A Message from Our Director

What an honor to witness the successful completion and launch of the Telling Lives, Living Histories (TLLH) oral history project pilot this past February!

Storytelling is not just a program feature or pastime, but rather the architecture of how we understand self, others, and community belonging. It is infinitely central to the definition of what it means to be well and whole.

Recently I have been reflecting on “humanities” and have seen it in my mind’s eye as “human identities”. The ways that our culture, history and expressions weave together to create unique ways “we show up” in the world. All of it is so powerfully important for our past, present, and future during this time of great shifts across global communities and cosmos. 

For this reason, among many, we are grateful to be a grantee of Mass Humanities' Expanding Massachusetts Stories program as a funding stream that recognizes and sustains community-held, relational, and deeply cultural work that cannot always be reduced to deliverable counts. Mass Humanities has offered a rare alignment in a funder that understands that equity in the humanities requires equity in whose stories are centered, preserved, and platformed. 

For TLLH, the power and impact of the pilot occurred off and on camera, was shared in deliberate retellings and unexpected recollections, was felt in robust laughter and quiet healing tears, and all of this fullness relived once again during the celebratory screening and presentation at the Shaw-Roxbury Branch Library. Witnessing through the lens of elders not as service beneficiaries but as knowledge-holders whose very lives constitute history was profound. And through our young adults, who expressed gratitude for the story exchange which opened corridors that no narrow curriculum could replicate, they encountered history not in abstract but embodied.

I remain inspired and excited as this work grows and is codified in the ongoing development of the TLLH framework, toolkit and curricula. It is nourishing to see our partnerships deepen and program reach expand, and particularly poignant for me to confirm and demonstrate that social-emotional, behavioral health and humanities are not just parallel tracks but intertwined on the same road of wellness.

Dr. Karen T. Craddock

Director, Telling Lives, Living Histories Oral History Project 

Co-Founder, The Wellness Collaborative Inc.

The highlight of the afternoon was the screening of our oral history footage, which brought the personal stories of our participants to life on screen. Watching those conversations — between elders and young adults sharing memories, wisdom, and lived history created moments of deep recognition, reflection, and joy.