Journal December 2025 Release - Flipbook - Page 29
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I wrote this email concerning the "success story of my life...” ages ago.
During my childhood, I started carrying with me a dark life story of loss, suffering,
illness, tragedy, and self-destruction. This weighed me down, sapped me of life
energy, and made it very difficult to love myself and therefore to love others.
Self-Destruction became an overpowering force that repeatedly hampered my
brave moves towards "Self-Construction". Working in narrative therapy with you
has opened the possibility of going back and retelling my life story with focus on
victories, successes, life, love, and light. I chose to do this.
I saw that every single incident of tragedy/self-destruction was consistently
followed by a miraculous victory of recovery, healing, growth, and re-engaging
with light/love/life.
I ascribe these miracles/victories to the power of Universal and Godly love- as
reflected in my own brave fighting passion for my life.
Self-Destruction used my past dark life story to keep me in bondage with despair,
guilt, and inferiority. Now I am retelling my story using truth this time. My story
turns out to be a balance of darkness and light (yes, the tragedies/disasters/Selfdestruction were as real as the victories/recoveries/Self-Construction). The Truth
is that all in my entire story is a life story of love/light /life. Never mind what my
future holds, the balance between light/dark will always be tipped in favour of
light. Why?
Now, without the weapon of my dark life story of SS/anorexia has been severely
weakened and disempowered. And finally, I have a solid foundation for my
journey of self-construction.
Retelling is really important to me.
SS implanted the idea that Joanna needs to rethink and correct everything she
wrote or planned. Joanna slowly let go of the SS idea that she needs to rework
everything she does to perfection; for example, that she must have perfect
defenses if she wanted to resist SS "successfully". Trash. She now insists on
standing on that imperfectly written draft as it is. It works, and it is good enough.
She says her "balanced best" is always good. And it is.
An Apprenticeship in Extremis
Journal of Contemporary Narrative Therapy, December 2025 Release, p. 5-44.
www.journalnft.com
