As poet Terry Tempest Williams advises, we learn, then, to speak and ‘comprehend words of wounding without having these words become the landscape where [we] dwell.

Exploring that space between memories and the stories we create allows us to emerge as the leaders we were born to be. My journey as a leader has taught me that my childhood demanded a hypervigilance and that, to stay safe, I learned to work ceaselessly to try to make sense of the world (even as I was confronted with insensible acts and facts). As part of that effort, I listened closely—collecting and holding the stories of those around me as clues to a puzzling life.

The result is that I often see, hear, sense things that others miss. This can be a source of great wisdom. But this sensing can be an impediment to my peace of mind as well, for I can create whole ships of fiction out of the random flotsam and jetsam that float my way. Still, when I sit well and quietly, I can see a way through the puzzle, especially when another is blocked. I laugh as I recall that one of my favorite childhood pastimes was completing books of mazes. I like working my way out of mazes; I am good at it.

Tracing forward from these remembrances of things past gives us the chance to re-experience and reframe these beliefs. Doing so liberates us from the confounding forces we label as fate, destiny, or—even more frequently—the other person’s “fault.” We will never sort through them all, of course, but what we don’t sort through impedes our happiness. It tricks us into using the rest of our lives—and the people we love, the professions we choose, the organizations we lead—to try to close the gaping wounds from childhood.

My friend, the poet Pádraig Ó Tuama, says, “To live well is to see wisely and to see wisely is to tell stories.” I’ll go further; telling stories helps us live well. Telling the stories of our lives, telling the stories of the lives around us, helps us make sense of the world and, in the end, be wise.

Wise and sacred. Years ago, as I was beginning to distance myself more fully from that day, in 2002, when I teetered on the edge of my own Ground Zero, I was alone, naked, in a desert in southern Utah. On the second day of a three-night water-only fast, as part of a fourteen-day quest, I settled into the meaning of the true name I’d be given: Holder. Holder of Stories of the Heart. Holder of my stories. Holder of the stories of those I love. Holder of the stories of the brokenhearted leaders who come to me.

Such remembering, the late poet John O’Donohue reminds us, is an essential element of adult leadership. ‘When someone fails or disappoints you,’ he writes, ‘May the graciousness with which you engage / Be their stairway to renewal and refinement.