A while back I started thinking about what my story was. What do I present to the world to let people know where I’ve been and how I have come to be who I am now? The answer came when I was at a school residency, really enjoying the deep conversations shared with some fellow counseling students. All of the sudden, it struck me how sick I was of hearing myself talk about my failed marriage and the contentious divorce. Gawd, I thought to myself, I’ve become one of those boring people who defines herself by her hardships. It had been an unconscious evolution. I had, I can only guess, meant to convey something along the lines of "I’m a strong person who has triumphed over personal obstacles," but the more I talked about it, the less triumphant and the more whiny I sounded. What was my payoff? Why did I feel compelled to offer these examples? Why, when I wanted so much to be perceived as a capable, strong woman, did I feel compelled to air a classic "victimization" story?

One of my fellow counseling students offered a theory - that’s what we do! Perhaps my repeated telling of the story was my way of coming to terms with it. The more I told the story, the more it became something I owned, instead of events that had victimized me. In the telling and retelling, I was literally taking the sting out of it. Toward the end, I was telling the story the way I might tell someone about getting a flat tire or bouncing a check; this crappy thing happened . . . and yadda yadda. And at this point, my friend said, "You probably don’t need the story anymore."

I think she was onto something. Your story is - albeit awful and sad - intrinsically yours. And if you have suffered a loss, then hanging on to the story of it becomes a way of refusing to let any more be taken from you. You own it. You decide with whom and when you’ll tell it. By the same token, you decide when to throw it away because it no longer defines you. For me, it was just a few weeks ago in another essay, when I made yet another reference to my crappy marriage and the pain of my divorce. I was using the story to illustrate a point, but even that made me cringe slightly, and I believe it’s time to let it go for even that.