the art of sacred story-telling across the oceans

I am writing this fresh off a call with a sister inside BIPOC+Bountiful, my love. We woke up some powerful stirrings centred around how to orient to story-telling as a sacred, generative act. I could see it was so life-giving for her to receive these codes, and feel called to share them with you too.♥️

A caveat: this is about social media, but it doesn't have to be. I'm going to talk about the art of sacred story-telling across the oceans - and that applies whether your medium is Instagram, an international telephone conversation with your mum or a prayer to your ancestors across the cosmic ocean. These words are intended to gently support you out of an extraction-based relationship with your voice (e.g. ‘I must speak what others want to hear’, ‘I need to provide value’, ‘I don’t have anything worthwhile to say' etc.) and towards a more generative relationship with the sacred storyteller archetype that lives in you, in life and business. I hope it serves. 

Firstly, an acknowledgement. We live in a society geared towards the extraction, exploitation and erasure of our stories as women of colour. Many of us move into entrepreneurship because we desire to reclaim our stories, our ancestral medicine, our voices - but doing so with integrity can feel like a mine-field. That is because most systems for ‘marketing business’ are inspired by extractive ideologies (I call it story colonialism). A lot of my clients come to me feeling that inner snag of ‘I want to share my authentic voice with the world’ and ‘but I don’t feel safe to do so in this system'. That is totally valid, love. With everything I share, root into your body and let it lead your pace.

Sidenote: Sometimes it can be helpful to just take a step back and inquire whether we have unknowingly entered an extractive relationship with our voice, online or offline. Am I holding back from speaking because I believe others don't want to hear me? Am I carrying the story that my voice doesn't matter? Am I afraid people will think I'm too much, too complex, too needy? Really examine this with a fine-comb. When you think about telling a story about yourself and feel that pang in your body - that edge that says but can I really share of myself in this way? - how do you respond to it? This will tell you a lot about your current relationship with story-telling (and social media, if you're examining it from that perspective). 

Here's a truth I'm inviting you to anchor into: story-telling is here to serve your aliveness, not the other way around. Story-telling, in any form, wants to be an activation of aliveness in your body. There is a reason our ancestors shared stories round the fire, sang stories into the night in moments of joy and grief. Stories bring us closer to our own humanity. They stir up landscapes in our bodies. They often contain the reverberations of wisdom and ways of being passed through your lineage. At the very heart of it, sacred stories connect you closer to something or someone. Because connection is what makes us come alive. The sacred stories living in you are no different in spirit to the stories your ancient ancestors shared around the fire. They are woven with that yearning to connect, whether spoken over the embers or the Internet. 

This is the piece I think many of us can struggle with. Meaningful connection involves taking emotional risks. Powerful personal story-telling always involves emotional risk, a moment of ‘I’m not sure how you'll receive me, but I know I need to trust this is part of my journey back home and I'm inviting you to walk with me'. We cannot tell powerful stories without being willing to lean into the risk it invites, and that is why this is brave work. That is why it is important to go slowly, to tend to the body and all the feelings the process can bring up. We need to feel resourced enough to see ourselves, even when our bid for connection feels like it fell flat. 

I want you to take a moment to look at your social media, with the eyes of a non-judgmental eagle. We so often orient to this idea that we need to ‘give value’ on our pages, but how much space are you creating for your community to witness and give back to you? This is the art of sacred story-telling. It is inviting people in. It is saying, I trust you enough to see me and not take from me. This is how we weave a relationship of reciprocity and authentic exchange into social media. It is non-extractive invitation-making. When your body understands the rhythm of non-extractive invitation-making, even ‘selling’ shifts into sacred story-telling.  

Another sidenote: If you find that your body doesn't feel safe enough to create that space online yet, it is usually an invitation to anchor into the support of a community (like The Sanctum!), where you can cultivate a taste of that safe enough-ness first. It's also important to remember that stories are like fruits - they want to be ripe before they're shared. If you're still moving through the integration or completion of a story in your body, know that it's vital to hold it. Not every story is for sharing - and for the ones that are, you'll catch on to that feeling of ‘ripeness’ in your body the more you practice actively asking your body what it feels ready to share. 

I have one more orientation for you, love. Every time I tell a story online, I imagine it to be like a message in a bottle. I land into the idea that the reason this story is blooming out of my lips (or fingers) is because there is one person out there who needs to hear it right now, in exactly the way I'm going to say it. When I press ‘post’ on Instagram or ‘send’ on the email, I imagine putting that message in a bottle into the ocean and watching it float away. I lean into trusting the innate intelligence of that story to know who it needs to go to. I find this perspective so helpful online, where it can be so easy to hyper-focus on the numbers. But truly, isn't a story worth telling if you knew it would reach the heart of that one person who really needed it? Could that be enough? Can you allow yourself to believe that this is happening with every post you put out, even when you don't receive any validation of the fact? We must practice planting the seeds of trees whose fruit and shade we may never knowingly benefit from. That is the spirit of all liberation work.

If you have got to the end of this letter, I thank you for being here - and I hope it served ♥️ If my orientation to story-telling and social media feels nourishing to you, you'd deeply benefit from being inside Sacred Sanctum, a business collective for women of colour coaches and healers who receive my high-touch support with messaging, copy creation and sacred story-telling, so they can sign on soulmate clients from a place of authenticity and decolonised leadership. 

You are ready to shift your relationship with social media from ‘I feel pressured and confused about how to see and speak about my offerings’ to ‘I deeply trust my body’s invitation-making and story-telling process, knowing it will be fruitful for me and my community.' Join us inside The Sanctum to awaken a more nuanced, bold and brave expression of the sacred story-teller who lives in you - and to dance within a beautiful BIPOC community devoted to your flourishing. 

much love,

heenali