Congratulations Jen Burns! Thanks to Everyone who Came, Told, Ate, Listened!

Last night’s show was absolutely fantastic. We are uncommonly blessed and lucky. Thanks to everyone. Congratulations to Jen Burns who, with her strong telling, closed the show and took the night. I hope you’ll come tell with us next month, Sept. 14th.

Janna and I are beside ourselves in appreciation. There were tons of sweet notes written on the sides of score cards. More people turned points in than ever before, and it was clear from the high scores all around that people were listening, appreciating, and truly sharing in the moment. There were funny stories, hard stories, well crafted stories, and connections made.

Being allowed to facilitate this… I don’t know what to say.

This show is a grace. It hinges entirely on people’s willingness to come and share and that you guys are willing to do that once a month with me is humbling.

I guess, let me try and tell a little story. I work hard at this, and I’m not the most charismatic host out there, in fact, of all the shows in Chicago, be it Jen Bosworth‘s Stories at the Store, or Alyson Lyon‘s Essay Fiesta, or any number of shows between, I may be the least. But I do a lot of other things well. I run the website, make the t-shirts, go out and buy the napkins and other equipment. I’m doing a lot of image editing, cropping and beautifying, I’m writing a metric ton of emails, I’m printing and designing and handing things out, so on and so forth. I haven’t counted hours put in per day, but as you can tell by the time-stamp on this post, I’m putting in a lot.

But the truth is, for all the good work I do, the work I do on Here’s the Story is the sort of work anyone with a mind to do it could.

Before I met Janna, I didn’t have a mind to do it. And when I said doing a show would be impossible, unlikely, difficult, preposterous–when I said anything along the lines of, I can’t make magic happen–Janna would calmly tell me, “You don’t have to make magic happen. When you put good people in a room together, magic just happens. You’ll see.”

I don’t understand the magic, but because of the work she does, bringing the right people together, welcoming, caring, and listening, I get to see it and be a part of it.

Bringing people together to share openly and honestly about the hard, the easy, the frivolous, the deep, or even the hard stuff that seems to, at times, flow easy despite it’s complexity, is a wonderful thing I hope we get to continue doing for a very long time.

Thank you again to everyone who showed up to listen and share. Thank you to our featured readers and story swappers who told with their whole hearts.

And thank you to my cohost, Janna Sobel.

Here’s the Story Podcast