Tag Archives: stories

Nov 19: Your words and art are needed!

from http://www.stopcsa.org/talktostop/:

Stop the Silence: Stop Child Sexual Abuse, Inc. (Stop the Silence, www.stopcsa.org), in collaboration with Art for Humanity (South Africa) and The Global Lesson Foundation (Canada) and other collaborating organizations (Survivors Healing Center, Spiritual Alliance to Stop Intimate Violence) request your input for the first annual “Stop the Silence: Talk Around the Clock” marathon to stop the silence about child sexual abuse (CSA). On November 19, 2008 we will start talking and presenting art and information through the Web from people around the world who want to add their work and thoughts to this movement, and we will not stop for twenty-four hours. We can present your work (e.g., we can air a clip of your poetry) or you can present it live through a special Web program that will allow others throughout the world to see and/or hear you.

We need your voice, art, and information.

* We need your voice if you are a survivor, a bystander, and/or a supporter of the prevention of child sexual abuse.
* We need your voice to help celebrate the courageous efforts of past victims, survivors and those who have supported them.
* We need your voice if you are an individual, organization or celebrity who believes that no child, regardless of geography, culture or heritage or economic status, should have to endure any form of sexual abuse.

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Telling (Our) Stories

On recommendation of someone at UCSF, I’ve been reading Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.’s book, Kitchen Table Wisdom. Dr. Remen, an accomplished physician, survivor of chronic illness, and therapist, began many years ago to think about how best one might work with patients who were facing chronic illness and death.

Stories are powerful instruments — and they’re as common and consistent for us as breathing. Just as the Tales Grimm or the old Parables or the Ananzi or Coyote tales are recognizable as telling us something about how our communities think we ought to live, we have individual/familial stories that we tell ourselves and one another very consistently every minute of every day. We, as literate and verbal culture, are ever immersed in story.

What’s the definition of story? My online dictionary says it can be used as a noun or a verb. I loved multi-layered words like that. Anyway, one definition is “an account or recital of an event or a series of events, either true or fictitious.” Another is “to decorate with scenes representing historical or legendary events; to tell as a story.” (Circularity is always fun — and the dictionary is fraught with it, but that’s another story!)

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