An Expressive Need to Tell Your Story - Day 64

An Expressive Need to Tell Your Story
Day 64

You may be a person who feels the need to express your story to anyone and everyone who will listen. You have felt the healing salve that comes from sharing with others, and you may think that telling your story repeatedly will result in greater healing.

Sharing your experience with others is a crucial step on your healing journey, but use wisdom in discerning if your timing is appropriate.

Luevenia experienced the death of her husband. She says, "When I talked about my husband's death to people who weren't close to me, it was boring for them. They got tired of it. But it's ever present with me."

God's Word offers advice on timing for all situations in life. "There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven ... a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak" (Ecclesiastes 3:1,7).

Lord, I praise You that sharing comes easily to me, and I praise You for the taste of healing that it brings. Give me the wisdom to hold my tongue when I should be listening instead of speaking. Amen.

~ I feel that expressive need to share. I figure that have to be other people out there that are hurting and looking to find someone that has felt that very same way. I don't go around talking about my losses to strangers. I don't want to be "Amber the grieving" or "Poor Amber who lost her sister and mom" ... I share because I want to help someone else, not for pity or approval. I think that is the fine line in sharing. If sharing is caring, then that is why I do it. I wish someone had shared their loss story with me. I felt really alone in the beginning. I felt like there is no way anyone would or could ever know what I was feeling. My younger sister is the only one that I know that lost the same way I did, except that she wasn't my mom's caregiver as much as I was and she didn't have the same kind of bond that I had with my older sister since my older sister and I had gotten closer since I got pregnant and then had my son. So it was a different set of relationships, yet we lost the same way. I don't talk to my younger sister about the deaths. She seems to let me grieve and I feel safe grieving when she is there, yet I think we both withdraw a bit when it seems like one of us might talk about it. It isn't easy to want to talk about it because I don't want to bring up something that she hasn't worked through nor do I want to sit in a pity circle and just boohoo over the losses. It is a point of restraint I think that I use when she comes home to visit. I just wish that I knew what to say and how to validate her feelings so that she could get the healing that I have. So that she would know that it is okay to grieve and it is okay that it has been three years. She might have worked through it and I just don't know it. Looks like I have some sisterly bonding to do!