Storytelling as Healing and Empowerment

Storytelling as Healing & Empowerment
 
Tamara Knox, Director of Ethics and Social Responsibility in Media at Ethical Narrative and an Associate Clinical Social Worker (ACSW), once struggled simply to leave her house. As a survivor of domestic violence, she picked up a camera and learned something profound: when you're behind the lens, you control what you see and how you see it. That shift in perspective sparked a vision that would eventually earn her a Masters Degree in social work and lead to her unique fusion of photography and mental health care. Now, in her role shaping ethical practices at Ethical Narrative, Tamara has flipped the traditional storytelling script entirely. Instead of photographers swooping in, extracting stories, and disappearing with all the power and profits, she's building something based on what she calls the four C's: community, collaboration, consent, and celebration.
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Tamara produced a book "Surviving To Thriving," where trauma survivors got unprecedented creative control of their story. Each person chose their backdrop color, curated their soundtrack for their portrait session, handwrote their own story, and approved every single detail before publication. No reporter interpreted their experience. No editor made final calls. The result? Participants literally thanked her for letting them use their voice—and the book now lives in trauma organizations as an actual therapeutic tool, showing people in their darkest moments what's possible on the other side of healing.