A free exercise · Marcus Anthony PhD
When you’ve built the courage to face someone, meet the voices you’re bringing with you.
There’s something you need to say to someone. Or write to them.
You’ve rehearsed it more times than you can count — in the shower, on the way to work, at three in the morning. You know exactly how it starts. And still, somehow, it hasn’t been said.
Before we begin, I want you to know something. If you’re frightened, you are not weak, and you are not overreacting. Some of the bravest people I have ever met could walk into rooms most people wouldn’t enter — and still not find the words for the one person who mattered.
For thirty years I sat in kitchens with former combatants, and with families who had buried their children — in Northern Ireland, Kosovo, Colombia and Southeast Asia. I drove a white van across borders at one in the morning. I learned to read a room before I opened my mouth.
Then I turned the same tools on my own life. That is where I learned how hard it is to say the thing that matters most.
The questions that follow are the ones I would ask if we were sitting together.
Marcus
Before the questions
When I was a teenager, I sold tickets at a busy London train station. The man at the next window was my boss — a former amateur boxer, warm, encouraging, with the quiet authority of someone who knew exactly who he was.
One busy morning, with a long queue in front of him, he simply vanished. No warning. Ten minutes later he came back, as though nothing had happened.
A colleague explained, quietly. He did that whenever he saw a Japanese passenger at his window. He had been a prisoner of war in a Japanese camp. That was more than forty years earlier. The war had ended for most people. Not for him.
He wasn’t hostile. He wasn’t weak. He was one of the bravest men I’ve known. But in that moment, someone else was in charge — an earlier version of him, still doing the only thing it knew to keep him safe.
I’ve thought about him for most of my life. Because all of us, in our own way, do what he did.
Who comes with you
You are not one voice. You are a community.
Most days that community is quiet. You notice it only as putting things off, or the feeling that half your life is spent negotiating with yourself. But when things get hard, different versions of you step forward. The one who goes quiet. The one who gives in. The one who gets angry. The one who just wants to leave.
In my book Your Civil War Within, I call them voices. Each one learned its job a long time ago, usually to protect you. None of them is the enemy.
But when you walk into a hard conversation — or sit down to write that email — they all come with you. And the one that speaks first isn’t always the one you would choose.
That’s what this is for. Not to fix you. To help you notice who comes with you, so that you can choose who speaks.
How this works
Some will take a second. Some might stop you in your tracks. Both are fine.
You will probably feel frightened at some point. That’s normal. It doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong — it means this matters to you. If it gets too much, stop, breathe, and come back later. Your answers will still be here.
You can skip any question.
What you write here is yours alone.
Your answers never leave this device. They are not sent to me, not stored on any server, and not kept by anyone. There is no account and no database. I will never see a word of what you write — and neither will anyone else.
Your answers are saved only in this browser, so that you can come back to them. When you’ve finished, you can clear them with one click at the end.
If you share this phone or computer with someone, use a private or incognito window, or clear your answers when you’re done.
1 · Who
It might be someone you love. It might be someone with power over you. Often the hardest conversations are with the people we most need to keep.
2 · How
Writing can feel safer — especially if you’re working in a language that isn’t your first. It can also become a place to hide: the email drafted a dozen times and never sent. Neither is wrong.
3 · What
Just the surface for now — what you’d tell a friend. We’ll go a little deeper in a moment.
4 · The courage
However long it’s been, you’re here now. That counts for more than you might think.
5 · The fear
This is often the hardest question. Take a breath before you answer. In my experience, once a fear is written down, it becomes a little smaller — and a little easier to look at.
And how much of that fear is about how they will see you — the no, the judgement, the feeling of being turned away?
You’ve just written down something most people never say out loud.
Before you go on, feel your feet on the floor. Breathe in slowly, and breathe out slower still. There’s no hurry.
6 · What usually happens
Choose all that feel true. Nothing here is a judgement. I’ve seen every one of these in people I respect enormously — and I’ve done most of them myself.
7 · When it hurt
This one is optional, and a sentence is enough. You don’t need to relive it. Just name the moment: where you were, who it was, what was said. If it brings up more than you want to look at today, skip it.
8 · What you hope for
Not what you want them to say. What you hope will be true for you once it’s done.
9 · The heart of it
Not the whole case. The one thing that matters most. If everything else goes wrong, this is what you want them to have heard.
10 · The line you won’t cross
We all have one — the thing that might slip out when it all gets too much, and that we’d regret. Naming it now makes it far less likely to escape.
What you’ve found
The one sentence
What you hope will be different
What you won’t say
And remember
They are not arriving alone either. Whoever is on the other side is bringing their own versions too — and something of their own to protect.