“The shortest distance between a truth and a human being is through a story.”
I was told that more than forty years ago by my mentor, Fr. Tony DeMello. I have carried those words with me ever since.
Joseph Campbell believed that the power of a story is that it unites the teller with the listener. My late friend Ernie Kurtz once told me that he was not truly invested in AA until someone told him his story. Something happened in that moment. He heard himself in another human being.
That is the power of telling our story in a Twelve Step meeting.
We tell what we were like, what happened, and what we are like now. We tell the truth of our common problem, the solution we have found, and the recovery that has followed. And when we hear another person tell that truth, something in us recognizes it. We don’t simply understand it intellectually. We feel it—in the heart, the gut, the body, and the soul.
And in that recognition, something begins to happen.
A bond is formed.
The person speaking is no longer a stranger. We hear something that sounds like us, something we thought perhaps belonged only to us.
You too.
I thought I was the only one.
I see myself in you.
Those moments of recognition can be lifesaving.
Somehow, in telling our stories and hearing the stories of others, we are able to hold off our obsession for another twenty-four hours. Our stories give language to our trauma, our woundedness, our fears, our behaviors, and the ways we have struggled to connect with other human beings. They reveal not only where we have been, but how we have changed and how we continue to grow.
A story allows us to enter another person’s life.
It is much like going to a movie. After a while, we become so absorbed in the character on the screen that we forget we are sitting in a theater. We begin to experience the story as if it were our own.
The same thing can happen in a meeting.
When I am willing to listen deeply to another person’s story—to their thoughts, emotions, behaviors, losses, hopes, and discoveries—I step into their experience. And in doing so, I may discover something of my own.
Willingness is the key.
Like a physical key opening a locked door, our stories contain certain marks and grooves—common experiences, wounds, fears, hopes, and truths. These become the points of contact between us. They are the tumblers that allow the lock to open.
And suddenly, the door opens.
You too.
In Chapter Two of Alcoholics Anonymous, “There Is a Solution,” we read:
“We are like the passengers of a great liner the moment after rescue from a shipwreck.”
What a powerful image.
We have been rescued from a common shipwreck. Our alcoholism is part of the common problem. The Twelve Steps offer us a common solution. And as we work those Steps, something begins to change within us—what we may call an inner transformation, a spiritual experience, a psychic change sufficient for recovery.
But we need one another’s stories to recognize that change.
Stories feed the soul. They can change minds, touch hearts, and transform lives. They connect us to one another through something deeper than explanation. Sometimes a story gives us the missing piece of the puzzle. Suddenly, something we have known but could not quite see becomes clear.
That realization can be a revelation.
So when I attend a meeting, I try not merely to hear the words of the person speaking. I try to feel something of their experience. What were they thinking? What were they feeling? What did they do? What happened to them? What happened inside them?
The common problem.
The common solution.
The common recovery.
These are the threads that bind us together.
That is the power of a story.
That is Our Story.
In early recovery, I needed other people’s stories because I needed to identify. I needed to hear someone say what I could not yet say for myself. Their stories helped me become willing—to believe that perhaps I, too, could change.
Today, I tell my story for another reason.
I tell it so that I can stay sober one day at a time. I tell it because, in telling it, I remember where I came from. And when I see the changes taking place in the lives of others, I am given the gift of reliving my own recovery.
But most of all, I need to hear the stories of others.
I need them to remind me.
To remind me where I was.
To remind me where I could be.
To remind me that I did not recover alone.
And to remind me, once again, to be grateful.
Because perhaps that is what happens when we tell our stories to one another: we give away a piece of our experience, and somehow receive back the memory of who we are.
The story I tell is mine.
But when someone else hears it and says, “You too,” it becomes something more.
It becomes ours.
And maybe that is why we keep coming back—
to tell the story,
to hear the story,
to recognize ourselves in one another,
and, for another twenty-four hours,
to remember that none of us has to make this journey alone.
By Contributor: Dr. Jeff Sandoz
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