December 2, 2025
Our Stories Have Power
Matthew Rodreick
Note: It’s Giving Tuesday, everyone’s favorite non-profit holiday :) Here’s a message I wrote that some of you may have received in the mail recently.
Stories have power. Maybe unlike anything else in our crazy beautiful messy lives. The stories we tell ourselves and the stories we buy, read, and watch largely define us. They inspire us. They warn us. And sometimes the best of them demand something from us.
Scene from the 2021 movie, ‘Pig,’ starring Nicolas Cage.
A few weeks ago I was watching a lovely film called ‘Pig’ with Nicolas Cage. As I often do with well told emotional stories, I cried a few times. I’m not gonna recap the film other than to suggest you should watch it. But after I broke down a second time, I started wondering why it was affecting me.
Without going into my whole life story, I came to the conclusion that I’m the kind of person who wants to believe. I want to believe a good story, not just a well told story but a story where the best thing happens: redemption, forgiveness, justice, resolution - the “happy” ending of a kind. I want to believe that the “arc of history bends toward justice,” Martin Luther King’s famous paraphrase of a longer quote from the 19th century abolitionist, Theodore Parker.
Martin Luther King, Jr. at a press conference, left (image by Marion S. Trikosko, 26 March 1964; Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division). Theodore Parker, right (Public Domain).
And why do I want to believe? Oddly, because I don’t believe. I don’t believe things will just work themselves out. I don’t believe that there are ‘adults in the room’ who know more than the rest of us and have ALL of our best interests in mind. And more pointedly, I don’t believe that cures for paralysis will materialize if we just let the status quo play out and simply relinquish our trust to a handful of experts.
I believe the arc of history will bend toward justice if we make it bend. Together. And the more of us that grab that arc and pull, the more it will bend.
That’s why U2FP has created innovative spaces for scientists, clinicians, funders, companies, policy makers and SCI folk to share their knowledge, experience and stories; on our podcast, at our annual symposium, in research labs with our SCI consultants, in marathons, in our collaborative working groups and many more spaces. We believe that this story of SCI demands something from all of us.
If you believe this kind of work by and for the SCI community is essential, consider making a year-end gift to U2FP today. Help us bend the arc of spinal cord injury toward meaningful and lasting recovery.
Join us!
