Laura Roselle | The Power in Storytelling

Stories in Our Roots 0:04
Welcome to the Stories in Our Roots podcast. I'm your host Heather Murphy. In this podcast, we dive deep into how knowing the stories of our ancestors can make a difference in our lives. Today, discovering our family history is more than a hobby. It is a way to connected deeply with ourselves, those we love, and the world around us.

Hello, and welcome to Stories in our Roots. I am so glad that you are joining me today for this episode. I had an incredible conversation with Laura Roselle about the psychology in stories and why we tell them and how we look at them what we gain out of them. How reframing a story can teach a different principle can even have a different ending. Stories are so powerful. And we talk about why that is and how we can be mindful of the reasons why we tell our stories and the reasons why we were told stories and how that can shape how we perceive ourselves, the family and our world. Here is the interview with Laura Roselle.

Heather Murphy 1:12
Hi, Laura, thanks for joining me on the podcast today. I'm excited to talk with you. Could you start by introducing yourself a little bit please?

Laura Roselle 1:22
Yours first. Thank you so much, Heather, for the invitation to be here. I think your podcast is amazing. And the guests that you have bring something really interesting. So I enjoyed listening to them. So thank you so much. I am Laura Roselle. And I am one of the co founders of a company called the family narrative project. And what we decided to do was to help people understand, analyze, and save and share their family stories. There are a couple of cool things about this company. First of all, the four of us who started it together, we're all women, and we're all related in one way or another. So my daughter Savannah does this with us. And then my cousin's wife, Kim and her sister, Darlene. And we're all connected, and all have a real passion for family storytelling, and storytelling generally, I have been studying narratives and storytelling for a really long time. I'm actually a university professor, part of my research has always been involved with storytelling. But for the first part of my career, I studied how political actors try to tell stories to influence people. And as time went on, I kind of had that side. It was a hobby at first, something I just really liked to do, which was genealogy, which was family history. as I went along, and studied narratives kind of from the top down. On the side, I was studying family history. And I began to understand really the power and importance of stories from the bottom up. So how we tell our stories, how families tell their stories, that can have incredible power as well. So that has compelled me to co found this company, and to also shift my research into looking at family storytelling and the effect that family storytelling has on us as individuals, for our families and our communities. And I know, from the research that others have done, and that I have done, that these stories can make a positive difference in the world. So that is really my guiding star right there is is that we can make a difference with our stories.

Heather Murphy 3:35
Oh, that is great. I am excited to talk with you more about this. Because as you know, this whole podcast is about stories. And so this is going to be great to look at stories from a little bit different perspective. Now, one of the things that you have mentioned is the concept of story power. What do you mean by that?

Laura Roselle 3:53
So that was what I was just referring to this notion that we all can use our stories, to help us grow as individuals and to help our families and that stories are powerful. And the way we tell stories can make a difference in the world. And that is powerful. So I think about stories as actually a storytelling is a superpower, it can be a superpower in the world. And part of that is is utilizing a knowledge that's already out there about storytelling, and beginning to learn and understand what our own stories tell us and then how we can shift stories sometimes to the way others understand their stories. And we can actually do things like increase resilience and generosity and things like that.

Heather Murphy 4:45
Okay, so one of the things you said is like the way you tell the story matters. Can you talk more about like, what are the different ways you can tell story? How do you change it like right?

Laura Roselle 4:58
And so I can give you an example. My life and how learning about the structure of storytelling changed actually changed my life and the way I looked at the world. One of the stories in my family was a story about my great grandfather, Mitchum, and he was checked from what bohemian and came of that side of the family came in the 1880s. From Bohemia, there's the story that his son, they came with nothing First of all, and they worked really hard. And they eventually had land and, and he had a good job. And he, in fact, was on the city council. And he was making decisions, like we need more schools. And so his name was on the plaque of the the new school that was built. So he, he really, it was a rags to riches type of story where he had nothing. And then he worked really hard. And he sort of gained everything it seemed, until the depression as the story goes, and in the depression, he lost everything. He lost all of his land, all of his his home, he he lost his job, he had nothing. And the story in our family was that this was the single most devastating thing that could have happened and did happen. When after that the family kind of fell apart and lost their connections. When people tell this story in my in my family, and I heard it my whole life. So when I was young, and I thought, Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, one thing can happen. And it can destroy everything. And it made me incredibly fearful. It made me very cautious, and kind of risk averse. Because I thought, first of all, you never know what can happen. It can happen just like this. And it might not be your fault. Or it might be your fault that things and things will go badly. And so this was a very, I would say disempowering story for me something that did not make me feel as if there was security in the world. Okay, that's my story. However, what I've learned from studying the research from people who had looked at storytelling, was that there are a couple ways you can structure stories. There are lots of ways but here are a couple. One is rags to riches, you start with nothing, you get everything. Or you start with everything, and you lose right things. So mine was in this kind of, yeah, you can gain things, but then one thing can happen, and you can lose it all that having things and losing it story, just that story is not really the best story in terms of what it can do to the people here who hear your story? Well, likewise, neither is you know, we had nothing and then we had everything. Because for especially young people, when they hear that just want one kind of arc, right? It would make them insecure like I was, it could make them fearful, it could make them think we don't know how to navigate life. And anything can go wrong at any time, for example. But once I learned this kind of notion that instead of those arcs, you should be saying things go up, and things come down. And you know what that happens over and over and over again in life. And when you look back on your family stories, you should think about the ups and the downs and the ups and the downs. And what did people do in those circumstances when things went badly? So I tried to do that for myself. I was like, Okay, this is what the science says, Okay, I'm gonna try to look at it this way. And I found I could, I found I could look at that story and say, Okay, what happened to that family to my family, when these terrible things happened when he quote, lost it all? Did he lose it all? Well, he got a job. People thought highly enough of him to give him a job. Was it a fancy job he had? No, in fact, he worked as a janitor in the school, one of the schools that he had belts be when he was on the city council. But he did get it down. And he did take care of his family and his family through the generations thrived. My father is related to him. And my father is a medical doctor who went through very tough times and thrived. So for me, it changed. Being able to change the structure of the story. And the arc of the story changed the way I thought about life, and about being able to be resilient and to survive. So that's one example of just changing the structure of the story.

Heather Murphy 9:34
And it sounds like you had to change what your definition of success was. That just because it peaked at one point didn't mean that nothing else after that wasn't ever going to be good enough. Right?

Laura Roselle 9:49
That's exactly right. And to look at the connections and families and to look at what happens down the road. Yeah, absolutely.

Heather Murphy 9:58
I think sometimes people maybe thinking like, what if that bad thing hadn't happened? Instead of looking at the good things that did happen after that.

Laura Roselle 10:09
Exactly. In our family, sometimes we call it the woulda, coulda shoulda, like, and, you know, if you do too much of that in your head, you're not looking at what did come after and what you do have right now. Yeah.

Heather Murphy 10:24
Another thing you mentioned is you have a story about encouraging generosity. Can you tell us that story.

Laura Roselle 10:31
And this is, this is another thing that came, I was able to see, let me put it that way, I was able to see more clearly, after studying some of the research that shows if you include generous people, helpers, in your family stories, tell stories about people who helped your family, they could be in your family, or that could be outside of your family. But if you do that, it's more likely that people who hear those stories will be generous as well. Which is so interesting, but make sense. Because when you think about it, you you think about all If I hear stories about trendnet generous people making a difference, first of all, okay, now I know there are generous people out there, like there are stories of that in my family. And if things go wrong, you know what I can look for them? I can, I can see where could they be in my world. And I could be one in someone else's world. So it made sense. This story rings, so true to me, because my father was quite bore and grew up in a in a cold water flat, they didn't have hot water in Paterson, New Jersey, which was a mill town in the 30s. He grew up there. And during the Depression, his father had no work and was off working on the WPA, and his mother got TB, and she was placed in a hospital for a year. And so he went to live with his neighbor, or the person who lived up the couple who lived upstairs, and they took care of him for a year. And they took such good care of him. And they were wonderful. And they were the joses. And like we remember their name, because he had said their name to us. They took such good care of him that that year was transformational for him in terms of just feeling love and feeling someone was there for him. And in fact, years later, when he was in high school, they said to him, you should go to college. And he thought I can't go to college, I have no money to go to college, I can't do that. He said no, no, no, you really should. And they helped him get a scholarship to go to college, which changed his entire life. He went to college, and he went on from there. But it just was this belief that people could be generous and client and caring. And that in our family made a difference for my father, which made a difference for everyone who came after him. That story to me is just, it just fills my heart with love for these people who took him in.

Heather Murphy 12:58
Yeah, and I think that's interesting. A lot of times we don't look at the people that our family members interacted with, we don't look at kind of the their larger stories of their lives, we kind of want their stories within their four walls of their home. But we don't look at them as part of their family. Can you talk about like goes into like context and why context matters.

Laura Roselle 13:23
Context is so important because as you say, it's not just it's just, it's not just say a nuclear family, or it's just not the dates that go into birth and marriage and, and death. It is how these people lived. And the lived experience is within communities, communities help people grow, or can help people grow. That context is really important, not only for who's around them. So we talk about, you know, look at if you can't find something kind of in genealogy look to the neighbors, look who were there with, right? Why? Because those are the people who they're connected to and associated with and make a difference in their lives. And they may have connections that then will help you with, say the paper, you know, the paper trail, but those people have connections that shape families and shape individuals as well. But if you think about it goes, it goes even beyond that. And it goes to things like the economy, and it goes to politics, it goes to the social life of people. All of those things matter because they have an effect on people in their families and in their communities. For example, if you had like I did a relative who worked in a mill, knowing what that what that meant, and knowing who was involved in that and knowing not only who were co workers but who owned the mill and what kind of person that was. That all makes a difference and helps you understand your family stories even more, because it helps set up the values that your family share across generations.

Heather Murphy 15:01
I think it's worth it to just sit and think about that sometimes you might not be able to know all the answers because those relationships might not be documented. And you kind of have to imagine, to some extent what they would be like. But even though you don't have a necessarily a set in stone answer, I think that can still be valuable to consider what influences your ancestor might have on them. And it might open your eyes to give yourself a different perspective on your ancestor and the choices that they made. Even if it's a little bit of conjecture on your part.

Laura Roselle 15:38
No, I think that's really, really true. I have I mean, there are so many stories I could tell about that. But one is, my great great grandmother came from Ireland, and on my mom's side came from Ireland, right after the famine, or starvation, he had five children in the sixth on the way when her husband died. So she was left with six children in Albany, New York, I went through all of the documents and the census data and things like that. And I could see that her brother in law was lived very close. And that family was very close. And she went up the street, and she worked at a bar on the edge on the corner of this, this street where they lived, and her brother in law and sister in law work there, too. And you could put together this whole, how was she going to survive? Well, they found whatever way they could just survive in that circumstance. But just to imagine her life, and put myself kind of think about having six children with no means of support, I found a lot of empathy for her in that.

Heather Murphy 16:45
Why do you think it is important for us to even try to learn these stories, like when the records aren't very descriptive? Or when there's not a lot of like direct evidence we have or narratives have been passed down? Why should we even put in the effort to like doing this contextual research? And, and thinking about them?

Laura Roselle 17:09
I think that's a great question. And I would say that for me, and I think for a lot of people, the answer is that those stories, and even the ones we don't know, so the ones we do and do not know, they shape us in ways that we may not even appreciate or recognize, we have so many people will say, well, these are just my stories, these are the stories that came down, this is what my grandfather said, or whatever. And some of those stories can be very empowering, and be something that is helpful, but some stories are not. And some stories, you need to kind of take a look at and say, Okay, here we have a story. Where did it come from? Why did that person tell it? Do you think? And what are the values that are inherent in it? Or what are the values that you find in that story? Because sometimes family stories can pigeonhole us in a way, right? And, you know, sort of you become, oh, you're like, Aunt, so and so. And she was and you fill in one adjective, and you think to yourself, particularly if you're young, but even later, I'm one thing I'm This is the only thing I am no, people are diverse and full of all kinds of interesting characteristics. First of all, so getting a handle on those stories, and analyze them can open up your world, because you can open up a vision of what your values are, and what you claim as your values and your mission in life. And so some of that might be tweaking those stories a little bit. But some stories may just give you an an incredible sense of pride in say what your family has done as well. I guess what I would say is understanding those stories or analyzing them. Those stories give you the opportunity to think deeply and to choose that our voice is very important.

Heather Murphy 19:08
And I think that is something that people who are interested in the family history kind of get in a little bit of a dangerous place because they only pass on their favorites. They only pass on the stories that resonate with them, when it might not be the story that's best for somebody else. And so it's kind of like equal opportunity for ancestors to not get stuck on. This is the favorite ancestor. This is our favorite traits of our ancestors that our family is continuing to embody. And let each person in each generation like you said, choose what they want to continue forward with.

Laura Roselle 19:50
Right. And and I think that's so exciting because that open space for so many fascinating people in your family, right so that you don't all have To be the same, you don't have to follow the same path next, necessarily, there could be many different ways to approach being in your family, for example, but you also might find that there are some things that are consigned of themes or threads throughout right your your family history that you might want to say, you know what we're really proud of this. And you might then say, this is something that I want to then carry on, say, with my family and friends.

Heather Murphy 20:29
Yeah, and it might even be something that the family in general has forgotten or not known. But because you go and research across your family history, you can find, in a way new things that you can bring back to life or things that you can bring back to life.

Laura Roselle 20:48
I have an ancestor like that. My grandmother, when I was in third grade, I did a family history, which I still have, I kept it all these years. And when I talked to my grandmother about her family, she told me all about her brothers and all about, you know, her sisters and her mom and dad. And then I said, Well, what about you know, your grandparents, you simple you don't need to know about. And so I never got that story. She was like her story started with her immediate family. But I could sense there was something there. And there was and there was a or grandfather was never married to her grandmother, and was in fact married to someone else. And so there were kind of two families going on at the same time, and a lot of anger and a lot of trauma and a lot of years and, and death. They're just that story. But that was never told. But it turns out that that that man, her grandfather was in fact, I mean, did in fact, had this serial type wealth, and sometimes not serial relationships with people. And that's why he wasn't really discussed. But when I went and looked at him as an individual, there was something else about him. And that doesn't mean it took away all of the other things. But he was a brilliant musician. And he created music. And he led choirs, and so to know, that was very important to me, and to other people in my family who loved music. And so bringing that back didn't make the bad go away. It added another layer of context to the story,

Heather Murphy 22:23
You talked a little bit about narrative psychology. Can you explain what that is?

Laura Roselle 22:30
So it's really cool. Actually, it is a branch of psychology, the discipline of psychology. So if you studied psychology, or if you took a class, there's actually a branch that studies narratives and what narratives do to our brains, and how different ways of structuring stories can affect your listeners can affect you. That's the research that I was referring to when we're talking about the ups and downs of stories. And that can increase resilience and people, or including generous people. And that can make people more generous. That ranch of social science has been studying family history or reading it for a long time. But there's some really, really good stuff in the last 15 to 20 years. And it's just growing and growing. So I was trained as an academic, I have a PhD, and I read this stuff all the time. It's really technical, I don't know you have to read it. And you have to you have to be trained to do it, right. So somebody just if I gave it to just somebody, they would probably be like, I don't even know what you're talking about here, or I don't even want this is too complicated. But it's just a different language. But what I think is super interesting is to go into that academic literature and say, This is super cool, like this research is incredibly interesting. And then I want to take it and then share it and say, This is what they found. This is how you can change your storytelling and enhance your story power in your family. That's what it is. And but that's why I'm so I guess so excited about I just think of myself maybe sometimes as a translator of some of that academic literature into like, this is what you need. So I'm writing a book right now, actually, and that title is tentatively story power, but it just takes a lot of this, this research and shares it because I wish I had known that when I was like a first a mom, I wish I had known how to tell stories and in ways that would enhance my family. I think a lot of people sometimes do a lot of it intuitively, or have learned it kind of from their upbringing, but a lot of people don't I didn't know how it felt stories like that.

Heather Murphy 24:45
Okay, so that's interesting, because I've done research like as far as marketing and storytelling and marketing, and I can see kind of like the parallel that you're talking about between family What do you want your family to value? What do you want them To spend their time on or, or emphasize and you use your storytelling not just as a passive, something that's interesting, but with the purpose of an outcome.

Laura Roselle 25:11
Exactly. And I would say that even if you are, if you think you're being passive in storytelling, you're really not. Because there are messages in there. And there are people who have chosen those stories, you know, maybe they don't realize it, maybe it's just passed down, passed down. But but you can choose, in a way, if you don't choose, you choose.

Heather Murphy 25:33
Yeah, you have some sort of reason or bias for the stories that you tell anyway, whether you're aware of it or not.

Laura Roselle 25:41
Right That's correct. And that's fascinating. It is fascinating. And that's why that's why we encourage people to really learn about storytelling, and then being able to look at their own stories and see what happens when different people tell the same story, or what things people pick out to tell in stories. Because it does, it helps you get at some of that, so that you can see it more clearly.

Heather Murphy 26:07
That was great. I will include all your links to your website and social media in the show notes of this episode, so that people can connect with you to learn more about their own storytelling and how that can make a difference to them.

Laura Roselle 26:23
That'd be great.

Heather Murphy 26:24
Thank you so much. It's been a great conversation. I appreciate you sharing your time.

Laura Roselle 26:29
Thank you.

Stories in Our Roots 26:31
Thank you for joining me today for stories in our roots. Please help this podcast grow by subscribing, leaving a review and sharing it with your friends. If you have feedback, or would like to recommend someone to share their story head to storiesinourroots.com and fill out the form. Thanks again for listening and I look forward to being with you again next week.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai