“Some people make cutting remarks, but the words of the wise bring healing.” (Proverbs 12:18)

At various points in your life, you’ve probably received well-intended but less-than-helpful words of support. Maybe it was the classic “You know everything happens for a reason!” or “You just have to stay positive!” These kinds of niceties often leave us rolling our eyes because they usually don’t meet us where we are. Such remarks can cut us open, making us feel unseen and unheard.

Oftentimes, the people who walk with us in our pain are people who have experienced and reckoned with pain themselves. In her 2017 book Braving the Wilderness, author and scholar Brené Brown argues that people who have experienced hurt are precisely the people with the greatest capacity to help others heal.

By virtue of their experiences, survivors often possess a kind of wisdom that others lack. Someone who has lived through the trauma of abuse, grieved and grown around the pain of that experience, may be able to empathize with the emotions and confusion other survivors may feel.

This points to yet another benefit to storytelling: The practice can help survivors build bridges toward others. Survivors don’t owe anyone their story, ever; but some may find comfort in knowing that the act of sharing their story may help others, and might also find other survivors’ stories helpful.