Why Stories Can Change Your Life

Episode Transcript:

Why do we love stories?

And can they help us find hope, even in a world that’s falling apart?

We will explore these questions and more in today’s episode!

Welcome my friend! You are listening to Read Clean YA with CJ. The podcast for teens and young adults who want to explore exciting worlds, deep themes, and epic stories— without the objectionable content. I’m your host, award-winning young adult author, CJ Milacci, and today will be a solo episode to kick off this new podcast.

Don’t you just love a book that draws you in, captures your imagination, and then shocks you by taking a turn you didn’t expect?

I know I do. Getting lost in a story is one of my favorite ways to spend any free time I have. And I love stories with high, life and death stakes. The kind of story that brings you to the edge of your proverbial seat, and holds you there as you will it to come to a good ending, desperately rooting for the hero, even as he or she faces astronomical odds. And, I don’t know about you, but when I see the protagonist stand up against evil, fight in the face of injustice, or take action when others refuse to do anything, it not only makes me love the character more. It inspires me.

There is a quote by C.S. Lewis that says, “We read to know that we are not alone.”

And I love that quote.

Because stories are wonderful for so many reasons. They can be a blissful escape from the stresses of life. A way to explore a world you could never actually visit in person. They can be entertaining, exciting, or action-packed. Sometimes, through a story, you can dig into a deep theme or get to the root of an issue in order to better understand it.

Stories can help us find answers to questions we didn’t even know how to ask, or help give us a chance to grieve over pain we couldn’t find words to express. Stories can teach us, give us insight into our lives and the world around us, and move us to laugh or cry.

And sometimes, like this quote from C.S. Lewis, a story can remind us that we are not alone. We’re not the only one who has experienced those emotions or fears or anxieties or, even, joys.

Stories…they’re powerful.

They can ignite the imagination. Shed light in dark places. And one of my favorite things about stories is they can reveal truth in epically powerful ways. Ways that can transform your life and stay with you forever.

Stories can entertain us, transport us to other worlds…and give us an escape from the difficult things we are facing in our lives.

And great stories. Great stories don’t just help you escape for a time. They teach you something, reveal a deeper truth, and give you something to take back with you into your life.

And all of this is the reason I’m passionate about writing great stories — and it’s also why I am so excited for this podcast. Each week, I’ll be sitting down with a different author, talking about his or her book, and diving into the deeper themes woven through the pages. I’ve already recorded several of these interviews, and I am so excited to share them with YOU and introduce you to these incredible authors and the new adventures you’ll discover within the pages of their books.

But today, I want to tell you a little more about me, my stories, and the reason I started writing since you’re going to be hanging out with me hopefully every week as we drop new episodes.

First, I just want to pause and weave a tale for you.

Imagine one day you’re with your family in your home. Everything is normal, status quo. What you’ve known your whole life And you go to sleep.

But when you wake up you’re not there — you’re in a forest surrounded by tons of teens and a military force. You have no idea how you got there, no clue what’s going on. And no idea if your family is even okay.

You try to run, but the soldiers stop you. They put you on a transport and brought to a new city you’ve never even heard of before, and these are the words you’re told:

“Forget where you came from. Forget the life you knew. You are now recruits of Talionis!”

How do you survive? Escape is impossible, but can you remain in a place like this without succumbing to the evil? Is it possible to find hope there?

This is the circumstance my protagonist finds herself in. Her world turned completely upside down.

In Recruit of Talionis, you follow Bria as she battles the evil of the city of Talionis and the darkness and guilt of her own past.

And I wrote this story for you. As a way to demonstrate that no matter how dark things get, or how broken and shattered life can become, there is still hope.

Now you may be like, “CJ, there’s little to no chance I’m going to be kidnapped and forced to become a military recruit in a dystopian type city.”

And you’re right.

But how many times have you heard someone say something like, “The world is falling apart. Things are worse now than ever before,”?

Spoiler alert — they aren’t totally wrong. The world is crazy. It’s broken and full of evil people. This guy is ready to set off a nuclear bomb, that guy — who’s totally corrupt — is getting more power. Things are insane.

But it can be so hard as a teen or young adult to hear that, even look at the world and see that your parents and youth pastor or whoever else is saying this right. Right now, you’re trying to figure out who you’ll be, what you’ll do. You want to dream, imagine, take hold of who God made you to be and experience everything He has for you. And somehow come up with an answer to the dreaded question “What do you want to be when you grow up.”

If feels easier to just pretend none of the craziness of the world matters, right? I mean, we can always imagine the world imploding, maybe even get freaked out a bit. But often we’re good at holding it at a distance, feeling like “well that’s terrible but BLANK could never happen to me.”

And then it does.

Look, I hope you’re never kidnapped and forced to become a soldier. But all of our worlds will crumble at some point.

You lose the person who was so close to you. You’re accused of something you didn’t do. Your life is upended. Torn apart.

A loved one dies.

Parents get divorced.

Someone does something to you they had no right to do.

Your house gets taken.

The family where you were supposed to be unconditionally loved only shows you conditional love.
The brokenness of the world breaks into your life.

How do you breathe there? How do you move on? How do you find the courage to get up and enter another day? In this lowest of places, can there be hope?

Yes. There can be hope.

One of the things I love to say is that “Hope pierces the darkness.” I believe this is true. That hope, real hope, can break through even the darkest most shattered place you find yourself in.

But when I say hope, I mean more than a wish — like “I hope the Eagles win the Super Bowl.” I’m from Philadelphia, and this is always a “hope” we have around here. But I’m a Christian, so when I say hope, I say that my hope comes from Jesus.

He said that in this world you will have trouble. So all of these things that we just talked about, all the terrible things you might be experiencing right now in your life, all that you will experience as you grow and walk along this journey — it’s the sad reality of the broken and sinful world we live in.

But thankfully, Jesus didn’t stop His statement there. He continued and said, “But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)

In the darkest, most shattered places of our lives, where all we find is ashes, a light can shine there. The Light of the world. Jesus.

He essentially says in this verse in John 16, “Have hope, because everything that is overwhelming you, all that is overcoming you, I already beat it. I overcame it.”

My heart, my passion, is to see teens and young adults — really people of all ages — cling to the hope found in Jesus and experience the power of that hope in their everyday lives. Because the hope we find in Him is eternal — it’s bigger than our circumstances, bigger than the craziness in the world, and it can break every chain and change any life that chooses to rest in it.

Over the years I’ve sat across from countless teens and young adults who have told me about their own lives, heartaches, things they’d done that they were ashamed of…and things that had been done to them that left scars. And, no matter what the circumstance or struggle, I have witnessed the power of Jesus Christ to change and transform lives and set free captives.

In my own life, I have experienced how Jesus comforts me when I’ve lost relationships and friendships. When I’ve been rejected, scorned, and misjudged. I have found hope when everything around me screams to just give up. In the darkest places of depression, when I despised of life itself, Jesus met me, lifted me up out of the miry clay, and He set my feet upon the Rock.

I know He can do the same for you.

And that’s why I wrote Recruit of Talionis. Because my hope and prayer is that this story can demonstrate the reality that hope can pierce the darkness in a way that me merely telling you that truth may not have.

Sometimes we know things in our heads, we hear them all the time, but a story kind of gets beyond our logic and our reasoning and our roadblocks and walls. And it demonstrates the power of that truth and reality as we walk through its pages alongside characters we grow to love.

Which is why I love stories.

Recruit of Talionis is a dystopian book that has life and death stakes, action and adventure, and I think you’ll love it if this is your type of story. People call it a page=-turner, say they’ve been up all night reading it, and I love to hear that. But what I love to hear even more is that the characters were relatable, that they resonated with what the protagonist was going through. Or they want to be more like Cade, who’s one of the characters in the story. That’s what makes me so excited, because it means that this story is getting into people’s hearts and minds and getting them excited to keep reading, but even more, maybe showing them a glimpse of something bigger. Something eternal.

And that’s why I write.

And that’s why I can’t wait to talk about other great stories. Because stories, they have so much power. They have so much ability to touch our lives and change our lives. And I’m excited because as we go through this podcast together, you’ll get to hear from other authors who are passionate about story. Some of their books might come out with very clear Christian influences. Others, maybe you won’t see them right away, but they’re woven deeper into the pages of the story.

Every book has a theme, has something bigger that the characters go through. Because the reality is the stories that most resonate with our lives, they’re the ones with characters who go through things. They’re the ones with characters who experience hardship and loss and conflict and struggle. No one wants to read a book about a character who never went through anything, or kind of has a perfect life and goes along his or her way with nothing bad happening. We don’t feel like that’s relatable, so we put it down.

No one wants that kind of a book.

And those aren’t the kind of books we’re going to talk about here. We’re going to talk about books with characters who have struggles. We’re going to talk about books with characters who go through difficult things, who have things in their history that are painful and hard and raw, because that’s what relates to our lives. That’s what touches our hearts. That’s what gives us something to think about long after we close the pages of that book.

The authors I talk to, y’all, they are so cool. They’re wonderful men and women. And I can’t wait to unpack all of these episodes with you.

As I mentioned in the pilot episode, I’m doing this podcast because I want a resource that highlights great clean fiction. Fiction you can get lost in without worrying about what you might find in the pages, about being surprised by a ton of language or an inappropriate scene that comes up, or things that just aren’t form a biblical worldview. And I’m excited because there are a lot more of these great stories than people realize. And I have some incredible friends — old friends and new friends that I’m making though just talking with them on this podcast. And I can’t wait for you to get to talk about these stories with us, and discover, perhaps, your newest favorite author and a new book that you can’t wait to share with your friends and family and whoever is in your life.

And I think one of the things that I really love about each of these authors is that they’re willing to get real and address hard issues, whether it’s how to find hope in darkness or depression and how to get out of that. Or if it’s the deeper themes of identity and who am I and how do I find my place in this world? And more. These are things that we all struggle with, things that every person longs to understand, and stories can help us do that.

So I’m excited to dive into this new podcast with you. I hope you’re excited as well. If you have a book that you love and you’d like to hear an interview with that author highlighted, I invite you to email me and let me know. I’m always looking for new guests, and I can’t wait to hear what your favorite episodes are as we journey together through this new adventure. Because this is gonna be an adventure, my friend, and I can’t wait to do it with you.

We all need hope in this world. We all need stories that can give us a moment to escape and entertain us, but also teach us in a deep way without feeling like we’re getting beat over the head with it. So these stories do that, and I can’t wait to talk about them with you.

As we kick off the new podcast, don’t forget there is also going to be a giveaway each month. So this month we will have a giveaway with the different authors who I’ll be interviewing in September. You can go to ReadCleanYA.com and find all the details for that giveaway there.

Coming up this month, we have some great interviews with authors like Sara Ella and Katherine Briggs and Bradley Caffee and I am so excited for you guys to sit down with us and listen in as we discuss deep themes, incredible stories, and epic adventures.

Thank you so much for listening to Read Clean YA with CJ. I am excited to have you here with me.