Maggie Lemere is a mighty force
"Storytelling is a process that can help build us as we move into the future."
Hoo boy, are you in for a treat! Maggie Lemere came to me as a client and has become a dear friend and teacher. As a filmmaker, oral historian, and storytelling strategist for mission-fueled organizations, Maggie works all over the world to cultivate connection through story. A National Geographic Explorer, she’s currently at work on several films that explore the intersections of people and their relationships with the environment. She took a break from her thousand projects and watching this year’s Sundance film festival lineup to chat with me about the power of telling our stories to create the world we want, allowing for complexity and change in our stories, using stories to build resilience, and so much more. Visit Maggie’s website to learn more and follow her amazing work.
Amanda: I’m wondering, if you step back and reflect on what you’ve observed about women's storytelling through all of the work you do, as a filmmaker, an oral historian — what comes up for you?
Maggie: I think probably the most focused space I've had talking about women's storytelling is through my work with Georgetown, telling the stories of women peace builders and negotiators all over the world. We did an event with National Geographic’s culture editor, Debra Adams Simmons, and we talked about women's storytelling and how so often, in the way history is written and recorded, women are reduced: you're either a victim, or you're a hero, but there's not a lot of space in between.
And so I think for me, in trying to understand the trajectories of women who have really made an impact in history, it’s about understanding where they came from and how they use their life experience, their womanhood, as an asset in that journey.
Leymah Gbowee, the Nobel peace prize winner, has talked about doing this really incredible work in Liberia as part of the peace process, but also how she had been through abuse and trauma, and how that helped her identify with other women and organize other women. I think stories like that are really important.
Maggie (continued): With characters in film — I’ve been in Sundance mode this week — the characters I like the best of course are the characters that have vulnerability, that aren't perfectly, fully formed. They’re real people. You can be a total mess one second, and completely confident in changing the status quo, the next.
And so I think that's how I think about women's stories broadly: How do we tell them in a way that can resonate and allow more women to see themselves in those processes of transformation?
Amanda: I love what you said about how in women's stories, so often the choices are either you're a victim or a hero, and that’s if you have any dimensionality at all — if you aren't just an accessory, if you aren't just “the girlfriend.” A lot of the women I work with who publicly present as strong people, very competent, very smart, people who have accomplished a lot and present with confidence — behind the scenes, when you create a space where they don't need to be politic or feel like they're being judged in the public eye, so many of them feel like real messes. And to show that — that can all be true.
Maggie: Allowing the contradictions to exist. What makes (storytelling) most powerful is authenticity and vulnerability, and being able to speak in a real way helps build movements. I think sometimes, women in power, it's not their fault, but they feel like they have to present this other kind of leadership, which probably is a reflection of patriarchy. So I'm interested in narratives that complicate and challenge that.
Amanda: Brene Brown talks about armored leadership — you mentioned vulnerability, which of course always makes me go to Brene Brown in my mind! Providing role models of that complexity, women’s stories where that complexity is allowed, is so important. So that as a young woman is thinking about how she wants to claim her power in this world, express her power — it’s not just, “Oh, it's possible to be the CEO,” but it's possible to be the CEO and also, maybe your LinkedIn feed shares really smart insights about your vision for your company and your industry and the world, as well as being honest about the toll that the pandemic is taking on you.
Maggie: One of the things I continue to learn through my workshops with Ashoka Fellows — they’re world-changing leaders, but if someone in that position tells a story without openings, it's not going to create the space for other people to relate, or for people to see where there's still need. So I’m trying to create spaces and stories that (treat) storytelling not as a final destination of, “now I have my story, I'm done,” but as a dynamic, ongoing, iterative process of self reflection, and real connection through energy from yourself to another person.
Sometimes, the exercises I do in my workshops, when we think about audience, people say, “the general public,” or “funders,” but I try to get them to a more human level: What do you want someone who could potentially hear this — maybe it's an adversary, or maybe a supporter — what emotions would you want them to feel? Imagine their faces.
I think sometimes we stay pretty distant, and there's just so much content out there — a million stories. So how do you create something that's disruptive? And that means having a process that you're constantly able to go back to within yourself. We’re in a dynamic world, changing all the time. Storytelling is a dynamic process and experience. Your story should be changing. You shouldn't just (think), “Ok, good, now I have my story.”
Amanda: Absolutely. I've made more of a point over the years with Mighty Forces to try to emphasize that to the women I work with: Yes, it’s very satisfying when we can come up with your story in a sentence, your personal tagline, and that can unlock a lot for you, in terms of your shaping your online presence, the language you use to talk about yourself, the kinds of content you share. I believe in all of that very much. And, it's not the destination. It's not like, “Well, good. Now I've checked that off my list. And for the rest of my life, that'll be my story.” As your life unfolds, your story unfolds.
But I can imagine people reading this, thinking, “Oh, god, storytelling is this constant process...who has the time?” Especially right now — this pandemic obviously has disproportionately impacted women, in ways that we're going to be rebuilding from for years. I feel like it's really interesting within that context to shift gears a little bit and talk about the work you've done around storytelling as a way for building resilience. It's not just a “to do” on your “to do” list, right?
Maggie: One thing I try to remind people and teach people is that we're always transmitting a story, or telling a story. It's how we form culture. It's how we form community. It is embedded in everything. We're already all storytellers, and we already all have this skill. So I think it's not this separate thing; it’s more about deepening intention or thoughtfulness. Maybe it’s about how you introduce yourself sometimes — there are so many opportunities to practice.
We need to get out of the idea of a story being completed or perfect, because it never will be. It’s something that I struggle with — I still struggle with the idea of perfectionism. So I really relate to people I work with. But I also want to tell people that storytelling is just something that we're always doing.
Amanda: Absolutely. It's about bringing intentionality to it. And it's not about a dichotomy between “you're not doing it” or “you suck at it,” or, “you're nailing it.” It’s a spectrum.
Maggie: I think storytelling is as much an exploration of ideas about ourselves, and who we are and how we see ourselves. Before we started working together, or maybe during our work together, I didn't feel comfortable calling myself an artist, even though I'm a filmmaker. That felt like something other people did; I felt like I hadn't been validated. But for me, just working on the process of my story, I got to start to entertain different words and different ideas and explore how I related to them. And it made new possibilities.
Storytelling is a process that can help build us as we move into the future. It's really not just about the past — it's a lot about the present and the future. All stories are about where you come from, where you are now, and where you want to go — or how you want to feel, or how you want to be seen. It’s a dialectical process, where then we live into it. So I think storytelling is a lot about creating the vision that you get to live into. And that's why it can't be about perfection. I have so many brilliant friends, but it's such a common challenge that we have.
Amanda: That reminds me of my very first Mighty Forces client — she said, “You helped me language my way into the role I want to be playing.” And it goes back again to the idea that there’s power in the storytelling process, and not just the product. It's not like I had a conversation with her, and I went away and I gave her a tagline and she was like, “Great, we're done.” It was a process of me saying, “Well, I hear you describing yourself this way. And this word seems important to you. And from everything you're saying, it's feeling like this is a value that wants to shine through.”
Amanda (continued): I had a client who talked so often about positive transformation. It was in her questionnaire responses, in our first conversation, in our fourth conversation — it was just like a staccato kind of thing that kept coming back. And I could see that and I could hear that because I'm a mirror in that process. And I said to her, “Positive transformation feels really central for you — the fact that you bring that to organizations.” And this was a woman who had been a CEO of this one organization for a very long time, and knew she was ready to move on, but was struggling with how to talk about herself. Through our work, she came up with a way of understanding herself and talking about herself that created a sense of possibility, and it helped her see her way forward. And that's all part of telling your story. It's not just the words she ended up with. It was her whole self concept.
Maggie: And whether it's someone who's felt boxed by a certain job, or someone who has had really difficult experiences and trauma, or maybe both — the regenerative kind of storytelling framework that I try to use in my interviews, we try to figure out: What were the lessons learned? Rather than looking at things as deficits, what insights or skills does that give you in terms of how you're able to connect and understand more empathetically, or with more nuance and complexity, other people's experiences? What strengths did you get from surviving that?
It's all about helping people make that bridge from their past to the present to the future, and make meaning that ideally is positive, or at least regenerative for them. There are obviously times when it's not possible, but for a lot of people, just the act of being heard deeply, and being invited to think about those things in that way, can be restorative. And then (you can) imagine where you want to go and what you're capable of.
That's something I found doing so many oral histories with survivors of acute human rights abuse and conflict — they understand that they have a lot of insight and resilience and power. Not that we would ever want them to have to have come through (those experiences). But that’s something I think for us as women, too — if you know what it's like to have the challenges of choice, or you know what it feels like to experience stigma, it’s part of how you can show up in the world as a leader in a positive way. The regenerative storytelling framework (focuses on) how we take those things that are difficult, and use them as sources of power and strength.
Explore Maggie’s story portfolio
Amanda: When I started Mighty Forces, it was the summer of 2017, and that fall, the Harvey Weinstein story broke. And when I was writing content for my website, or when I would write articles, I would talk about telling women's stories, and my biggest reference point was #metoo — what's possible when women tell their stories. And I hope you know this, but maybe you don’t: You were looking at a draft of something I wrote, and you observed, “If it was so powerful to share all those stories of trauma, what might it look like if women also were sharing their stories of strength and success? What might it be possible to create?” That had such a big impact on me.
Maggie: I'm so glad you say that. One of the things that's been on my mind a lot lately, which I'm sure won't surprise you, is the problem of how environmental and climate stories are being told. I went to an event about the intersection of art and climate change, and basically the whole conversation was about how art can show us, at scale, how big the crisis is. But what I felt was incredibly missing and a huge missed opportunity — it's not to say that work isn't vital, but I'm actually not sure how helpful it is. I think what we need is art that helps us imagine our way out of this dystopia and disconnection. We need art that moves us towards connection, towards power, towards strength, towards a world that we can live in — towards a vision of coexistence.
Don’t Look Up was really powerful. I cried at the end — I loved it. But I also see that it's problematic, because if the biggest narratives that are happening around a lot of the most critical issues of our time stay at this place of deficit and brokenness, then I don't know how that builds our muscle towards living into something different. And that is what we need in this moment.
Amanda: What you just said is so important. I'm thinking of a client I'm working with — she's got a very important organization that she's leading with a very important, feminist mission. And she struggles, because she's very depressed at the lack of progress, and feels like, “Haven't we been having this conversation for 30 years?” But as a result, she has reflected to me that she feels like the tone of things that she and her organization have put out there have been depressing, and stark, and bleak — which I think can be a go-to method for trying to shock people or get people to care. Yet she’s not seeing the needle move. And so one of the things we've been talking about is how to write this year in a way that feels more like an invitation, instead of a lecture.
It's funny, I was just talking to my husband, Jordan, this morning, about the idea from improv, that when you're building a scene with someone, you bring a brick, not a cathedral. He said: If I come into a scene and I'm like, “Holy moly, today's the day we launch the rocket for the moon. And it's a good thing, too, ‘cause the earth is on fire. I sure hope that rocket ship holds, especially ‘cause our top engineer is sick.” — it’s like I've written a play. I haven't invited you to create a scene with me. Whereas if I just come out and say, “What a beautiful day to go to the moon,” then I've put something out there, and you can add a piece of information, and you're going to be invested in that scene, because you've created it with me.
That all comes back to this idea of an invitation. Jordan made the connection: If you're trying to pitch an idea, and the people you’re pitching it to have no context, and you're like, “Here's my vision. Do you like it?,” a lot of times, you're gonna get resistance, or people are not going to care, because it's your thing. But if you bring a brick instead of a cathedral, you come to them and say, “I feel like we have a problem with this. What are you seeing?,” you're starting to invite a conversation and co-create.
It’s exactly what you're talking about: A film about the state of the environment that invites me to imagine what the future might look like, and how we might get there together, is one hundred percent going to create more actual change than something that just feels like doom scrolling. If it’s just, “everything sucks,” I shut down.
Maggie: What you're saying just made me think about the difference between marketing and storytelling. Although I think these are increasingly overlapping — but I think this is the challenge of a lot of institutions or companies who are stuck in more conventional ways. (Their marketing) is one directional rather than bidirectional, moving into the framework of a conversation…an invitation.
I think that's helpful for taking the pressure off of people when they're thinking about their story: your story can never reflect everything about you.It can never hold it all. It’s impossible — we're way too layered.
Amanda: “An Inconvenient Truth” is the proof point of that, right? Because if it worked to paint a dire picture and get it in front of millions of people, that happened 20 years ago, now. That also gets to — it's not a silver bullet kind of solution. Change comes from the fabric of many stories coming together as opposed to one film doing it all.
Maggie:Movements are built through stories. With Black Lives Matter and #metoo, and Mni Wiconi (“water is life”)— we need stories that build movements, because it's not only storytelling, it’s also about disrupting corrupt power structures.
Amanda: It's this dialectic, to use that word you used earlier. As somebody who's centered my life's work around the theme of storytelling, sometimes you do hit that bleak spot where you wonder, “Do stories matter?” And they do, but they're not silver-bullet solutions. I come from public media and there's so much outreach around the documentaries that air on PBS to translate awareness of a social issue that the film raises into action. I think it’s about realizing that there’s this fabric — it’s not just the film, because the film shifts the stories that individuals tell, and the context in which organizations and activists are working, which shifts the story itself, the actual story. It’s all story.
Maggie: It’s about creating new narratives that we live into as society. We’re getting very meta!
Amanda: Gotta go meta!
As we wrapped up, I asked Maggie: If she could underline one idea from our conversation, for people to take away — what would it be? “The idea that stories aren't about only telling what is,” she said, “but what can be. And that’s true for us individually and collectively.”
Indeed. I wonder, reading this, if you might ask yourself: What stories do I want to tell about what could be? Let me know in the comments.
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