Who Am I To Blog/Podcast

On my website, I talk about the events I run and the people I have helped tell their stories and now I am looking to work with a podcast 'No Story Stagnates'.

Why?

Who am I to start a podcast?

Whoever begins a blog or a podcast must surely ask themselves 'Who Am I?' to start a post.?

Perhaps, you, like me have been reading and listening to other people write content about a subject we are both confident in our experience of the work and our ability to pass on information to members of the public and business owners.

My skill, my experience and my passion are in storytelling. I don't mean just telling fiction stories, although that is the path I walked down to get to this point. I believe we all have a story. And         'No Story Stagnates' Or rather it shouldn't.

But, that's not my experience of working with people. But, first. Who Am I? let me tell you a story.

My story starts 71 years ago when a private in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment was drinking in the Granby Arms, Attleborough. My dad.

You see, during the war, he served with the Regiment on the Ack-Ack guns and mortars. He never talked about where he served except the time he spent in Ireland. He was an athlete. He played soccer for the battalion, rugger for the battalion, ran for the battalion but most of all boxed for the battalion.

He ate his meals with the officers and never drank. Until a few days after demob and celebrating with friends.

He drank three pints and began to feel 'woozy', and decided to get some fresh air. As he reached the door, he tripped and, falling into the street, bumped into my mother-to-be and fell over. They knew each other and that is what may have saved my life before it started. She picked him up and took him to her house around the corner. That is how I was born. Not that night! A year after they married. The date, 18th of December, 1949

So, you see our stories could be traced back to a time we were not even a thought, a vision or an atom.

The thing I remember from my early life was that during the 1950s most children couldn't talk at the dinner table, couldn't speak after dinner because our fathers had just come back from a 12-hour shift at work. We couldn't talk in bed because we shared bedrooms. At school, we were always being told to 'be quiet', and in the factory, no one could hear us. Many people, my age, grew up without really talking to anyone. We kept our stories inside us.

Then, we entered the world of relationships, and new stories began to evolve. These were emotional stories which often impacted us daily. The stories often overwhelmed us emotionally and, as such, pushed our past stories deeper into our psyche. Those previous stories then become stuck. Those stories often become our 'go-to' emotions when life turns sour.

So, I am Ernie Boxall, and I'm a storyteller. I have also been a fitness instructor, tai chi teacher, shiatsu practitioner and supply teacher. I mentor people who feel anxious speaking to a live audience, people who have learned to keep their stories to themselves and people who are not comfortable with who they are.

This is me. Ernie Boxall. More comfortable with who I am than I have been at any time of my life. More sure that my story is worth telling and more confident I can make an impact on people's lives by allowing their story to be told, by making sure that No Story Stagnates