📖Get Free: The Power of Your Story

Get Free Fam, welcome to Fri-YAY!

I hope you remember to do your Friday shimmy-shake to stretch out those shoulders, put a little sparkle in your eyes and throw off the past five days. You know the drill…

CONVERSATIONS THAT CONVERGE

I’m so excited about this week’s edition of The Get Free Guide - it’s like different parts of my week and my life all converged around one topic: gathering and telling your story. Here’s how.

On Wednesday night I had the pleasure of interviewing AARP’s Chief Public Policy Officer Debra Whitman about her brilliant book, The Second Fifty: Answers to the 7 Big Questions of Midlife and Beyond (get all your chuckles about AARP out now, it’s OK, but it’s not your parents’ AARP! Also, if you’re in LA, there are signed copies of the book at Zibby’s in Santa Monica!)

The Second Fifty delves into all kinds of questions about longevity, aging and how we navigate our later years with joy, enthusiasm, community and purpose. Of course it made me think of my own parents who are well into their 80s, fit, healthy and still with PLENTY of opinions on pretty much everything (like, ALL the opinions.) But - and this is a big but - my mum is one of two remaining siblings and my dad is the last man standing of his brothers and sisters. They are both FULL of stories.

As a journalist I’ve interviewed my parents over the years, but this work feels more urgent now. Last year, for the first time ever, mum ASKED to be recorded. She said “once I’m gone, it’s all gone.” Of course, she’s right (she’s always right!)

So this is where my week converged. Sifting through IG recently I spotted a post about Black Storytelling Week, a week described as “a global celebration uniting Black families through intergenerational storytelling and oral tradition.” This is exactly what I want to do with my own family.

Black Storytelling Week was created by Martina Abrahams Ilunga, the founder of You Had Me At Black and one of the BEST story editors I know. I asked Martina about Black Storytelling Week, how it connects to being free, and how we can get involved. Here’s an edited version of what she shared:

What’s the background to Black Storytelling Week?

Black Storytelling Week began with a conversation I had with my grandmother over Thanksgiving one year. I went in wanting to interview her — not just about family history, but about her life as a woman. She grew up in Alabama, moved to New York, raised six kids, and worked as an education administrator. She was also the “neighborhood mom” — her doors were always open and she was a fly, fashionable, fiery lady.

As I've gotten older and thinking about becoming a parent and being a working woman and just navigating all facets of life, I've become a lot more curious about my elders and what they were like at my age and how they navigated the ups and downs of life.

So I wanted to have an open conversation with my grandmother and at first, she was skeptical, like where did these questions come from? When I asked if I could record, she clammed up. Later, I realized I wasn’t alone. Friends shared similar experiences: their parents or grandparents from across the diaspora also resisted when asked about the past. There is this kind of a block, sometimes guarded walls from some of our elders.

As a storyteller and cultural worker I wanted to create a space where sharing and preserving our histories feels natural, not guarded. Black Storytelling Week is about building that culture. It’s about asking: how do we, as the younger generation, become safe keepers of our elders’ stories? How do we make sure our history doesn’t disappear in the day-to-day of life?

How can people get involved?

Black Storytelling Week is held the second week of September. This year, it runs from September 7–13, 2025. It's a holiday and really a campaign or initiative to encourage families to create new traditions or rituals around telling their stories, documenting their history and preserving that history.

On blackstorytellingweek.com, you can add the holiday to your calendar and download our conversation guide, which includes activities for families and chosen families.

We’re also hosting two celebrations this year:

• Wednesday, Sept 10 (Virtual): Who Raised You? A storytelling circle where people can share stories about the people, places, and beings that shaped them.
  

• Saturday, Sept 13 (New York City): A day of family art and storytelling at Weeksville Heritage Center, 12–5pm. There will be an oral history station, family portraits, zine-making, a community farmers market, and a Black-owned business market. It’s for all ages, all kinds of families.

And beyond the week itself, we host bi-monthly virtual gatherings for people doing this work in their own families. Some participants are seasoned genealogists with detailed charts; others are just getting started. What’s powerful is that everyone learns from each other. One person may be great at asking questions, another at archiving, another at tracing ancestry. The space acknowledges both the challenges and the rewards of this work.

For you, how is this work connected to being—or getting—free? It's so interesting, because in doing this work and spending so much more time in the past, I'm realizing how much history repeats itself, and how many codes for navigating the present and also creating new futures can be found in the past. And so when I think about getting free, being free, I think about liberation: how can we live unbound—personally, communally, interpersonally? When I study Reconstruction, Jim Crow, or the civil rights era, I see patterns: a decade of progress, then backlash. That’s the American story.

So when I recognize that, then it's like, okay, who can I talk to, who was alive back then? What was that experience like? How did they cope? How would they manage differently if they had the chance to do it today? I feel like it places us in this arc of history.

Black people—and all marginalized people—have always carried a struggle, and the struggle isn't over. We are just carrying a legacy of people who have come before us who found ways to not only fight, but to create joy, to create art, to create expression, to just create out of really trying times.

This work has really enriched me with a broader sense of my place in time, my place in history, my role in society, and also it's given me a lot more grace for my elders, my ancestors, but also myself. Human beings, at any point, are just figuring it out, and that's what I'm doing. I'm just figuring it out, and the next generation will just figure it out. Even that is freeing.

The conversation guide emphasizes making time to celebrate. Why is this important?

I have never met somebody that I've shared the Black storytelling ethos with that has not thought it is a great idea and something they need to do. The big challenge is finding the time to do it.

This work takes effort. Building trust with elders, digging into archives, piecing together stories that can be difficult because of slavery and the erasure of our history —it all requires time and patience. Getting kids interested in their grandparents, getting kids interested in their history, teaching them who they are — all it takes is a little bit of dedicated time. And so that is why so much of this is about creating a tradition.

If we're encouraging people to carve out time one week in a year, that can hopefully build to something where they are doing it a couple of times a year. Then maybe it becomes a part of a holiday celebration or tradition, and it can grow from there.

Gathering family stories is both an honor and can be tough. What’s the one piece of advice you’d share with people taking part in Black Storytelling Week?

Earlier this year, at one of our convenings, we had a conversation about navigating tender conversations with elders. A member of the Black Storytelling Week community, Austen Smith (from Imagination Doulas) offered really great advice about connecting with elders: wash the dishes with them.

In other words, meet elders where they are. If they like to garden, cook, or fix things, join them in those activities. Helping with the everyday creates intimacy and a way for people to open up.

And lead with a story, not a question. Share something that has happened to you to lead into the conversation. It gives you a chance to open up, to be vulnerable and then ask them what they think about it. Ask them, have they experienced anything like that. Ask them questions that open some of the doors that folks have a hard time opening.

A big thank you to Martina Abrahams Ilunga for sharing more about Black Storytelling Week — and for giving me the tools (and the nudge!) to gather my own family stories. Our histories really do keep us free.

• More information at blackstorytellingweek.com

• Follow Black Storytelling Week on Instagram

• Find out more about Martina’s creative storytelling studio, You Had Me At Black

🚀Get Your Life: Things to read, listen to, enjoy🚀

📚What I’m reading: The Second Fifty, of course!

🎧What’s on the pod: I discovered Martina Abrahams Ilunga’s work through NATAL, a podcast all about having a baby while Black. A must listen.

🎵 Soundtrack for the week: I am SURROUNDED, no, SWARMED by Virgos. Here’s a fav from yet another September baby, Queen Bey:

✨ If you’ve got a recommendation drop me a line. ✨

THANKS FOR READING!

If you got something out of this issue of The Get Free Guide, give us a follow or a shout out on Instagram and share the love with a friend. We don’t gatekeep around here!

See you next Friday!