Speak It, Write It, Tell It: Everybody Has a Story To Share
Co-founder of the story sharing platform Storybooth, Joshua Sinel discusses the importance and power of unloading personal stories for others to hear and relate.
From the time that the first human sketched out the story of the hunt—a life-sized drawing of a wild pig—over 45,000 years ago, we have all felt the tug and pull of our own stories wanting to get out, wanting some life of their own. It seems part of the human condition that our communication, and our need to connect to ourselves and one another, is wrapped up in storytelling. We see our lives as stories unfolding, as chapters, as acts in a play, and our stories—of pain, of triumph, challenges, losses, and gains, simple or complex—are the catalog of our experience. Our lives are a collection of self-told stories; the experience of being human.
We all have a story to tell, a thousand stories, a million, told in an infinite number of ways. To share your story is art, and it is an act of creation and healing. Whether you are speaking your experience into the world, writing short stories, poems, novels, articles, essays, or just journaling, you are giving life to your own story, and in doing so you are setting that story, and yourself, free.
Knowing your own stories, and—though often scary and sometimes ugly—facing them, perhaps even sharing them out loud, does so much more than ground your future work in truth and your own experience. Knowing your own stories, and telling them however you choose, also helps you gain perspective and to heal. There is something magical about putting it all out there (even if just to yourself), about getting your story recorded, getting it on paper, on the screen, into a video, spoken into the ether, or narrated into a microphone. Confining your story to the discipline of words, and expressing them, is not just and only storytelling, it is catharsis on the highest level.
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The idea for Storybooth came from our experiences with our own kids, when our daughter came home from her first sleep-away weekend having endured her most embarrassing moment—her name-tagged underwear discovered less than clean, then announced in front of everyone—shamed by the other kids, embarrassed, and feeling totally alone in what she had gone through.
Slowly and bit-by-bit we encouraged her to share what happened, to tell her story, and as she did, as she formed her story into its beginning, middle, and end, and shared it, we saw the weight lifted, and we shared our own childhood stories of embarrassment and that too lifted her. We planted those seeds for our kids, to form and share their stories with us, with each other as siblings, and with their peers, and we noticed that the telling of them, and the hearing them, enhanced and strengthened and balanced their emotional well-being, taught them empathy, and let them practice it. The idea that we could take what we had learned from our kids as their parents and present that to the world, and offer this storytelling tool to kids and teens everywhere, for them to use and learn from and heal with, was the genesis of the Storybooth platform.
At Storybooth there is a driving awareness of the healing and cathartic power of storytelling, not just as a way for our young audience to connect to the stories of others and to feel the unity in shared experiences, but also, and equally, as a way for our teen audience to learn and grow comfortable with confronting and knowing their own stories, speaking them, and perhaps, sharing them with the world.
When we launched Storybooth, we knew that people wanted to hear others’ stories, to make them feel not so alone in what they themselves experience, and to gain and gather insight into the ways in which others have handled their own unique experiences. And we were right; peoples’ true spoken-word stories have connected to and resonated with millions and millions of young people. But while the animated stories we have posted on Storybooth have gained nearly two billion views, it is the nearly 750,000 stories that young people have spoken into their phones and submitted to us for consideration that seem the most significant. This is where our daughter’s experience drove the creation of the platform. It is not just that everybody has a story to tell, it is that everybody has a story that needs telling. Storybooth was created to hear those stories that need telling, to offer a truly safe space to express them, to unload them, and perhaps, to have them brought to life and shared with the world.
Joshua Sinel understands the impact and healing power of telling your story. He is an award-winning short story writer, novelist, and long-time digital entrepreneur who believes that storytelling has the power to transform lives, not just for the audience, but also and perhaps primarily, for the storyteller. He co-founded Storybooth to bring this belief to life, to empower GenZ with a platform that would meet them where they are, equip them with the tools to be and become storytellers, and to share their stories with the world to heal themselves, and their community of peers. Bringing his experience on the digital frontlines with young people over the last 25 years, together with his training as a writer and storyteller, Storybooth has grown to become one of the world’s most powerful outlets for teens, and a truly unique way to understand, from the outside, what today’s kids are truly up against, and how they are coping with it. Prior to co-founding Storybooth, Josh and Marcy co-founded, launched, and managed three other companies, through which they have worked at the intersection of young people and digital media for brands including AOL, CTW, iVillage, Microsoft’s xBox, MTV, Nickelodeon, Simon & Schuster, and Time Warner.
