TELL | DAY 2 OF 31
This largely unedited free-write is linking up with the Write 31 Days Challenge. // indicates the start and stop of five minutes. The prompt word for today under the 31 Days of Five Minute Fridays is TELL.
My 31 Day writing series is called
31 Days of living well
Ready, Steady, Go...
// Whatever you do don’t tell…
If you do that I’ll tell everyone…
I’m going to tell on you…
You can’t tell them that or they’ll…
I cannot tell you how may times in my life I have heard these chilling sentences and I hate to admit how many years I allowed myself to be bound in guilt, fear and condemnation because I was afraid to 'tell'.
You might not be able to relate to this at all, but have you ever been so ashamed? Ashamed of what you did or of what has happened in your life? So ashamed that you felt like if you ever told anyone, that would be it, your life would be over? Or, have you ever wanted so badly to interrupt a negative or pathetic conversation and tell the person the truth but you have been silenced by the fear of being misunderstood, judged or rejected?
Or maybe, you feel like, so many people have interesting or powerful stories to tell, but yours just wont match up?
If you are me, you have faced all of those things.
I want to encourage you to tell. Tell your story, interrupt the conversation, confront the culture, confess your shame… Silence when it is undergirded by peace and tranquility is beautiful, priceless even. But silence because you are muzzled by fear, intimidation or guilt will eventually cost you everything, it nearly cost me my very sense of who I was and my purpose. //
Your story matters and believe me when I tell you that it is the key to someone else freedom and victory. Did you know that? So often the key to someone else jail is hidden in your mouth.
I've had very, very dark lows, done things I was ashamed of, had things done to me that caused me pain, lived as a young, bi-racial woman in what seemed to be an old white man’s world… and the journey has been less than perfect. However, what bound me, was not what happened to me or what I did, what bound me was being muzzled into silence and left in a prison locked by the sentence “whatever you do, don't tell them…”
Well you know what, I did. I told the “them’s” that mattered and they did nothing but look into my eyes and love me. And I came to realise that the ones who left, weren’t worth it anyway. What was worth it? My freedom. My future. My voice.
If you want to live well, you have to tell.
Tell your story, because in it is the key to somebody’s victory. First and foremost, your own.