Families Shouldn’t Keep Secrets: When Silence Becomes Survival

I was never born to stay silent. I was trained to. Conditioned from the start to swallow the truth, to bury my voice, and to protect their image at the expense of my own well-being.

In my family, truth was dangerous and compliance was rewarded. I learned early that my role was to protect their image, keep the peace, and never say the thing that might make them uncomfortable. I was the keeper of secrets, the master of pretending everything was fine, even when it was far from it.

The truth is, if proper conflict resolution had existed, there never would have been a need for family secrets in the first place. Family secrets only exist to cover up toxic behaviour, protect the wrong people, and keep the truth buried. These secrets thrive in environments where image matters more than integrity, where silence is rewarded, and where the people causing harm are shielded instead of held accountable.

If you grew up with narcissistic or emotionally immature parents, you know exactly what that does to you, how silence becomes your survival, and how terrifying it feels the first time you decide to break it.

How Speaking Up Became Unsafe

Growing up, any time I spoke up about behaviour I knew was wrong, my dad would punish me. Often physically. Other times it was explosive, threatening outbursts that filled the room with rage, name-calling or throwing objects which made me feel like my safety was hanging by a thread. I learned early that telling the truth was not safe and speaking up came with consequences that felt life-threatening as a helpless little girl.

My mom’s role in this was different, but just as damaging. She would tell me that if I ever spoke to another adult, a teacher or a friend’s parent, about my dad’s outbursts or the abuse, I would be taken away from my family and never see them again. Reflecting back on this now, she was probably right... speaking up would likely result in Children's Aid getting involved. For a child, there is no bigger fear than losing your family regardless of how volatile it got. After all, when dysfunction is the only family you have ever known, it is easy to believe everyone lives this way. That fear kept me silent, even when every part of me was desperate to scream and tell someone, anyone, what was happening. I felt trapped and powerless to protect myself.

How My Childhood Silence Followed Me Into Adulthood

Now, as an adult, I see how deeply this conditioning shaped me. I still feel the echoes of that fear when I try to speak my truth.

I have had to reparent my inner child to show her that the adult I have become can protect her, can speak up and can stand firm in the truth no matter who tries to silence her. I remind her that she is safe now, that her voice matters, and that she no longer has to shrink herself to keep the peace.

This lesson was put to the test when people began sending me screenshots of my dad’s predatory, sexually inappropriate comments on posts from girls who appeared to be very underage. When I brought this to my mom, her first question was not about the age of the girls or the harm or even the fact that her husband was cheating. It was, “Does anyone else know? How can we delete the comments?”

In that moment, the family script was as clear as ever: protect the image, manage the reputation, and ignore the harm. It was in that moment that I realized just how delusional she was. The priority had never been safety, accountability, or change. It had always been about appearances.

That's when something inside me clicked and I began reflecting on so many moments throughout my life that reinforced these beliefs and how they had shaped the way I saw myself and the world. I began to see the threads connecting each experience, from my childhood to now, and realized that my silence had never been a choice rooted in my own values. It was a survival mechanism I had inherited, a deeply ingrained rule I was taught to follow in order to keep the peace.

But peace built on silence is not peace at all... it is self-abandonment.

Refusing to Stay Quiet

This time, I could not play along. I finally saw that the victim mentality that my mom had enmeshed into her identity my entire life was nothing more than a shield to avoid accountability. There had been countless times I’d confronted her about my father’s disturbing behaviour, and every time she acted as if I was the problem for even bringing it up.

The latest confrontation started when people had sent me screenshots of my dad’s public, predatory, sexually inappropriate comments on posts from girls who appeared to be very underage. This wasn’t a misunderstanding or something taken out of context... it was right there in black and white for anyone to see. Yet when I showed my mom, her first concern wasn’t the girls, it wasn't the harm being done, or even that her husband was behaving this way while married. Her immediate reaction was to ask if anyone else knew, and whether she should tell him to delete the comments.

That was the moment I realized this wasn’t just about my dad. It was about the lifelong conditioning that taught me to protect the family name at all costs, even if it meant ignoring dangerous and harmful behaviour. I had been silenced my entire life, told to hide the truth to preserve appearances. I was not going to let that happen again.

So I released a video publicly sharing my concerns and making it clear that I would not be associating with my parents going forward. Never would I knowingly associate with someone engaging in this kind of behaviour, parents or not. I understand that not everything needs to be shared publicly on social media. However, my dad chose to engage in this behaviour publicly, and therefore I felt it was appropriate to address it publicly. Who knows if there were other victims who had been disturbed by his actions? I also wanted it to be absolutely clear that I do not support or condone that behaviour, nor will I associate with it.

After I posted the video, it was less than twenty minutes before my mom called, her boss on the line as some sort of "mediator" in attempts to convince me to take the video down. She wanted me to stop talking about it entirely. I was not sure how much her boss actually knew, but one thing I knew for sure was that she was either just as delusional as my mom or she hadn't been told the entirety of the situation. So I explained everything in full detail. The deafening silence on the other end told me all I needed to know: my mom had twisted the truth and not been honest. Her boss at a loss for words asked my mom if she had anything else to say to which she responded, "no," and then the call ended.

This has always been her pattern: twist the story, control the narrative, make it look like I am the problem, and in a family where everyone else stays silent, the person who speaks up always becomes the target. I’ve come to learn it’s very common for narcissistic parents to round up what’s called “flying monkeys” a term borrowed from The Wizard of Oz, where the Wicked Witch sends her flying monkeys to do her bidding. In the context of narcissistic abuse, it refers to people the narcissist recruits to carry out their manipulation, spread their version of events, and apply pressure on the real victim to fall back in line. This is a real thing you guys, look it up.

In the end, this wasn’t just about one incident or a single moment of betrayal. It was about a lifelong pattern of abuse, denial, and protection of the wrong people and my choice to finally break it.

Why This Time Was Different

Too much of my life has been shaped by unsafe men, dangerous situations, and parents who failed to protect me.

I recall a time not too long ago when my mom became deeply involved in the local church, using it to feed her need for recognition and validation-- a hallmark of communal narcissistic behaviour. She became unusually close to this priest, a man who had committed his life to God and to serving the Catholic Church with integrity and good faith. She’d spend long hours with him in private meetings, invite him over, and do things for him that, to me, seemed far beyond what you’d expect from a simple friendship. I had read some of their email exchanges and felt a deep unease at how flirtatious they seemed for a married woman and someone in his position. Were priests even allowed to flirt like that? Several years into their “friendship,” that same priest was suspended from ministry for “substantiated allegations of professional misconduct.” I remember asking her if it had to do with whatever weird relationship they had going on but she denied it and said it was to do with something else. Regardless of what the real reason was, this was yet another reminder that my mom’s choice in who she allowed close to her showed a dangerous lack of judgment.

I think about being 16, kicked out of my home for speaking up during my parents’ abusive arguments. I had no stable place to go, just a rotation of friends’ couches, boyfriends’ houses, and cheap motels. I was vulnerable, desperate for stability, and craving any sense of safety or care. That is when I met a man online who was about ten years older than me... you don’t need a calculator to see how wrong that was, considering I was a minor. Even though I made it clear we were not in a romantic relationship, he sent me gifts and money... gestures that, at the time, felt like lifelines and acts of generosity I was desperate for. I didn't know it then but I was being groomed. Eventually, he began visiting me in Canada from the United States. I always brought a friend when we met, probably because some part of me knew I shouldn’t be alone with him. But there were still many times I got into his car or went up to his hotel room, convincing myself I was safe simply because I had a friend with me. Not long ago, I learned that man had been convicted as a pedophile on 101 counts of child pornography and had served time in prison. The weight of that knowledge is something I will never forget. I think about how easily any of those visits could have turned into something far worse, and how dangerously close I came to becoming another statistic of a young girl exploited by someone who saw her vulnerability as an opportunity.

My parents never intervened, never asked questions, and never took any steps to ensure I was safe. Their absence in those critical years of my development were not just neglect, they were a complete failure to fulfill the most basic duty of a parent: to protect their child.

Instead, they labeled me as the problem, and their solution was to get rid of the problem rather than put in the effort toward resolving the situation and finding a real solution.

Looking back, I see just how mentally unwell my parents were to believe that the solution was to abandon me and not therapy, mediation or finding a safe family or friend I could stay with. If my parents had been healthy, responsible adults, there were countless options other than kicking me out for standing up to the years of abuse and neglect I had experienced. Any of those options would have required admitting their own mistakes, something I now know that they were simply incapable of doing.

So when the situation with my dad came up recently, it wasn’t just about this one incident. Seeing the images of the young girls who were the recipients of his disgusting, misogynistic comments took me right back to being that girl-- vulnerable, unprotected, and targeted by someone who saw my innocence as an opportunity. Young girls might think that kind of attention is flattering (I know I did at that age), but little do they know the comments are coming from a 60-year-old married man with limited mental capacity. They can’t see the predator lurking behind the screen, calculating every move, waiting for the perfect moment to exploit their trust. It brought back the same fear, the same sense of being unsafe, and the same betrayal. The realization that my own dad was one of those men, the kind who prey on vulnerability, made me sick.

Families Shouldn’t Keep Secrets

Healthy families have nothing to hide.

When love is safe, respect is mutual, and accountability is present, there is no need to cover things up or protect reputations at the expense of the truth. Secrets thrive in dysfunction. They protect the person causing harm, not the person being harmed. They allow unhealthy patterns to repeat, silence the voices that could stop them, and keep generations stuck in the same cycles.

Healthy families do the opposite. They encourage open conversations, even when the topics are uncomfortable. They listen without dismissing or punishing. They take responsibility when they have caused harm and seek solutions instead of excuses. They turn to healthy strategies like therapy, mediation and conflict resolution to repair relationships and strengthen trust. They value the well-being of each family member over appearances, knowing that facing the truth together is what keeps the family strong. I know it is hard to believe that families like this exist if you grew up in dysfunction like I did. But they do, and the more we talk about what healthy families should look like, the easier it becomes to recognize that what we grew up with was not normal, and it was never okay.

When “Good Moments” Make You Doubt the Bad Ones

One of the most confusing parts of growing up in dysfunction is the way love gets disguised. Your family might buy you gifts, take you on family trips, or create moments that look perfect from the outside. To the world, it appears like everything is fine, and for a child who desperately wants things to be fine, those moments can be enough to make you question your own reality.

This is where the gaslighting takes root. When the same people who cause harm are also the ones creating those “happy memories," it becomes harder to trust your own feelings.

You start to think, Maybe it wasn’t that bad. Look at all the good things they did for me... but those good moments were often just a smokescreen. Something they could hold up as proof to themselves and others to deny the harm they caused. They mastered the outward appearances while failing where it mattered most: emotional safety, accountability, and genuine connection. Real love is not about creating a picture-perfect scene for others to admire. It is about showing up in the hard moments, protecting your children, and making sure they know their worth is not conditional on how they make you look.

In a healthy family, the good moments aren’t used to erase the bad. They address the harm, repair it, and make sure it never happens again.

Why Speaking Up Matters

Speaking up is not easy. It is terrifying when you have been conditioned to believe it will cost you love, safety, or family. But silence does not protect the people who need protecting. It protects the people causing the harm.

I have learned that my voice matters. That telling the truth is not something to fear, but something that can create change, inspire courage, and protect those who cannot yet speak for themselves.

For me, speaking up is not just about truth. It is about healing. Every time I share my story, I am reparenting my inner child, showing her that we can speak now, that we are safe in our own voice. I am shedding the weight of carrying other people’s burdens, of protecting their image at my own expense. My family can choose to keep walking that path, but I will not.

So forgive me if I do not believe my parents when they say they did the best they could, because their version of “the best” could have cost me my life.

I want you to know that if you've been through trauma or grew up in a dysfunctional family, you owe it to yourself to speak up. Your inner child is desperate for the adult version of yourself to finally be the protection and voice they never had.

Speaking up does not always have to mean going public. Sometimes it simply means telling a trusted friend, a therapist, or someone who will truly listen. What matters is that you let the weight out instead of carrying it alone. Holding in the truth of family dysfunction will eat away at you from the inside.

You will never feel truly safe until the adult version of yourself allows your inner child the freedom to say what they have been silenced from saying.

You deserve to be heard, to be believed, and to free yourself from a burden that was never meant to be yours.