As some of us re-write history with one conversation, others will continually re-write history as a way of life.

If you were to ask me what I did yesterday, I'd struggle to remember. My short-term memory is poor, but my long-term memory is excellent. I always remember conversations as if they took place yesterday, even though some of those conversations will have taken place years ago.

As we go about our daily lives recounting conversations, our interpretation of the facts may change. Some of us will recount very different stories along the way, because we choose to deny and obliterate our own understanding of the story and because we're choosing to create a different ending to the way we saw it.

We convince ourselves that our recollection of our conversation is fact, even though the other person we’ve had the conversation with, has a different recollection. It's annoying if you’re continually on the receiving end of a conversation with a different ending and you were part of the original conversation.

Yes, we don’t always have to re-write history through history books to recall a one-sided account: we can do it in our own back yards and some of us often do.

Ilana Estelle is a mental health and wellbeing advocate who combines educational insight with her personal experience of living with physical, mental, and emotional disabilities. She holds diplomas in Counselling, Diet and Nutrition, Nutritional Therapy, Psychotherapy and Counselling, and Stress Management. Through her writing, Ilana supports others in navigating their emotional, mental, and physical health challenges. In addition to writing for The CP Diary, her work has appeared in healthy lifestyle magazines. Ilana is also the author of three books: Cerebral Palsy: A Story – Finding the Calm After the Storm, Spirituality, Healing and Me, and Survival: The Covid Years – Time for Change.

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2 comments on “Rewriting history”

  1. It's embarrassingly normal for me to search for my eye glasses only to realize they're already on my face, but yet I can remember an exact incident when I was ten years old as if it were yesterday.

    But history is often written by those who have the power to tell your story their way and truth is never exactly pure when we get a chance to tell it ourselves.

    The most dangerous and the most liberating thing in the world is the truth; but the truth is a lie if someone tells your history for you.

    1. Thanks Tim. Perhaps the truth told my someone even if it our history, is their own truth of our story and not ours, because it's seen through their eyes. I believe the truth is often told and seen differently through other people's eyes.

      We may try to avoid the truth when telling our story, but we all know what our truth is, whether we tell the truth or not.

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