2011 - Talk Birth

than expert direction, recommendations, or advice. Stories can also provide a point of identification and
clarification as a way of sharing information that is open to possibility, rather than advice-giving.
Cautions in sharing stories while also listening to another’s experience include:
• Are you so busy in your own story that you can’t see the person in front of you?
• Does the story contain bad, inaccurate, or misleading information?
• Is the story so long and involved that it is distracting from the other person’s point?
• Does the story communicate that you are the only right person and that everyone else should do things
exactly like you?
• Is the story really advice or a “to do” disguised as a story?
• Does the story redirect attention to you and away from the person in need of help/listening?
• Does the story keep the focus in the past and not in the here and now present moment?
• Is there a subtext of, “you should…”?
Several of these self-awareness questions are much bigger concerns during a person-to-person direct dialogue
rather than in written form such as blog. In reading stories, the reader has the power to engage or disengage
with the story, while in person there is a possibility of becoming stuck in an unwelcome story. Some things
to keep in mind while sharing stories in person are:
• Sensitivity to whether your story is welcome, helpful, or contributing to the other person’s process.
• Being mindful of personal motives—are you telling a story to bolster your own self-image, as a means
of pointing out others’ flaws and failings, or to secretly give advice?
• Asking yourself whether the story is one that will move us forward (returning to the here and now
question above).
While my training and professional background might suggest otherwise, my personal lived experience is
that stories have had more power in my own childbearing life than most other single influences. The sharing
of story in an appropriate way is, indeed, intimately intertwined with good listening and warm connection.
As the authors of the book, Sacred Circles, remind us “…in listening you become an opening for that other
person…Indeed, nothing comes close to an evening spent spellbound by the stories of women’s inner lives.”
Molly Remer, MSW, ICCE, CCCE is a certified birth educator, writer, and activist who lives in central
Missouri with her husband and children. She is an LLL Leader, a professor of Human Services, and the
editor of the Friends of Missouri Midwives newsletter. She blogs about birth, women, and motherhood at
[4]http://talkbirth.wordpress.com.
This is a preprint of The Value of Sharing Story, an article by Molly Remer, MSW, ICCE, published in
[5]Midwifery Today[6], Issue 99, Autumn 2011. Copyright © 2011 Midwifery Today. Midwifery Today’s
website is located at: [7]http://www.midwiferytoday.com/
1. http://talkbirth.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/noahs-birth-story-warning-miscarriagebaby-loss/
2. http://talkbirth.wordpress.com/2010/06/16/how-do-women-really-learn-about-birth/
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