Story Revisions: Community is a Necessity Now More Than Ever
As I mentioned in my initial story pitch blog, my story is focusing on the topic of feeling isolated and how that affects our mental health. I’ll look at the correlation between isolation and how COVID-19 may have played a major part in increasing these feelings this year specifically. I believe community is a necessity in everyone’s life and without it, it can be detrimental to our emotional and mental health.
I am going to zoom in and talk with people in the Greeley community who have experienced extreme loneliness and isolation this year. For example, a good friend of mine, Kianna Peters spent most of Colorado’s quarantine in her bedroom in the basement of the house that is owned by the family she works for as a nanny. Kianna will be sharing about her experience during those couple months towards the beginning of the year and how her mental health took the hit. A story like her’s will better help us understand the seriousness that isolation has on our wellbeing.
Also, taking a suggestion from a fellow classmate, I will also talk with another good friend of mine, Kaelah Hamman, whose mental health has also been affected greatly by the pandemic. Kaelah regularly attends counseling sessions with a local therapist. However, due to the conditions of the world we are living in now, her sessions have had to move from in-person to online through video chat. Kaelah will dive into her story of mental health and how this year has affected it. Her story will look at virtual community and how seeing and talking with others through a screen may not always be enough when it comes to our need for community and relationship.
Lastly, I will be speaking with Isaiah Hupp, a pastor in the Greeley community who has been very intentional in the last year to build community among the people of Greeley. We’ll hear some of the ways in which he has gone about loving people well and how this year’s pandemic has created obstacles in his pursuit to bring people together. Isaiah has seen real change in the people of Greeley and his stories will help us look at powerful ways we can build community in our spheres.
Aside from interviewing and hearing from these three individuals, I plan on telling this story through sharing local and national research as well as statistics related to people’s mental health and feelings of loneliness from before the pandemic and since it hit. I think infographics will be great visuals to share this information. I see the interview with Isaiah being on video as a visual as we talk. I also will share ways in which the audience can strive to create and build community within their sphere of influence which I imagine will also be shown through some sort of graphic visual or photos.
Something that has changed since my initial pitch of this story is that I will be telling it on Facebook primarily rather than Instagram. After it was pointed out to me that this story will most likely consist of considerable chunks of information and personal stories, it was clear that I needed a platform that didn’t so heavily rely on the visuals, but rather was a complimentary location for these stories to be told through text or video. I do see the possible use of YouTube as the platform for the interview with Isaiah depending on it’s length and depth of conversation. I am still trying to figure out a possible post to be used on an “experimental” platform as well as how I will creatively include a live element into this story. I am open to any suggestions.
As I said in my initial pitch, my goal in telling this story is to bring awareness to mental health and how important community really is in our lives. In addition, I want to inspire anyone listening that they can be the one to step up and create that community through loving people well which is why the story will cover effective ways of doing so. I think that the overall tone of this story will be authentic, uplifting and inspiring. Even when going on the darker side of things and telling of the experiences my sources have had with feeling isolated this year, it will be to let the audience know that they are not alone if they too have felt the affects of this very lonely and unexpected year. A little ironic isn’t it? That we are not alone in feeling so alone this year.
