I keep getting asked this question about storytelling. I figured it was time I tried to unpack it a bit. It ain't perfect, but its a start.

Its no surprise that we're living in an era defined by conflict. In a lot of ways, I don't know if the human race ever lived in an era not defined by conflict. We see it in geopolitics, of course. But we also feel it in rooms much closer to home; in communities, in planning processes, in conversations that start well but harden before they land.

In moments like that, we reach for what we know how to do.

We negotiate. We facilitate. We draft agreements. We redistribute resources. We incorporate, integrate, consult, engage. All those good things. We design processes that aim to bring people back to the table.

This work matters. Deeply matters.

And yet, there are moments when you can feel it; that something hasn’t quite shifted. The agreement is there. The language is careful. The room has quieted. But underneath it all, the story remains unchanged. The narrative remains unchanged.

Here's the thing: when the underlying story remains unchanged, the conflict has somewhere to return to. And like water, where there's a crack, it'll fill up.

The Stories We Get Stuck Inside

In conflict, people don’t just hold positions. They begin to live inside stories about themselves, about each other, about what has happened and what it means.

Over time, those stories become tight. Totalizing.

A person becomes the harm that was done to them. A community becomes the injustice it has endured. An institution becomes the decisions it has defended.

None of this is imagined. It is lived. It is felt in the body. It is very very real.

But when a story closes in like that, it leaves very little room for movement. You can bring evidence. You can bring logic. You can even bring goodwill. And still, the conversation circles back to the same place.

Because what is being protected is not just a position. It is a way of being. A way of being defined by the stories we tell ourselves about us and the stories we believe about us.

And THAT is where we have an opportunity for shifts to be made.

What Story Allows Us To Do

I think often about Emahn here.

There is a moment in Gajarah where, after horrific violence Emahn loses the ability to speak.

Her mother does not ask her to explain what happened. She does not ask her to recount, to justify, to make sense of it. She tells her a story about a little prince who was hurt in a field. About birds and winds and beings who come together, not to undo what happened (they can't), but to simply carry him home. The beings together gift the prince a pencil to write to them whenever he feels the need to be surrounded by them.

After finishing the story, her mother places a pencil in Emahn's hands - a nudge to do what the prince would do. She introduces a way around the pain.

And so, Emahn begins to write. That moment is a profound shift in how to touch that pain.

She is still inside the pain. Nothing has been resolved. Nothing has been repaired. And yet, she has shifted. She is no longer only the place where something happened.

She is the one telling it.

Moonga Rani and the Work of Seeing Differently

Emahn’s relationship with story does not begin or end there.

It is shaped, over time, by another character called Moonga Rani (dare I saw one of my favourite characters in the book!).

Moonga Rani is not just a storyteller in the traditional sense. She sits somewhere between memory and cosmos, between grief and guidance. Through her, stories are not explanations. They are invitations into another way of seeing.

In those stories, conflict is rarely linear. A raja (king) listens not only to people, but to rivers, to animals, to winds, to those who carry insight across worlds. Decisions are not rushed. They are held, turned over, examined through many voices before they land.

For a child growing up inside rupture, this does something quietly radical for Emahn. It introduces the possibility that what has happened to her is not the only story she belongs to. That there are other ways to hold it. Other ways to place it. Other ways to understand herself in relation to it.

Moonga Rani does not take Emahn away from her reality. She expands the frame around it.

That's what stories can do when done well - expand our frame around the rupture.

The Shift We Rarely Name

In planning and peacebuilding spaces, we often speak about mindset shifts, behavioural change, relationship-building. All of these matter.

That said, there is another shift that sits underneath them - the shift in how a person understands themselves in the story they are living.

You can feel it when it happens. When someone moves from carrying the conflict inside their body, to being able to place it in front of them, even for a moment.

In Gajarah, that shift continues through writing, through ritual. Through the takhti (a wooden board used to practice calligraphy) passed down to Emahn by her Naano jaan, where words were written, held, washed, and released into something larger.

That ritual means the pain is no longer carried alone.

What This Means for Collective Work

When we step into collective conflict, we often meet people at the point where their stories are most tightened. We ask them to listen. To compromise. To move forward.

And sometimes, that means we move too quickly. Because if the story has not shifted, the person cannot move in the ways we are asking them to.

This is where storytelling, particularly the kind grounded in metaphor and cultural memory, becomes more than a tool. It can become infrastructure.

It creates enough distance for people to engage without being overwhelmed. It allows complexity to exist without forcing immediate resolution. It invites multiple truths to sit in the same space without collapsing into competition.

In the Yorùbá tradition of Ifá, the use of Odu (sacred oral chapters) serves as a diagnostic mirror, shifting an individual’s internal narrative from a "broken identity" to a temporary inhabitant of an ancient, archetypal path, allowing them to externalize the conflict and reclaim their agency. Across the Aboriginal Songlines of Australia, the land itself acts as a living archive and legal script; here, conflict is transformed by "walking the track" to find where stories intersect, reminding the parties that to harm the "Other" is to tear a page out of the very narrative that sustains one’s own existence.

Similarly, the Andean philosophy of Buen Vivir (or Sumak Kawsay) reimagines harmony not as a personal achievement, but as a collective pulse; a "woven textile" where the individual's internal healing is inextricably tied to the restoration of Ayni (reciprocity) with the community and the cosmos.

Here's perhaps a key thread that connects these: In each of these traditions, the goal is not a transactional "middle ground," but a return to a state of being where the conflict is no longer the center of the world, but a disharmony to be re-composed within a much expansive song.

And that means these traditions serve as key tools to reorganize reality in ways that prevents conflict from defining us.

The Work in Front of Us

If there is something Emahn’s journey offers us, it is this:

People do not move because they are told to see differently. They move when they are supported in seeing differently. And that rarely comes through argument.

It comes through story. Through metaphor. Through the slow, careful work of expanding the frame until something new becomes possible.

For those of us working in planning, in peacebuilding, in any space where conflict lives, this means paying attention to the stories in the room. To notice when they have become too tight to move. To create conditions where new stories can emerge, without forcing them into being.

Because believe it or not, the work is not only about reaching agreement. It is about whether the people in the room leave with a different relationship to the story they are carrying.

And if that relationship shifts, even if ever so slightly, then something deeper has already begun.