Max on L-Word went home to his mother’s funeral. His sister, who had been holding his secret in the family, didn’t want him to come, because it would be too hard on the family.
Max went, and it was good and it was bad — his father connected, but Max understood his presence at the funeral would make it about him, not his mother.
But I have to admit that I felt bad for the sister. It’s not easy to hold the secrets that aren’t your own, to be the one who has to absorb the shocks between comfort & change. There is no way you can be bold enough when you are stuck being the holder of secrets.
I know this firsthand, of course, because I have been the holder of my own secrets in this family, and know how hard it has been for me. But I tell truths, am explicit, push the boundaries, which are all things most holders of secrets don’t have the incentive, the energy, the push and the skills to do.
It seems that secrets have little ability to creep into conciousness; they are secrets because conciousness is loaded against them. They have to pop in, to break through, and then the next time they pop in, they aren’t as schocking, as scandalous, as abnormal.
And for all those cast as holders of secrets, or who cast themselves that way, not passing on what we think others can’t handle, I know that the work is hard.
May you find the power to let go, at least a little.
Callan 