It starts with stories.

Hi. I am Madison Murphy Barney, but I go by many names. If you are one of my many siblings or my childhood best friend, you likely call me Maddy. Shortly after I was born, I was given a name in the Shoshone language that translates to “swimming spirit.” This has always been the truest thing about me. I am here to swim through complexities and contexts to reveal a more just, compassionate, equitable world. More concretely, I am a two spirit author, public health storytelling expert, and doula. 

For the first 18 years of my life I lived in North Dakota in a community that largely believed in what I didn’t believe in – and also loved me incredibly well. At 18, I packed two bags and moved to Thessaloniki, Greece to make good on a promise I made to a librarian when I was eight. Two years in Thessaloniki led to two years in Madrid, Spain to finish my degree. I then worked in Azerbaijan and later completed a Fulbright in a town called Marang on the east coast of Malaysia. I spent much of my time in these places designing and implementing storytelling programs.

After leaving Marang, my life of living out of two backpacks came to an end: I bought a bed and a blender and began my Masters of Public Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where I focused on storytelling as a tool for health equity. During my time as a student, I worked with the Harvard Ministerial Leadership Program, the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative, the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, and the Rose Service Learning Fellowship to this end. 

I then moved to New York City, which I departed 2.5 years later and now steward two acres of land in Middlesex, Vermont. I work with StoryCorps and other organizations to build a larger national culture of storytelling within health systems in order to build trust and speak truth to the systems perpetuating health disparities. I write for and organize an online community centered on storytelling and rematriation and also have the distinct honor of being a doula rooted in a practice of birth as ceremony.