Have you ever discovered a family secret? How did it change your relationship with the people around you?
I have a family member (related to by marriage) who I’d known for 20 years when he revealed a family secret on his side of the family. He’d sometimes alluded to the secret (years of physical and psychological abuse) in very cryptic statements. I had unfortunately glossed over the statements made. In retrospect, his cryptic statements were a test to see if I’d still care about him or whether the secret would appall me and make me think less of him. It took lots of time and work to repair the relationship. I also understood why I never felt completely comfortable around the perpetrator of the trauma (due to some quirky behavior). Thankfully, geographical distance worked to an advantage in that I did not have to see the perpetrator. Were that not the case, I think I would have avoided being in close proximity to that person out of fear that I would say something.
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No, I can’t say that I have. The only question mark in my family has to do with an Ancestry.com DNA test, which showed I’ve got some Finnish blood. All my relatives insist we’re 100% Hungarian, but no one will admit to marrying outside our ethnic group.
I found out through Ancestry that someone I knew had fathered an unacknowledged child. For reasons I won’t go into, I felt strongly that his family had a right to know and I “made” him come clean.
It turned out very well for everyone else in the family, but he will never forgive me for not agreeing to keep his secret.
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I discovered quite late in life that one of my uncles had raised another family. His unmarried sister who was helping my aging grand-parents had delivered three babies and placed them for adoption. These people were deceased when I learned those secrets. I questioned if other secrets were hidden.
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I learned my mother’s father was not who I had been told was her father. The shame of a birth out of wedlock kept that a secret for many years. It did not impact our relationship. I was just sorry they felt the truth needed to be hidden all those years.
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