by Shannon Turner | Mar 17, 2022 | authenticity, disordered eating, food, grief, self-image, self-worth, vulnerability, walks with grief
The first time it happened, it was really unplanned. I was twelve. My best friend had thrown me over for cooler girls. There I sat at home on a Friday night, not at a slumber party with the rest of them. So, I invited Loneliness over to hang out. Always so obliging, so eager, that Loneliness. Unlike me, she never begrudged being the substitute friend when there was no one better or more interesting to fill the social calendar.
by Shannon Turner | Jan 25, 2022 | Blog, personal narrative, transformative storytelling, trauma, vulnerability, walks with grief
Despite all that, my most visceral memory from that year will always be sitting in a car on a cold, rainy, fall afternoon with the mother of one of the shooting victims. We formed a friendship during that season and had gone out to a local school to talk about resilience. When we got back in the car to leave, she checked her voicemail, had gotten a call from her son who was refusing to go to school. Again
by Shannon Turner | Oct 5, 2021 | change, manifesting stories, transformative storytelling, workshops
In my curriculum where I teach people how to cultivate and tell their own stories, an approach I affectionately call, ‘The Story Sandwich,’ I always refer to the importance of finding the change in our storytelling. I call it the meat (or spicy tofu) of the sandwich. In workshops, I break out these two figures side-by-side and talk about that moment in English class when they would talk us about the “beginning-middle-end” of a story (blah-blah-blah), and especially “exposition-climax-denoument” (again: blah-blah-blah).
by Shannon Turner | Oct 1, 2021 | change, happy stories, life maps, manifesting stories, personal is political, personal narrative, transformative storytelling, workshops
Pittsburg: Past, Present, Future is an innovative, new storytelling project under the guidance of the Pittsburgh Community Market, which will culminate with a live, pop-up theatre at Pittsburgh Yards on Saturday, October 30 at 7:00p as a part of the ELEVATE Atlanta Arts Festival.
by Shannon Turner | Sep 2, 2021 | Blog
Two nights before we wrapped Treasure Maps, I was sitting on my front porch on a sweltering summer evening, looking at my overgrown yard, thinking about what it would be like when life wasn’t quite so busy again. Given that it had been such a large and ideal...