What Stories Give Back to Us
This weekend, the city I call home reminded me that stories do more than entertain us. They gather us, challenge us, and return us to what matters.
This weekend, Santa Fe felt like a city gathered around a question.
Not just: What are you reading?
But also:
What are you remembering?
What are you carrying?
What are you ready to see differently?
Dr. LaNysha Adams signing ME POWER on the portal at Garcia Street Books, the official bookstore of the Santa Fe International Literary Festival in 2024. Grateful to the New Mexico Book Association for creating space for local authors and readers to connect.
At the 2026 Santa Fe International Literary Festival, I listened to writers talk about childhood, justice, imagination, grief, humor, history, and the strange work of making meaning from a life while still living it.
More than 7,500 people gathered across the festival. Ocean Vuong’s session alone drew 1,750 people in the largest room, with another 800 in overflow at the Lensic Performing Arts Center.
Listen to Ocean Vuong connect two things most of us never think belong together: “Care and…caregiving…is on the same wavelength as rage and anger.”
One moment that made me laugh came from Judy Blume.
She talked about how Margaret will always be 12, even though people now want her to talk about Margaret in menopause.
I laughed, thinking she’d call it, “Dear God, it’s me, Margaret, I’m having another freaking hot flash!”
But the lesson stayed with me.
Not everything needs a sequel.
Not every past version of us needs a rewrite.
Not every finished thing needs to keep evolving.
Some work is COMPLETE.
The hard part is trusting it.
Blume was the closing speaker on Sunday, but when I heard Isabel Wilkerson earlier in the weekend, I was struck by something different.
Blume made me think about what we can let remain complete: finished, whole, and no longer asking to be revised.
Wilkerson made me think about what we are called to keep following.
You may know Wilkerson from Caste, and from Ava DuVernay’s film Origin, which was inspired by the book.
Wilkerson was the first Black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in journalism in 1994. Not just history-making. Barrier-breaking.
She said she does not set out to make arguments in her narrative nonfiction. She follows the story. She lets the evidence, the people, and the truth do the work.
That hit me because I am in the middle of shaping the proposal for my second book. And book proposals can make you feel like you have to prove the idea before it has had room to breathe. You start thinking about the market, the hook, the chapters, the audience, the promise, the platform. All of that matters.
Wilkerson reminded me that powerful writing does not always begin with proving a point. Sometimes it begins with listening deeply enough for the truth to reveal itself.
She also spoke about time, complexity, and devotion to the work.
Her first book took 15 years.
Fifteen.
In a world obsessed with speed, that kind of patience feels radical.
Good work takes time. Real work asks for patience. Sometimes the story is shaping you while you think you are shaping it.
And then she said something that stayed with me:
“We are not in this moment because we can’t handle it. We are here precisely because we can.”
That line.
The question is not:
Why? Why is this happening to me?
The deeper question is:
What was I uniquely made to bring to this moment?
That is the Me Power connection. Knowledge of self does not always arrive as a plan.
It can come quietly.
As a sentence you cannot shake.
A scene that keeps replaying.
A memory that rises at the right time.
A line from someone else’s life that suddenly feels like it was waiting for yours.
One story may ask you to let something remain complete.
Another may ask you to stay with the work a little longer.
And the one that really gets inside you may ask you to stop only reflecting on the moment and start bringing your answer into the moment you are living.
1 Question
What past version of you are you ready to let stand as complete?
1 Challenge
Choose one line, moment, or idea from a story that stayed with you.
Write it down.
Then ask yourself: Why did this stay with me?
The story we cannot stop thinking about may be asking us to honor what is complete, stay devoted to what is unfinished, or bring our answer into the moment we are living.
Three ⚡️ in 31 Seconds
⚡️ Some stories teach us to stop revising what is already whole.
⚡️ Some stories teach us to stay devoted when the work takes longer than we hoped.
⚡️ Some stories arrive as a question we are finally ready to answer. What was I uniquely made to bring to this moment? Finding your answer and using it is Me Power. 🫶🏾
Me Power in the World
Where the ideas behind Me Power are showing up, expanding, and connecting with new conversations.
If this story gave you a question worth sitting with, share it with someone who needs a pause and subscribe to The 3-31 for one story, one question, and one challenge each month.