The Stories We Tell. And Who Gets to Tell Them.

This past week and a half, I have been sitting with an uncomfortable truth: Someone's worst day is trending, and we're all watching.

A traumatic event is unfolding less than a mile from my home. The abduction of Nancy Guthrie is still developing, and already it has become content. Headlines. Speculation. Think pieces. Social posts. Armchair analysis.

We've stopped noticing how quickly someone else’s terror becomes public property.

True crime has become a dominant cultural genre. Podcasts, documentaries, books, and TikToks promise insight, justice, or awareness. Sometimes they even deliver those things. But too often, they normalize something else entirely. The telling of deeply personal, life-altering trauma without consent.

We rarely stop to ask the most important question.

Who gets to tell this story?

And who does not get a choice?

What we are witnessing is not new. But it has become faster, louder, and more normalized.

In traditional media, trauma is framed as educational or awareness-building, even when the people most affected have no control over how their lives are portrayed. In social media, proximity increasingly substitutes for permission. A screenshot. A repost. A viral thread. A well-meaning “sharing for visibility” that strips away context, agency, and choice.

The boundaries between witnessing, sharing, and extracting have blurred.

The justification is often framed as purpose-driven. If we tell the story, maybe something will change. If we amplify it, maybe it will matter. But intention does not equal consent. And awareness does not automatically mitigate harm.

I was reminded of this sharply while reading Paper Cut, a book that confronts this dynamic head-on. Author Rachel Taff examines how women’s pain is consumed, dissected, and repackaged for public consumption. The book is not about crime in the traditional sense. It is about power. About authorship. About how easily trauma becomes a product once it is deemed interesting enough.

What struck me most was not the violence itself, but the entitlement surrounding it. The assumption that proximity grants permission. That curiosity outweighs consent. That storytelling is neutral, even when the person at the center has no voice in how they are portrayed.

This is the part we rarely interrogate.

We ask whether a story is compelling.

We ask whether it will drive engagement.

We ask whether it will spark conversation.

We do not ask whether the person at the center would choose to tell it this way, or at all.

Over time, this becomes cultural conditioning. Trauma becomes entertainment. Grief becomes content. Pain becomes proof of resilience without any reckoning with the cost of being repeatedly exposed, reinterpreted, or publicly owned.

And because culture shapes systems, these norms do not stay confined to media or social platforms.

They follow us into institutions.

Organizations absorb these patterns quietly. Stories of burnout, breakdowns, conflict, and crisis are often retold without the involvement of the person who lived them. Experiences become sanitized narratives. Human moments become lessons learned, case studies, or leadership anecdotes.  A manager frames a team member's breakdown as a leadership lesson in an all-hands. An exit interview becomes a LinkedIn post about 'navigating tough conversations.' A personal crisis becomes an anonymous case study—recognizable to everyone who was there.

Rarely is consent discussed.

Rarely is authorship preserved.

Rarely is the emotional aftershock considered.

When people lose control over how their experiences are shared, trust erodes. When trauma is repackaged as insight without care, psychological safety becomes performative. When resilience is framed as something proven through exposure rather than protected through agency, people learn to stay quiet.

Resilience does not come from visibility alone.

It comes from choice.

From dignity.

From the ability to say, “This is my story, and I get to decide how it is told.”

That principle applies everywhere. In journalism. In social media. In leadership. In organizational culture.

The question is not whether hard stories should be told.

The question is whether we are willing to slow down long enough to tell them responsibly.

Before we hit publish, post, share, or present, ask:

• Is this story ours to share?

• Who benefits from it being told this way?

• Who carries the emotional cost?

• What would consent look like here?

If we want workplaces, communities, and systems that are genuinely resilient, this has to be part of the conversation. Not just amplifying stories, but protecting the people inside them.

That distinction matters. And it is long overdue.