Why You Need to Tell Your Story

Everyone has a story. And not just any story, but a story that is totally, completely and utterly unique. Every single being has, like a thumbprint or a snowflake, a signature story like none other. Take a moment and remember a time you heard someone tell you about their life, something that touched, moved and inspired you. You found yourself not just listening with the utmost intentionality but found yourself viscerally feeling their story too like you were there in the experience with them as it happened. Why is that? How was that possible?

As a speaker and workshop leader, I have seen emotions come up in my audience. I have found that when I am vulnerable and share from a deep and truthful place there is an energetic connection that cannot be described. Something happens. It’s like the molecules in the space move and rearrange themselves to generate the same openness and vulnerability in the audience. No amount of practiced or memorized speech giving can create this connection. It is in the quality of presence and intentionality of the speaker that this magic happens and I feel so honored to have had the privilege to experience this several times.

The more and more I share myself through these blogs, speaking, TV, radio or film – no matter what the medium might be – is secondary to the fact that telling one’s story is a transformative and vulnerable experience. Look at the children who love telling you about their experiences, or what happened on the playground or who said or did what at school? They feel free and uninhibited. But adults however very often feel unsafe for fear of judgment, opinion or criticism. Kids don’t care about being judged. They haven’t been hardened by harsh and bitter experiences just yet. What they lack in comparison to adults, which is actually a great benefit to them, is the thing we call “memory”! Adults have this (memory) in abundance and, more often than not, they remember facts that would best be forgotten and not so deeply etched in their minds.

The irony of this predicament is that as unnerving as it may feel to be vulnerable, you will find that telling your own true story is the safest place in the world because you are finally free and in the embrace of your truth. The journey is arduous yes at times, but once you arrive, you are home.

Over twenty years ago someone suggested I write a book and I outrightly refused to do so. Me, tell my story? Share all the deep, dark, shameful secrets I have been keeping under the covers my whole life? Never. Little did I know at the time that the not telling of my story was keeping me sick, depressed, unhappy and attracting the same painful people, lessons and experiences in my life, over and over again. It was like I “thought” I was free but I really was not. I was worse off, in fact, entrapped and entrenched in the pretend safety of my superficial life.

In the summer of 2012, I started to climb out of the shadows and began writing my memoir, “Coming Home to the Heart”. Writing my first book was a journey in itself. I could write a book about writing the book in fact. I learned and grew so much from the experience and not so much as a writer but as a person. I had to be vulnerable and surrender to my truth, release my past and forgive my relationships, above all forgiving myself for all that I continued to blame myself for.

Telling my story truly and deeply helped me heal. This one reason alone is enough that I ask you too to tell your story, but the benefits of telling one’s story are even more. When I read the reviews on Amazon for my book, and when readers send me messages about my book, I realize that telling my story not only helped in my healing but that it also helped as a catalyst on the journey of others on this planet.

The bottom line is this: “We need to tell our story, so that we may heal!”

Uncovering all the dark corners, shedding the shame, guilt, and past pains, freeing yourself from the entrapment of the old ways of thinking, gaining true freedom.