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I Know What I Heard
This week we have the memorial service for my stepdad, and at the same time I’ve needed to declutter the house. When someone dies, there is so much to do…it feels like there needs to be a pause button in life, just to take those extra breaths and to take time to look back at our stories.
What happens to us, the words that are said to us and how we take them in shapes our life. Validating them, knowing their truth or untruth, shapes our daily lives.
I remember the exact sentence. I remember where I was when it was said to me. I remember thinking, even at the time: is this for real? I remember saying that out loud, because it mattered.
For a long time afterwards, I quietly ignored it and rewrote it in my own head. Told myself I’d probably overreacted. That it wasn’t really worth the feeling it had left me with, they didn’t mean in that way. That version – the smaller, more forgiving version – was easier for everyone, including me.
It took me years to trust my own memory of it again. Years to say: no, actually, that really did matter and those words really did hurt. I know exactly what was said and how it felt, and I don’t need anyone’s agreement to know that.
This is the thing I see now with women I speak with. Not that they’ve lost their voice – they speak perfectly well. It’s that somewhere along the way, someone convinced them their own memory needed a second opinion.
“You’re too sensitive.” “It wasn’t that bad.” “That’s not what happened.” “You’re overreacting.”
Repeated over enough years, that can leave you doubting the one witness who was there for your whole life. You. Until one day, you know in your bones that you were right all along.
I know this pattern so well because I lived it before I ever coached a single woman through it. And I know exactly what it takes to come out the other side of it, because I’ve done it myself. It’s the moment a woman finally says something out loud that she’s been quietly doubting for years – and instead of it being rewritten for her, it’s simply witnessed. Yes, that happened. Yes, you’re allowed to feel what you felt about it. And yes, you can move forward from it.
That’s most of what I actually do. I don’t fix anything. I hold space for the woman to find her own truth, her reality.
Here’s the practice I use for myself, and offer to others. Whenever someone rewrites what happened to you, write down two things, side by side. Their version. Your reality. Not to argue with them – just so you have it, in your own words.
Their version: “It wasn’t that big a deal.”
Your reality: it was, because you’re the one who felt it.
Their version: “You’re remembering it wrong.”
Your reality: you were there. You know what you heard.
You don’t need them to agree with you. That’s the actual shift – not winning the argument, just no longer needing to.
This week’s practice:
Think of one moment someone rewrote what happened. Write their version down, plainly. Then write yours, just as plainly, underneath.
Read both back. Notice which one has more detail. Which one you can actually feel in your body. That’s the one that’s true.
You don’t owe anyone the version that makes them comfortable. And if you’re ready to have someone in your corner who won’t let you talk yourself out of your own truth either – that’s exactly what I do, and exactly why I can help.
With love and best wishes always,
Susy