I’ve heard the phrase “own your truth” in various iterations for years, but it never really made sense to me until today.

One of the most important things to me, so much so that I see it as pretty much a way of life, is validation. Providing it for others as much as possible, wherever I see it’s needed – and getting really pissed off whenever I witness or experience validation being denied or withheld. Invalidation is a very big, deep-seeded trigger for me. When I managed to escape a horrifically abusive relationship in college, I told my mother, who didn’t believe me, and went to the university police, who wouldn’t even file a report because they insisted no one would believe me (and clearly they didn’t either). I was being taught not to hold onto my own truth, to dismiss my story, to allow it to be stolen away in lieu of other people’s needs…when in reality, I just desperately needed help holding onto it.

At the time, I did have a tiny bit of that help – I had a few close friends who held onto my truth for me as best they could, when I couldn’t hold it myself. I couldn’t – wouldn’t – didn’t know how to hold it for a very long time. In some ways, fourteen years later, I’m still learning how. Like today, when my therapist told me that in the emotional labor I’ve done, I’ve been able to finally “own my truth”, and therefore didn’t need to cling to any savior figures in my head, because I no longer need saving. My story is mine, I’ve reclaimed it and made space for it, and it’s okay if no one is around now to hold onto it for me, because I can now hold it on my own. More importantly, no one can take it away from me anymore.

Most unfortunately, trauma begets trauma. A singular experience that, on its own, might be simply aggravating for a person without such history, can be very troubling and cause lasting pain for a survivor of trauma and abuse. It’s like respraining an ankle, or breaking a bone that has already been fractured in the past, and is thus more prone to injury than a bone that’s always been intact and whole. When I experience invalidation – when a narcissist gaslights and manipulates me and I’m made to feel like the concerns I’ve expressed are all in my head, and not real – there’s a part of my mind that understands this infuriating occurrence as a current and present problem, but there’s a bigger part of my subconscious mind that gets transported right back to when this was my entire life, and not just one bad day or bad week. Harmful people like narcissists are master burglars; the business they conduct is theft. They steal your truth to better uphold their own.

Do not let them steal your truth; do not let them invalidate your story. Your experience, your pain, your trauma, your feelings, are REAL. It is all valid, it is legitimate, and if you’re in a position where you are not able to hold on to it yourself right now, do what you can to ensure that there are people in your life who will help, who will hold it for you until you’re ready. Your story is yours, and no one – no one – gets to take that away from you.