We all have stories to tell, but sometimes, letting those stories and our messages be heard can be so challenging that we just keep them in. And what a waste of value that is. Amanda Johnson (a.k.a. The Story Oracle) is helping people not only with sharing their stories but also healing and freeing themselves through ‘narrative medicine’ in the process. Amanda is the founder/CEO of True to Intention and the co-founder of Saved By Story Publishing. In this episode, she shows us how healing occurs through storytelling. Through the Butterfly Approach Philosophy, Amanda shares how she leads people to overcome the resistance against their unfolding process, providing them a safe space to expose themselves, write, heal, and eventually create an impact through their own unique stories and expertise. Tune in to this inspiring episode and unleash the stories you have.
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BUTTERFLY APPROACH PHILOSOPHY – AMANDA JOHNSON
SPEAKER, STORYTELLER, AND GUIDE
In this episode, I have the awesome Ms. Amanda with us. I am super excited to be talking to her. We’ve known each other for a little over a year now. She’s such an amazing person. She has a lot of insights so I can’t wait for you guys to get to know her. Ms. Amanda, do you want to tell everyone a little bit about yourself?
I’m not sure how much to tell upfront right now. A little bit about me is I’ve been working with aspiring and seasoned messengers for the last seventeen years. I’m helping them to create powerful content and book signature talks, courses, revenue models, and all of the things that people need to want a message-based business. I started a publishing house with three of my family members and some clients turned friends, which is fun. I’m getting ready to launch this thing called The Story Oracle, which is going to be bringing what I’ve learned about narrative medicine by working alongside people through the process of exposing their stories and writing through them. I want to share that with the world and what I’ve been doing for the last twenty years. That’s a little bit about me.
She’s wonderful. What was that called, narrative medicine? That sounds very interesting.
What happened was I was going to be a History teacher. I got into the education system and thought that was not for me at that time. I didn’t have the inner resilience to be who I wanted to be for the kids that I was teaching and the little guy that I had at home. I took an online writing instruction job with a friend of the family. I was teaching people how to write powerfully so they could pass basic skills tests. We’re getting such remarkable results. We went out to shop and we went to the wrong market. We went to a bunch of entrepreneurs who said, “We don’t want to learn how to write well. We’ve already written stuff and it’s not working.” I shifted gears and created a little editing business on the side.
My mentor was figuring out whether she wanted to continue her writing instruction business or not. Eventually, I had this little collection of entrepreneurs who were referring me back and forth. I was helping them reorganize books. The process of developing content can be excruciating for some people. Some people are naturally gifted and it’s easy and it flows. I would say I’m probably one of those people. I’ve been well-developed when it comes to writing over the years. Some people are just masterful at other things. They want to tell their story or share their expertise. When they get in front of their computer, they freeze up. They have all the stories but they can’t do it. Some of them got through it. They work for months or sometimes years.
The average, for me, in the early days was about a five-year average from inspiration to getting someone some content. A lot of times, they’ve finished something but kept it on their desk or their computer because they were like, “I don’t know who to give it to or what to do with it.” I ran into this problem where I would take people’s content and I would see all of the amazing messages in it or the beautiful things that they want to share with the world. I would see it in the wrong order. I would see it delivered without anything that engaged the heart as well as the mind. I would take it and hack it up into a bunch of pieces, make it powerful, give it back to them, and watch their faces fall off.
When they thought, “I spent so much time on this. This is clearly better but ouch. How much time did I lose?” It’s because there are entire sections that don’t need to be there. It was rough for them. After a few years of editing, I decided to start helping people from the beginning. I was like, “I was going to help people write powerful books and get it right from the beginning.” I tried a few different methods, some Mastermind programs, and some this or that where I can get people to get anything done. I was like, “Let’s get to a retreat. I’m going to trap you guys and kidnap you for three days. Leave your cell phones at the door and your computers even.” My first retreat was when I started to see that I was supposed to engage in narrative medicine.
I didn’t know what it was at that time, but I spent a few years learning how to facilitate transformation in a life skills program for teens. By this time, maybe 3 or 4 years, I had watched master facilitators use stories to open portals of healing for rooms full of teens. It’s hundreds at a time. They weren’t teaching. They weren’t using bullet points. They had clear concepts and they were delivering clear objectives, but the way they were doing it was through story. Healing happened in those rooms so fast that it used to freak the photographers out. They would take pictures of one of the participants at the beginning of the day. At the end of the day, this child would look completely different and transformed.
I had witnessed that for years. I thought I was going to help people write until one of my clients walked in, red-faced and activated to the point where she couldn’t speak because of what had transpired before she arrived at the retreat. She didn’t talk for two days. She stayed in the room and couldn’t do any of the exercises. She’s just paralyzed. On the last day, everyone was sharing their stories. We figured out a way to work through it and map them out. Everyone had their turn, getting up and sharing their story.
At the end of the day, everyone turned and looked at her. She stood up in the front of the room and started singing a song that she had sung when she was a teenager when she was in so much physical and emotional pain that she could barely function. As soon as she was done with the song, she started to tell her story. Twenty minutes later, there was not a dry eye in the room. We were all tearful. We couldn’t believe the breakthrough that we were witnessing. She curtsied because she was so emotionally uncomfortable. In the end, she sat down really quick.
Everyone has questions and feedback. That was the way that everyone else did it. She stood up there and everyone started asking her some questions. All of her pain came up and she ended up on the floor with a bunch of tears. I heard a voice in my head say, “This is what True to Intention is about.” It’s not about getting the message true to intention as much as it is helping the messengers go back to their true intention, who were they before, and all of the story piled on top of them.
From the first retreat, I was like, “This is what we’re doing. I guess I’m helping people heal through a story.” It took a few years to figure out how to do that as effectively as possible, how to blend my facilitation skills with the writing, and all of that. It was narrative therapy on steroids. I could not believe what I was witnessing. People were writing through their stories and the beliefs that they ran into about themselves, their creator, or their spouses that we would question and challenge. It would change everything for them.
That totally makes sense as to the person you are. Those words completely make sense. I remember when I first met you. I think I took one of those writing courses that you had and there were four of us. Even though at the time, I didn’t know if I was ready for taking it all in completely. I remember how intentional and strategic your thoughts were in leading people to the next topic. You have to think about this. You have to feel this. You have to feel your emotions. I have never heard those two words together but now it makes complete sense.
It was the whole field that I didn’t even know about. There’s a ton of research around narrative medicine, narrative therapy, and using stories to help clients and patients work through their stuff. I was in the trenches with people witnessing and trying to use the skills that I had. Eventually, some of their friends would come up to me at an event that they came to celebrate these books getting done. They’d say, “I don’t really want to write a book. I’m not about becoming an author or a speaker. Is there another way that I could have what they got out of your program like the personal healing?” I didn’t have an answer for them right away. I had a few retreats that were more focused on what your dream is. Still, it wasn’t exactly the thing. It wasn’t exactly getting to the bottom of just a story.
I was facilitating a workshop, A Good Life Project Camp, for one year. I heard myself say something. I don’t know if this has ever happened to you. You say something and you’re like, “I can’t forget that.” You told yourself something that you knew but you hadn’t articulated before. What usually happens in my coaching relationships is that a client gets me to say I want to write a book. Maybe they want to tell their story. Maybe not. Maybe they want to tell everybody else’s story. I’ve had a few of those. They have this whole plan for how they want to change the world with a message. We get into the process and we talk about what it takes to attune and to connect with your reader.
You have to go back to what you used to feel so that you can build trust with them that you know exactly where they’re at. In order to do that, you have to go back to those memories. If you’re going to write it powerfully, then you have to write it from inside of it. You have to be the character in the story. What was happening in your body? What was happening in your mind? What was happening in your environment? How do you bring the reader into the experience with you? Quickly, they would wonder if they had hired the wrong person. You’d be like, “You want me to do what? Go back and experience what? Are you crazy? I’m talking about how I overcame that stuff. I do not want to talk about that stuff.”If you’re going to write stories powerfully, then you have to write from the inside. You have to be the character in the story.Share on X
Your reader needs you to go back there. I’ve had people over the years say, “I’m not going back. We’re doing it another way.” They go through this process of going back to the character. They go in and do a deep dive into a scene or something. We have a conversation about how you get from this scene to this one because we’ve mapped them all out. That’s more of a narrator’s perspective because they’re not necessarily in it. They’re above their story looking at how everything moved. This is where they start to witness a lot of magic that they haven’t seen before. They would see characters in their story that they had forgotten. If this person hadn’t shown up at that time, where would I be? It’s pieces of magic and grace that had happened in their story they had forgotten, which is cool to witness.
The character is like “This hurts so bad. I hate you, Amanda.” The narrator is like, “Look at the magic in my story. Back to the next scene.” “Amanda, I hate your guts. I hate this. I hate going back,” and then back to the narrator, “It’s so much grace.” What happened about 60% to 70% point in the project, I would get a phone call or text from these clients and it would go something like this, “Amanda, you know how I’ve been complaining in our breakthrough sessions that this thing is going on in my life and I can’t quite figure it out. It keeps interrupting my process of getting my message out. It’s so retraumatizing and all of that. Do you think it might be connected to this thing that I keep doing when I’m in character where I say these things or respond like this?”
I think that is exactly your part in this process. It would be at that moment that I realized that they had become both the character and the narrator at the same time. They can now live in a moment that was full of pain but be witness to it and have that pause where they could say, “I witnessed in the first 60% of my book that every time something like this happens, I say these words that I always regret or I do this thing that never works. I’m going to make a new choice here. I’m going to try a new script or behavior and see what happens.”
We talk through what those could be and I would watch them completely shift their personal lives very quickly. This phenomenal healing process was happening so I’m sharing this with this room at this workshop. I realized that’s the key. I have the framework now to help people who aren’t going to write a book understand how to move through and do that narrative medicine without this other giant process that I take other people through.
That’s where the story healing work has gone and it’s turned into some fun stuff. We have retreats now that are story focal and we work on big three-day retreats with particular stories that we’re working on. We did a Hunger Games one on the contracts that we make. One on Time and Destiny and looking at the doors that open for us that we have to open for ourselves. It’s fun to use a story because we’re wired for it. We know things.
How many times have you been watching a show and you’re so mad at that character and you know exactly what she should do? You then go back to your life, face a similar situation, and you freeze up. You’re like, “What should I do? I have no idea.” You did when you were on my couch, but no one connected the dots for you between that character and who you are in your life. I’m helping people to do that in a methodical way. It has accelerated people’s feelings and healing process.
I honestly didn’t even relate medicine to narrative, but that’s amazing because now I can see where my healing process started and the things that I did during that process to get to where I am now. It is a little bit down those lines of what you were talking about. That’s awesome. I know that you guys are always busy. You guys do a lot of projects. I love all the postings that you do about this book and helping this person tell their story, which is amazing. Someday, we’re going to get together and finish our project. I did want you to expound on the butterfly approach fault philosophy that I find really amazing how you explain it. I love how you explain it. I was hoping before we say goodbye for this interview that you could explain that philosophy and what brought you to that.
My son was about three years old and we had a conversation. He was born at a time when my husband and I were going through a spiritual crisis. We were trying to sort ourselves out and also trying to protect his mind and his heart from all of the dogmatic thinking and evangelizing that was happening in our families. We had figured out that story was going to be our approach. My husband had said glibly, “We do have a Bible, Aaron. We have Avatar: The Last Airbender.” We were on this track of starting to look at stories in a powerful way. Around the same time, I had gotten ahold of a Butterfly Bungalow. I don’t know if you know what that is, but there’s this company called Insect Lore. You buy these little netted Bungalows.
They used to have giant ones. I don’t know if they sell those anymore, but they usually have these little tunnels that you purchase. They are netted and you receive butterfly larvae in the mail. You get to watch this entire process happen. The little caterpillars break out of the larva and then they eat everything up. They flip upside down, wrap themselves in a cocoon, and then eventually, they come out of that cocoon. They have to strengthen their wings and then they have to be taken out of that Bungalow so that they can take flight in nature. Of course, they reproduce.
During this process, I had some incredible insights because when you have a three-year-old, you have to pay very close attention to the things that they are fascinated about if you want to stay connected with them. Aaron would watch these things for hours, especially while the caterpillars were out kneading. I watched this moment when the caterpillar flipped upside down. I thought, “There’s absolutely no resistance to this process. That is amazing. Nature knows what to do and then it knows how to make itself safe.” It makes itself safe in the cocoon and then your job is to take it out of this little cup. It’s like a little cheesecloth and then you have to attach it to the inside of this Bungalow, which is already a little scary to do, but you add a jumping three-year-old to experience.
I had to get down to eye level with him and say, “Here’s the thing. If you knock this out of my hand and one of these cocoons hits the ground, I’m not sure that this thing is going to survive. I don’t know if it can become a butterfly if it hits the ground.” “Okay, Mommy.” He lets me put it in there and then he becomes a little guard. He’s walking around this thing making sure that nobody gets too close. Nobody bumps it so that none of these cocoons will fall.
One day, I’m in the kitchen and I hear this blood-curdling scream. I realized something terrible had happened. My grandma hit the Bungalow and one of the cocoons fell and hit the ground. Aaron was beside himself. He was mortified and he was crying. He’s like, “Now I don’t know if it’ll become what it’s supposed to be.” As I was holding him trying to settle him down, I realized that was how I was parenting. I was trying to keep him safe inside of his own unfolding process. I was trying to treat him as if there was already a divine blueprint for his life and he was going to become whatever he was going to become.
Every time someone said, “When you grow up,” I’d be like, “He can be anything he wants to be.” I was so protective and it was because I didn’t want him to be as damaged as I was. I didn’t want him to lose the possibility of flying someday like I felt when he was born. I had this awareness and watched this entire process happen. This is about the same time I’m starting to build a business and people are talking about branding and how you help people understand this process that they’re in.
When I started to see this process happen in True to Intention, I was like, “This is the butterfly thing happening. People get connected to their magic egg.” It’s that moment of insight where you’re like, “This is what I’m here on the planet for. I’m supposed to deliver this and everything makes sense.” They start to do things like fill out Post-it notes and put them all over the place. Fill out journals, start documents, and then forget where they put them. There are so many ideas, insights, and content coming through. There’s so much activity like that caterpillar craze.
There’s this moment that happens where they flip upside down. Unlike these little caterpillars who don’t think very much, they just do, people resist the upside down. This is the moment when people typically are slamming into their personal stories where they are sitting down at the computer and stuck. They’re not sure why we get a headache every time we sit down or maybe they’re not even putting that together. They just sit down every time they get a headache or stomach ache, a family member gets upset with them, or whatever the dynamic is, something happens every time.
There’s something going on that is creating resistance against their unfolding process. This is usually the time when people find me. Maybe this is because it’s not organized properly. Maybe I’m not clear enough on the message, or I have the wrong audience. They think I’m writing this for the wrong audience or the wrong main character. They slammed in and they don’t know what it is. Usually, there is one of those issues but also, there’s usually a personal story in there that they don’t want to look at. What we do is we wrap this cocoon around them. I call it the Cocoon of Camaraderie.
This is where we do these retreats with the community and these writing quests like you experienced. We work to create safety for people. They feel safe enough that they can start to expose things to themselves and to each other that they’ve never exposed to anyone else in their lives sometimes. That’s when the healing starts. They heal and they write until they’re done with the content. They get to the point where I call it Wing Training. This is where people get out and they have to start to share some of their content. I say have to because a lot of people don’t want to. They’re like, “I don’t need to publish this. I probably don’t need to show another human.” Even after an investment of time, tears, and money, they’re still like, “What will people think?”
We take little baby steps. Who do you feel safe with? Who can we share this with? Who can we get feedback from? I hope you feel safer to expose it to more people. Through that process, we get endorsements and all our reader feedback. We refine everything and then we move into trusting the wind. Trusting the wind is reconnecting with your faith and that destiny that you felt in that first magic egg moment when you’re like, “I was made for this. This allows me to be fully me. I get to use all of my expertise, experience, education, and everything to deliver this to the world.”
They get ready to step out in faith because they have to believe that the thing that inspired them is also going to help them to move this thing into the world. Most people that I’m working with don’t want to promote. They don’t want to be publicists. Most of them hate social media. What do you do when you’re not a self-promoter? You have to have faith that there’s a plan and that you’ll be connected to the right people.
We work with them through that process and then eventually, we’re moving toward impact. It’s the reproductive part of the butterfly phase where you get to watch them begin to create impact and hopefully some income around being able to share their incredible magic egg with the world in a fully developed way. Also, bring all of that color to the world in ways that another human being couldn’t possibly because they don’t have the same story and expertise.
I love the way that you describe it because it completely fits everything that I’ve been through in the last four years from my healing process starting in 2019. Once they tell their story, it’s almost like this weight is lifted and they can start to form those expressions and the embodiment of what they’ve been through to tell other people. I relate to that so much because it’s like I almost cocooned myself. Once I told my story, it was like, “Wow,” and that’s only part of the story. I told it and then I wrapped myself up and started taking in as much as I could when it came to positivity, healing, getting rid of the negative people that were around me, or the negative thoughts.
Now I’m starting to feel the wind. We’re ready to hopefully get this butterfly going and start that process. I love how compassionately and eloquently you explain that process because I totally relate to that, especially where I’m at in my life right now. I think for the audience, that is what soul hygiene is all about. It is about that caterpillar to the butterfly. It encompasses everything that is soul hygiene that we want the world to hear.
It’s how you get back to the original plan.
I appreciate that. What are you and Aaron up to these days? I know you guys are working on another book or another podcast.
We finished A Religion of Story in 2022. 2023 is about moving everything into the world. I had a major healing of my own this 2023 while I was working through a client project. It healed something that I felt had been driving me in business. I got to the point where I thought, “If that is finished, what is next?” All I want to do is tell the story of what has been happening in True to Intention and Saved By Story, watching people work through this, and giving other people the skills and tools on a broader scope. I’m launching The Story Oracle this 2023. That’s going to be the place where I do a lot of speaking and training. I’m also working on all of the writing quests, retreats, and things that will help people move through that healing process.
One of the cool things that happened was I was in the process of filling out all the things that I needed for my media kit. It occurred to me that Aaron should be there for the times when I’m speaking with parents and educators and the times when I’m speaking with messengers because he’s my partner in the publishing house. I said, “Would you be open to speaking with me?” I had completely forgotten that in 2022, about this time, a lady had reached out and said, “Will you and Aaron come to speak at our Writer’s Guild?” It’s because she’d read A Religion of Story.
I literally had this idea. I looked at my calendar and had to prepare a presentation with him. We got back from Oregon and did our first presentation and workshop together. It’s so much fun. He’s twenty years old, but you know him. He’s been this wise human since he was little. They used to call him the Little Buddha. He walks around, asks these questions, and stuns people. He’s the same guy in every room. He shines and he’s dropping wisdom like an older person.
This is the intro to Aaron’s conversation later on when we have him on.
I can’t wait to listen to that interview.
I know. I’m excited. I think he just turned nineteen when I first met him. When I talked to him on the phone, we talked for probably a good hour. It felt like we’d known each other forever. I’m like, “How old are you?” I felt like I was talking to someone way older. He is a very wise soul and I can’t wait for everyone to hear that conversation and get to know Aaron a lot more. It’s always a blessing to have you here. I hope that you’ll come back and visit a few more times to keep us up to date with what’s going on. How can people reach out to you if they’d like to discuss books, narrative medicine, or anything like that?
The easiest way is to go to the website TrueToIntention.com. There’s also a fun dip into narrative medicine. If you fill out the form there, you get an exercise like a writing prompt that helps you to see that you already have an answer and then you get to have a session with me to unpack some of it. It’s fun. That’s the quickest and easiest way to get ahold of me.
Wonderful. It’s always a blessing and a pleasure, Ms. Amanda. I can’t wait until the next time that we can talk again and expound even more on all the things that you are passionate about and have a talent for. Thank you so much. I hope that you have a wonderful rest of your night. We’ll talk soon.
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About Amanda Johnson
After twenty years of facilitating transformative experiences through story literacy, writing, and narrative medicine, Amanda Johnson (a.k.a. The Story Oracle) is determined to empower a generation that challenges disempowering with curiosity and love, heals the st*ries that hold us back, and co-authors a magically-ever-after.
As a Speaker, Facilitator, Storyteller, Strategist, Guide, and Ally, she partners with emerging leaders (of all ages and titles) to become uncompromising agents of change in their families, communities, and industries.
Through her two businesses, True To Intention and Saved By Story, she midwifes paradigm-changing brands, content, and more whole thought leaders and storytellers into the world with st*ry-healing quests and message-manifesting retreats. From inspiration to impact, she and her team help inspired souls dissolve the lies, reorganize their sacred material, and become truer to intention with every piece of content they craft, love offering they launch, and system they develop to change the world.
