We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Salma Hasan Ali a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Salma, thanks for joining us today. Let’s talk legacy – what sort of legacy do you hope to build?

The legacy I hope to leave is that I helped encourage people to live up to our name, humankind. We are all part of humankind. I don’t think it’s an accident that the words ‘human’ and ‘kind’ comprise our very definition. To me that means we need to see the human in each of us; and that we need to live and lead with kindness. That’s why I’ve titled my newsletter of personal stories and inspiration ‘humanKIND”.

We need to get to know each other better, by sharing, by listening. By building a sense of community and connection and commitment to each other. Do I think sharing our stories can change the world. Yes, yes I do. By connecting us to each other. By helping us understand each other better. By allowing us to see the world in a different way than our own experience.

Salma, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m a storyteller – or rather a “storyseeker”, a term I’ve coined for myself, which to me means someone who gently uncovers the ordinary stories that make our life extraordinary.

About a dozen years ago, I wrote a story about how my family immigrated to the United States from Pakistan. I wanted to record this aspect of our personal history, so our kids would have some sense of where they come from. I interviewed my parents, looked through old family photos, drafted our immigrant experience, read it to my children and to my parents, and tucked it away. Until a friend suggested that I send it to a widely read magazine, the Washingtonian. They published the piece. What happened afterwards changed my life.

I started receiving dozens and dozens of emails from people of different backgrounds and faith traditions echoing the same sentiment, as expressed in this quote from a reader: “I realize that people from all over the world have more similarities than differences and your writing brings that to light.”

I realized then the power of a personal story. We each have a story. It may seem ordinary to us, but it is our ordinariness that connects us to one another, that helps us cultivate a relationship and develop a sense of familiarity. Our stories help us go beyond generalizations and stereotypes so we can simply get to know each other as people.

I’ve written several books of personal stories. “30 Days: Stories of Gratitude, Traditions, and Wisdom” is a collection of stories around these themes; each book is a handmade limited edition volume, and there is a compendium “30 Days journal” where you can capture your own stories. My newest book is “BenchTalk: Wisdoms inspired in Nature”, a collection of insights and inspirations that were captured in yellow journals tucked under benches in green spaces around the country. My “humanKIND” newsletter captures everyday stories of compassion and humanity; if you’d like to receive an occasional dose of inspiration in your inbox, hope you’ll subscribe on my website.

Understanding the power of a personal story to communicate and connect, I set up a storytelling consulting business – SHA Storytelling – to help people and organizations figure out their “story.” I help them hone, develop, write, and share it effectively and with purpose. My clients range from businesses who want to share their origin story, to nonprofits who want to reveal the “why” of what they do, to individuals who want to share something personal for a speech or event, or who want to record their immigrant experience, love story, lessons they want to pass on, and more. We are all mortal, but it’s our stories that endure.

In my volunteer capacity, I help lead a nonprofit called KindWorks, since its founding over 15 years ago, as their CIO – Chief Inspiration Officer. I help create campaigns to promote volunteerism, like the “KINDdemic” and “KindSoup”, and capture and share tales of ordinary people doing good.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I think our stories are the most precious things we have – it’s what make us who we are, our stories give our life meaning. They are unique to each one of us – no one has experienced life quite like you have – and yet our stories hold the power to connect us to each other in deep and profound ways. It’s by sharing our ordinary extraordinary stories that we get to know each other better, feel more at home with each other, realize how similar we are in the emotions we feel, and how much we have in common. Encouraging this realization and connection is the goal of my writing, storytelling, and speaking.

Because I feel our stories are so important, I think the thing that contains our stories should feel like a treasure. That’s why all of my books are made by hand, with handmade paper, exquisite original art, and unique design features like a letter at the start and art postcards tucked in the back as a gift to encourage people to continue the story sharing process. Finding unique ways to capture stories and produce one-of-a-kind handmade books that look and feel like a lasting legacy is another goal of my creative process.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

As a storyteller and a storyseeker, I get the privilege of asking people about their lives, their hardships, their wisdoms, their gratitudes. Conversations quickly become meaningful, personal, and authentic. It is such a privilege to get to know people deeply, to turn a stranger into a friend after just one conversation.

If I’m writing some aspect of a person’s life story, it is a tremendous responsibility that I take to heart; to be able to capture the nature of a person and reveal that with nuance and emotion is a true honor. After I interview someone who wants help crafting a speech or their “why”, I often spend days or weeks working on the story, finding just the right words to communicate a feeling and not simply the facts. When I call them to read to them how I’ve captured their disparate thoughts into a cohesive story, at the end there’s usually silence for a few seconds, followed by tears. To be able to give the gift of a story to someone – their story – by weaving a personal narrative that ties together different aspects of their life is incredibly fulfilling for me.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.salmahasanali.com
• Instagram: @salma.hasan.ali
• Facebook: Salma Hasan Ali
• Linkedin: Salma Hasan Ali
• Other: Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6ogGZsz82pxhcvvR7pvrtM

Image Credits
First photo – Shahidul Alam