Had I listened to my father, I probably would have become a steel worker rather than a storyteller . . . ❞
My story...
Me at about 4 yrs
Once upon a time . . .
According to my mother, I was a "good boy", meaning that I was a quiet and well-behaved child. According to her, she could tie me to the front porch railing and leave me for hours knowing I wouldn't make a peep. Sitting there on the front step of our little home in Hamilton Ontario, I watched the world around me . . . and listened.
Later, I went to college and studied Child Care. I went to work as a counsellor with troubled adolescents. Like me, many of them had untold stories. Yet by providing them with a safe space and a compassionate, non-judgemental ear, I could invite these stories to emerge and together, we could begin to make sense of them.
My call to story . . .
Eventually, my fascination with story returned me to University to study art and literature. That journey brought my family and I to Scotland and to the University of Edinburgh where I embarked on a Ph.D. programme in English Literature. Every page I turned, I heard the voices of men and women who needed to tell a story. Later, as a tutor and teacher I shared my passion for those stories with my students. And, gradually growing within, my own inner call to adventure was sounding.
The Storytellers' Apprentice
In the late 90s, I embarked on what amounted to a seven-year storytelling apprenticeship through workshops at the Scottish Storytelling Centre. With the help of my mentors, Ruth Kirkpatrick and Claire McNicol, I discovered I had a voice, an inner storyteller, a storyteller who longed to share his stories with the world and help others do the same.
In 2005, I left the classroom and crossed the threshold, beginning a journey into full-time storytelling and StoryCoaching, bringing my skills as a listener and storyteller to the people who came to me with their untold stories and a desire to share them.
Stories for Peace and Education
In 2006 I co-facilitated (with David Keith, founder of Unipaz UK) a three-year project working with children and young people in schools, helping them to share their stories as a way of addressing conflict and creating more peaceful classrooms. At the same time, I began working with the General Teaching Council of Scotland, helping senior classroom teachers create critical and reflective accounts of their professional development in order to earn the distinction of becoming Chartered Teachers in Scotland.
Despite this promising beginning, I fell prey to my shadow, sabotaging my marriage and relationships with those who had loved and supported me the most. This was a particularly painful and chaotic time for all and I take responsibility for my part in it. I had turned everyone's world upside down. Yet somehow, I had to turn my life around in order to survive, to make sense of the chao I had created.
Healing Words
In 2009, I accepted an invitation to travel to the Middle East with an international troupe of storytellers as part of the international "Healing Words" project. Our task was to work with groups of Arabs and Jews across the region, using story as a way of encouraging dialogue and mutual understanding. I confess that there was a part of me that wanted to lose myself in others' pain and conflict. Instead, I experienced the transformational power of story to change people, to shift paradigms of thinking, to encourage new solutions to old problems. Peace would come one heart, one story at a time. That experience changed me. I knew what my life work was to be. I returned to Scotland and began developing my work as a therapeutic StoryCoach, working with men and women who used story in their work and personal lives.
Therapeutic Storytelling Practice
The following year, I was called to Canada to work with young people creating stories using new digital technology. I also had the opportunity to go to Newfoundland to speak with teachers about the power of story in restorative justice circles. In 2011, I travelled to Denmark to study indigenous approaches to story and healing with the psychiatrist and indigenous storyteller Lewis Mehl-Madrona. Upon my return to Scotland, I developed further my "healing story" practice.
Narrative Approach to Leadership
In 2012 I teamed up with Norton and Lynn Bertram-Smith of On Purpose Coaching to found the Aberdeen Leadership Forum, a group of corporate leaders from the local oil and gas industry whom we invited to explore the potential for story to develop them into mindful and transformational leaders. Over and over again, we heard how grateful people were to have the time and space to share their stories and to be offered skills and techniques for creating compelling narratives of leadership and community development.
Everyone has a story...
I'm writing this in 2020. Over the past 10 years I have been privileged to help hundreds of people share their stories, people from all walks of life-- children, teens, teachers, undergrads and graduate students, therapists, nurses, social workers, librarians, ministers, museum curators, musicians, storytellers, actors, managers, community and corporate leaders and their organisations. Each has unlocked untold stories and discovered the power of storytelling in their professional and personal lives.
These are just some of the stories behind the people I've worked with. Whoever you are, you have a story to share with the rest of the world. StoryCoaching can support you in telling that story, while helping you better understand the stories that you hear, that you tell, and that are played out around us. Below, are just some of the outcomes achieved by some of the people with whom I have worked:
According to my mother, I was a "good boy", meaning that I was a quiet and well-behaved child. According to her, she could tie me to the front porch railing and leave me for hours knowing I wouldn't make a peep. Sitting there on the front step of our little home in Hamilton Ontario, I watched the world around me . . . and listened.
- Listening became my primary mode of learning about the world. I was always listening. I particularly loved listening to older people, especially my grandparents, aunts and uncles, and their friends. They loved telling stories. Some were whispered, some were spoken aloud. They were about hard times and good times and sometimes I wasn’t quite sure what they were about at all. They laughed, they cried. Listening to their stories told me who they were, what they thought and how they felt. And at night, I'd pull the cover up over me in bed and listen to rock and roll and evangelical preachers on my little transistor radio.
Later, I went to college and studied Child Care. I went to work as a counsellor with troubled adolescents. Like me, many of them had untold stories. Yet by providing them with a safe space and a compassionate, non-judgemental ear, I could invite these stories to emerge and together, we could begin to make sense of them.
My call to story . . .
Eventually, my fascination with story returned me to University to study art and literature. That journey brought my family and I to Scotland and to the University of Edinburgh where I embarked on a Ph.D. programme in English Literature. Every page I turned, I heard the voices of men and women who needed to tell a story. Later, as a tutor and teacher I shared my passion for those stories with my students. And, gradually growing within, my own inner call to adventure was sounding.
The Storytellers' Apprentice
In the late 90s, I embarked on what amounted to a seven-year storytelling apprenticeship through workshops at the Scottish Storytelling Centre. With the help of my mentors, Ruth Kirkpatrick and Claire McNicol, I discovered I had a voice, an inner storyteller, a storyteller who longed to share his stories with the world and help others do the same.
In 2005, I left the classroom and crossed the threshold, beginning a journey into full-time storytelling and StoryCoaching, bringing my skills as a listener and storyteller to the people who came to me with their untold stories and a desire to share them.
Stories for Peace and Education
In 2006 I co-facilitated (with David Keith, founder of Unipaz UK) a three-year project working with children and young people in schools, helping them to share their stories as a way of addressing conflict and creating more peaceful classrooms. At the same time, I began working with the General Teaching Council of Scotland, helping senior classroom teachers create critical and reflective accounts of their professional development in order to earn the distinction of becoming Chartered Teachers in Scotland.
Despite this promising beginning, I fell prey to my shadow, sabotaging my marriage and relationships with those who had loved and supported me the most. This was a particularly painful and chaotic time for all and I take responsibility for my part in it. I had turned everyone's world upside down. Yet somehow, I had to turn my life around in order to survive, to make sense of the chao I had created.
Healing Words
In 2009, I accepted an invitation to travel to the Middle East with an international troupe of storytellers as part of the international "Healing Words" project. Our task was to work with groups of Arabs and Jews across the region, using story as a way of encouraging dialogue and mutual understanding. I confess that there was a part of me that wanted to lose myself in others' pain and conflict. Instead, I experienced the transformational power of story to change people, to shift paradigms of thinking, to encourage new solutions to old problems. Peace would come one heart, one story at a time. That experience changed me. I knew what my life work was to be. I returned to Scotland and began developing my work as a therapeutic StoryCoach, working with men and women who used story in their work and personal lives.
Therapeutic Storytelling Practice
The following year, I was called to Canada to work with young people creating stories using new digital technology. I also had the opportunity to go to Newfoundland to speak with teachers about the power of story in restorative justice circles. In 2011, I travelled to Denmark to study indigenous approaches to story and healing with the psychiatrist and indigenous storyteller Lewis Mehl-Madrona. Upon my return to Scotland, I developed further my "healing story" practice.
Narrative Approach to Leadership
In 2012 I teamed up with Norton and Lynn Bertram-Smith of On Purpose Coaching to found the Aberdeen Leadership Forum, a group of corporate leaders from the local oil and gas industry whom we invited to explore the potential for story to develop them into mindful and transformational leaders. Over and over again, we heard how grateful people were to have the time and space to share their stories and to be offered skills and techniques for creating compelling narratives of leadership and community development.
Everyone has a story...
I'm writing this in 2020. Over the past 10 years I have been privileged to help hundreds of people share their stories, people from all walks of life-- children, teens, teachers, undergrads and graduate students, therapists, nurses, social workers, librarians, ministers, museum curators, musicians, storytellers, actors, managers, community and corporate leaders and their organisations. Each has unlocked untold stories and discovered the power of storytelling in their professional and personal lives.
These are just some of the stories behind the people I've worked with. Whoever you are, you have a story to share with the rest of the world. StoryCoaching can support you in telling that story, while helping you better understand the stories that you hear, that you tell, and that are played out around us. Below, are just some of the outcomes achieved by some of the people with whom I have worked:
- a mother . . . discovers her voice and begins volunteering as a storyteller in her daughter's school.
- a storyteller . . . improves her performance skills and gains greater self-confidence on stage.
- a grandfather . . . connects with his grandchildren through storytelling.
- a therapist . . . better understands the relationship between myth and his client's stories.
- a teacher . . . enlivens her classes with weekly oral storytelling sessions, finding the confidence to tell stories rather than just read them.
- a writer . . . gains a better grasp on the structure of his historic novel and is inspired to tell parts of it at a nearby storytelling gathering.
- a PhD student . . . transforms her complex research with marine crustaceans into an entertaining story for primary school pupils and successfully competes for funding to complete her research.
- a film-maker . . . develops her first feature-length production from a story she's been nursing for years.
- a nurse . . . develops her listening skills and feels more compassion for her patients and the stories of their illnesses.
- a community worker . . . feels empowered to communicate his vision for social justice in his community through a powerful story.
- a parliamentary education manager . . . inspires her team to learn storytelling skills to engage the public more effectively.
- a retiring oil executive . . . re-discovers his love of storytelling and becomes a valued spokesperson for his company.
- a senior investment manager . . . increases her self-confidence and secures a difficult contract and instills confidence in her clients.
- a global engineering company director . . . conveys a compelling vision to his technical team thanks to his storytelling skills.
- a young entrepreneur . . . successfully transforms his fledgling business into a major player in the market with the help of a powerful story of leadership.
. . . and finally . . .
Storytelling today is recognised as a powerful, transformative art of communication in business, medicine, therapy, media as well as in our personal lives. I've experienced this power in my own life. It has changed me, changed the way I see the world, made me a more effective speaker and listener. It has been both a healing and creative journey. Are you ready to make that journey? If so, I'm willing to accompany you on your storytelling adventure.
Storytelling today is recognised as a powerful, transformative art of communication in business, medicine, therapy, media as well as in our personal lives. I've experienced this power in my own life. It has changed me, changed the way I see the world, made me a more effective speaker and listener. It has been both a healing and creative journey. Are you ready to make that journey? If so, I'm willing to accompany you on your storytelling adventure.
I'm also a ukulele player and a member of the Gentle Jam Ukulele Group in Burlington, Ontario. Still a beginner but enjoying it so much. I'm particularly fond of playing and singing the old standards from the 20's and 30s. Photo by Bruce Shaptka.
Some of the organizations I've worked with:
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