I wouldn’t talk about what happened in my family of origin as a kid because I was afraid of the repercussions (a beating at least, being sent away and responsible for “getting them in trouble” at worst), and refrained for a long time as an adult because I was ashamed of what happened to me and of the family members involved. I wanted to distance myself from it all and not accept it. I felt that their poor choices and behaviour towards me reflected on me as a person and marked me as unworthy. I wanted to maintain the illusion that by keeping their awful behaviour a secret, then that meant I was showing my love for them and that love would be reciprocated. As long as no one knew, then I was like everyone else, “normal”, and deserving of good things and love. I was sure the moment someone found out, I’d be cast aside as “that chick whose crappy, low-class family abused her”. I have no idea how I came to decide this.
Maybe because I was explicitly taught not to reveal anything that happened at home or anything of my origins, which weren’t “nice”. Time and maturity have taught me that I am free to own my entire experience, and if some of it makes some people look bad, then it’s up to them to own and accept what they did. If some of it makes people think less of me as a person because I didn’t grow up in Brady Bunch-land, then they can get lost. I’m not charged to hide any part of my life to keep my former abusers safe from the opinion of others, nor of other people who want to imagine they live in some sanitized world.