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Dear Lori, Helcat and all,

I too am sorry that anita chose to leave, even though nobody forced her to, moreover she in her most recent posts expressed that she doesn’t want to leave. I too valued her contributions immensely and I believe that her presence on the forums will be irreplaceable, since she was completely dedicated to helping each and every person, and no one’s post was left unanswered. Also, she offered super valuable advice and insight to so many people. Her contributions will really be missed 🙁

I agree with Lori that the situation with anita and Helcat isn’t black-and-white. In my opinion, there was sensitivity on both sides. For example, anita didn’t mean to question the validity of Helcat’s childhood trauma, but Helcat seems to have interpreted anita’s words as questioning and possibly accusing her of lying, which wasn’t anita’s intention.

But, truth to be told, anita has in the past accused several members of lying and inventing their stories, which led to some of those members leaving and deleting their accounts. I am not sure if this is what made you, Helcat, super vigilant and believing that anita accused you of the same, when in fact she didn’t?

I want to stress that anita helped hundreds of people with kindness, care and respect, whereas the instances where it wasn’t the case were pretty rare. The good that she did far outweighed a sporadic problematic reaction here and there.

But if we want to talk about how to prevent such situations in the future (answering to Lori’s question “If anyone has any thoughts to share to help me better address situations like this in the future, feel free to post them below!”), what I see as problematic is that I started to censor myself whenever I noticed a potential problem in anita’s reactions (which, I want to stress again, was very very rarely).

But nevertheless, anita reacted very strongly to criticism, even constructive criticism, directed at her. And she came up with a rule, which I believe isn’t a part of the forum guidelines, which she repeated to Helcat too (on Sept 18, 2022):

To promote safety and calm in the forums, it is important that Responders (members who choose to reply to an OP, in the OP’s thread)  do not criticize other Responders. It is not at all necessary because a Responder can thoroughly express his/ her understandings, convictions, etc.-  as many times as she wants, and at length- without criticizing other responders. Not only is there no benefit to the OP in such criticism, but it can easily turn an OP away from his/ her thread and discourage Responders from responding because of fear of being criticized.

This “rule” basically says that we shouldn’t say anything, even if one member is being unkind to another member. Anita presented this rule to me too, when I once tried to point out that she might be unkind or insensitive to another member. She reacted very strongly, explained why it was wrong of me to address her directly in the OP’s thread, and told me she wouldn’t be communicating with me again.

I’ve recognized it was a sensitive spot for her, and I think she too realized it in the meanwhile (and we’ve smoothed our misunderstanding since). However, the result was that from that moment on, I’ve never said anything, even if sometimes I’ve noticed things that bothered me.

This “rule” silenced me. I didn’t want to say anything to anita, because she truly did so much good on the forums and I didn’t want to provoke unnecessary conflict.

I understand how this rule can be beneficial too, because it prevents exactly that – unnecessary conflict and criticism among members. But when taken to the extreme, it can discourage constructive criticism as well, and things are swept under the rug, instead of clarified and talked about.

So, I agree with Brandy that this could be an opportunity for growth for all of us. At least it is for me. As much as I cherish peace and no conflict, sometimes it is necessary to speak out, even if it might be uncomfortable. Constructive criticism, when there is a loving intention behind it, isn’t bad, but necessary.

It is also my impression that Helcat’s criticism of anita was partially constructive (i.e. justified) and partially stemmed from over sensitivity. That’s why I said I believe this wasn’t a black-and-white situation. But unfortunately anita saw it as black-and-white. She felt attacked and even stalked by Helcat, and chose to leave. And it’s a huge loss for the community.

I truly hope she works through some things and returns to the forum, because her help, advice and care will be greatly missed.