Let me tell you something about stories—they are the bones we bury, the ones we dig up, hoping the earth hasn’t gnawed them clean. When you come from a childhood where the wolves wore human faces, it is tempting to keep silent, to let the past rot beneath your skin. But silence is a cruel god, and it will devour you whole if you let it.
For years, I thought God had left me. Abandoned me in the wreckage of my own beginnings, like a father who promised to come back but never did. I carried my silence like a cross, heavy and splintered, believing my suffering was some divine punishment for sins I didn’t even understand.
But then I began to speak. At first, it was a whisper, trembling and frail, as if the words themselves might hurt me. But with every telling, my voice grew steadier, stronger. And in that voice, I began to hear God—not the stern judge I feared as a child, but a God who leaned in close, who said, Tell me everything, child. A God who wept with me as I laid my grief bare, who turned my tears into something luminous, something sacred.
I found that naming the monsters robbed them of their teeth. That in turning my pain into poetry, into prose, I was no longer just a survivor—I was an alchemist, transmuting darkness into light. And somewhere in the process, I came to believe that God had never abandoned me. It was I who had abandoned myself.
This is what I’ve learned: when we tell our stories, we do not just heal ourselves. We crack open a door, let the light spill in, and invite others to step through. We say to them, Look, I have been there too, and I am still here. We remind them that they are not alone in their ache. And in that shared humanity, we become closer to God—closer to the divine image stitched into all of us.
And more than that, we plant seeds of rebellion. Because when we name what hurt us, we refuse to pass it on. We break the cycle. We teach our children, our nieces and nephews, our godchildren, that love should never come with a price. That silence is not safety. That they are allowed to take up space in this world, just as they are. And we show them that God is not found in our perfection, but in the messy, bloody work of healing.
So I say, tell your story. Even if your voice shakes. Even if your hands tremble. Speak it, write it, sing it—turn it into something holy. Because every time you do, you make it easier for the next child to grow up unbroken. And isn’t that worth everything? Isn’t that what God would want?
B🤍
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