In our Stories-in-Motion workshop, we start with a writing prompt, I borrowed from the wonderful Writing Life Stories by Bill Roorbach.

Quickly draw a map of your childhood neighborhood, if you had several, choose one between ages 6-11, try to include 4-6 blocks or ¼ mile area from your home.

Quickly draw a map of your childhood neighborhood, if you had several, choose one between ages 6-11, try to include 4-6 blocks or ¼ mile area from your home

In your mind’s eye, circle three locations where 3 of the following five events likely happened.

• You learned something useful (think riding a bike, climbing a tree, how to cross a busy street, shop at a store, make a special meal/item)
• You lost something you valued/found something you valued
• You were hurt or associate with some type of minor injury
• You were successful (won a contest/game, completed a task, did something you hadn’t done before)
• You made a new friend/relationship that lasted

Choose one and write in one paragraph what happened, and in the second paragraph why you think it mattered.

Preparing for this Spring’s online course, I went back and re-made a map of the Vickery Meadow Neighborhood I grew up in during the 1960s.

You can find it here, Vickery, Texas StoryMap.

Each time I assign this prompt, people find some critical memory unfold before them. I am reminded of all my reading into memory, and the ways sensory embodiment allows us to retrieve seemingly long forgotten parts of our lives. That skinned knee story remains with you, as does the feeling of accomplishing something new, and your first kiss, but so does the time you stood at a crosswalk, on your own, and stepped off the curve into your future.

Our workshops are precisely where folks get to explore place and memory, even as they explore the dilemmas of their current life, and their aspirations for the future. Storymapping is the kind of tool that reminds us to pay attention to our surroundings, to find insight in the details, in the little things, that make a place our own.