Meet Michael Kass of Story & Spirit in Highland Park

Today we’d like to introduce you to Michael Kass.

Michael, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
When I was about 11, I looked up from a book of Celtic myths and told my parents that I wanted to spend my life exploring the ways story reflects and shapes the culture from which it comes. My parents immediately panicked and sent me to science camp.

For the next 27 years, I found myself caught in a tension between following my curiosity and passion for story and human connection and following the well-trodden path cleared by my parents, family, and schools.

That tension showed up when I was fifteen and had the chance to choose between two ways to spend my summer. On the one hand, a drama teacher had invited me to be a part of a summer theater production at a mid-sized theater in Washington, D.C. On the other, my mother had finagled me an opportunity to be an intern in microbiology at the National Institutes of Health.

I wanted nothing more in life than to tell stories and create worlds using my creativity and imagination. So I chose the internship.

With that choice, my life got a little bit smaller.

Six years later, the tension showed up again. I was about to graduate with my MA in Theater and my mentor at school had offered me a part-time job teaching acting and Shakespeare to at-risk youth in Chicago. And my mother (again) had asked a friend of hers to meet with me and offer me a job as a manager of programming at a new Nature Museum.

I wanted nothing more than to give back to the community and inspire people with art using my hard-won skills. So I took the job at the Nature Museum.

Again, my life got a little bit smaller.

These small choices showed up everywhere: career, dating, friendships, even my choices of places to live. Each of them both created and reinforced my core belief that I would never amount to much. That, despite being fairly intelligent and not without talent, my life was destined to be mediocre at best.

Let’s take a moment to acknowledge that I had a pretty great life. In addition to having the basic privilege of being born white in America, my parents loved and supported me. I got a first-rate education, fantastic grades, was able to support myself, had friends. I’d acted on stages in Chicago and Los Angeles, some pretty fancy ones. I had built a reputation as a compelling storyteller at events like The Moth even as I pursued a career in nonprofit management; real save the world kind of stuff. On the outside, it all looked fantastic.

But inside, I felt like a misshapen slug. Unworthy of fulfillment. Unworthy of the life I had built around me. Unworthy of love.

Those are heavy beliefs to carry. And when I hit 35, they brought me to my knees.

I had trouble getting off the couch. My friends, to whom I am forever grateful, came over to clean and cook for me. I ate sweets obsessively and experienced a ton of anger, mostly directed at myself.

The clinical term for all this is ‘dysthymia,’ or long term, low-grade depression that may get deeper over time. Because of how deeply ingrained the beliefs, the stories, driving the depression were, my therapist advised me that healing could take five or ten years.

I’d wanted a life of magic, exploration, creativity, and service. Now I looked into the future and saw endless decades of deskbound drudgery and pasta dinners eaten alone over the kitchen sink.

I didn’t have five or ten years. I needed to take action now.

So I did the most terrifying thing I’d ever done: I started to make big choices. I quit my job as a financial management consultant for nonprofits and went to South America to work with indigenous healers. I dove into a breathwork meditation practice. I spent three days fasting in the wilderness in a traditional rite of passage. I ran over hot coals (super fun, highly recommend).

Each choice, each conscious decision, chipped away at the beliefs that had driven my decisions for three decades.

All of which was nice, but it didn’t pay the bills.

About six months after I left my job, a former co-worker invited me to a collaboration dinner with a group of social impact entrepreneurs. These were impressive people. One had just collaborated with the White House to develop new models for social impact investing. Another had just written an OpEd in the New York Times. A third had founded a company that gave ex-convicts jobs in electronics recycling.

As each person introduced themselves and their work, I felt a growing sense of unease. What would I say when my turn came? ‘Hi, I’m Michael and I quit my job and now I’m trying to figure stuff out and gosh you all are very impressive!’

My mouth went dry; I took a swig of beer.

My turn came. I looked around the table and took a deep breath. Then I opened my mouth and hoped something coherent would come out:

“I’m Michael and I work with amazing people like you and organizations to help them discover and harness the power of story to create change.”

The words hung over the table for a few moments as I tried not to do a celebratory fist pump.

Although I’d had a sense that I wanted to bring my love of story together with a dedication to somehow helping people change their world, I’d never articulated it before.

After what felt like an hour, everyone began speaking at once. They all wanted my card (which I didn’t have because I’d just created the business). I told them I’d run out, dashed home, created a website and started figuring out how to be of service using my creativity, imagination, deep curiosity about people, and love of story.

The journey since then has taken me to board rooms in Istanbul and to working with inmates in California. My work has grown to encompass storytelling and cultural transformation workshops, consulting, one on one healing and coaching work, breathwork and meditation classes, retreats, and keynote speeches. The core beliefs that sit in the center of all this are:

We all have stories to tell. The stories we tell the world and ourselves have the power to create (or inhibit) change. Story and spirit are inextricably linked; they play off of each other in a constant dance. The more deeply we explore and accept the various parts of our own story, the better able we are to show up with greater humanity and authenticity in work, relationships, and life in general. The more we’re able to share our stories, and our humanity, the more powerfully we are able to connect with each other. Powerful connection with self and others brings powerful healing.

Those core beliefs drive big choices and a passion for helping others reconnect with the power of their stories. And I still have the book of Celtic myths.

Has it been a smooth road?
Nope, not at all.

When I first started out, I experienced near-constant anxiety around money. I had never not had a full-time job, how would I be able to support myself? Over time, experience taught me to release that anxiety. It wasn’t quite that simple, but that’s the shape of it.

I have ongoing conversations with myself around the value of the services I provide and the impact that I’m having not just in terms of my individual clients, but also a deeper level. Am I helping shift the status quo and contributing to the creation of a more just, equitable, and vibrant world… or am I supporting the status quo and, perhaps unknowingly, helping sustain inequitable systems? So I’m constantly inviting myself to learn, grow, and move into unfamiliar, sometimes uncomfortable, waters.

The largest struggle is, oddly enough, also what I love most about my work: it’s constantly evolving. My work with one client may look absolutely nothing like my work with someone who I work with 10 minutes later. In the space of a single day, I may facilitate a corporate communication workshop, do an energy healing session, help a CEO with some presentation coaching, and teach a storytelling or breathwork class.

From my point of view, this all of this is fundamentally the same work. It just shows up differently.

From a marketing perspective it is, as a client of mine who happens to run a communications and marketing agency put it, an absolute nightmare.

Please tell us about Story & Spirit.
Story & Spirit is all about creating spaces for people to be more human with themselves, each other, and the wider world. This work shows up as organizational storytelling and culture change workshops, one-on-one coaching and healing sessions, and speaking engagements.

There are tons of beautiful moments that I’m proud of. The moment that, after a breathwork session that began with a client saying he felt profoundly disconnected, he sat up and said “Everything is really pretty great and I’m so grateful.” Or an email I received yesterday from someone who attended a storytelling workshop and wanted to reach out to let me know that she had applied some of what we covered in a meeting and saw an immediate impact. Or watching storytelling students realize how powerful their stories are for the first time.

Beautiful stuff.

But what I’m most proud of is the continuing evolution and integration that’s happening through this work and the ever-deepening sense of trust that comes along with it. It’s a privilege to share that with folks.

I don’t know of anyone else who offers quite the constellation of services that I do, so I suppose that sets me apart (for better or worse). I’d also say that my deep curiosity about people, ability to meet people and organizations where they are without judgment, and capacity for creating spaces that encourage people to connect with their own inherent genius may distinguish my work.

Is our city a good place to do what you do?
LA is a great place for this type of work… mostly because there are tons of people.

Honestly, I’d recommend starting out wherever feels right. I can’t think of a single place that doesn’t need help feeling more connected and human at the moment.

At the end of the day, each of us has our own path to walk. Over the past couple of years, more than a few people have contacted me asking for advice on being an ‘entrepreneur’ or a ‘coach’ or ‘speaker.’ I’ll share what I share with them: ‘I have nothing to tell you that will be useful other than don’t try to walk the path walked by others. My way of doing things isn’t yours; the game is to find your unique way of moving in the world. And embedded in that will be a unique path to being of service.’

Sometimes they get it. Other times they kind of roll their eyes. Either way, I generally get a cup of coffee out of it 🙂

Contact Info:

• Website: www.storyandspirit.org
• Phone: 323.702.2357
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: storyandspirit
• Facebook: facebook.com/storyandspirit

Image Credit:
Marisa Sarto

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