Telling your story – reporting.
The first step in this process is to put words to your experience and tell your
story. I have often heard people say, as they begin to tell their story,
they realize that they have never really shared the details
of their experience before. It is powerful to begin to share
one’s secrets, including the painful parts of his/her story that have
shaped and formed who they are.
Embracing your story – owning.
The next step in the process is to own your story. When we first begin to
tell our story, we can sound like a reporter who is detached from
the events. Somewhere in the process, we are no longer just using
words to communicate our story and we begin to recognize that the
events being shared are ours. This is a significant step in
healing, because in order to steward our story, we must first own it as
ours. Stewardship begins with ownership. Stewardship is the
process of understanding something’s value and managing it accordingly.
Feeling your story - connecting
to the emotions. As we begin to own our story, it opens the door
to feel our story. With each of our childhood experiences there
is an emotional component, and yet for many people, it was not safe nor
encouraged to express those feelings at the time. The emotions are
still within us, and in many cases, leak out in our current life. When we
allow ourselves to feel the power of our story, we can begin to fully live in
the present, and not be held hostage by the past.
Integrating your story – accepting
grace. What finally happens on this journey is that we are able
to integrate all parts of our story – the good and bad, the painful and
comforting, the desperate and the hopeful. For many of us there are parts
of our story that we wish did not exist and ever happened. Many times there are
harsh judgments and shame associated with our own experiences.
When we begin to integrate our story, we recognizes that it is all parts of our
story that shape and form us, and when we look at our story and lives
through the lens of grace, we become a gentle observer and we can live in
truth.
The Power of “And” Many
of us have been living in a world of “either … or.” We get stuck
into thinking that something or someone must be either all good or all
bad. An aspect of recovery and emotional health is accepting
that in each of us there is the capacity for both good and bad.
When we expect or need for someone to be all of something, life becomes disappointing
and lonely. Life is not like the movies where the villain is easily
identified.
We discover that those we love have the capacity to hurt us, and
yet, we still can see the goodness of who God has created them to be. As
we do the work of integrating all parts of our story, and we come to see the
truth of who we are, we are then able to see the complexity in others. We
begin no longer to need the contrast of black and white, we are able to
embrace and celebrate the beauty of the gray that is in us all, which leads us
to discover
the power of “And.”
Greg Miller, M.Div., D.Min.
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