Episode 11: Tara the storycatcher

Tara Pohlkotte is a writer, a mom, a wife, a woman and a creator. She tells her own story of an idea and a passion for sharing stories with people throughout her life. She wove together threads of ideas to develop a forum, a community for telling stories. Her effort to build this platform and encourage people to believe in the truth that we all have stories to tell comes from deep within her spirt. Hear how her seemingly simple idea has expanded to something all communities could adopt and grow with.

Links:

Email Tara to learn more about Storycatchers

Storycatchers website: Learn more about Storycatchers and hear stories captured through the various storytelling opportunities

Storycatchers on Facebook: Keep tabs on upcoming events and new ways stories are being shared

Update:

Since our recording, Tara hosted a Storycatcher session with refugees from the Congo region in Africa. This is amazing. Bridging the understanding of our world one story at a time. Here’s what she told me about the experience:

I have to tell you, last night I did a session with 30 refugees, mainly from Congo- and, oh Jane… the stories they told. An old man weeping in gratitude for being in America and truly of being alive all of his fingers chopped off by police when he tried to flee… a woman telling of watching her sister-in-law die, being separated from her family for two months thinking they had all died, to the joyous reunion of them all…only to have the police come into their home two years later and shoot her husband in his head at point blank range while she stood next to him- to a young men joking (in truly good cheer) about the wonderment that he see white shirts and shoes without mud, clean grounds to sleep on only to have a bed that is his very own and all of us with such porcelain skin that speaks to the easy lives we live… all of these stories, huddled in our public Library on an average Monday night. What a testament it was not only to the power of story but of the human spirit.”

I’m reminded to be even more grateful for the life I’m blessed to live and at the same time it fills me with the focus to do something worthy of that kind of suffering, to shift the focus from trivial first world problems and shine it in the way of serving in the best way I’m equipped.  So grateful for Storycatchers.