“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 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. And the older version of you might have wisdom and compassion that the younger version of you still needs.

Maybe consider sitting down with that child and telling them your story of courage, resilience, and perseverance. As adults, we can better appreciate what it means to have been a child, to have been manipulated, and to have been taken advantage of. We can tell our stories more fully than we could before.

Storytelling can also build bridges. Perhaps reading or hearing other survivors’ stories can reassure you that you’re not alone in your experiences. (But please be careful not to downplay your trauma by comparing yourself to other survivors. Even if someone suffered a lot more than you did, your pain still hurts. You deserve to be heard. And God cares about you.)