Lignin Stories is a storytelling platform for parents and teachers of 5 - 10 year old children.
Through our live and online programmes, events, and resources we support parents and teachers to transform guilt and fatigue into deep communication and connection.
Lignin (yes, it's a strange word I know) is actually a polymer found in trees. It transfers to paper and when paper is handled the polymer breaks. At this point, it releases a vanilla-like smell, which is why old bookshops smell so delicious!
I chose the name because lignin's properties are magical, just like the work I feel called to do here.
It also resonated because it fits one of my life mantras - that beauty and hope push through everything, especially brokenness. The polymer has to break for the comforting fragrance to exist. When we embrace this mantra we release ourselves from the oppression of the past, from the victim narrative, from stories that no longer serve us, from brokenness. This release allows us to embrace wisdom, beauty and hope and in return we gift these qualities to our children. This has a huge impact on their lives. When parents and teachers dig deep and fly high, we open the world up into a playground of possibility.
This has certainly been my experience and one day soon I will tell you more about how storytelling healed me and is now healing the families and schools that work for us. But, meanwhile, I want to share some of the wisdom, beauty and hope that Lignin Stories has shared with our global community since its inception, in 2017.
Over the past three years, my team of storytellers and I have told stories to over ten thousand 5 to 10 year old children. They have listened to us, wide-eyed and emboldened whilst we listened to them empowered and inspired by their experience of the world.
Lignin Stories has also hosted over 100 workshops, in-person and online, for parents and teachers of 5 to 10 year old children. I have witnessed so many aha moments as parents realise that our storytelling method makes communication and connection with children so much easier and lighter. I have been moved to see these families receive hope for a peaceful home life, sprinkled with story magic. Our commitment to beauty has birthed unique handmade and sustainable books and resources for our clients. Our budding range includes original books of fairy tales, written by women from all over Europe, as well as a story ritual kit which both adults and children return to each week. And, there are other dreams in the pipeline.
We wish to gift every child a story library that will resource them for life, a chest full of wisdom and courage that they can always turn to in moments of need. We wish to bring our support to all parents everywhere because parents are the most important service providers in our global society and yet they are the least supported.
We wish to launch a community programme that will allow us to work with children who do not have direct access to our events, parents who really need support but for whom the idea of a course is scary, families transitioning through trauma.
Every day we pray and move our feet. Every day we have faith and take action. Every day we choose wisdom, beauty and hope and we pay it forward, from our hearts to yours, one magical story at a time.