“Behind the story I tell is the one I don’t.

Behind the story you hear is the one I wish I could make you hear.

Behind my carefully buttoned collar is my nakedness, the struggle to find clean clothes, food, meaning, and money. Behind sex is rage, behind anger is love, behind this moment is silence, years of silence.” – dorothy allison

we all have stories. we all tell stories. so much so that some of the stories we tell about ourselves become the only stories we tell about ourselves. we begin to live within a very narrow perspective of who we are. we begin to live out the stories that hide our deeper truths.

i believe we all share a common longing to be known, for the stories behind and underneath and just around the corner to reveal themselves. for the veil of one story to lift to reveal the truth of another.

it’s my deepest desire and most honorable privilege to bear witness to this truth-telling process. to be the listener of stories, to grow ears for the ones that are veils to those other deeper and truer stories.

if this quote strikes you in any kind of way, please know you are not alone. the first time i read it i understood my whole process in therapy until that point. that i was telling my default stories while simultaneously sitting in the screaming silence of those stories unspoken. the stories that carried whispers of my soul and deepest desires. the stories of pain and longing, love and light.

and this is what we do when we’re stuck, scared, vulnerable. we tell the same stories, hoping for the listener to hear what’s left unsaid. i can be that listener. together, we can create space for the stories you’re ready to tell.