The staying kind: Storytelling as a tool for reconnection and repair

By nae vallejo, access designer and experiential archivist

I have watched stories that were sacred to someone become a branding tool for someone else. We deserve a different relationship to story, one that moves us toward repair instead of extraction. 

I have always believed that story is a form of returning. 

Not only returning to ourselves – though the slow gathering of pieces we were not sure still belonged to us is part of it – but returning to each other. Returning to communities we have drifted from, or been pushed out of. Returning to relationships that carry both tenderness and harm. Story has always been one of the few places I could land without needing to shrink myself or translate my survival for someone else’s comfort. 

Storytelling has been the one practice I could rely on when institutions failed, when care was conditional, when rooms asked me to be grateful just for being allowed inside. Story was where I placed the things I could not carry alone: confusion, grief, anger, hope, imagination, fragments of memory that felt too heavy or too bright to name out loud. 

But in nonprofit and fundraising spaces, I have seen storytelling used in ways that pull us away from one another. 

I have seen it trimmed into a “narrative asset,” polished beyond recognition, flattened into messaging that serves a budget line before it serves a community. I have watched stories that were sacred to someone become a branding tool for someone else. 

We deserve a different relationship to story, one that moves us toward repair instead of extraction. 

Story as Relationship, Not Resource 

For me, storytelling begins with relationship. It begins with the kind of trust you build slowly, without forcing timelines or outcomes. It begins in the space between people, the part that is quiet, tender, and often uncomfortable, because truth-telling asks us to be seen. 

Nonprofit culture often pushes story into a different shape: a product. Something to package, optimize, measure, or leverage. A story becomes proof of impact, or a hook for a fundraising campaign, or a way to demonstrate “reach.” These tactics might keep dollars flowing, but they interrupt the deeper work of listening. They strip away the complexity of real lives and replace it with narratives that secure institutional comfort. 

When organizations treat story as a resource rather than a relationship, they harm the very communities they claim to serve. A story lifted out of context can reinforce stereotypes. A story shared without care can reopen wounds. A story twisted to fit a grant proposal can prevent the teller from being fully human. 

Community-centric fundraising invites us to move differently, to build relationships first, and let story arise from that ground, not the other way around. 

Repair Requires Honesty, Not Performance 

In my work, I have sat with people whose stories were mishandled by nonprofits, twisted into marketing language, used without consent, or shared before the teller was ready. I have also sat inside organizations trying desperately to demonstrate transparency through storytelling alone, without the relational groundwork that makes those efforts real. 

Story cannot replace accountability. 
Story cannot substitute for repair. 
Story cannot be an apology on behalf of someone who is not accountable. Honest stories can support repair, but they cannot carry that work alone. 

When communities have been harmed, when access was denied, when leadership broke trust, when disabled people were sidelined or tokenized, the first step is not branding. The first step is not crafting a message. The first step is slowing down enough to tell the truth: 

We caused harm. 
We did not listen. 
We did not follow through. 
We are trying to do better, and here is how. 

Repair begins when leaders stop speaking about community and start speaking with community, creating space for multiple stories to coexist without competing for legitimacy. It is not polished. It is not pretty. It is not something you can script. 

But it is real. And real is what people remember. 

Tenderness as a Condition for Belonging 

When I talk about “the staying kind,” I’m talking about the tenderness that lets us remain connected even when things get hard. Staying kind is not the same as staying quiet. It is not passive. It is not about swallowing harm for the comfort of others. 

Staying kind is a practice of presence, a return to humanity in moments when institutions might prefer efficiency or control. It is what lets us sit with discomfort without rushing toward the nearest explanation, solution, or spin. It is what helps us ask: 

What does belonging look like if we do not force a single story to carry all of us? 

Tenderness is a form of access. Tenderness is a form of leadership. Tenderness is what keeps the door open when mistrust has settled in. And in fundraising spaces, tenderness can shift a narrative from transactional to relational, from extractive to restorative. 

When community members feel tenderness in the room, we feel safe enough to tell the truth. Not a curated, institutional version of the truth, but the truth we live every day. 

And when truth enters the room, repair becomes possible. 

Story as a Tool for Reconnection 

Real storytelling does not just transmit information. It nourishes connection. It helps people see themselves in someone else’s experience without requiring sameness or erasing difference. It creates a space where multiple truths can be side by side. 

I have seen story repair relationships between community members and organizations after years of mistrust, not because the story was “useful,” but because it was held with integrity. I have seen story deepen belonging for people who thought they had no place left to return to. I have seen story help fundraisers rethink their practices, shifting away from narratives that center donors and toward narratives that center community. 

When we hold story as relational practice, it asks something of us: slow down, listen deeply, and be accountable for the ways we show up. It asks organizations to move at a human pace, not a grant cycle pace. It asks fundraisers to choose accuracy over appeal, truth over aesthetics, care over urgency. 

And it asks all of us to remember that storytelling is not an endpoint. Storytelling is an invitation to reconnect, to repair, to recommit. 

Toward a Culture of Staying 

If I return to story again and again, it is because story has returned me to myself, gently, repeatedly, unexpectedly. Story has helped me survive isolation, institutional betrayal, disability burnout, and the kind of grief that rearranges everything you thought you knew. 

Story helped me stay. 
Stay present. 
Stay honest. 
Stay connected. 
Stay kind. 

And in community-centered fundraising, “the staying kind” is how we build long-term relationships rooted in equity, not extraction. It is how we honor the people we claim to uplift. It is how we hold each other through the work of transforming systems that were never built for us. 

Story is not a strategy. 
Story is not a tool. 
Story is a relationship worth tending, with patience, courage, and care. 

If we follow that truth, repair becomes possible. And not just repair, but the kind of belonging that lasts, the kind that holds, the kind that welcomes us back when we are ready to return.