Healing Story Alliance Concerts & Workshops

HSA offers workshops, concerts, seminars, and panel discussions that explore the applied uses of storytelling in all forms of healing.

PAST EVENTS

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The goal of this workshop is to help build skills to manage controversial conversations in the family and beyond. Whether it be the conflict in Gaza or Ukraine, the climate crisis, border issues, or our upcoming political election, as people in our country take sides over controversial national and international issues, it can feel like the divide between us only deepens. Family relationships are becoming casualties of our toxic polarized environment. Family members are having nasty political arguments, avoiding each other, or even cutting off lifetime relationships. If you want to preserve important family bonds while still being true to your values and political beliefs, this workshop is for you! 

The Healing Story Alliance (HSA) presents a concert of healing stories told by women members of the HSA Advisory Committee. Enjoy a varied evening of personal narratives and folktales that will delight you at one moment and inspire you the next. Please join us for this exciting fundraising event and help support our programming.

You have something to say in a story, but how do you say it without sounding too pushy or opinionated? In this hands-on workshop, Sue O’Halloran will demonstrate and instruct how she approaches themes of race equity, diversity and inclusion into stories that respect, enlighten, and emotionally move your audience members to take action. You’ll leave with a better understanding of your motives for telling socially relevant stories and be given practical ways to overcome the fears all of us have about taking stands. Join us whether you are a veteran activist or you are still discovering what causes call to you. 

Healing Story Alliance is delighted to present a virtual concert, Social Action Stories curated by Dr. Kevin Cordi. Listening to and telling social action stories renders people and their stories visible. This program, which grew out of the recently released book, Social Action Stories, (Ed. Cordi, Milks, and Van Tessell, 2023) captures the voices of five storytellers, activists, educational reformers, therapists, and regular folks who advocate for change through deep listening and deliberate action. These stories are intended to move your work as a storyteller towards an equitable world.

Social Action Stories (Ed. Cordi, Milks, and Van Tessell) Marion, MI: Parkhurst Brothers Publisher, 2023) PO Box 356 Marion, MI 49665 Phone 800-621-2736. http://www.parkhurstbrothers.com/ $19.95 paperback (See website for other options) Free shipping for attenders of the program. (Code will be given out during program). You must call to order to receive the discount.

Join us for an HSA special event fundraiser featuring Lani Peterson Psy.D. who will guide us on a remarkable Heroine’s Journey. Through telling our stories and listening to the stories of others who walk a similar path, we will explore within ourselves and between each other, the underlying knowledge, skills, and support we need to help us live our lives more fully.

Throughout our life’s journey we face challenges that reveal to us who we are in our depths, who walks with us, what we know and what we still need to learn. Whether we are looking at the arc of a day or the journey of a lifetime, we find similar patterns of being pulled into experiences that we sometimes embrace, and many times just endure. As women, what aspects of Campbell’s Hero’s Journey are unique to us, and how might we benefit from sharing our stories of challenge and triumph with our sisters?

In this special event fundraiser for Healing Story Alliance join us to explore the art of Kintsugi with Kristin Pedemonti! Through guided reflections and hands-on learning, attendees will experience the physical art and profound metaphors of Kintsugi in a step-by-step process. Engaging in this uplifting endeavor, imagine how you will put the pieces back together! No experience necessary.

WHAT IS KINTSUGI? Kintsugi (golden joinery) is an ancient Japanese art of mending broken pottery with lacquer and precious metals highlighting the cracks rather than hiding them. Kintsugi honors the journey of the vessel and believes the mended piece is stronger and more valuable. Kintsugi is a powerful metaphor and art form used to explore layers of meaning- including challenges, changes, and new chapters in our lived experiences. This workshop offers an invitation to look at the pieces in new ways as we put them back together. 

Welcome one and all! Healing Story Alliance is delighted to present a free storytelling concert designed by master storyteller Laura Simms to celebrate HSA’s rejuvenation in the New Year. The event will be a tapestry of personal stories and fragments of myths uncovering the heart of joy in everyday experience. These stories within stories are woven into a remarkable Kurdish Jewish fairy tale called “What a Beautiful Road.”

Two-Eyed Seeing in Relation to Life Stories
a keynote and Workshop with Dr Lewis Mehl-Madrona and Dr. Barbara Mainguy
December 10, 2022
1:00pm-5:00pm
$75 &
Pay as you are able option $25-$150

Lewis works with aboriginal communities to develop uniquely aboriginal styles of healing and health care, particularly drawn from the Lakota and Cherokee traditions. As both a psychiatrist and psychologist, Lewis has been studying traditional healing and healers since his early days and has written extensively about their work and the process of healing.  Lewis is the author of Coyote Medicine, Coyote Healing, and Coyote Wisdom, a trilogy of books on what Native culture has to offer the modern world. He has also written Narrative Medicine, Healing the Mind through the Power of Story: the Promise of Narrative Psychiatry.  

Lewis has developed this special keynote and workshop for the Healing Story Alliance based on his recent book written with Barbara Mainguy, Remapping Your Mind: the Neuroscience of Self-Transformation through Story. 

CONCERTS

DEEPER THAN THE SKIN
Reggie Harris & Greg Greenway
Nov 20, 2022
On Zoom! 7:00 PM-8:30 PM
Tickets $25

DEEPER THAN THE SKIN is a musical presentation on race. It is an experience of singing and listening… of experiencing a connection so deep that it makes you laugh, smile, cry and reconsider what you know about our history. It’s an invitation to open your heart and mind to a story of shared humanity that can resonate with your own.
Two friends… one Black, one White… one from the North… one from the South! Musicians, storytellers, students of history and world travelers . . . born 3 day apart! Two separate narratives forged into one powerful friendship aimed at finding common ground and helping others to do the
same.

Past HSA Workshop Events

KIND STORIES WORKSHOP- June 6, 2021
After presenting several Kind Stories in Concert programs during the winter and spring of 2021, HSA offered story listeners an opportunity to work with facilitators Elisa Pearmain and Lani Peterson to explore the personal and family stories of kindness in their lives.  Take-aways included several story seeds, a more developed story shared, inspiration, and sense of our shared community.