![]() ![]() Instead of shunning family secrets, we might therefore use them as a lens through which to take a closer look at the family and its complicated relationships to wider society. What looks like a final battle against oppressive social norms could in fact help to enable the operations of power in less tangible ways. And although lifting a taboo might be unburdening, as the philosopher Michel Foucault has taught us, there is nothing innocent about the push to confess our innermost secrets. Secrecy might be suffocating, but it can also save lives. Although the history of family secrets is one of fear, shame and repression, it is also one of trust, tenderness and tolerance. It might be a good idea, however, to re-examine this attack on secrecy. Let’s pull them all out of the closet! Secrets are harmful, and killing them will be liberating and healing – so we are promised. The schizophrenic grandmother, the abusive father, the suicidal brother, the sister who turned out to be one’s mother, the queer uncle, our own history of addiction. From revealing status updates to self-scrutinising memoirs and exposing podcasts, we are now witnessing a seemingly endless flood of confessional outbursts. It’s in our zeitgeist that it’s salutary to disclose secrets voluntarily, publicly even. ![]() These secrets are baggage from the past, sometimes carried over several generations. Secrets tie families together through bonds of trust, they weigh on them as an often increasingly unbearable burden, or they tear them apart leaving behind hurt feelings and unanswered questions. A trauma, a dubious deed, or a disgracing detail that is kept under wraps through more or less elaborate practices of concealment. May our Christmases never be as explosive as that one was.Every family has one. "My dad never spoke to his brother again. Not only had uncle slept with their mother, he had fathered their sister. Thanks to the power of genetic comparison, the family eventually managed to confirm his story. One Christmas, wrote, their father's brother drank a little too much and hinted that he had had an affair with their mother, their father's wife. It's a weird place to be in emotionally!" wrote of their mixed feelings about their great-grandmother's actions.Ĭompelling as voice_of_craisin and were, some commenters thought that family secret took the cake. "It's a really sad story, but if his mother hadn't intercepted the letters, I wouldn't exist. While the Italian woman attempted to correspond with him over the years, his mother intercepted every letter, à la Allie's mother in the 2004 romantic movie The Notebook. In a reply that has 25.0k likes, revealed that their grandfather fathered a child with a local woman while stationed in Italy during World War II before returning to the United States. Not all stories had such a wholesome ending. We're all old now (I'm 50 and my cousin/sister is 58) so it's just a really neat thing that makes us all happy," they wrote. My cousin (sister) and the sister I was raised with and I are really really close. It was actually an amazing moment when we found out. "Apparently my mom got pregnant really young and her much older sister adopted my sister and raised her as her own. In one of the thread's more popular replies, revealed that the woman she was raised to believe was her cousin is actually her sister. While the invention of paternity tests has resolved many a court case, it has also forced countless hard conversations between spouses. Unsurprisingly, many of the secrets involve dramatic revelations about parentage. What family secret was finally spilled in your family? from ![]()
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