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NewStories

Re-Storying for Regenerative Futures
-- Change your story, change what's possible. Stories shape us. Or simply aren’t true?

They shape our thoughts, our perceptions, and our responses to the world. They hold our history and guide our actions in difficult times. They define us to ourselves and each other and provide our place in the order of things. What happens when the Old Stories, the ones we were taught to believe, no longer serve or match our experience? What are the New Stories, the ones that tell us the truth for

these times and help us understand where we are going? What is the Larger Story of who and what we are that gives new meaning to our lives, strength to speak truth to power, and courage to ride the waves of change with style and grace, love and humility, gratitude and praise?

08/25/2026

Disaster reveals things about a community that were always true but rarely spoken—who is trusted, who has been carrying too much alone, who knows how to fix things, whose voices need to be part of the plan.

This fall, the Regenerative Responders community gathers three times to sit with what disaster reveals and what becomes possible in its wake.

September 2 | The Practice of Re-Storying Disaster
An introduction to Re-Storying Disaster as a practice—the work of re-enlivening, re-patterning, and re-structuring toward a life-giving future. What are the conditions that make this practice possible?

October 7 | Getting Started with Ready Together
A guided tour of the Ready Together Toolkit and open discussion about starting a group in your own neighborhood. Communities that do this work beforehand walk into an emergency already knowing each other.

December 2 | Hopes & Possibilities for 2027
A chance to shape what comes next—including the possibility of a cohort-based certificate program. What would best serve community practitioners in the year ahead?

All three calls run 2:30–4:00 pm PT, hosted by Nicole LaJeunesse and Bob Stilger. Each one is a space for genuine human connection—you'll be invited, never pressured, to share your thoughts and let your voice be heard.

Full details and registration at the link in comments.

We would love to see you there.

08/06/2026

"Saturday afternoon I wondered if anything I knew mattered. By Monday I remembered I know what to do in these times. Listen. Connect. Breathe. Find the next step—and take it. Together." — NewStories founder Bob Stilger

The Spokane Complex Fire has been moving through the place NewStories calls home. Three members of our team live here. Nearly 70,000 of our neighbors are displaced.

We share this not to center ourselves in a story that belongs to an entire community, but because it has clarified something we already knew: the work of accompanying communities through disaster is never abstract. One day, it may arrive at your own door.

Our latest newsletter shares three things:

Ashes to Resilience: Finding Your Way After Disaster — a guide created with Regenerating Paradise, gathering practical wisdom, emotional support, and hard-earned lessons from people who have lived through catastrophe. Nineteen practical orientations for the days, weeks, and years ahead. It belongs to anyone who needs it.

When Disaster Comes Home — NewStories founder Bob Stilger has spent more than 50 years accompanying communities through rupture in Japan, Zimbabwe, Northern California, and beyond. This week, that work came home. His reflection is published now on Great Transition Stories.

Thursday Gatherings — beginning August 6, a weekly Zoom space to listen, reflect, and be with others navigating disaster and recovery. Open to anyone.

Recovery is rarely one dramatic moment. More often, it is thousands of small ones.

You can read the newsletter with links to all mentiones in our comments.

08/04/2026

The hearts of everyone at NewStories are with the Spokane community as these devastating fires continue to unfold.

Headquartered in Spokane, members of our team call this community home.

In moments like these, it's easy to become overwhelmed by the flood of information and the uncertainty of what comes next. We created these two companion resources to offer a little orientation: one shares gentle guidance for navigating the days ahead, and the other gathers trusted local resources for those affected by the fires.

Please share them with anyone who may need them.

With thousands of our neighbors still displaced and many communities continuing to face uncertainty, we are holding everyone affected in our thoughts—including the families who have lost homes, those waiting to return, the first responders, volunteers, and all those caring for one another in countless quiet ways.

07/30/2026

The regeneration we need is not coming from the top down.

It's already underway—practiced by people choosing to work with life rather than extract from it, in bioregions and neighborhoods and community gardens across the world. Growing food. Repairing soil. Tending watersheds. Building the relationships that make genuine resilience possible.

This summer and fall, that work is gathering. Our latest newsletter maps permaculture and bioregional gatherings across each region of the country:

🌲 West — Permaculture Symposium in Spokane and the Turtle Island Bioregional Congress in Oregon
🏜️ Southwest — REGENERATE Conference in Santa Fe, bringing together ranchers, farmers, and land stewards around arid working lands
🌾 Midwest — Wisconsin Permaculture Convergence in the Driftless region
🌊 Southeast — Florida Permaculture Convergence at London Island
🍂 Northeast — where new gatherings are taking shape

Plus a look ahead to the Transition Network's 20th anniversary gathering in Portugal in 2027.

Wherever you are, there is likely something closer than you think.

Read the full newsletter with links to events via the link in comments.

07/16/2026

For more than 25 years, NewStories and Kufunda Village in Zimbabwe have walked alongside each other—learning, building, grieving, and dreaming together about what communities become when they organize around life rather than against it.

Kufunda was born out of collapse. When Zimbabwe's economy unraveled in the early years of this century and the world cut ties, Ubuntu—the infrastructure of reciprocity and trust—began to thrive. "I am because we are" became community strategy.

This August, Kufunda is opening its doors to young people from around the world for Rooting & Rising — A Two-Week International Youth Gathering, August 10–22, 2026.
Designed for people ages 18–28 who find themselves at a threshold: navigating transitions, asking what is calling them forward, and ready to explore those questions in genuine community. Two weeks of land, creativity, shared meals, art, movement, storytelling, and participatory practices that engage body, heart, and mind.

More than anything: the gift of belonging.

Participation fees: $550 Global North / $300 Global South. Partial scholarships available.

If a young person comes to mind as you read this—someone ready to root down before rising up—please share this with them.

Learn more and register at the link in comments.

06/11/2026

"I can say anything I want now at this age — which is a great liberation and a big responsibility." — Meg Wheatley

Meg Wheatley has spent five decades teaching leadership, community, and what it means to be human. At nearly 82, she has arrived at ideas that don't fit neatly into any of it.

She teaches three kinds of compassion—and the one most of us are missing is the fiercest. Idiot compassion is the cape-rushing impulse that ends in burnout. Loving kindness is genuine partnership that strengthens rather than depletes. Fierce compassion is compassion without aggression—the kind that carries a sword. Not for aggression. For clarity. For the courage to speak when something needs to be said.

Our profile on Meg—drawn from a conversation with Great Transition Stories editor-in-chief Stephanie Regalado last week—is live now on Great Transition Stories, where she is also a featured storyteller. And Friday, June 20, Meg is offering a three-hour live exploration: Fierce Compassion: The Power of the Sacred Feminine.

Read our newsletter, including links to Meg’s profile and event, via the link in comments.

06/04/2026

Seven-plus years after the Camp Fire, the people of Paradise are still at work—rebuilding, carrying what cannot be put down, and finding the endurance to keep going within their community.

Last month, we enjoyed the honor of witnessing that work firsthand.

The first Re-Storying Disaster Learning Exchange brought community practitioners from across Northern California to Paradise for twenty-four hours of embodied learning—hand-crafted dinners, Ridge tours, housing development visits, conversations with Town Staff, and a gathering at Hope Plaza, the moving community-led memorial honoring the lives lost in the Camp Fire.

What made it different from a conference or a workshop? The place itself was the teacher. By attaching conversations to specific locations in Paradise, something opened up that boardrooms rarely allow. Impromptu exchanges bubbled up throughout the day. Stories emerged in the spaces held open.

"Communities are the authors of their own futures. Learning Exchanges are a way for communities facing similar challenges to see how others are making their way forward—exchanging ideas and experiences while building solidarity and connection across distance and difference."

The Paradise Learning Exchange is the first in a series. Future exchanges will feature communities including Nevada City and Cobb Mountain.

Read our reflection and stay tuned for what's coming next at the link in comments.

05/28/2026

Over decades of accompanying communities through disruption and transformation, we have come to believe something deeply: trust is the infrastructure for regenerative futures to emerge. Durable relationships create the conditions that make lasting transformation possible—and investment in those relationships is core to everything we have seen succeed.

That conviction brought us to this resource, and we think it will resonate with many of you.

Community As Strategy: 10 Ways to Create Belonging and Power Where You Live is a beautifully crafted, freely shareable zine by Sarah van Gelder—lifelong activist, writer, and founding editor of YES! Magazine, and a longtime friend and colleague of NewStories and Great Transition Stories founders Bob Stilger and Lynnaea Lumbard.

Sarah's ten practices are rooted in lived experience, cross-cultural wisdom, and decades of on-the-ground learning. They are for anyone who gathers people: neighborhood organizers, facilitators, educators, community builders, team leaders, and anyone trying to make the groups they're part of work smoother.

"It was community that kept our ancestors alive. And it will be in community that we can support each other through today's crises." — Sarah van Gelder

The zine is free—in the Creative Commons—to download, print, copy, and share widely. Thirty pages of practical wisdom you can hold in your hands, pass across a table, or drop into a group chat.

Read our overview and link to download via the link in comments.

05/19/2026

Today, Great Transition Stories is live—and we are so glad you're here.

Fifteen years ago, Duane Elgin, Jeff Vander Clute, and Lynnaea Lumbard began gathering the archetypal stories of transformation that could serve as maps for navigating change. Today that vision has found its fullest expression yet: a living commons with more than 200 pages of content, 450+ curated resources, and a growing body of work that translates paradigm-shifting research into accessible stories for anyone seeking deeper understanding of this moment we are all living through.

Today, nine members of our team share their own personal entry points into the site—ten different doors into the same living house. Find the voice that resonates and step inside at the link in comments.

This commons grows richer with every voice that joins it. If you know of a story worth telling, a voice worth amplifying, or a resource worth sharing—we want to hear from you at the email, also in comments.

Cheers!

05/14/2026

Today, members of our Re-Storying Disaster team are on the ground in Paradise, California, for the NorCal Fire-Affected Communities Collaboratory Learning Exchange—gathering with community practitioners who have spent seven years building something worthy of what was lost.

NewStories Founder and Board Chair Bob Stilger has spent 50 years asking the most important questions about community—what holds it together, what tears it apart, and what becomes possible when people choose to build something new in the ashes of the old. From Spokane to Zimbabwe to Japan to Northern California, he has been present for that work again and again.

Today he weaves those threads together—and extends an invitation to conspire.
"I am not the disaster guy. I am the possibilities guy," he shares (and everyone who has worked with him agrees).

To Nicole, Michelle, and Bob and everyone gathering in Paradise today and tomorrow: we are with you in spirit—and so proud of this work. 🌲

You can read Bob's full reflection at the link in our comments.

Address

Spokane, WA

Opening Hours

Monday	9am - 5pm
Tuesday	9am - 5pm
Wednesday	9am - 5pm
Thursday	9am - 5pm
Friday	9am - 5pm

Website

http://www.NewStories.org/, http://www.GreatTransitionStories.org/, http://www.AfterNow.Today/

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