The Remembrance Codes

The Weaponized Word: How Language Shapes Our Reality

• Susan Sutherland

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Words can heal - or harm. They can open hearts or close them. In this episode of The Remembrance Codes, I unpack how language itself has been shaped to control emotion, perception, and even belief. From ancient terms like sin, obedience, and failure to modern mantras like healing and doing the work, I explore how meaning drifts over time - and how to reclaim it.

You’ll hear a personal story that reveals just how much charge a single phrase can carry, how our nervous systems respond to language long before logic catches up, and why words like attack, crisis, and trauma have become the emotional currency of a culture addicted to alarm.

This conversation invites you to pause, breathe, and witness the invisible frequencies shaping your thoughts and speech. It’s part etymology, part energy work, and part revolution of awareness - showing how to reframe language as medicine rather than manipulation.

If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by the noise of media, spiritual jargon, or the endless demand to “heal,” this episode will help you return to clarity, calm, and choice.

✨ Listen now to remember: the words you speak shape the world you live in.

Below is a simple Pocket Practice for Reclaiming Words you can begin using today:

Pocket Practice: Reclaiming Words in Real Time

  1. Pause + Breathe
    Before reacting to a word that feels heavy or charged, take one slow breath. Notice how it lands in your body.
  2. Trace Its Origin
    Ask yourself: Where did I first learn this meaning? Was it inherited from family, religion, culture, or media? Awareness loosens its grip.
  3. Reframe the Literal
    Gently translate the word back to its neutral root or true intent.
    • Sin → to miss the mark → to realign.
    • Failure → feedback → data for growth.
    • Healing → integration → returning to wholeness.
  4. Speak the New Phrase Aloud
    Try an embodied rephrasing that your system can believe.
    • Instead of “I’m broken,” say “I’m integrating.”
    • Instead of “I failed,” say “That attempt didn’t land.”
  5. Anchor with Intention
    Close your eyes and let your new phrase settle into your breath. Feel how your nervous system responds when the word shifts from fear to love.

✨ A deeper guided version of this practice - including journaling prompts, etymology roots, and a printable “Word Reclamation Template” - is now available inside The Keepers' Garden for members.

Which word will you reclaim this week? 🌹

SPEAKER_00:

A few weeks ago, my husband had a heart attack. And that is not the story that I want to make a theme song out of, but there was something else that was really important that I want to bring through to you guys. And that is the power of words. Before I left to go to the hospital and meet him there, and even when he and I were in the hospital, when the scans were happening, the blood words going, I described things to my kids the way I always try to. Soft and clear and true. I told them that dad had elevated levels. I told them he had a blockage. I told them that they put in a stint and they processed it and they carried on. And we all showed up for what needed showing up for. And for them, that was a really heavy academic and athletic week. But later, when we were all home and gathered around the kitchen table in the safe, ordinary hum of dinner, I said those words out loud. I said heart attack. And the air changed, and their faces changed, and their jaws dropped. Dad had a heart attack. Nothing about the facts had changed, and I had disclosed everything. There was only the shape of the words, only the sound of how it was communicated. That small moment is why I am calling this episode the weaponized word. Because words are not neutral. They are frequencies. They can be medicine. They can be spell work, but they can also become sharpened tools thrown at our hearts to make us smaller, to keep us frightened, to keep us obeying a script that is not ours. So I just want to walk through some of those with you today so we can start witnessing, witnessing some of the words, some old and some newer, and feel how they have been used. The word sin went simply meant to miss the mark. It is a direction to reorient. Simple and it's human. But over centuries, it was recast as moral annihilation, original sin. You are bad, you are broken, you are unsalvageable unless you kneel and plead. The original invitation was to realign and to try again. And it became a sentence used to have you bargaining outside of yourself for repair. The word obedience, at its best, at its origin, meant deep listening, in right relationship to wisdom. And it has been weaponized. A demand for conformity, a leash on curiosity, a tool to keep people quiet, to keep people submissive and in line. And the word failure, it was just raw data, it's feedback. And in the economy of growth, it is crucial information. But in a culture of shame, in a culture of sin, it becomes this permanent identity. I am a failure. And that shift freezes people into a fear of trying again. Y'all, if you said that you had an unsuccessful attempt, how does that feel differently in your body? What is the likelihood of a next attempt? If you say, I am a failure, or I had an unsuccessful attempt. The situation has not changed, but the words used to reference it did. Many words have been intentionally distorted by the empire and by the church to cultivate a society that relied on government and religion to fix their brokenness. We create a problem and then sell you the solution. But that is not where weaponized words ended. Now there are plenty of new age words that are worn like badges. And yet, if you look closely, they are used to flatten people. Healing. I love this word. And yet I watch it bend into a marketplace slogan. You are broken, come fix it. The implication out there is that if you are not constantly healing, investing, attending programs, buying a course, you are not doing the work. Because ultimately you are defective and on a forever quest to fix that. Healing should be a tender return to wholeness. But when it's hijacked, it insists that we are permanently broken, and that keeps us in chronic repair mode, looking for our flaws. Doing this work is also play and laughter and rest and joy. You do not need to constantly pick scabs to see where you are bleeding. Live with awareness. Witness your emotional highs and your lows. Witness your triggers and ask them to reveal what wants to be healed. The next word is trauma. And trauma is real and it is important and it is necessary to name. But trauma overused can become this lens that explains everything and then disempowers. I'm traumatized, therefore I'm stuck. Words that started as liberation become handcuffs. The word shadow is an invocative, helpful concept that darkness walks with us, yet sometimes it becomes an identity label that we use for ourselves or for others. And it can be a shorthand that keeps people trapped into their worst stories rather than invited into integration. And then there are the words that media and culture energize like alarm bells. It is literally their job to create an emotional charge to keep you locked in. Attack, emergency, crisis, scandal. These are not always wrong. Sometimes they are precise and necessary. But notice when the tone of delivery, the repetition, the breathless headlines primes you to panic before you even know the context. When we are afraid, our nervous system tightens. Fear is a great attention magnet. The story and the profit or power behind it may not be the truth that we want to live by. I wanted to show you some of these examples of words providing the charge that a reframe does not. When I told just about anyone about Mark's heart attack, the unanimous response was, that is so scary. And y'all, it could have been he had a 90% blockage in the Widowmaker artery. But our experience was not scary. And time after time, when I received loving and supportive messages checking on us saying how scary this was, I had to remind myself that they were responding to a word and not the situation. And I didn't need to allow reading that, thinking, oh, this is scary. I didn't need to receive that charge. They were responding to the word attack. What other words do you find yourself assigning emotions or responses to without knowing the context? There's many. We are conditioned to charge these words. So let's talk about how we practice witnessing without becoming paranoid. Here are simple steps you can do in the moment to test whether or not a word is carrying someone else's charge. Pause and breathe. Don't swallow the word. Right after you hear it, take a slow breath. That alone breaks a reflexive spiral. Ask, where did I first learn this meaning? Is the weight coming from a sermon you heard as a child? Your parents, a new cycle, a viral post, a culture of comparison? Naming the source loosens the grip. Then check the pattern. If the word always produces shame or panic or urgency in you, especially in a way that shuts down curiosity, what is going on in this situation? Treat it as a potentially weaponized word and then reframe the literal meaning. A practical exercise is to pause for six seconds of silence. If sin is missed the mark, then what does missing the mark invite? And try to reframe it out loud. I missed the mark, I can reorient. Doing that, watch how your body changes. This is very effective in your healing journey as well, because often we have been caught in this cycle of shame because we feel the weight of the word sin. But if you can reflect on the time that you missed the mark, it is easier to find ways to forgive yourself and maybe ask for forgiveness when the weight has softened, when you are reframing this in, I missed the mark, and that I can move on from. Then the last step is to decide your relationship to the word. You don't have to be opposite of everything. You can set a boundary. I will not speak the word broken about myself in the next week. Or I will not amplify headlines that use attack or alarm without checking reputable sources. Quick reminder, friends, they want you alarmed and they want you fighting. The headlines are meant to stir division. So these are practical nervous system practices that are disguised as decisions. They reintroduce sovereignty back into speech. When we have become great at witnessing these weaponized words, we can take that next step. Because if words have been weaponized, they can also be reclaimed. This is reclamation work. It is taking a field someone else built and saying, no, this is mine now. I'm going to plant different seeds. So here are some micro practices you can use to replant the field. Translate the word back into its original root. That is what we did with sin. The root meaning often carries humble and neutral assistance. And when you know the root, you can choose the tone in which you hold the word. Make an embodied rephrasing. Instead of saying, I am a failure, say this attempt did not land, and I will learn. Say it slowly and feel the difference. And then create a new ritual phrase. If healing has been turned into a marketplace, make a phrase that returns it to care. I am integrating. I am tending. Use that phrase in your household or community. Language is social. And if you don't believe me, be in a house with some preteens and know that they can pass around words and create a whole new vocabulary every season that we don't even understand. So to change our language, invite others to say it out loud. These small actions, repeated, change the frequency of language in your home and in your feed, and in your field. Quickly, since we are here and talking about words, I want to say something that has been burning in messages lately. The way some public conversations get turned into fear engines. There are certain topics about identity and health and safety that become lever points. If the goal is to get the largest possible audience, the quickest road is the trigger alarm. Outrage clicks and panic circulates. Take any hot button topic and ask who benefits if everyone is afraid? Not to judge, but to notice the mechanism. When we can see that mechanism, we can respond with compassion and clear boundaries. This is especially tender when people are activated around others' rights or existence. Like transgender people. Most of the people that are angriest or most fearful don't know a single transgender person. Their reaction is being shaped by images and language that presents others and otherness as a threat. Our job as sovereign listeners is not to inflame, but to refuse to be gaslit by spectacle. We cultivate curiosity. We ask questions, and we prioritize real human relationships over hashtag FedPanic. Language shapes the world. When we take the time to notice and to reframe and to reclaim our words, we are doing slow revolution work. It's tender and it's brave and it's daily. So tonight, notice notice one word that arrives heavy in your field and ask a question. Refind its root. Re-say it differently. Teach the new phrasing to someone. You know what they say when you want to learn a new vocabulary word, you need to go and use it three times in a sentence to claim it as your own. This is how we reclaim. Find a word and then know it differently, and then use it with others. If this episode landed with you, I've created a small downloadable pocket practice for reclaiming words, simple prompts, and a short script that you can use when the news feed feeds your fear. It will be in the Keeper's Garden this week for members, and I'll put a short version in the show notes for everyone. Which word will you reclaim this week? We have a choice to align with love or fear, and we need words that support that choice. Thanks for watching or listening, and have a great week.

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Susan Sutherland

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