Stories and the Storying
that heal us
I have been sitting with two quotes that convey well all that stories mean to me and that they can mean to you…the ways in which they transform us.
One of them is as follows:
“It is possible to story our way out from shame, from family narratives…this is storytelling liberation.”
~Mark Yaconelli
It is true that we have to be careful with the stories that we tell (Thomas King). We also have to be careful with the stories that we tell ourselves [and about ourselves] (Brene Brown).
The Nigerian author, Adiche reminds us that stories can be used to dehumanize people and break their dignity, but that they can also be used to restore, empower and humanize, to break stereotypes, if we expand beyond that single story narrative.
Breaking free from shame is such a powerful idea. It’s life-changing, really, especially for those of who know trauma and therefore, have a very deep and intimate relationship with shame.
The “shame” that I know and feel and embody from my PTSD, a common symptom of PTSD, is unlike any other ‘shame’ I had ever experienced or felt before in my life.
But storying breaks that strong hold, the power that that shame has over us.
This is also why they say that to share our stories in a safe space, to be seen, heard, and validated, restores us, heals us, it really saves us.
It can go the other way, certainly.
But there is much hope when we recognize that simply holding space and listening, to validate and legitimize another person’s story, is also a way of restoring our broken world. If we can just willingly listen with an attentive ear and an open heart, we confirm someone’s lived, embodied experience, their story, and it is a powerful tonic and healing remedy.
This storying or story-telling can be through sharing it aloud or through writing.
Author Laura McKowen says this:
"The effort of putting words to my experiences, of trying to describe things as accurately and precisely as possible, felt like it was saving my life. One sentence at a time, I was writing my way to an understanding and a grace. I could not otherwise reach. With each word I wrote, I breathed power into a new story of myself, and also slowly started to make sense of what I've never been able to before."
~Laura McKowen
As someone who also felt “saved” by stories, both through the reading of grief narratives, and the writing of my own experiences of death and loss, and two suicides in my family, the more that I realized that through stories—like McKowen—I was also “Breathing power” into a new story of myself.
Through that, I too have been able to make a lot more sense of the reality that all of the men in my own immediate family took their own lives, exited this world, of their own choice, from their own hand.
It still doesn’t entirely make sense to me. Perhaps it never will.
However, in that word by word, sentence by sentence, I absorb the shock and the horror. And I put myself back together, I reclaim my story, in telling how this experience shaped me, and what I do now—
With authoring the rest of my story.
Never underestimate the power of stories.
They make and break us. They are serious business. They are life and death.
