Hi Reader -
Earlier this year, I joined a ten-month coaching program where every week I am coached by a different coach.
Because each session is with someone new, I found myself telling the same story of struggle again and again—just to give context.
And you know what I saw real quick?
Just how much I felt defined by my story.
"Let me tell you how much I've suffered through this big trauma so you can know who I am and how to help me."
While I definitely experience big breakthroughs in these sessions, I also started to feel a growing sense of self-judgment about this "contextual story" I kept repeating.
The inner dialogue sounded like:
- Shouldn’t I be past this by now?
- Maybe those past breakthroughs didn’t really work if I’m still carrying this story.
- When will I finally move on, so it doesn’t define me anymore?
One day, while filling out a coaching questionnaire, I found myself typing the same old context—and in frustration, I threw my hands in the air and said aloud:
“I don’t want this story anymore! Why does it keep following me around like it’s the most important thing a coach could know about me?”
Do you ever have the same story return again and again?
What judgments do you put on yourself when it shows up?
Repeated stories often show up in two ways:
- They get louder — because they need our attention.
- They get softer — because we’re healing.
And maybe sometimes it's even a little of both.
Either way, stories cycle. They just do.
Healing is not a straight line.
We return to the same stories, not because we’ve failed, but because we're cyclical beings.
Mother Nature grows in cycles. So do we.
So the gentle question becomes:
Is your story getting louder or softer?
- If it’s getting softer, that’s healing.
- If it’s getting louder, that’s a call for attention.
Either way, it’s not a flaw. It's a cycle.
If you're looping through something familiar right now, you are not broken.
You are simply moving in the shape that life moves: A spiral, not a line.
The cycle is supposed to be there. What purpose does yours serve right now?
You are loved, Dear one.
Delightfully,
brooke
P.S. Happy to report that my own story has grown softer and softer. It's taken the whole year but now it feels like a faint whisper of something that used to be there but isn't part of my identity any longer. The peace this brings is worth the many cycles of gently holding space for it to soften at its own pace. Here's to divine timing of Mother Natures cycles.