May 27, 2025 • 40 mins
One of the most common questions I am asked from anyone who is writing about their life goes like this:
How do I write about the people who hurt me?
Maybe you find yourself wanting to write about your parents, lovers, ex-lovers, siblings, neighbors, bosses, co-workers, etc but you aren’t sure how you would do that in a way that is true and also respectful.
Maybe you aren’t worried about being respectful but you are worried about being sued.
In this episode, I’ll share my own process for writing about a villain in my story and discuss a guiding concept I use anytime I’m writing about others. This storytelling truth might bring healing beyond your writing.
The villain in the story has a purpose. I’ll share it with you today.
Host: Ally Fallon // @allyfallon // allisonfallon.com
Follow Ally on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/allyfallon/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Pick up the pieces of your life who put them
back together with the words you write, all the beauty
and piece and the magic that you'll start too fun
when you write your story. You got the words and said,
don't you think it's down to let them out and
write them down on cold it's all about and write
(00:24):
your story. Write, write your story. Hi, and welcome back
to the Write Your Story Podcast. I'm Ali Fallon, I'm
your host, and on today's episode, I want to talk
about how to write about or how to even think about,
the villain in your story. Maybe one of the most
common questions that I get from people who are trying
(00:45):
to write a book, or trying to write any piece
of writing that they plan to share publicly, even if
that means sharing it on Instagram, is how am I
supposed to write about the people in my story who
have hurt me? How am I supposed to write about
my ex husband, my ex wife, my parents, my my
neighbor who was horrible to me, my brother, my sister
in law, my mother in law, whatever it is, the
(01:05):
person in your life who is causing you conflict, who's
causing you pain, who's causing you frustration? How am i
supposed to write about these people both honestly but also
in a way where it's respectful of who they are
as separate people. And I have a lot to say
on this topic, in part because I have done this myself.
I wrote a book called Indestructible that came out in
(01:25):
twenty eighteen that was about a toxic relationship that I
had to leave. And the entire book is about my
experience both with this relationship and also leaving this relationship.
And so I encountered this question and this dilemma of
I have this experience that's mine that I want to
write about, and I plan to write about it publicly,
(01:46):
but I don't know how to write about it in
a way that's both respectful of this other person who
was also part of this toxic dynamic with me, and
also that's honest and truthful to my own experience, my
own lived experience, and my owntage point and my own
perspective of the story. So I had that experience of
writing down that story and then also sharing that story
(02:08):
in a very public way, and there was kind of
two sides to the dilemma. One was like, how do
I write about this person in a way that would
be respectful or considered respectful. And two, how do I
write about this person in a way where I don't
open myself to a lawsuit, Which, if you're planning on
sharing this part of your story publicly, is an important
thing to consider, even if all you're doing is sharing
(02:29):
on Instagram. I have worked with writers in the past
who have been trying to share aspects of their story
on Instagram and really do have to think about what
am I allowed to say legally. Maybe they're in a
lawsuit with their previous employer or something like that, and
they're trying to share their story for their audience and
their platform and their community, their tribe. But they understand
(02:50):
that there's this person on the other side of the
argument who maybe sees things a different way or had
a different experience. And so how do we share our
stories in a way that's both truthful to us and
also honoring to the other person, and also doesn't put
us in a position where we're vulnerable to a lawsuit.
I want to talk about all of that today. I
have a lot to say on this subject. Like I said,
I went through this experience personally. I've also coached hundreds
(03:13):
or maybe even thousands of people over the course of
the last ten or fifteen years who have been in
a similar position, and I've learned a lot about what
it takes to write about the people in our lives
who have heard us. But in order to talk about
the more practical elements of this dilemma, I also have
to talk about how villains operate inside of stories. And
(03:35):
I'm going to use this term villain, which can be
kind of an inflammatory term, but it's a storytelling term
and that's why I'm going to use it. It's the
same thing with the word hero. We've talked about this.
People do not like to think about themselves as the
hero in their own story, but you absolutely are the
hero in your own story. Who else could possibly be
the hero in your personal story? And I know that's
difficult for people to understand, But I'm using the term
(03:55):
hero because that's a storytelling term, and I'm using the
term villain because that's a story telling term. And heroes
operate in a specific way inside of stories, and they
play a certain role. And when we are writing personal stories,
we need to understand what that role is so that
we know how to write about ourselves and how to
present the perspective in a way that makes sense to
a reader and that grips their attention and that the
(04:17):
story makes sense and has a cohesiveness to it. And
same thing with the villains. We have to understand what
a villain is for inside of a story, how a
villain operates, what purpose the villain serves inside of the story.
Otherwise we won't know how to write about the villains
in our personal stories. And so the driving message of
this episode is going to be about what the purpose
of the villain is inside of your story, because villains,
(04:41):
in storytelling terms, serve a specific purpose. And if you
understand the purpose that the villain serves in your story,
you'll better understand how to write about the villain. You'll
better be able to make peace with the villains that
are inevitably going to be in your story. Because I'll
share a few personal experiences today of villains that are
popping up in my story here and there. And there's
(05:02):
a takeaway here for us that has to do with
more than just writing. It's more than just publishing. It's
more than just avoiding a lawsuit. It's also how do
we think about the people and the elements in our
story that come in front of us, that are deeply frustrating,
that seem to be antagonistic, that seem to be kind
of standing in the way or providing a barrier to
(05:22):
the thing that we want to achieve. And when we
think rightly about what the purpose of the villain is
inside of the story, it really helps us to make
peace with those people in those situations. So I'm going
to start here. The purpose of the villain inside of
a narrative arc is always to facilitate the transformation of
the hero. I'll say that again. The purpose of the
(05:44):
villain inside of a narrative is always to facilitate the
transformation of the hero. And if you'll remember from write
your story, the book or the framework or the workshop,
if you've come, the narrative arc is built around the
transformation of the hero. So the transformation of the hero
of the story, which is you in a personal story.
When you're telling your personal story, you are the hero
(06:06):
of the story. Therefore, your transformation in the story is
what the story is built around. Without a transformation of
the hero, there is no story. A story is uninteresting,
it's boring, it's flat, it doesn't have much dynamic to it.
People tune out. They don't pay attention to a story
where there's no transformation of the hero. I've talked about
before how the problem in the story provides the necessary resistance,
(06:31):
almost like gravity in a push up, to provide that
necessary resistance so that the hero can complete the push
up and grow those bicet muscles, tricep muscles, whatever it
is you're growing in a push up. So the necessary
resistance that is required in order for the hero to
grow is provided by the problem in the story and
(06:52):
can also be provided by the villain of the story.
So the villain enters the story and seems extremely frustrating.
They seem antagonistic, They seem like they're getting in the
way of the hero reaching their goal. They are getting
in the way of the hero reaching their goal. And
also the villain enters the story to provide this contrast
so that you can see what happens when someone embraces
(07:16):
the problem in their story and grows stronger and transforms
in a positive way because of it. That's the hero
of the story versus someone who has pain, who has difficulty,
you has frustration and chooses the different path, who chooses
to cheat, chooses to be manipulative, chooses not to grow,
chooses to take the easy way out, chooses not to
do the work. That's the villain in the story. So
(07:38):
the villain enters the story and provides this contrast and
shows you you have two choices here. You can either
use this opportunity, this unfair opportunity in your life, this
thing that you're up against that doesn't seem like much fun,
to grow and expand and become a higher version of yourself.
Or you can choose this opportunity to play the victim,
(08:01):
to hurt other people, to project your pain onto others,
to make it about them instead of about you, to
not grow, to you know, become more closed minded, to
become manipulative, to just try and get what you want
no matter what the cost. Those are the two choices
that any one person has inside of a narrative, and
(08:22):
the villain really amplifies that choice. The villain provides for
the viewer the reader, that necessary contrast, so that we
understand there are two choices here, there are two paths
that we could take, and the villain acts as a
sort of problem inside of the story. Something to push against,
something to resist, something to be different, from in order
(08:44):
to achieve the transformation that they need to achieve for
that story arc to be complete. So remember that a
narrative arc is a hero who wants something who has
to overcome some kind of problem in order to achieve
that thing that they want. And yet, in order for
the narrative arc to be complete, the hero doesn't just
need to achieve their objective. They also need to become
someone different, and the villain helps the hero to become
(09:08):
someone different. So let me just use Indestructible as an
example of this. Indestructible is the book that I wrote
that came out in twenty eighteen. It's a memoir about
leaving a toxic relationship and finding my footing on the
other side of that relationship. The dynamic inside of this
relationship was extremely toxic and abusive, and honestly, it was
(09:29):
toxic on both sides. The farther away I get from
the relationship, the more I'm able to see my own
part and my own contribution that I made, even if
it was just almost consenting to the dynamic that we
shared together that was so unhealthy. The other person in
this relationship was extremely manipulative, very abusive, extremely controlling, really
(09:54):
found a way to kind of tear me down and
make me feel like I couldn't do anything without him.
I was never going to be able to without him.
He did everything for me. How could I possibly you know,
manage on my own without him? And really stripped me
down to basically, you know, a shell of myself in
the time that I was with him, and there was
a lot of violence and like yelling and really unhealthy
(10:17):
arguing and no boundaries or parameters around how we fought.
And I found myself many times feeling extremely unsafe running
out of the house, leaving the house without choos on,
leaving the house without a purser, without a phone. I
thought many times about calling the police or calling you know,
my sister, calling my parents or something to try to
come extract me from this relationship. And I was terrified
(10:37):
of what he would do to me. I thought he
would hot me down. You know. There were so many
different dynamics happening, and it's wild that the further away
I get from this relationship, the more I can see
my own contribution to it. Like I said before, so
(10:59):
because of all that, when I was leaving this relationship,
I was really questioning my own vantage point, my own
view on things. And when I sat down to write
the story of the demise of our relationship, I didn't
think that this was something I was going to publish.
I had been published before. I'd had a book come
out in twenty thirteen, and I had been working on
a second book that was very ironically supposed to be
(11:20):
about the first years of our marriage. The book was
called Our First Years, and it was supposed to be
about how challenging the first few years of marriage can be,
but how worth it it is to keep working on it.
And he and I had been in counseling together for
eighteen months and we were trying to work through all
of our issues and whatever else. So I'm working on
this book at the time about how challenging the first
few years of marriage can be. And as I'm working
(11:42):
on that book, our relationship completely falls apart, and I
am a shell of myself. I mean, I just can't
even figure out which way is up. I didn't have
my feet on the ground. I didn't trust myself. I
didn't know what was going on. All I knew was
that I was no longer willing to put up with
the dynamic that was happening between us, and so I
(12:02):
asked him to leave the house. I changed the locks
on the door as I pulled in some friends for
support and help because I was really afraid for my
safety at the time. I write about this and in destructible,
but I went to go file a restraining order and
I was turned away. And I learned so much through
this whole experience. But I began writing about the story
mostly just to orient myself inside of my own reality.
(12:23):
And so the first piece of advice that I give
to people who are asking how do I write about
the people who have hurt me? How do I do
this respectfully? Is you don't do it respectfully. You do
it with the sole purpose and the sole intention of
telling your story exactly the way it happened from your
own vantage point. Because for many people who are asking
this question, that step is the hardest step of all.
(12:47):
And I can speak from my own experience that leaving
that relationship where there was a lot of gaslighting happening,
there was a ton of manipulation, there was a lot
of fear mongering, using fear to control me. When I
stepped out of that situation, I had a really hard
time even believing that my own perspective was real. I
(13:07):
remember vividly this is probably a year after I had
left the relationship. I was on a date with a
man who I went on I don't know, maybe three
or four dates with and then we later became friends.
And I was saying to him that just telling him
stories about what had happened inside of this previous relationship,
and he was like, oh, so it was an abusive
relationship and I was like, no, no, it wasn't physically abusive.
(13:29):
And he's like, no, what you just told me is
that he put his hands on you. And I'm like,
I know, but I never like had to go to
the hospital for a broken bone or anything. And he
was like, but that doesn't matter. You're telling me that
he would, you know, grab you and throw you up
against a door, like hold you down on the bed,
and I'm like yeah, and he's like that's that's called
(13:50):
physical abuse. And it was just such a wild moment
where I was like, oh, oh, yeah, I guess I
hadn't really that or I hadn't really been willing to
own that inside of my own story, but that really
is what it was, and that just gives you a
sense of how long it took. You know, this is
a year after I had left the relationship for me
(14:10):
to really come back to reality and be willing to
trust my own viewpoint and my own vantage point on things.
And so sometimes that first step of just saying, I'm
going to write this the way that I remember it happening,
and I'm going to tell the details the way that
I remember it, and I'm going to try to get
this other person's voice out of my head, because I
did have his voice in my head saying to me,
(14:31):
that's not how it happened, or you're over dramatizing this,
or you're making it seem like it was worse than
it was. So I had his voice in the back
of my mind that was constantly influencing how I thought
I saw things. It was such an important step for
me to just say I have my own viewpoint, and
I get to have my viewpoint and we might disagree
(14:52):
about something. In fact, we probably will. We're going to
see things differently. We're different people with different temperaments and
different needs and different trauma, coming at this from different directions.
So this really isn't about being right. This isn't about
getting it accurately right, although I would say, like, don't
lie about the details, even in that first draft. But
tell the details the way you would tell it, not
(15:14):
the way someone else would tell it, not the way
your mom would tell it, not the way your ex
would tell it, not the way your sister would tell it.
Think about this siblings in a family. This is a
great example that doesn't it's not quite as charged as
like lovers, but siblings in a relationship who all grew
up in the same home with the same two parents.
Think about how differently siblings will tell the story of
(15:34):
let's just say your family vacation when you were ten
and your sister was six or whatever. How differently those
two people are going to tell that story. You're going
to remember different things, Yeah, hold on to different pieces
of the memory. You're going to have seen whatever memory
it was in a different light. Even if you remember
the same moment or instance, you might remember it very differently.
(15:56):
And that's just because you're different people, and you have
different viewpoints, and you see things differently. And what I
want to emphasize here is that your viewpoint matters. It's important,
it's needed, it's part of the larger picture of the story.
It is not the only truth, or the whole truth,
or the most important truth, but it is a very
important truth. And if you can't find the courage to
(16:18):
share from your vantage point, not only are you missing
out on that, you're missing out on the sense that like,
oh yeah, I have my own view of this, and
my view matters, like the way that I saw this
out of my own two eyes, and the way that
I heard it out of my own two ears, and
the way that I processed it and metabolized it. Not
only do you miss out on seeing how much that
(16:39):
matters to you, but also the rest of the world
misses out on seeing your way of seeing things, your
unique vantage point, your unique perspective, and we need more
of that. We need more of a well rounded perspective
of how to see the world. I've used this example before,
but imagine if you were to read a history book
(17:01):
about what happened in March of twenty twenty the shutdowns
in COVID and know the entire world shutting down all
at once, you would read one vantage point of how
that took place, or maybe some history books are written
by you know, three, five, maybe seven people at the most.
So you might read a collaborative viewpoint of seven people
(17:22):
who witness this happen and tell it in a very
objective way. But what if you read a collection of
stories of one hundred different people who told the story
of what life was like for them on that day,
Or what if it was a collection of stories of
one hundred different people who told their unique vantage point
of what life was like on September eleventh, two thousand
and one. You would get a really different a much
(17:46):
broader understanding of what it meant to be alive when
something like that took place. And it's not to say
that there's not a place for the history book version
of it, but all I'm saying is that we get
a much broader vantage point, a much bigger understanding of
human experience of how the world works when you share
(18:09):
your unique vantage point. So this is really Step one
is trusting yourself enough to put your unique vantage point
down on paper. And my admonition to you at this
point is to put it down on paper without assuming
that you're going to share it with anyone. Ever. What
this does is it provides an anonymity in your writing
that gives you permission to tell your truth. It's a
(18:32):
little bit like stepping into a therapist's office where you
can talk about things in a way that you wouldn't
be able to talk about outside the therapist's office, just
because you know, if you're going to, like go talk
to one friend about another friend to try to get
more perspective on a situation, you're going to hold back
a little bit because you're just like, I don't know
if this friend is going to talk to this friend
or whatever, Like I don't know where the alliances are
(18:54):
or where the allegiance lies. So you're just always going
to hold back a little bit because people, and also
you don't want to maybe taint one friend's view of
another friend or something like that. But when you're with
a therapist, you're like, this is an objective third party.
This person isn't part of the friend group, they're not
part of the family dynamic, they're not part of this situation.
They're being paid to sit here and listen to me.
So they can be mostly pretty objective, and you may
(19:17):
find that you have an easier time sharing with a
therapist about another person in your life or a situation
that's going on. Then you would if you were talking
to someone really close to you or I don't know
if this has happened to you before, but I've been
on the receiving end of this a lot, where if
you're an open person, you might find that strangers will
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tell you stories from their life that they never would
tell anybody close to them. They'll tell you their whole backstory,
they'll tell you the horrible things they've done. They'll tell
you about this messy divorce they're going through. My husband
likes to joke that people like this make a bee
line for me, and it's just kind of always been
like this, I think because I receive those stories and
(19:58):
I find myself actually genuinely very interested in them, and
so I think people pick up on that and they
feel free to share. But have you ever found yourself
in a position where you feel free to share your
story with a stranger, even though you wouldn't feel free
to share it with someone who's very close to you.
That's the type of anonymity that this can provide when
you're willing to go sit down and write your story
(20:19):
without thinking, oh, I'm going to put this on Instagram
or I'm going to try to get this published. I
would recommend at first that you just plan to write
the story exactly the way that it happened, assuming nobody
else is going to read this, so that you have
the freedom to share as honestly as you possibly can
from your own personal perspective. So that's step one. Step
(20:41):
one is sharing the story from your own perspective without
thinking about how someone else is going to receive it
or know what they would think about it, or what
they would say, or their perspective or their vantage point.
Just your perspective first. And Step two has to do
with thinking about the villain in your story as the
hero in their own story. So this piece of the
(21:04):
equation is really about acknowledging that we are all multifaceted
creatures that just because someone is a villain in your
story doesn't mean that they're not the hero in their
own story. Because they are the hero in their own
story and they've got their own thing going on, they've
got their own transformation that's in process, and whether they're
resisting that transformation or not, that doesn't mean that the
(21:25):
transformation is not in process. So they may be the
villain in a lot of people's stories, but they still
are the hero in their own story, and you, This
is another way to think about it, You are the
hero in your own story, and you may very well be,
to your knowledge or not, the villain in someone else's story.
Not everyone who is the villain is villainous in the
(21:48):
way that we would think about a villain in a
movie or in life or whatever. Like. Not everyone who
is the villain in a story is intentionally or maliciously
your story. As the villain, they may very well be
just dealing with their own pain, and I'm not excusing
their behavior in the slightest, but they may be in
(22:09):
their own story really working hard to transform. It might
just be that they are behaving in a way that
as they enter into your story, it's triggering you into
a deeper transformation. And so remembering that people are multifaceted.
Just because they're the villain in your story doesn't mean
they're the villain in every story. It also means that
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they're probably the hero of their own story, that they've
got their own thing going on, their own transformation going on,
and that not every villain is intentionally malicious. The way
that I think about it is that there's kind of
two types of villains there's the villain who is oblivious,
who's sort of covertly villainous. They are just dealing with
(22:54):
their own pain. They're not really paying attention to others.
They enter into other people's stories as the villa because
their behavior is sort of absurd or ridiculous or whatever,
it can be hurtful. And then there's another type of
villain that intentionally or maliciously takes advantage of the vulnerability
of others. And to me, these are two different types
of people. There are people who are wrapped up in
(23:15):
their own pain, who are just doing the best they can.
You know, my dad used to say all the time,
most people, most of the time are doing the best
they can, and I really do believe that. And I
also would add on to it that some people some
of the time are not doing the best they can.
Some people some of the time are predators. They are
intentionally malicious. They're looking for people who are vulnerable, and
(23:36):
when they see your vulnerability, they come in and attack
that vulnerability and take advantage for their own personal gain.
And so whichever type of villain that you're dealing with,
the interesting thing is is it doesn't really change the
purpose of the villain inside of the story. The purpose,
no matter the villain, is still to get the hero
to rise to the occasion. So, when you think about
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someone who you would define as a villain in your life,
maybe it's someone in your personal life like a parent
or a lover or an ex lover, or a sibling
or a neighbor or whatever. Or maybe it's someone who
is more distant. Maybe it's someone who's in politics that
you can name as the villain right now. I can
think of more than one person that I would name
(24:18):
as the villain in politics right now, but I don't
want to get too distracted by that. My point is,
whoever you think of as the villain in your story,
remember that the purpose of the villain is to call
out the best qualities in the hero. That's the purpose
of the villain inside the narrative of the story. It's
to facilitate the transformation of the hero inside of the
(24:38):
narrative arc. Now, in real life, sometimes that happens, and
sometimes the opposite happens. For me, in my toxic dynamic
with this X, one thing that would often happen is
his villainous behavior would call out my villainous behavior, or
I later learned in therapy that there's a try where
(25:01):
at one tip of the triangle is the villain, another
tip is the victim, and another tip is the rescuer,
and that you get stuck on this triangle with someone
who's the villain in your story, where when they're the villain,
you play the victim, and then someone has to become
the rescuer, someone has to rescue the victim from their victimhood,
(25:21):
and then someone else has to become the villain. And
for many, many years I was stuck on this triangle
with him where he would act in ways that were,
you know, extremely villainous, and then I would respond in
ways that were like a victim, and then he would
have to come and rescue me, and then I would
become the villain, and we just couldn't find our footing
inside of our dynamic. And so my point is that
(25:42):
sometimes in life, the villain in our story can call
out the villain in us, or can call out the
victim in us, or can call out the rescuer in us.
You know, sometimes maybe we find ourselves like caretaking these
people over and over again, or doing whatever is necessary
in order to get them to be kind to us again,
or be nice to us again, or whatever we find
(26:02):
ourselves like fawning or placating or whatever it is. And
yet in the story, the point of this person in
the story is to get us to rise to the
occasion and to become empowered people with our own agency
and who trust ourselves and who can take action, and
who are positively creating our life and our space and
our dynamic. And so when you have a villain in
(26:24):
your story, it's really exciting to think about the fact
that this person could call out the worst in me.
Or if I'm writing my story either down on paper
or I'm just sort of creating my story, this person
also could facilitate my transformation. They could call out the
best in me. And so this is the third piece
(26:44):
of the equation. Here. The first piece is learning to
tell the story from your own vantage point, trusting yourself,
deciding that your viewpoint matters, and just telling the story
the way that it happened without worrying what anybody's going
to think about it. The second stage is being willing
to see the villain as multifaceted, trusting and knowing that
while they are the villain in your story, they are
(27:06):
the hero of their own story, and they're going through
their own transformation no matter how villainous they are in
your story or anyone else's story. This is not to
excuse their behavior at all or to say that you
shouldn't have very firm boundaries. I'm this X who I'm
talking about, I do not have any contact with I
went total no contact with him many many years ago.
So please have boundaries. And also having those boundaries allows
(27:29):
you to see with compassion and grace that this person
is also the hero of their own story. They're a
multifaceted person who has their own transformation going on inside
of their story. And then the third piece is being
willing to step out of this victim villain rescuer kind
of cycle or dynamic that we're in, and rather than
(27:49):
allowing the villain to call out the worst in you,
seeing if there's a way we're inside of the story
that the villain can call out the best of the hero.
So what does that look like? A big piece of
(28:09):
this for me, when I was writing a story of
Indestructible was deciding that I was not going to let
this story be about him, because he's the hero in
his own story. He's the villain in my story, but
he's the hero in his own story, so he's a
secondary player in my story. I'm the hero in my story.
This is about my transformation. So it's about asking myself,
how do I want to transform and who do I
(28:30):
want to become? And for me? As I reflected on
that question inside of my story, I realized that a
really big part of who I wanted to become was
that I didn't want to allow this experience to make
me bitter. I knew a lot of people who had
been through something similar and who came out on the
other side of it understandably, like completely understandably, and I
(28:50):
say this with tons of compassion. Who would come out
on the other side distrustful, fearful, bitter, closed off, angry,
you know, frustrated that life had turned out the way
that it had, that this person had hurt them so badly.
And I really wanted to come out the other side
of this stronger, more trusting of myself, more open, more free,
(29:13):
more loving, less fearful, like more courageous. That's who I
wanted to become. And so I had to start to
ask myself, what would I need to do inside of
the story, like, what would the hero need to do
on the screen of the movie, screen of my life
in order for this transformation to take place? In order
for the villain in this case, to facilitate the transformation
(29:36):
of the hero, how would I have to change? Who
would I have to become, What would I have to do?
What choices would I have to make for myself? And
that really informed my choices inside of the story, and
not just in the story that I was writing, but
also in my life. This is one of the amazing
ways that writing your story affects your actual life is
that as I was seeing the story unfold on the page,
(29:56):
I was realizing, Oh, oh, okay, that's not who I
want to be. This woman whose voice I can hear
on the page, who's very bitter and angry at this
person and who's making it all about him, That's not
who I want to be. I want to be the
type of person who really owns my story and owns
my experience and shapes it into something that I can
(30:17):
be proud of and who comes out on the other
side stronger for it. And I know that writing my story,
writing down my story, and choosing to do it in
the way that I've just laid out here in this
episode was a massive part of how I evolved through
this experience, and it's a huge reason why I've wanted
to pass this tool on to others and why it
(30:39):
matters so much to me to invite other people into
the experience of writing their story because it was such
a huge part of my growth and evolution. I don't
think I would be the woman that I am today
or have the life that I have if it hadn't
been for the experience of writing down my story and
being able to see myself in such a clear mirror
like that. And there's so much more that I could
say about this, especially along the lines of legality and
(31:03):
defamation suits, libel suits. I have a lot that I
can say about this, and I teach all about that
inside of my program called a book in six months.
But before I close the episode, I want to say
one thing that I learned along the journey, as it
relates to avoiding a lawsuit, because I was really concerned
when I published Indestructible that he was going to come
after me. I was worried he would either try to
assume me. I knew he had been pretty litigious when
(31:25):
we were together to other people, and so I just
knew how his brain worked, and I figured for sure
he was going to try to come after me, and
if not through the legal channels, then I figured he
would come after me and you know, try to hurt
me in some other way. And so that was part
of my thinking as I formed the story, and I
(31:46):
really wanted to do it in a way that would
make it extremely hard, if not impossible, for him to
come after me legally or for any kind of money
or anything like that. So I did my research. I mean,
I talked to so many different attorneys they kind of
pulled the audience a little bit. And one thing that
I heard several different attorneys repeat over the course of
(32:07):
my research was a phrase that has stuck with me
for a really long time. And each of the attorneys,
no matter what kind of law they practice, no matter
where they practice, all said this same phrase, and it
has stuck in my brain ever since then. And the
phrase is this, The truth is an absolute defense. In
other words, if you're telling the truth, it's really hard
for someone to refute you. If you're telling the truth,
(32:29):
they can take you to court, but especially if you
have proof of the truth. Then it's going to be
really difficult for a lawsuit to hold up in court.
So they might try, and you know they could. It
could cost you some attorney fees, but it's going to
be really challenging for them to win a lawsuit if
you're telling the truth and you have proof or facts
(32:52):
to back up your truth. So I thought about that
a lot. As I was writing the manuscript, I thought
about what kinds of things are objective? Toru? So I
thought about that a lot as I was editing the manuscript.
I did not think about this while I was writing
the manuscript. While I was writing, I just told my story.
But while I was editing the manuscript and thinking about publishing,
I really had to ask myself, is this the truth?
(33:16):
And the truth can feel like a little bit of
a gray area sometimes because there's my truth the way
that I see things, and there's your truth the way
that you see things, and we see things very differently
through an extremely different lens. So I had to ask myself, like,
in what areas was I willing to share my truth
even though I knew his truth would be different than mine,
(33:38):
and really get honest with myself about just because this
is my truth, is it really the truth? Or is
this my perspective on something? And the truth can feel
like kind of a gray area sometimes because there's both
my truth or my perspective on the situation and your
perspective on the situation. And I'm only one person here,
(33:58):
and there were two people in in this experience. And
one of the things that I learned in editing this
is that the more I can grow my perspective to
understand where both people are coming from, or where all
people are coming from, the more that I can work
to understand how you might have seen this. Actually, the
broader my understanding of truth becomes, the bigger my understanding
(34:20):
of truth becomes. It doesn't mean that his perspective is
right or my perspective is right, or his is wrong
and mine's right, or mine's wrong and his is right,
none of that. Getting inside of that trap of who's
is right and who's is wrong is exactly where that
toxic dynamic that we were in can come from. But
instead having really clear boundaries to keep myself safe, that's
an important part of this. Or you don't even feel
(34:41):
safe enough to consider someone else's perspective. So I want
to just make sure that that's on the table, that
I have been total no contact with this person since
like twenty fifteen, and so there's a sense of safety
and stability there that I grew over time to feel
safe enough to see things from his perspective. And yet
a lot of times when people read instructible, they'll say, like,
(35:02):
especially my friends and family who know you know more
of the story, they'll say, like, wow, you could have
really said way more you know, and like, could have
like really taken him down. And my response is always,
it wasn't my intention to take him down. It was
my intention to tell my truth. And it was an
extremely freeing experience to tell my truth and to learn
(35:22):
to trust myself and to learn to stand on my
own two feet and to allow myself to see things
the way that I actually do see them. And yet
I didn't do that without an understanding that he also
is the hero in his own story. I really did
this by not giving him too much space inside of
my story because my story is not about him, it's
(35:43):
about me, and only giving him enough space to be
the villain. The villain in the story. The purpose of
the villain is to facilitate the transformation of the hero,
the elevation, the evolution of the hero. And I want
to just say this really quickly before I wrap up.
I believe we are in a time right now where
(36:04):
there are villains unfolding on the broader stage, on the
political stage, that are truly, in my opinion, terrifying. And
I know everybody has different political opinions and understandings, and
so I don't know if you're listening to this thinking
like you disagree with me totally, that's fine. We have
our different perspectives. But in my opinion, we have villains
(36:27):
that are unfolding on the broader stage that are truly terrifying,
that are bringing what I would call the second type
of villain, that are taking advantage of the vulnerabilities of
others in a knowing and intentional kind of way that's
really scary. And yet I maintain what I have said
this entire episode, which is that the purpose of the
(36:49):
villain in any story is to call out the best
qualities in the hero and to invite them to rise
to the occasion. And so it is my opinion that
this period of time and history that we are going
to look back and notice the difference between those of
us who moved out of fear, and those of us
who moved out of conviction. And I say this with
(37:10):
the deepest compassion and knowing how truly terrifying it is
to act out of conviction, because I lived this on
a very personal level. There were times in my relationship
where I thought, I need to call the police, I
need to call my parents, I need to get the
hell out of here, I need to ask someone for help,
I need to ask this stranger on the street for help.
(37:30):
And I didn't do it because I was so scared
of the retaliation. I was so scared of what happened
to me. I was scared of how it would make
me look. I was scared of looking weak. I was
scared of people saying, you know, I couldn't make it work,
or this was all about me, or this was my
fault or what. I was so scared of so many
different things happening. And I think those fears are extremely real,
(37:51):
and all the things that I was afraid of could
have happened. And so I'm not undermining or underplaying those fears,
and I'm not undermining or underplaying the real fears that
we have existing inside of this dynamic that we're in
as a country right now. And yet I'm also saying
boldly and with conviction that now is the time to
rise to the occasion and find in you the love
(38:15):
that you need in order to continue to show up,
to act from your agency, to trust yourself, to trust
your own perspective. Do not let your perspective be wiped
out right now. Do not let your own conscience be
wiped out right now. This is so weird because last
night at the dinner table, my four year old was like, Mom,
what's a conscience? And I was explaining to my four
(38:36):
year old what a conscience is, and it was just
such a bizarre experience of like, in light of what
I wanted to talk about today on this episode, don't
forget what a conscience is. Don't forget that you have
a voice inside of you that's telling you what's right.
Do not let yourself be talked out of knowing what
you know is right. And right now is the time
(38:57):
to allow that love, that conviction, that conscience to come
out of you, that trust of yourself, that agency, the
sense that I have agency to create the kind of
world that I want to create. And I'm not going
to allow myself to be talked out of that right now.
I think many of us are being feeling like we're
being talked out of that right now. And I just
want you to know that you can trust yourself, You
(39:17):
can trust your own perspective of the story of what's unfolding.
That you have a voice inside of you that's speaking
to you and it's speaking truth to you. And I
want to encourage that and encourage you to write down
you whether your story that you want to tell is
a personal story that has nothing to do with politics,
or whether you're really wrestling with the villain that has
(39:39):
entered the scene right now in our world. Whichever it
is for you, I want you to know that writing
your story is an amazing way to reconnect with that
part of yourself that knows what you know, what you know,
what you know, what you know is true. So trust
your voice, trust yourself, trust yourself right now, and allow
(39:59):
the villain in the story to invite out the best
in the hero. You are the hero. This is your moment.
I'm in this with you, and I'll see you next
week on the Write Your Story Podcast.
Pick up the pieces of your life who put them
back together with the words you write, all the beauty
and piece and the magic that you'll start too fun
when you write your story. You got the words and said,
don't you think it's down to let them out and
write them down on cold it's all about and write
(00:24):
your story. Write, write your story. Hi, and welcome back
to the Write Your Story Podcast. I'm Ali Fallon, I'm
your host, and on today's episode, I want to talk
about how to write about or how to even think about,
the villain in your story. Maybe one of the most
common questions that I get from people who are trying
(00:45):
to write a book, or trying to write any piece
of writing that they plan to share publicly, even if
that means sharing it on Instagram, is how am I
supposed to write about the people in my story who
have hurt me? How am I supposed to write about
my ex husband, my ex wife, my parents, my my
neighbor who was horrible to me, my brother, my sister
in law, my mother in law, whatever it is, the
(01:05):
person in your life who is causing you conflict, who's
causing you pain, who's causing you frustration? How am i
supposed to write about these people both honestly but also
in a way where it's respectful of who they are
as separate people. And I have a lot to say
on this topic, in part because I have done this myself.
I wrote a book called Indestructible that came out in
(01:25):
twenty eighteen that was about a toxic relationship that I
had to leave. And the entire book is about my
experience both with this relationship and also leaving this relationship.
And so I encountered this question and this dilemma of
I have this experience that's mine that I want to
write about, and I plan to write about it publicly,
(01:46):
but I don't know how to write about it in
a way that's both respectful of this other person who
was also part of this toxic dynamic with me, and
also that's honest and truthful to my own experience, my
own lived experience, and my owntage point and my own
perspective of the story. So I had that experience of
writing down that story and then also sharing that story
(02:08):
in a very public way, and there was kind of
two sides to the dilemma. One was like, how do
I write about this person in a way that would
be respectful or considered respectful. And two, how do I
write about this person in a way where I don't
open myself to a lawsuit, Which, if you're planning on
sharing this part of your story publicly, is an important
thing to consider, even if all you're doing is sharing
(02:29):
on Instagram. I have worked with writers in the past
who have been trying to share aspects of their story
on Instagram and really do have to think about what
am I allowed to say legally. Maybe they're in a
lawsuit with their previous employer or something like that, and
they're trying to share their story for their audience and
their platform and their community, their tribe. But they understand
(02:50):
that there's this person on the other side of the
argument who maybe sees things a different way or had
a different experience. And so how do we share our
stories in a way that's both truthful to us and
also honoring to the other person, and also doesn't put
us in a position where we're vulnerable to a lawsuit.
I want to talk about all of that today. I
have a lot to say on this subject. Like I said,
I went through this experience personally. I've also coached hundreds
(03:13):
or maybe even thousands of people over the course of
the last ten or fifteen years who have been in
a similar position, and I've learned a lot about what
it takes to write about the people in our lives
who have heard us. But in order to talk about
the more practical elements of this dilemma, I also have
to talk about how villains operate inside of stories. And
(03:35):
I'm going to use this term villain, which can be
kind of an inflammatory term, but it's a storytelling term
and that's why I'm going to use it. It's the
same thing with the word hero. We've talked about this.
People do not like to think about themselves as the
hero in their own story, but you absolutely are the
hero in your own story. Who else could possibly be
the hero in your personal story? And I know that's
difficult for people to understand, But I'm using the term
(03:55):
hero because that's a storytelling term, and I'm using the
term villain because that's a story telling term. And heroes
operate in a specific way inside of stories, and they
play a certain role. And when we are writing personal stories,
we need to understand what that role is so that
we know how to write about ourselves and how to
present the perspective in a way that makes sense to
a reader and that grips their attention and that the
(04:17):
story makes sense and has a cohesiveness to it. And
same thing with the villains. We have to understand what
a villain is for inside of a story, how a
villain operates, what purpose the villain serves inside of the story.
Otherwise we won't know how to write about the villains
in our personal stories. And so the driving message of
this episode is going to be about what the purpose
of the villain is inside of your story, because villains,
(04:41):
in storytelling terms, serve a specific purpose. And if you
understand the purpose that the villain serves in your story,
you'll better understand how to write about the villain. You'll
better be able to make peace with the villains that
are inevitably going to be in your story. Because I'll
share a few personal experiences today of villains that are
popping up in my story here and there. And there's
(05:02):
a takeaway here for us that has to do with
more than just writing. It's more than just publishing. It's
more than just avoiding a lawsuit. It's also how do
we think about the people and the elements in our
story that come in front of us, that are deeply frustrating,
that seem to be antagonistic, that seem to be kind
of standing in the way or providing a barrier to
(05:22):
the thing that we want to achieve. And when we
think rightly about what the purpose of the villain is
inside of the story, it really helps us to make
peace with those people in those situations. So I'm going
to start here. The purpose of the villain inside of
a narrative arc is always to facilitate the transformation of
the hero. I'll say that again. The purpose of the
(05:44):
villain inside of a narrative is always to facilitate the
transformation of the hero. And if you'll remember from write
your story, the book or the framework or the workshop,
if you've come, the narrative arc is built around the
transformation of the hero. So the transformation of the hero
of the story, which is you in a personal story.
When you're telling your personal story, you are the hero
(06:06):
of the story. Therefore, your transformation in the story is
what the story is built around. Without a transformation of
the hero, there is no story. A story is uninteresting,
it's boring, it's flat, it doesn't have much dynamic to it.
People tune out. They don't pay attention to a story
where there's no transformation of the hero. I've talked about
before how the problem in the story provides the necessary resistance,
(06:31):
almost like gravity in a push up, to provide that
necessary resistance so that the hero can complete the push
up and grow those bicet muscles, tricep muscles, whatever it
is you're growing in a push up. So the necessary
resistance that is required in order for the hero to
grow is provided by the problem in the story and
(06:52):
can also be provided by the villain of the story.
So the villain enters the story and seems extremely frustrating.
They seem antagonistic, They seem like they're getting in the
way of the hero reaching their goal. They are getting
in the way of the hero reaching their goal. And
also the villain enters the story to provide this contrast
so that you can see what happens when someone embraces
(07:16):
the problem in their story and grows stronger and transforms
in a positive way because of it. That's the hero
of the story versus someone who has pain, who has difficulty,
you has frustration and chooses the different path, who chooses
to cheat, chooses to be manipulative, chooses not to grow,
chooses to take the easy way out, chooses not to
do the work. That's the villain in the story. So
(07:38):
the villain enters the story and provides this contrast and
shows you you have two choices here. You can either
use this opportunity, this unfair opportunity in your life, this
thing that you're up against that doesn't seem like much fun,
to grow and expand and become a higher version of yourself.
Or you can choose this opportunity to play the victim,
(08:01):
to hurt other people, to project your pain onto others,
to make it about them instead of about you, to
not grow, to you know, become more closed minded, to
become manipulative, to just try and get what you want
no matter what the cost. Those are the two choices
that any one person has inside of a narrative, and
(08:22):
the villain really amplifies that choice. The villain provides for
the viewer the reader, that necessary contrast, so that we
understand there are two choices here, there are two paths
that we could take, and the villain acts as a
sort of problem inside of the story. Something to push against,
something to resist, something to be different, from in order
(08:44):
to achieve the transformation that they need to achieve for
that story arc to be complete. So remember that a
narrative arc is a hero who wants something who has
to overcome some kind of problem in order to achieve
that thing that they want. And yet, in order for
the narrative arc to be complete, the hero doesn't just
need to achieve their objective. They also need to become
someone different, and the villain helps the hero to become
(09:08):
someone different. So let me just use Indestructible as an
example of this. Indestructible is the book that I wrote
that came out in twenty eighteen. It's a memoir about
leaving a toxic relationship and finding my footing on the
other side of that relationship. The dynamic inside of this
relationship was extremely toxic and abusive, and honestly, it was
(09:29):
toxic on both sides. The farther away I get from
the relationship, the more I'm able to see my own
part and my own contribution that I made, even if
it was just almost consenting to the dynamic that we
shared together that was so unhealthy. The other person in
this relationship was extremely manipulative, very abusive, extremely controlling, really
(09:54):
found a way to kind of tear me down and
make me feel like I couldn't do anything without him.
I was never going to be able to without him.
He did everything for me. How could I possibly you know,
manage on my own without him? And really stripped me
down to basically, you know, a shell of myself in
the time that I was with him, and there was
a lot of violence and like yelling and really unhealthy
(10:17):
arguing and no boundaries or parameters around how we fought.
And I found myself many times feeling extremely unsafe running
out of the house, leaving the house without choos on,
leaving the house without a purser, without a phone. I
thought many times about calling the police or calling you know,
my sister, calling my parents or something to try to
come extract me from this relationship. And I was terrified
(10:37):
of what he would do to me. I thought he
would hot me down. You know. There were so many
different dynamics happening, and it's wild that the further away
I get from this relationship, the more I can see
my own contribution to it. Like I said before, so
(10:59):
because of all that, when I was leaving this relationship,
I was really questioning my own vantage point, my own
view on things. And when I sat down to write
the story of the demise of our relationship, I didn't
think that this was something I was going to publish.
I had been published before. I'd had a book come
out in twenty thirteen, and I had been working on
a second book that was very ironically supposed to be
(11:20):
about the first years of our marriage. The book was
called Our First Years, and it was supposed to be
about how challenging the first few years of marriage can be,
but how worth it it is to keep working on it.
And he and I had been in counseling together for
eighteen months and we were trying to work through all
of our issues and whatever else. So I'm working on
this book at the time about how challenging the first
few years of marriage can be. And as I'm working
(11:42):
on that book, our relationship completely falls apart, and I
am a shell of myself. I mean, I just can't
even figure out which way is up. I didn't have
my feet on the ground. I didn't trust myself. I
didn't know what was going on. All I knew was
that I was no longer willing to put up with
the dynamic that was happening between us, and so I
(12:02):
asked him to leave the house. I changed the locks
on the door as I pulled in some friends for
support and help because I was really afraid for my
safety at the time. I write about this and in destructible,
but I went to go file a restraining order and
I was turned away. And I learned so much through
this whole experience. But I began writing about the story
mostly just to orient myself inside of my own reality.
(12:23):
And so the first piece of advice that I give
to people who are asking how do I write about
the people who have hurt me? How do I do
this respectfully? Is you don't do it respectfully. You do
it with the sole purpose and the sole intention of
telling your story exactly the way it happened from your
own vantage point. Because for many people who are asking
this question, that step is the hardest step of all.
(12:47):
And I can speak from my own experience that leaving
that relationship where there was a lot of gaslighting happening,
there was a ton of manipulation, there was a lot
of fear mongering, using fear to control me. When I
stepped out of that situation, I had a really hard
time even believing that my own perspective was real. I
(13:07):
remember vividly this is probably a year after I had
left the relationship. I was on a date with a
man who I went on I don't know, maybe three
or four dates with and then we later became friends.
And I was saying to him that just telling him
stories about what had happened inside of this previous relationship,
and he was like, oh, so it was an abusive
relationship and I was like, no, no, it wasn't physically abusive.
(13:29):
And he's like, no, what you just told me is
that he put his hands on you. And I'm like,
I know, but I never like had to go to
the hospital for a broken bone or anything. And he
was like, but that doesn't matter. You're telling me that
he would, you know, grab you and throw you up
against a door, like hold you down on the bed,
and I'm like yeah, and he's like that's that's called
(13:50):
physical abuse. And it was just such a wild moment
where I was like, oh, oh, yeah, I guess I
hadn't really that or I hadn't really been willing to
own that inside of my own story, but that really
is what it was, and that just gives you a
sense of how long it took. You know, this is
a year after I had left the relationship for me
(14:10):
to really come back to reality and be willing to
trust my own viewpoint and my own vantage point on things.
And so sometimes that first step of just saying, I'm
going to write this the way that I remember it happening,
and I'm going to tell the details the way that
I remember it, and I'm going to try to get
this other person's voice out of my head, because I
did have his voice in my head saying to me,
(14:31):
that's not how it happened, or you're over dramatizing this,
or you're making it seem like it was worse than
it was. So I had his voice in the back
of my mind that was constantly influencing how I thought
I saw things. It was such an important step for
me to just say I have my own viewpoint, and
I get to have my viewpoint and we might disagree
(14:52):
about something. In fact, we probably will. We're going to
see things differently. We're different people with different temperaments and
different needs and different trauma, coming at this from different directions.
So this really isn't about being right. This isn't about
getting it accurately right, although I would say, like, don't
lie about the details, even in that first draft. But
tell the details the way you would tell it, not
(15:14):
the way someone else would tell it, not the way
your mom would tell it, not the way your ex
would tell it, not the way your sister would tell it.
Think about this siblings in a family. This is a
great example that doesn't it's not quite as charged as
like lovers, but siblings in a relationship who all grew
up in the same home with the same two parents.
Think about how differently siblings will tell the story of
(15:34):
let's just say your family vacation when you were ten
and your sister was six or whatever. How differently those
two people are going to tell that story. You're going
to remember different things, Yeah, hold on to different pieces
of the memory. You're going to have seen whatever memory
it was in a different light. Even if you remember
the same moment or instance, you might remember it very differently.
(15:56):
And that's just because you're different people, and you have
different viewpoints, and you see things differently. And what I
want to emphasize here is that your viewpoint matters. It's important,
it's needed, it's part of the larger picture of the story.
It is not the only truth, or the whole truth,
or the most important truth, but it is a very
important truth. And if you can't find the courage to
(16:18):
share from your vantage point, not only are you missing
out on that, you're missing out on the sense that like,
oh yeah, I have my own view of this, and
my view matters, like the way that I saw this
out of my own two eyes, and the way that
I heard it out of my own two ears, and
the way that I processed it and metabolized it. Not
only do you miss out on seeing how much that
(16:39):
matters to you, but also the rest of the world
misses out on seeing your way of seeing things, your
unique vantage point, your unique perspective, and we need more
of that. We need more of a well rounded perspective
of how to see the world. I've used this example before,
but imagine if you were to read a history book
(17:01):
about what happened in March of twenty twenty the shutdowns
in COVID and know the entire world shutting down all
at once, you would read one vantage point of how
that took place, or maybe some history books are written
by you know, three, five, maybe seven people at the most.
So you might read a collaborative viewpoint of seven people
(17:22):
who witness this happen and tell it in a very
objective way. But what if you read a collection of
stories of one hundred different people who told the story
of what life was like for them on that day,
Or what if it was a collection of stories of
one hundred different people who told their unique vantage point
of what life was like on September eleventh, two thousand
and one. You would get a really different a much
(17:46):
broader understanding of what it meant to be alive when
something like that took place. And it's not to say
that there's not a place for the history book version
of it, but all I'm saying is that we get
a much broader vantage point, a much bigger understanding of
human experience of how the world works when you share
(18:09):
your unique vantage point. So this is really Step one
is trusting yourself enough to put your unique vantage point
down on paper. And my admonition to you at this
point is to put it down on paper without assuming
that you're going to share it with anyone. Ever. What
this does is it provides an anonymity in your writing
that gives you permission to tell your truth. It's a
(18:32):
little bit like stepping into a therapist's office where you
can talk about things in a way that you wouldn't
be able to talk about outside the therapist's office, just
because you know, if you're going to, like go talk
to one friend about another friend to try to get
more perspective on a situation, you're going to hold back
a little bit because you're just like, I don't know
if this friend is going to talk to this friend
or whatever, Like I don't know where the alliances are
(18:54):
or where the allegiance lies. So you're just always going
to hold back a little bit because people, and also
you don't want to maybe taint one friend's view of
another friend or something like that. But when you're with
a therapist, you're like, this is an objective third party.
This person isn't part of the friend group, they're not
part of the family dynamic, they're not part of this situation.
They're being paid to sit here and listen to me.
So they can be mostly pretty objective, and you may
(19:17):
find that you have an easier time sharing with a
therapist about another person in your life or a situation
that's going on. Then you would if you were talking
to someone really close to you or I don't know
if this has happened to you before, but I've been
on the receiving end of this a lot, where if
you're an open person, you might find that strangers will
(19:38):
tell you stories from their life that they never would
tell anybody close to them. They'll tell you their whole backstory,
they'll tell you the horrible things they've done. They'll tell
you about this messy divorce they're going through. My husband
likes to joke that people like this make a bee
line for me, and it's just kind of always been
like this, I think because I receive those stories and
(19:58):
I find myself actually genuinely very interested in them, and
so I think people pick up on that and they
feel free to share. But have you ever found yourself
in a position where you feel free to share your
story with a stranger, even though you wouldn't feel free
to share it with someone who's very close to you.
That's the type of anonymity that this can provide when
you're willing to go sit down and write your story
(20:19):
without thinking, oh, I'm going to put this on Instagram
or I'm going to try to get this published. I
would recommend at first that you just plan to write
the story exactly the way that it happened, assuming nobody
else is going to read this, so that you have
the freedom to share as honestly as you possibly can
from your own personal perspective. So that's step one. Step
(20:41):
one is sharing the story from your own perspective without
thinking about how someone else is going to receive it
or know what they would think about it, or what
they would say, or their perspective or their vantage point.
Just your perspective first. And Step two has to do
with thinking about the villain in your story as the
hero in their own story. So this piece of the
(21:04):
equation is really about acknowledging that we are all multifaceted
creatures that just because someone is a villain in your
story doesn't mean that they're not the hero in their
own story. Because they are the hero in their own
story and they've got their own thing going on, they've
got their own transformation that's in process, and whether they're
resisting that transformation or not, that doesn't mean that the
(21:25):
transformation is not in process. So they may be the
villain in a lot of people's stories, but they still
are the hero in their own story, and you, This
is another way to think about it, You are the
hero in your own story, and you may very well be,
to your knowledge or not, the villain in someone else's story.
Not everyone who is the villain is villainous in the
(21:48):
way that we would think about a villain in a
movie or in life or whatever. Like. Not everyone who
is the villain in a story is intentionally or maliciously
your story. As the villain, they may very well be
just dealing with their own pain, and I'm not excusing
their behavior in the slightest, but they may be in
(22:09):
their own story really working hard to transform. It might
just be that they are behaving in a way that
as they enter into your story, it's triggering you into
a deeper transformation. And so remembering that people are multifaceted.
Just because they're the villain in your story doesn't mean
they're the villain in every story. It also means that
(22:32):
they're probably the hero of their own story, that they've
got their own thing going on, their own transformation going on,
and that not every villain is intentionally malicious. The way
that I think about it is that there's kind of
two types of villains there's the villain who is oblivious,
who's sort of covertly villainous. They are just dealing with
(22:54):
their own pain. They're not really paying attention to others.
They enter into other people's stories as the villa because
their behavior is sort of absurd or ridiculous or whatever,
it can be hurtful. And then there's another type of
villain that intentionally or maliciously takes advantage of the vulnerability
of others. And to me, these are two different types
of people. There are people who are wrapped up in
(23:15):
their own pain, who are just doing the best they can.
You know, my dad used to say all the time,
most people, most of the time are doing the best
they can, and I really do believe that. And I
also would add on to it that some people some
of the time are not doing the best they can.
Some people some of the time are predators. They are
intentionally malicious. They're looking for people who are vulnerable, and
(23:36):
when they see your vulnerability, they come in and attack
that vulnerability and take advantage for their own personal gain.
And so whichever type of villain that you're dealing with,
the interesting thing is is it doesn't really change the
purpose of the villain inside of the story. The purpose,
no matter the villain, is still to get the hero
to rise to the occasion. So, when you think about
(23:57):
someone who you would define as a villain in your life,
maybe it's someone in your personal life like a parent
or a lover or an ex lover, or a sibling
or a neighbor or whatever. Or maybe it's someone who
is more distant. Maybe it's someone who's in politics that
you can name as the villain right now. I can
think of more than one person that I would name
(24:18):
as the villain in politics right now, but I don't
want to get too distracted by that. My point is,
whoever you think of as the villain in your story,
remember that the purpose of the villain is to call
out the best qualities in the hero. That's the purpose
of the villain inside the narrative of the story. It's
to facilitate the transformation of the hero inside of the
(24:38):
narrative arc. Now, in real life, sometimes that happens, and
sometimes the opposite happens. For me, in my toxic dynamic
with this X, one thing that would often happen is
his villainous behavior would call out my villainous behavior, or
I later learned in therapy that there's a try where
(25:01):
at one tip of the triangle is the villain, another
tip is the victim, and another tip is the rescuer,
and that you get stuck on this triangle with someone
who's the villain in your story, where when they're the villain,
you play the victim, and then someone has to become
the rescuer, someone has to rescue the victim from their victimhood,
(25:21):
and then someone else has to become the villain. And
for many, many years I was stuck on this triangle
with him where he would act in ways that were,
you know, extremely villainous, and then I would respond in
ways that were like a victim, and then he would
have to come and rescue me, and then I would
become the villain, and we just couldn't find our footing
inside of our dynamic. And so my point is that
(25:42):
sometimes in life, the villain in our story can call
out the villain in us, or can call out the
victim in us, or can call out the rescuer in us.
You know, sometimes maybe we find ourselves like caretaking these
people over and over again, or doing whatever is necessary
in order to get them to be kind to us again,
or be nice to us again, or whatever we find
(26:02):
ourselves like fawning or placating or whatever it is. And
yet in the story, the point of this person in
the story is to get us to rise to the
occasion and to become empowered people with our own agency
and who trust ourselves and who can take action, and
who are positively creating our life and our space and
our dynamic. And so when you have a villain in
(26:24):
your story, it's really exciting to think about the fact
that this person could call out the worst in me.
Or if I'm writing my story either down on paper
or I'm just sort of creating my story, this person
also could facilitate my transformation. They could call out the
best in me. And so this is the third piece
(26:44):
of the equation. Here. The first piece is learning to
tell the story from your own vantage point, trusting yourself,
deciding that your viewpoint matters, and just telling the story
the way that it happened without worrying what anybody's going
to think about it. The second stage is being willing
to see the villain as multifaceted, trusting and knowing that
while they are the villain in your story, they are
(27:06):
the hero of their own story, and they're going through
their own transformation no matter how villainous they are in
your story or anyone else's story. This is not to
excuse their behavior at all or to say that you
shouldn't have very firm boundaries. I'm this X who I'm
talking about, I do not have any contact with I
went total no contact with him many many years ago.
So please have boundaries. And also having those boundaries allows
(27:29):
you to see with compassion and grace that this person
is also the hero of their own story. They're a
multifaceted person who has their own transformation going on inside
of their story. And then the third piece is being
willing to step out of this victim villain rescuer kind
of cycle or dynamic that we're in, and rather than
(27:49):
allowing the villain to call out the worst in you,
seeing if there's a way we're inside of the story
that the villain can call out the best of the hero.
So what does that look like? A big piece of
(28:09):
this for me, when I was writing a story of
Indestructible was deciding that I was not going to let
this story be about him, because he's the hero in
his own story. He's the villain in my story, but
he's the hero in his own story, so he's a
secondary player in my story. I'm the hero in my story.
This is about my transformation. So it's about asking myself,
how do I want to transform and who do I
(28:30):
want to become? And for me? As I reflected on
that question inside of my story, I realized that a
really big part of who I wanted to become was
that I didn't want to allow this experience to make
me bitter. I knew a lot of people who had
been through something similar and who came out on the
other side of it understandably, like completely understandably, and I
(28:50):
say this with tons of compassion. Who would come out
on the other side distrustful, fearful, bitter, closed off, angry,
you know, frustrated that life had turned out the way
that it had, that this person had hurt them so badly.
And I really wanted to come out the other side
of this stronger, more trusting of myself, more open, more free,
(29:13):
more loving, less fearful, like more courageous. That's who I
wanted to become. And so I had to start to
ask myself, what would I need to do inside of
the story, like, what would the hero need to do
on the screen of the movie, screen of my life
in order for this transformation to take place? In order
for the villain in this case, to facilitate the transformation
(29:36):
of the hero, how would I have to change? Who
would I have to become, What would I have to do?
What choices would I have to make for myself? And
that really informed my choices inside of the story, and
not just in the story that I was writing, but
also in my life. This is one of the amazing
ways that writing your story affects your actual life is
that as I was seeing the story unfold on the page,
(29:56):
I was realizing, Oh, oh, okay, that's not who I
want to be. This woman whose voice I can hear
on the page, who's very bitter and angry at this
person and who's making it all about him, That's not
who I want to be. I want to be the
type of person who really owns my story and owns
my experience and shapes it into something that I can
(30:17):
be proud of and who comes out on the other
side stronger for it. And I know that writing my story,
writing down my story, and choosing to do it in
the way that I've just laid out here in this
episode was a massive part of how I evolved through
this experience, and it's a huge reason why I've wanted
to pass this tool on to others and why it
(30:39):
matters so much to me to invite other people into
the experience of writing their story because it was such
a huge part of my growth and evolution. I don't
think I would be the woman that I am today
or have the life that I have if it hadn't
been for the experience of writing down my story and
being able to see myself in such a clear mirror
like that. And there's so much more that I could
say about this, especially along the lines of legality and
(31:03):
defamation suits, libel suits. I have a lot that I
can say about this, and I teach all about that
inside of my program called a book in six months.
But before I close the episode, I want to say
one thing that I learned along the journey, as it
relates to avoiding a lawsuit, because I was really concerned
when I published Indestructible that he was going to come
after me. I was worried he would either try to
assume me. I knew he had been pretty litigious when
(31:25):
we were together to other people, and so I just
knew how his brain worked, and I figured for sure
he was going to try to come after me, and
if not through the legal channels, then I figured he
would come after me and you know, try to hurt
me in some other way. And so that was part
of my thinking as I formed the story, and I
(31:46):
really wanted to do it in a way that would
make it extremely hard, if not impossible, for him to
come after me legally or for any kind of money
or anything like that. So I did my research. I mean,
I talked to so many different attorneys they kind of
pulled the audience a little bit. And one thing that
I heard several different attorneys repeat over the course of
(32:07):
my research was a phrase that has stuck with me
for a really long time. And each of the attorneys,
no matter what kind of law they practice, no matter
where they practice, all said this same phrase, and it
has stuck in my brain ever since then. And the
phrase is this, The truth is an absolute defense. In
other words, if you're telling the truth, it's really hard
for someone to refute you. If you're telling the truth,
(32:29):
they can take you to court, but especially if you
have proof of the truth. Then it's going to be
really difficult for a lawsuit to hold up in court.
So they might try, and you know they could. It
could cost you some attorney fees, but it's going to
be really challenging for them to win a lawsuit if
you're telling the truth and you have proof or facts
(32:52):
to back up your truth. So I thought about that
a lot. As I was writing the manuscript, I thought
about what kinds of things are objective? Toru? So I
thought about that a lot as I was editing the manuscript.
I did not think about this while I was writing
the manuscript. While I was writing, I just told my story.
But while I was editing the manuscript and thinking about publishing,
I really had to ask myself, is this the truth?
(33:16):
And the truth can feel like a little bit of
a gray area sometimes because there's my truth the way
that I see things, and there's your truth the way
that you see things, and we see things very differently
through an extremely different lens. So I had to ask myself, like,
in what areas was I willing to share my truth
even though I knew his truth would be different than mine,
(33:38):
and really get honest with myself about just because this
is my truth, is it really the truth? Or is
this my perspective on something? And the truth can feel
like kind of a gray area sometimes because there's both
my truth or my perspective on the situation and your
perspective on the situation. And I'm only one person here,
(33:58):
and there were two people in in this experience. And
one of the things that I learned in editing this
is that the more I can grow my perspective to
understand where both people are coming from, or where all
people are coming from, the more that I can work
to understand how you might have seen this. Actually, the
broader my understanding of truth becomes, the bigger my understanding
(34:20):
of truth becomes. It doesn't mean that his perspective is
right or my perspective is right, or his is wrong
and mine's right, or mine's wrong and his is right,
none of that. Getting inside of that trap of who's
is right and who's is wrong is exactly where that
toxic dynamic that we were in can come from. But
instead having really clear boundaries to keep myself safe, that's
an important part of this. Or you don't even feel
(34:41):
safe enough to consider someone else's perspective. So I want
to just make sure that that's on the table, that
I have been total no contact with this person since
like twenty fifteen, and so there's a sense of safety
and stability there that I grew over time to feel
safe enough to see things from his perspective. And yet
a lot of times when people read instructible, they'll say, like,
(35:02):
especially my friends and family who know you know more
of the story, they'll say, like, wow, you could have
really said way more you know, and like, could have
like really taken him down. And my response is always,
it wasn't my intention to take him down. It was
my intention to tell my truth. And it was an
extremely freeing experience to tell my truth and to learn
(35:22):
to trust myself and to learn to stand on my
own two feet and to allow myself to see things
the way that I actually do see them. And yet
I didn't do that without an understanding that he also
is the hero in his own story. I really did
this by not giving him too much space inside of
my story because my story is not about him, it's
(35:43):
about me, and only giving him enough space to be
the villain. The villain in the story. The purpose of
the villain is to facilitate the transformation of the hero,
the elevation, the evolution of the hero. And I want
to just say this really quickly before I wrap up.
I believe we are in a time right now where
(36:04):
there are villains unfolding on the broader stage, on the
political stage, that are truly, in my opinion, terrifying. And
I know everybody has different political opinions and understandings, and
so I don't know if you're listening to this thinking
like you disagree with me totally, that's fine. We have
our different perspectives. But in my opinion, we have villains
(36:27):
that are unfolding on the broader stage that are truly terrifying,
that are bringing what I would call the second type
of villain, that are taking advantage of the vulnerabilities of
others in a knowing and intentional kind of way that's
really scary. And yet I maintain what I have said
this entire episode, which is that the purpose of the
(36:49):
villain in any story is to call out the best
qualities in the hero and to invite them to rise
to the occasion. And so it is my opinion that
this period of time and history that we are going
to look back and notice the difference between those of
us who moved out of fear, and those of us
who moved out of conviction. And I say this with
(37:10):
the deepest compassion and knowing how truly terrifying it is
to act out of conviction, because I lived this on
a very personal level. There were times in my relationship
where I thought, I need to call the police, I
need to call my parents, I need to get the
hell out of here, I need to ask someone for help,
I need to ask this stranger on the street for help.
(37:30):
And I didn't do it because I was so scared
of the retaliation. I was so scared of what happened
to me. I was scared of how it would make
me look. I was scared of looking weak. I was
scared of people saying, you know, I couldn't make it work,
or this was all about me, or this was my
fault or what. I was so scared of so many
different things happening. And I think those fears are extremely real,
(37:51):
and all the things that I was afraid of could
have happened. And so I'm not undermining or underplaying those fears,
and I'm not undermining or underplaying the real fears that
we have existing inside of this dynamic that we're in
as a country right now. And yet I'm also saying
boldly and with conviction that now is the time to
rise to the occasion and find in you the love
(38:15):
that you need in order to continue to show up,
to act from your agency, to trust yourself, to trust
your own perspective. Do not let your perspective be wiped
out right now. Do not let your own conscience be
wiped out right now. This is so weird because last
night at the dinner table, my four year old was like, Mom,
what's a conscience? And I was explaining to my four
(38:36):
year old what a conscience is, and it was just
such a bizarre experience of like, in light of what
I wanted to talk about today on this episode, don't
forget what a conscience is. Don't forget that you have
a voice inside of you that's telling you what's right.
Do not let yourself be talked out of knowing what
you know is right. And right now is the time
(38:57):
to allow that love, that conviction, that conscience to come
out of you, that trust of yourself, that agency, the
sense that I have agency to create the kind of
world that I want to create. And I'm not going
to allow myself to be talked out of that right now.
I think many of us are being feeling like we're
being talked out of that right now. And I just
want you to know that you can trust yourself, You
(39:17):
can trust your own perspective of the story of what's unfolding.
That you have a voice inside of you that's speaking
to you and it's speaking truth to you. And I
want to encourage that and encourage you to write down
you whether your story that you want to tell is
a personal story that has nothing to do with politics,
or whether you're really wrestling with the villain that has
(39:39):
entered the scene right now in our world. Whichever it
is for you, I want you to know that writing
your story is an amazing way to reconnect with that
part of yourself that knows what you know, what you know,
what you know, what you know is true. So trust
your voice, trust yourself, trust yourself right now, and allow
(39:59):
the villain in the story to invite out the best
in the hero. You are the hero. This is your moment.
I'm in this with you, and I'll see you next
week on the Write Your Story Podcast.
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