How ’bout this eye-catching poster, compliments of the incomparable Higashi Glaser Design. I’m thinking if Kathy Harrigan is working on refreshments for this event, that makes three artists besides me donating work to this effort. Sandra Higashi, Byron Glaser, Kathy and I all know the truth of that slogan: “Art saves lives.” That’s what this event is all about.
This coming Friday, June 15, I’m doing a benefit concert for Empower House in Fredericksburg. Empower House. Whose mission is: “Supporting survivors of domestic violence.” Mission statements are the haiku of marketing tools.
A few weeks ago, the writer working on the advance publicity for this event sent me the following e-mail:
Need some comments from you about empowerment as it relates to your trade..
I’d rather write a 20-minute story than a 100-word blurb. They usually take about the same amount of time.
Empowerment as it relates to being a professional storyteller. I could hold forth for hours, rant and write for days and days. But in a nutshell?
After a couple of days’ procrastination, after several running jumps into several discarded opening sentences, I felt myself get nudged out of the way. This blurb sort of wrote itself:
One of the most powerful ways to heal ourselves is to tell our stories. Our secrets — the ones we keep from ourselves and the ones we hide from others — keep us sick. They bind us and enfeeble us. Once my secrets are spoken, they become part of my story, which gives them context, sense and meaning. Give a secret the context of your life’s story, and you’ve become more rational. If you share your story as honestly as you can, it will not only make you stronger, it can give others courage and the comforting assurance that they are not alone.
We tell stories in order to make sense.
Maybe that final sentence is my personal mission statement.
If you want to know more about the benefit, all the pertinent information is in the poster.
Beautifully and honestly said.
I feel you sending me hugs from 350 miles away. Thank you.
Truer words … Keeping secrets is never the best idea although we all tend to do it, espcially if they are about someting distasteful. Knock their shoes and socks off!
Thank you, Julie. Alice Miller is the writer/thinker who got me to see that when secrets come out into the light of day, things that used to be confusing make sense; and when things make sense, all sorts of impossibilities — healing, forgiveness, contentment, laughter — become possible.
Sounds like a great program, and a great personal statement. Best of luck.
Thank you, ma’am. For the good wishes and for being on the “receiving” end of this yawp of mine.
So true! Every word of it. All 109 words of it.
109, huh? For me, that’s downright terse.