You Are Not Alone

I am usually pretty good at keeping secrets, but for one memorable exception. A friend was getting married and some of us were planning a surprise bridal shower for her. She showed me something she had just purchased, and I said, "Oh, I almost got you that for your sh-" Uh oh!

I recently had the experience of sharing something rather personal with a friend, only to discover later she had told someone else. There was no malicious intent on her part, and to be fair, I didn't swear her to secrecy. We didn't mingle our spit or do a pinky swear or anything like that. And she tends to overshare her own personal information, so I think she was just behaving normally for her. But I will be a little more careful about what I tell her in the future.

Secrets. It's good to keep a surprise party a secret, and it's good not to blab stuff about others. But keeping some secrets is a bad idea. Secrets are powerful. They thrive in the dark, growing and gaining more and more power over you. Some victims of abuse keep it a secret and never tell a soul. There is the shame associated with it, the idea that maybe you deserve what you are getting, that other people will think you are stupid or weak, or simply that you will not be believed. When you talk about the abuse, you discover that you are not alone. That you (unfortunately) belong to a big club of people who have suffered like you have, and even people who have never experienced it are pretty sympathetic and non-judgmental. Telling that secret, putting it out there in the open, diminishes some of the power it has over you.

I have found that we humans are more alike than we are different. It is sad to think that we isolate ourselves, keeping our sad secrets, when sharing them can be so freeing.

Susan