RISE With Dr. Jaz Gray: Storytelling & Resilience

Dr. Jaz Gray, Professor of Communication Studies, joins RISE Program Specialist Emily Shaw at the RISE Roundtable. The two discuss the power of narrative storytelling in strengthening one’s resilience.

We also hear from three Pepperdine community members, who each share a story that has impacted their perspective on resilience: Hope Dease, Assistant Director of Connection; Young Yang, Seaver student; and Tehillah Mwenya, Seaver student.

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In this episode, we discuss the following:

• 0:00 Pepperdine community members share a story that has impacted their perspective on resilience
• 4:23 What a narrative researcher investigates
• 6:09 The various mediums of narrative that supported the different seasons of Dr. Gray’s life
• 10:38 The ways in which films can be a place of escape but also a place of empowerment
• 15:35 What happens when there’s no “fairytale ending” or no “ending” at all
• 19:56 Re-negotiating the “ending” and what the “problem” is to begin with 
• 24:18 The power of radical honesty in the journey to self-acceptance
• 26:41 Stories you can only experience and not tell; honoring the chaos of a story
• 30:10 Building empathy when storytelling and listening to stories
• 32:35 How marginalized communities and identities can utilize narrative storytelling to build resilience, find community, and challenge systems
• 43:14 The connections between the dimensions of resilience and narrative storytelling
• 52:55 Life plotting as a tool for resilience building and humanizing oneself
• 59:28 When to share and when to not force yourself to share your story
• 1:04:48 Bouncing back and pushing forward