Unearthing the Gift

Almost accidentally, I have fallen into a new hobby/adventure: Storytelling.

It’s not so strange that I would find myself exploring this. I remember back in college during the Day of the Dead celebrations, I went to a museum exhibit on the Dia de Muertos, and they had a real live Storyteller. She used different instruments to bring the sounds of her story to life and I was mesmerized by her performance. I secretly wished I could one day become a storyteller like her, but my extreme shines and fear of public speaking kept me from even trying.

I have always battled with fear of speaking. Not just public speaking, just speaking in general. Speaking up in class was never easy, it used to cause me so much anxiety, I rarely even talked in class. I didn’t know that speaking-up was important to my spiritual and life journey, until recently. My life has put me in many situations where I have the opportunity to work on my fear of public speaking.

I have come a long way from my younger years. I even have a job where I regularly have to speak up, do presentations, tell people what’s on my mind. It’s through this job that I’ve had the opportunity to dip my toes into storytelling.

It started with a workshop series where we learned the basics of storytelling and got to practice and actually share some stories. I received very good feedback from those workshops, but it was always very nerve wrecking. Not just because it was speaking up in front of people, but also because sharing personal stories is well…personal, and vulnerable.

Apparently, my stories were powerful because I was invited to share my story at a large event. My mind told me to run for the hills and not accept such a crazy proposal, but my soul told me I needed to be brave and do this.

This Friday, I will have my first storytelling workshop to prepare for the big event. The story I am going to tell has been trickling in little by little. I will be needing a lot of courage to make it through the two workshops and the main performance. Wish me luck, I feel afraid, but I am choosing courage. I feel this is an important step for me. And I’m excited to see where it leads me.