Are you keeping an untold story in lock down? A painful chapter stored somewhere in your heart under lock and key? A tender memory moldering out of sight?
Why?
Have the voices been messing with you? The voices that insist you have nothing important to say? That you have no talent for this kind of thing? That no one wants to hear what you have to say anyway?
Perhaps your story is too painful to revisit. Too achingly sad to put into words. Too confusing to make sense of...so you haven't started.
“You are so brave and quiet,
I forget that you are suffering.”
~Ernest Hemingway~
If this resonates with you, you MUST begin writing. Do it for the rest of us. Pick up any old scrap of paper and get started. Or open a blank document and begin. Or run out and get yourself a journal that strikes you as welcoming and forgiving. Go now! We’ll wait.
As Maya Angelou reminds us:
“There is no greater agony
than bearing an untold story inside you.”
~Maya Angelou~
Can’t do it? Try this. Ask yourself these three questions:
1. What do I know?
Perhaps you lost a child. Maybe it happened because of a miscarriage no one saw coming. Perhaps someone convinced you to have an abortion when you were too young to understand what was happening…and now you can’t forgive yourself. Maybe you spent an inestimable number of sleepless nights at your child’s bedside praying for his survival to no avail. You know everything there is to know about suffering.
2. Who else needs to know it?
If you survived, someone else needs to know how you managed to pull it off. Someone somewhere needs to know that healing is possible. It might be the father who suffers a disabling injury. Or the parent of a child with special needs. Or the woman who is hearing the word “cancer” for the first time.
The story of your journey may be a wellspring of hope for others. Your strength may be the only thing that keeps them standing under the weight of their own burden. The expression of your anguish gives them permission to admit theirs.
3. How will I tell them?
One painful word at a time. One affirmation after another. Honestly. Openly. Courageously.
“Write hard and clear
about what hurts.”
~Ernest Hemingway~
about what hurts.”
~Ernest Hemingway~
Still can’t do it? Try writing a poem or a letter. Perhaps instead you should run out for some new paints and a fresh white canvas. Or raise your voice in song. Or put on some music and dance.
There is more than one way to tell a story. More than one way to heal.
jan
