MEMOIR NOTE #18 : Stop holding it down. Start holding it close. The courage to reclaim your story.
The healing begins the moment we stop using our energy to avoid our story and instead start using it to face it with compassion and care.
Dear Friends,
There comes a time when the energy it takes to hold everything down becomes greater than the energy it would take to face it.
For years, I kept my story pressed beneath the surface of my life. Like many of us, I believed that silence was strength. That if I didn’t speak the pain, it might lose power. That if I stayed busy enough, helpful enough, successful enough, I could outrun what ached.
But the ache doesn’t vanish when you ignore it. It waits. Quietly. Insistently. It settles in your body, in your breath, in the choices you don’t understand but keep making.
Because the truth is, I was using all my energy to hold down emotions I had never fully faced. Old grief. Lingering shame. The ache of childhood stories that went unnamed and unhealed. I feared that if I opened the door to those feelings, they would rush in like a tidal wave and take me under.
What changed, what finally began to heal me, was this:
I stopped using all that energy to keep it down.
And I started using it to face it instead.
I began to write.
I didn’t know where it would lead. I only knew I had to try. I wrote through the knots in my stomach, the hesitation in my hands. I wrote into memories I had avoided for decades. I didn’t write to blame or accuse. I wrote to understand. To listen to the parts of myself I had once silenced. To hold my own story with care.
And slowly, something softened. Not all at once. But gently, as though a new language was emerging. A language I didn’t have access to until I stopped running.
That’s what reclaiming your story can do.
It allows you to carry your past without being crushed by it. It offers you the freedom of integration. Not perfection. Not erasure. But wholeness.
There is no perfect time to tell the truth of your life.
There is only now.
You don’t have to share it publicly. Maybe your healing begins in the quiet and by writing something no one else will see. Maybe it starts with a whisper:
This happened. And I’m ready to see it.
I’m ready to feel it.
I’m ready to heal it.
Let the page become a place of return to your whole Self.
Let your story teach you something you couldn’t have known before you faced it.
A Prompt for You:
What part of your story are you ready to stop holding down ,and finally, hold with care?
I know how hard it is to turn and face your story. Let me help you do it gently.
If your heart is carrying something heavy, something long buried or too tender to name, you are not alone. I know how much it takes to stop running from the pain and finally turn toward it with open eyes and an open heart.
When I began to face my own story and write to heal, it felt like stepping into the unknown. But I wasn’t destroyed by it. I was met by something deeper: clarity, self-compassion, and the quiet presence of something sacred.
That is the space I now hold for others.
This is not therapy.
It is soul companionship.
It is deep listening.
It is sacred attention.
It is the loving guidance of someone who has been there.
In one-on-one creative-spiritual sessions, I will walk alongside you as you explore the parts of your story that are asking to be seen and heard. Together, we will use gentle practices like writing, reflection, guided meditation, or simply sacred listening—whatever helps you feel safe, supported, and strong enough to face what you have been carrying and begin to move it out of your body and into a creative form.
You do not have to heal it all at once.
You just have to begin.
If you are ready to reclaim your story and begin again, I would be honored to walk with you.
👉 Click here to learn more or book a free discovery call.
With understanding and compassion for the journey,
xo Mary