“Family patterns—like family secrets—repeat themselves.” ~ Iyanla Vanzant
There has been a rash of books lately on the topic of family secrets. Why? Your guess is as good as mine, but I’m sure part of it has to do with the fact that children weren’t included in a lot of family news when I was growing up. There was a Chinese Wall between children and their parents then, suggesting adults thought kids were invading their privacy and didn’t ‘need to know’. That left the potential for surprises in later life, often threatening the foundation of family structures when the truth, or at the very least revelations came out. The epidemic of memoirs over the past decade has certainly served to expose many of those secrets, from the personal to the political, but I always felt a bit left out, as it seems there was very little I didn’t know about my family. Being the last of five girls, I sense my parents gave up the effort to hide anything from me, probably accepting what they didn’t tell me, my sisters surely would. Continue Reading
