The Power of Story

I just got back from a trip to Italy. It was one of those trips where you see things you’ve heard about most of your life and suddenly it’s a living, breathing reality. I walked through the ruins of Pompeii and found myself tearful at what was once a thriving city that was destroyed by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.

I mused to my husband that the people who lived here and were killed by the eruption had no idea that one day they’d be part of a story that would then become a giant tourist attraction.

 Stories matter.

I became a therapist largely because of my own story. It would be great to say that my intentions were completely altruistic in finding myself in this field, but the reality is that I was trying to work something out in my own life by becoming a therapist.

A key part of my story is that I was asked to leave my church. It was a wildly disorienting moment when it was happening, but real all the same. We had come to a crossroad of me taking up more space and holding boundaries with my leadership and they found this pretty intolerable. So, they asked me to leave.

This sent me into a 10-year long journey of evaluating my entire faith and value system. I had to get closer to my own story and my experience of what happened to me and how things played out as they did. I had a lot of questions and a lot of anger.

 Fortunately, I was required to be in therapy while I was in graduate school. It was that therapist who helped me walk through my experiences, offering me language that I couldn’t find on my own, and giving me the space to feel what I needed to feel without judgement. It was that process of her complete openness to my experience that helped me rework my story into a whole new narrative.

 This is the work of therapy – story work.

 Our stories do not heal on their own…we need others to come alongside of us and hold them with us. It is in the work of diving into your own story that you find that you matter.

 You matter. Your story matters. You deserve to share it.

If you need someone to share your story with and hold space for you, please reach out and contact me to see if we’d be a good fit.