Community Spotlight: Erin Holler & Shalom Story Care
From Burnout to Shalom: Erin Holler's Path to Story Care
From Fundraising to Ministry
Erin Holler didn't set out to build Shalom Story Care. But looking back, she can see how every step of her path was leading here.
Erin's professional background is in nonprofit management. For about 15 years she worked in small Richmond nonprofits and then moved into consulting, mostly doing development and fundraising work. Ten years in, she started praying that the Lord would take her out of that work. She was burned out and didn't know what was next, so she took one of those career assessments that tells you what you should be when you grow up. Nonprofit work and ministry came out on top.
"I hadn't thought about being in ministry since high school," Erin said. Back then, she'd become much more aware of her own sin and figured she was too much of a sinner for that kind of work. But now she was 35, with young kids, and the assessment wouldn't leave her alone. She brought it to her pastor, half expecting him to talk her out of it. Instead, he told her the elders had already been talking about creating a women's ministry director role, and that she'd be great for it.
A Before and An After
That role turned out to be transformational, and not just for the women she served. Around the same time, Erin started looking at her own story, doing counseling and trainings through the Barnabas Center.
She describes it the way some people describe their conversion: there's a before and an after. "I don't really have that conversion point that some people talk about. I grew up in the church. But I have a before Barnabas and an after Barnabas." It was there that she came to recognize the grace and mercy of God and the dignity of her own story, alongside its brokenness, and to hold the beauty and the brokenness together.
Erin kept training with Barnabas, served on their board, and after nine years on church staff, was invited to join the Barnabas Center team, leading their training groups and bringing her nonprofit experience to the organization. It felt like a gift. She'd spent years feeling like she'd shelved her nonprofit background to do ministry work, and suddenly she didn't have to choose between the two.
Discovering Story Work
From there, she started wondering about going back to school for a counseling degree. Instead, a mentor pointed her toward the Allender Center, where she found narrative focused trauma care, also called story work. She completed a three year certification and began facilitating for the Allender Center, taking on clients through their online directory. All of it was virtual, and while she was grateful for the work, she felt a pull to serve her local church community in person.
Erin isn't entirely sure how she ended up on Needle's Eye's mailing list. But last spring, she read a post about the hub of Christian ministries taking shape in our space, and she describes it as the Lord tapping her on the shoulder. "This is not what I had in mind," she said. "But it just felt so generous of him to provide a space where I could try this out on my own, but not be on my own."
That space became Shalom Story Care, Erin's practice offering trauma informed narrative engagement grounded in Christian spirituality, right here at Needle's Eye. Her tagline says it well: making sense of your past for a flourishing future.
What Is Story Work?
So what is story work, exactly? Erin says not everyone needs clinical counseling, but everyone needs their stories to be held with curiosity and kindness by another person. Story work ministers in the gap between caring friends and clinical therapists, offering skilled engagement of sensitive life stories for people who feel stuck in their relationships with God, others, or even with themselves. She stresses that it isn’t therapy, though it can feel similar to the person going through it. It typically begins with clients writing two or three pages about a specific memory, often a moment of harm from childhood, and then spending a couple of sessions processing it together.
"What happens when hard things happen to us as kids is we make sense of them the best way we can, but that's not always the truest version of what happened," Erin explained. Kids often take on fault and responsibility that was never theirs to carry, because they need their parents to be good and safe. Story work helps uncover a truer account of what actually happened, and then looks at how that experience is still shaping life today, especially in relationships.
For Erin, the work is intentionally spiritual. "It's an intentional inviting of the Holy Spirit into your story, to help you see what you haven't been able to see and heal the places you haven't been able to look at," she said. "You don't have to go in there alone." She works with people at every stage of faith, including those who have stepped away from the church, and she's quick to leave the door open rather than close it.
Along with her work at Shalom Story Care, Erin continues part time with the Barnabas Center and facilitates trauma intensives for the Allender Center a few times a year. It's demanding work, but she calls it energizing. "There's something for me that feels so energizing about it. It's hard work, but there's just so much opportunity to see the Lord at work."
Connect with Erin
Erin currently has availability for new clients, in person or virtual. If you or someone you know could use a guide through the harder parts of your story, you can reach her through shalomstorycare.com.
