There are many very good reasons to decide to stop writing about one’s trauma, or to take a break from writing about one’s trauma — as someone who used to try to change hearts and minds about the topic of sexual assault by sharing my own experiences, I know how painful it can be to mine your trauma and have it feel like it hasn’t made an impact. But don’t let anyone convince you that your story is not worth telling, that the very act of existing and expressing yourself is unwanted. It’s not. Your experiences are valuable and your voice matters.

I think when we’re in situations where we have privilege, the temptation is to think that it’s best if we not talk at all — but I think that can sometimes be a kind of fragility in its own way, or at least in my case it is. It can be hard to make the decisions about when to speak, when to pass the mic, when you are taking up another person’s space, when the space ought to be your own. I think it’s very important to be cognizant of the advantages you have in the ED community as a thin, cisgender person whose recovery process followed the expected path somewhat. Amplifying under-represented voices, as you did in this piece, is so important. Not talking over or invalidating people of color, trans people, fat people, that is all deeply important. But that is not synonymous with silencing yourself.

Like you, I think I do get a bit sick of how months like these (awareness months) become a place for the most privileged members of an affected community to come out and perform their pain for a mainstream audience. It happens with trans acceptance and autism acceptance weeks/months, too.

But that doesn’t mean that you have to put a categorical ban on writing about your recovery and your experience — if you ever want to again. It’s perfectly fine to not. I just don’t want you to think that you have to stop or that expressing yourself is oppressive. It’s all about being mindful of the very issues you’ve highlighted in this post. As long as you are, you’re probably good.