When did you feel ready to share your truth while still healing? What helped you find your voice?
How did you know it was time to share your storyeven before it felt fully healed?
r/AskWomen
When did you feel ready to share your truth while still healing? What helped you find your voice?
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I’m not sure this is what you’re looking for but I’ve been separated for over a year. He is/was abusive and mean but sprinkles in kindness and very thoughtful actions sometimes. I’ve started telling people about the things he’s done, not just my therapist. I don’t spread it around lightly but I’m also tired of covering for him. Not everyone needs to know why we’re separated but some of my friends have no idea why I left and until recently, thought it was such a shame. Letting those specific people know has actually helped me heal, I don’t have to hide anymore. At first, and admittedly sometimes still, it’s scary to tell the truth because I don’t want to be judged for not leaving sooner and it can be embarrassing, but overall if I’ve chosen the right people, it’s very liberating.
When you feel called to do so.
I found myself more compelled to help others in similiar positions. I started really small. I’d make comments here on Reddit for people in similiar situations to my own so I was still completely anonymous.
It felt good to share so once I was around a solid group of people, I slowly took the risk and opened up. Each time it went well opening up to people and I found there was a certain strength and dignity in owning my story. I liked that I was finally the one telling my story, in my own way.
Primarily though, once my desire to advocate and help others in vulnerable positions outweighed my own personal fears it became easier to speak up.
From there it was like unraveling a thread. The more I spoke the better I felt. Th better I felt, the more I healed. From there I just kept on speaking.
I do it through writing and fictionalizing my characters and places. I haven’t shared everything publicly, as I’ve only self-published one novel, but I feel like by the time I’m ready to share all my writing, I already feel like I’ve told the story so many times because of all the re-reads I’ve done, and the editing process to make sure it’s conveying exactly how I felt during those moments.
People reading my work will not fully know how true some of the scenes are because it’s not labelled as a memoir, but a lot of what I draw on in my writing is from trauma and pain I’ve experienced. Getting it out that way is healing in its own way.
One thing worth noting is that women are encouraged and often socially rewarded to share our trauma stories, but there is no moral value attached to sharing them. It’s not a decision that makes you a better person or a worse person either way.
If you feel like you’re not ready, maybe you’re not ready. You are the guardian of your own experience and you should hold every boundary you need to hold in order to protect yourself appropriately. 🙂
When the same thing happened to someone else. I wish I had someone to help me feel that I wasn’t alone, but being that person for someone else was one of the best things that I could do.
When I realized that telling my story would help other people.
When I realized it was going to take every voice possible to work towards ending the stigma and stereotypes of mental illness and suicide.
I tried to make my exit in 2010. And I couldn’t talk about it for a long while. Then in 2017 I found myself in a room full of my colleagues for a mental health awareness presentation. And even though I didn’t feel healed and had only been at that job for a few months and those people were still strangers to me there was something about the milquetoast tone of the event that compelled me to raise my hand and share my story.
It was a real teaching moment. Because so many people said “you don’t seem depressed” “you don’t seem like the kind of person that would try to die by suicide” “you don’t seem like you’re mentally ill”. And I was able to challenge them on their stereotypes and give some of them insight on what is really like to live with mental illness.
Of course I’ll never know for sure but I hope somebody was in that room that felt less alone after hearing what I had to say.
And since then I have not stopped sharing my story.
Journaling helped me believe and trust myself. Eventually, I read my journals to people I trusted and they were so moved. It was quite healing to know what had happened to me could help others heal
I just knew
I don’t think it will ever heal, I will forever remember the pain. But often I found myself okay to talk about it once I knew I was already on the next step. Still not fully healed, but I know I’m growing past it. I have something to hold and expect from myself ❤️🩹
Because shame was holding me back. And that was not my shame to carry.