What If You Shifted The Story You're Telling Yourself

Driving my daughter to march in our local Pride Parade this past weekend, I flipped on the car radio. Esther Perel's voice, one I recognize from long hours listening to her incredible podcast Where Should We Begin, filled the car. She was being interviewed about relationships (duh!). But she told more of her backstory than I've heard before. About how both of her parents were the only surviving members of their families after Hitler's reign of terror. About growing up in Antwerp, surrounded by other survivors of the Holocaust. And she noticed something that set her on the course of her life – helping us find connection with each other. What she noticed was that there were two groups of people (not neatly delineated, she pointed out) that each told a story. One group told stories of victimization – what had been done to them. The other told stories of survival – what they themselves had done. She noticed something else. For those who perceived themselves as victims, she said, the most you could say about them was that they weren't dead. But those who perceived themselves as survivors? They were alive.

Not dead vs. alive. See the difference?

Betrayal isn't the Holocaust. But, as Perel insists, trauma is trauma and all pain is legitimate. 

Of course, betrayal isn't the whole of our story. We bring plenty of baggage into all our relationships. Baggage about our worth. Baggage about love. Baggage about expectations. Baggage about entitlement.

But betrayal can also blow our stories wide open, it can give us the opportunity to re-examine what we've been telling ourselves. It can allow us to rewrite. Because stories are not set in stone. They are always ALWAYS a story, narrated by someone who has bias.
How might your story be different if you framed it as a story of survival, of triumph, rather than a story of being victimized. As Laura, the founder of Infidelity Counseling Network, told me: Her healing began the day the she changed the question from 'why did this happen to me?' to 'why did this happen?'
I have zero doubt that you can just as easily tell all of us here about the ways in which you're a hero. Getting out of bed, for a start. Not murdering your husband in his sleep. Taking care of children, sometimes children with special needs, when your heart is shattered. Checking in with elderly parents. Continuing to get yourself to work. Not risking your sobriety. Not spending money you don't have on temporary fixes. Making dinner. Doing laundry. Remembering your best friend's birthday.
Stories of your ingenuity, of your resilience, of your goodness and your integrity. Stories of carrying on even when it's so damn hard. Stories of survival. Stories that will move you toward feeling alive rather than just not dead.
Try it. Tell us a story of something you did that felt really really hard but you did it anyway. Let us all celebrate your aliveness.
And then, let's all of us make it a habit. I want to be more than just not dead. I bet you do too.