Several years ago, I had the opportunity to take yoga teacher training with sixty outstanding fellow learners; people with great compassion and a desire to bring change to their circle of influence through the teaching of yoga. Young, old, quiet, outgoing, in love, out of love, between loves, and each with their own story. Their stories carried with them joy and laughter, heartbreak and tears, brokenness and restoration, and love. Mostly love. The love they have for their family, their passion, their pets. Some displayed a great capacity to love and others the deep desire to be loved. All clearly had a love for the others of us who made up the sixty. As I again contemplate and appreciate the setting I found myself in 2012, I realize I had seen this somewhere even before then.
You will no doubt recognize a similar scenario in your own lives. For me, my somewhere before was with my family, my close friends, my childhood friends, all of whom are a part of my story today; when we were younger and life was less complex, before life overtook us and told us who we were, when we were known by our first names, not by our mistakes, when we knew ourselves by our childlike wonderment and not by the baggage we collected along the way. Oh, the stories we could tell.
Tell them!
Write your story down, then share it, or write it down and burn it. Or don't write it down at all. Just tell it. Tell it to yourself. Out loud. In a closet. At the beach. Tell it to your best friend. An old enemy. Have a story telling sleepover. Tell it around a fire pit. Or on a hunting trip. Start with the best part. Start with the worst part. But just tell it. Those who hear your story will be moved by your joy and laughter, your heartbreak and tears, your brokenness and restoration, and your love. Mostly by your love. For you see, we each have a story, our own story, unique to us but recognizable by all.
Tell it.
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