Chapter 3: Our Stories Create Community
Chapter 2 explored the natural cycle of warriors protecting their group, village, or tribe, and the community then circling around them—tending to their wounds and hearing their stories.
We humans build strong bonds from the sharing that happens during this cycle. This is the unique genius of our species: our ability to form the most complex communities on the planet.
No other species can grow stronger together like humans can.
What makes this possible?
Language.
And story.
The ways we can communicate and work toward shared goals is what turned our ancestors—from small, roaming bands of hunter-gatherers—into the dominant species on Earth.
As our language evolved, it allowed increasingly advanced cooperation among increasingly large groups of us. No other species can work together in such large groups with the kind of flexibility we can.
On top of that, unlike other animals, we have the ability to share information about things that don’t exist at all.
We can not only communicate about what is happening (as many other animals can) we can speak about what has happened—or what might happen.
In other words, we can tell each other stories.
In his book on human history, “Sapiens”, Yuval Noah Harari writes:
“This ability to speak about fictions is the most unique feature of Sapiens language…You could never convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas after death in monkey heaven.”
"...Homo Sapiens conquered the world thanks above all to its unique language”.
Our ancestors were the world’s best storytellers. Through shared knowledge and beliefs, they strengthened their bonds and advanced their skills as hunters, gatherers, and eventually, farmers.
Over time, these beliefs became things like religions, laws, nations, and Constitutions.
In today's world, there's a constant battle over who controls the narratives—the stories that shape our shared beliefs. Every side wants their version of the story to be the one that is heard, honored, believed in and cooperated with.
This external war mirrors a war inside us.
There are voices in us fighting over what to believe. Voices confused, angry, or scared by what has happened to us, and what could happen next time. These voices cry out to be heard. Sometimes those voices can’t find words. Instead, they get stuck in our body.
If we carry post-traumatic stress, military sexual trauma, or moral injury, part of us has a story that needs to be told.
Taking control of that story is up to us. The story we’ve written so far can be changed. And when we change our stories, we change our lives, and the lives of the people who matter to us.
I once believed I had to “do it alone.” But when I realized I was never meant to, I saw that the right communities for me were the ones where my full story wasn't just welcomed—it was needed.
If you don’t know who or where your community is yet, finding a place where your full story is needed can help guide you there.
By “full story,” I mean one that includes the physical details of our military experience—what happened to our bodies. A full story is in the present tense, told from our direct experience, and includes as much sensory detail as possible.
The Standard Story
I’m going to share an example from one of my experiences in Iraq—starting with what I call the “standard story.”
This is the kind of story I used to tell myself and others when asked: “What happened?”
Standard Story:
My platoon had just replaced 3rd Platoon on rooftop guard duty. We were on the roof of the Mosul Hotel, one of the highest points in the city. Guard duty involved scanning the city through high-powered binoculars. I was the first on duty that day.
We were still unpacking our gear on the roof when I heard an explosion, followed by gunfire. I saw that 3rd platoon was being ambushed, just as they left the gated entrance to the hotel. There wasn’t much I could do except watch through the binocs and relay updates over radio. It was almost useless—there was too much smoke, I couldn’t see anything. After 15 minutes, it was over. No casualties. I remember my watch beeping and being surprised that my shift was over. I went and found a corner to lay down in for a few hours until my next turn on watch.
When friends, family, other veterans, or the VA wanted to know about an intense experience from my service, that was the kind of story I told.
But that wasn’t the full story.
The Full Story
Over the years, I found tools that helped me explore my memories deeper. I started remembering more details—how my stomach tightened when I heard gunfire, how I went into mission mode when the explosion went off, how my legs tensed to race down the six flights of stairs to the ground level…
So as those bits and pieces returned to me, my story started to look more like what you're about to read below.
Now, here’s the same event after I re-entered the memory and rewrote it in first-person present tense, as if I were there again. I did my best to recall every original detail, especially what I felt inside my body.
Full Story:
My platoon has just replaced 3rd Platoon on guard duty. We’re on the roof of the Mosul Hotel, one of the highest points in the city. Another 24 hours of scanning the countryside with high-powered binoculars. I’m the first on duty.
I’m unpacking gear on the roof... and PEKOWRR—a sound like thunder splitting a boulder into fragments. Something big exploded. Pop-pop pop-pop-pop. Gunfire. I feel my stomach tighten. I look towards the sounds and see clouds of dark smoke forming at the hotel gate. 3rd platoon. They’re being ambushed—I need to get down there now. My leg muscles tense, preparing to run down the six flights of stairs. But I can’t. I'm on watch. My post is here. I swallow down every impulse to move. Pressing my face into the binocs, I radio in estimates of where the enemy is shooting from. Pop-pop-pop. My friends are pinned-down. My stomach clenches tighter. Smoke. Shouting. Confusion. Then, it’s over. 3rd Platoon breaks free. They're heading down the open road. Everyone made it. But I feel strange. Hollow. It’s like I’m too worn down to feel relieved.
Beep-beep. Beep-beep. My watch alarm goes off. Shift over. Already? I find a corner to lie down in, trying to let the adrenaline drain out of me before my next turn on guard duty.
Can you feel the difference there?
When we retell our stories in the present tense—focusing on the original sensory details—we bring the experience back to life. And that process brings us back to life too.
This "coming back to life" deepens when the people who matter to us hear our stories. Our full story becomes a vital part of our family's, and community’s, understanding of the true cost of war and what we, as soldiers, actually need honored in order to reintegrate.
It's why having a full story to share is so important. Our families and communities need to hear what was happening to our bodies while we were out there defending them. And all of us—whether we deployed or not—were part of that defense.
There’s more to the story I shared, but I don’t want to say too much. I don’t want to give the impression that the way I rewrote my story is the “right” way.
Each intense event we’ve gone through in life is like a fingerprint—no two stories are alike. Your story will be different than anyone else's.
You may have dealt with sexual trauma, moral injury, or been let down by your chain of command.
Do you remember any event like that?
The only “right way” I've found to tell my story is to let out the Truth. The truth of what I really experienced.
Nothing more. Nothing less.
What really happened back then?
What did my body experience that I didn’t fully pay attention to?
What memories have been buried inside of me?
Buried experiences can end up being like "monsters under the bed". They don't actually exist anymore, but they still haunt us. They affect our current lives because we've never looked directly at them.
Writing the full story about these experiences can be like taking a light, looking under the bed, and making the truth unmistakably clear to our nervous system: the threat is gone. There's nothing there anymore.
Your Truth, Not Someone Else’s
I've learned through doing this process dozens of times that comparing my stories to someone else's, or trying to change what I wrote to match someone else's, only took me farther from my what was real for me.
The power our full stories is in how they help us reach our truth—not someones else's.
The goal here isn't to tell a "good story", it's to connect with the full impact of the original experience.
We have a unique ability as humans to re-enter memories to uncover what our body, mind, heart and soul actually went through in past events.
To fully understand: "Oh, this is how that event affected my nervous system".
The story I shared above involved rooftop guard duty.
By going back to it many times—using methods we’ll cover in later chapters—I reconnected with what my body went through at the time, like:
- My stomach clenched.
- I lost my sense of time.
- Part of my body wanted to run, but another part felt I had to stay.
- I felt hollow.
Those were my experiences in those moments.
The feelings that come up for you when you write out your stories will be different than mine.
Taking Back Control Through Writing
Writing is a great way to capture what happened during intense moments of our lives. It gives us control over how we explore those experiences.
We can move at our own pace.
We can take our time uncovering what we weren’t able to process back then.
The rest of Part I will cover the best techniques I’ve found for re-entering past memories and writing out the details that have been buried.
There is no question that re-living these experiences will be triggering and painful. That’s why I recommend reading through Chapter 5 before starting to write anything down. We’ll cover how to manage whatever gets stirred up.
Because the goal here is not to re-traumatize ourselves. This is about re-opening wounds so that we can give them what they need to finally heal. The mission is to tell our stories in a way that, in an ideal world, they would have been told when we first came home—fully embodied by us and held by others.
When we bring our full stories home—and share them with the right people—we can regain command over our life's narrative in a way that grounds us in our full identity.
This is a way for the Hero and Heroines journey of the warrior-protector to complete itself. This is a way to honor and release the outdated beliefs we’ve been carrying about who we are and what the world is—so that a new life can take root witnessed by community.
Because when we reclaim our stories, we reclaim who we truly are.
Join me in Chapter 4: The Power Of Your Story
"Banana Heaven" photo credit: Ron Kimball