How Telling My Story Helped Me Heal (And Gave Others Hope)
By Eric Dickson | Mindful Mountain Wellness

For a long time, I believed healing meant getting as far away from my trauma as possible. I thought that if I just buried the pain deep enough, covered it up with accomplishments, or distracted myself with busyness, maybe it would eventually fade. But as many of us who’ve walked through trauma come to learn—pain doesn’t disappear just because we stop looking at it.

I went to war at 19.  As an infantryman, I experienced intense firefights on a daily basis.  Explosions, ambushes, and snipers were around every corner.  It was a game of life and death.  Not only did I get shot, but I watched many friends, many good men pay the ultimate sacrifice.  Following my deployment, I had 5 back-to-back surgeries, and I was medically discharged from the Army, with absolutely no life plan ahead of me..  So I did what any normal infantryman would do, blew all of my money on tattoos, alcohol, and guns. 

It wasn’t until I became a peer support specialist and later a health and wellness coach that I began to truly understand the power of my own story. Not just in my own healing, but in the healing of others.

At first, telling my story felt like tearing open a wound every time. I’d brace myself before speaking. My heart would race. Sometimes my voice would crack, my hands would tremble, I was constantly drenched in sweat.. But over time—after dozens, maybe hundreds of times repeating the same experiences—the story lost its sharp edge. It no longer had the power to hijack my nervous system or drag me back into the past.

Telling my story over and over was like releasing pressure from a valve I hadn’t even realized was about to burst. Each time I shared, something shifted. The emotions became more manageable. The memories felt less like chains and more like chapters. I stopped being afraid of what happened and started learning from it.

Yes, countless years of therapy, mindfulness, yoga, and acupuncture have done amazing things to help me heal and come back to myself, but being able to share my story with so many other veterans and people living with PTSD has brought me more inner peace than anything. 

There’s a strange kind of alchemy that happens when you turn pain into purpose.

When I sit with a veteran or a client who feels like they’re drowning in shame or anger or grief, I can look them in the eye and say, “I’ve been there.” And I mean it. I have been there. And yet, here I am. Breathing. Growing. Loving. Serving. That simple truth—that survival is possible, and that growth is even probable—is often all someone needs to keep going one more day.

That’s the gift of peer support. It’s not about having the right answers. It’s about showing someone what’s possible when you refuse to give up.  I have learned that the gift of hope is by far the most profound gift you can give to someone.

Helping others has become a cornerstone of my healing.

There’s something incredibly grounding about using your scars to light the path for someone else. When I coach others through breathwork, or lead a sound healing session, or guide a veteran through coherence techniques, I’m not just offering them tools—I’m offering them a part of myself. And every time I do, I reclaim a little more of my own wholeness.

Healing, I’ve come to learn, isn’t a straight line. It’s a spiral. Sometimes you circle back to old wounds, but you meet them from a higher perspective. You’ve got more tools, more wisdom, more strength. And often, the weight you carried for so long begins to shift—not because it vanished, but because you’re no longer carrying it alone.

If you’re holding onto a story that feels too heavy to tell, I want to encourage you: You don’t have to share it all at once. You don’t even have to share it publicly. But finding safe spaces to speak your truth—even if it’s just to a journal or a trusted friend—can be profoundly liberating.

Your story has power.
Not because it’s perfect.
Not because it’s resolved.
But because it’s real.And someone out there needs to hear it.
Just like you once needed to hear someone else’s.

-Eric