Speak from the Scar, Not the Wound

I heard someone say, “Speak from the scar, not the wound,” and the visual of it has really stayed with me.

The reason it resonates so much is because of the work I do with people and their stories.

People sometimes come to me when they are still in the wound. During our sessions, we go through the pain and try to make sense of what has happened. This is a process, and it takes time.

When you speak from the wound, it is still tender. You are still in the pain, and talking about it can bring all those emotions back to the surface.

But when you speak from the scar, you can step back from the experience. You can talk about what happened without it overwhelming you. You can still connect emotionally with your audience, but you are no longer bleeding into the story.

I know this because I have experienced it myself.

When I first started speaking about my mum and her death, it was incredibly traumatic. From finding out that she had a brain tumour to the speed at which everything happened and the time when she died, the whole process was devastating.

She died in March, and by December that year, I was delivering a talk about her.

I had to do everything I could to hold back the tears.

Each year, as I continued to tell her story, I became more able to step back from what I was saying. I could hold the emotion in the room without allowing it to overwhelm me.

I realised that when I speak from the scar, I can still connect emotionally with my audience and honour my mum. I can tell her story in a way that means something to other people without falling apart myself.

My mum has been gone for eight years now, and I can speak about her and share her story without feeling overwhelmed by emotion.

But there are still moments when a memory flashes into my mind that I haven’t quite processed or haven’t had the time to sit with and cry about. In those moments, I’m right back there, feeling as though it happened yesterday.

I’ve also noticed something interesting. I can tell the stories I’ve told before, but when I try to share a different part of her story or bring a new memory into the conversation, it can feel as though I’m experiencing the loss all over again.

That has taught me something important about storytelling and healing.

Speaking from the scar you have reached a place where you can share the story without the story suffocating you.

This is also what I see in my work as a coach.

When someone works with me over eight weeks, the first session can be emotional. People cry, sometimes even when they thought they had already healed, because we are unpicking the story and looking at the pain that sits within it. It’s almost like picking at the scab or reopening the wound a little so that we can understand what is underneath it. As we move through the process, we begin to look at the pain in the story, the meaning we have attached to it and how that story has served us. We start to build the scar: that tougher layer of skin that allows us to talk about what happened without feeling as though we are bleeding every time we revisit it.

Are you speaking from the wound, or are you speaking from the scar?