It was the first semester of my senior year of college, and I found myself on the floor of my apartment—in the fetal position—wondering if life was still worth living. My world had unraveled.
I had gone to school to study for vocational ministry. I was training to be a pastor. But one morning, I woke up and it was like everything I believed and built my life around crumbled at once. I wasn’t just deconstructing my faith—I was unraveling my identity, my worth, my sense of value.
The school I attended had a heavy, legalistic atmosphere. And for me, it became like a mirror. I saw myself clearly, and I didn’t like what I saw. That moment on the floor was the culmination of years of self-hatred and performance-based value. I asked myself, "Is this really worth it?"
The next season was rough. I left school, went home, and picked up a job at Starbucks while living with my parents—ashamed and discouraged. But in that messy, in-between place, something began. A journey toward health. Not a perfect, clean path. Not a tidy, fixed version of my story. Just a slow, honest pursuit of healing.
Along the way, I came across a line from W.H. Auden’s poem As I Walked Out One Evening that became a foundation for me:
"You shall love your crooked neighbor with your crooked heart."
That line reframed everything.
It reminded me that the best stories—the ones that truly connect—are rooted in imperfection. In crookedness. In wounds that haven’t fully healed. And in storytellers who don’t try to separate themselves from the stories they tell.
I’ve come to believe that at the core of every story is a piece of its author. And that’s not a bad thing. It’s what makes storytelling powerful.
There’s a quote from C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy that speaks to this too: we are "bent." None of us are straight anymore. We are all walking around with pain, trauma, brokenness. We’ve caused harm and received it. And there’s no escaping that truth.
But it’s exactly that shared human experience that gives us the capacity to connect. To empathize. To tell stories not from a place of pity or superiority—but from an honest and vulnerable place.
When I think back to that painful morning in college, I can say—now, years later—it was worth it. That unraveling made me the kind of storyteller I am today. I don’t tell stories from a distance. I tell them from the trenches. And that changes everything.
If you're part of a nonprofit, mission-driven brand, or impact-focused organization, hear this:
Your most powerful stories won’t come from stats and outcomes alone. They will come from people. From the messy middle. From real experiences and imperfect hearts that dared to speak.
As storytellers, we lead with empathy. We lead with our wounds. And we trust that in doing so, we’re making space for others to connect—and maybe even to heal.
Until next time.
