On Secrecy, Speech, and the Fire of Truth
I grew up in a large family, one of nine children, five sisters, a house full of noise, bodies, opinions, and shared air.
From the outside, that configuration reads as closeness. Abundance implies belonging. A large family carries a kind of cultural shorthand: you must be close.
But intimacy is not created by proximity.
It is created by being known.
And being known requires truth.
It has taken me decades to understand that much of what I experienced as closeness was actually shared silence. Not cruelty. Not neglect. Silence. There was love and laughter. And, there was a wide chasm of silence as well. The kind that organizes a system so thoroughly you don’t realize it’s there.
In families like mine, secrecy was ambient. It lived in the air between sentences. It was not always about dramatic events. Sometimes it was as simple as what we had for dinner.
Family business was just that. Family business.
That phrase could apply to something deeply personal or something utterly mundane. There was no clear distinction. Pork chops for dinner? Family business. An argument? Family business. A hurt feeling? Family business.
When everything is secret, nothing makes sense.
The Chatterbox
I was the talker.
The chatterbox. The one who processed out loud. I loved words. I loved sharing. I loved the feeling of connection that comes from telling a story and hearing one back.
In many ways, I still am that person.
Yes, I am a talker. But I am also a listener. I have refined that part over the years. I can sit quietly now. I can hold someone else’s truth without interrupting it. I can feel the difference between expression and oversharing.
But as a child, I didn’t understand nuance. I didn’t understand the difference between privacy and secrecy. I only knew that talking felt natural and silence felt confusing.
So I talked.
I told Mrs. Dowling we had pork chops for dinner.
What was the big deal?
When my mother asked who had told, I lied. I knew by the way she asked that I had done something wrong. I didn’t consciously decide to lie. It just seemed to pop out of my mouth. I knew that I had disappointed my Mom. I didn’t fully understand why or how but I could see it on her face. So, I lied. “I don’t know how she found out about the pork chops.” My face felt hot, my throat was closing as the lie slipped from my lips.
And she knew.
Her shaking head. Her disappointment. The look that said more than words ever could. You cannot be trusted.
That moment imprinted.
Not because of pork chops. But because I did not understand the rules. I did not understand why something so ordinary was suddenly dangerous. I did not understand why speech could destabilize belonging.
The idea of “keeping a secret” confused me.
What exactly was I protecting? And from whom?
Secrecy and the Making of Self-Doubt
In a family organized around silence, children absorb the rules somatically.
You feel when something tightens the room.
You notice which topics shift the energy.
You learn, without instruction, what must remain contained.
There are two ways to adapt.
One is to board the secrecy train. Contain everything. Edit before speaking. Carry weight quietly and call it maturity. Become loyal to the system by disappearing parts of yourself.
The other is to refuse the distortion. Speak plainly. Name what you see. Live without much secrecy at all.
I did not consciously choose the second path. My nervous system chose it for me. I could not hold what felt untrue without feeling fractured inside.
But the message I received, subtly and overtly, was that I was untrustworthy.
Not because I lied habitually.
But because I did not know how to keep the system intact.
There is a difference.
For years, that early imprint lived quietly inside me. Even as an adult. Even as I built a life around coaching, storytelling, listening deeply to others. Somewhere in my body was the echo: you cannot be trusted.
The irony is sharp.
I have spent decades sitting with people in their most vulnerable moments, hearing their stories, holding their secrets with reverence. I know how to keep confidence. I know the sacredness of privacy.
But what I did not know, as a child, was the difference between privacy and secrecy.
Privacy protects.
Secrecy confuses.
Privacy says: this is mine to share when I choose.
Secrecy says: this cannot be shared because the system cannot tolerate it.
When everything is categorized as secret, a child does not learn discernment. She learns anxiety.
The Assault and the Architecture of Silence
When I experienced assault, years later, the existing structure of secrecy absorbed it easily.
Of course I kept it quiet.
Silence was already the organizing principle. I was finally able to keep a secret. I was finally trustworthy.
I did not only keep it from my family. In some ways, I kept it from myself. Silence does not simply remove language. It erodes perception. It teaches you to question your own internal experience.
Pain becomes something to tuck away so the larger narrative remains undisturbed.
And the body becomes archive.
I’ve carried excess weight for most of my adult life. For a long time, I saw it as failure. As lack of discipline. As something to fix.
Now I understand it differently.
The body protects what the psyche cannot yet integrate.
Weight can be insulation. Buffer. Containment. A way of taking up space without being fully visible. A way of holding what cannot be spoken.
Protection often looks like flaw from the outside.
Through the years, at different times, that weight began to release, grief rose with it. Relief and mourning together. What was dissolving had once kept me alive. I never seemed to be able to continue releasing the weight. There is tenderness in that realization.
More recently, I’ve been taking a shot that helps release excess weight. And, it’s beginning to work. Slowly but surely I’m shedding weight. This time, it feels different. I feel different. Yes, I’m dropping weight but I notice, I’m not feeling the push and pull I’ve felt in the past. No grief. Just relief. No need to shout the number from the rooftops as proof I’m working on it. Yes, I’ve shared that with a few people. But, this time, it’s about me. And, only me. And, living more fully and healthier. Both physically and emotionally.
Breaking the Spell
There comes a moment when you stop disappearing.
It does not feel triumphant. It feels destabilizing. That is, destabilizing to the system of silence and secrecy.
As I began to name things, first internally, then externally. I saw more clearly. What I had called closeness was often compliance. What I had called loyalty was sometimes self-erasure.
Clarity costs fantasy.
I grieved the hope that truth would be rewarded with understanding. I grieved the belief that if I just explained myself well enough, everyone would meet me there.
Instead, I met differentiation.
And differentiation can feel like exile before it feels like freedom.
I still sometimes feel like the odd one out. That has not vanished. But it no longer means what it once did. It no longer signals defect. It signals consciousness.
It signals that I am no longer willing to confuse silence with love.
Tara and the Fire of Truth
In my study of the Mahavidyas. The ten cosmic powers in Tantra. I have been sitting deeply with Tara, the second great wisdom form.
Tara’s shadow is self-deception.
Her remedy is truth.
She is often depicted surrounded by burning cremation fires. Those fires are not external punishments. They arise from her own sound, from vibration meeting falsity.
Om. The first hum.
The recognition of I am.
When truth vibrates strongly enough, what is untrue cannot remain.
I feel that now in my own body.
The old belief, you cannot be trusted, burns in that fire.
Standing in my truth does not make me disloyal. It makes me aligned.
It does not mean I cannot hold privacy. It means I will not participate in secrecy that distorts reality.
It means I am more loyal to my own integrity than to an ideology that was never mine to carry.
That is not rebellion.
It is maturation.
The Real Intimacy
True intimacy is not built on silence.
It is built on mutual revelation, freely given.
It requires discernment. It requires knowing what is private and what is secret, and why. It requires the courage to speak and the wisdom to listen.
I am still a talker.
I still process out loud. I still love stories, my own and other people’s. But now my speech is less about filling space and more about alignment. I no longer talk around what is true. I no longer speak simply to belong.
I speak to integrate.
And I listen to honor.
The illusion of intimacy dissolves slowly. What replaces it is quieter. Fewer fantasies. Less dramatic reconciliation. More internal steadiness.
Tara does not promise comfort. She promises clarity.
And clarity, once heard, cannot be unheard.
What begins as sound becomes fire.
What the fire consumes makes room.
And in that clearing, something truer stands.
Not louder.
Not reactive.
Not desperate for approval.
Just present.
For the first time, intimacy feels possible, not because everyone agrees with me, and not because every relationship has been repaired, but because I am no longer disappearing in order to belong.
The chatterbox has become a witness.
The secret-keeper has become discerning.
The child who did not understand the rules has grown into a woman who writes her own.
And that, finally, feels trustworthy.
