Working Through Our Family Secrets

Most families experience family secrets to a certain extent, and sometimes it can begin to weigh heavily on the youngest generation.

We find ourselves asking how certain things happened, why they happened, and why we have to continue to keep things secret.

Outside factors such as ancestry kits and social media seem to perpetuate this topic, as it feels a key was handed to us to unlock some things that may have previously been kept away.

Through my time working with millenials, I have found a few common elements of family secrets; parents typically do not want to discuss these topics, and the ‘kids’, who are now adults, are left utterly conflicted as to why secrets are asked to be kept, and why it is producing such uneasy feelings.

Let’s say, for example, John has discovered an affair within his family. He reaches out to his parents to discuss this, but is told this is not something that they talk about and to ‘just let it go’. The parents, who frankly are probably just doing what their parents did to them, are sharing the idea that mistakes or failures are not able to be acknowledged, and therefore should not be brought up. For if they are spoken, it somehow becomes a reality.

But isn’t it already a reality?

I mean, these things happen, have happened, or continue to happen, and yet we are expected to ‘just let it go’. This can start to feel uncomfortable morally and personally. What message is this providing to us down the road when we have our own failures or mistakes?

It does not have to be as severe as an affair. But, what if we experience a failure in the workplace? We are now conditioned to believe that we are not to speak about these things. Just let it go. If we do not discuss it, it does not exist.

Again, it does exist, and it is reality.

Even if we have been conditioned to believe there is no safe space for our mistakes or failures, we can create that safe space into adulthood. With our partner, with our friends, with our family, or even with our co-workers.

Our secrets keep us sick.

We do not need to repress, repress, and repress some more when it comes to things that make us vulnerable. It can be so tough to break away from this when we have been conditioned through the years to believe such a thing. But our vulnerabilities are not a taboo subject. We deserve the space, and we can make that space for others.

We do not have to live alone with our mistakes. We can be more than our parents were able to provide for us.

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