“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” —Maya Angelou
Welcome to Issue 5!
As you’re walking through life, storytelling becomes part and parcel to your journey, how you look at the world, and how you make decisions. You gather stories till you have this huge collection that maps out who you are and how you think. Many times your stories are not even your own, as they come from your friends and family, books, and especially movies.
Stories have a huge impact on our lives and storytelling is a very powerful tool. Because stories are inherently important in your personal life story and shape your view of the world starting from infanthood, that’s why Disney is magic. Disney created a multibillion dollars business by capturing the attention of children and adults alike with retelling fairy tales via animations, movies, and theme parks.
We even find meaning and cause-and-effect in stories we’ve been told. Remember when it became a huge topic of conversation that princess stories are teaching young girls negative stereotypes about who they are? Or how TV has been used for years to teach children ABCs (shout out to Elmo)? What about how in some cultures, ancestral knowledge about life is shared through storytelling? No matter what we do, we can’t take escape our tales.
Before there was Disney and TV, There were books, travel, and grandmas. I have travelled all over the world. It was pretty quickly that I realized that my favorite part was collecting epics from every where I go. I keep all of the epics in a little chest in my mind where I visit when I’m bored or need inspiration. A lot of what is stored away in my mind-chest is stories about how to take care of myself, recipes to potions for haircare, mental health exercises, true meaning of love. I accumulated those through stories from my grandmothers, my parents, and other people in my community. This isn’t a magical unknown phenomenon because it happens in every community and culture. Aboriginal peoples of the North, Central, and South Americas are all very well known for their story telling cultures. So are many African communities and Pacific Islander communities. Stories serve as a life-line between various generations through history and the tidbits of information are just as important as anything else we learn through out life. In many communities, stories are medicine.
Going into Women History Month tomorrow, think about how many of the stories you know about care for yourself and others and strength and resilience were shared with you via the amazing women in your life. Then think about your own mental health and, if you feel like it, share your story here. – Lili
✉️▪︎ Share this issue
📱 Websites & Apps
UNBLND → Make friends with strangers around the world
“Find people who share your interests and hobbies and connect with them. You get to know real people, uncover their profiles, and make a plan with them! Do you want to know what separates this application apart from others? To begin with, there is no visible profile photo. You are completely anonymous.”
📚Articles & Books
The Prophet → Philosophy, love, and spirituality told in the story of a village
“The Prophet is a collection of poetic essays that are philosophical, spiritual, and, above all, inspirational. Gibran’s musings are divided into twenty-eight chapters covering such sprawling topics as love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, housing, clothes, buying and selling, crime and punishment, laws, freedom, reason and passion, pain, self-knowledge, teaching, friendship, talking, time, good and evil, prayer, pleasure, beauty, religion, and death.”
👣 Things To Try
🎵Inuit Throat Singing → Music that moves your core
Among the Inuit, this traditional type of musical performance is known as katajjaq and typically practiced by two women. Inuit women across the Arctic also used throat singing to soothe fussy babies, who were tucked close enough in the hoods of those amautis to feel the vibration of their mother’s throat. Thanks to social media it is gaining attention and many people say it has relaxing and anti-anxiety effects. The music I’ve shared with you is a hybrid of Inuit throat singing and other styles but still quite powerful. Give it a listen!
💭 Food for Thought
Storytelling By National Geographic → Storytelling is the act of telling stories, which are narratives with a beginning, middle, and end
“Storytelling is universal to the human experience. Indeed, although it is likely impossible to prove, it has been suggested that storytelling developed not long after the development of language itself.”
🎨 Aesthetic Inspiration
Maggie Stephenson → Illustrator
Under the Instagram handle _maggiestephenson_, Polish-German illustration artist Maggie Stephenson puts lines and colors together to create new images of how we see people.
📖Did You Know?
Storytelling → Has profound mental health benefits
“According to one study, patients struggling with drug abuse experienced statistically significant reductions in depression and anxiety scores after they had been treated with narrative therapy—a form of directly processing adverse events through storytelling. Another study found that people who wrote stories that drew on “traumatic, stressful, or emotional events” saw improvements in physical and psychological health. And more recently, backed by these promising results, researchers predicted that those who could create a positive and coherent narrative out of COVID-19 would experience greater emotional well-being, plus have an easier time coping.”1
🎞 This Week’s GIF
🌿 Herbs & Plants for Health
Herbcyclopedia → it’s a living library that you can add to!
▪︎ Check out what’s already in the library
😺Thank You for Reading and Say Hi!👋🏼
I’m Lili and you are receiving this email because you signed up for It’s Kismet through one of our freebies. It’s Kismet is a weekly curated list of content I thought was worth sharing with more people.
If this email was forwarded to you, subscribe using the box below:
If you found anything inspiring in this Newsletter, have something to share with me, or just feel like saying hello, reply to this email and let's start a conversation! Know someone who would enjoy something from this issue? Have a friend or two who is looking for some inspiration?
How Strangers Use Storytelling to Help Others—and Themselves. (n.d.). Time. Retrieved February 28, 2022, from https://time.com/6144918/storytelling-circles-benefits-pandemic-anxiety/