Telling Tales to Help, to Heal

Diane Wyzga likes to start her storytelling at the Human Options shelter for survivors of domestic violence by having the women share something that’s bothering them and toss it into an imaginary fire.

On a recent Sunday evening in the living room of the agency’s Orange County safe house, a group of nine gathered around a candle burning on a coffee table. Wyzga showed the women how to “create fire” by snapping their fingers and clapping their hands. One by one, the women spoke:

“Loneliness, confusion,” said a dark-haired woman in her 20s, as she held a 1-year-old on her lap.

“Sadness,” said a middle-aged Latina.

“Fear,” another woman said.

With each confession, Wyzga made whooshing sounds, waved her hands and pretended to burn away all the hurt feelings.

“This is a tangible way of unloading something, even for a moment,” she said.

Wyzga knows she can’t make the women’s pain vanish. Instead, the professional storyteller uses tales of courage, hope and humor in an effort to make the women forget, for at least an hour, their troubles. Board members of Newport Beach-based Human Options consider Wyzga’s twice-monthly sessions so therapeutic that attendance has become mandatory for residents of the emergency shelter, whose location is kept secret as a precaution for the women.

To the 40-something Wyzga, the ancient art of storytelling brings people together and offers insights into how to handle life’s challenges. Sharing stories reminds women who are struggling to rebuild their lives after fleeing abusive husbands and boyfriends that they’re not “in a boat by themselves,” she said.

“Women come . . . with the clothes on their back and children in their arms,” said the San Clemente woman. “Storytelling pulls us together as a community of women. It’s a fun time when they don’t have to do anything. And it’s healing.”

With an expressive face and skillful pantomime, Wyzga engages listeners in legends, fairy tales, ghost stories and her own family lore.

“My people come from Poland,” she told the women. “My father’s mother, Helen, was known around her village as a wonderful cook. She loved to polka; she loved to dance.”

Wyzga waltzed around the living room, then launched into a story of how her grandmother chose between two suitors by inviting each to dinner.

“For each she made a big pot of stew,” Wyzga said, stirring an imaginary pot. She then pretended to play the piano, as her grandmother did to entertain the men after dinner. One man dozed off during her grandmother’s performance, which Wyzga demonstrated by slumping in her chair and snoring. The other suitor asked her grandmother to dance.

“That man became my grandfather,” Wyzga said. Several women smiled.

Toward the end of the session, residents were so caught up in the performance that when Wyzga began a love story by asking, “Do you see that fellow standing over there?” every head in the room turned to look in the direction she was pointing. There was no man, just a character she conjured for a tale about a soldier who proves that real love is more important than appearances.

“The story shows there are good men out there,” she said.

Wyzga closed her storytelling hour by having the women form a tight circle and join hands, creating what she calls a “story well.”

“All of our stories are right here in this well,” she said. “A story becomes part of your personal fabric. It percolates. It might not hit you until weeks or months later.”

A short time later, a woman in her 50s hugged Wyzga tightly. She had come to the shelter several months earlier when her husband had threatened to kill her. She arrived suicidal and had $5 in her purse.

“As you listen to [Wyzga], you relate to your own life,” the woman said. “It helps you put things in perspective and not take things so seriously. You sometimes feel you’re alone, but she makes you feel there’s hope, that it’s not the end, that there will be a way out.”

A 16-year-old girl staying at the shelter with her mother said she too could identify with many of Wyzga’s stories. “This helps you to communicate with others by telling them how you feel,” she said.

Some stories carry subtle but pragmatic messages that could help the listener in solving problems of her own.

“Oral tradition teaches moral and ethical behavior. Stories tell how people could or should relate to each other,” Wyzga said. “But it’s never my job to give a moral or a message.”

Wyzga finds stories everywhere, often on the Internet. “I go to the library a lot and check out a bazillion books at a time.”

She also likes to update folk tales by bringing them into present-day settings.

“Folk tales were meant for adults--they were a way of working through the issues of the day.” she said. “There is some version of Cinderella in every country of the world.”

Wyzga also draws on her own experiences as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy Nurse Corps in Portsmouth, Va. (she served from 1974 to 1977) and as a backpacker, kayaker and the oldest of seven children. As a child, she listened to her Polish grandparents describe the struggles of moving to America at the turn of the century. Her aunts liked to share stories of raising babies, and her uncles talked of working in coal mines.

“All we need to do to bring back the past is a little imagination and a story,” she said.

From Lawyer to Weaver of Tales

Being able to weave a compelling tale proved an asset to Wyzga’s career as a lawyer, but it wasn’t until she attended a storytelling seminar in Pasadena on Valentine’s Day weekend 1997 that Wyzga found her new calling. Doug Lipman, an internationally recognized storyteller from Massachusetts who led the seminar, told her, “You’ve found your way to the center of storytelling. You should set up shop and never leave.”

In March 1977 Wyzga started storytelling at Laura’s House, a San Clemente-based women’s shelter. One year later, she began performing regularly at Human Options.

“Storytelling is a very metaphorical and imaginative way of eliciting someone’s emotions. It helps the women look inward,” said Leslie Van Fossan, volunteer coordinator of Human Options. “It’s a different approach to healing that allows a woman to work through her journey through someone else’s journey.”

“The art of storytelling is almost lost in our country. To have someone like [Wyzga] is a real treat,” Van Fossan added.

In September, Wyzga stopped practicing law full time and opened her storytelling business, Tell It by Heart, which she runs out of her home. Her goal: to perform for teens and adults at schools, parties, fund-raisers and churches. Wyzga joined the National Storytelling Assn. and tests her material at meetings of the South Coast Storytellers Guild in Huntington Beach.

Occasionally Wyzga volunteers to tell stories at South Coast Medical Center, where her husband, Mike Murray, is a hospital administrator. Those performances are part of the hospital’s community education program, which has drawn “educators, preachers and teachers,” Wyzga said. (She also belongs to the Defenders of Wildlife and Surfriders Foundation, a San Clemente-based organization dedicated to ocean preservation.)

Still, speaking to women recovering from abuse remains her priority. Wyzga said she has never been in an abusive situation, yet she “feels drawn to this particular cause.”

“These women think they’re alone, that nobody else has these real-life problems,” Wyzga said. “These stories give them the feeling they’re not alone, that this has happened to somebody else.”

To contact Tell It by Heart, call (949) 361-3035. Human Options can be reached at (949) 737-5242. The hotline is (949) 854-3554.