It was back in 2007 when Freya first stumbled across fan fiction.
“My friend was convinced she’d discovered the last Harry Potter book,” she said through a beaming smile and a soft German accent. “It turned out to just be fanfic.”
They laughed about it and continued their search. What she didn’t realise at the time was that she had just found the tool that would save her life.
As we speak, it doesn’t take long for her to begin to unspool a whirlwind of trauma that she’d been through. Teenage depression, domestic abuse, homelessness, child loss – this was all pain that a now 36-year-old Freya has learned to navigate through her discovery of fanfic almost 20 years ago.
Reading it incessantly was what helped in the beginning.
“The ones I read have changed over the years, but many of them have grown up with me,” said Freya.
“I started with the classic fix-it fics and all the raised-by-Voldemort stuff. Now, I really love family dynamics.”
Consuming these fics later inspired her to start writing ones of her own based on a lifetime of personal stories.
She added: “I’m always open to talking about what’s happened in my life because writing fanfic forces me to revisit it. I started writing when the last Harry Potter book eventually came out. I thought I was super cool.”
Growing up neurodivergent and in an abusive household, she sought solace in familiar stories, starting with the Harry Potter novels. She used them as a blueprint for survival, rewriting Harry’s trauma felt like she was writing a way out of her own.
“It was my escape,” said Freya.
“I could write a happier world, a happier ending. I really related to Harry back then because I had that kind of home life too. That really helped me.”
Over the next 19 years, Freya’s relationship with writing ebbed and flowed through her darkest chapters, including a period of homelessness. During that time, writing fanfic wasn’t about publication or recognition; it was about keeping her busy enough to offer the spiralling thoughts in her head a place to rest.
After a brief hiatus from writing, Freya experienced a traumatic event that brought her back to the familiar comfort of fanfic. She describes it as “child loss”, but she tells me the reality is complex. After ending an abusive relationship with a same-sex partner who had given birth to their children, Freya found herself with no legal parental rights.
“I say ‘child loss’ because it’s easier,” she explains. “They are alive, but they are not in my life. I’ve been grieving them because I’ve not seen them in over two years.”
This return to fanfic led her to the X-Men. She began channelling her grief by writing for Magneto – a character defined by complicated parenthood.
She said: “I wrote a happier ending for him, and it helped me process some of that pain I felt.”
It was around this time that Freya’s therapist recognised the power of her writing and encouraged her to continue using these fictional escapes as a tool for recovery.
“I have trouble experiencing my own feelings and naming my own feelings,” she said.
“It’s easier for me to put them on characters and ask myself ‘how would the character feel about this?’ and that helps me realise how I feel.”
Lindsay Meagher is a mental health counsellor in Washington State and has been writing fanfic for nearly 40 years.
They work at a clinic in Seattle and offer their therapy services over video call to create a more “relaxed environment” for their patients, the majority of whom have autism, which Lindsay also has and can legally diagnose.
“It allows people to do therapy on their phones, in their car, in their living room, on a laptop sitting on the couch. It’s super chill.”
They explain that most of their patients are authors in some way. Even the ones that don’t do fanfic, their work is still a creative response to existing stories.
“I literally prescribe fanfic,” they said.
“One thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of people have an easier time with self-compassion if they’re writing fanfic. They will describe something they have been through as something the character is going through.
“This helps them understand their own situation, so it can be like a cheat code for unlocking self-compassion much better than traditional therapies do.”
Lindsay’s advice is rooted in personal success. After experiencing a trauma of their own, it was fanfic that helped them navigate it.
They have a rare medical condition which often triggers a delusion that they themselves are fictional. On New Year’s Eve 2023, this manifested as a two-hour paralysis of fear after seeing the cat drawing on the front cover of the Japanese horror film ‘House’. But it’s thanks to fanfic that they no longer fear the drawing.
“My brother had to talk me down, and I had to call my psychiatrist,” they recalled.
“There’s an anime that I love, and it has a character in it that looks almost exactly like that drawing of the cat,” they said, referring to Nine Tails from Naruto.
“Seeing that character in fanfics worked so well as exposure therapy. I’m not afraid of that character, so I’m not afraid of that cat anymore.”
With Lindsay now entering their fourth decade of fandom and Freya her second, both continue to heal through the power of rewriting narratives.
“Every time I have struggled, I have gone back to fanfiction,” Freya said.
“The characters I write about have grown up with me.”
For Lindsay, their life in practice has been to heal traumatised patients through creating, while confronting their own past through the same lens. They both act as inspiring reminders that when reality offers no closure, we have the power to rewrite our own.