The weight of our stories

I didn’t start talking about my parents’ divorce until I decided to finally stop running away from myself a few years ago. It was a traumatizing event for me and was tied to deep feelings of shame, silencing my voice and was completely unprocessed because I was forbidden to talk about it. My full body would shake and I would be riddled with anxiety and start crying at the mention of it.

I ended up processing this trauma through writing to my newsletter audience and released it out into the world. I cried a lot when I did and it fundamentally changed something inside of me. I realized that the shame didn’t belong to me and instead of the story owning me, I starting owning it. I eventually talked about it when I joined WomanSpeak as a member and speak openly about it today when someone new joins the group and I explain why I lead the group today.

I don’t think we truly realize the weight of what we carry… of the many unprocessed stories sitting inside of us. They create walls and armor around us and keep us from showing up as our true selves. We don’t even recognize the weight because we get so used to it. It isn’t until we release it that we understand how heavy it truly was.

I hope you have a safe place to release the weight of your unprocessed stories, whichever method you may use to release them. Having a person or a community to honestly share with can be life changing. When we share in carrying that weight by holding space for each other, we create space for all of us.

Photo by Ana Tavares on Unsplash