Storytelling

Storytelling can be therapeutic. For the person, it is both validating and valuing—as nothing else can do. There is a connection between old age and spirituality and a quest for transcendence—to express one's self as part of the human condition. This article seeks to describe the links among spirituality, nursing care, and patient/resident storytelling, and includes suggestions on how to help older adults tell their stories, even if they are cognitively challenged by memory and language loss. It describes a worldview as expressed in several of the new nursing theories as “humanness”: a life cycle of continuous growth leading, perhaps, to “self-transcendence.” Storytelling can be peacemaking and transformative. The voice of the “wounded storyteller” and how nurses can make that voice heard might be the takeaway message.