Fifteen years ago, the triple disasters struck Tohoku. Earthquake, tsunami, nuclear meltdown. I went to Japan to listen. I have been listening ever since.
Most of my work since then has been with communities after disaster, and sometimes before. Fire, flood, storm. Economic collapse too. At one level, they are all the same thing. Something we counted on breaks, and we find ourselves standing somewhere new.
This year I began stepping back from daily leadership at NewStories. I wanted time to ask a simple question: After fifteen years, what matters most? What have I been seeing?
One image kept returning.
Disaster takes us to a crossroads.
The Choice Point
The old story of disaster is familiar. Something terrible happens. We grieve, we rebuild, we get back to normal. Disasters are rare. They are limited. We hope one never finds us. When one does, we recover and carry on as before.
The communities I have walked with tell a different story. Disaster wakes us up. It opens a choice point. We can keep doing what we were doing, even the things that were never working very well. Or we can turn. We can choose lives and communities that are more alive, that work for us and for everyone around us.
We have started calling that turn Re-Storying Disaster.
As the image grew clearer, we began naming the stepping stones communities use when they make the turn. Then came one of those small, curious questions: I wonder who else is seeing this?
The answer astonished me. People everywhere are seeing it. They use different words. They are arriving at the same crossroads, and many are finding their way through.
I thought of the Culture of Health listening tour we did with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation about ten years ago. The original request asked us to find the obstacles people faced in creating healthy communities. We asked if we could go looking for what communities were already doing. The foundation said yes, that was exactly what they meant.
I thought of Sarah van Gelder, founding editor of YES! Magazine. After 20 years of lifting up stories of people changing their world, she set out on her own road trip. For months she sat with communities remaking who they were and how they wanted to live. Sarah is now part of our research team.
So we are going looking again.
Finding One Another
We want to find the people who help their communities make the turn. We call them Regenerative Responders. We want to find the communities they serve who are becoming wise about disasters. When communities connect and share their stories, they begin to see larger patterns of how communities regenerate and how we live fully in dramatically changing times.
The stories matter because this work can be lonely. People doing it often feel isolated. They wonder whether what they are doing is enough. They think about giving up. Then they meet someone across the world who has walked a similar road, and something shifts.
When fire destroyed Lahaina three years ago, we connected people there with people in Onagawa, Japan. Onagawa’s town was swept away in 2011. Its people chose a radically different path to recreating community. Lahaina learned from them. Now Onagawa learns from Lahaina. The knowledge flows both ways.
This May we gathered in Paradise, California, eight years after the Camp Fire. People came from across Northern California to see what Paradise has learned and what has grown on that burned ground. People in Paradise have a deep sense of their own agency. They know why their work matters and where it is going. They and other communities that face disaster want to speak with a unified voice to those who hold power and money. They want policy and funding shaped by what communities themselves know.
The Stories Are the Doorway
One of my favorite memories from that Culture of Health listening tour is Try This West Virginia. A journalist grew tired of the way others told her state’s story. She went out and found stories of communities taking charge of their own lives. Then she brought those communities together.
It was wonderfully unpretentious: Here is what we are trying. Maybe it helps you.
Funders saw it and wanted to be part of it. People saw what they could learn from each other. It grew into a funding system and a learning ecosystem.
The stories were the doorway.
Next week I head back to Fukushima for our tenth learning journey. Thirty people are coming from Japan, the United States, Taiwan, and China. Afterward I will be in Taiwan, sharing this work with people there.
Here is what I know. More disasters are coming. We are in a time of transitions. New ways of living well with each other and the planet are beginning as old ways are coming to an end.
We can meet this as an ending or as a beginning. The choice is ours.
The stories of those who chose beginnings help the rest of us choose too.
For another powerful reflection from Bob, visit Re-Storying the Ruins: Connection Dissolves Despair on Great Transition Stories.