The room is never empty when you arrive: Narratives are already operating before anyone speaks—stories about who is credible, what's safe to say, and what's been buried. Preparing means noticing what's already present. Learn more.

To understand a system, invite “the system” into the storytelling circle: Systems become visible when different perspectives meet. But presence alone is not enough—gatherings must be designed so that everyone can actually speak and be heard. Learn more.

There is no perfect moment: The work is not waiting for ideal conditions, but sensing what this moment needs and can hold, and designing accordingly. Learn more.

Trust and consent are ongoing practices: Trust is built through what you do, what you don't do, and what you do next. Consent doesn't end when the story begins—it needs to be asked again whenever form, audience, or purpose shifts. Learn more.

Storytelling happens in many containers: Stories emerge in multiple spaces–in hallways, during walks, over meals—in liminal moments that can be designed with intention. Learn more.

Questions do the work: A well-held question invites curiosity, fresh insights, new connections.  A poorly held one lead to canned or thin responses. Learn more.

The facilitator is host, guide, and listener: Your presence shapes what emerges. Hosting creates welcome; guiding helps people navigate; listening means receiving what's offered with respect and care. Learn more.

Listen for how stories reveal systemic conditions: A systems story reveals how conditions, relationships, and structures shape what happens to people. The host's work is listening for system insights in individual accounts—and helping others hear it too. Learn more.

Lived experience is systems knowledge: The person navigating a system every day knows things about it that no theory can capture. The host's role is to treat these accounts as authoritative, not as raw material for experts to interpret. Learn more.

Protect a story's ability to reveal the unexpected: Stories are not instruments. When we approach them as tools to justify or prove, or simply illustrate, we close down what they might open. Protecting stories means allowing for ambiguity, uncomfortable truths, and loose ends. Learn more.

Storytelling is an embodied practice: Before systems are named, they are felt—in bodies as tension or breath. Consider the body as a barometer, and what silence, gesture, changes in breath and sensation might be telling us. Learn more.

Design for more than words: Visual art,  movement, music, ritual– these are forms of storytelling in their own right, often revealing what language cannot. Arts-based approaches can lift up what's hardest to say. Learn more.

The land is not scenery - it is witness: The land holds story—not as metaphor, but as fact. The place where we gather has witnessed what came before. Listening to land requires stillness, humility, and recognizing we are not the only ones with something to say. Learn more.

Stories change as they move: Form changes meaning. Audience changes meaning. At every stage, someone makes choices about what to cut, keep, and frame. Caring for stories means noticing how they are changing where power gathers. Learn more.

Be alive to what your words carry: Language carries assumptions, images, and mental models that can restrict or expand what becomes possible. Being alive to this—noticing what we might be implying, what frames we're reinforcing—is part of the work. Learn more.

With the correct conditions in place, systems stories can support healing in a system: Systems storytelling is an approach that carries the unique quality of enabling people to share their story of what’s happening in the system in ways that can elicit empathy and connection from other system participants. Learn more.

What remains after the story is the relationship: Projects end, but people shared something. The orientation is tending: listening, staying, caring for what's been entrusted—even when there's no deliverable attached. Learn more.