When the Savior Story Breaks

Cheri Williams spent much of her career inside child welfare believing she was helping save children.

Then she began questioning the story the system was telling — and her own role inside it.

In this conversation, Cheri talks about the moment that forced her to reconsider more than twenty years of work, why institutions can become attached to narratives that preserve their own power, and what happens when the people living a story are not the people authorized to define it.

We explore saviorism, lived experience, power, fear, compliance, imagination, and why systems can become so invested in the stories they already believe that alternative futures become difficult to imagine.

Cheri also offers a powerful definition of Narrative Intelligence: “careful stewardship” of the stories we tell ourselves, believe, and tell about other people.

And she ends somewhere important:

“I’m filled with hope.”

Because when people begin telling new stories, they find one another. Community forms. And what once seemed impossible can begin to become real.