Are we the sum total of the stories of our lives? And do we become the stories we choose to embrace? These are age-old questions -- and Michael White’s vision helped us all to find hope and health in the storied life.

There are two people, gone too soon from this life, I think of every week as I sit with clients in therapy. One is Shirley Riley, a family art therapist, mentor, and incomparable friend. The other is Michael White, social worker and family therapist who died on April 4, 2008, and who developed a form of therapeutic storytelling that is now known as narrative therapy. Shirley introduced me to the work of Michael White; a number of years later, I introduced Shirley to Michael White when I was fortunate enough to interview him and observe his work with families.

Michael White and Shirley Riley both understood the power of people’s stories to heal. With David Epston, White developed a now well-known storytelling technique in their seminal 1990 book, Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends, a form of treatment that has since become known as narrative therapy. Narrative therapy is based in part on having individuals tell or write stories and metaphors that essentially externalize a problem situation and reevaluate it, usually from its potential for positive change.

In using storytelling, White was more interested in the ways people construct meaning in their lives than just with how they communicate their problem behaviors. He embraced the idea that stories actually shape our behaviors and our lives and that we actually become the stories we tell about ourselves. Thus there are helpful stories we can choose to embrace as well as unhelpful ones. Riley’s work as a family art therapist eventually infused art making with White's narrative approaches, integrating the importance of sensory experiences within the process of narrative work with families and adolescents.

What has consistently impressed me about White is how he masterfully used the power of storytelling to elevate the person in treatment rather than the therapist as expert. In essence, the person is the authority on his or her story. That sounds so obvious, but psychotherapy still struggles with defining people as their pathologies; I believe that is where the healing arts—art, music, movement, play, and storytelling—have a place in changing the predominant paradigm.

Stories are, of course, the basis for all verbal psychotherapies. But they are much more than that. Storytelling—whether through essays, poems, or letters-- not only has a therapeutic power, it is also defines the human spirit, stimulates the imagination, and preserves the cultural heritage of the world’s peoples. Throughout his life’s work, White was tenaciously persistent in envisioning the use of narrative therapy and inspirational in helping people to narrate the best in themselves, restoring hope and health through storied lives.