This week I read a powerful essay by author Naomi Jackson about losing and finding her mind. I was compelled to share it with
and another dear friend because, to be honest, I didn’t want to be alone with her words in my head. I’ve seen enough of life to know that to survive some ideas requires a multiplicity of voices.What emerged was a threaded conversation between three friends—a true funding moment (as
might say)! Though the essay was about Jackson’s mental health struggles, our conversation opened up space to (re)member people from our own stories. These were people we had loved and lost. Some of them had lost themselves and we were there (or not) to pick up pieces. In our sharing of stories we were building narrative bridges between them and maybe each other.Paula M Salvio writes about the power of story-taking in the context of public pedagogy—learning as a society. Specifically she looks at how stories of social engagement in the face of large scale societal ills can “work to build and sustain social bonds of solidarity.” Societal sickness is surely evident in the stigmas around mental health in and beyond this city. So for me a link can be made here:
Reading essays like Jackson’s in community is a kind of story-taking. It looks like pain management strategies found in caring conversations. Our email thread brought about a story-taking moment that you might experience at book club or maybe a podcast episode that rings so true you can’t help but share about it in your WhatsApp chat. Story-taking is inherently relational. It is narrative bridge building.
For my next Good Enough I’ll be curating a list of texts that grapple with the complexities of mental health. I’m inspired by Aparna Mishra Tarc who writes that stories give us “the symbolic means to carry our unrest and speak our grief with the world, with others.” I welcome your suggestions in the comments. Listening to and reading such stories might be where healing starts for some of us. But sharing them is next level. That’s where the learning and growth becomes a story-taking experience.
For the good of the whole.