“I’m not the story you made of me.”  Lidia Yuknavitch

I read that line this morning while reading a Lenny  interview with Lidia Yuknavitch by Suleika Jaouad.

It was one of those moments when truth hit with such clarity, I felt my heart stop for just a moment to let my mind catch up.

It’s where truth always hits first. In the heart. My mind, slower to grasp its presence, needs time to wrap itself around what just happened.

I am not the story you made of me.

You are not the story I make of you, either.

Everyone we meet forms a story of us, just as we form stories of them. We hear their words, feel their energy, their body language, their ‘vibe’ and immediately create a story that aligns with how we see and experience the world. We listen intuitively, even when we’re not conscious of what we’re doing, to what they’re not saying, or what is behind and underneath what they’re saying, seeking the common ground of our shared understanding of how their truth aligns with our knowing of our own truth.  It is a common ground that can only be defined through our own experiences where our knowing butts up against their knowing of what they believe to be true between us.

It isn’t that we want to judge. It is that our minds can only make sense of their truth by comparing it to what we know to be true for us.

There is truth in all things and not all things are true.

The story you made of me is not my truth. It is a truth you hold because through your experience, that is the truth you know about me.

When I live my truth without fearing or worrying the truth you experience about me, I am free to be true to me while honouring your truth about me as yours, not mine.

And when I step away from making up stories about you that I live as if they are true, and instead make room for my story about you to be just that, my story about you, we are both free to live with grace in our own stories, honouring the space between us.

Challenge is, we are a story-making people. Telling stories about one another to make them fit our world view, to make them sit more easily in our life is what we do.

Listening to our hearts calling us to let go of the need to make our stories about one another the truth about one another, is where we find peace, love and joy waiting to embrace us in its healing grace. We are all story-tellers and story-makers.

In every life there are many stories.

In every story there are many truths.

In every person there is only one story true to the heart.

Live your story from your heart.