What Woodlawn Taught Me About Narrative, Belonging, and Who Gets to Tell the Story

The best stories aren’t created for communities. They’re created with them.

I was reminded of that while being at Woodlawn Saturday Supper, Woodlawn United’s annual gathering that brings neighbors, leaders, partners, and families together around food, conversation, and shared history. This year, the celebration unfolded outdoors on 55th Place, a wide open space filled with long tables, music, movement, and the kind of energy that only shows up when a community comes together in its own neighborhood. I was there not as a distant observer, but in relationship with the work and the people, supporting the visual storytelling and paying close attention to how the community carried its own narrative in that space.

Being there, you could feel how much was being held. Pride, memory, long relationships, and a deep sense of investment in the future of the neighborhood. There was also a responsibility present, the responsibility of telling the story of a place with accuracy and care, without flattening it or letting it be defined only by outside perspectives. This is what I mean when I talk about narrative equity and authorship.

What stayed with me was how naturally story lived there. In the way people greeted one another across the street. In the way longtime residents spoke with context that didn’t need explanation. In the way partners listened before leading. Past, present, and future were all present at the same time, and nothing felt staged or performed. It felt like a community holding its own story.

Experiences like that continue to shape how I understand narrative work. Story is not just something we package after the fact. It shapes trust. It shapes perception. It shapes whose voices are centered and whose experiences are taken seriously. The way a place is framed influences how it is supported, invested in, and understood.

Woodlawn Saturday Supper was a reminder that narrative is part of the infrastructure of community, not a layer added on top. When people see themselves clearly and truthfully reflected, connection deepens and momentum grows.

This is the work I am committed to. Staying close to people and place. Stewarding story with care. Protecting authorship. Building narratives that are grounded in lived experience and held with dignity.

Every place has something to teach you if you’re willing to listen.

And every time I’m in community like that, I leave changed in some way.