When I Say Tender, You Say What?
When I say tender, what comes to mind?
Is it soft?
Sweet?
Painful?
Sometimes the most important part isn’t the memory itself. It’s finding the words that help us understand what we’re holding.
I’ve noticed that words aren’t nearly as fixed as we think they are.
Neither are memories.
Or understanding.
Years ago, I heard that healing meant burning things away.
Break it down.
Confess it.
Purify it.
Let it go.
At the time, I was trying to stop drinking.
Like so many people, I had used alcohol for celebration, escape, comfort, and numbness. When I finally decided I wanted something different, I followed the path that had helped many people before me.
One of the exercises, at least as I understood it, was to open every closet and let every skeleton out.
So I did.
I wrote down painful memories.
I spoke them aloud.
I confessed things that had carried shame for years.
I burned the paper.
I was told that was part of healing.
But afterward…
I didn’t feel peaceful.
Mostly, I felt exposed.
The longer I stayed in those rooms, the more I noticed something curious.
Sometimes we unknowingly build identities around our hardest moments.
Recently, Rich and I laughed about something.
We both said we had never gotten to the point of drinking beer with cigarette butts floating in the can.
Then we stopped.
Actually…
Back when nearly everyone smoked, I imagine most drinkers accidentally took a sip from the wrong can once or twice.
It happened.
And it made me wonder.
How many ordinary moments become permanent evidence?
How many stories become bigger every time they’re told?
This isn’t judgment.
It’s curiosity.
Does our pain have to become the main character to make peace with it?
I’ve also heard people say you’ll know you’ve healed when you can tell your story without crying.
I’m not convinced.
I cry during movies.
Commercials.
Beautiful music.
A stranger’s kindness.
The gentleness of nature.
The heartbreak of humanity.
Tears have never seemed like a reliable measurement of healing.
Maybe they’re simply evidence that our hearts are still open.
For the deepest wounds, there are layers.
Different versions of us revisit the same memory carrying different wisdom.
The event hasn’t changed.
But the woman witnessing it has.
Years after I made my confession, something unexpected happened.
I met the little girl who had lived through those experiences.
Not the story.
Her.
Standing in my kitchen years later, I found myself talking to her instead of talking about her.
I told her I was sorry for what had happened.
I told her how proud I was that she kept smiling.
That she still found joy.
That one of her camp counselors had once called her sunshine.
I couldn’t see her the first time I told the story.
Back then, all I could see was the pain.
Years later, I could finally see the child.
She was then.
I am now.
Somewhere along the way, we stopped feeling like strangers.
I don’t think what I needed had a name at the time.
Looking back, maybe it was simply this:
Time.
Space.
Safety.
Trust.
Not trust that someone else would tell me what the memory meant.
Trust that I could sit with it long enough for its meaning to unfold.
The facts never changed.
My relationship with them did.
When I say tender today, I don’t automatically think sweet.
I don’t automatically think painful either.
I think of a memory that can finally be held with gentle hands.
Not because it has disappeared.
Not because I’ve forgotten.
But because I no longer have to grip it so tightly.
Sometimes the greatest healing isn’t rewriting the story.
It’s allowing ourselves to witness it again as the woman we’ve become.
And discovering that even our understanding can soften over time.
