Less than three weeks ago I gathered in a room in sunny Redlands, California with 60 other people and together we learned what it means to truly own our stories.
Let me take you back a bit and tell you the how and why I ended up there that day.
For the past eight years I have been a leader in the social media Down syndrome space. Yes! The “social media Down syndrome space” is a real thing (you should come hang out with us there. It’s a magical space!). I never sought out to be in this space. We started as an Instagram account set up to share and celebrate life with a child who has Down syndrome. As I shared how lucky I felt to be a mother to a child with Down syndrome I began using the hashtag #theluckyfew. This hashtag grew quite quickly and within a year many more families posting pictures of their child with Down syndrome began adding #theluckyfew to their captions. As our Instagram account grew so did the hashtag. With more than 430K #theluckyfew hashtags on Instagram today, all of which are connected to the Down syndrome community, the phrase “The Lucky Few” has become synonyms with Down syndrome. In other words, “lucky” has begun to attach itself to “Down syndrome” and a true narrative shift is happening right before our eyes.
It took me a few years to truly recognize the influence I had in the Down syndrome conversation. But once I did, I began to notice that the stories I had to share were being received in life changing or rather, narrative shifting ways. As those early days unfolded it took me some time to learn how to truly step into my influence and intentionally tell the story I was living out. But as the years have gone by, I’ve discovered that when I made the conscious decision to truly own my story by understanding its importance and choosing to share it with the world, what started as a simple hashtag has become a new, life giving, life changing and necessary narrative shift for people with Down syndrome and those of us who love them.
As my influence on social media grew so did my interaction with moms raising kids with Down syndrome. Over the years I’ve had a similar conversation with thousands of these mamas and it goes something like this: “how do I share my story with the world in an impactful and narrative shifting way?” The short answer was, “Put your story into the world.” But a longer answer was needed and thus Own Your Story was born.
Here’s the thing about stories: we all have one that should be told and should be heard. All of us are living out our own unique stories and the only way those stories can have a positive impact on the world is if we share them.
Three weeks ago when we launched our first ever Own Your Story Workshop the room did have a few mamas from “the lucky few” in it, but what I found so amazing, and affirming is that the room was full of people from all different walks of life living out all different kinds of stories.
Yes, a person raising a child with Down syndrome NEEDS to know how to see the influence their story has on this world, they need to truly learn how to own their story. But so does the person who is raising a kid without Down syndrome. And the person who is single with no kids, and the person working as a barista, or starting a non-profit or hustling as a small business owner.
This world is full of stories that have the power to create empathy, connect humanity and shift narratives. And the story you’re living out is one of them.
At the end of the night, after we finished up our first every Own Your Story Workshop, I sat in my living room with my husband and my friends who partnered with us and made it happen. We raised our glasses to a successful day created by all our hard work but more than that we toasted to the stories that were born into the world that day knowing that each story would have a narrative shifting ripple effect. The first Own Your Story had come to an end, but its impact was only just the beginning.
If you’re ready to Own Your Story follow this link to join us at our next live workshop or you can join us at home with our Own Your Story eCourse!