The Unfiltered Story
We’ve long known the power of a story. One that moves you, finds you in the moments you feel alone, and invites you to RISE, courageously to the next chapter of your own story.
This really hits home when you actually share your own story. To be truly seen, heard and expressed - unfiltered & una-fucking-shamed.
Diving into the words and the wounds of my story was confronting & so darned messy. But it turned out to be beautifully messy, releasing remnants of the consequences and perceptions of one event that radically changed the course of my life, allowing me to finally share my story from a place of peace. A place of forgiveness instead of blame.
Oh I had so many righteous moments justifying why I was a victim to circumstance & the whole world sucked.
Trying to heal the humiliation from my husband telling me the woman he didn’t have an affair with just had his son was one of those. We’d been together 10 years & I was six months pregnant with our first child after a miscarriage, living in a small town 1887km away from my family. It was pretty hard not to feel like a victim. Or to feel like wishing the bastard an eternity of misery.
But every single time I sat down to write or refine those words I released a little more of the grip they had on me. I noticed the victim language even though I swore I was over it. I’d done the forgiveness practices, I’d healed that chapter of my life & we’d all moved on.
But it was there loud & clear in my language. Inked into the page was the blame, the shame, the victim like it was someone else’s.
I couldn’t see that story while it remained within me, I guess I was too close to it.
The gift of this reflection is that it’s not even real. Well it is, but it can be rewritten & every time we rewrite the parts that hold us captive we let them go & live a new reality that’s a little lighter.
Each and every one of us has a story that needs to be told and rewritten. One that if shared courageously can touch the lives of others even in the smallest way, which creates a ripple effect that plays a vital part in healing the collective.
That’s the real power of a story.
The power of the story within you that’s yearning to be expressed.
And it has absolutely nothing to do with being a good enough writer.
“You either walk inside your story and own it or you stand outside your story and hustle for your worthiness.” That one sentence from Brene Brown is worth sticking on your bathroom mirror so you can be reminded every single day of the importance of living your story in a way that serves you.
The story remains, but how we tell it sets us free.
