by Shannon Turner | Aug 21, 2019 | Blog
Recently, in a workshop on resilience by Kevin L. Green at ROOTS Week, our small discussion groups were asked to come up with a definition or metaphor for resilience. We kept coming back to the notion of a rubber band that maintains its elasticity, something that...
by Shannon Turner | Jul 25, 2019 | Blog, improv, manifesting stories, nostalgia
When I was a little girl, we used to play this game at slumber parties called Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board. One girl would lay down and pretend to be dead. The rest of us girls would sit around her body, one at the head. Sometimes “the body” would...
by Shannon Turner | Jul 3, 2019 | Blog, brain science, memory, trauma
I can’t remember the first time it happened – which is ironic – but it happened a lot in my childhood and continued on until now. We would be sitting around at a potluck or some other social occasion and I, trying to entertain folks, would join in...
by Shannon Turner | Jun 19, 2019 | authenticity, Blog, change, happy stories, transformative storytelling, vulnerability, walks with grief
Around this time two years ago, I set off to tell some happy stories. I had just gone through a cycle of work involving grief, helping people tell some of their hardest stories, including the Virginia Tech residency and Trigger Warning. Coming out of that cycle, I was...
by Shannon Turner | Jun 3, 2019 | Blog
I love this scene at the end of When Harry Met Sally. Harry wonders who the acquaintances are we should remember when we sing Auld Lang Syne. Sally replies that perhaps we should just remember that we forgot them. Ever since I started my story coaching practice,...
by Shannon Turner | May 20, 2019 | Blog
Picture it. A Wednesday evening, a Saturday morning. A community pool at the local YMCA. The women gather, picking out their foam water-resistance weights, placing them on the side of the pool, and then gingerly entering into the water with squeals and groans. The...
