Dispatch from Daybreak’s mission is to support, validate, and give voice to womxn's true experiences through first-person letters written by womxn to their earlier selves.
The Vision
Sharing
Writing to your earlier self is a valuable form of catharsis and healing.
Empowerment
You can’t write a bad story if it’s your story.
Validation
Reading other womxn's stories is validating to each other and ourselves.
Storytelling
The power of storytelling gives voice to experiences no one talks about.
A Dispatch of my own...
Dear Annie,
The life you’ve known and cherished for the last 25 years has just vanished. Your oldest brother has been killed, and you will bury him along with everything you thought you knew about your own future. Your life is permanently divided into life with Ben, and life without Ben. And you don’t know how the rest of your family will survive either. Being a family of 4 feels impossible, unnatural… but that’s what you are now.
You will survive. You will all survive. You will grow and change and evolve in ways you can’t even imagine.
You will start a family of your own with an incredible partner who makes you laugh everyday, but you will also suffer from postpartum depression when you have your first child. You will worry when he is born and you feel nothing.
You will cry. A lot. You should stop attempting to wear mascara for a few years, it’ll only make you frustrated.
You will decide to live your life as an open book. You will commit to being honest in your experiences and offering support, empathy, and understanding to other womxn who are struggling. You’ll tell them the truth about your experiences, and you will open yourself up to hearing the truths of others.
In fact, you’re going to build a career around gathering people’s personal stories. Over the course of the next decade, you’ll talk to over a thousand people across the globe on topics ranging from terminal illness to social media, and you’ll listen to each and every one. You’ll work to build empathy in others through your storytelling.
Remember when you won the “Storyteller” award at Ridge Top Camp in 1989 and were mortified because you were convinced it meant you talked too much? Joke’s on them. Future you wishes you’d saved that paper plate award to hang on your wall with pride.
Xoxo
Annie Sklaver Orenstein is an ethnographic researcher who has spent the last decade collecting stories on behalf of companies including Viacom, Mattel, Instagram, Facebook, Pfizer, Netflix, Johnson & Johnson, and more. In her work, Annie brings these stories to life in order to build empathy and understanding among the people who build the most influential products, content, and experiences in the world. These stories are the backbone of our humanity, and the more we share them the more we can build empathy in ourselves and others. We might not be able to relate, but we can try to understand. Imagine the power that could come from a world where we listened to each other.