Expanding the Circle

For seventeen years, Melanie Hanna has taught music at Second Presbyterian Preschool in Little Rock, Arkansas. She knows the teachers well. They celebrate birthdays together, navigate difficult school days together, and care deeply about one another. Like any workplace, though, there are misunderstandings, assumptions, and the occasional quiet competition that can grow whenever people spend years working side by side.

Melanie wondered what might happen if they stopped seeing one another primarily as coworkers and had a deeper experience with one another through the Story Circle. So instead of gathering at the church or preschool after work, she invited a handful of Pre-K teachers into her home.

The evenings begin long before the Story Circle itself.

Dinner is waiting when everyone arrives. Sometimes it is a potluck, though Melanie always prepares a meal just in case someone comes empty-handed. They eat together first, talking about the week, the children, and the ordinary rhythm of preschool life before moving into the living room.

On the coffee table, Melanie creates an altar. Candles flicker beside crystals she carefully arranges. One week, she placed sprigs of rosemary because it helps memory. Each gathering includes something slightly different, a quiet reminder that this time together is unlike the rest of the week.

Then the grounding begins.

Melanie had fallen in love with this part of the Story Circle process during her facilitator training. As someone accustomed to constantly thinking about what came next, she discovered how difficult it was simply to arrive in the present moment. So, she began helping the teachers do the same.

Together they breathe deeply. They imagine their feet rooted firmly into the earth. They placed a hand on their heart, noticing its steady rhythm. Sometimes they hummed softly before the silence settled over the room.  At first, a few teachers admitted the quiet felt awkward.  Before long, they began looking forward to it.

Melanie watches shoulders relax. The anxious energy of the school day slowly gave way to presence. The women are no longer thinking about tomorrow’s lesson plans or replaying difficult conversations from earlier that afternoon. They are simply there, fully present with themselves and with one another.

Then the stories begin.

Many of these women had worked together for years. Yet as the weeks unfolded, Melanie realized they were no longer seeing one another merely as fellow teachers. They became whole people again, each carrying joys, griefs, dreams, fears, and stories that had quietly remained hidden beneath the routines of everyday work.  One teacher in particular embodied that transformation.

Jamie, the preschool’s director, had stepped unexpectedly into leadership and spent the previous years carrying the weight of that responsibility. During Story Circle, she shared something Melanie had never expected to hear. Professionally, she had always felt competent. Personally, she confessed she had never experienced deep friendships with other women. For the first time, she felt herself becoming connected to colleagues as something more than coworkers.

“I feel seen,” she told Melanie. “I feel heard.”

Soon other teachers began asking when the next Story Circle would begin.

One group became two.

Two became three…

Teachers who had not participated heard about what was happening and wanted to experience it themselves. The circles have spread through the preschool, creating a deeper culture of trust, grace, and understanding among people who thought they already knew one another.

The work changed Melanie as well. The practices of grounding, deep listening, and compassionate presence have opened healing in places she had not expected. The experience also awakened a new sense of calling. Having walked alongside profound pain within her own family, Melanie has become increasingly aware of the isolation many parents experience as they carry trauma surrounding their children. She now hopes to create Story Circles for parents navigating those difficult journeys, offering the same compassionate space where stories can be shared, burdens witnessed, and healing begins through the simple gift of being heard.

Today, Story Circle has become part of Melanie’s ministry. Alongside serving as Assistant Music and Arts Director at Second Presbyterian Church, facilitating Story Circles is now woven into her role. She continues leading preschool teachers while dreaming about where the circles might grow next, always beginning the same way: around a table, in a home, with a meal, a candle, and enough quiet for people to become fully present to one another.