Words shape the way we see the world.
However, language is more than the words we use.
There are the external inflexions – our tone, phrasing and vocabulary – and these are held in the flow of our movements and posture.
Yet our knowing what is being communicated is even more than these.
We subtly pick up the timbre of truth without being consciously aware of it. And we notice whether this resonates with all the other elements we are sensing.
This leads me to the extraordinarily perceptive line toward the end of Brené Brown’s Manifesto of the Brave and Brokenhearted:
Story is our way home. Truth is our song.
Our story is so much more than the narrative we periodically clothe ourselves with when we need some sort of explanation or defence of our identity.
It is our means of finding where we belong. Not returning to a predetermined box from which we have escaped, but to that place where we are loved for who we are.
And the truth sets us free to soar. To craft the song of our lives that only we can sing.
Because the world is waiting to hear the voices of the brave. Of those who know what it is to fall yet rise again with hope and love.
And if we’re quiet, we can start to hear them on the breeze.
Manifesto of the Brave and Brokenhearted
There is no greater threat to the critics
and cynics and fearmongers
than those of us who are willing to fall
because we have learned how to rise.
With skinned knees and bruised hearts;
we choose owning our stories of struggle,
over hiding, over hustling, over pretending.
When we deny our stories, they define us.
When we run from struggle, we are never free.
So we turn toward truth and look it in the eye.
We will not be characters in our stories.
Not villains, not victims, not even heroes.
We are the authors of our lives.
We write our own daring endings.
We craft love from heartbreak,
compassion from shame,
grace from disappointment,
courage from failure.
Showing up is our power.
Story is our way home. Truth is our song.
We are the brave and brokenhearted.
We are rising strong.
+ Brené Brown, from Rising Strong