Everyone wants to sleep peacefully at night
Living in the Shadow of Violence
Our twenty-first century life is saturated with violence.
If we live in the middle of war, or suffer domestic abuse, or experience the traumatic aftermath of a mass shooting, then violence likely defines our lives.
For those who are more fortunate, violence pervades our lives through the imagery, sounds, and doom predictions that enter our living rooms and the phones we carry in our pockets.
Is all this violence “human nature,” and therefore unavoidable?
Or is there something we can do?
We believe there is a gentle, non-invasive, yet radical antidote to violence.
Everyone has a mother. Every mother has a story.
Nothing is more universally human than mothers: those who give life.
WORLD MOTHER STORYTELLING PROJECT is an educational organization and global movement that seeks to end violence in a gentle yet radical way: by teaching people how to tell and listen to stories about mothers. Both our individual mothers, and our collective mother: Mother Earth.
The universal and heart-opening quality of mother stories leads people to regard each other and our environment with tenderness and compassion.
Priorities
Education in Compassion and Understanding
Teaching the values of empathy, humanity and nonviolence to children and adults - namely through the power of storytelling.
One in three women worldwide have experienced physical or sexual violence. Their suffering is usually shrouded in silence. Mother storytelling has the power to break this silence, and to foster trust and healing.
Gender-Based Violence
Environmental Violence
By sharing stories that honor our planet or mourn her degradation, we promote empathy for our collective mother and love for those whom we share her with.
Ending the Cycle of Violence
We envision a world where all victims of violence experience healing, + where the nurturing quality of the mother overcomes aggression: toward our fellow human beings, and toward our Mother Earth.
When we share mother stories, we naturally become averse to violence and do everything in our power to find alternatives.
The Narativ Method of listening and storytelling
In 1994, Murray Nossel created an original method to teach dying AIDS patients how to listen to and share stories with one another. Left behind as personal legacies, these stories led to a social campaign to advocate for research and services for AIDS patients.
Murray then co-founded Narativ, whose mission is to implement the listening and storytelling method in a wide variety of contexts to effect social change.
Narativ has since spread its method internationally, working with organizations such as Open Society Foundations and UNICEF.
CENTRAL AMERICA PILOT PROJECT:
Breaking the Silence in El Salvador
In 2022, funded by the U.S. Department of State, we embarked on a pilot project to reduce gender-based violence in El Salvador. In partnership with local NGO Glasswing, World Mother trained Salvadoran community workers to empower and uplift 9- to 18-year-old girls across the country.
WE TAUGHT THEM HOW TO:
•Create safe spaces for self-reflection and self-expression
•Listen openly without judgment
•Tell their own stories
•Listen to and retell their mother’s stories
•Apply and adapt the method throughout El Salvador
The cycle of gender-based violence
Breaking the cycle of gender-based violence
Sofia’s Story
After listening to her mother’s story, community worker Sofia Mangandi shared the story with her peers:
“Through my love, I understood my mother better. I understood that the time had come to accept things, to see what had happened to me and lovingly embrace it, to lovingly embrace myself. Before then, the emotion I had felt most throughout my life was loneliness, feeling utterly alone. Now, I don’t feel alone any more.”
As of September 2023:
49 community workers have been taught how to use the method
191 girls have participated in storytelling workshops
15 organizations have expressed interest in incorporating the method into their programming
IN JANUARY 2024, WE WILL BE GETTING MORE DETAILS ABOUT THE PROJECT’S GROWING IMPACT ON THE GIRLS’ LIVES AND THEIR ABILITY TO EXPRESS THEMSELVES.
“I am what I could have been,” someone once said. So, in telling their story—in discovering it—people can become something they weren’t before but that they were always meant to be.
MATT BOLAND
Public Affairs Officer, U.S. Embassy San Salvador
Highlights of World Mother Storytelling Project
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Buddhist Arts and Film Festival
2018, COLORADO
Mother Storytelling Workshop – an experiential staged event in which Murray Nossel taught an audience how to listen and tell mother stories.
“Conduit” - Installation using paintings by Doug Safranek of mother and child pairs accompanied by recordings
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Bronx High School of Science
2019, NEW YORK
Semester-long workshop in which 10 students crafted short performances, retelling their mothers’ stories.
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World Mother Live
2020, MOTHER’S DAY ONLINE EVENT
An online event in which Murray Nossel took mother/child pairs through the process of listening and storytelling. Participants came from all over the world, including India, South Africa, the UK, Palestine, and Israel.
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World Mother Pride
2020, ONLINE EVENT
An online event focused on LGBTQ mothers and children
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Mothers Rising
2020, ONLINE EVENT
An online event about mothers who have lost children to gun violence.
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International Indigenous Women's Forum (FIMI)
2021, LIVE EVENT
We worked with indigenous community leaders to document stories of disappearing cultures, particularly those containing the knowledge of women.
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Sugar Hill Children's Museum of Art and Storytelling
2024, NEW YORK
Installation exhibition with audience participation.
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Town Hall (NYC) Events
2024, NEW YORK
Queering the Mother
Mothers and Migration
Impact
“At a moment of profound cultural and political divisions, the World Mother Storytelling Project has devised as tangible a creative intervention as they come. I can say, without reservation, that this is an effort that the world needs now. Very few stories in life are at once universal and wildly divergent—a mother’s story is one of them. It is one of the few life arenas that is shared by everyone, and yet also strangely obscured from our close attention. Mothers, at last, merit this.”
Sarah Stillman
Staff Writer, The New Yorker
“At a time of great peril to humanity, we are engulfed in uncertainty and fear. We are compelled to socially distance when our natural inclination is to reach out and connect. The World Mother Storytelling Project comes at such a fitting moment. Here is the opportunity to connect in a most fundamental way, between mother and child, a universal connection. Now more than ever, sharing mothers’ stories and wisdom can nourish and bring comfort to our anxious souls.”
Wafaa El Sadr
Director, Columbia World Projects, ICAP
Who we are
Since we embarked on the World Mother Storytelling Project, a diverse group of passionate, committed people have stepped forward and offered their time, energy, and expertise.
Strategic Plan
Our overarching goal is to bring as many people as possible into the mother storytelling movement and to end violence throughout the world.
We aim to achieve this by first setting up our team to raise funds from foundations, and to manage and market the project so that we can reach as many people as possible.
