The Story Is the Start

My storytelling career started in 6th grade. Early in the school year, my language arts teacher asked each student to write a brief story from summer break. I was burning to tell the story of my family's trip to Arizona and back on a Greyhound bus. Both the bus ride itself and the strange, arid landscape of Arizona fascinated me, a child reared in the lush green South in a family who rarely traveled. 

I scribbled all of my thoughts down in my spiral notebook and on the day we were asked to share our stories, I readily volunteered, overcoming my adolescent reticence to draw attention to myself. At the conclusion of my twelve-page handwritten account, I looked up to find the teacher wide-eyed and silent. After a moment’s pause, she suggested that perhaps I should consider journalism later in life. If not in letter, then certainly in spirit, I suppose I took her up on that suggestion. 

Stories have always satisfied my urge to make meaning out of the world, to dissolve the boundaries between the known and the knowable. I credit an early appetite for reading and writing with my capacity for empathy, my ability to take multiple perspectives, and my aptitude for articulating complex concepts in digestible ways. 

Storytelling is problem-solving, a choose-your-own-adventure moment each time I revisit the page to process big ideas. As I research, mull, write, and revise, I feel the pieces click into place. Through stories, true and imagined, I have gained a deeper appreciation for the larger human story, our common struggles and joys, and the things that connect us, even in our vast array of lived experiences. 

The idea for Appleseed Consulting Services emerged from a desire to combine my passion for stories with two decades of human service experience. While developing my vision, I stumbled across the quote, "you can count the seeds in an apple, but never the apples in a seed." I felt these words beautifully captured the infinite, unseen possibilities that exist in both stories and human service work, and I knew I had a name for my pursuit.