The Difference Between What Happened and the Story I Made It Mean

The Difference Between What Happened and the Story I Made It Mean

After we hung up the phone, I noticed a strong feeling move through me. I checked in with my heart and stayed with what was there.

First came resentment, resentment that she could travel, that she could get up and go while I felt stuck here.

Underneath the resentment was jealousy. And underneath the jealousy, something I wanted. To travel. My emotions pointed to something real.

But there was still no peace. Something deeper stirred. So I stayed.

Then the word arrived.

Abandoned.

And with it a memory. Seven years old. My mother has left the country for three weeks. I am staying with my grandmother. I do not feel safe.

I felt it.

What Was Actually Underneath It

Afterward, I saw something that took my breath away. My mother did not abandon me. She got on a plane. She had someone care for us. She came back.

That is what happened. Everything else was built by a seven-year-old trying to make sense of something she couldn't understand yet.

The truth underneath was simpler. More tender than any story.

I felt afraid. I felt alone.

That's it. That's what was real.

Why Knowing the Story Wasn't Enough

Knowing the story didn't bring peace. The story was only information.

Afraid. Alone. I sat with it. Just the feeling itself. I let it be real. I didn't try to fix it or move it along.

After a few moments, I burst out laughing.

Not because it was funny. Something on the other side of everything I'd been carrying moved through me freely. Light. Alive.

The emotion was never the problem. It was the story I'd wrapped around it. And that story was fifty-five years old.

What Happens When the Feeling Finally Completes

My friend in Amsterdam gave me a gift she didn't know she was giving. She got on a plane. And this morning, fifty-five years later, that little girl who felt afraid and alone finally let herself feel it.

And let it go.

It wasn't darkness on the other side. It was life. Just life, moving freely again.

What story might you be living out of — that began as something much simpler than the meaning you gave it?

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