Not All Stories Have Words

Sometimes the story in you doesn’t come with the words that could do it justice. Your wit, wisdom, or insight can fail to capture the pain you have been holding on to. Instead, the body just cracks, pulls the ripcord, and the only thing left is tears. We like to believe every struggle can be explained, categorized, turned into a lesson we can repeat at dinner or on a podcast, but some experiences refuse translation. Illness, loss, disappointment, the slow erosion of the life you thought you were building, these things often live outside words. Crying becomes the primitive form of speaking your truth, a way of admitting that the nervous system knows something you cannot find the words for. Allowing yourself to cry is not weakness or regression or lack of coping, it is the recognition that not all stories can be easily shared with words, some simply want to be felt and to be seen for what you are feeling. And strangely, when you stop forcing words onto what hurts, the pressure to understand everything can calm down, and the story, wordless as it may be, finally gets validated.

Dr. Jeff Bone