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A few weeks ago, I went to a family reunion.

And shocker…

I left thinking about stories.

My family put together this whole book tracing across generations: the roots, elders, the children, the children's children, weddings, graduations, new family members, and of course, ancestors.

People I knew.

People I'd heard about.

People I had never met.

As I flipped through it, I kept thinking about what makes all those names and photos mean something.

A family portrait can show you who was there.

It can't tell you who they were.

I have cousins who never got to meet my grandmother. They weren’t born before she died.

They can see a picture of her, know her name, and pinpoint where she falls on the family tree.

But they can't know what she was like, what she cared about, or how she showed up for her family from a portrait

For them to know that version of her, somebody has to tell them.

And then someday, if those stories are going to keep moving, they'll have to tell somebody else.

Stories don't automatically survive.

I've been thinking about a progression.

Someone dies, but plenty of people still remember them.

Years pass. Fewer people remember them firsthand, but the stories are still told.

More years pass. Someone knows the name. Maybe they've heard a story or two.

And eventually?

That's just a photograph of someone nobody recognizes.

Even important stories can go poof when people stop telling them.

Our communities have stories.

Our professions have stories.

Our work has ancestors, in a sense too.

I learned this firsthand in a public health systems class during my MPH program.

Until I took that class, I thought being able to stay on your parents' health insurance until age 26 was just... normal.

I thought that was how health insurance worked, and how it always has.

NOPE.

Biiiiig nope.

I learned that the Affordable Care Act created that federal protection.

I had benefited from a policy without knowing the story behind how that benefit came to exist.

And in a space where, unfortunately, rollbacks happen, this historical context matters.

Because when we inherit the outcome without the story, we can mistake something hard-won for something inevitable.

We may not know that others advocated for it. Organized for it. Fought for it.

And if we don't know how something came to be, we might not understand that it can disappear, too.

🛠️ The PHacilitator’s Corner: Keep One Story in Circulation

Think of one story you don't want to disappear.

It could be about:

Maybe it's about a person. A tradition. Your community. Your profession. Something you benefit from today.

Then, follow your curiosity.

What don't you know about that story?

Look something up. Search the archives. Go down the rabbit hole.

Learn one thing you didn't know before.

And then? Keep it in circulation.

Bring it up at dinner. Text the family group chat. Tell a coworker.

Go run and tell that!

That new detail might give you a stronger way to explain an issue. Or an entirely new story you hadn't realized you could tell.

That's what happened when I learned the history behind staying on a parent's health insurance until 26. Suddenly, there’s another way I could talk about healthcare access.

That's all folks.

How’d I do?