The Lifesaving Magic of Storytelling

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Continuing on from Monday’s Christmassy theme, yesterday I decorated my tree. Like lot of people, I’ve had many of my decorations for years and years — decades — and each of them have their own little story or a memory attached to them.

There is the plastic Father Christmas on his sleigh pulled by two reindeer who is almost (coughs) fifty years old. As a child I remember he used to have a pile of plastic presents on the back of his sleigh that have obviously been lost over the decades. There are also the messy paper decorations that my daughter made at nursery, and my favourite tin soldiers.

There is one wooden decoration which is one of my most treasured, a wreath of holly and inside it, a dove – suspended so it twists and turns and appears to fly – holds an olive branch in its beak above the word ‘peace’.

As I placed it on my tree I thought ‘if I just had one wish for Christmas...’ – like so many people, I am sure, all over the world this year given what is happening in the Middle East.

But all those stories, all those memories, unwrapping them all like presents, got me thinking about an unreported part of this conflict in Israel and Palestine – the power of storytelling.

When some of the hostages were released they talked about how many of them from the same kibbutz had been able to stay together and how they had survived, day by day, by recreating some of their kibbutzim routines. Deep underground surrounded perhaps by the sound of the distant thud of bombs, they sat for lectures, they told each other stories, it was for them the only way to keep going in what must have felt like hell.

There is a long history of storytelling in the Jewish culture. Back in the 16th and 17th centuries maggidim were itinerant storytellers in Eastern Europe who travelled between villages, telling folktales and stories from the Torah.

It was perhaps these same stories that the hostages held onto to survive maybe the worst days they had ever lived through. And yet I couldn’t help but think of their distant cousins above ground, made homeless from the conflict, sharing food and shelter and perhaps stories of their own to get through the horror of every day life in Gaza now.

Alal-hakawati is the Arabic word for storytelling, and stories are the way that many displaced people hold onto their culture and history in times of conflict. In 2019 a children’s centre in Gaza even launched a storytelling club to preserve this ancient tradition, the children learnt the importance of using different voices, accents, facial expressions and body movement to tell tales.

Stories are told on our bodies every day – every laughter line a funny memory, each scar a battle overcome, a pale line from a caesarean marking the safe arrival of a child into the world.

Stories are vital to keep tight hold of our sense of self too. For example, a story you tell about how you volunteered for charity might be your way of identifying as a kind person, the jokes you tell in a group of people might be all the evidence you need to know you’re a funny person.

In the second book that I wrote with Wendy Mitchell, What I Wish People Knew About Dementia, I came across an interesting piece of research about the importance of autobiographical detail. It suggested that once someone with dementia loses their sense of self, the progression of the disease can be more severe. Many people will know what it’s like to sit with someone with advanced dementia who will tell you, in great detail, about a moment in their history, a story which they appear to need to press onto you with some urgency – a timeline which they may even be quite sure they are occupying.

Could it be that without even knowing why, they have an intuition to hold onto these autobiographical details? Do they know, deep inside, that to tell these stories about their lives, about their personhood, is the best way to cling on to the self that they know? It certainly makes you feel differently about listening.

What are we without our stories? Perhaps that’s why some of us feel an urgency throughout our lives to pin them to the page? We don’t want to forget that moment, that person, or even that version of ourselves. The challenge is trying to do it justice in our writing. A challenge and a journey – sometimes an impossible one, but we endeavour. Isn’t that the fun of it?

Storytelling is a very human occupation, it is a reminder that we have more in common than that which divides us, whatever age, skin colour or religion we are – wherever we live in the world.

As we gather with friends and relatives for Christmas this year, be sure to share some storytelling of your own, and if you make a vow to pin those stories (either your own or someone else’s) to the page, come and join my Write With Me Club in the new year – we’ll do it together.

And let’s all hope for peace in 2024.