Listener Questions: Story

by on July 10, 2026

Today’s episode is dedicated to your questions!

Recently, we invited our email subscribers to submit the questions they’d like Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen to explore on the podcast. Thank you to everyone who responded with such honesty, vulnerability, and courage.

Hosted by Melissa Dowell from the Allender Center, this conversation explores questions about what healing really looks like, how to care for aging parents while honoring healthy boundaries, what to do when you feel stuck in your story, how to engage others’ stories wisely, and how to navigate the complexities of family, faith, and trauma.

We’re deeply grateful for your questions and for the trust you continue to place in this community. If your question wasn’t featured this time, stay tuned—we hope to continue these listener Q&A conversations in future episodes.

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About the Allender Center Podcast:

For over a decade, the Allender Center Podcast has offered honest, thoughtful conversations about the deep work of healing and transformation. Hosted by Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen, MDiv, this weekly podcast explores the complexities of trauma, abuse recovery, story, relationships, and spiritual formation. Through questions submitted by listeners, stories, interviews, and conversations, we engage the deep places of heartache and hope that are rarely addressed so candidly in our culture today. Join the Allender Center Podcast to uncover meaningful perspectives and support for your path to healing and growth.

At the Allender Center, we value thoughtful dialogue across a wide range of voices, stories, and lived experiences. In that spirit, our podcast features guests and hosts who may hold differing perspectives. The perspectives shared on this podcast by guests and hosts reflect their own experiences and viewpoints and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, or endorsements of the Allender Center and/or The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology.

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Episode Transcript

Rachael: Good people with good bodies. Today is a special kind of podcast episode for us here at the Allender Center, one that we’ve started to build a rhythm around because it really involves listening to you, our listeners, and engaging some of your questions that you’ve been so gracious to send our way. And before I turn it over to our guest host today, Melissa Dowell, who you’ve had the opportunity to hear from and episodes past, I want to just say that Dan and I have both over this past season through travel and different offerings that we’ve had with the Allender Center that involve being in person have had some tremendous opportunities to meet some of you on the road. And that has been, and I really mean this with all sincerity, like such a gift to us because we so rarely get to see your faces and know your names and it’s always a gift to just get to encounter the community that we are thinking of and anticipating and speaking to in our conversations. Dan, I don’t know if you would add any more to that before we turn it over.

Dan: Oh, I was thinking about this beautiful couple in Minneapolis I had the chance to be with and their, again, I would say college educated daughter. The three of them blessed us, bless me. And it was so sweet to hear the kinds of… When you hear somebody say something like, “I really enjoyed your podcast.” That’s so rare. But on the other hand, when somebody goes, “This particular episode,” they’re not just blessing something at 30,000 feet, but naming in the particularity something that meant something to them in the season of their life. It was a context of a dinner after a conference with a number of people and I did a pretty good job of just keeping my mouth closed. Becky, often when I feel shock will say to me, “Could you close your mouth?” I was just sort of open awe. So I was like, what would Becky say at the moment? close your mouth. So I was making sure that my mouth was as closed as possible, but I felt that sense of, aw, oh my gosh, these are sweet gifts to know that to know we have listeners is wonderful, but to know that there is something of the work of the spirit in the life of another as a result of something that we have done. I think as much as I enjoy looking at you, Rachael, the two of us at times, it just feels like maybe a personal conversation that my mother wouldn’t even have listened to. So anyway, all that to say we are grateful to you all, really grateful.

Rachael: And we’re grateful to you, Melissa. Melissa is our director of product and brand. If you have not had the opportunity to encounter Melissa, she’s incredible and has been taking in those of you who responded to our survey just asking for your questions that we can engage on the podcast. And she’s going to host our podcast today and help us engage your very good questions. So Melissa, I will turn it to you.

Melissa: Thank you. I’m so grateful to be here and I’m honored to be able to ask these questions on behalf of our listeners. So thank you for having me. I will start with the first question. These will be anonymous questions and thank you to everyone who submitted them and for your courage in sharing a bit of your story. The first question is: Story is new to me. I am 66 and my story is not a happy one. How do you move through your story while embracing the present and future? I’m finding that I am depressed and emotional while working through my past.

Dan: Oh, well, first of all, I’m so thrilled that at the young age of 66 that you’re choosing to engage. Let’s just say the universe says elderly begins actually at 60. So for technically a person, a woman engaging your story, you’re going to have more terrain to cover than a 30-year-old and therefore more potential for regret, more potential for guilt, more potential for heartache. But in that, I again want to start with what I believe to be most true, how courageous of you. And can you name and honor that courage? Because without naming what is good and true, we generally don’t have the ability to face what is broken and what we still long to have healed and often won’t be fully healed until the restoration of the new heavens and earth. So the first category is honor, honor your courage. Second, it’s going to require that ability to be able to say, are you eating too much at the first meal? In which case then it’s almost a question you have to ask the spirit, where do I begin? Where do I begin and not attempt to cover A to Z, but to open the door to what significant events of my past do I think have that shaping influence for where I am today? So we look at the past to engage the present, to have deepened sense of hope for the future. So we don’t go to the past to resolve it. We go to the past to be in a position to have greater clarity of how is it that my brain, my being operates in this particular way. So that’s why in looking at the past, we’re looking for where are we triggered? Where have we in some sense developed the neurological patterns of defense to protect ourselves even there, not to curse, not to shame, but to be able to say, I did learn how to survive a very difficult world. Even there is blessing and yet likely those patterns may not be useful in the same way of protecting in the way that it did at one point. And so it’s in one sense, giving the opportunity for grief but also giving the opportunity for imagination.

Rachael: Yeah. And I would add to what you’re saying, Dan, two things. One, you’ve got to tend to your body because it does make sense that it’s opening up heartache, that it’s feeling that you’re tapping into some of the trauma. And so what are some of the body care supports you need, whether that’s talking to a doctor about needing some additional biochemical supports. But I would also say we’re not meant to engage our story alone. And so I also think it’s really important that we are doing storywork with good helpers. And second, I would say we’re not meant to be engaging story alone. It can be too heavy a weight to bear. So we need good guides. We need good helpers. So whether that’s working with a spiritual director or a story coach or a therapist or coming and doing work with the Allender Center or someone else who’s holding space for a story group, I don’t think it’s wise to read a book or listen to a framework and then try to do that work on our own. We need not only helpful eyes, but we actually need good care in the midst of it. And part of what makes engaging our story with good helpers so profound and transformative is in the midst of those places in our story where there was a failure of love, a failure of care, a failure of honor, we get to experience that in the present with others. And so those are the two things I would add to your very vulnerable and I hear a question full of a lot of desire.

Melissa: Are we ever able to fully heal from a previous trauma, specifically sexual trauma, even if it’s a one-time occurrence?

Rachael: Depends on what you mean by fully heal.

Dan: Yeah. Yeah, there we go.

Rachael: I mean, do I think we are able to heal? Absolutely. I absolutely do. And I hear you in the, maybe there’s hope that a one-time event would be easier to heal from than something that’s more repetitive or complex or chronic. I don’t actually know if that’s the case.

Dan: I don’t think so.

Rachael: Yeah. And so I think about Jesus, right? Jesus is fully redeemed and restored and still bears scars. And are those scars, do those scars mean that healing hasn’t happened? I don’t think so. I just think our healing journey is much more robust and dynamic than we could ever imagine. And I think a lot of people imagine healing is like we tend to the wounded parts or tend to the wounds and then the wounds disappear and the parts of us that bear testimony to the wounds disappear. And I actually think it’s much more about like radical welcome and hospitality to those parts that do get healing and mending and tending, but they also know things and understand things and bear truth that we actually need close to us. So Dan, it might be very esoteric way of saying it, but I do think healing is possible. I do think a kind of healing that eradicates the harm or makes the wound disappear. I don’t think so.

Dan: No, I think we both stumble perhaps over the word fully. And to underscore, I do think there is the potential where, especially for those who’ve been sexually violated, where shame is so profound and contempt being the means by which it has come to some, not degree of resolve, but some degree of distance. I think it is humanly glorious, spiritually glorious that that shame power can be largely eradicated, but I don’t think any of us are, shall we say, going to be what 1 John 3 speaks to, and that is when we see him, then we will become as he is and that sense of fully redeemed. So I think that’s not meant to be a burden like, “Oh shoot.” It’s more like, “Oh my gosh, you have no idea what healing is ahead.” And it is both surprising and sweet at levels also disruptive like, I’m not sure I want to know anymore. I’m not sure I want any more freedom because it’s costing me. So do you see the interplay? The more freedom and joy you have, the more of an object of evil’s intent to harm you. You’re too powerful. You bring too much of the glory of God into the world. So I think as we understand that healing doesn’t take away struggle, healing opens the door to having more power and more freedom and more joy, which becomes then an issue not only in the unseen world, but frankly, in the seen world, the more you have joy, the more you’re the basis of envy for people who basically don’t want you to change. So we could ramble on that a bit other than to say, yes, significant change.

Rachael: And one other thing I would add is just even though a single instance of sexual trauma, it can in trauma science have more capacity to get greater healing with regard to something like EMDR or something where it’s like there’s a time and a place and a boundness to the event, but trauma doesn’t discriminate in the sense that it’s always connected and linked to other areas of harm, whether that’s coming from our family of origin, attachment trauma. So that’s why I also think any kind of healing work we do is connected to other healing that we’re met for. So it just does open the door for more and it’s kind of like that C.S. Lewis sense of further up and further in. It’s less of a like, oh, I’ll never be healed. And more of like, I don’t know if the healing stops.

Melissa: This next question has a bit of a story attached to it. And Dan, you teed me up well to ask this question. This person writes, “My mom has been with an abusive husband, my father for 65 years. She is 84, now I am 65. She has threatened to leave him as long as I’ve been alive and I am resigned that she never will. For many years, our stories were very similar having both lived with that man at the same time, me when I was growing up. I left home over 45 years ago. I’m happy to say that abuse is no longer in my life and through therapy and the Allender Center, lots of hard work and the strength of God, it never will be again. My mom, however, has never known a life free from abuse. So while I get better, she feels abandoned by me. I can’t hear her complaints about my dad anymore if I want to get better. So I set boundaries and then she pulls hard to get our story back in line in an effort to make our lives be an identical story. So my question is, how do I remain supportive of her without allowing her to keep telling me we have the same life? She wants so badly for our stories to remain the same and they simply aren’t. Commonalities maybe, but the same no. How do I tell her with love and respect that my story belongs to me and hers belongs to her?

Dan: Oh gosh, just I’m sure all three of us ache and in one sense beautifully she’s answered her own question, but I can reinforce and to say there is no way to in one sense demand of another that they take their life with honor and gravitas and with beauty and goodness. And that bind in that couple that her parents is not uncommon where there is so much dissatisfaction yet a sense of either a religious boundedness or a psychological in one sense homeostasis that you can be abused, complain, be abused, complain, and in some sense create this relationship of contempt, contempt for oneself, contempt for the other. And I don’t know how it is humanly possible for people to have a diet of contempt, but unfortunately that is true and to say that you can stop it, you can’t, you can pray, you can indeed speak truth, but more importantly, you can live outside of that system as she is doing. And in doing that, yes, you exacerbate the judgment in this case of her mother and the demand to come back into the waters that are foul in order for her to have a companion. And I think the invitation she’s making of boundaries set with invitation, boundaries set with… no matter how many days, weeks, months, years you have left on this earth, there is something better for you than what you have chosen. And that’s an important phrase, what you have chosen. Yes, she’s being abused and yet she has chosen not merely to remain, but remain in a system that continues to create for her profound bondage. So just honor her for this good-hearted woman aching, desiring restoration, but choosing not to walk into foul waters.

Rachael: Yeah. I would just add, I think you, like Dan said, you’ve so answered your own question and how can you grow a greater capacity for grief? Because to remain to trust your goodness when there will be accusation that you’re betraying, you’re abandoning, whether it turns into like you’re self-righteous, you think you’re better, whatever, however it comes, whether there’s envy, that you can stand your ground to know you actually have profound love for your mother and that you can’t shape what choices she makes. And that can intensify the heartache the more healing you taste to know what is possible for her and to not be able to transmit that to her will actually require greater depths of grief in order to stay in relationship and to have your wits about you. So may comfort find you.

Dan: Yes.

Melissa: This next person writes, “My question is regarding when your story is difficult to celebrate, as in how do you share or look back with gratitude at all the hurts experienced or caused? In my own story, I’m grateful for where I am and can see persevering and awakening of sorts, but there are many parts that are not celebratory or triumphant like some stories”

Dan: Well, just a quick sentence. I don’t think we are to celebrate, for example, having been abused. I don’t think we celebrate having been in a terrible accident. I don’t think we celebrate the reality of physical harm in any form, but what we can hold is a sense of awe for who we have become as we have engaged that. And in that sense, if we hold awe, that sense of it could have killed me, it could have drowned me and in defiance, I chose, even though I failed a thousand times, I chose not to be taken out. Then I think you can begin to bear gratitude for the spirit of God, gratitude for the community around you and frankly, gratitude for your courage to continue to move. So awe and gratitude is from our standpoint, the framework of worship where you’re able to hold with wonder, but also a sense of appreciation. These deep harms have brought me to be who I am and I still wish I’d never had to have suffered X, Y, or Z. So to me, we celebrate who we are and we anticipate who we’re meant to become and we grieve and meant to hold grief with others. And in that sense, I think we’re standing in defiance against what evil wants with past harm, which is isolation.

Rachael: When I hear that language of my story is not as triumphant as other stories, I honestly don’t know anyone with a truly triumphant story in the sense of like, I’m not saying people don’t have good stories or maybe they didn’t know as much harm, but I think it’s actually like a spiritually abusive or spiritual bypassing when we’re made to believe to be right in right relationship with God we have to celebrate everything of our story. That to me feels like it’s coming out of more dogmatic, deterministic. I think very weak theology that keeps us from the comfort of God keeps us actually from becoming people who are deep wells that have greater capacity to suffer with others toward a kind of life.

Dan: That was an important spice to add.

Melissa: What do I do if I sense someone is wanting to tell me some of their story of trauma or difficulties, but they don’t really want help or engagement. They just want a listening ear. I don’t want to shut them down entirely, but I have a hard time saying no when someone is sharing their heart.

Rachael: That’s a great question. As a recovering codependent and two on the enneagram, I’m not sure I’m actually the right person to answer this question, but I will give it to my best attempt. What I hear you putting words to is when somebody might be at a part of their journey where yes, they’re not ready to actually move towards healing and/or maybe it’s a part of their style of relating to get kind of support and care by constantly ruminating on these hard things, but when help is offered, there’s kind of a refusal. So one of two things for me, right? Is this someone who, this is such a new part of their journey that what they really do need is a listening ear. They just need to be able to tell their story for the first time and that actually is a step toward healing. That feels very different energy than the person who wants to basically dump their trauma onto you and for you to hold it, but they actually have no desire to do something with it. That’s where I think you absolutely get to have boundaries that say, “Hey, you know what? I’m not sure this is actually helpful for me to keep holding this pain. There’s opportunities for this to move toward a kind of healing for you and I’m not going to be available to keep holding this with you if there’s not actually a desire towards a deeper kind of movement,” especially if you are not that person’s care provider. If you’re not the person who they’ve actually entered a kind of very mutual agreement to do a kind of healing work. So if your intuition and gut is telling you, I’m not actually sure this is good and kind for this person and it doesn’t actually feel good and kind for me, you’re going to have to hold on to the parts of you that are going to be saying, you’re cruel, you’re selfish, you’re mean that you won’t hold this and trust the wise parts of you that know something is at play that’s not actually leading toward honor, toward goodness, towards healing. So Dan, if you have more clear words to help someone like me and the question asker, I would love to hear them.

Dan: Well, I was interacting with one of my children and I’ll say none of my children are generally speaking despair oriented in a kind of wallowing, but I did at one point say to one of my children, “What are you wanting from me? When you share what you’re sharing, which was a kind of despairing moment, what do you want? ” And this particular, I won’t even gender it, this particular person said, “I just want you to listen and scream.”

Rachael: I love that.

Dan: It’s like I can offer that literally because the situation he or she was describing deserved to scream, but there’ve been other conversations with human beings where I’ve asked that and it’s been confusing to them. Why are you telling me this and what are you wanting from me is honorable questions because now you’re looking to not just the data that they’re suffering, but the interpersonal play between you and the other person. And in that, if a person’s able to say, “I just need a listening ear.” Great, to what end? Just to have me in one sense suffer with you, I’m honored to do that, but most people will go, “Well, I’d like your input.” And it’s like, “To what end?” Because I can say words like, “Well, you need to pray about it,” which is not untrue regarding anything in the universe, but it’s now clarifying our relationship rather than merely presuming that you want to listen or you don’t want data from me, et cetera. So I think that’s something that very, very few people choose to do to clarify because it feels too personal, it feels too risky to ask that. So people who endure other people’s suffering, irrespective of the nature of the suffering that they’re encountering, at some point you got to ask, “What do you want from me? ” And it will help clarify.

Melissa: What are some common ways a person may be harmed when we engage their story and how can we avoid these common pitfalls?

Dan: Well, the first is simply most people want answers with regard to what they’re suffering and I get it. If I’m not feeling physically well, I want to know what to do. Seldom in the context of our current struggles or our suffering, do we actually have the, shall we say, intentionality to ponder what’s really going on for us? What’s going on in my body? What’s going on in my heart? What’s going on in relationships? So reflection isn’t usually most person’s first orientation, but you’re not going to really know what’s going on for another person without reflection. Reflection on the current struggle, how it’s played out with regard to past experiences and what you want with regard to the future. I think that’s one issue. Spiritual bypass is always the offer of an answer without indeed reflection.

Rachael: Yeah. I think another one I would name is having enough tools to know, well, first of all, does someone want you to engage their story? Have they actually consented and given you permission? That is one way you can bring harm. Someone’s sharing something, you’re seeing something, you want to invite them to more. It has to be an invitation where there’s full consent. Second, if our traumatic stories bear traumatic wounds and we know trauma, if we’re getting too close to it, takes us out of our prefrontal cortex. I’ve had to learn through some really painful moments of wanting so much goodness for someone, but not misattuning to how their body is responding and that we’re moving outside of a window of tolerance where they’re no longer in their prefrontal cortex. Words no longer hold meaning. And in that case, storywork ceases. What is needed is a return to the body and breathing and a sense of safety in the body. And so I think also having the wisdom to know when people are ready and actually available for story work or whether that work needs to be held in a therapeutic relationship on a much slower pace where there are trained kind of frameworks to be able to hold. I don’t think that means we shy away from story or that someone might not want to continue. I just think having that sensitivity To the way trauma shows up in the body. And it looks different for different people. I had an experience recently talking with someone whose desire is so clear to enter story. And I wasn’t seeing how their particular way of expressing trauma is much more of a freeze response. And so I just kept moving with the data. And it was like, thankfully this person has a very, very beautiful voice full of integrity to be able to say, okay, in the future, what might be helpful is this. Slow down, check in with me, make sure I’m actually hearing what you’re saying. So those are the two things that come to mind for me that you need consent just because you’re doing story work or you’re sensing story doesn’t mean that someone else is ready or willing or wanting to do that kind of work. And that invitation has to keep extending even if there’s an initial invitation. The deeper you go, that’s always a posture. And then taking seriously the impact of trauma on the body and knowing when to pause and when to slow down.

Dan: Yeah. And it’s brilliant. And the idea of the face will tell you so much data and to be able just to read another person’s face that they just went numb, that they’re dissociating or that they’re just getting angry maybe at you or maybe intensifying. Read the face. What just happened feels like whatever connection we had doesn’t seem there right now. Am I off? So helping a person read their body isn’t just asking what they feel. It’s inviting the data to become clearer. And there are just times where, Rachael, you’ve done this with me in a conversation and you’ll go, “What just happened?” I’m like, “What do you mean?” “Well, did you just hear how your voice got rather tight? “It did?” Yes, it did. Can you hear it? ” I’m like, “No” Yes.

Rachael: And that’s also you’ve been gracious enough, courageous enough to offer feedback to me as well.

Dan: Well, and that’s where mutuality of engaging story and lives a community affair so that you trust. I’m not saying I’m accurate, but if I’m not reading accurately, help me become so. So that’s just part of quote unquote, good story work.

Melissa: At times while working my story, I get stuck. Either I don’t remember details or I cannot connect with the emotions of the story. What do you do with that feeling of stagnation?

Dan: Whoa. Well, let’s just say if you don’t at times feel stuck, you’re not doing good work. So the reality is none of us… Look, I couldn’t be any more opposite than an elegant ballerina. It’s stumbling forward. And so when you in one sense fall, you’re stuck. You can’t get clarity. I think one of the things that I know I’m apt to do is push through it. It has taken about 74 years and I’m not claiming to be there totally. But the ability to step back and go, “Something’s going on here. Can we create terrain?” And sometimes I literally have to create a topographic map like, where am I right now? And what barriers seem to be there? What risk is ahead? And what’s going on? So even for me at least, I have to write. I have to visually create a map. I have to begin writing. But even there that has the potential of trying to push through. So there’s almost a degree to which I just have to step back, step or two and go, something’s happening here and I’m going to need to slow down and begin to ask the spirit, what’s up? What do I need to hear? What’s going on? And I would wish, of course, that I would have an answer immediately, but honoring I can’t move forward. But also with the desire to truly engage, that’s where I need to be patient and to bless that patience and to bless that I might be here pondering this for a significant season before I get at least not so much answers, but a sense of, okay, I’ve got momentum again.

Rachael: Yeah. I think I would just add, we talk a lot at a Story Workshop and our story assignments are very down to earth in the sense of the closer you can get to the dirt, the more helpful that is in story work. So if you’re engaging, let’s say a larger story, it might just be too overwhelming. You have to fly too high to get close and get down because you’re trying to take in too much data or too long of a story arc. So at our Story Workshops, we’re asking people to write a single narrative of an actual moment in time. Usually that’s happening within a few minutes to a few hours. And so sometimes part of why we’re feeling stuck or disconnected is because we’re trying to land in a story too big. And it feels counterintuitive to get smaller because it feels like, well, how could this one moment possibly capture all that I want to capture about these other parts of my story? And there are certain stories I’ve shared the same story, the same 20-minute story over 20 times. And at times, yes, have felt stuck or more disconnected. So I’m not saying that’s a perfect antidote, but sometimes we need to actually get smaller to actually feel more connection, more clarity and more embodiment.

Dan: An example is Becky asked me a while back, “What was it like to go into a supermarket with your mother?” And it was a context. There were other reasons that was not just out of the blue. And I was like, “I don’t know. I don’t remember.” And what Becky did was instead of like, “Oh, well, if you don’t remember, you don’t remember.” She said, “Where generally did you and your mom go to get groceries?” And even then I was like, it was in Kingsdale Shopping Center. And she goes, “Was it Big Bear?” And I went, as soon as she said the words Big Bear, I went, I could feel my body go, Oh crap. Meaning I don’t remember anything, but I just can feel the tension in my body at that point. And instead of what happened, what occurred, you’re clearly in one sense seizing up. And she just said, “What do you remember about the entrance?” It was like, oh, that’s where they had charcoal. And even that teeny little detail was enough to begin, oh yeah, I can sort of see the entrance. I see a little bit more. So many memories we don’t have access to unless we honor the small, honor the insignificant. And in that sense, you begin to build. It’s almost like running a marathon. You don’t just buy the equipment and then go do it. You’ve got to be faithful to do quote unquote training. And a lot of times with regard to disturbing memories, you’ve got to do it somewhat piece by piece and let the Spirit bring the fullness over seasons.

Melissa: This person writes, “Coming out of a religious cult environment, telling my story is fraught with abuse. How do I protect the stories of my siblings? We all have different ones. It’s a place of struggle as I dig deeper into the spiritual side, while some have very different takes on it. I have serious distortions of who God is versus who my parents were. Am I required to protect their stories?”

Dan: Oh gosh. Well, seeing our time, this is probably our last question. I’ll just begin by a cultic environment is committed to profound disinformation. And that’s true with any totalitarian regime. There is not just disinformation, there’s a kind of gaslighting, a, let me see if I can blind you to reality and bind you to the reality that I create, which creates bondage. So the reality of coming out of systems based on high dogmatism, high totalitarian, high deception, you’re going to have a hard time slowly moving into the truth and that needs to be honored and blessed. So I’ve got a couple more thoughts, but Rachael, I’m going to make sure you respond.

Rachael: Yeah. I think what I hear in your question and even here in some ways probably in your body in asking the question is less do you have… Because there’s ways to do story work in private that doesn’t involve anyone even needing to know the stories that you’re bringing. Unless you have siblings who are still in a harmful environment and a person you tell your story to is going to be like a mandatory reporter that will need to… if their children under the age of 18 or an elderly person still in a harmful abusive environment, then someone may need to actually intervene. If you are adult siblings and you are reckoning with the truth, but maybe your siblings aren’t ready. It’s like even in our bodies, especially coming out of religious, high control religion, we feel like we are betraying. And so in some ways I wonder to what level can your body tolerate the truth that other people aren’t willing to hold or bear knowing then that will increase feelings of isolation or potential exile or even the ways that high control distorts and tells us we’re being deceptive if we don’t bring our vulnerability and truth to the community. So where there’s a feeling of if you start telling your stories to a trusted helper that then you have to go tell those stories to your siblings or there’s actually a space to protect your, like what Dan’s saying, to lean into the truth in a way that it actually gets to be integrated in your body with safety, that’s going to require pretty intense levels of protection and sacredness around that without letting other people have access. And that will feel like a deep betrayal even if logically you know that’s not a community you want to be a part of or you want your family to be a part of. And similar to talking about the question with regard to the mother who’s staying in an abusive system will open up newer levels of grief in that distance. And so more for you, I would want to know, do you have a safe, trustworthy place to begin telling the truth with someone who will hold that with the dignity, honor, grief, anger that you’re meant for?

Dan: Indeed.

Rachael: And that you may have to grow a resilience and tolerance for holding the truth apart from the community you most long to hold the truth with.

Dan: Yeah. So honor can never be at the expense of honesty, but honesty doesn’t require us to tell everything. So the reality of being able to say that I was abused in my family may not mean then that you have to specifically tell who abused you in that kind of setting. But ultimately what I guess I’m saying is your story is your story and not somebody else’s. And there may be moments and times where telling that story will involve disruption of the other stories that are not in concert with your understanding of what is true. So when I wrote the book, To Be Told, it was the first time I put significant words to my interaction with my mother and I let her read the book before it was published. And what I said to her was not, you have permission to take out sections, but if I’ve not told the truth, if you believe that what I’ve said is not true, I want to hear that from you. And do you feel honored by how I’ve engaged our story? So the reality of, especially for someone in a public sphere, I’m generally not going to tell stories that do not have some engagement with the person that I am interacting with. Does that mean ultimately I will let somebody else determine what I tell? No, but I want there to be an engagement where there is care and honor. And if that creates more disruption as it did with my mother, it was actually very profitable to take us further into actually a more honest and caring relationship. Well, let’s just say this has been fun. Melissa, first, thank you for joining us and collating those questions. And let’s just do this again.

Rachael: If we need a part two, we can always do a part two.

Melissa: There are many more really, really profound questions that were submitted. So again, thank you listeners for submitting your questions. We’re honored to read them.