Tepukeko.co.nz
Title
Storytelling and Olive Growing
Description
I began telling stories to my own children. Sometimes we would not find stories they wanted in the library on other occasions I would extend the life of a favourite character from a book by writing a story to tell. Later, I spent many years listening to people tell their stories in counselling rooms and assisted students development in universities and polytechnics, I have continually marvelled at the way ordinary people live lives of mythic proportion every day while being unaware of their heroic qualities. I found myself increasingly drawn to finding stories that reflected themes in the lives of the people I was counselling and to help me when teaching others to be counsellors and weaving them together to create stories to tell. Gradually, I began to make stories that brought together universal themes and my ordinary life stories to tell to people just for fun as well as learning and this has become my life’s work.
I love people and I love stories and the ongoing involvement they give me in my own and other’s development whether in a training/teaching situation or as a storyteller creating a sense of community for a short time. Living on Te Ao O Te Pukeko under the mountains among the birds and trees gives me great opportunity to reflect on life and to weave my stories. Weaving stories and spinning yarns has heightened my interest in spinning and weaving wool (sometimes the wool grown here on Te Ao O Te Pukeko) so when I am not weaving words and themes I can be found sitting at the spinning wheel or behind my loom creating threads of meaning there.
Last year I began to think about the stories that are not told. Stories of invisible heroes and of the stories we need to hear- stories that our children can grow into. I created a story called Fairy Godfathers Where Are You? This is a narrative that honours the stories of good men in my life and I first told it when I was a Featured Teller at the Glistening Waters Storytelling Festival. The story was so well received that I have recorded it on CD and have sold many copies. I believe we need these stories to stand alongside those important stories that have had emerge about the danger some men pose to our community.
