When Asking Isn’t Care: A Story About Safety, Honesty, and Belonging
For those who’ve ever shared too much in the name of care—and been left holding it alone.
There are moments when a question feels like an open door—
an invitation to be seen, to be known, to belong.
But what happens when the question is only a performance?
When your honesty is received with silence, or worse, turned against you?
This piece is for anyone who’s ever mistaken curiosity for care.
For those of us who have given our truth in good faith—at work, in community, in spaces that claimed to be safe—only to find that safety was never really there.
This is a story about what care actually requires.
About the courage it takes to be honest.
And about the sacred work of protecting our truth when the world doesn’t.
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For a long time, I believed that when someone asked me a question—especially about who I am, how I feel, or what I believe—they cared.
I saw curiosity as care.
I saw interest as intimacy.
And I opened, wide and willing.
Because when you’ve gone unseen for so long, even a small invitation can feel like a door.
And many of us were taught to meet that door with our full selves—honest, thoughtful, whole.
But care is not in the asking.
Care is in what happens next.
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What I’ve learned—what we’ve learned—is that some questions aren’t asked to honor us.
Some questions are just extractions dressed up as curiosity.
Some are performances.
Some are traps.
Especially in spaces where survival is already a negotiation—like workplaces that claim to center justice but are built on performance and hierarchy—being honest can feel holy.
But it can also make you a target.
We’ve been there.
We’ve answered the questions truthfully,
even when our truth was uncomfortable.
Even when it went against the grain.
Even when it risked our position, our peace, our safety.
Because we believed that speaking honestly would build solidarity.
But it didn’t.
Instead, people carried our words not as offerings—but as weapons.
They didn’t hold us.
They reported us.
They protected their own rise by stepping over our openness.
And I was left alone—isolated in the very vulnerability they invited.
The questions weren’t about care.
They were about control.
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I’m still grieving this.
Because I wanted care to live in the question.
I needed it to.
But now I know better.
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So what is care, then?
Care is not asking us to be honest and then using our honesty against us.
Care is not inviting our stories and then weaponizing them.
Care is not checking in when leadership is watching and going silent when we’re drowning.
Care is not extracting truths for the benefit of those in power while leaving us to carry the consequences alone.
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Care is:
- Following up when no one else is.
- Speaking up when we’re not in the room.
- Creating safety without needing a performance.
- Listening not to report, but to remember.
- Staying, even when the truth is inconvenient.
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Care is action.
Care is risk.
Care is commitment.
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But what if care is absent?
What if the space we’re in does not truly care?
What if it only asks to extract?
Then I remind myself:
I was never wrong for being open.
I don’t need to prove anything through pain.
My honesty is sacred, even when it’s not safe.
Their response does not define my worth.
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I find care in myself.
In breath.
In boundaries.
In choosing when and how to be visible.
Because I am done being disarmed by the question.
From now on, I ask my own:
- Is this safe for me to share?
- Do I feel held here?
- Is this truth mine to give away—or mine to keep?
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We may not have all the answers.
But we know this:
We deserve more than being mined for our truth.
We deserve care that holds us, not just hears us.
We deserve rooms that don’t require us to shrink to stay.
And until those spaces exist,
we will keep building one within ourselves.
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Affirmation
“My truth is not for consumption—it is a gift. I choose when, where, and how to share it.”
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With love and honor,
Chriseithia
Founder of Black Self Wellth™
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This is sacred work, not open source.
Please honor the heart behind these words.
All rights reserved © Chriseithia Collins | Black Self Wellth™