Storytelling.

Storytelling can be therapeutic. For the person, it is both validating and valuing--as nothing else can do. There is a connection between old age and spirituality and a quest for transcendence--to express one's self as part of the human condition. This article seeks to describe the links among spirituality, nursing care, and patient/resident storytelling, and includes suggestions on how to help older adults tell their stories, even if they are cognitively challenged by memory and language loss. It describes a worldview as expressed in several of the new nursing theories as "humanness": a life cycle of continuous growth leading, perhaps, to "self-transcendence." Storytelling can be peacemaking and transformative. The voice of the "wounded storyteller" and how nurses can make that voice heard might be the takeaway message. Copyright 2010 Mosby, Inc. All rights reserved.