Finally I think I’ve tended the last bit of cleanup related to my forced exit from an org. I now know that I should not have had to ask; that my leaving should have automatically resulted in removal of any and all of my endorsements or image from their marketing.
But things being what they’ve been, I’ve needed to be the one to politely request each and every mitigation; most requests to make it safer for me, no matter how small or undisruptive, were refused outright.
Each cutting request has been hard and painful, especially because I had no choice but to leave. Letting friends know that unfriending them was more about structure than about how much I liked them personally, which I often truly did. Removing myself from online groups where there was content that fed and inspired and humored me. Even local groups. Having to ask more than once for photo removal via a mediator I paid. There’s still a private seaside photo I took, that was taken and used without my permission, that they cropped me out of and used to advertise my ex, still out there in public meetup photo albums for every group they have even if it was removed from their website. I just have to let go of it, even as it grates.
They finally removed the quotes taken and screenshotted without permission, and a couple of images where I was more prominent.
In one group shot used to advertise retreats that I was in, they didn’t remove the photo, but instead colored over me in brown. A piece of it below.
It’s an eyesore, and hurts more than I anticipated – just the lack of dignity and care of the handling, which was probably more a product of expediency than forethought. But my dignity is mine, they can’t take it from me.
It just underlines to me again how little that org was actually able to hold me. I think that the blotting out is the first thing the eye is drawn to when one sees that pic, which reflects more on them than on me, so I’m not picking a nit about it, but still – it’s like I’ve been publicly tarred, humiliating.
No way out but to go through these additional layers of grief, as my life reorients outside of something that did much to buoy me over the last years, when I needed it. I can’t now unsee what I now understand with clarity.