By Theresa Rézeau 

There are moments when the internet mistakes proximity for care. A private fracture becomes public content, grief is circulated, and what might once have been held between a few people enters the glare of commentary, opinion, screenshots, memes and moral verdicts.

We call this transparency. We call it truth-telling. Sometimes it is. At other times, suffering has simply acquired an audience.

Family wounds need witnesses who are safe, not millions who are entertained.

This is not an argument against speaking about pain. Silence can protect abusers, preserve coercion and leave vulnerable people isolated inside harmful situations. There are circumstances in which testimony must travel beyond the family, to friends, therapists, safeguarding professionals, courts, journalists or the wider public. Privacy should never become an ethical disguise for impunity.

The more difficult question is not whether pain should be spoken, but what happens after it is spoken. Who receives it? What do they do with it?

The full essay continues in the Membership Archive, where Käthe Kollwitz becomes the starting point for a deeper reflection on suffering, privacy and what it means to give pain shelter without forcing it into silence.