I am working with an organization that provides counselling services to the broadest range of society, from no income to high net worth. The centre is a place of compassionate healing for everyone who walks through their doors. In the sacred space the therapist creates to allow clients to share their hurts and pains and wounds, in that space where they explore the possibility for more of what they want in their lives, healing becomes reality.

As therapists, there is a natural and a learned hesitation in asking clients to ‘tell their story’ beyond the safety of the therapist-client circle. Privacy concerns, fears of being labelled, stigmatized, re-wounded are all natural and real concerns.

Yesterday, the CEO invited me to come into their regular staff meeting to talk about story. I am working with them on ideas for their 50th anniversary celebrations and have suggested it would be beneficial to build a database of client stories that speak from the heart to the heart.

This is work I love — Story gathering. Story telling.

This is ground I know well. Listening, probing, hearing, inquiring. Being open and compassionate. Being present and receptive. I have learned through telling my own story what a difference it makes — within me and in the world around me. There is power in our stories. 

Telling our stories makes a difference. In our telling we have the capacity to touch hearts and open minds. In our sharing we create space to heal, to renew, to open the door to a new story beyond the threshold of the past.

Honouring another’s story by listening with a gentle heart and open mind is vital. So is inviting someone to share.

Later in the day one of the counsellors came up to me to tell me she had asked someone if they would be willing to share. They were on their last session and the counsellor extended the invitation.

It was all it took.

One invitation.

And the client immediately responded with ‘yes’.

What a gift. To know you’ve helped someone move far enough along their healing journey that they are willing and able to share that journey with another.

And, as I told the counsellor, what a gift to the client to know they have healed enough to have been invited to share their journey and have the courage to say, yes. To know, their story makes a difference.

Giving is receiving.

Yesterday, an invitation to tell story rippled out into the world and continued to resonate and to draw out the beauty of our human condition through one person’s willingness to say, ‘yes’.

If we don’t ask, the answer is always no, I told the counsellors (I’d told the group at the Urban Exposure Project the same thing the night before — it was one of my father’s favourite sayings. Thanks dad!) When we ask, the possibility of ‘yes’ opens up.

We never know when one question  will touch another nor when one story will ignite imagination. Like extending an invitation, sharing our stories opens up the possibility of more than we can ever imagine.

And when we listen to each other’s stories with gentle hearts and open minds, we create a world of difference. A world where we are not measured by the story of the past, but rather, by our courage and capacity to create powerful meaning in our lives today.

We all have stories of falling down. We all have stories of getting back up. Like a baby who falls when learning to walk, we encourage each other to get stand up and try again when we share the steps we took to transform the pain of falling down into the joy of flying free.