I Chose Van Gogh

I Chose Van Gogh is an expression of selective influence: a survivor can acknowledge what was done to her without allowing it to become the authority that shapes her life. In the advice writer’s response, the phrase becomes both a remembered source of strength and a way to encourage another survivor to speak openly with someone she loves.

Origin and Meaning

The expression comes from a conversation with a painter twenty years older than the advice writer, a woman of some renown who had been raped three times over the course of her life. Asked how she recovered and continued to have healthy sexual relationships, the painter answered by framing recovery as a choice about influence: she could let the men who harmed her shape her, or choose van Gogh. Her concise answer does not deny the harm; it asserts that the harm need not have the final say over who she becomes.

Recurrence in the Advice

The advice writer says she never forgot the phrase and recalls it when she has trouble lifting her own head. Reading a letter from a woman who had experienced sexual assault, she recognizes the same choice in the correspondent’s efforts not to let what happened make her ugly. Calling the correspondent courageous and graceful, she tells her that she has chosen van Gogh too. The phrase thus moves from one survivor’s account into another woman’s story, carrying encouragement without claiming that their experiences are identical.

Disclosure and Intimacy

The response pairs this affirmation with a recommendation: the correspondent should tell her boyfriend about the assault directly, describing what happened, how she suffered, how she came to terms with it, and how she feels about it now. Although she says the experience no longer affects her day-to-day life, she also recognizes that it helped shape who she is. The advice writer argues that keeping it from her boyfriend gives the trauma more weight by turning it into a secret. Telling, by contrast, can disperse that secrecy and let a lover stand closer to the person’s full story. In this context, choosing van Gogh is not a demand to conceal pain or prove that it has been overcome; it accompanies an invitation to acknowledge the past and allow intimacy to include it.