Stories For The Grandchildren

Around this time last week, I found myself stranded in a darkened hotel room in Kandy, high up in the hill country of Sri Lanka.

We were supposed to be on a sun-drenched family holiday, getting some outdoor time for our city kids. Elephant orphanages. Safari drives. Tea plantations. Beach resorts.

Instead, we got Cyclone Ditwa, the worst storm the country has seen in three decades.

The internet was down. Power flickered on and off from the generator of our hotel — one of the rare few venues that still had electricity in the city, we later learned.

While the storm battered down outside, we passed the hours playing UNO on the hotel bed by the glow of our mobile phones, squinting to tell blue cards from green. (Perks of raising screen-free kids: no one was missing the iPad or TV.)

And we were the lucky ones.

Many homes had no drinking water. Roads around us were flooded, bridges collapsed, landslides everywhere.

Hundreds lost their lives. Thousands more lost their homes.

Somewhere between the bizarre polarity of doomscrolling the trickle of news updates and choreographing silly hotel room dances to buffer our young kids from the severity of our situation, I thought: This is one of those stories we’ll tell our grandchildren one day.

A chapter in our family history on how we stuck together and stayed hopeful even when the world around us fell apart.

We talk so much about building resilience in the next generation — but this was an opportunity, right in front of us, on learning to find the sliver of light (literally) in the dark.

Finding the insight in the story

Of course, being a workaholic, it also made me think of the work I do at Atypical Media with my 1:1 clients and in my storytelling workshops.

In my STICKY storytelling toolkit — distilled from my 15+ years of journalistic intuition on what makes certain messages and stories stick — the “I” stands for Insight, which is about sharing not just what happened, but what shifted in you as a result.

Because people don’t connect with milestones; they connect with meaning.

They want to know why a moment mattered to you, and what it revealed about your journey — and how it reflects or inspires theirs too.

I am a firm believer in providing actionable takeaways, so here’s an exercise if you want to try my framework out for yourself:

When the skies finally stopped raging, we were lucky enough to find a flight out — and I have never been more relieved to hear the “To all Singaporeans, a warm welcome home” announcement on a Singapore Airlines flight.

But even after everything, I’m already plotting my return. Sri Lanka is breathtaking and deeply kind, and it deserves to be seen in its full, sunlit glory.

So for anyone considering a trip, I hope you’ll keep it on your list. The country needs tourism — and our solidarity — now more than ever. (And should you go, I can highly recommend our wonderful driver, Mr Jagath, who is not only conversant in Sri Lankan history and politics but also quite literally braved hell and high water to get us safely where we needed to be.)

To support relief efforts on the ground, you can also consider donating to the Sri Lanka Red Cross Society’s Relief Fund.

And to you, thnak you for reading this far and for being part of my unfolding (if occasionally dramatic) story.

If you tried the storytelling exercise, feel free to hit reply. I’d genuinely love to hear what surfaced for you.

Till the next chapter,

Debbie