how telling your story can help you heal

It doesn't take a stretch of the imagination to understand how hearing or reading just the right story at just the right time can help with healing. For example, you might gain a new perspective on an issue that has been troubling you. Perhaps you've been struggling with guilt after a friend committed suicide. You pick up a book like "The Ticking Is the Bomb" by Nick Flynn whose mother took her own life. His story looks at suicide differently. He considers the inevitability of it given the course of his mother's life. After reading it, you might see things a little differently. Maybe it wasn't your fault your friend found life unbearable. Perhaps you didn't miss the clues because there were none. A layer of guilt falls away.

Healing.

"The book I read after my mother died,

the how-to-deal-with-trauma book,

had failed to say when change could resume,

when one could go on."

~Nick Flynn~

~"The Ticking Is the Bomb"~

 

Or maybe your friend has been diagnosed with cancer, and it doesn't look good for her. You have no idea what to say or do for her, no clue how to help. Then you pick up a book like "Talk Before Sleep" by Elizabeth Berg, and you learn all the ways you can comfort and encourage her, and even bring a touch of humor to the situation. 

 

Healing. 

 

It may be a bit harder to grasp the idea that telling or writing your own story can also be a healing practice. But it is.

 

Maybe for you, anger sometimes erupts without provocation. Perhaps you feel anxious even when life is going well. Maybe despair blankets everything you do for reasons you don't understand. Or a particular song always brings you to tears. You can't help it. Why?

 

"We don't write what we know.

We write what we wonder about."

~Richard Peck~

 

Intrusive thoughts and feelings are the shadows of traumatic memories. Remember the time your father hit your mother in a fit of rage? You were so angry you wanted to hit him back, so scared you didn't dare move, and you couldn't run away. You felt helpless as a child, and now you feel worthless as an adult.

 

Perhaps, in your family, you never knew when the front door would open and your father would come home drunk, and even if you were already in bed, he'd find you there...

 

Maybe that was the song you listened to so you didn't have to hear your parents argue.  

 

Your anger, or sadness, or fear needs to find a time, or a place, or a name to explain it. You need to know its identity, its source, and its setting in order to renegotiate your relationship with it.

 

Telling your story puts you in control. It helps you think about what happened. It helps you understand why. You get to decide how it ends. And that can help you heal.

 

 "At any given moment

you have the power to say,
'This is not how my story is going to end.'"
~Christine Mason Miller~

 jan