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“Telling a story is how we digest what happens to us,” Mr. Whittier says. “It’s how we digest our lives. Our experience.”

“…You digest and absorb your life by turning it into stories,” he says…

Other events–the ones you can’t digest–they poison you. The worst parts of your life, those moments you can’t talk about, they rot you from the inside out…

But the stories you can digest, that you can tell–you can take control of those past moments. You can shape them, craft them. Master them. And use them to your own good.

Those are stories as important as food.

Those are stories you can use to make people laugh or cry or sick. Or scared. To make people feel the way you felt. To help exhaust that past moment for them and for you. Until that moment is dead. Consumed. Digested. Absorbed.

It’s how we can eat all the shit that happens.