Rewrite Your Story, Rewire the World

What happens when we stop internalizing the system’s lies — and start telling the truth together?

Stories. That’s how we are built — down to our bones and our systems. We have a 7-day week because of Biblical stories. Businesses are closed on Sundays because God said to rest.

As a cradle Catholic, I have a deep appreciation for our rituals and patterns.

Until they don’t work for us.

My Burnout Story — and Why It Was Never Just About Me

So, here’s the thing — If our systems are built on stories, then changing the story is how we change the system.

Changing the Story, Changing the System

I’m going to say it. “I hate hustle culture.” I hate having to rush through spring to get to summer to get to fall to rush into the Christmas season. This story is rooted in so many things, but it’s a story. “I love working in flow and rhythm and giving spaciousness for the thinking work.” That’s an aspirational story — one I want to live into.

So, I get curious, what story do I need to both tell myself and live by to make that a reality? A reality for myself, and a reality for those around me? Because this story of spaciousness is an antidote to hustle culture. So, what story do we need to collectively tell to get over hustle culture?

We operate on other stories, too. We operate on this idea that the USA is made up of the Self-Made Man — rugged individualism. We are told stories of entrepreneurs and that they made it, no matter their circumstances, by their bootstraps, lacing them up one boot at a time, and they succeeded. This is also akin to when people say, “[Beyoncé or Oprah] has the same 24 hours a day that you do, what’s your excuse?” (My excuse? I don’t have a personal chef, housekeeper, or nanny.) Stories that say mothers must sacrifice everything and play the martyr (but maybe not complain about it). Linked to that is the story that women care for everything — all the things — but heaven forbid we change anything. We are told stories that rest is laziness (see a theme with my issue with Hustle Culture). So if you burn out, you must have won some prize.

These stories? They don’t just live out in the ether; we internalize them. I internalize them. While I rest, I feel guilty!!!

Understanding Story

In my organizing work, we work on telling our stories all the time. This is a cornerstone to our job because most of the time, decision-makers are not representative of the people who are directly impacted, adversely, by our system. I primarily work on childcare issues. And there are few early childhood educators in any elected office, yet these decision-makers continue to make rules affecting the lives of early childhood educators. Likewise, there are few parents of young children in elected office. And they are making rules for the families who need these systems. Elected officials without young children don’t know what’s going on in the lives of families who have young children. So, we work on telling their and our stories. We work on speaking story to power.

When we tell our stories, we interrupt the dominant narrative (bootstraps, for example). When we organize and bring more and more people together, we really interrupt that narrative. We claim power every time we come together and say, “I am a mother,” or “I am a caregiver.”

While finishing my degree, I took a series of two classes, framed around “Speaking Truth to Power.” It was one of my favorite classes, where we looked at stories through the urban lens and then spoke about the importance of speaking truth to power or speaking story to power. The sustainability courses were run through the College of Urban Planning, so these classes were all part of the Community Development focus. I mention this because then, I didn’t know I would later become a Community Organizer, where we talk about disrupting power every day, and it all starts with telling our story.

In the Speak Truth to Power series, one class looked at movies. In that class, I reflected on 11 movies that all had threads of relationship, resource management, and how collective action can disrupt power. This is the work I engage in right now: collective action to disrupt power.

I’ve noticed a pattern in how repetition keeps a story alive. For example, when something happens, it gets told more than once. It is told to the generation experiencing it, then it’s passed down through oral stories or written in letters, newspapers, or books. And, each time someone chooses to tell the story, it gets refreshed. Even when we are choosing to tell stories through art: film and books — we are choosing to offer an arc, a story ready for public consumption. And the story lives on.

We took these story classes with the belief and reminder that we are storytelling people. The first stories, the first people, all told stories about creation, myth, and belief. They were orators who passed down stories around campfires or dinner tables. They passed on the stories and traditions of yesterday so the next generation could pass on those same traditions, myths, and beliefs.

Likewise, our current system is a story that we pass on, and passing it on helps reinforce it.

Some of the stories we continually tell, as stated above, include stories that demonstrate that we can pick ourselves up by our bootstraps, and that we don’t need anyone. (Rugged individualism and bootstrap success). We tell stories that mothers have it all figured out, and they are naturally suited to care, so why would they complain about their role? (Mothers as martyrs and women as caretakers, but ‘lo and behold, not changemakers). We tell stories that idle hands are the devil’s playthings, which tells us that we shouldn’t rest. (So, rest becomes laziness, and burnout can be a badge of honor.)

We have internalized these stories, and we pass them onto our children!

Here’s the thing — we know we are a storytelling people, and the science backs it up.

The Science of Story and Change

Neuroscience shows that stories don’t just entertain — they literally rewire the brain. Character-driven narratives generate empathy by triggering oxytocin¹,^⁠ by syncing the speaker and the listener’s brainwaves through neural coupling²,^⁠ and activating multisensory brain regions that reinforce memory and meaning³.^⁠

Let that land for a minute. We know we are a storytelling people, and there is wicked science that demonstrates it through fMRI data points. We literally connect and reconnect when we tell stories. Meaning, telling stories in community is a cornerstone of how we change stories.

While taking these classes and others on Sustainability, I was introduced to Robert Putnam’s work in Bowling Alone and the follow-up, Better Together. Both books underscore the importance of doing things in community — showing that active participation in shared life strengthens our health, trust, and longevity (Putnam, Bowling Alone, pp. 326–335). Better Together highlights how rituals like storytelling, singing, and gathering are essential tools for rebuilding social bonds. One case study reflects how “conversations and storytelling became part of the glue that held diverse communities together and gave people a sense of common purpose” (Putnam & Feldstein, Better Together, p. 261). Shared storytelling, then, becomes a kind of cultural re-patterning — it rewires the social body in the same way trauma does, but in reverse.

So, we can build new stories, together, in community. We can use those stories to heal past trauma. We can heal by telling our stories — and build the world we really want, together.

In organizing, we use Marshall Ganz’s framework of “Story of Self, Story of Us, Story of Now.” We teach people to locate themselves in their story — not as isolated individuals, but as people shaped by the systems around them, and still capable of shaping what comes next. We dig deep when we do this. We ask people to think back — where were they in relation to their family, their community, their church, other parts of their growing up?

We look at the values that shaped us, the values that told us a story of how life ought to be or not ought to be, and how we’d rather it be. These stories usually frame someone’s purpose/why/self-interest in this world. And getting really clear on the story of why you want change is a cornerstone to making the change a person’s own.

Additionally, this aligns deeply with my “Third Way” philosophy — where we resist binaries like shame or silence, powerlessness or performance. The Third Way says we don’t have to choose between authenticity and belonging, rest and impact. Story becomes the bridge — a way to bring our whole selves forward without erasing our complexity.

When I tell my truth, and you stay to hear it? We both become more free.

Practicing Story as Power

In my coaching work and group containers, storytelling isn’t just a warm-up activity — it’s the heart of the work. Whether in my developing circles for business or connecting your story to activism, we practice telling the truth of our lives not as confession or content, but as an act of power. We tell our stories to practice our collective system rewiring.

I don’t mean that metaphorically.

When a woman says aloud, “I was never lazy — I was exhausted,” the system takes pause. When a caregiver says, “I deserve to be supported, not shamed,” we interrupt generations of inherited silence. When someone names the disconnect between who they were told to be and who they actually are — and is witnessed in that truth — we restore something sacred.

In my (developing) circles, we will move from personal story to public action. We will start by asking: What stories was I raised on? Which ones still live in me? Which ones need to be composted, and which are ready to grow? Then we work to make them visible, to put them into words, and to connect them to the systems we want to shift. Because story is not just about healing — it’s how we make culture. It’s how we build power.

We don’t just “find our voice.” We practice voice. We practice pattern change. We practice public transformation.

The systems don’t get to write your story for you.

They never did.

And, we are working together because we are not just healing as individuals. We are rewriting the collective script.

I’m building spaces where women can do this together — to reclaim their voice and rewire the world.

If this resonates, stay tuned. I’ll be sharing more soon about The Ember Circle, a nine-month storytelling journey for changemakers who are ready to speak their truth, reshape their power, and take aligned action.

Or reply and share: What story are you ready to rewrite?

Let’s stop passing down stories that burn us out, silence our truths, and tell us we’re too much or not enough.

Let’s tell new ones — with clarity, with courage, and in community.

Because when we change the story, we change the system.

A Post Script

I intend to post every Monday. But, I was delayed in finishing this as I was packing for a trip to the Midwest, where, for work, we are canvassing in coalition. In this canvassing, we are literally inviting people to step into their story and rewrite how the world ought to work. We are literally looking for people ready for change and ready to act in that collective story reshaping, so communities can really get what they deserve: a thriving life full of dignity.

1. Zak, Paul J. “Why Inspiring Stories Make Us React: The Neuroscience of Narrative.” Cerebrum : The Dana Forum on Brain Science 2015 (February 2015): 2.

2. Hasson, Uri, Asif A. Ghazanfar, Bruno Galantucci, Simon Garrod, and Christian Keysers. “Brain-to-Brain Coupling: A Mechanism for Creating and Sharing a Social World.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 16, no. 2 (2012): 114–21. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2011.12.007.

3. Paul, Annie Murphy. “Your Brain on Fiction.” The New York Times, 2012. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-neuroscience-of-your-brain-on-fiction.html.

Zacks, Jeffrey M. Flicker: Your Brain on Movies. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.