Morgan Harper Nichols' Blog

Tag: stories

  • The Importance of Sharing Your Story

    The Importance of Sharing Your Story

    Imagine buying a pot with soil for a plant to grow. The entire experience of going to the store and selecting the pot is an important part of the process, even before the plant begins to sprout. This experience is a part of the story, just as significant as the growth that will follow.

    Now, picture meeting a friend later that day and they ask you about your day. You share the story of going to the store, choosing the perfect pot, and picking out the seed. As you recount the details, you express your emotions and excitement about watching the plant grow in the future. This narrative can be complete and meaningful story even without the plant’s growth.

    Perhaps, in some ways, your life, as it is right now, has parts that can be shared like that. It’s a story unfolding, filled with experiences, emotions, and anticipation for what’s to come. You might not have the exact details of how everything is going to turn out, but you’ve been fully engaged with the steps of the process not because you have all the answers but because you’ve lived it…and it’s something you can share with others.

    Pay attention to the moments of your life where you start to tell the story of where you are and who you are. Notice how there might be storylines unfolding in your life right now that quite have this easy-to-explain metamorphosis moment, but it’s still something worth telling because it’s real, and it also reminds others that they don’t have to have every storyline figured out before it’s something worth telling.

    There are moments in life when advice is given, but perhaps, there are even more moments in life where stories are untold. But who says they have to be perfectly polished stories? Who says there can’t be places for stories to be shared, even while they’re still in the making?

    Even before the next chapters are written, your current story is valid, significant, and worth sharing.

    An illustrated image of a small potted plant with green leaves, centered against a background of radiating teal, dark blue, yellow, and peach beams that resemble stylized sunlight or energy. The pot is terracotta-colored and sits on a dark shadow. Below the image is handwritten text that reads: “This life, right here, tells a story as it is… even before new chapters have been written.” The overall style is painterly and contemplative.

    – Morgan Harper Nichols

  • Stories of Change: How Clarity Emerges Over Time

    Stories of Change: How Clarity Emerges Over Time

    In some stories, a character may find themselves in a place where everything feels uncertain, where the path ahead is unclear. And even though the answers don’t come all at once, with time, something shifts…whether in what they understand or what they are ready to reconsider.

    In other stories, characters may start with a clear sense of direction, only to have it unravel, forcing them to look again, to reconsider, to notice what they hadn’t before.

    And then there are stories where characters resist change, holding on tightly to what they’ve known, until something (whether it be small or significant) breaks through, and suddenly, they can’t help but see differently.

    All of these kinds of stories are examples of many different shapes a life can take. Whether it’s a fictional story or a real-life story someone is telling, no two unfold in exactly the same way. But what they all have in common is that somewhere along the way, clarity began to take shape. And not because the confusion disappeared all at once, but because they started paying attention. A pattern appears. A question becomes clearer. Something makes sense that didn’t before. And these things took shape not because the character instantly arrived at a place where everything made sense at once, but because they had been on a journey…one that wasn’t always linear or clear, but a journey where understanding shifted, not as a single moment, but as layers forming and reforming over time…A journey with many components that allowed them to notice…perhaps even to wonder.

    There are different ways that clarity can emerge in a story. Through layers: when meaning builds gradually, one piece at a time. Through movement: when a shift in direction changes everything that came before it. Through openness: when an unanswered question holds more than a single answer ever could.

    And these are just a few. But they are all examples of how, even before things make sense, the journey itself can still be significant…a place where meaning takes shape…not by figuring it all out at once, but by learning to pay attention, on the journey.

    -Morgan Harper Nichols