photo credit: WTL photos
I learned this morning that Michael White has passed away. Known to many of us in the story community as a co-founder of narrative therapy, he was a pioneer who paved the way for many of us who do this work. He brought a deep critical and social consciousness to our understanding of stories; he liberated both stories and storytelling so practitioners could work in creative and powerful ways with clients. His death seems particularly poignant for me right now as I launch my new narrative coaching programs and think more deeply about where and how I most want to invest my life energy. Perhaps his death will inspire me to play a bigger game.

Michael’s work was an important bridge for me in connecting three domains of my narrative study and practice that had long been separate: Jungian psychology/spirituality, cognitive development and learning, and social justice. On a personal level, I felt inspired by his work to be more courageous and confident in bringing together these domains in my narrative coaching work. I experienced him as a deep thinker, a complicated writer, a consummate practitioner, and a gifted teacher. He has left a legacy that will live on in the thousands of professionals who have been shaped by his work and the many contributions of narrative therapy to our language, perspectives and practices. Thank you, Michael.

“The evolution of the lives and relationships of persons is akin to the process of reauthoring, the process of persons entering into stories with their experience and their imagination, of taking these stories over and making them their own.” (1992)

photo credit: Wolfgang Staudt
High thunderhead clouds were blowing in from the north as they often do in the New Mexico afternoon. As I set out for a hike, I could see lightning and rain in the distance, but hoped it would pass over before I got into the high country. Making my way up the second canyon I came across a father and two young sons who were white as ghosts and laying in a small arroyo. As we began to talk, it began to rain; we huddled under a piñon tree. It turned out they had been on top of the mesa when the storm hit. One bolt of lightning had struck so close to them that the force of the wind had knocked down the youngest boy. Needless to say, they got down off the mesa in a hurry. Now they were under a tree, petrified to move any further until the lightning and thunder stopped.

The father asked me to reassure his sons that they were safe now. Drawing on my experience in the wilderness and speaking in my most authoritative and calming voice, I told them it was so. They listened with rapt attention, but it still took twenty minutes before they truly believed it was OK to head back to their car. The storm passed and we each headed our separate ways. When I got back from the top of the mesa, I came across the father and sons who had since reconnected with the mother. The boys came running up to me, excited to ask about my hike. They recounted the story to their mother again about what they had been through and how I had helped get them down the mountain.

As I puzzled at their level of admiration for my simple Good Samaritan gesture, the father told me the rest of the story. When I had come across them, the father had been trying to reassure his sons, but he had been unsuccessful. Not feeling safe yet, the boys had asked their dad if they could pray for God to save them. They weren’t much of a religious family, but he told them it certainly couldn’t hurt. So they had prayed out loud to God for a guardian angel to come and rescue them.

Serendipitously, I had come around the corner about thirty seconds after they had said “amen”. To me, I was just out on a walk. To his boys, I was an angel sent directly from God in answer to their pleas for help.

As Seth Godin pointed out, every one of your interactions can become an anecdote that lives on for years. We often look for the perfect story or the perfect opportunity, yet many of our most significant moments in coaching come when we least expect them. Even if I had not met up with the family again, their story about the angel on the mesa would have lived on in them for years to come.

What anecdotes are you cultivating today as you interact with your clients, your peers, your family or even that homeless man you passed on the street?