Images & Voices of Hope is featured in a new book, “The Upside of Stress,” written by Stanford University psychologist Kelly McGonigal. In a recent blog post, McGonigal said ivoh is one of the organizations that inspired some of her thinking around resilience.
ivoh has spent about two years looking at how resilience plays into storytelling. Specifically, we’ve been developing a new genre called Restorative Narrative — stories that show how people and communities are rebuilding and recovering in the aftermath or midst of tragedies and other stressful situations.
“One of the great joys of writing books is sharing with a wide audience some of the organizations that inspire me,” McGonigal wrote in her blog post. “… The organizations I featured in ‘The Upside of Stress’ examples of communities that aim to transform adversity and suffering into meaning, connection, and positive action. I encourage you to explore these groups, donate if their mission resonates with you, and allow them to inspire you to create similar communities of support.”
The other organizations featured in McGonigal’s book include The Dinner Party, Sole Train, and ScholarMatch.
“The Upside of Stress,” which was published earlier this month, argues that stress can “transform fear into courage, isolation into connection, and suffering into meaning.”
In a Washington Post interview about her book, McGonigal explained:
“One way we experience stress is through contraction – we feel trapped in our bodies and our own emotions. We start ruminating on stories very tightly focused on us rather than what other people feel, and feel isolated, that we’re alone in this suffering.
“But when we shift and think beyond ourselves, to who else in this situation is struggling, or what people I care about are experiencing, we can use our own struggles as a catalyst for helping others.”