Why We Keep Parts of Ourselves Hidden

“I know what it feels like to lose my voice. For 11 years, I kept a secret, and I don’t want to do that anymore. The silence brings the darkness in, and the darkness means that somehow it is bad. This isn’t bad. This is just my life, and I am trying to survive it.”

Last week, I had an entrepreneur group meeting. This was my third meeting with this group. A group that I decided to take a chance on and join. A group that I haven’t really shared much with because, well, honestly, once I start sharing, I tend not to stop. 

I have this belief that I should be an open book. The things I am going through will help someone else who is going through them. Someone out there is where I was a year ago. Holding in my story means that I am not only diminishing my story but also diminishing their story.

The last year, I have kept the struggles to myself because what I have realized is that it is a lot harder to share when those struggles affect those who are closest to you. When they have a stake in part of the story. 

When I shared the story of my sexual assault, there was no one to protect. That man broke the law. That man broke me. I couldn’t even tell you his name anymore. I could tell you other things, but his name, my brain has kept that from me. 

But yet, I am sitting here, trying to figure out how to share parts of my story that have been affecting my mental health and every other aspect of my life. 

How do you share something that involves those in your life that you love? How do you share your perspective without muddying the others in your life? How do you share parts of your life when they are so deeply entwined in the lives of others? 

I’ve been asking myself these questions for months. Maybe longer. Because the truth is, my husband and I are separating. 

Even writing those words makes me pause.

Not because I am ashamed of them, but because they don’t belong only to me. They belong to him. They belong to our children. They belong to a story that is still unfolding and one that I don’t yet know the ending to. 

We’re still working toward us. 

There isn’t a villain in this story. There isn’t someone I want you to blame. There isn’t a list of things that he’s done wrong that I need to air out to make my pain make sense. 

There are simply two people who spent twenty years building a life together and found themselves in a season neither of them expected. And that season has been one of the hardest things I have ever walked through. 

For months, I convinced myself that staying quiet was the respectful thing to do. Maybe it was.

But somewhere along the way, respect quietly became silence. And silence slowly became loneliness. 

I stopped writing about what I was living because I didn’t know how to write about it without hurting someone I love. I stopped sharing because I worried that people would fill in the blanks with assumptions. I stopped telling the truth because I believed that protecting everyone else meant that I had to disappear. 

But I’m beginning to realize that there is a big difference between protecting someone’s privacy and abandoning your own voice.

One is rooted in love. 

The other is rooted in fear. 

I don’t want to tell anyone else’s story. 

I don’t want to convince you to choose sides. 

I don’t want sympathy.

What I want is permission. Permission to say, this has been hard. Because it has. 

And I know I’m not the only one who has struggled with this.

Maybe your marriage is struggling.

Maybe your child is battling something they don’t want shared. 

Maybe your parents are aging. 

Maybe someone you love is living with addiction, mental illness, grief, or something that isn’t yours to explain.

Sometimes the hardest stories to tell are the ones that involve the people we love most. 

I’ve learned that not every detail needs to be public for a story to be honest. Honesty isn’t found in exposing everyone involved. It’s found in owning your experience.

I can tell you that I’ve cried.

I can tell you that I’ve questioned everything I thought I knew. 

I can tell you that I’ve had mornings where getting out of bed felt impossible and evenings where hope quietly returned.

I can tell you that therapy has helped. The few friends I have spoken to have carried me. That writing has become both my refuge and my mirror.

Those things are mine to share. The details of someone else’s heart are not. Maybe that’s the line I’ve been searching for all along.

Not silence.

Not oversharing.

Just truth with compassion.

As writers, we often hear the advice to write what you know. But I think the better advice is this:

Write what is yours. Tell your truth. Leave room for someone else’s. 

And if you’re reading this while carrying a story that feels too heavy, too complicated, or too intertwined with someone else’s life, I hope that you remember this. 

You don’t owe the world every detail. You don’t have to expose someone else to validate your pain. You are allowed to say that this season broke you while still protecting the people that you love. You are allowed to heal out loud without making someone else the headline. 

That’s what I’m learning. 

For the first time in a long time, I’m learning that finding my voice doesn’t require someone else to lose theirs.