Stand on Your Story: Turning What Tried to Break You Into the Ground You Walk On
By Michael Kelman Portney
1. The Lie We’re Told
There’s this story the world tells us about how to matter. It starts with a triumph, or a diploma, or a startup exit. It gets polished in clean sentences. It ends with applause. It pretends trauma is a footnote and legacy is built from achievements only.
This is a lie.
The real legacy starts in the fire. It starts in the courtroom when you’re alone. It starts at 3 a.m. when you’re not sure if you're going to make it through the next day. It starts the moment you realize no one is coming to save you, and you stop waiting to be rescued and start building something out of your pain.
We are told to heal first. To polish it. To wait until it's a "better time."
But there is no better time than now. And there is no healing without power.
2. The Truth You Learn in the Fire
When you go through hell, everyone wants a clean version of it. They want you to wrap it up in a bow. "What did you learn?" "How did it make you better?"
But sometimes, there’s no bow. Sometimes you come out ash and nerve and teeth.
And here’s what you learn in that fire:
You don’t have to forgive the people who threw you in. You don’t have to turn your pain into a TED Talk. You don’t have to be a motivational speaker for a system that tried to kill you.
You just have to survive long enough to tell the truth.
That’s it. That’s the power. That’s the beginning of legacy.
Not when you win. When you outlast.
3. Shame Is a Distraction
Shame is the favorite tool of institutions, families, and abusers. It’s the sedative they inject to keep you quiet. It’s the soft voice that says, *"Maybe you deserved it. Maybe you’re overreacting. Maybe if you were stronger, you wouldn’t be here."
Fuck that.
Shame is a diversion. It pulls you off the trail. It tries to convince you that your trauma makes you unreliable.
But your trauma is the evidence. Your trauma is the transcript. Your trauma is the proof that something happened.
You don’t owe anyone a clean story. You don’t owe anyone your silence. And you sure as hell don’t owe anyone your shame.
4. The Legacy of Standing on It
The worst thing that ever happened to you might be the only thing no one else can take.
They can steal your job. Your home. Your inheritance. Your safety. They can smear your name and question your character and drag you through institutions that pretend to be neutral.
But they can’t rewrite what you lived through.
That story, as awful as it is, is yours. It is your stone. And you can stand on it.
Not because it's comfortable. Not because it's finished. But because it's yours.
5. Don’t Heal It Yet. Use It First.
There’s a common idea that you shouldn’t speak out until you’ve healed. That it’s dangerous to act when you're still angry. That you need to take time, breathe deep, find peace.
That advice is often well-intentioned. But when it comes from the people who benefitted from your silence? It’s strategy, not compassion.
You don’t owe anyone your silence while they keep doing the damage.
Sometimes your unhealed self is the most truthful version. Sometimes the pain is the compass. Sometimes the fire is the only time you’re clear-headed enough to see the system for what it really is.
Use that.
Don’t wait to heal if you’re in the middle of a cover-up. Don’t wait to process if you’re surrounded by people who want you neutralized.
Speak while it’s raw. Speak while it’s ugly. Speak while they still think you won’t.
6. You Don’t Have to Explain Everything
Let me tell you something they don’t teach in law school, or therapy, or media coaching:
You can name what happened without explaining it.
You can say:
"Something broke that should never have broken." "I was betrayed in a way that rewired my nervous system." "I am not who I was before."
You don’t have to give receipts. You don’t have to justify your tone. You don’t have to tell the story on their terms.
Because when you speak from the raw truth, the people who know, will know. And the ones who demand more? They were never listening to begin with.
7. What It Looks Like to Stand on Your Story
So what does it actually look like to claim your legacy while the fire's still burning?
It looks like documenting everything.
It looks like refusing to reframe your words to make institutions comfortable.
It looks like saying "No" to premature closure.
It looks like taking the time to name names when you're ready.
It looks like not begging for justice — but building your own archive of truth.
Standing on your story doesn’t mean screaming it from rooftops. Sometimes it means writing one sentence that you know is true and letting it sit in the world like a grenade.
Sometimes it means declining to play the game they offered because you already wrote your own rules.
Sometimes it means waiting until you can publish the receipts in your own voice, not through some gatekeeping editor or committee.
8. The People Who Will Try to Stop You
When you start standing on your story, people will get nervous.
The enablers will tell you you're being "divisive." The complicit will say, "That was a long time ago." The well-meaning will say, "But what will people think?"
And you can say this:
"I’m not telling this for you. I’m telling it for the person who comes next. So they know they aren’t crazy, and they aren’t alone."
Because legacy isn’t just about what you leave behind. It's about what you make survivable for the next person.
9. You’re Not Broken. You’re Documented.
This system will try to convince you that you’re unstable, irrational, paranoid.
They will throw labels at you to discredit your clarity. They will use your pain as proof that you’re unreliable.
But your trauma is not a flaw in your perception. It is a record of impact. It is a living affidavit.
You’re not broken. You’re documented.
And when you finally compile those documents into a legacy, the people who tried to bury you will realize: you were the archive all along.
10. This Is the Beginning
You don’t have to be done. You don’t have to be healed. You don’t have to have the perfect ending.
But you do have to decide:
Will you spend your life running from the story they tried to write about you? Or will you stand on the one you lived?
Because even if it’s grotesque, even if it’s humiliating, even if it cost you everything,
It’s yours.
And the moment you choose to stand on it? That’s the moment they lose control.
That’s the moment the ground under you becomes foundation.
That’s the moment legacy begins.
Michael Kelman Portney
MisinformationSucks.com
