Who would we be without stories?
Are you someone who associates the word “story” with a thin, hardcover children's picture book? Of course, we all know that children love stories. But how many of us are aware of the prevalence and importance of stories in our adult lives and how integral they are to our histories and identities?
Consider a simple, silly example. You leave your dirty dish on the counter without putting it away. When called out, do you say, “I forgot, sorry!” or, do you tell a story that is designed to invite understanding and forgiveness: “Oh, sorry! I forgot because just as I was coming into the kitchen, my phone rang and it was Janet and she was so upset and needed to talk right away. The dog had already started whining to go out, so, totally distracted, I just put the dish down and left with the dog while talking to Janet.”
If we think about it, we may discover that we are, in fact, telling stories all day long. “I fell asleep in my chair” becomes: “I'm so tired. I was wide-awake all night thinking about next week’s party. This morning I had trouble keeping my eyes open. I guess that's why I fell asleep in my chair in the middle of the day.”
For the people telling these two stories, context matters—surrounding facts or single events with details and causal occurrences makes all the difference in the conveying of information. I’d like to believe that context also matters when it comes to the fact of myself, my personhood. I was not simply dropped into the world from the sky. In the moment of my birth, I already had a context. In addition to all that came afterward, this context (what came before) is also part of my story.
Stories shape what we know about ourselves and ground us in time and place. Dan P. McAdams, a psychologist and researcher in the field of narrative psychology wrote that “people construe their lives as integrative stories, complete with settings, scenes, characters, plots, and themes. Stories bring together the reconstructed past and the imagined future and provide messy human lives with some semblance of meaning, order, and purpose.” This irrepressible human drive to integrate past, present, and future through story is the essence of narrative theory.
My first introduction to narrative theory was through the writing of Dr. Michael Grand. When I heard him speak on the Women in the Middle podcast about the existential struggles faced by adoptees, I was already well into my quest to uncover information about my birth father. At the time, I didn't think my search had much to do with me. And yet, the extent to which I became obsessed to know the story of my father's life after his marriage to my mother confused me. Why did I care so much? As Dr. Grand said in that interview, adoptees “feel their life began at Chapter Two because they’re missing Chapter One of their life…It’s important that they have the opportunity to fill in as many of the missing pieces as possible to create a personal gestalt, a sense of wholeness.” While I’m not someone who had two adoptive parents, I am a step adoptee (raised by one birth parent and one adoptive stepparent). For most of my life I didn’t consider that having no details and no stories about my birth father or my family’s circumstances in the lead up to my birth could have shaped my identity. Grand’s description of the sense of incompleteness that can result when one has little or no information about one’s origins really resonated with me.
I decided to take a deep dive into the question of narrative and identity. I found a lot of articles written by developmental psychologists who made clear linkages between the two concepts. A 2013 article written by Bruce Feller in the New York Times called, “The Stories That Bind Us” received a lot of attention. Feller wrote about the surprising discovery by researchers Marshall Duke and Robyn Fivush that children who were told stories about their family members experienced a greater sense of control over their lives, higher self esteem, lower anxiety, and more resiliency, among other benefits. I wondered if Duke and Fivush would say that the opposite is equally true. Is there also a negative impact for individuals in families where stories are missing, as is the case for those who have never known one or both of their birth parents?
As I enter my third year of writing my Chapter One, these questions continue to fascinate me. While writing mine and my family’s stories, I’m steeping myself in the meaning of story!
What role has story played in shaping the person you are today?
(If you’re interested in further reading or the citations for any of the above, get in touch with me at micheledhaberwriter@gmail.com)
