My Words, Their Weapons: But Still Mine

Author’s Note: This essay reflects my lived experiences and the meaning I’ve made from them. I write to explore how personal storytelling can be both healing and risky. For me, writing has always been a way to make sense of my life. I often write to know what I think. These are my stories, told from my perspective, with the hope they resonate with others navigating the risks, costs and inherent power of telling their personal stories.

A few years into my writing journey, I learned that words, what I write here and elsewhere, are never entirely safe. I write to make sense of my life, the joys, the hardships and everything in between, and I learned a hard truth: that my words can be lifted, twisted, and used against me. It’s happened in workplaces, in writing circles, and even in family. Each time, the message has been the same: stay silent, or we will silence you, and we will do it by force, if necessary. But each time, I’ve returned to writing because silence — the murky abyss where shame inhabits and power imbalances reside — has always been the greater evil.

I write about me and my experiences because I believed (notice the past tense) no one can tell me I’m wrong for writing about me. Except, of course, they do. Anne Lamott’s credo: You own everything that happened to you. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better has always guided my writing because it’s true. Yet my words have been read as attacks, complaints, or transgressions, rather than what they are: me thinking through and deeply processing what’s going on in my life. I guess no one likes a mirror being held up to them because it’s better to live in denial, convincing yourself that you’ve done nothing wrong.

The first time my words were used against me was about fifteen years ago. I wrote a blog post about a supervisor. I didn’t name them. I thought, nay believed, sunshine was the best disinfectant. After all, I was writing about how I felt, about the impact on me — not issuing a press release about her poor behaviour. But a colleague shared my writing with her (familiar theme, as it turns out) and the supervisor took offence, and suddenly I was staring down the barrel of a legal threat. My words, intended as a personal reflection, were read as a public attack. I deleted the post as requested because what else could I do? I found there is no protection if someone decides to read themselves into your words, and they don’t like what you have to say, even if it’s true.

It didn’t stop me writing, though. Over the years I’ve written about work culture, poor management and how toxic leadership ripples through organisations. I wrote about what it did to me personally: the stress, the disillusionment, the frustration. But again, my words came back to bite me. Three separate times, colleagues — people I thought I could trust — shared my writing to underpin their own agenda: advancement. Me, bad. Them, good. My little corner of the internet — my attempt at sense-making — was hauled into office politics. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t named names, or that I was writing in the spirit of reflection. What mattered was that I’d told a truth that made people uncomfortable. And discomfort, it turns out, can be dangerous to those who don’t like truth and self-reflection.

Then there was the time I shared a draft travel essay with a writing group. The story was about an on-again/off-again relationship I had while overseas, a romance that was as intoxicating as it was destructive. The man in question was, as I now know, a covert narcissist. I described him the way I experienced him: in terms of his physical presence, my attraction to him, and later, the betrayal.

The feedback that came back wasn’t about the writing craft or even the story, which was essentially about emotional abuse. While it was about me, the overarching message was that I was wrong to write about my own experience. I wasn’t “woke” enough. My truth had been reframed not as lived experience, but as evidence of my supposed failure to write within the acceptable ideological lines. Once again, the point of my story was erased — not because of what happened, but because of how it was received. My words had been taken and turned into a weapon to be used against me.

Fast-forward to now, and the stakes are so much higher. Here, the place where I have always laid down my thoughts and stitched my experiences into some kind of coherence — has been pulled into spaces I never intended. Words I wrote to steady myself have been lifted out of their context, twisted into shapes I no longer recognise. What was meant as a soothing balm has been turned into the sharpest of blades, redirected to pierce my heart. It is surreal, and frankly devastating, to see language born of sense-making and history-marking repurposed as an instrument of wounding.

Looking back, I can see the pattern clearly. Whether it was a workplace, a writing group, or even the most intimate of spheres, my words have been read through someone else’s lens, and then twisted and wielded against me. Each time, the message was the same: stay silent. Do not tell this story. Do not use language to expose what we would rather leave hidden. We have the power. You do not.

But here’s the thing: I cannot not write. Not writing would be to erase myself. Writing is how I survive, how I gather the broken pieces and lay them out into a shape that makes sense to me. Yes, my words can be coiled around to wound me — but not writing is the greater sin. Silence eats away at me like acid far more than a backlash ever could.

So I accept the risk. I accept that my words may again be misread, misused, even fashioned into sharp, pointy things designed to wound and damage. But I also know that by writing my story, I reclaim what was taken: my voice, my narrative, my agency, what it means to be me. Anne Lamott is right. We own everything that has happened to us. Everything. We also own the right to make sense of it, to craft it into language, to put it out in the world irrespective of who is outraged or offended.

(And I don’t need to remind you: just because you are outraged or offended doesn’t mean you are right. And your opinion? You are only entitled to what you can argue for.)

This is the thread running through every story: I write, they resist, I keep writing. They keep resisting. But in the end, my words are not theirs to control. They are mine. And I will keep writing them, because I can.

Image: Rafael Juárez from Pixabay