"I want to get to a point where my story doesn’t have to be of service"

Grappling with how to write about religious and sexual trauma

This weekend, I attended the Truckee Literary Crawl and had the opportunity to read from No One Loves An Angry Woman for the first time. I chose a section that talked around my rape, without going into any detail. Instead it centered on how I use storytelling as a coping mechanism — most of it ended up being a retelling of the Book of Esther. Even so, it felt vastly more vulnerable than any reading I’ve ever done for Fed Up: Emotional Labor, Women, and the Way Forward. This next book exposes my deepest wounds in a way that feels physically scary.

I’m not a stranger to public speaking. I teach 4-5 yoga classes a week and I’ve spoken on plenty of stages for my first book. But during this weekend’s reading my face became flushed and hot and red, my nervous system having an absolutely metldown that we were saying the forbidden thing out loud.

Writing No One Loves An Angry Woman has put me in touch with the physical aftermath of my trauma in eyeopening ways. It’s not just the sobbing breakdowns that happen during the process, but the tightness that will settle into my shoulders and the pain that erupts in my hip when I’ve done nothing (physically) to aggravate these body parts. The body remembers more than I do, and what I remember is bad enough.

The heat and activation in my body didn’t subside, even after the reading and Q&A ended. I put a cool hand to my enflamed cheek as my friend and I walked to get coffee afterwards. You’re okay, I told myself internally. We’re okay.

These are the words I need to hear when my body believes I’m back in harm’s way, which is most writing days. There is a little version of me that needs to be soothed and safe in order for the work to get done. You’re okay, I remind myself. I feel my feet on the ground, put my hand on my heart. Breathe. We’re okay.

It’s been interesting to see that it comes up not just when writing about physical trauma, but whenever I write anything that little me believes is dangerous to say out loud. When I criticize the harmful actions of my parents or church leaders. When I write down the unspoken truths of purity culture for everyone to read.

The culture of silence the church encouraged still lives within me. Still strikes fear in my heart every time I tell the truths a “good girl” isn’t supposed to reveal.

One of the questions asked after my reading was how did you learn to be vulnerable in your public writing?

I turned to the answer I’ve told before. Breaking silence has never come easy, and it took a lot of defiance and anger to disconnect from my “good girl” conditioning. But ultimately what has always guided me to truth telling has been the knowledge that it helps others who are still stuck in their silence. It allows others who have been harmed in the same way to see themselves and their truth more clearly.

“But I want to get to a point where my story doesn’t have to be of service to be worth sharing,” I said.

I didn’t know this was what I was going to say. I don’t think I have ever thought those words to myself before. I’ve certainly never said them aloud. But they are true.

So often I justify writing difficult things because that writing can help others. I find myself thinking of my lived experience as a mirror in which people can see themselves reflected. Superimpose their own stories over my own. I write myself into invisbility, even in my most vulnerable moments.

I literally have a folder full of emails I’ve received from readers to help remind me why my work is worth pursuing. Stories of divorces initiated or marriages restored or the validation of feeling seen and acknowledged and given language for a phenomenon they’ve experienced. This is why I write.

But there is a voice inside me that is starting to recognize how using this as my primary motivator becomes another form of erasure. Another way to disappear in service to others. To render myself a tool — a useful object, as I was taught to be in purity culture.

As a girl I was reduced to many metaphorical objects. I was a pair of white sneakers, easily scuffed and marked. Gum no one would want to chew after it’s used. A lollipop dropped in the dirt. The cow no one would buy if they could get the milk for free. My body was intended as a gift for my future husband — no one wants a secondhand present, especially one intended for single use.

But even when I wasn’t being compared to consumables, I was still aware that my value lay in what I could offer others. My humanity was always framed in terms of service — what could I give that would make me useful, worth having around? How was I being used as a servant of God? As clay in the hands of the master potter? I learned I needed to earn my keep. That my value was not inherent.

Which meant that anything I said out loud had to serve a purpose outside of myself: to lift others up, to help and advise, to express gratitude. Naming harm in this context was obviously not allowed. It could ruin futures. It was focused on the negative. It was selfish. Unecessary. It didn’t matter if it was true if it wasn’t also helpful.

My workaround in writing about trauma has always been a sort of fucked-up cost/benefit analysis. Yes, naming harm causes my family of origin discomfort or upsets men or casts the church in a bad light, but it also helps others. The benefits outweigh the cost of speaking the truth — or at least nuetralize them. It’s useful writing, and therefore worthy. I’m allowed to have something to say if it’s helpful.

To be clear, I do want my writing to be helpful. I want others to see themselves reflected in my experiences. But I also want to know that my story is worth telling regardless of its usefulness. I want to name what has happened to me, because I deserve to be heard. Even when others don’t find meaning in it. That’s what little me deserved.

Being of service is a beautiful thing, but often it gets muddied for me because it’s a compulsive remnant of that good girl conditioning. I have to be of service, otherwise I have no right speaking out this way. My story needs to be useful, otherwise it’s better to keep the hard truths hidden.

I want to get to a place where both things feel true. My writing can be helpful and has worth outside its usefulness. My story can be a tool for others’ reflection, and it is still first and foremost mine. We get to tell our truths out loud, because our truth deserves to be told. Because we are worthy of being heard.

---

OR, you can send me a tip here! I will also accept nice comments to put in my validation folder, which I have no intention of deleting anytime soon.