Last Friday I met a woman who has spent a year in a maximum security prison and I let her play with my 7 month old son… Her name is Jennifer and don’t worry, since she got out from prison, she has become a gifted counselor for troubled teens at a small outpatient hospital program.
I met her on the plane to Seattle, as my wife, my son Kai and I were making our way back from a long vacation. Now, my son’s toothless grin has a tendency to pull women into his orbit faster than a super magnet, which is why within a few minutes of our meeting, Kai was happily sitting on Jennifer’s lap with her cooing a song to him.
As Kai went back to his mother for lift-off feeding, Jennifer and I started a conversation that has profoundly touched me and made me realize the power of using stories as therapy!
It started when Jennifer told me that before she was a counselor, she served several years in prison for cocaine smuggling and for the last ten years since her release she has dedicated her life to helping troubled youths—a role model that she herself wished she had as she was growing up.
To say that I was glued to my seat is an understatement—it was only when we finally left the plane did I realize just how badly I had to pee!
What was so powerful about Jennifer’s approach of reaching troubled kids was not traditional lectures, workshops or therapy—her secret was in helping them identify the positive story of who they are and what they are capable of, often for the first time in their lives.
One story she mentioned touched me in particular. One of her clients, I’ll call him Jamal, was a trouble teenager from the inner city with a long record of misdemeanors. He was, without a doubt, on the path to jail or an early grave. He was ordered to see Jennifer and as you can imagine, he was not thrilled. “I could see it in his face” Jennifer told me “You’re just another arrogant adult who has no idea who I am!”
Jennifer reviewed his file and saw that he liked to rap. So she asked him: “Do you write your own rap or just sing other’s?” Taken aback Jamal said “I write my own!”
“Can you sing your rap here?” Jennifer asked.
“Here?” “Now?!” Jamal was incredulous
“Yeah” said Jennifer, turning to her computer and opening a sound file of a rap backbeat. She had this handy, since she specializes in using pop culture as a tool of her trade.
Reluctant at first, Jamal started to rap.
“It was incredible” Jennifer recounted. “This kid who believed himself to be worthless and felt betrayed by the adults in his life, was telling his life’s story through the lines of rap that was pure poetry.”
After he was done, Jennifer asked Jamal about the words in his song and what they meant to him.
“I built a rapport with Jamal during that session and from then on for every session I only asked him to bring a new rap song he had written and sing it for me. Then we would look at the words and find the meaning for him. It was life changing for him.”
WOW! What a story! As a speech coach I know the power of a good story but I was floored by the way that Jennifer used the stories as therapeutic tools.
Needless to say, I told her what I do and how I teach my clients to speak with power by telling stories with purpose that engage their audience in order to share knowledge. Jennifer loved the idea, saying that though she intuitively used stories as therapeutic tools, she has not thought of it as a therapeutic tool—just something she did. She suddenly saw how her own story can be a tool to change lives if spoken with power. She shared with me her dream of speaking in front of a live audience about her experiences in the penitentiary and how it changed her lifeso that it can engage and empower others.
As we were leaving the plane, Jennifer turned to me and said: “ Thank you, Leo, I know what I want to do now!”
I love my job!
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