Truth: A very complicated subject. Is it subjective or fact? Real—or the power of all we have been told? We wonder—in history, media, politics, religious doctrine, or altered family narratives and secrets—what is the truth? What were we told? What do we believe? What have we come to know about our history or ourselves?
Truth is all of these: subjective, narrated, interpreted, inherited, projected, passed down, altered or corrupted. Perhaps squashed, silenced. The ground of truth lies below the muddy pebbles of appetite or ego, inherited shame or cognitive memory.
It can be distorted by the scars of trauma, embedded silence, or shattered fragments of memories that may have split us into parts just to survive.
But deep inside, we know.
We may welcome truth or shrink from it. And sometimes—no matter what we have come to know—we may be relieved when we finally come to it.
In recovery, our body, its persistent brain and, more importantly, our mind begin to clarify what is true. This can reveal itself with disturbing clarity or unforeseen tenderness: in flashbacks, triggers, and new realizations. We may connect some of the dots, recognizing how our experience had to be airbrushed to protect someone, something, or ourselves. We begin to untangle the muddled complicated reality. Truth manifests itself step by step—humbly, deeply, clumsily, courageously.
If it is laid bare later in life and feels safe enough inside to reveal it, we might change the narrative of our life to something far more nuanced and honest than we were ever able to do before. This journey of recovery is both shadow and sunlight. Brutal reality or beautiful truth is known only when one is ready to see it for all it is.
Perhaps then we recognize how we have survived with light and remarkable grit in the dark times. Respect the truth and respect yourself. Wonder. Resist. Regret. Grieve. Forgive. Respect.
When we come to this and recognize the wisdom of all we have struggled to know, we can take it in. And…
When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.¹
¹From “A Brave and Startling Truth” by Maya Angelou.