God is my Father.
They say if you live in a glass house, you shouldn’t throw stones, but there I was, boulder in hand. Family secrets protect more than just the perpetrator. Secrets protect those who were passively complicit in abuse and those who are complacent in their denial that anything is or ever was amiss, and secrets revealed threaten to shatter the façade that we were a happy family. When I started speaking up about the childhood sexual abuse I endured at the hands of my father, it cost me dearly.
My home was unsafe growing up with a father who was volatile due to his drug and alcohol abuse. He was violent and abusive, depending on what substance he was on, and we lived on high alert. I was little, so I don’t know for sure, but I think it was alcohol that brought him to my room at night because I remember smelling it on his breath when he would crawl into my bed. He hurt me. Yes, the beatings hurt, but the way he hurt me in my room at night left invisible scars that stayed with me long after we left him for good.
My mother divorced him when I was twelve, and we moved to a new state. She changed her name, and we moved on with life. Sort of. We never talked about anything that happened with my dad, but it ate away at me as a young teen. I went to school and made straight A’s, but I remember sitting in math class one morning, confounded that nobody could see how I was dying inside. It hurt to breathe, but I just kept putting one foot in front of the other, so well, I guess, that nobody knew I was struggling. I started cutting myself at thirteen and developed an eating disorder at sixteen. I knew I wasn’t supposed to talk about what happened, but I felt powerless to stop thinking about it. I knew those weren’t healthy behaviors, but it was the only way I could restore a sense of order and control in my life. It was the only way I could forget.
It worked for a while, a decade or more, until the memories started coming back in my mid-twenties. I remember praying on my knees, weeping and begging God to take this thorn from my flesh, to give me any story but the one I had. I started to become angry at my mother in my thirties for knowing the abuse was happening and not doing anything to protect me. She had her own demons, and my brother and I sometimes talked about difficult experiences with her, but nobody ever said anything to her. We all just acted like it was water under the bridge. The problem was that there was no bridge, and I started feeling like I was drowning in all that was unsaid. My sister was much younger, and she grew up very differently. We left my father when she was only two, and she had a different version of our mother in her later childhood and teen years than I did. We all played different roles in the family, and as the one who had the most memories, I felt like it was my duty to be the golden child who succeeded at everything to prove that we were a great family with nothing to hide, while I bore the shame of our secrets privately. It was my cross to bear… until I laid it down.
I chose to confront my mother first. I told her that it was difficult for me to have a relationship with her and deny what happened to me as a child. I told her the only way I could continue to have a relationship with her was for us to have an honest conversation about the abuse. She declined. For a while, I was able to have fragile relationships with my brother and sister, despite the uncomfortable rift between my mother and me. We just didn’t talk about it. But all the hurt I had spent my whole life trying to outrun, and the decisions I had made for myself while running, started to catch up to me, and my world began to crumble. I was no longer playing the role of the quiet, high-achieving shame bearer. I was speaking out and making difficult decisions about what I was willing to tolerate in my life, and in the middle of my world crashing in on me, my brother and sister decided they could no longer have relationships with me. They chose to deny what happened to me to protect my mother because she was denying what happened to me.
I was devastated. I felt discarded, abandoned, and exiled when I needed the support of family the most. For five years, I didn’t speak to my mother, brother, or sister. After a lot of therapy and the Lord working on my heart to heal and forgive, I started to reach out to my sister. Communication was awkward and tense but civil enough for us to be able to sing together at our grandfather’s funeral. It was at the funeral that I saw my brother for the first time in many years, and we began to reconnect. My sister and I were able to talk openly about the distance between us for the first time, and even though our relationship is not completely restored, we are closer than I ever thought possible. It may never be what I want it to be with either my brother or sister, but I’m so thankful the lines of communication are open with them now. I have forgiven my mother, but I still don’t have a relationship with her because my boundary remains that restoration between us requires us having an honest conversation to acknowledge the abuse I endured. I confronted my father about the abuse after fifteen years of estrangement, but I believe him to be so far into his addiction and mental health struggles that he is unable to have an honest conversation. I have decided it is best for me to forgive him and not pursue a relationship with him.
I am more authentic in all my relationships because I was able to speak up about the family secret of shame I carried. Though it was a costly decision, I’m grateful the Lord led me out of the muck and mire of my self-hatred and into the light of His grace and mercy so I could heal and experience new life in Christ.
Through my difficult family relationships, God has been my Father.
Psalm 27:10 has been a comfort to me as I have navigated difficult family relationships:
‘Though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me,’
My counsel for others dealing with family secrets and relationships is this:
- Therapy helps.
- Pursue forgiveness first so the motivation for your boundaries is to protect your heart and not punish those who hurt you.
- Speak the truth in love. You are responsible for what you say and how you say it, but you are not responsible for how it is received. Forgiveness allows you to speak with love, but it does not mean you don’t still speak the truth.
- Count the cost. Know that bringing things into the light that have been intentionally kept in the shadows will not be easy and will probably not be met with open arms, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. Just know you may lose people in your life who only wanted to have a relationship with the unhealed version of you that was willing to carry family secrets in silence.