There was a story I would occasionally tell regarding how badly my mother treated me throughout my life. It was a story about verbal and emotional abuse, and I told it well. Some people would get tears in their eyes when they listened to me. One day I told the story to a healer — a Christian Science practitioner — and she didn't get tears in her eyes. Instead, she looked at me and said kindly, "You know, you're going to have to stop telling that story if you want to be healed." My first thought was, "Golly. I don't know if I can do that. This story tells people why I am the way I am." Besides, I'd gotten a lot of mileage out of that story.
In the same conversation with the practitioner, she told me about a healing of a man who was in prison and whose testimony was later published in the Journal. He'd had a violent past, yet had been able to forgive a man who'd shot him near the heart years before. A Christian Science practitioner told him to think about this man as a little child, the same way he thought about his own little niece. He did this, and was able to feel love for the man. Days later, bullet fragments that had been too close to his heart to remove surgically emerged from his skin. He was completely healed.
I know I changed, but I think she changed, too
