Well hello again Reader,

As Alysa Liu skated her authentic heart to gold this week, Xennials like me felt healed from the scandal that rocked the 1994 Olympics: the coordinated attack on Nancy Kerrigan, that was an attempt to knock her out of contention.

It quickly became a “good vs. evil” storyline and the villain was Tonya Harding.

I, Tonya is an attempt to bring Harding out of the flattened villain arc that pop culture handed her and give her dimension.

When this movie first came out, I hesitated to watch it. I wasn’t interested in seeing her story sanitized to make her a victim in all of this too (which was the narrative that they tried to redeem her with in the public eye).

This film is crafted in a documentary-style interview. In it, you get three perspectives: Tonya’s, her mother’s, and her ex-husband Jeff’s. As you watch, you can see how each character’s perspective of the same event is just a little different.

There’s a scene where she explains how she started skating. She looks straight at the camera and tells it plainly—the rink, the cost, her mother, the scrappiness of it all. It isn’t sentimental. It’s positioned as, “This is where I come from. This is how it started.”

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Before I go further, let me draw a line that matters here.

Context does not erase harm. Abuse is a choice. Accountability matters. Understanding someone’s background is not the same thing as excusing their behavior.

I was afraid that's what this film was attempting to do, but that’s not what this story is about.

This is about authorship.

When you tell a story that includes other people, you are never telling the whole truth, but you are telling your truth.

Which, when characters in your story have behaved badly, makes people nervous.

Our perspectives in our stories are about meaning-making. We choose where the story begins. We choose which details matter. We decide where the audience’s sympathy lands.

Anne Lamott wrote, “If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”

That isn’t a casual disregard for people’s feelings. It’s permission to own your story. You are not required to edit your truth to protect someone else’s comfort.

But permission is not distortion.

Perspective is not fabrication.

And telling your version does not mean erasing harm, especially if you caused it. It does not mean weaponizing vulnerability to rewrite reality. There is a difference between owning your story and manipulating the frame.

The question is simple: Am I telling this in good faith?

Good faith storytelling doesn’t pretend your version is the only version. It doesn’t exploit. It doesn’t dodge accountability. It owns what’s yours and tells it honestly.

So if there’s a story you’ve been holding back because someone else was in it—because you’re afraid they’ll disagree, because you don’t want to be misunderstood—tell it.

Try This

Take one story you’ve been hesitating to tell.

Write down:

• Where does it begin — and why there?
• Who might disagree with your framing?
• What part of it is fully yours to own?
• Are you telling it to defend yourself… or to illuminate something true?

Revise with intention and shape your narrative.

Authorship is power.

Use it well.

Until next week,