Naming, Clearing, and Apologies

Truth is the theme we are exploring this month. Today’s title comes from our church’s coordinating team. This management body meets twice a month. On every agenda they always include: naming, clearing, and apologies. The group takes time for feedback, appreciation, clearing up of miscommunication and offering apologies. This group is busy with many tasks and details, yet they recognize the importance of naming and clearing the air.

How we are with one another affects our work.

Someone might say, “I’m not sure what you meant last week, when you said…” Or “I’m curious. What did our discussion stir up for you personally?” Or “I wish I hadn’t said what I said the way I said it. I was feeling defensive.” Or “I reacted strongly because I was feeling like I did as a child when my father was disappointed in me.”

Clearing the air is helpful in day to day misunderstandings. Indeed, such practice is how we get the courage to deal with life’s bigger challenges.

People sometimes say Bill and our son Ben look alike. When we were meeting a friend’s family in India, we were showing them photos of our family. I wondered if we really needed to tell them that Bill is not the biological father of our children Sarah and Ben. It’s kind of complicated to tell our story. And if we didn’t tell, we would get to appear to be the family I used to imagine I’d have. I hadn’t thought I’d ever be divorced. Maybe if they knew the truth, they would think less of us. Why not just keep it simple?

But I am a person who divorced. Sarah and Ben’s father Randy is a good father. And Bill has a daughter Laura from an earlier marriage. And that marriage included Bill’s other two step children Mike and Katie. The complicated story of our lives is what has made all of us in our family who we are – with our frailties, failings and strengths.

We were meeting our friend’s family in India for the first time. We were entering into relationship. Relationships are built on sharing our truths.

It’s important to do justice to the complexity of our lives. The effort to speak honestly is needed. The accounts we share with one another shape our understanding of the universe. The truth has power.

A review described a book as “a story of hearts broken, first by the past, then by family secrets, and the truth that begins to repair the pieces." That seems true of so many life stories.

So many lives are touched by secrets.

A family generations back are Jews, one member of the family escapes the Nazis. Other family members are killed in concentration camps. The survivor changes her name and eventually settles in a community in the United States. She wants to start a new life; she wants her child to be safe. She keeps the past from her husband and son. She attends and raises her child in the Catholic church.

A daughter gets pregnant in her teens, and in the months when the pregnancy is visible, the family sends her off to “visit relatives in another state.” Her mother goes with her. The baby boy is born and everyone pretends the grandmother is the mother, the mother is the sister. All the older siblings know the truth which is kept from the boy.

A woman comes out as lesbian to her mother and brother. They are accepting. The brother is engaged to marry and the family of his fiancé is conservative. The mother and brother ask the sister not to tell anyone else, especially not the brother’s fiancé and her family. The truth, they say, might jeopardize the marriage.

A man loses his job and keeps it from his family. He doesn’t want to worry them. He searches for work and the stress mounts. He becomes very distant. His wife thinks he no longer loves her.

So many secrets.

A person is addicted to alcohol, doesn’t admit it, feels shame and never seeks out help.

Two people fall in love. They come from two very different religious backgrounds. The immediate families rejoice in the couple’s engagement, but don’t want to tell their extended family about the other’s religion.

A person has a mental illness and hides it out of shame.

A husband learns through email of his wife’s secret love.

So many secrets.

A family member commits suicide and to protect people, the family explains the death another way. The children suspect, but nothing is ever said.

A woman is raped and keeps it secret from her family, friends and the police. Tragically, she blames herself and feels guilty. She suffers depression.

A person serves in the army in war. He doesn’t want his family to know such horrors exist. He wants to protect them. He never shares his stories.

A mother dies and the father never speaks of her again. His pain is so deep. His family thinks he doesn’t care.

All of this is so very human.

We think we’ve moved on. Why bring up all that old stuff? There’s no need to dwell on the past. What good does that serve? That’s just rubbing salt in old wounds. What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. That’s nobody’s business but my own. I don’t want to know. He did what he did. I don’t want to cause pain. That’s private.

In a family where there are secrets, a bond may develop between two people who know, but the secret can separate and alienate other family members. Sometimes cycles repeat. Keeping secrets may be passed on to next generations who keep secrets from their partners and families.

Secrets can close off communication. They can lead to serious physical, emotional, and mental health problems. Blocked truths may block arteries, may cause literal heart break. Blocked truths may cause anxiety and learning problems.

Secrets can lead to evasiveness and lies. They affect communication. There are things you can’t talk about, things not being said. You know some people know things others don’t know. Something feels funny.

In an Adrienne Rich essay in her book On Lies, Secrets, and Silence, she says, “To discover that one has been lied to in a personal relationship, leads one to feel a little crazy…This is why the effort to speak honestly is so important…In lying to others we end up lying to ourselves. We deny the importance of an event, or a person, and thus deprive ourselves of a part of our lives…We lose faith even with our own lives.”

People who break the silence with a trusted counselor begin healing. Sometimes with the help of such a counselor, people may decide that no benefit or good will come from revealing secrets. But generally, silence and trying to forget are not paths toward healing and liberation.

Adrienne Rich writes, “Truthfulness, honor, is not something which springs ablaze of itself, it has to be created between people.” She says, at the very least you can say, “There are things I am not telling you.”

It was the novel Sarah’s Key that was reviewed as “a story of hearts broken, first by the past, then by family secrets, and the truth that begins to repair the pieces." Sarah’s Key is the story of two women.

In Nazi occupied France in July 1942 a ten year-old Jewish girl Sarah and her parents are rounded up by the French police. Sarah hides her brother in a cupboard thinking she will be able to return soon to release him. The story follows the young girl’s life through so much suffering and loss. We learn of the pain she continues to experiences as an adult when she keeps her past a secret.

Sarah’s life is connected to Julia, a woman who sixty years later, is unlocking the story. Julia learns her family’s life is interwoven with Sarah’s. Julia’s family’s secret troubles her and her marriage. Julia tries to protect her own young daughter from what’s going on. Her daughter, like most children, can tell something is wrong. Across the generations, there are things known and not talked of and the secrecy leads to heart break. When one person learns the truth, it brings pain and withdrawal, but over time, he feels relief, curiosity, and new life. As the review suggests, the truth begins to repair the pieces.

The truth begins to repair the pieces.

Mike Leigh’s film, Secrets and Lies, is set in London. After her adoptive parents die, a young black woman seeks out her natural birth mother only to discover her mother is white. Equally shocked to learn the daughter she gave up for adoption is black, the mother says it’s a mistake. Soon she realizes it’s true. She and her daughter begin to know each other. Then she brings her daughter to a family celebration. The truth comes out and more secrets are revealed. There is emotional outburst and then real loving relationships begin to grow. When one person tells the truth, you create the possibility for more truth.

A boy grows up and learns who he thought was his mother is his grandmother, who he thought was his sister is his mother. His world seems turned upside down. He’s angry everyone knew but him and that it was kept from him for so long. But some things he always wondered about now make sense.

A man finally comes out to his family as gay. They immediately offer acceptance, warmth, love. They ask when he knew he was gay. He tells them he knew since he was a child. They agonize over his years of suffering alone. And then ask more questions, talk more and grow closer.

A woman finally talks with a therapist about being raped. The therapist’s sympathy and assurance allows the woman eventually to tell her boyfriend who offers compassion, comfort and love. Their relationship grows deeper.

I know it’s complicated; I know healing takes time and can be longer than it takes to read a novel or watch a movie. Still healing is possible.

In the film Secrets and Lies, the mother’s brother says, “All of us are broken, can’t we share our pain?”

Healing is possible. The truth begins to repair the pieces.