I’m Not Trauma Dumping into a Ring Light
☕ What If I’m a Bad Storyteller?
☕ Brewing Up Stories That Don’t Sound Like Hallmark Movies
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about storytelling.
Mostly because I think I might be bad at it. ☕💀
Not bad at talking. Clearly. I can talk to a brick wall and somehow end up teaching it how to make better social media videos.
But storytelling? The kind everyone online tells you to do?
That’s where things get weird.
Because supposedly, good storytelling has:
☕ a clear sequence
☕ emotional tension
☕ a transformation
☕ a hopeful ending
☕ and some beautiful little life lesson wrapped up with acoustic guitar music playing softly in the background
Meanwhile my stories are over here ending like:
“Actually I felt full-body relief when my mother passed because I was finally free from being trapped in an identity I had outgrown years before.”
Not exactly Hallmark Channel energy. ☕💀
☕ Stop Treating Social Media Like Group Therapy
And before anybody gets weird about that statement:
No, I’m not asking for therapy from the internet.
No, I’m not asking for pity.
No, I’m not trying to one-up somebody else’s pain.
That’s part of what’s made storytelling difficult for me.
I think social media has confused “authentic storytelling” with emotional exposure.
People think being real online means bleeding publicly like a dropped Starbucks order while strangers in the comments try to diagnose your childhood over iced coffee.
Hard pass. ☕
I don’t tell stories because I want emotional rescue. I tell stories because experiences shape perspective. And perspective shapes how we help people.
That distinction matters.
☕ The Coffee and Conversation That Hit Harder Than Expected
Recently at a Mic Drop Club workshop (because you know I'm refining my public speaking), we paired up to answer this question:
“Who believed in you and saw your potential before you saw it yourself?”
And honestly?
Nobody.
I have never had a mentor walk into my life and say: “Oh my gosh, you’re amazing, and I want to help you become even more of who you are.”
That’s not me being dramatic. That’s just true.
And sitting there realizing that hit me harder than I expected.
☕ Becoming the Espresso Shot I Never Got
But what’s interesting is what happened because of it.
Instead of becoming bitter, I accidentally (but really intentionally, it turns out) built my entire life around becoming that person for other people.
I became that teacher for my students.
I became that mentor in leadership training.
And now I become that person for business owners trying to figure out how to show up online without sounding like watered-down corporate sad brown water. ☕
I give affirmations constantly.
Real ones.
Not fake “you got this babe!” fluff with glitter fonts and toxic positivity espresso shots.
I mean genuine feedback.
The kind where I can see exactly what someone is doing well, where they’re stuck, and how to help them become even better.
Because I know what it feels like to move through life without enough of that.
And honestly? That directly connects to my personal philosophy:
“God gave me these talents to help people be the best they can be.”
That has been the throughline the whole time.
Teaching languages.
Mentoring students.
Leadership development.
Social media coaching.
Video confidence.
Messaging.
All of it.
Helping people become more fully themselves.
☕ Some Stories End With Relief Instead of Reconciliation
And maybe THAT is why I struggle with traditional storytelling online.
Because my stories don’t usually end with:
☕ reconciliation
☕ rescue
☕ magical mentors
☕ somebody swooping in to save the day
A lot of my stories end with:
☕ clarity
☕ relief
☕ boundaries
☕ self-trust
☕ becoming my own support system
That’s still transformation.
It’s just not the kind people usually package into inspirational coffee mugs and TED Talks.
☕ Brewing Transformation Instead of Trauma Dumps
So instead, I found another way to tell stories.
Transformation stories.
Client stories.
Growth stories.
Process stories.
The evolution from my old “hey y’all” videos into a structure I refined for nearly two years:
☕ hook
☕ introduce myself
☕ answer the hook
The evolution of my graphics.
The evolution of using Ai after building content systems long before ChatGPT existed.
The evolution of helping people stop hiding behind static graphics and actually use their voices.
Those stories feel meaningful to me because they show movement.
Not perfection. Not performance. Movement.
☕ Maybe Good Storytelling Isn’t What We Thought It Was
And honestly? Maybe that’s what good storytelling actually is.
Not creating a perfectly polished ending.
Not performing emotional CPR on the internet.
Not trauma dumping into a ring light while people type “sending hugs” into the comments section.
Maybe storytelling is simply:
☕ revealing something true
☕ helping people feel recognized
☕ showing what changed
☕ and using that perspective to help somebody else grow faster than you had to
And if that’s true?
Then maybe I’m not a bad storyteller after all.
☕ Hooks you can use to tell shots of your story
I don’t think people realize how much this experience shaped the way I move through the world now.
Looking back, that was probably the moment everything started changing for me.
At the time, I thought I was just dealing with a bad situation. Now I realize it changed my entire perspective.
I didn’t understand the emotional weight of it until much later.
What’s interesting is that this experience didn’t make me bitter. It made me become a different kind of person for others.
I used to think this part of my story was too messy to share.
Honestly? The ending of this story doesn’t sound inspirational at all. But it’s true.
I think people expect transformation stories to look prettier than they actually do.
That experience taught me exactly what I never wanted another person to feel around me.
I didn’t realize until recently how much this shaped the way I help people now.
Some stories don’t end with healing. Some end with clarity.
The biggest shift wasn’t external. It was realizing I saw myself differently afterward.
I spent years thinking this story made me weak. It actually made me more observant, compassionate, and intentional.
I’m not sharing this for pity. I’m sharing it because perspective matters.
The older I get, the more I understand why this affected me the way it did.
At some point, I stopped waiting for someone else to become what I needed.
I think a lot of people carry stories they’ve never learned how to talk about honestly.
The lesson wasn’t what happened. The lesson was what I built from it afterward.
Some experiences don’t leave you devastated. They leave you relieved. And that’s a complicated thing to explain to people.
I used to think this story reflected badly on me. Now I think it explains a lot of my strengths.
The most meaningful part of this story isn’t the pain. It’s who I became because of it.
I’m not interested in turning my life into trauma content for the internet. But I do think there’s value in honest perspective.
Sometimes the transformation is simply deciding the cycle stops with you.
This experience changed the way I encourage people forever.
I think some of the people who pour the most into others know exactly what it feels like to go without it themselves.
The version of me that went through this would never believe where I am now.
This isn’t a “look how hard my life was” story. It’s a “here’s what this taught me about people” story.
I don’t think every story needs a perfect ending to have meaning.
Some stories become valuable because of the perspective they give you later.
I used to think storytelling meant wrapping everything up neatly. Now I think honesty matters more than polish.
