Walking together in truth

​I gave a talk yesterday on trauma informed leadership. At the beginning of the talk, I asked, how many of us are in this room right now?

We determined there were about 100 of us.

Then I asked, what do you think our average age is?

We roughly guessed 40.

Then I asked, what is 40 times 100. Thankfully, someone in the audience knew this was 4000. I would have looked foolish breaking my phone out to get the answer to what I know is a simple 3rd grade math problem.

4000, I said. That's the number of years of experiences, or stories, we have sitting in this room right now.

If I was really brave, I would have gone a step further and multiplied that by 365 to reveal we had about 1.5 million days of stories in the room, but again, I didn't want to publicly test my math skills.

But think about that. In that room, with just 100 people, there were 1.5 million days of life.

There were 1.5 million days with stories. Some good stories, some challenging. Some forgotten, some held on to forever. Some that people were walking in, some that people were living outside of, hiding from, in their chase to feel worthy and accepted.

We often forget that. That people show up to a presentation, or to a meeting, or to a relationship, with all the days and stories of their lives.

I don't show up anywhere empty handed, I show up with over 21,000 days of stories.

That makes relationships mathematically challenging. And algebraically speaking, in relationships, mathematically challenging equals emotionally challenging.

The solution?

We invite people to walk into the truth of their stories by safely accepting each other's stories. Not as right or wrong or good or bad, but as the total truth of all the days of their lives.

The less often we have people sitting in a room or across from us in a relationship feeling like they have to hide from their stories, hustle for worthiness, the more often people will feel and experience all the stories of their lives as one story.

Wholeness.

One beautiful story called truth.

One beautiful story called a human life.

And when a room full of lives sit together in truth, well that's when life gets to witness the best of humanity.

The equation is hard, but it's not unsolvable. Invite each other into the truth of their stories. No matter how much or how deeply that conflicts with your stories.