You Are Only As Sick as the Secrets You Keep

This week’s blog title is a line from a Netflix series called Ginny and Georgia.  In the scene Ginny, the teenaged daughter of Georgia is talking with her therapist. She is discussing the reality that her mother is a murderer, likely several times over. 

Ginny is a burner, meaning when she is stressed, she self-harms. In her case she takes a lighter and burns the skin on her thighs. There are several ways young girls’ often self-harm. Cutting their skin, pulling out their hair, throwing up their food. And the more subtle ones including promiscuity and drug addiction.

Ginny is a burner.

Her therapist suggests she confide in a close friend. That walking around with a suitcase full of uncomfortable truths is as unhealthy as the truths themselves. Ginny wants to be healthy, happy and safe. Her therapist then delivers the line. 

You are only as sick as the secrets you keep.

In all of my own years of self-harm, self-punishment and internal hatred, I constantly processed how sick all of the secret keeping has made me. My life was full of secrets to keep and lies to tell. It became clear to me at a very young age that my survival depended heavily on making sure I said what was necessary to secure peace and harmony.

(Not mine necessarily, but for sure that of my environment)

As I have grown older, loved, lost, learned and all of the other things we do as we move through life I have pondered most about how damaging it was to me to be told that it was my job to keep secrets, 

The demand often started with “Don’t tell Dad”, or “Don’t tell Mom”. They grew into, “you can’t tell anyone”, with the occasional specific person mentioned here and there. My response has been to keep secrets that I do not need to keep. To create situations that require secrets and lies. To allow people to treat me really badly and then say nothing about it because, well, isn’t that how it’s done?

My podcast began as a story telling mission, to share with the world all my struggles. To give permission to those who also struggle. It has been a fact mission in my attempt to make sense of Molly’s death. It has been a time to say all of the things other people feel they cannot say.

As I write this it is July first. A new month. My birthday month. When I visualize a year in my mind the moths make a circle or sorts. It becomes more of an egg shape as July contins to go “UP” the circle. At August first, the shift occurs, and the months are now counted down. July is super long in this visual, and pink. (June is blue, August is a rust colored red). Clearly I will have to illustrate my crazy brain. 

I know as a child July was my very favorite month. Long summer days, vacations, camps, friends, playing in the park. I loved July then, and I love it now. Gracie, Molly and Jack were all conceived in July. (TMI yeah yeah)

So what is in store for this July in the life of Barbara Higgins.

Well, I will invoke Matt Bonners advice and take a look at adversity. I will contemplate mine from a neutral place and use what I find to move forward. I will manage and discard all that is not helpful. I will not carry around adversity for the sake of someone else’s peace of mind. 

I will set goals. I will focus on the process rather than fixate on the result. Yes, I will set goals I want to reach, but I will maintain awareness and focus on the here and now. I will see both the goal and the many paths to the goal.

I will look at Barb as Barb, the only person I truly have any control over. As hard as it is, always has been and likely always will be, I will not compare myself to others. In all of my journeys this is likely the most difficult task. 

We gain perspective by seeing where we fit into the big picture. We use the successes and failures of others to gauge our own. How do we not compare ourselves to others? 

I think it is that we refrain from judging ourselves against others. We only know what they show us. “Don’t compare your insides to someone else’s outsides” is some sage advice I used to give my health students and my athletes. 

Social media counts on people looking at other people, comparing themselves to them, and then buying all the miracle cures for whatever this comparison tells them is ailing them.

So, for July, I will contemplate adversity and turn it to achievement, I will set goals and then live within the process. I will judge myself only against myself and be kind to the version of me I am looking at.

Sounds easy! 

I got this! 

Piece of cake! Birthday Cake!!! July 29^th at 2:03am I will turn 62 years of age.