Thank you! I don't want anyone to feel like their personal experiences should be belittled, as all of our experiences are important and need to be talked about. It's just a question of recognizing the time and the place to talk about which ones, and how to talk about them in the context of what others are sharing.

It helps that the commenter in question is a regular commenter on my LJ whom I have a generally good rapport with. If it were some random dude I don't know, I'm not sure I would have responded the same way.