Meghan Iris Armstrong is a filmmaker, writer, and artist who breathes life into people's stories through the documentaries she directs and produces. She creates unforgettable experiences with these educational, inspirational, and entertaining film projects for her clients.
In this episode, Meghan shares with us how she got into filmmaking, the types of stories she’s told through the films that she produced, and how adding Guided Autobiography is enriching to the clients she serves.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Welcome to the Starfish Storytellers, the podcast that makes a difference one story
(00:04):
at a time by bringing storytelling to life.
It is night and the lights are out. I must be around six years old. I am standing over the toilet, not sure of what is about to happen.
(00:36):
I have the dread of nausea swelling in my throat, the feeling of inept ability, no turning back,
but I have begun to associate with my damning understanding of death, the harrowing feeling that the body does what the body does, despite my desire for it to behave otherwise.
Tears well in my eyes, I begin to vomit, but just as I do, my long hair is pulled back from my face. I don't see her, but I feel her.
(01:03):
My mother's hands steady my shoulders, she envelops me, and when I am done, she carries me back to bed.
She picks me up off that asphalt too, when I fell off my little red bike and carried me screaming, blood dripping down both my legs and placing gently on the kitchen counter.
I placed my feet in the sink, turned on the faucet, and did not stop washing the pebbles, the dirt, out of the gashes in my knees as the water ran red and I wailed from the pain.
(01:35):
My mother is not the only one who has helped me. When I was sixteen, I had all four of my wisdom teeth removed.
Afterwards, the nurse delivered me groggy from the anesthetic to my grandfather who was in the waiting room.
When he brought me to my surgery appointment, I had anticipated the intimacy with which he would have to care for me.
When it came to my grandparents, physical care had been, until this point, the purview of my grandmother.
(02:01):
Still, he gathered me in his arms into his familiar scent, soap, and aftershave, and led me as best as he could to the car.
I felt safe and loved by him as we drove slowly home, listened to the local news on the radio.
My grandmother met us at the door and followed us to the guest room where together they tucked me into the frilly floral bed.
(02:22):
Grandma placed a bag of frozen peas on each side of my face and giggly, Grandma took out his camera to capture a photo of my chipmunk cheeks.
The evidence of my family's love for me is a catalog of sense memories.
The special taste of Grandma's bread, the bread that she would make for us every time she visited, the way she would take my hand in hers as we quietly snuggled off on the couch,
(02:47):
tracing a circle onto the back of my hand over and over again with her other hand.
The feeling of the comb digging into my scalp as my dad parted my hair into three sections, the impatience I fought as he fumbling gathered my hair into three ponytails.
The exhilaration bursting through my small body and the cold air on my greeting face as he took my hands into his and skating backwards whooped me around the ice, around the ice rink before I could fully skate on my own.
(03:21):
I was aware of their bodies before I was truly aware of mine as separate.
I ran my hand over the welts on mom's legs to see what the strange bumps felt like when she was suffering from a Crohn's disease flare.
I remember the soft sound of my grandma's dry fingers rubbing together as she demonstrated the C major scale, how she called them utter fingers,
(03:43):
admonishing herself when they wouldn't behave.
And my grandfather's hands big and elegant, the masonic ring on his finger glinting in the afternoon sun as he gracefully flipped through the yellow pages of the phone book telling me,
you've got to let your fingers do the walking mech. Call around first.
(04:04):
The first pain I bore on my own were my teenage menstrual periods.
I experienced the pain as exquisite in the medical sense of sharp and intense but also in the French poetic sense that I do know exquisites the exquisite pain,
the pain caused by unrequited love or in my interpretation the pain of unanswered pain.
(04:26):
I had already internalized that in our society women's gynecological issues were a pain that should be born at alone.
And I learned to walk the school hallways with one of my first masks, the masking of pain with pretty.
As my family and I had aged, I see my grandmother wince silently from her crushed vertebrae as she moves around the kitchen.
(04:48):
It's okay, Meg, it only hurts when I walk and watch my father rub his knuckles as he watched TV.
My mother rushed out of the room unannounced when hit with a Crohn's attack and hurt her whimpering in the bathroom, only for her to return with a breezy smile on her face.
I have witnessed my grandfather struggle to stand as we parted ways for the last time, his legs swollen and weeping from congestive heart failure but wanting to give me a kiss.
(05:17):
I've watched them hiding their pain like animals do, trying to survive and because of this I have felt helpless to ease their suffering.
I don't know what the answer to the human condition is.
The exquisite truth that death is the prerequisite of life, that the experience of bodily pain is facilitated by the same nervous system that allows us to experience the pleasure of a lover's touch, the warmth of the sun,
(05:45):
that our minds have the capacity for the knowledge of our mortality and that with our minds we must simultaneously hold this truth at the forefront and work to distract ourselves from this fact to appreciate the profound and fleeting pleasures of being incarnate.
When I was rushed to hospital for complications from my miscarriage, the pain was so intense that I panicked.
(06:09):
There was nowhere to run from it.
I couldn't think my way off the ledge.
They asked me about my pain level.
10 out of 10 can't think, can't think, I said, gasping for air.
My body took over, rocking and writhing.
I was completely vulnerable again, like a child.
The warmth of more clean spread through my body like the sun rising across a dewy morning landscape and the gratitude for the doctor who ordered the drug and the nurse who delivered it into my veins.
(06:39):
Two merciful strangers was akin to the love I felt for my mother, my father, as they held me in the night, rocking me to the sleep after a nightmare.
A year before that, I had found myself in a German hospital admitted at 10pm for complications of the deep vein thrombosis in my leg.
I was wheeled through the dark hallways of the hospital that was built in 19th Elfbore and been seemingly not redecorated since.
(07:07):
I was deposited into a room with an elderly lady and probably forgotten about for 17 hours.
But I didn't know at the time that this was the hospital for people with bad insurance.
The lady greeted me in German and with my non-existent German, I found out her name was Isselda, like Wagner's opera, Tristan and Isselda, I thought.
(07:29):
We shared one high-sealing room with curtains on the window hung by some long-dead decorator, but no privacy curtain between us was to be found.
That night, she lifted herself with great difficulty onto the commode but beside her bed at multiple times.
I pretended to be asleep so as to maintain a facade of privacy for her.
Breakfast was two Kaiser rolls, one stick of butter and one stick of margarine.
(07:54):
Medical attention was not only scarce for me but for Isselda. No one came for us for hours.
No one read our charts or took our blood pressure.
By the early afternoon, I started roaming the halls, as were my instructions to keep the blood from pulling in my legs.
I came across the communal kitchen and in it, extra butter and a coffee machine.
(08:15):
I secured some extra butter for what I guessed would be an equally uninspired lunch and poured some coffee for myself.
Returning to our room, Isselda perked up.
Coffee? She said. Her eyes glow.
Coffee, I said.
I left the room and went back for a cup for her.
I remembered the chocolate bar in my purse. I took it out, broke it in half and offered it to Isselda.
(08:38):
She smug, she accepted it with a smile.
We enjoyed our treat in silence, knowing that we couldn't say much to one another.
Afterwards, she motioned to the back of her neck. Her gown had come untied but she couldn't reach behind her head.
I walked over to her and tied a bow at the soft place below her hairline.
She sat back down, and I sat back down across from her.
(09:03):
As if to continue the conversation, she lifted her gown and revealed to me the reason for her hospitalization.
A large cancerous ulcer covered most of her lower right leg.
Cancer, she said using the English word in a way that was somewhere between solemn and matter of fact.
I nodded. From Vosis, I said, pointing to my leg.
(09:27):
She nodded.
Hast du an a kapse? She asked. Do you have a cat?
And sensing that she had found the limit of my German knowledge, she followed her question with a
mew-mew noise and mind whiskers.
I laughed. Yeah.
(09:48):
I pulled out my phone and scrolled back many months to find a photo of my recently departed cat.
Yes, I have a cat. Her name is Popotam, like Epopotam, French for hippopotamus.
Isn't she sweet?
I pretended just for a moment that she was still alive.
My past is still to the phone and she smiled inside with what sounded like relief.
(10:15):
Ich liebe Katzen, she told me. I love Katzen. Ich liebe auch Katzen, I told her. I love Katzen, too.
I don't know what to do with the exquisite pain of the fact of our mortality,
but having been graced with the touch on the hand of a stranger at just the right time
(10:39):
and the mercy of more than one shared piece of chocolate, I do know that while we are here,
our bodies are in communion with each other.
And that we have the capacity to ease each other's suffering by tending to each other's bodies
as if they were the temple of the soul.
(11:25):
Hello, my name is Leanna Henry and welcome to the Starfish Storytellers.
(11:54):
I'm the CEO of the Black Dog Group, a Marcom and project management firm
headquartered on the east coast of the U.S. and Quaint Colonial Bedford, Massachusetts.
I'm your host and passionate about storytelling.
I'm actually on a mission to raise up the next generation of storytellers.
We've named ourselves the Starfish Storytellers after the Starfish Story.
(12:15):
The moral of the Starfish Story is based on the power of one.
No matter how big the challenge, each action we take makes a difference and has an impact.
One step, one starfish, or one story at a time.
Every episode, we welcome a new storyteller who will share their story meant to inspire and connect with you.
Then we'll break it down and offer tips for any listeners who are ready to tell their own stories.
(12:39):
So thanks for tuning in. Now let's get started.
Today's episode is about narrative techniques in filmmaking where storytelling meets artistry
and with me today is my friend, Megan Iris Armstrong, a filmmaker, writer, and artist
who tells people's stories through the documentaries she directs and produces.
So it's so good to get together again. Thank you so much for being here.
(13:04):
Thank you so much for having me, Leona. It's an absolute pleasure. Thank you.
So we like to get started every episode by having our guests introduce themselves.
And I probably do a better job than I did. So would you mind telling our listeners a little bit about yourself?
Of course, yeah. I am a documentary filmmaker, writer, artist, and personal historian.
(13:28):
I used to work as a fiction producer in Canada for many years, but now that I'm living in the US,
I have returned to my first love, which is documentary film and personal history.
I say my passion is helping people craft and preserve their life stories
so that they can leave a meaningful and hopefully an impactful legacy.
(13:51):
I do this by making documentary portrait films, recording life stories with audio interviews,
and now I'm helping people write their autobiographies two pages at a time
by facilitating a beginner's writing workshop called Guided Autobiography.
I also help people organize their old family photos and home movies by sorting,
(14:12):
cataloging, and digitizing everything so that, you know, with the goal of creating a coherent and meaningful archive for their kids and grandkids.
Nice. It's very important work that you do.
So thank you for sharing your story.
So it was definitely a sensory journey. You know, that's just a true mark of a great storyteller
(14:38):
who can really take people along for the ride through their very colorful descriptive word choices.
So, you know, I just loved hearing it, so thank you for sharing that.
Thank you so much for listening, Leanna.
So in the fascinating world of filmmaking, directors, script writers, actors, and cinematographers
(15:01):
are modern-day magicians who breathe life into stories through their cameras.
Cinematic storytelling through essential film techniques transforms narratives into unforgettable experiences.
Let me think about any time we've gone to the movies.
In documentaries, which deal with facts, the purpose is to educate and inspire, not just entertain.
(15:22):
So I know that you are a documentary filmmaker. Can you expand on this for us?
Yeah. So I think, for me, the purpose is in the name to document.
My goal with documentary is to add historically underrepresented stories to the historical archive with the goal of creating a more richer document
(15:47):
so that we can better understand the time we live in. I think that this is important, the work of documentary is important,
because no one story creates an accurate representation of the world we live in.
We need a plurality of voices. I think that, you know, every story is a thread in the rich tapestry of the story of humanity,
and that's what I'm trying to add to with documentary.
(16:11):
I'm also interested in personal history and by extension genealogy and the developments in the technology that we have available to us today
that enable us to research our own histories and to see our ancestors in that historical archive.
For a number of reasons, the major one is that we do better when we know where we come from.
(16:32):
I'm thinking of a really good example of that is there was a sociological study done, the group of children,
it was a study called Do You Know, and they asked children about their ancestors, how much they knew about their ancestors,
and they found that those children that knew the most about their ancestors and had what they called a rich ancestral identity
(16:56):
did well on many markers of wellness, better on many markers of wellness.
They were more grounded, connected, so I think for me that's what I'm trying to do with documentary is to add to the historical archive,
help people add to it so that we leverage our lives and so that our children benefit from it.
(17:19):
So, going aside here, you know, do you find that there's, well, two questions.
Do you find that there's a demand for documentaries, the types of documentaries that you do,
and, you know, who's coming to you to say, hey, you know, let's do this, let's create this documentary?
(17:45):
Yes, there is a huge and wild demand for it.
It's typically baby boomers who are interested in recording their story or in sorting through all of the family archive materials that they have inherited from their parents.
They feel a responsibility to do something with it.
(18:06):
And if I'm making a portrait of someone, you know, the parents of baby boomers, it's because the baby boomers have, you know, they're in this process in that part of their lives where they have realized that they need to start reflecting.
And they're lucky their parents are still alive and now they're starting to ask their parents questions.
So, yeah, typically they do boomers.
(18:27):
And, you know, also my mom and I have worked with a number of people that are adoptees as well.
My mom is a genealogist and she works with me to help research family history for the projects that I work on.
And, you know, people who were adopted know this, you know, since the time that they are young, how important it is to know one's family history.
(18:57):
So, yeah, those are the kind of people.
I, in my previous life, before I went into marketing and communications, my bachelor's degree is in social work.
So I worked in the foster care system and I worked with children who were adopted out of the system.
(19:19):
And we did a lot to try to preserve as much of their birth history as we could, good or bad, so that they would have that to go back to.
And sometimes we had adoptive parents that were very open to supporting them.
And sometimes, you know, they just wanted to kind of adopt their child and start their new life. But search was a big thing for the kids, for sure.
(19:43):
You know, and there was always sort of that period of time in their lives, you know, as they got older, that they would search.
So I think that's, it's very interesting that you brought up adoptees that would make perfect sense for them to want to have their genealogy.
Yeah, I have a number of stories within my own family of adoption, and I won't go into those here, but, you know, I've heard firsthand how difficult it is to feel as though, you know, you have to live your life,
(20:16):
knowing that as if the first few chapters of the book of your life have been ripped out and you haven't been able to read them, you know, and answers to questions that you have might easily have been answered if you had access to the chapters before you go around.
So, I think it's, yeah, it's people who were adopted are evidence of just how important it is for us to do this work for us to record our life stories for our children.
(20:54):
Yeah, I mean, I imagine especially being able to even just to understand like health history to understand where health conditions may come from.
So that's huge to be able to know that so good work.
So, let's talk a little bit about you and your filmmaking history. So, how was it that you got into filmmaking? Is that did you go to school? I don't know, did you go to school for that? And I saw on your website that you thought maybe someday you'd head to Hollywood.
(21:31):
So, did you ever get a chance to pursue that?
Yes. So, I did a Bachelor of Fine Arts in filmmaking in Canada. And I got into film because I have wanted to work in film since I was a child. I have videos of me directing my cousins and reenactments of the western film Tombstone and Little Women and my favorite was Pride and Prejudice,
(21:59):
All Dressed Up. And I've always loved historical biopics and dramas for the way that becoming absorbed in those stories allows you to feel as though you can live another life and another time.
And I was embarrassed to admit it for a long time, but the reason I went to film school is because of the film The English Patient.
(22:20):
I was embarrassed because when it came out, I was a teenager and a teenager at the time saw that film to be overly romantic and hokey. But for me, that film was it.
It was, you know, I love stories of people living their lives and having to make difficult decisions because of the historical moment that they find themselves in.
(22:44):
So, yeah, it was because of meaningful historical films that I got into film, did the film degree, and I immediately found myself working in Hollywood superhero movies.
Wow.
Because that was what was available to me at that time in Vancouver. There was a lot of those kind of films would be made at that time in Vancouver.
(23:11):
Which one?
Did you work in?
The one that I am specifically referring to is called Watchmen and it's a demographic novel by Ellen Moore.
And I realized pretty quickly on that film set that I was going to have to carve out a different path for myself. After that, something happened on that film where we on it was a Friday night at eight o'clock at night.
(23:41):
And we were having co-workers wine and cheese. It felt like something that was expected of us, you know, after a 12 hour mandatory day of work.
And one of my co-workers said, she admitted that she was missing her five year old daughter's first ballet recital.
(24:05):
And I thought, why?
Why are you here with us? You know, when you're missing what to me, I would have thought would have been one of the most important days of her and certainly her daughter's life.
And it was in that moment that I realized, oh my gosh, I need to do something different.
(24:28):
And so I started a film production company with friends and colleagues with the goal of getting to prioritize the things that were important to me and setting our own hours.
That moment, I count as the moment that set me on the path of my entrepreneurial path, I should say, trying to carve on, make films in a way that they aren't usually made.
(24:54):
So I spent some time on your website and your LinkedIn and you do have an impressive resume of entrepreneurship.
You did, you know, I did see that you had started some production companies and film studios.
And so you were just saying that you were, you were starting those so that you sort of would have a little bit more control over your, your career and your destiny and how you were going to live your life.
(25:20):
What types of stories were you telling through the films you were making during that time?
Yeah, so with my first company, we made a number of short narrative films with the idea of them becoming like calling cards for us.
The idea is that you get your short film scene at festivals and that somehow stay ways into funding for feature narrative films.
(25:44):
But what ended up happening was I started another company to make branded content to support the development of our creative projects.
And we made the brand of content we made were short narrative films for businesses and nonprofits.
And at the time, in a time when I had to convince businesses and nonprofits that they needed video for their website and for social media, which was totally wild if I think about it at the time because I didn't understand at that time just how important video would become in the next 10 years.
(26:23):
So one of the projects that I'm most proud of from that period of the time was a series of videos that my company was hired to make historical promotional informative videos for an organization called Metrack, which stands for the Metropolitan Action
(26:45):
Against Women in the Young Violence Against Women. It is an organization that was founded at the 1980s in Toronto in response to a series of highly publicized murders and rapes of women in Toronto.
And basically what happened, their history is that they were a group of women got together and they said we've had enough. They called themselves the Toronto Pink Ribbon Committee, and they went into collaboration with the Metropolitan Toronto Police is what they were called at the time.
(27:18):
And with the goal of creating a task force to figure out how to address instances of violence against women and children. And with the support of many different community volunteers, many different stakeholders, they created a report and that final report.
And they put into practice, and they took action on all of the recommendations of the report. Their continued goal now is to change policies, practices, laws and structures, and they do.
(27:49):
I just can't sing their praises enough. They do a number of things. For example, the main thing they do is something called a safety audit, which is they go into communities where people are feeling I'm experiencing violence or feeling unsafe, for example, universities, workplaces,
apartment complexes, that kind of thing. And they work with the community to solicit their stories of what they've been experiencing and to create a report.
(28:19):
So that that report can be used to communicate with various people, the police, city council, apartment managers, whomever is involved that has some power in the situation to create change.
I loved working with this organization because they are, we're still are a group of women who decided that they didn't like the story that was being told, you know, the story that walking down the streets of Toronto, we could be murdered and raped.
(28:54):
What are we going to do about it? You know, this was in the 1980s in a time when domestic violence and sexual assault by people known to a survivor were considered, you know, euphemism was used to describe these things.
They were considered getting carried away when perpetrators committed these acts of violence. It wasn't talked about. And so this organization made it their mission to gather stories of people who were experiencing violence and tell that story and change the story,
(29:29):
and create a new outcome. They were also instrumental in bringing to light in Canada, the ways in which professional bodies, self governing professional bodies, for example, College of Physicians failed to report and act on instances of sexual misconduct, that kind of thing.
(29:50):
So it was an absolute honor to tell the story of these people who used stories, you know, to take action and make change. Anyway, that's that's my, that's my favorite story from that period of time in my work life.
Now, was that just remind me again, you had one company that was sort of the creative documentary side, and then you had sort of the, the branded content side.
(30:25):
I can appreciate that I'm a storyteller and marketing pays the bills. So, so that that project that you did.
So that project that you did was out of the branded side or the creative side.
Yeah, so it was considered the branded side the side that we did commercial video basically, and it was considered commercial video. Yes, that's right. Yeah, yeah, so yeah they they commissioned us to do it.
(30:59):
Yeah.
So, video is everything now. It is. So you were, you know, a trailblazer before you do you were a trailblazer, because it is video is everything now and I know as as a marketer.
I create a lot of video and I provide for our company and for my clients so video is is is critical, especially in this, in this era of screens. It is by far some the most consumed content out there.
(31:38):
So,
Mm hmm.
Mm hmm.
I little did I know at the time.
Yeah, I was hoping that that would be the case.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And yeah, here we go.
Here we go.
Yeah.
So, I saw on your on your website that the documentary types type of films, you call them documentary portrait films. And you talked about the different themes that you like to focus on marriage, labor politics, illness, medical field compassion women's cognitive
(32:14):
development, female friendship motherhood fertility family dynamics. So can you can you explain a little bit. What is a documentary portrait film.
And what, you know, why, why all of these themes I mean I, I'm getting I'm getting a sense based on what you just shared, how important being able to shed light on social injustice and being sort of the the force for social justice is is very important in the work that you do.
(32:50):
In addition to archival and genealogy. But yeah, can you can you explain what a documentary portrait film is. Yes. So, for me, a documentary portrait, the guys that I make our films that capture my subjects unique essence at this moment in time.
(33:13):
I interview my subjects about their lives and their perspective as it is now.
I film them in their environment to capture their physicality.
I film them in their hands to light in their eyes that kind of thing. And I focus on portrait, because to me, every person is this unfathomable universe unto themselves and I think it's my privilege to contemplate what people have to tell me about their
(33:47):
life. To me, a portrait is making special, meaning that it's when you focus your lens, your attention on someone in the endeavor, endeavoring to create a portrait, you set them aside from others, and honored a thing that makes them unique.
(34:08):
I think is a, it's a dialogue between the subject and the filmmaker, or the portraitist, and my goal is to make my subjects feel seen and heard.
To me, I think that making a portrait involves deep listening, quiet observation and curiosity, and a willingness to go where the subject wants to take you.
(34:40):
And I've decided through much experimentation over the course of my career that I want to focus on portraiture as a way to explore the larger themes that you've listed above, because I think that we audiences connect on a personal level, connect
to larger ideas on a personal level. I think that we have to empathize with the experience of others in order to truly feel and understand their experience.
(35:12):
And it helps us, I think, to proceed ethically in our own lives, when we are able to interact with the ideas that are presented in the form of portraiture, when we are able to empathize with the people that are my subject of the portrait.
Yeah, does that answer your question?
(35:35):
Yeah, no, and I was thinking, I can get a better understanding of these communities and these issues with something that has excused upon a more narrow lens, like, you know, that has a more focused story, because, you know, these are all really broad and important topics.
(36:02):
And, you know, we have a lot of sources of information that come at us, but sometimes the sources of information that come at us don't personalize the subject, you know what I'm saying, and I think that what you're doing is really humanizing.
(36:27):
Yes, yes. I think that it's, you know, I love documentary, but the ones that I think struggle to connect with people or to inspire action, which I think is the goal of a lot of documentaries, are the ones that don't tell a compelling story.
(36:48):
They present a lot of facts, a lot of data, but we are not moved. As anyone that will tell you who works in fundraising, for example, people donate to causes because they connect with a story, you know, you are moved to action, because for whatever reason, find ourselves empathizing with those that need our action.
(37:17):
Exactly. Exactly.
So I'm a pivot for a second and talk a little bit about how we met. We had the pleasure of meeting each other through a guided autobiography instructor training class.
We did it on Zoom. There was a group of women that got together and took this class and became very close.
(37:41):
I took the course to get certified in this type of storytelling because I wanted to be able to offer workshops for anyone who might want to delve into their life story.
And I noticed I was just adding my certification and all of that to my website. I noticed that you added it to yours too. You know, as you're working with folks in telling their life story, using the guided autobiography format, because it's a nice, easy way to do that in a nice ordered fashion.
(38:18):
You know, because I think sometimes when people think memoirs or they think autobiographies, they think that they have to go back and remember things from when they were born and they have to have it in a chronology.
And the nice thing about guided autobiography is that we're offered these themes and we can, like you said, help people tell their stories two pages at a time per life theme.
(38:39):
And that, I think, is, you know, a lot more palatable and easier to do than trying to rack your brain or having to pay somebody else to write it for you.
But I was curious, you know, would you, when you're, when you're telling, when you're teaching a guided biography workshop, would you, you know, would, would somebody who or somebody who is a is a documentary client of yours, might you use some of the gap formatting as a way to have them sort of help them guide them along in their documentary process, maybe.
(39:19):
The short answer is yes. I like you took that a guided autobiography facility facilitator instructor training in order to off with the intention of offering it to people and facilitating workshops, but also with the intention of deepening my practice.
(39:41):
I came across guided autobiography because I was looking for other people or other disciplines that were involved in the kind of work that I am interested in doing.
My film and came practice until now has been influenced by other disciplines specifically palliative care nursing and pastoral care with, because my mother and grandmother worked in those areas, and also from my experience having worked in the long term care facility as a chapel assistant, I, I feel being exposed to that influenced
(40:15):
by that made me realize that my work, I see my work as an extension of the work that my mother and grandmother did in nursing.
For a long time I didn't know in what way I was similar to them, but now I see my work as bearing witness to the experience of others.
And also, my other influence before this was anthropology and the practice of ethnographic interviewing.
(40:46):
Because of gab, I have learned, you know, what we learned in the instructor training was that what they found in their research in the in the process of developing this protocol was that gab has three, three different pillars that are important to helping people draw out their
(41:11):
stories. The first one is that they are introduced to a theme, a theme is discussed, and they are given primary questions, and then they, on their own, right.
Like you say, something that's very easy to do two pages. The second important aspect is the component of sharing on the stories in a small group, sharing it reading it aloud and being heard.
(41:40):
And the third component is participating in giving feedback and receiving the feedback. There is a communion there that is an essential element to what people almost uniformly describe as a transformation, the transformative process of being involved in gab.
(42:04):
And having done this training and having participated in the in the work ourselves, you know, when we did the training we also have participants and share stories.
And I realized that like it works, you know, I'm a complete convert and, and it gave me the language and the framework to describe something that I have been following intuitively in my career to this point, which is that, you know, I think that the reason why gab is so effective and valuable or for
(42:45):
for example, me coming in and working with individuals or their families as an outsider is so effective is because people can tell me their stories and their experience as if they are telling it for the first time.
You know, so that is all the time that we have for today. I want to thank you, Megan so much for being our guest and to sharing your, your, your life's passion and and how you are making a difference in this, you know, your corner of the world, you know, it's like huge.
(43:20):
So thank you. Thank you for being here.
It was my absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for inviting you.
And to our listeners, whether you hear us locally from the BTV studios in Bedford, Massachusetts or across the globe on such podcast channels as Spotify, Apple podcasts or Amazon Prime.
Thanks for listening.
(43:41):
We hope that you enjoyed this episode and we'll see you next time.
Happy storytelling.
Welcome to the Starfish Storytellers, the podcast that makes a difference one story
(00:04):
at a time by bringing storytelling to life.
It is night and the lights are out. I must be around six years old. I am standing over the toilet, not sure of what is about to happen.
(00:36):
I have the dread of nausea swelling in my throat, the feeling of inept ability, no turning back,
but I have begun to associate with my damning understanding of death, the harrowing feeling that the body does what the body does, despite my desire for it to behave otherwise.
Tears well in my eyes, I begin to vomit, but just as I do, my long hair is pulled back from my face. I don't see her, but I feel her.
(01:03):
My mother's hands steady my shoulders, she envelops me, and when I am done, she carries me back to bed.
She picks me up off that asphalt too, when I fell off my little red bike and carried me screaming, blood dripping down both my legs and placing gently on the kitchen counter.
I placed my feet in the sink, turned on the faucet, and did not stop washing the pebbles, the dirt, out of the gashes in my knees as the water ran red and I wailed from the pain.
(01:35):
My mother is not the only one who has helped me. When I was sixteen, I had all four of my wisdom teeth removed.
Afterwards, the nurse delivered me groggy from the anesthetic to my grandfather who was in the waiting room.
When he brought me to my surgery appointment, I had anticipated the intimacy with which he would have to care for me.
When it came to my grandparents, physical care had been, until this point, the purview of my grandmother.
(02:01):
Still, he gathered me in his arms into his familiar scent, soap, and aftershave, and led me as best as he could to the car.
I felt safe and loved by him as we drove slowly home, listened to the local news on the radio.
My grandmother met us at the door and followed us to the guest room where together they tucked me into the frilly floral bed.
(02:22):
Grandma placed a bag of frozen peas on each side of my face and giggly, Grandma took out his camera to capture a photo of my chipmunk cheeks.
The evidence of my family's love for me is a catalog of sense memories.
The special taste of Grandma's bread, the bread that she would make for us every time she visited, the way she would take my hand in hers as we quietly snuggled off on the couch,
(02:47):
tracing a circle onto the back of my hand over and over again with her other hand.
The feeling of the comb digging into my scalp as my dad parted my hair into three sections, the impatience I fought as he fumbling gathered my hair into three ponytails.
The exhilaration bursting through my small body and the cold air on my greeting face as he took my hands into his and skating backwards whooped me around the ice, around the ice rink before I could fully skate on my own.
(03:21):
I was aware of their bodies before I was truly aware of mine as separate.
I ran my hand over the welts on mom's legs to see what the strange bumps felt like when she was suffering from a Crohn's disease flare.
I remember the soft sound of my grandma's dry fingers rubbing together as she demonstrated the C major scale, how she called them utter fingers,
(03:43):
admonishing herself when they wouldn't behave.
And my grandfather's hands big and elegant, the masonic ring on his finger glinting in the afternoon sun as he gracefully flipped through the yellow pages of the phone book telling me,
you've got to let your fingers do the walking mech. Call around first.
(04:04):
The first pain I bore on my own were my teenage menstrual periods.
I experienced the pain as exquisite in the medical sense of sharp and intense but also in the French poetic sense that I do know exquisites the exquisite pain,
the pain caused by unrequited love or in my interpretation the pain of unanswered pain.
(04:26):
I had already internalized that in our society women's gynecological issues were a pain that should be born at alone.
And I learned to walk the school hallways with one of my first masks, the masking of pain with pretty.
As my family and I had aged, I see my grandmother wince silently from her crushed vertebrae as she moves around the kitchen.
(04:48):
It's okay, Meg, it only hurts when I walk and watch my father rub his knuckles as he watched TV.
My mother rushed out of the room unannounced when hit with a Crohn's attack and hurt her whimpering in the bathroom, only for her to return with a breezy smile on her face.
I have witnessed my grandfather struggle to stand as we parted ways for the last time, his legs swollen and weeping from congestive heart failure but wanting to give me a kiss.
(05:17):
I've watched them hiding their pain like animals do, trying to survive and because of this I have felt helpless to ease their suffering.
I don't know what the answer to the human condition is.
The exquisite truth that death is the prerequisite of life, that the experience of bodily pain is facilitated by the same nervous system that allows us to experience the pleasure of a lover's touch, the warmth of the sun,
(05:45):
that our minds have the capacity for the knowledge of our mortality and that with our minds we must simultaneously hold this truth at the forefront and work to distract ourselves from this fact to appreciate the profound and fleeting pleasures of being incarnate.
When I was rushed to hospital for complications from my miscarriage, the pain was so intense that I panicked.
(06:09):
There was nowhere to run from it.
I couldn't think my way off the ledge.
They asked me about my pain level.
10 out of 10 can't think, can't think, I said, gasping for air.
My body took over, rocking and writhing.
I was completely vulnerable again, like a child.
The warmth of more clean spread through my body like the sun rising across a dewy morning landscape and the gratitude for the doctor who ordered the drug and the nurse who delivered it into my veins.
(06:39):
Two merciful strangers was akin to the love I felt for my mother, my father, as they held me in the night, rocking me to the sleep after a nightmare.
A year before that, I had found myself in a German hospital admitted at 10pm for complications of the deep vein thrombosis in my leg.
I was wheeled through the dark hallways of the hospital that was built in 19th Elfbore and been seemingly not redecorated since.
(07:07):
I was deposited into a room with an elderly lady and probably forgotten about for 17 hours.
But I didn't know at the time that this was the hospital for people with bad insurance.
The lady greeted me in German and with my non-existent German, I found out her name was Isselda, like Wagner's opera, Tristan and Isselda, I thought.
(07:29):
We shared one high-sealing room with curtains on the window hung by some long-dead decorator, but no privacy curtain between us was to be found.
That night, she lifted herself with great difficulty onto the commode but beside her bed at multiple times.
I pretended to be asleep so as to maintain a facade of privacy for her.
Breakfast was two Kaiser rolls, one stick of butter and one stick of margarine.
(07:54):
Medical attention was not only scarce for me but for Isselda. No one came for us for hours.
No one read our charts or took our blood pressure.
By the early afternoon, I started roaming the halls, as were my instructions to keep the blood from pulling in my legs.
I came across the communal kitchen and in it, extra butter and a coffee machine.
(08:15):
I secured some extra butter for what I guessed would be an equally uninspired lunch and poured some coffee for myself.
Returning to our room, Isselda perked up.
Coffee? She said. Her eyes glow.
Coffee, I said.
I left the room and went back for a cup for her.
I remembered the chocolate bar in my purse. I took it out, broke it in half and offered it to Isselda.
(08:38):
She smug, she accepted it with a smile.
We enjoyed our treat in silence, knowing that we couldn't say much to one another.
Afterwards, she motioned to the back of her neck. Her gown had come untied but she couldn't reach behind her head.
I walked over to her and tied a bow at the soft place below her hairline.
She sat back down, and I sat back down across from her.
(09:03):
As if to continue the conversation, she lifted her gown and revealed to me the reason for her hospitalization.
A large cancerous ulcer covered most of her lower right leg.
Cancer, she said using the English word in a way that was somewhere between solemn and matter of fact.
I nodded. From Vosis, I said, pointing to my leg.
(09:27):
She nodded.
Hast du an a kapse? She asked. Do you have a cat?
And sensing that she had found the limit of my German knowledge, she followed her question with a
mew-mew noise and mind whiskers.
I laughed. Yeah.
(09:48):
I pulled out my phone and scrolled back many months to find a photo of my recently departed cat.
Yes, I have a cat. Her name is Popotam, like Epopotam, French for hippopotamus.
Isn't she sweet?
I pretended just for a moment that she was still alive.
My past is still to the phone and she smiled inside with what sounded like relief.
(10:15):
Ich liebe Katzen, she told me. I love Katzen. Ich liebe auch Katzen, I told her. I love Katzen, too.
I don't know what to do with the exquisite pain of the fact of our mortality,
but having been graced with the touch on the hand of a stranger at just the right time
(10:39):
and the mercy of more than one shared piece of chocolate, I do know that while we are here,
our bodies are in communion with each other.
And that we have the capacity to ease each other's suffering by tending to each other's bodies
as if they were the temple of the soul.
(11:25):
Hello, my name is Leanna Henry and welcome to the Starfish Storytellers.
(11:54):
I'm the CEO of the Black Dog Group, a Marcom and project management firm
headquartered on the east coast of the U.S. and Quaint Colonial Bedford, Massachusetts.
I'm your host and passionate about storytelling.
I'm actually on a mission to raise up the next generation of storytellers.
We've named ourselves the Starfish Storytellers after the Starfish Story.
(12:15):
The moral of the Starfish Story is based on the power of one.
No matter how big the challenge, each action we take makes a difference and has an impact.
One step, one starfish, or one story at a time.
Every episode, we welcome a new storyteller who will share their story meant to inspire and connect with you.
Then we'll break it down and offer tips for any listeners who are ready to tell their own stories.
(12:39):
So thanks for tuning in. Now let's get started.
Today's episode is about narrative techniques in filmmaking where storytelling meets artistry
and with me today is my friend, Megan Iris Armstrong, a filmmaker, writer, and artist
who tells people's stories through the documentaries she directs and produces.
So it's so good to get together again. Thank you so much for being here.
(13:04):
Thank you so much for having me, Leona. It's an absolute pleasure. Thank you.
So we like to get started every episode by having our guests introduce themselves.
And I probably do a better job than I did. So would you mind telling our listeners a little bit about yourself?
Of course, yeah. I am a documentary filmmaker, writer, artist, and personal historian.
(13:28):
I used to work as a fiction producer in Canada for many years, but now that I'm living in the US,
I have returned to my first love, which is documentary film and personal history.
I say my passion is helping people craft and preserve their life stories
so that they can leave a meaningful and hopefully an impactful legacy.
(13:51):
I do this by making documentary portrait films, recording life stories with audio interviews,
and now I'm helping people write their autobiographies two pages at a time
by facilitating a beginner's writing workshop called Guided Autobiography.
I also help people organize their old family photos and home movies by sorting,
(14:12):
cataloging, and digitizing everything so that, you know, with the goal of creating a coherent and meaningful archive for their kids and grandkids.
Nice. It's very important work that you do.
So thank you for sharing your story.
So it was definitely a sensory journey. You know, that's just a true mark of a great storyteller
(14:38):
who can really take people along for the ride through their very colorful descriptive word choices.
So, you know, I just loved hearing it, so thank you for sharing that.
Thank you so much for listening, Leanna.
So in the fascinating world of filmmaking, directors, script writers, actors, and cinematographers
(15:01):
are modern-day magicians who breathe life into stories through their cameras.
Cinematic storytelling through essential film techniques transforms narratives into unforgettable experiences.
Let me think about any time we've gone to the movies.
In documentaries, which deal with facts, the purpose is to educate and inspire, not just entertain.
(15:22):
So I know that you are a documentary filmmaker. Can you expand on this for us?
Yeah. So I think, for me, the purpose is in the name to document.
My goal with documentary is to add historically underrepresented stories to the historical archive with the goal of creating a more richer document
(15:47):
so that we can better understand the time we live in. I think that this is important, the work of documentary is important,
because no one story creates an accurate representation of the world we live in.
We need a plurality of voices. I think that, you know, every story is a thread in the rich tapestry of the story of humanity,
and that's what I'm trying to add to with documentary.
(16:11):
I'm also interested in personal history and by extension genealogy and the developments in the technology that we have available to us today
that enable us to research our own histories and to see our ancestors in that historical archive.
For a number of reasons, the major one is that we do better when we know where we come from.
(16:32):
I'm thinking of a really good example of that is there was a sociological study done, the group of children,
it was a study called Do You Know, and they asked children about their ancestors, how much they knew about their ancestors,
and they found that those children that knew the most about their ancestors and had what they called a rich ancestral identity
(16:56):
did well on many markers of wellness, better on many markers of wellness.
They were more grounded, connected, so I think for me that's what I'm trying to do with documentary is to add to the historical archive,
help people add to it so that we leverage our lives and so that our children benefit from it.
(17:19):
So, going aside here, you know, do you find that there's, well, two questions.
Do you find that there's a demand for documentaries, the types of documentaries that you do,
and, you know, who's coming to you to say, hey, you know, let's do this, let's create this documentary?
(17:45):
Yes, there is a huge and wild demand for it.
It's typically baby boomers who are interested in recording their story or in sorting through all of the family archive materials that they have inherited from their parents.
They feel a responsibility to do something with it.
(18:06):
And if I'm making a portrait of someone, you know, the parents of baby boomers, it's because the baby boomers have, you know, they're in this process in that part of their lives where they have realized that they need to start reflecting.
And they're lucky their parents are still alive and now they're starting to ask their parents questions.
So, yeah, typically they do boomers.
(18:27):
And, you know, also my mom and I have worked with a number of people that are adoptees as well.
My mom is a genealogist and she works with me to help research family history for the projects that I work on.
And, you know, people who were adopted know this, you know, since the time that they are young, how important it is to know one's family history.
(18:57):
So, yeah, those are the kind of people.
I, in my previous life, before I went into marketing and communications, my bachelor's degree is in social work.
So I worked in the foster care system and I worked with children who were adopted out of the system.
(19:19):
And we did a lot to try to preserve as much of their birth history as we could, good or bad, so that they would have that to go back to.
And sometimes we had adoptive parents that were very open to supporting them.
And sometimes, you know, they just wanted to kind of adopt their child and start their new life. But search was a big thing for the kids, for sure.
(19:43):
You know, and there was always sort of that period of time in their lives, you know, as they got older, that they would search.
So I think that's, it's very interesting that you brought up adoptees that would make perfect sense for them to want to have their genealogy.
Yeah, I have a number of stories within my own family of adoption, and I won't go into those here, but, you know, I've heard firsthand how difficult it is to feel as though, you know, you have to live your life,
(20:16):
knowing that as if the first few chapters of the book of your life have been ripped out and you haven't been able to read them, you know, and answers to questions that you have might easily have been answered if you had access to the chapters before you go around.
So, I think it's, yeah, it's people who were adopted are evidence of just how important it is for us to do this work for us to record our life stories for our children.
(20:54):
Yeah, I mean, I imagine especially being able to even just to understand like health history to understand where health conditions may come from.
So that's huge to be able to know that so good work.
So, let's talk a little bit about you and your filmmaking history. So, how was it that you got into filmmaking? Is that did you go to school? I don't know, did you go to school for that? And I saw on your website that you thought maybe someday you'd head to Hollywood.
(21:31):
So, did you ever get a chance to pursue that?
Yes. So, I did a Bachelor of Fine Arts in filmmaking in Canada. And I got into film because I have wanted to work in film since I was a child. I have videos of me directing my cousins and reenactments of the western film Tombstone and Little Women and my favorite was Pride and Prejudice,
(21:59):
All Dressed Up. And I've always loved historical biopics and dramas for the way that becoming absorbed in those stories allows you to feel as though you can live another life and another time.
And I was embarrassed to admit it for a long time, but the reason I went to film school is because of the film The English Patient.
(22:20):
I was embarrassed because when it came out, I was a teenager and a teenager at the time saw that film to be overly romantic and hokey. But for me, that film was it.
It was, you know, I love stories of people living their lives and having to make difficult decisions because of the historical moment that they find themselves in.
(22:44):
So, yeah, it was because of meaningful historical films that I got into film, did the film degree, and I immediately found myself working in Hollywood superhero movies.
Wow.
Because that was what was available to me at that time in Vancouver. There was a lot of those kind of films would be made at that time in Vancouver.
(23:11):
Which one?
Did you work in?
The one that I am specifically referring to is called Watchmen and it's a demographic novel by Ellen Moore.
And I realized pretty quickly on that film set that I was going to have to carve out a different path for myself. After that, something happened on that film where we on it was a Friday night at eight o'clock at night.
(23:41):
And we were having co-workers wine and cheese. It felt like something that was expected of us, you know, after a 12 hour mandatory day of work.
And one of my co-workers said, she admitted that she was missing her five year old daughter's first ballet recital.
(24:05):
And I thought, why?
Why are you here with us? You know, when you're missing what to me, I would have thought would have been one of the most important days of her and certainly her daughter's life.
And it was in that moment that I realized, oh my gosh, I need to do something different.
(24:28):
And so I started a film production company with friends and colleagues with the goal of getting to prioritize the things that were important to me and setting our own hours.
That moment, I count as the moment that set me on the path of my entrepreneurial path, I should say, trying to carve on, make films in a way that they aren't usually made.
(24:54):
So I spent some time on your website and your LinkedIn and you do have an impressive resume of entrepreneurship.
You did, you know, I did see that you had started some production companies and film studios.
And so you were just saying that you were, you were starting those so that you sort of would have a little bit more control over your, your career and your destiny and how you were going to live your life.
(25:20):
What types of stories were you telling through the films you were making during that time?
Yeah, so with my first company, we made a number of short narrative films with the idea of them becoming like calling cards for us.
The idea is that you get your short film scene at festivals and that somehow stay ways into funding for feature narrative films.
(25:44):
But what ended up happening was I started another company to make branded content to support the development of our creative projects.
And we made the brand of content we made were short narrative films for businesses and nonprofits.
And at the time, in a time when I had to convince businesses and nonprofits that they needed video for their website and for social media, which was totally wild if I think about it at the time because I didn't understand at that time just how important video would become in the next 10 years.
(26:23):
So one of the projects that I'm most proud of from that period of the time was a series of videos that my company was hired to make historical promotional informative videos for an organization called Metrack, which stands for the Metropolitan Action
(26:45):
Against Women in the Young Violence Against Women. It is an organization that was founded at the 1980s in Toronto in response to a series of highly publicized murders and rapes of women in Toronto.
And basically what happened, their history is that they were a group of women got together and they said we've had enough. They called themselves the Toronto Pink Ribbon Committee, and they went into collaboration with the Metropolitan Toronto Police is what they were called at the time.
(27:18):
And with the goal of creating a task force to figure out how to address instances of violence against women and children. And with the support of many different community volunteers, many different stakeholders, they created a report and that final report.
And they put into practice, and they took action on all of the recommendations of the report. Their continued goal now is to change policies, practices, laws and structures, and they do.
(27:49):
I just can't sing their praises enough. They do a number of things. For example, the main thing they do is something called a safety audit, which is they go into communities where people are feeling I'm experiencing violence or feeling unsafe, for example, universities, workplaces,
apartment complexes, that kind of thing. And they work with the community to solicit their stories of what they've been experiencing and to create a report.
(28:19):
So that that report can be used to communicate with various people, the police, city council, apartment managers, whomever is involved that has some power in the situation to create change.
I loved working with this organization because they are, we're still are a group of women who decided that they didn't like the story that was being told, you know, the story that walking down the streets of Toronto, we could be murdered and raped.
(28:54):
What are we going to do about it? You know, this was in the 1980s in a time when domestic violence and sexual assault by people known to a survivor were considered, you know, euphemism was used to describe these things.
They were considered getting carried away when perpetrators committed these acts of violence. It wasn't talked about. And so this organization made it their mission to gather stories of people who were experiencing violence and tell that story and change the story,
(29:29):
and create a new outcome. They were also instrumental in bringing to light in Canada, the ways in which professional bodies, self governing professional bodies, for example, College of Physicians failed to report and act on instances of sexual misconduct, that kind of thing.
(29:50):
So it was an absolute honor to tell the story of these people who used stories, you know, to take action and make change. Anyway, that's that's my, that's my favorite story from that period of time in my work life.
Now, was that just remind me again, you had one company that was sort of the creative documentary side, and then you had sort of the, the branded content side.
(30:25):
I can appreciate that I'm a storyteller and marketing pays the bills. So, so that that project that you did.
So that project that you did was out of the branded side or the creative side.
Yeah, so it was considered the branded side the side that we did commercial video basically, and it was considered commercial video. Yes, that's right. Yeah, yeah, so yeah they they commissioned us to do it.
(30:59):
Yeah.
So, video is everything now. It is. So you were, you know, a trailblazer before you do you were a trailblazer, because it is video is everything now and I know as as a marketer.
I create a lot of video and I provide for our company and for my clients so video is is is critical, especially in this, in this era of screens. It is by far some the most consumed content out there.
(31:38):
So,
Mm hmm.
Mm hmm.
I little did I know at the time.
Yeah, I was hoping that that would be the case.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And yeah, here we go.
Here we go.
Yeah.
So, I saw on your on your website that the documentary types type of films, you call them documentary portrait films. And you talked about the different themes that you like to focus on marriage, labor politics, illness, medical field compassion women's cognitive
(32:14):
development, female friendship motherhood fertility family dynamics. So can you can you explain a little bit. What is a documentary portrait film.
And what, you know, why, why all of these themes I mean I, I'm getting I'm getting a sense based on what you just shared, how important being able to shed light on social injustice and being sort of the the force for social justice is is very important in the work that you do.
(32:50):
In addition to archival and genealogy. But yeah, can you can you explain what a documentary portrait film is. Yes. So, for me, a documentary portrait, the guys that I make our films that capture my subjects unique essence at this moment in time.
(33:13):
I interview my subjects about their lives and their perspective as it is now.
I film them in their environment to capture their physicality.
I film them in their hands to light in their eyes that kind of thing. And I focus on portrait, because to me, every person is this unfathomable universe unto themselves and I think it's my privilege to contemplate what people have to tell me about their
(33:47):
life. To me, a portrait is making special, meaning that it's when you focus your lens, your attention on someone in the endeavor, endeavoring to create a portrait, you set them aside from others, and honored a thing that makes them unique.
(34:08):
I think is a, it's a dialogue between the subject and the filmmaker, or the portraitist, and my goal is to make my subjects feel seen and heard.
To me, I think that making a portrait involves deep listening, quiet observation and curiosity, and a willingness to go where the subject wants to take you.
(34:40):
And I've decided through much experimentation over the course of my career that I want to focus on portraiture as a way to explore the larger themes that you've listed above, because I think that we audiences connect on a personal level, connect
to larger ideas on a personal level. I think that we have to empathize with the experience of others in order to truly feel and understand their experience.
(35:12):
And it helps us, I think, to proceed ethically in our own lives, when we are able to interact with the ideas that are presented in the form of portraiture, when we are able to empathize with the people that are my subject of the portrait.
Yeah, does that answer your question?
(35:35):
Yeah, no, and I was thinking, I can get a better understanding of these communities and these issues with something that has excused upon a more narrow lens, like, you know, that has a more focused story, because, you know, these are all really broad and important topics.
(36:02):
And, you know, we have a lot of sources of information that come at us, but sometimes the sources of information that come at us don't personalize the subject, you know what I'm saying, and I think that what you're doing is really humanizing.
(36:27):
Yes, yes. I think that it's, you know, I love documentary, but the ones that I think struggle to connect with people or to inspire action, which I think is the goal of a lot of documentaries, are the ones that don't tell a compelling story.
(36:48):
They present a lot of facts, a lot of data, but we are not moved. As anyone that will tell you who works in fundraising, for example, people donate to causes because they connect with a story, you know, you are moved to action, because for whatever reason, find ourselves empathizing with those that need our action.
(37:17):
Exactly. Exactly.
So I'm a pivot for a second and talk a little bit about how we met. We had the pleasure of meeting each other through a guided autobiography instructor training class.
We did it on Zoom. There was a group of women that got together and took this class and became very close.
(37:41):
I took the course to get certified in this type of storytelling because I wanted to be able to offer workshops for anyone who might want to delve into their life story.
And I noticed I was just adding my certification and all of that to my website. I noticed that you added it to yours too. You know, as you're working with folks in telling their life story, using the guided autobiography format, because it's a nice, easy way to do that in a nice ordered fashion.
(38:18):
You know, because I think sometimes when people think memoirs or they think autobiographies, they think that they have to go back and remember things from when they were born and they have to have it in a chronology.
And the nice thing about guided autobiography is that we're offered these themes and we can, like you said, help people tell their stories two pages at a time per life theme.
(38:39):
And that, I think, is, you know, a lot more palatable and easier to do than trying to rack your brain or having to pay somebody else to write it for you.
But I was curious, you know, would you, when you're, when you're telling, when you're teaching a guided biography workshop, would you, you know, would, would somebody who or somebody who is a is a documentary client of yours, might you use some of the gap formatting as a way to have them sort of help them guide them along in their documentary process, maybe.
(39:19):
The short answer is yes. I like you took that a guided autobiography facility facilitator instructor training in order to off with the intention of offering it to people and facilitating workshops, but also with the intention of deepening my practice.
(39:41):
I came across guided autobiography because I was looking for other people or other disciplines that were involved in the kind of work that I am interested in doing.
My film and came practice until now has been influenced by other disciplines specifically palliative care nursing and pastoral care with, because my mother and grandmother worked in those areas, and also from my experience having worked in the long term care facility as a chapel assistant, I, I feel being exposed to that influenced
(40:15):
by that made me realize that my work, I see my work as an extension of the work that my mother and grandmother did in nursing.
For a long time I didn't know in what way I was similar to them, but now I see my work as bearing witness to the experience of others.
And also, my other influence before this was anthropology and the practice of ethnographic interviewing.
(40:46):
Because of gab, I have learned, you know, what we learned in the instructor training was that what they found in their research in the in the process of developing this protocol was that gab has three, three different pillars that are important to helping people draw out their
(41:11):
stories. The first one is that they are introduced to a theme, a theme is discussed, and they are given primary questions, and then they, on their own, right.
Like you say, something that's very easy to do two pages. The second important aspect is the component of sharing on the stories in a small group, sharing it reading it aloud and being heard.
(41:40):
And the third component is participating in giving feedback and receiving the feedback. There is a communion there that is an essential element to what people almost uniformly describe as a transformation, the transformative process of being involved in gab.
(42:04):
And having done this training and having participated in the in the work ourselves, you know, when we did the training we also have participants and share stories.
And I realized that like it works, you know, I'm a complete convert and, and it gave me the language and the framework to describe something that I have been following intuitively in my career to this point, which is that, you know, I think that the reason why gab is so effective and valuable or for
(42:45):
for example, me coming in and working with individuals or their families as an outsider is so effective is because people can tell me their stories and their experience as if they are telling it for the first time.
You know, so that is all the time that we have for today. I want to thank you, Megan so much for being our guest and to sharing your, your, your life's passion and and how you are making a difference in this, you know, your corner of the world, you know, it's like huge.
(43:20):
So thank you. Thank you for being here.
It was my absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for inviting you.
And to our listeners, whether you hear us locally from the BTV studios in Bedford, Massachusetts or across the globe on such podcast channels as Spotify, Apple podcasts or Amazon Prime.
Thanks for listening.
(43:41):
We hope that you enjoyed this episode and we'll see you next time.
Happy storytelling.
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