“Better, thank you. It’s now more than two years since the attack. I’ve had therapy, which has helped a little. I’ve learned to practise better self-care. I’ve learned to avoid situations that are damaging to me. I think I’ve made progress.”

She looks as though she has bitten into something unpleasant-tasting.

“Your self-care is better, is it? You’ve learned how to help yourself heal? You have the luxury of choosing to walk away from situations that will damage you. Do you even hear how privileged you sound?”

The temptation to feel sorry for myself is very strong.

“I went through a hard time,” I say.

“No harder than thousands of black women in this country. Women who have to see their abusers every day—perhaps live with them, cook for them, sleep with them. Women who don’t have the space to avoid situations that retraumatise them. Women who don’t get retraumatised by a book, but by a second assault, or a third, or a fourth. This was a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence for you. For many black women, it may happen several times. And then they watch it happen to their daughters.”

“Yes, but . . . you can’t quantify pain, can you? You can’t really compare what different women are feeling . . .”

“Yes, you can. You can understand that racism and poverty make everything worse. When you suffer PTSD as a result of what happened to you, you have access to medicine and a therapist. Most black women have no access to any kind of support. Nothing. It is never even acknowledged that their pain exists. Try suffering from a mental illness in a poor and marginalised community. There are no words to articulate your pain. You go through it alone and have no name for it.”

“I understand that, but . . .”

“That’s why the doctrine of self-help, self-care and so on, is so dangerous. It places the burden of care for mental health on the individual, instead of on the system—where it belongs. And when individuals like yourselves—white, middle-class women—begin to heal, you give the credit to self-care rather than to the systemic privilege that gives you access to medication, counselling, exercise, and good nutrition. It makes it seem as if black women are responsible for their own misery. Like, if only they were better at self-care, they would cope better.”

I feel hurt and misunderstood and attacked. Tears threaten to well up in my eyes. The tears of my white fragility. I have said all these things to myself before, but they had no power to hurt me then. Now, coming from the mouth of a black woman, they cut deep. Part of me wants to fight these ideas, to defeat them as you would an invading army. I can feel them threatening the very core of my being. Worse, I can feel them threatening my privilege. If I don’t have my privilege, what is left?