Finally reading @jessradio’s See What You Made Me Do.

CN: abuse
I’m only on the introduction and I already wish every person who minimised or dismissed me when I told them my ex had abused me, would read this.

CN: abuse

“In the words of world-leading trauma expert Judith Herman, ‘It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that we do nothing ... The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain.’”

So many people I called friends, who espouse harm minimisation and accountability rhetoric in public, shut me out and stayed friends with him because he asked them to do nothing, and I was asking them to live their values in private when it was difficult and no one would see.

CN: abuse

To leave abusive relationships (romantic, friend, family, even work) you have to be prepared to lose everything and everyone. And people wonder why you didn’t leave or speak up sooner.