The Weight of Unanswered Truths

I grew up in a family of secrets.

So many secrets, in fact, that over time I stopped believing almost anything that came out of their mouths. Truth became slippery. Flexible. Optional.

Cleaning up my own relationship with truth has been a long journey. And I’m not just talking about the big lies. I’m talking about the small ones. The kind we barely notice anymore.

Like showing up late to something and blaming traffic when the real reason is that we hit the snooze button three too many times because our body is exhausted from living in ways that drain us. Or when someone asks if we ate the last of something and we say no—even though we did. Or when we break something and quietly walk away instead of admitting it.

Little lies. Harmless lies. Except they aren’t harmless at all.

When you slow down and really examine them, these small deceptions usually come from a deeper place: fear. Fear that admitting a mistake will make us less lovable. Fear that someone will judge us. Fear that accountability will lead to rejection.

So the lie becomes a shield.

It keeps us safe—from confrontation, from embarrassment, from the possibility of being seen imperfectly. But it also keeps us trapped.

Before we condemn these behaviors in others, it’s worth pausing long enough to ask a more compassionate question:

What happened to this person that taught them honesty was unsafe?

Most lies are born from trauma. And transformation rarely happens through accusation. It happens through understanding.

That doesn’t mean we tolerate dishonesty indefinitely. But it does mean we approach it gently. If someone has spent a lifetime hiding their truth to survive, tearing the mask off their face rarely heals them.

Helping them understand why the mask exists might.

I learned this lesson early.

One of the clearest memories of my childhood happened when I was about six or seven years old. I had taken a gallon of milk out of the refrigerator to pour cereal. But I dropped it. Milk exploded across the kitchen floor. My mother erupted in rage. She screamed at me as if I had destroyed her entire world.

In that moment I felt small. Terrible. Unloved.

All over a mistake.

But something interesting happened inside me. Instead of hating her, I found myself loving her more. Because I had seen the way other people treated my mother. I had seen the wounds she carried.

So I understood—even as a child—that her reaction wasn’t really about the milk.

It was about pain. But while I learned to love other people’s brokenness, there was something I desperately needed that I wasn’t getting.

I needed to feel loved myself.

And so, without realizing it, I began a pattern that would follow me into adulthood.

I learned to love everyone else’s wounds. And hide my own.

Many of us are doing exactly that. And we’ve become so accustomed to it that we no longer recognize the pattern.

Over the past several years I’ve made tremendous progress learning to own my truth—even when people react harshly to it. But there is still one area where my relationship with truth feels complicated.

My relationship with medicine.

For more than fifteen years I lived on prescription medications.

Antidepressants.

Mood stabilizers.

Sleep medications.

Anxiety medications.

Acne medications.

Thyroid medication.

At one point I was taking nine pills a day. At the time, I believed these medications were helping me. Because that’s what I had been told.

I would go to the doctor and describe my symptoms:

“I’m exhausted.”

“I cry at the drop of a hat.”

“I feel sad all the time.”

What I didn’t understand back then was why I felt that way.

That’s why people go to doctors—to help diagnose the root of the problem. But often the conversation ended quickly.

“You’re depressed,” they would say.

And then came the prescription.

The medication would relieve one symptom. But soon another appeared.

Now, I couldn’t sleep.

Now my sex drive was gone.

Now my skin was breaking out.

So I would return.

Another prescription.

Another chemical solution.

Over and over again.

Eventually my body reached its breaking point. It began rejecting everything.

And when the collapse finally came, it was overwhelming - for me and for the people around me.

Looking back now, I believe something important was happening beneath the surface. My body was trying to speak. My depression wasn’t random. It was a signal. In my case, it was the signal of a relationship where I felt invisible.

My husband loved his sport. I loved him. And somewhere inside that equation, I disappeared. When I tried to talk to him, I felt like an interruption. Like a nuisance standing between him and the motorcycles he was working on in the garage.

So I tried harder.

Better jobs.

More money for his sport.

Prettier clothes.

Hair styled the way he liked.

Photo books documenting his races and victories.

I kept giving more and more of myself. Hoping that eventually I would be seen. But instead I became depleted. And my body began to collapse under the weight of that depletion.

Years later I learned something fascinating. The thyroid gland is often associated with the throat - the place where voice lives. Mine had been surgically removed. At the time I didn’t question it. Now I sometimes wonder if my body was screaming for something I had never learned to give it.

A voice.

For most of my life I had learned to stay quiet.

Work hard.

Keep the peace.

Don’t make waves.

Just cook dinner, schedule appointments, do the laundry, buy the gifts, and smile.

But don’t speak too loudly.

Don’t ask for too much.

Don’t disrupt the system.

Eventually my body disrupted it for me. The crash forced me into a five-year journey of research, healing, and reflection. During that time I slowly weaned myself off every medication I had been taking.

Except one. The thyroid replacement pill. Doctors told me I would need it for the rest of my life. And I still don’t fully know what to believe.

Part of me trusts the science. Another part of me believes deeply in the body’s ability to heal.

So sometimes I take the pill for a while. Then I stop.

Months later a symptom scares me and I start again. It’s a cycle I’m still learning to understand. But here is what I know for certain. For the first time in most of my life, I actually want to live. And that desire to live has made me curious again.

Curious about truth.

Curious about healing.

Curious about what the body is truly capable of.

I don’t claim to have all the answers. This chapter isn’t about answers. It’s about asking better questions.

Because the systems we live inside—families, medicine, workplaces—often operate through authority rather than curiosity.

We dictate.

We diagnose.

We prescribe.

But real understanding usually requires something slower.

Conversation.

Exploration.

Listening.

The body, after all, doesn’t operate through commands. It operates through communication.

One of the most powerful tools I’ve discovered for breaking cycles is something I call the mirror exercise.

It’s simple.

Whenever we see a behavior in someone else that frustrates us, we pause and ask ourselves a difficult question:

Where am I doing this?

Because the patterns we notice most clearly in others often exist inside us too. For me, this realization shows up everywhere.

At work.

With friends.

With my children.

I’m a fixer. When someone comes to me with a problem, my instinct is to solve it immediately. But most of the time they don’t want solutions.

They want to be heard.

My kids especially have taught me this. They often avoid telling me things because they know advice is coming.

Unsolicited.

Instant.

Relentless.

So now I try to stop that train before it leaves the station.

I listen more.

Speak less.

Ask questions instead of delivering answers.

And I give myself grace along the way. Because these patterns are deeply woven into our culture.

We see them in families.

In workplaces.

In medicine.

Everywhere.

We dictate instead of collaborate. But life itself doesn’t evolve through domination.

It evolves through partnership.

Every child born carries new combinations of DNA - new solutions to the struggles of the generation before them. If we insist on forcing the old patterns onto them, we risk silencing the very wisdom that could help us grow.

Breaking cycles isn’t easy. It requires patience.

Curiosity.

Humility.

But the reward is extraordinary. Because every time we choose honesty over fear…

we loosen the bars of the prison we built around ourselves.

And little by little -

we begin to step free.