Waterloo Open Doors event

Both within and outside of my club, there have been opportunities to practise what I learned in Toastmasters. Taking what I learned there outside was, as in Marj’s words, “Getting ready for the big game.”

A couple of years after I started Toastmasters, Greg Kay and I were talking at an area event. By this time both of us had experienced storytelling within our manuals. We knew about the Story Barn in Baden, and so we decided to attend the next Stories Aloud evening that was always held first Friday of the month.

After our 2011 concert at the Waterloo Region Museum

On meeting there we discovered a tradition. We could pick a stone from a dish on entering the space, indicating we were prepared to tell. It gave our host, Mary-Eileen McClear, an idea of the number of stories that would be shared that evening.

The lamps were lit, candles burning in their holders, and people sitting in that cozy place under the roof, with a cup of hot apple cider or tea in hand, and ready to listen, because that’s what we did best in that space.

I’d been writing for awhile and bravely decided I would share a children’s story I’d recently written. I discovered that telling a story I’d put on paper comes out much differently. It was an important realization how written stories can be different in the telling.

I was hooked on stories and this place. Both Greg and I both returned month after month and we joined the guild at the same time. It seemed we both were caught with the desire to hear and learn more about the art of oral storytelling.

In time, I began to tell outside the guild at public events, such as at Heart and Hand at the Joseph Schneider Haus in Kitchener and the Enabling Gardens in Guelph. At the same time I developed friendships with fellow storytellers.

When we went east on a holiday to Nova Scotia in 2010, I had opportunity, and planned in advance, to tell at the Ark in Bridgewater. The clients enjoyed the stories I told that day, one of them being The Theft of Smell.

Telling at the Ark in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, in 2010

The experience in starting to tell one story at a time “out there” helped me gain confidence in my speaking and storytelling.

I took on executive roles in my club and leadership roles in meetings. I also became active in the guild executive. It’s been a learning and growing experience and still is. It’s called continual learning.

What can Toastmasters do for you? You won’t know unless you try it. And best of all, you won’t know the possibilities it will open for you. Give it a try.