The Question That Changed My Work

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In This Episode:

In this episode, Maria shares the question that changed the trajectory of her work and ultimately led to the creation of the When Bearing Witness® Trauma-Informed Storytelling Certification Program.

After years of working in nonprofit marketing and communications, Maria was leading a virtual storytelling webinar when someone asked her a question she didn’t have the answer to.

Maria explores what she began to notice once she looked back at her own storytelling work through this new lens, from the limits of good intentions and signed consent forms to the emotional impact of bearing witness to difficult stories.

She also shares some of the biggest lessons she has learned after guiding more than 160 people through the When Bearing Witness training program, including why consent must be ongoing, why harm repair matters, why storytellers need care too, and why knowing the principles of trauma-informed storytelling is very different from applying them in real organizational situations.

You’ll also hear how those lessons are shaping the next chapter of the training program and its expanded focus on practice, reflection, and community.

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Transcript

There is one question I can trace almost everything I teach today back to.

I was leading a virtual nonprofit storytelling webinar, and at that point in my career, I had already spent years helping nonprofits tell stories. I knew how to talk about messaging and positioning, how to structure a compelling story that would help an audience connect.

Toward the end of the webinar, someone asked me a question that caught me completely off guard:

“How does trauma-informed storytelling fit into your framework?”

I remember pausing and searching my brain for something useful to say, but the truth was that I didn’t have a good answer.

The webinar ended, everyone logged off, and life moved on. But that question stayed with me.

By that point, storytelling had already been woven through almost every chapter of my career. I had studied journalism, served as a health educator with the Peace Corps in a small village in Ghana, and spent years building and leading communications and digital marketing programs for public health organizations in New York City. Later, after my first daughter was born, I left my traditional nonprofit role and built my own consultancy around nonprofit marketing and storytelling.

I had spent a long time thinking about stories, but suddenly someone had asked me a question that exposed a huge gap in the way I understood them.

I knew how to think about the audience. I knew how to think about the organization. I knew how to think about the message and what would make someone care.

But what was the experience like for the person whose story I was gathering? What happened when I asked someone to revisit something painful? Was a signed media release enough to tell me that someone was actually ready to share? What responsibility did I have after a story was published? And what was all of this doing to those of us whose careers asked us to repeatedly sit with difficult stories?

I realized I had never really been taught to think about the entire storytelling process through the lens of trauma.

Once I noticed that gap, I couldn’t unsee it.

So I started learning everything I could about trauma-informed practice. Over time, that led me into deeper study of trauma and resilience, trauma-informed space holding, coaching, somatic embodiment, nervous system regulation, and the many ways trauma can shape how people experience safety, choice, power, and connection.

There was already so much thoughtful work happening around trauma. Therapists and social workers were talking about it. Healthcare professionals and educators were talking about it. Journalists had resources for reporting on traumatic experiences.

But I kept looking for something written specifically for people like me.

What about the nonprofit communications person trying to gather a story for the year-end appeal? What about the development director sitting across from someone and asking about one of the hardest periods of their life? What about the filmmaker interviewing a survivor, the grant writer trying to demonstrate impact without reducing someone to the worst thing that had ever happened to them, or the consultant who had been entrusted with the stories of a nonprofit client’s community?

There simply wasn’t enough for us.

As I learned more, I also started looking backward at my own career differently. I thought about interviews that had technically gone very well. I had gotten the quotes, the emotional moments, and the details I needed to write the story, but sometimes I had a weird feeling I couldn’t quite explain.

Had I asked too much? Had the person told me something because they genuinely wanted to, or because I was sitting there with a notebook and they thought that was what I needed from them? Had I made it clear enough that they could say no or skip a question? Would I even ask some of those same questions today?

Those reflections quickly turned into shame and immense guilt. But one of the most important things this work has taught me is that shame is not particularly useful for sustainable change.

I didn’t know what I didn’t know. Once I knew more, I had an opportunity to make different choices, and eventually I realized I wanted to help other nonprofit storytellers make those choices too.

That is what eventually became the When Bearing Witness® Trauma-Informed Storytelling Certification Program, the training program I created for nonprofit professionals and the people who serve them. I built it to bring together the things I had been searching for myself: an understanding of how trauma can show up in storytelling, practical ways to create more safety and agency throughout the process, and tools for navigating everything from consent and story readiness to language, distribution, storyteller well-being, and harm repair.

What began with one question in a webinar has now grown into a learning community of more than 160 people who have gone through the training program. And one of the unexpected gifts of teaching it has been realizing that I’m still learning too. The questions students bring from their own organizations have stretched my thinking, challenged the way I teach, and helped the program continue to evolve.

One of the first things I understand much more clearly now is that good intentions matter, but they aren’t enough.

I have met a lot of nonprofit storytellers over the years, and I have yet to meet one who wakes up in the morning wondering how they can exploit someone’s story that day.

Most of us come into this work because we care deeply. We believe stories can help someone understand an experience they have never lived themselves. They can challenge assumptions, build connection, and move people to give, volunteer, advocate, or simply see another human being differently.

Those intentions matter enormously, but good intentions alone cannot keep people safe.

You can care deeply about someone and still ask a question they weren’t ready to answer. You can create a thoughtful media release and still discover later that someone didn’t fully understand what it would feel like to see their face on a brochure, website, billboard, or social media post. You can write something you genuinely believe honors someone and later hear from people with lived experience that your language caused harm.

Trauma-informed storytelling doesn’t ask us to stop telling stories because those things are possible. It means prioritizing safety and agency over and over again. 

That means thinking about story readiness before we ever make the invitation, considering who should be involved in the process, creating meaningful opportunities for someone to say no, building review and retraction practices, and deciding ahead of time what we will do if harm happens.

Good intentions may be where we begin, but thoughtful practices are what help us follow those intentions all the way through the storytelling process.

Another lesson that has become increasingly important to me is that the goal is not to become a perfect storyteller.

When people first start learning about trauma-informed storytelling, I sometimes watch them begin remembering every story they have ever told. An interview from five years ago, a fundraising appeal, a photograph they chose, or a phrase they used over and over again suddenly looks different through this new lens.

And once they understand the work differently, it is very easy for the reaction to become, “Oh my gosh. I did this wrong.”

I know that feeling because there are absolutely moments from my own career that I would approach differently today.

But I don’t want trauma-informed storytelling to become another standard we use to shame ourselves or each other. My work has become increasingly grounded in kindness, empathy, grace, and accountability, and I don’t see those ideas as being in conflict with one another.

Kindness doesn’t mean avoiding difficult conversations. Grace doesn’t mean pretending harm didn’t happen. Accountability doesn’t require us to humiliate ourselves or someone else. It means believing that people can learn, repair, and change.

The reality is that we are going to make mistakes, and our organizations will make mistakes too. This is complicated work involving people, power, trauma, identity, deadlines, money, organizational culture, and sometimes enormous pressure, so perfection simply cannot be the standard.

A much more useful question is: What do we do when harm happens?

Can someone tell us that something went wrong? Can we listen to them without immediately explaining our intentions? Can we acknowledge the impact, make whatever repair is possible, and change something about the process so we are less likely to cause the same harm again?

And can we extend enough grace to ourselves to stay engaged in the work instead of becoming so ashamed of a mistake that we stop trying altogether?

That is why harm repair eventually became such an important part of the When Bearing Witness training program. Being trauma-informed cannot only describe what we do when everything goes according to plan. It also has to shape the way we respond when it doesn’t.

And then there is another lesson that has shaped the When Bearing Witness training program more than almost any other: knowing isn’t the same as doing.

More than 160 people have now moved through the program, including communicators, fundraisers, nonprofit leaders, researchers, filmmakers, consultants, agency professionals, grant writers, and plenty of people who didn’t necessarily think of themselves as storytellers until they realized how often their work asked them to hold someone else’s experience.

Again and again, I see people learn the concepts, understand why they matter, and feel energized about doing things differently. Then they go back to work, and the real questions begin.

“My executive director wants this story tomorrow.”

“Our fundraiser needs something more emotional.”

“The program team doesn’t want me interviewing anyone.”

“This person signed a release two years ago. Can we still use the photo?”

“The story owner wants to share this detail, but I’m worried publishing it could put them at risk.”

“I understand all of this now, but my leadership doesn’t.”

Those are the places where trauma-informed storytelling gets complicated, because there isn’t always a perfect answer waiting for us in a workbook.

Sometimes two important values pull us in different directions. Sometimes the safer choice conflicts with the faster choice. Sometimes we need more context, more voices around the table, or simply more time before making a decision. And sometimes what we really need is a place where we can say, “Here is what is happening in my organization. Can we think this through together?”

That realization has shaped the next version of the When Bearing Witness training program.

The Fall cohort begins October 5, and this time I wanted to create more space between learning the material and figuring out what it looks like in actual practice.

The cohort is expanding from four weeks to six, and we’ll have three optional 90-minute integration sessions where we can work through real-world scenarios and case studies, have breakout discussions, and spend time with the questions that come up as people begin applying the material.

I’m also adding something I have wanted for a long time: a private community space for the cohort.

So much of this work happens between lessons. You might watch a section on consent on Tuesday, and on Thursday someone at work comes to you with exactly the kind of situation we were just talking about.

I want you to have somewhere to bring that, a place to ask the question, hear how other people doing this work are thinking about it, and remember that you are not the only person trying to navigate these tensions inside an organization.

And while we will spend six weeks moving through the program together, everyone will continue to have access through December 27. That gives you 12 weeks total to complete the material, revisit lessons, and return to the resources as you begin putting them into practice.

I’m especially excited about the timing of this cohort because it happens right in the middle of year-end giving season. I know that can make fall an incredibly full time to learn something new, but it also means so many of the questions we are talking about will be happening in real time.

You may be gathering stories for a year-end appeal while we are talking about story readiness. You may be reviewing Giving Tuesday content while we are discussing language and imagery, or deciding whether an old story can be reused while we are exploring ongoing consent.

You get to bring the real work with you.

I still think about that virtual webinar sometimes, and I honestly don’t remember who asked the question. They probably have absolutely no idea what they set in motion.

At the time, I was embarrassed that I couldn’t give them an answer. Today, I am incredibly grateful that I couldn’t, because not knowing pushed me to get curious, and that curiosity changed the trajectory of my work.

I started this journey asking how trauma-informed practice fit into storytelling. Now I think the much bigger question is what storytelling could look like if we truly centered safety and agency throughout the entire process.

How would it change the questions we ask and the stories we choose? How might organizations think differently about deadlines, review processes, retraction, or what happens when harm occurs? And what would change if we acknowledged that the people gathering these stories also deserve care?

I don’t ask those questions because I want anyone to become afraid of storytelling. Quite the opposite.

I believe deeply in stories. They have shaped my entire career, and I have seen what becomes possible when someone trusts us enough to share a piece of their life with us.

I simply believe that something this meaningful deserves our care.

That is what the When Bearing Witness training program has become for me. It is not about becoming a perfect storyteller. It is a place to learn, question, practice, repair, and keep growing alongside other people who care deeply about doing this work well.

More than 160 people have now been part of that learning community, and I’m still learning right alongside them.

If these are questions you’ve been asking too, enrollment is now open for the Fall cohort of the When Bearing Witness® Trauma-Informed Storytelling Certification Program. We begin October 5, and I would be honored to have you join us.