My husband, the movie aficionado, put on “Lady in the Van”, starring Maggie Smith. As I was watching it, I recall many years ago a movie called “Nuts” starring Barbra Streisand. These movies have a lot in common with our own personal lives.
Initially, the movies showed a person who looked “different.” As the movies unfolded in their timely two-hour lengths, their stories in snippets showed earlier events that affected their own outcomes to give us greater understanding of how they got to where they are today as a reaction or response to those events.
Isn’t that how it is with our own road to recovery? People do not necessarily understand or want to understand how we got to where we are today. All kinds of events help to shape us. Sometimes we are rejected by others, some offer cursory pleasantries, some are fearful of us from not understanding. We can be stuck in fear, push/keep people away from us. Our coping strategies which worked back then might still be in use today even when they are not likely to serve us that well. We just do not know those back stories that define us which leads to other people deciding how we are, true or false. Other people may make up stories of how crazy some of us are or we get that sympathy card (you poor thing) laid on us.
When someone takes the time to 
hear our stories, our history, those events, whether they occur in therapy, group, a spiritual context, a friend, it can not only provide context to why, this can also help to set us free from that shame and guilt we have carried around for years. That sack is very heavy and we become weary. Our past can weigh us down and it will show. There is hope that someone will celebrate our achievements to still be standing and alive.
hear our stories, our history, those events, whether they occur in therapy, group, a spiritual context, a friend, it can not only provide context to why, this can also help to set us free from that shame and guilt we have carried around for years. That sack is very heavy and we become weary. Our past can weigh us down and it will show. There is hope that someone will celebrate our achievements to still be standing and alive.So how can we decide how a person is without knowing the rest of the story? I used to listen to Paul Harvey’s “The rest of the story…” about someone, generally someone well-known. As he unfurled their story, my admiration for that person grew and I gained greater understanding of how events shape that person Harvey was talking about. The extra special part was how that person moved themselves through those events and adversities to do something with their lives. They seemed to not define their lives by those occurrences.
A few years ago, I went to the class reunion. As I walked in with a class friend, I looked around to see who was there. I saw one classmate who looked at me as I walked in and she appeared to stick her nose up in the air. Wow! I thought. She has no idea who I am now, where I have been and what I have done after all those years, just like the other attendees. How many of us know that about others? Likely, there are a lot of us overcoming obstacles to still remain standing. Although at times we are still shaky.
So give others the benefit of the doubt. Try not to make up stories as we truly do not know unless they share them. Same with our own stories of overcoming.
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