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Capturing Essence for Care: Storytelling that Promotes Personhood in Healthcare
Feeling overwhelmed by caregiving responsibilities? Struggling to stay present and patient when you're stretched thin? Transform your caregiving relationships in just minutes with evidence-based storytelling strategies that honour the whole person—not just their needs.
Listen for practical tools to:
- Open deeper conversations with aging loved ones, even when time is scarce
- Access life story approaches that reduce caregiver stress and burnout
- Hear real conversations with people with lived experience, including persons living with dementia
- Build meaningful connections that sustain you through the demands of caring
Host Lisa brings together personal historians, digital storytellers, healthcare practitioners, family caregivers, and seniors themselves. Each episode delivers actionable insights for anyone balancing multiple caregiving roles—whether you're supporting aging parents while raising children, managing care from a distance, or working in healthcare while caring for family.
Perfect for: The sandwich generation, family caregivers, adult children of aging parents, healthcare providers, long-term care staff, home health aides, personal support workers, memory care teams, social workers, activity staff, and anyone seeking to preserve dignity and connection in their caregiving relationships.
Join caregivers already transforming their relationships. Discover how small storytelling moments create profound connections—and give you the resilience to keep showing up with compassion.
Please join this community by following the show.
Capturing Essence for Care: Storytelling that Promotes Personhood in Healthcare
14. From Nonprofit Leader to Story Doula: How Photography and Video Preserve Life Stories
Storytelling photographer Heather Knox shares her journey from international nonprofit work to helping people capture their life stories through guided autobiography and digital storytelling. With deep experience in service, photography, and nonprofit leadership, Heather now focuses on helping seniors in Mexico preserve their stories before they're lost.
Key Points Discussed:
• Over 30 years in nonprofit sector spanning multiple countries and causes
• Founded Project Somos Learning Village in Guatemala with her husband Greg
• Discovered storytelling photography while documenting children at their nonprofit
• Trained in guided autobiography and digital storytelling to help others preserve memories
• Currently works with "To Whom I May Concern" helping people with cognitive changes share their stories
• Recommends three steps to capture your essence: guided autobiography, organizing photos, and creating digital stories
• Views storytelling as a spiritual practice that honors human dignity
• Advocates for printing photos and documenting stories before they're lost
• Serves as a "story doula" helping people birth their personal narratives
Connect with Heather:
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@heatheraliciaknox
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aliciaknoxfotos/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/heatheraliciaknox
Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heather-alicia-knox-b4587849/
Website: https://aliciaknox.com/
Heather's own digital story: (Te Veo/I See You)
Other links discussed:
Common Language Digital Storytelling: https://commonlanguagedst.org/
Listen to Episodes 3, 5, 10 & 11 for more about CLDST
The Birren Center for Autobiographical Studies: https://thebirrencenter.org/
To Whom I May Concern: https://towhomimayconcern.org/
Listen to Episode 8 for the interview with Laura Bowley with To Whom I May Concern
If you enjoyed this episode, take a minute to look at the show notes for resources and links, be sure to leave a rating and review, and follow the show to get notified when the next episode comes out. If you know someone who would enjoy this podcast, please share it with them.
Thank you for listening!
Do you have a question or a topic related to "capturing essence for care" that you would like discussed on the podcast? Send Lisa an email: awestruckaspirations@gmail.com
Interested in learning more?
Intro and outro music with thanks: Upbeat and Sweet No Strings by Musictown
Welcome to Capturing Essence for Care, where we discuss the importance of incorporating personal life stories into healthcare and share ideas to help you on your journey. I'm your host, lisa Jaworski. Welcome everyone to Capturing Essence for Care. I have Heather Knox with me today and I'm so privileged to know Heather through the common language digital storytelling community, as well as a few others, but we'll get into that in a minute. I just want to introduce Heather first and share with you that, with over 30 years in the non-profit sector, she has served as a volunteer board member, founder, executive director and country director across international arts and educational organizations. Her diverse experience includes working with children with special needs, animal rescue, farm-to-table educational programming and managing up to 1,200 volunteers. She specializes in fundraising, communications and donor stewardship.
Lisa:I'm not sure if there's anything Heather hasn't done. As a professional storytelling photographer, heather captures candid, unscripted moments for families, nonprofits and end-of-life pet photography, and her work is just beautiful. I've taken some time and looked at her website and looked at her other videos myself. Together with her husband, greg Kemp, heather founded Project Somos Learning Village, guatemala. They have since moved to Mexico and offered guided autobiography classes, and Heather also works as a common language digital storytelling facilitator, where she helps individuals craft legacy stories, tributes and eulogies, and most recently, she's become deeply involved with To Whom I May Concern. I, heather, am just so excited, I feel honored and just so privileged, like I said, to know you and to be in the same worlds as you, and that you take the time to be here with me today. So thank you.
Heather Knox:Well, thank you, Lisa. I'm excited to be here. I know we've been talking about this for a little while, so I'm thrilled to be able to chat with you today so I'm thrilled to to be able to chat with you today.
Lisa:Well, thank you and I. We had talked just before we started and I pressed record saying that you know there's there's so many great rich details that you have to your story, so I don't want to share all of them from your website. I don't want to share what's just written there, because I think it's so much better when it comes from you yourself and, I guess, what I'm really curious about. So, heather and I for those listening like I said, we are connected through a few different worlds. First it was common language digital storytelling is where we met through that community and then guided autobiography, which I'm an instructor, and then you were interested in that, so that connected us even further.
Heather Knox:Thanks to you. Thanks to you because you gave you shared with the Common Language group about Guided Autobiography and I had an aha moment. I was like 'I need to do that' and it came from you.
Lisa:That's awesome, yeah
Lisa:And they go together, don't they?
Heather Knox:They do, they do, yeah, they do, they do to me too
Lisa:And then, coincidentally, I think, yeah.
Lisa:You and I were both connected to Laura Bowley and the To Whom I May Concern group or project or organization, and so you've done work for them. So this conversation I'm hoping we can kind of get through a few of those pieces and how maybe those dominoes all lined up. But I would love to hear more just about your you and why I guess that you're in this work. What's attracted you? Because you and I have a lot of similarities in the fact that we feel that this life story work is so important. So I just want to hear more about you and your story and what led you down this path.
Heather Knox:You know it's a question I've been asking myself as well. I've been doing a little bit of soul searching to identify where this comes from, because it's really welled up inside of me as something very near and dear and honestly I think I'm going to say it comes from having an Irish father who loved to tell a good story and love to connect to other humans. Both he and my mom were very involved in service all of their lives and I think it just was instilled in me from an early age and just something that was really important to me and I started volunteering quite young and then that naturally led to the nonprofit world and and then the storytelling has been an interesting thing. I've been reflecting on some of those threads that followed me throughout my whole life, and one of them was I loved collecting pen pals and I had pen pals from all over the world and I loved when they sent me a photo that showed me a little bit of their lives and I loved hearing their stories and I kept a very organized system for following their stories, and so I'm quite curious to explore that more.
Heather Knox:My husband and I started the nonprofit, the Project Somos Children's Learning Village in the Central Highlands of Guatemala and while there, once we started receiving kids to the project, my little point and shoot didn't work anymore. It wasn't capturing the motion of kids and I thought I want a big girl camera now, so went out and got you know, a Canon DSLR and started playing with that and not getting the results that I had hoped for. And then I discovered online photography classes and I became an addict and it became really clear to me that it was the storytelling photography that really resonated with me, and so that was my first aha around storytelling and the difference between doing a formal stage photograph and one. So a candid one was night and day and it really inspired me. So that's kind of where the storytelling launched.
Heather Knox:And then, when I heard about digital storytelling, I was like wait a minute. And I took the course in 2022, and now everything I do is inspired by stories. And, of course, I did my Guided Autobiography training last year and now that we've moved from Guatemala and we've been in Mexico for nearly two years, we took a pause to recover and then but we're not officially retired we didn't weren't wise about our making sure we had a pension, but that's okay. I just turned I turned 60 this year and I feel excited about this next chapter, um, incorporating all these things, and it feels still very purposeful but a lot more intimate than it did running an international project, Right. So I'm very, very excited about it and the clarity once I got clear that it was just felt super clear. I don't know the path, yeah, Just seems obvious to me.
Lisa:Yeah, it sounds like you've definitely. Well, you were raised in a family of service being a main core value right For your family. Yeah, and then so it makes sense to me that, well, the pen pal piece is really neat because it incorporates the pictures and the stories that you receive from probably who knows where, like other parts of the world. And you're Canadian, right? Yes, I am Vancouver, okay, okay, so from Vancouver and then moved to Guatemala in 2011 and then to Mexico in 2023 yeah.
Lisa:so it's neat to me that you just kind of go from place to place and gather stories and learn about people and create these awesome services and supports for people that surround them, right, like just to provide whatever they need to help people feel safe and comfortable, and so to me, service and stories and listening all go together quite nicely.
Heather Knox:Oh, there's one other factor. I was trained as a homeopath back in the day as well, and homeopathy is the process of sitting and listening to someone for between 90 minutes and three hours.
Lisa:Wow,
Heather Knox:and when I'm doing my digital storytelling, it often resonates with a homeopathic consultation. I didn't ever really stick with that because I had the opportunity to sell homeopathic software and educate people around using it, so that became my focus. I became an educator and a bit of a tech geek, I guess.
Lisa:But we were talking a little bit about that. You did a lot of like group work even then, teaching tech stuff and yeah, but being together with a group of people is something that it sounds like has always come pretty naturally to you right.
Heather Knox:Yeah, I realize a lot of what I've done has been an educator. I was also a childbirth educator and I taught infant massage and I homeschooled my daughter all the way through and I would organize homeschooling conferences and give workshops on helping families learn how to homeschool and stuff like that,
Lisa:holy Wow.
Lisa:A wealth of knowledge and experience, that's for sure. So why then, I mean we have some commonalities between the storytelling. I think is the common thread that ties all of this together with you doing the work you're doing. Are you focusing right now on guided autobiography and digital storytelling right now, like tell me what you're up to currently?
Heather Knox:Okay, so we've moved to a small town called Ajijic and it's one of the largest expat communities in the world, they say, and there's anywhere between 10 000 and 30 000 Americans and and Canadians that live here, and the average age is 75. And so I feel this audience, this is their chance, as, as Greg jokes, it's like tick-tock you save those stories. Time is time is a ticking. So I've been focused on giving public presentations about why our stories matter.
Heather Knox:My first big one was last.
Heather Knox:It was in November of 2024. And there were 90 people there, and after I spoke at that presentation, I started with my photography, telling about the storytelling and photography, and then I moved in and talked about digital storytelling. I didn't talk much about guided autobiography at that one, but afterwards I was approached by Ellie Contreras, who is one of the facilitators for To Whom I May Concern, and she I need you to work with me. So that's how I got involved with To Whom I May Concern. So it was the first time To Whom I May Concern was offered here in Mexico and run by Ellie, who has a husband with advanced dementia, and we had five individuals who bravely signed up to be our cast and to share their journey with Cognitive Changes. And so on April 7th they did their first performance and there were over 130 people that attended and, holy cow, that's a huge turnout for the first time. It was a huge turnout. It really created a ripple in the community. I'm still stopped on the street and people rave about how impacted they were by this story. And then we just back, by popular demand, we did another one on July 13th in the it's called Lake Chippewa Society and every Sunday morning they have open circle and so different, and that's where I had given my talk in November and we had upwards of 150 people attend that one as well, so people who had missed it and then people who wanted to see it again. So it was incredible.
Heather Knox:We have a woman in this community that's done a lot around educating people about dying death and dying, embracing it and not, you know, dispelling the stigma and the fear around it, and we have a death cafe that meets here every month and I feel Ellie's work with she has a day program for individuals who have dementia and she has a support group for care partners. So I feel like Ellie's on the same track as this woman who's dispelling the stigma around death with dementia and cognitive changes and I think, with this population, it's a really important thing, yeah, and so I feel really strongly, like I said, about encouraging people to preserve their stories as well. It's a parallel thing and I feel it's really important. I think when we why do you think?
Heather Knox:it's important Because I think I think even if our kids and grandkids I don't have grandkids yet, but even if they don't seem to care about it now, they will, somebody will in the future. And they're going. How come nobody took grandma's stories, or where are grandma's stories? And I think we, on a human level, we connect so much better when we understand each other's stories. For me, it's one of the greatest honours. When I'm running a guided autobiography class or doing a digital story one-to-one with someone and they're sharing so intimately, I feel profound gratitude and it gives me this perspective on life that I wouldn't have otherwise. For me, it almost feels it's a spiritual practice. I know that may sound a little woo woo, but it's so. I don't know. It's just such a profound way to connect with other humans. It is yeah.
Lisa:And you're not the only one to have said that. If people want to listen to Whitney Myers as well well, she's a videographer that we talked about that that it's a spiritual practice. They're very much connected, I believe, because it is it. It's a matter of deep listening and understanding about our roots, you know and our backgrounds and just taking the time to listen to one another.
Lisa:We don't do that enough, you know, especially, especially these days, I think, right with people living further away too. There's lots of reasons why, if someone was to be interested in capturing their own story and I've talked on this podcast about the reason I think it's so important is because, especially in healthcare, that if we don't know who a person is and what matters to them, we're not going to be able to provide good quality care. You know, considering their own personal needs. If, for whatever reason, a person wants to capture their story, what would be the quickest? First, maybe three steps that somebody could do that quickest.
Heather Knox:First, maybe three steps, that somebody could do that Well, I think guided autobiography is the first step. I think going through six to 12 weeks of story prompts that get progressively deeper is a really wonderful way to start to write down your stories, two pages at a time. You get inspired and triggered by other people in your class and it brings up more memories. And then I would encourage someone to keep writing, like to make that a habit. And then, of course, do a digital story or two or three, because it's one thing to have it written down, but it's another thing to have that individual's voice and for them to choose the photos that match that story. It just brings the storytelling to a whole new level. It does and it's something that will impact family members on a much deeper level to have those, and I would also say, get your photos in order. You know, I think it's really important that the photographs are documented, backed up, printed. They've got to be printed.
Lisa:It's so important to me.
Heather Knox:I was recently in Calgary for the Common Language Retreat. We went to Fernie, British Columbia, and I visited my aunt, who turns 80 this year, and she brought out all the photos, all the family photos, and she must have had more than my mom did. My mom passed away 14 years ago and my aunt had this photos I had never seen and so I was madly scanning them just with my cell phone, but it's going to take time and those photos have just been such a gift and it created this really sweet connection between us as we discuss them. So yeah, photos, stories, digital storytelling.
Lisa:Okay, okay, I was just about to ask you. So, if so, those three that you mentioned would be the guided autobiography, digital storytelling, and maybe would step one be the photos, and then guided autobiography.
Heather Knox:I think the photos tie in so well, like when I'm teaching a guided autobiography class. Now I say to people if you have a photograph that ties in with this story, bring it, because it's just gonna enhance for your audience, because everybody reads their stories right and you need those photos for your digital stories so you want to be able to remember what's there and access them. So it all, it's all connected.
Lisa:They are all interconnected.
Heather Knox:I don't think any one of them is the most important.
Lisa:I think they all need to happen. So Mike Lang and I did a presentation for the International Center for Life Story Innovations and Practice. That acronym is ICLIP, and what I mentioned during that was and so we talked a little bit about digital storytelling and guided autobiography and how they go nicely together and how I explain it, and I think you're adding photographs to this makes perfect sense. I compared it to if we use the analogy of beach glass, where you have, say, the photos or those, those prompts that convey a good story, right, like if you look at a photo, you're like that tells a story.
Lisa:When you look at that photo and then if you add the guided autobiography, which some listeners will know or you can listen to, some of the other episodes is two pages at a time about a different theme every time, so whether it's a branching point or sharing a story about a work, role or family or whatever it might be, then you have photos, you have the guided autobiography stories and then after that is the digital storytelling, which to me is just you think about beach glass, going through the water and beating against the rocks and going through all those storms.
Lisa:And after a while, through all that resilience and time, you know, then we come out with this polished story which to me, is like a digital story you know where you put it all together and it becomes this even more beautiful. It doesn't mean the others aren't beautiful, because we are still going to benefit so much from photography and stories and written material. Digital storytelling is just putting it all together.
Heather Knox:Yes, with all of it. Yeah, that's a beautiful analogy. Yeah.
Lisa:Thank you, I had to work hard to think of that, but we're all about analogies and metaphors, right?
Heather Knox:Yes.
Lisa:Well, thinking about next steps for the listeners. Is there anything else that you think would be worth sharing if people wanted to consider, like how to capture their own essence or where to go from here, if they're just starting out, or if they work in health care and they're trying to think about how to support their patients or residents, or whatever? It might be do you have any ideas on on how they could do that?
Heather Knox:well, one thing that I encourage people as a when I put my photographer hat on is to capture those sweet moments in your day to day. If you're in a marriage and you know your partner is fading away, hire someone and photograph it, or work on telling your stories together. My sister-in-law was just recently diagnosed with Alzheimer's and we're so we're having weekly phone calls with her, my husband and I, and we're pulling out old photos and we're documenting her life and she cries with us and says what, what if I forget everything? And we said well, we're helping you, we'll put together this book that you'll be able to reflect on, because those stories, those old stories, are still very strong for her.
Heather Knox:Yeah, and I think it's just, I really want people to know that their, their stories may seem boring or they may seem they, they know them too well so they don't value them, but they are so valuable and that's what makes us human and I guess I just really want people to understand how precious their life is and how precious their stories are, and for me it just, it just all ties together and I do love watching that process of people sharing with each other and getting that acknowledgement and being seen.
Heather Knox:My personal digital story is called Te Beyo. I see you and it's my journey with photography and I see it as a means for seeing other human beings. And when I was living in Guatemala, we were running our project and my side project, my personal photography project, was going into the community and photographing individuals who had zero or just a tiny handful of photographs of themselves and their loved ones. So I would photograph them, go back to my house and print them on a little printer and then gift them to them and I could. I could see them feeling.
Heather Knox:They were delighted, right, but they knew I was seeing them and loving them and valuing them, and so that was a lot of the inspiration for me, but it applies to everyone. We're all at risk of losing those visual stories if we don't get them printed and backed up. Yeah, so I know I'm all over the place, but for me it's all connected.
Lisa:No, not at all. I completely agree. And first I want to just go back to your sister-in-law that I think what a wonderful way for you to honour her stories and to be able to just take time.
Lisa:Really, when it comes down to it, love to one another, just by taking the time to listen and care
Heather Knox:Yeah, and at this point in my life you know I'm losing people more and more and I don't want to live with regret. I want to value the time I do have with the people that are still here.
Lisa:That's beautiful. Well, thank you for everything you've shared. This has just been such a wonderful conversation and I don't know, I don't have anything to add. I hope that people what they get from this is that it's important to capture the stories, for even if you don't think they're important now, they are well it could be for future, future generations. Um, to think about capturing your photographs, those natural candid moments, guided autobiography, which I can add some links on that digital storytelling, just starting with a few little pieces, whether it's your photographs and prompts, and just grab a notebook and do some writing.
Heather Knox:Yeah.
Lisa:Find somebody like Heather. Heather, I can put in your contact information, yeah, of course.
Heather Knox:Well, I think there is something to that. I reassure people. I'm going to help you with this. You know you're not on your own. I feel like the main role is story coach. I'm going to help draw it out, yeah, and I'm going to help you value it, yeah, yeah.
Lisa:Yeah, sometimes that's what we need. There's so many coaches, right, there's we have sports coaches, we have life coaches. Now there's all these different coaches and the storytelling and capturing your, your story Isn't really any different. It's hard to do it by yourself sometimes.
Heather Knox:I actually am playing around with using the title story doula, because I was a birth doula for years. So there you go, helping people birth their stories. That's a great idea.
Lisa:That's awesome.
Heather Knox:Yeah.
Lisa:Okay, oh, and can I add your digital story into?
Heather Knox:the show notes as well, of course. Okay, perfect, yeah, thank you, well, can.
Lisa:I add your digital story in to the show notes as well. Yes, of course, of course. Yes, perfect, yeah, thank you Well.
Heather Knox:is there anything else you wanted to mention? No, just thank you so much for inviting me to be here and for allowing me to share my story.
Lisa:Absolutely. Thank you for sharing your story and I think yeah, I've been thinking about this a lot today and previously but how even this podcast is capturing our voices right and these stories that you don't just have on a daily basis, they're only when you take the time to really dig in and ask the questions. So thank you for allowing that to happen. Thank you, thanks for listening today. If you enjoyed this episode, take a minute to look at the show notes for resources and links, and be sure to leave me a rating and review, and also you can follow the show so that you get notified of when the next one comes out. And lastly, if you can think of somebody in your life who you think would enjoy this podcast, I hope you share it with them as well, so that they can listen in on the conversations and ponder how to capture their own essence. Take care, and I look forward to the next time.
