Retelling Our Stories

One of the practices I have been called to incorporate not only into my own life, but also into the work I do with my clients, is something I can only describe as Retelling Our Stories.

We all carry ideas about who we are—beliefs and identities that were formed through memories and stories from our past.

Some of these beliefs began as recordings we received in childhood. Some came from stories other people told about us—even people who loved us deeply. Others were born from experiences that happened in our lives and the meaning we gave those experiences at the time.

I am not enough.

I don't get what I want.

I am alone.

I have to take care of myself.

I am not supported.

And without realizing it, we can spend years continuing to experience ourselves and our lives through the identities those stories created.

A couple of years ago, I found myself reflecting on memories and dreams.

I began noticing that when I brought certain old memories to mind and compared them with dreams I could still remember, there was something remarkably similar about the way they felt within me—the energy they carried.

Some of my earliest childhood memories had become so distant that I couldn't always tell anymore whether I was remembering something I had actually experienced or something I had once dreamed. And as I sat with that realization, I began to sense something deeper.

A memory and a dream may come from very different experiences, but once they live within us, both exist as thoughts, images, feelings, and stories we carry.

I could feel how close their energetic imprints seemed to be.

And that opened a question for me:

If a memory now lives within me as a story—and that story has helped shape what I believe about myself—what becomes possible if I begin telling the story differently?

That's when I was guided to revisit a particular childhood memory.

I was probably six to eight years old. I had gone to visit my grandfather at his trading shop in a busy shopping area. While walking with him, I saw a pair of shoes I desperately wanted. Everyone at school was wearing them. They were very popular, and I really wanted a pair of my own.

I didn't come home with the shoes that day, but somehow I came home believing that my grandfather was going to get them for me.

For the next couple of weeks, I would come home from school excited, run into my bedroom, and expect to find those shoes waiting for me on my bed—a surprise from my grandfather.

But the shoes never arrived.

At least, that was the story I had carried.

As I sat with this memory, I realized that the experience had affected me deeply enough as a child that I had created a belief from it:

I don't get what I want.

One experience had become a story.

And the story had become an identity.

Then the guidance came:

If this memory now exists within you as a story, why not tell a different story? What would happen if you created a version that supported the woman you are becoming—a woman who knows she can receive what she desires?

So I did.

I closed my eyes and saw myself again in my school uniform. I stepped off the school bus, opened the front door, ran up the stairs and into my bedroom.

And there they were.

The shoes.

Right on my bed, inside a box, waiting for me.

I saw myself grabbing the box and jumping up and down with excitement and gratitude.

And I heard that little girl say:

“Yay! I always get what I want. I do! I always get what I want! Thank you, Grandpa. Thank you, Life.”

For the next several days, every time the old memory surfaced, I smiled and consciously returned to the new story.

There was a new recording now.

About two weeks later something incredible happened: a package arrived in the mail from my mother.

My mother lives in another country, and in all the years we had lived apart, she had never really sent me a gift like this.

Inside the package was a pair of shoes.

Except for the color, they looked remarkably like the shoes I had wanted when I was that little girl.

I was in awe. Speechless. Tears running down my face.

In that moment, it felt like so much more than a pair of shoes. It felt like a beautiful reminder that I was on the right path—a reminder that a simple practice could become a powerful tool for changing our lives.

I had changed the story into one of abundance, receiving, and being supported—and with it, the identity I had created from the story began to change too.

Since then, I've come to understand and use this practice at a much deeper level.

Retelling our stories does not have to mean pretending something didn't happen.

Sometimes what needs to change isn't the event. It's the meaning we gave the event—and the identity we created from it.

And that is where perspective becomes incredibly powerful.

If we begin to understand our human experience from a higher perspective—if we remember that our experiences can guide us toward deeper remembrance—then we can return to old stories carrying wisdom we simply didn't have when we first lived them.

And suddenly, we may see something we couldn't see before.

I recently witnessed this shift with one of my clients.

She carried stories from childhood that had shaped beliefs about abandonment, lack, rejection, loneliness, and not being loved or protected.

Over the course of several sessions, we began looking at those experiences from different perspectives.

And something beautiful happened.

She began to recognize love and support that had always been present but that she had never been able to see through the perspective from which she had originally experienced the story.

She saw herself differently.

Loved.

Protected.

Seen.

Cared for.

She was even able to recognize ways in which some of those experiences had served her life that she had never considered before.

She began to see her own story as a gift—an experience that, from this new perspective, had helped shape the amazing woman she is today.

During one of our sessions, she was guided to retell her story from this new understanding.

And as she spoke, tears began flowing.

Not because we had erased her past.

We hadn't.

But the past no longer had to mean what it had always meant.

She could release beliefs and identities that had been created from one perspective and allow herself to see her story—and herself—through another.

This is the power I continue to discover in remembrance.

When we remember who we truly are, we begin to understand that we are more than the identities we created from the experiences of our past.

We can return to those experiences carrying the wisdom and perspective that become available to us through remembrance.

We can ask:

What else is true about this story?

How did this story happen for me?

What couldn't I see then that I can see now?

Who did I decide I was because of this experience?

And is that still the story I choose to tell about myself?

This isn't about erasing our humanity, dismissing pain, or pretending difficult things never happened.

It is about remembering that we are not required to spend the rest of our lives living from the meaning we gave an experience when we were five, ten, twenty—or even forty years old.

We are allowed to see again.

We are allowed to understand differently.

We are allowed to tell a story rooted not only in what happened, but also in what we now know.

We are allowed to remember.

And when we retell our stories from a place of love, trust, support, abundance, freedom, joy, and remembrance, something profound can happen:

We stop allowing the past to tell us who we are.

We remember who we are—and from there, we begin creating a different story.

With love,

Veronica Nouel

Founder of Lumina Circle