Conversation With Nikki

Conversation With Nikki

The Student Level: Learning to Own Your Story

Conversation 2 — There Are Two Sides to Your Story

Welcome back to Conversation With Nikki.

In our last conversation, we talked about your shame story.

That story you have told so many times that you can almost tell it without feeling it anymore.

The story about what happened.

Who hurt you.

Who left.

Who disappointed you.

Who didn’t show up.

Today, we’re going to look at the other side of that story.

And I want you to hear me clearly before we go any further.

Accountability is not blame.

If someone hurt you when you were a child, you are not responsible for what that adult chose to do.

You were a child.

You didn’t have the power.

You didn’t have the information.

You didn’t have the choices you have today.

So when I say there are two sides to your story, I’m not asking you to rewrite history or pretend the person who hurt you didn’t hurt you.

I’m asking you to look at the whole story.

There is the side that says:

This happened to me.

And there is the side that asks:

What happened inside of me after it happened?

What did I start believing?

How did I begin responding?

What did I do to protect myself?

And what am I still doing today that may have made sense back then but no longer serves me?

That’s the accountability side.

Let’s make this real.

Maybe your story is:

“My mother left me, so I have abandonment issues.”

That may be true.

But what happened after the abandonment?

Maybe you started expecting people to leave.

Maybe you became overly agreeable.

Maybe you worked hard to make people like you.

Maybe you stayed in relationships longer than you should have.

Maybe you stopped asking for what you needed.

Maybe you became the person who could handle everything because needing someone felt dangerous.

The abandonment wasn’t your choice.

But some of the patterns that grew around it became part of your adult life.

That’s where your responsibility begins.

Not responsibility for the wound.

Responsibility for what you do with the wound.

That’s a very different conversation.

I had to learn this myself.

For a long time, I understood my childhood through the eyes of a little girl.

And that makes sense.

A five-year-old doesn’t understand adult decisions.

A five-year-old understands:

“My mother left me.”

That’s it.

There is no larger context.

No career.

No money.

No family planning.

No understanding of what an adult may have been trying to build or survive.

Just:

“She left me.”

And that little girl created meaning from what she could see.

I carried that meaning into adulthood.

But as I got older, I had to become willing to look at the story again.

Not to excuse anything.

Not to erase what happened.

To see more than one side.

That’s what I mean by putting on what I call HD glasses.

You can finally see the picture with more detail.

You start asking questions you weren’t capable of asking as a child.

What was happening around me?

What did I not know?

What did the adults know?

What didn’t they know?

What were their limitations?

What choices did they make?

What choices did I make later?

And most of all:

What do I want to do differently now?

Because sometimes the most painful part of accountability is realizing that we have continued a pattern long after the original situation ended.

Maybe nobody is telling you to stay quiet anymore.

But you still don’t speak.

Maybe nobody is making you take care of everyone anymore.

But you still do it.

Maybe nobody is telling you that your needs are too much.

But you still apologize for having them.

Maybe nobody is stopping you from going after your dream.

But you’re still waiting for permission.

That’s the part of the story we have to own.

And I know this can be uncomfortable.

Because it is much easier to say:

“This is why I am this way.”

Than to say:

“This is why I became this way, and now I have a responsibility to decide whether I want to stay this way.”

Those are two very different statements.

One explains you.

The other gives you a choice.

And I want you to have the choice.

So let’s do an exercise.

Think about one situation from your past that still affects you.

It doesn’t have to be the biggest trauma you’ve experienced.

It could be something that seems small.

Maybe someone embarrassed you.

Someone rejected you.

Someone didn’t keep a promise.

Someone made you feel stupid.

Someone constantly criticized you.

Someone made you feel like you were too much.

Write down what happened.

That’s side one.

Then write:

What did I start believing because of this?

That’s side two.

Then ask:

How has that belief affected my adult choices?

Maybe you started people-pleasing.

Maybe you became controlling.

Maybe you stopped trusting people.

Maybe you became emotionally unavailable.

Maybe you overworked.

Maybe you used food to comfort yourself.

Maybe you stopped trying.

Maybe you became afraid to be seen.

Maybe you kept choosing people who confirmed the story you already believed about yourself.

And now ask the question that changes everything:

What can I choose differently now?

Not what can your mother do?

Not what can your father do?

Not what can your husband do?

Not what can the person who hurt you do?

What can you do?

That’s where your power is.

And I don’t mean power over anybody else.

I mean power over your own choices.

Your response.

Your boundaries.

Your healing.

Your next decision.

Your life.

Taking accountability doesn’t mean you caused your trauma.

It means you refuse to let your trauma make every decision for you.

There’s a difference.

You can say:

“What happened to me mattered.”

And:

“What I do with my life now matters too.”

Both can be true.

Before we finish today, I want you to take your shame story and divide it into two parts.

On one side, write:

What happened to me.

On the other, write:

What I did, believed, learned, avoided, or continued because of what happened.

Be honest.

But don’t beat yourself up.

You’re not putting yourself on trial.

You’re gathering information.

You’re learning how your story shaped you.

And once you can see the pattern, you can begin changing the pattern.

That is what becoming self-led looks like.

You stop asking only,

“Why did this happen to me?”

And you begin asking,

“What am I going to do with my life now?”

That question belongs to you.

I’ll see you in our next conversation.

Until then, keep telling yourself the whole truth.

Don’t Stop Here

Awareness is powerful.

But awareness alone doesn’t change a life.

The real work begins when you start recognizing the patterns, challenging the beliefs, and making different choices one decision at a time.

If this conversation resonated with you, I invite you to take the next step.

Become a paid subscriber for exclusive essays, guided reflections, audio conversations, and deeper healing work.

Explore my books and resources for practical tools to help you move from self-abandonment to self-leadership.

Books & Resources:

Thank you for supporting independent writing that helps women reclaim their voice, their power, and their story.ory.

Welcome to Conversation With Nikki.

Before we talk about becoming self-led, I want to talk about something that can be uncomfortable.

Your story.

Not the polished version.

Not the version you tell when you’re trying to make everybody understand why you are the way you are.

I’m talking about the story you have told so many times that you know exactly where to pause, what happened next, who hurt you, and why you became the way you became.

I used to call this your shame story.

And I don’t call it that because I think you should be ashamed.

Quite the opposite.

I call it that because shame has a way of attaching itself to our stories.

Something happened.

It hurt.

We didn’t know how to process it.

So we carried it.

Then we built a story around it.

And sometimes, that story becomes the explanation for almost everything that happens in our adult life.

“I can’t trust people because...”

“I don’t take risks because...”

“I keep choosing the wrong relationships because...”

“I can’t stick with anything because...”

“I eat when I’m stressed because...”

“I don’t believe in myself because...”

“I am this way because somebody did this to me.”

Now, let me be very clear.

Some things that happened to you were not your fault.

If you were hurt as a child, you did not choose that.

You didn’t choose the adults around you.

You didn’t choose their emotional skills.

You didn’t choose what they knew or didn’t know about raising children.

You didn’t choose whether they were available, absent, overwhelmed, addicted, emotionally shut down, or dealing with their own unresolved pain.

A child does not have the power to make those choices.

So this conversation is not about blaming yourself for what happened to you.

It is about something different.

It’s about what happens when you become an adult and the story continues running your life.

That’s where accountability enters the conversation.

There are two sides to a story.

There’s the side that says:

This happened to me.

And then there’s the side that asks:

What have I done with what happened to me?

Those questions are not the same.

You can acknowledge that you were hurt and still take responsibility for how you respond to that hurt today.

You can say:

“My childhood affected me.”

And also say:

“I am responsible for what I do with that pain now.”

That’s not blaming the child.

That’s freeing the adult.

Because here’s the problem with staying on only one side of the story.

If everything that happens in your life is always someone else’s fault, then your ability to change your life stays in someone else’s hands.

Think about that.

If your mother has to change before you can heal...

If your husband has to change before you can be happy...

If your family has to understand before you can move forward...

If the people who hurt you have to apologize before you can have peace...

then your future is still sitting in somebody else’s hands.

And I don’t want that for you.

I don’t want it for me either.

I had to learn this myself.

I was hurt as a child.

There were things I didn’t understand.

There were things I couldn’t control.

And for a long time, I carried those experiences into adulthood without realizing how much they were shaping me.

But at some point, I had to stop asking only,

“Why did they do this to me?”

And start asking,

“What am I doing now that keeps this pain in control of my life?”

That’s a very different question.

And honestly?

It can bruise your ego.

Because sometimes the answer isn’t pretty.

Maybe you kept choosing relationships where you abandoned yourself.

Maybe you kept saying yes when you wanted to say no.

Maybe you kept using food, work, sex, shopping, alcohol, attention, or achievement to avoid feeling something.

Maybe you kept waiting for someone to finally choose you.

Maybe you kept blaming your circumstances because taking action felt terrifying.

Maybe you knew exactly what you needed to do...

and didn’t do it.

That doesn’t make you bad.

It makes you human.

But if you want a different life, you have to become honest about your part.

That is the beginning of self-leadership.

So I want you to think about your own shame story.

What is the story you tell when you’re frustrated with your life?

What happened?

Who hurt you?

Who disappointed you?

Who left?

Who didn’t show up?

Who didn’t love you the way you needed?

Who made you feel rejected?

Now tell the story again.

But this time, don’t stop there.

Ask yourself:

What did I do after that happened?

What did I learn?

What did I start believing?

What coping pattern did I create?

What choices did I make?

What did I continue doing long after the original situation was over?

And here’s the question I really want you to sit with:

What part of this story belongs to me now?

Not then.

Now.

Because you are not that five-year-old child anymore.

You are not powerless in the same way.

You have choices now.

You have information now.

You have resources now.

You can learn.

You can change.

You can apologize.

You can set boundaries.

You can leave.

You can stay.

You can ask for help.

You can stop.

You can begin again.

That is what accountability gives you.

It gives you your life back.

So before our next conversation, I want you to write your shame story.

Don’t make it pretty.

Don’t make yourself the hero.

Don’t make yourself the villain.

Just tell the truth.

Then underneath it, write one sentence:

“This happened to me, but it does not get to decide who I become.”

That’s where the Student Level begins.

Not with pretending the past didn’t hurt.

Not with blaming yourself for things you couldn’t control.

With telling the whole story.

Because you cannot take ownership of a life you refuse to look at honestly.

I’ll meet you in the next conversation.

Until then, keep telling yourself the truth.

I’ll see you in our next conversation.

Don’t Stop Here

Awareness is powerful.

But awareness alone doesn’t change a life.

The real work begins when you start recognizing the patterns, challenging the beliefs, and making different choices one decision at a time.

If this conversation resonated with you, I invite you to take the next step.

Become a paid subscriber for exclusive essays, guided reflections, audio conversations, and deeper healing work.

Explore my books and resources for practical tools to help you move from self-abandonment to self-leadership.

Books & Resources:

Thank you for supporting independent writing that helps women reclaim their voice, their power, and their story.