The Medicine of Story: Why Your Wounds Are Your Wisdom
Your story has the power to change the field that others are standing in. When you speak your truth, you create a doorway for someone else to step through.
We Are All Walking Stories
The word "relate" comes from the Latin relata—literally meaning "to carry back, to recount, to report, to tell." Think about that for a moment. Humans relate through telling stories. It's not just something we do; it's literally how we're wired to connect. Every day, we carry back the stories of what happened to us and share them with the people we're trying to build relationships with.
"How was your day?" isn't just small talk. It's an invitation into story. It's a request for you to carry back your experience and lay it at the feet of someone who cares. When we stop bringing back and sharing the stories of what happens to us, we lose the essence of our relationships. We become isolated islands instead of connected continents.
But here's where it gets interesting. Our ancestors understood something about stories that we've largely forgotten in our relentlessly modern world. They knew that some stories transcend the personal and touch the universal. They called these mythic tales, and they used them to make sense of their own experiences and find meaning in their struggles.
Beyond History: The Timeless Realm
In our modern world, we're obsessed with history. We want to know when something happened, how it evolved, what it's worth in today's market. We see ourselves at the front edge of time, marching forward into an uncertain future. But ancient peoples had a different relationship with time and story. They felt connected to things that were timeless. They aligned themselves with cosmic rhythms rather than quarterly reports.
When they wanted to understand something, they didn't just ask about its history. They went back to its origins, to the mythic time when all the potentials of life were present. They told stories of how everything began and how it might begin again. This wasn't naive thinking; it was profound wisdom. By staying connected to origins, they understood that each moment was always on the verge of revealing inner meanings.
This is what we've lost in our rush toward the future. We've forgotten that some truths are timeless, that some stories release us from the prison of linear time and carry us back to the deepest parts of ourselves.
The Healing Power of Being Witnessed
Here's what I've learned from almost two decades of professional listening: to be witnessed with loving attention by others who care is what we all long for. To be truly known. Each of us is a constantly unfolding story, yet so many of us leave our stories untold because of fear. We end up feeling lonely, disconnected, and out of touch with our life's purpose. We feel incomplete.
But here's what the ancient wisdom keepers knew and modern psychology is finally catching up to: each person is the author of their own life-story. We all carry what Meade calls "a story within us that's waiting to be lived"—a seeded soul with its own unique genius and purpose. The work isn't to become someone else; it's to draw out the inner genius so that our true story can unfold.
And here's the beautiful truth: our bodies love being seen and heard. Every time you tell your story and someone who cares witnesses it, your nervous system relaxes. Words have real energy in crisis—the power to help and heal. This isn't just emotional relief; storytelling literally changes the field you're in, creating a different energetic and psychological space where healing becomes possible.
The Illusion of Disconnection
When we tell our stories and others bear witness, something magical happens. The notion that we are disconnected beings suffering alone dissolves under the weight of evidence that this whole concept is an illusion. We discover that millions of others are struggling with the same fears, the same shame, the same secret worries that keep us up at night.
They say misery loves company, and it's absolutely true. But it goes deeper than that. The minute you discover that someone else is suffering just like you—or even better, that they're celebrating their wholeness just like you—that sense of disconnection begins to ease. You start to glimpse a fundamental truth: we are all the same at our core, connected through our shared humanity, our common struggles, our universal need to be seen and accepted.
But here's the catch, and I'm not going to sugarcoat this: to benefit fully from the healing medicine of telling your story, you must resist holding anything back. You must strip off your masks, be unapologetically yourself, ditch worrying about what "everybody" is going to think, and let your glorious freak flag fly.
Easier said than done? Absolutely. But here's why it matters so much.
If you try to polish your story, you miss out on the profound sense of connection that comes only when you're letting someone see your warts. Every time you expose those imperfections and someone loves you not in spite of them but because of them, you gain trust. Trust allows connection and intimacy to grow, and that allows you to become more of who you were always meant to be.
Let's talk about what these words really mean, because etymology matters when we're dealing with the deep stuff.
"Vulnerable" comes from the Latin vulnerabilis—literally meaning "wound" (vulner) plus "able to hold" (habilis). To be vulnerable is to be able to hold your wounds openly, to carry them without hiding them away in shame.
"Courage" derives from the French cœur, meaning heart. Courage isn't the absence of fear; it's speaking your truth with your whole heart, even when your voice shakes.
And here's one that might surprise you: "blessing" comes from the French blessure, which means wound. Your wounds are your blessings. Your scars are your wisdom. Your broken places are where the light gets in.
Where Genius Hides
This brings me to one of the most profound truths I've encountered in my years of walking with people through their darkest moments: genius hides behind the wound. The mythologist Michael Meade puts it plainly: "the wound and the gifts are in the same place." Moving toward your wound actually moves you closer to your gifts.
I've seen this pattern over and over again. The person who was bullied for being different becomes the advocate for outcasts. The one who struggled with addiction becomes the guide for others fighting the same battle. The child who felt abandoned develops an extraordinary capacity for creating belonging. We often hear our calling most clearly when we're in trouble or alone, because our genius sits just behind our wound.
This isn't some mystical mumbo-jumbo. It's practical wisdom that traditional cultures understood through rites of passage. Real initiation was designed to uncover a person's natural gifts while also tending their wounds, because everyone is wounded, and working with that wounding is part of becoming who you're meant to be.
The hard truth? To reach your genius, you often have to go through the wound, not around it. There's no bypass, no shortcut, no way to get to your gifts without facing what's hurt you most deeply.
The Unabashed Truth
Look, I've been doing this work long enough to know that some of you are rolling your eyes right now. "Great," you're thinking, "another therapist telling me to share my feelings." But I'm not just asking you to share your feelings. I'm asking you to recognize that your story—all of it, the good and the ugly and the embarrassing—is medicine for a world that's dying of disconnection.
We live in an age of carefully curated personas and filtered realities. Everyone's pretending to have it all figured out while secretly falling apart behind closed doors. The cure for this epidemic of loneliness isn't more perfection; it's more authenticity. It's more real humans telling real stories about real struggles and real triumphs.
Your story has the power to change the field that others are standing in. When you speak your truth, you create a doorway for someone else to step through. Your vulnerability gives others permission to drop their masks too. This isn't just feel-good therapy talk; it's how transformation actually works—one honest story at a time.
Your story matters. Not the cleaned-up version, not the highlight reel, but the whole messy, complicated, beautiful truth of your life. Someone out there needs to hear exactly what you've been through, especially the parts that wounded you most deeply, because that's exactly where your genius is hiding.
Your Loving Push
Stop waiting for permission to be real. Stop editing your experience to make others comfortable. Stop pretending your wounds don't exist or that your struggles don't matter.
Your story is not a liability; it's your superpower. Your vulnerability is not weakness; it's the most courageous thing you can offer this world. Your imperfections are not flaws to hide; they're the very places where others will recognize themselves and feel less alone.
The world doesn't need another perfect person. It needs you—wounded, wise, and willing to carry your truth back to the rest of us who are stumbling around in the dark, desperately hoping someone else will light the way by admitting they've been lost too.
So tell your story. All of it. The people who matter will stay, and the ones who don't were never yours to begin with. And in the telling, you'll discover what our ancestors knew all along: we are all connected, we are all struggling, we are all healing, and we are all more beautiful in our brokenness than we ever were in our pretend perfection.
That's not therapy speak. That's truth. Raw, unfiltered, life-changing truth.
Now go live it.
