The Secrets I Carried Were Never Mine
Before you continue reading, I want to acknowledge that this is a deeply vulnerable piece. It touches on themes of trauma, sexual abuse, family wounds, shame and the long-term impact of silence. If these topics are part of your story, please take care of yourself as you read and honour what you need in this moment.
For so long I have wanted to share… or at least say out loud, far and wide, the things I have buried deep inside.
Not my secrets.
Not my shame.
But my mother’s.
And maybe that is the hardest part to understand how do you carry something that was never yours to carry?
How do you hold the weight of another person’s choices, another person’s actions, another person’s silence… and somehow make it your responsibility to protect it?
From my last blog, I shared a vulnerable part of my story. I remember writing it and feeling the discomfort that came with exposing something I had spent years trying to keep hidden.
But through that process, I realised something important.
Our reactions and responses are not always about what is happening in front of us.
Sometimes the present moment touches an old wound, and suddenly we are no longer responding from today, we are responding from every moment we had to survive before.
The pattern.
The feeling.
The fear.
The need to protect.
The need to stay quiet.
The need to make sure everyone else is okay.
The last two years have been some of the most emotionally challenging years of my life.
Not because of grief.
Not because of losing my mum.
But because of the process that came afterwards.
The will.
The conflict.
The conversations I did not want to have.
The situations I felt forced into.
I remember feeling so much resentment, but I could not fully understand why.
Why was this bringing up so much anger?
Why did I feel like I had to fight so hard for closure?
Why, when it was finally over, did the anger become louder rather than disappear?
I realise now it was not just about the present situation.
It was my younger self, the 11-year-old girl and the teenager.
The girl who had to carry things she was never meant to carry.
The girl who had no power.
No voice.
No ability to change what was happening.
And suddenly, years later, she was fighting a battle she could not fight back then. After sharing my last blog, I felt shame.
And I questioned myself.
Why?
Why did I feel shame sharing something that was never mine to own?
Why did I feel like I was betraying someone by telling my truth? I think about all the years of protecting.
Protecting a reputation.
Protecting a family image.
Protecting someone from consequences.
Even when that protection came at a cost to myself.
And this is the part I have struggled to understand…
Was I protecting her?
Or was I repeating the same pattern I had learnt as a child? Keeping someone else’s behaviour hidden.
Carrying someone else’s burden.
Now that my nervous system is no longer constantly anticipating danger, no longer waiting for the next thing to happen, things are surfacing.
Memories.
Feelings.
Connections I did not see before.
I think back to standing at my mum’s graveside. Everyone watching as she was lowered into the ground and instead of feeling only grief, I felt rage.
A deep, overwhelming anger.
I moved to the back because I felt flooded and the thought that came to me was not just about my loss. it was:
“How many others?”
How many others had been impacted?
How many others had carried pain?
How many others had suffered because I stayed silent?
This is the complicated thing about trauma.
We often hide our own pain.
We carry shame that does not belong to us.
We question ourselves.
We minimise.
We survive.
But at the same time, we can become fiercely protective of others.
We fight battles for everyone else.
We advocate.
We notice.
We carry.
And yet we struggle to offer that same protection and compassion to ourselves.
For years, I thought silence was protection.
Part of me stayed quiet because I did not want my mum to lose something important to her.
Part of me stayed quiet because she was my mum.
And part of me stayed quiet because when I was young, speaking up had consequences.
Things changed.
My home no longer felt like a place I could freely share with others.
I carried embarrassment.
I carried responsibility.
I carried something that belonged to an adult, but somehow became my burden.
And looking back, I can see how much that shaped me. I also recognise the grief around having my story shared by others before I was ready.
Not because I believe stories should remain hidden forever.
But because there is something deeply painful about losing the choice of when, how, and why you share something that shaped your entire life.
When someone speaks about something that impacted you, but they were not the one who lived through the consequences of it, there is a grief that happens.
A loss of choice.
A loss of timing.
A loss of ownership over your own story.
And this is the part that has been the hardest for me to process…
The story was shared, but the cost of that story was not.
The years of carrying it.
The years of navigating what happened afterwards.
The consequences that came from speaking.
The friendships impacted.
The way I saw myself.
The way I had to adapt.
The way my childhood changed because of things I never had control over.
That is something that is difficult to explain unless you lived it.
Because silence is not always because someone does not care.
Sometimes silence is because they have already experienced the cost of speaking.
When I was 11 years old, I did not understand the bigger picture.
I did not understand systems and I did not understand the impact beyond myself.
I only knew that telling the truth changed my world.
It changed what was safe.
It changed what I could do.
It changed how I felt about my own home.
It meant carrying embarrassment and responsibility for something that was never mine.
And this is where I see the difference.
My brother and my sister did not have to carry that same experience.
They did not have to navigate the consequences of their friends not being allowed into their home.
Their experience was different.
And that does not make their grief or their relationship with our mum any less valid. But it does mean that we carried different things.
We lived different stories.
I think this is why we need to be gentle when we ask: “Why didn’t someone speak up?”
Because sometimes the question we should be asking is: “What happened when they tried?”
What did it cost them?
What did they lose?
What did they have to carry afterwards?
Because sometimes silence is not acceptance.
Sometimes silence is survival.
Sometimes silence is a child trying to protect themselves in the only way they know how. The hardest part is realising how much losing my voice impacted me.
Sharing my story is part of taking that voice back.
Not to destroy.
Not to punish.
Not to stay stuck in the past.
But to acknowledge what happened.
To honour the younger version of myself who deserved safety.
Who deserved protection.
Who deserved to not carry secrets.
Our stories are sacred.
Our voices matter.
And healing includes reclaiming the right to tell our own story, in our own way, when we are ready, not because we want to stay stuck in the past.
But because we deserve to be the person who holds the pen.
