We all Love a Good Story, don’t we? We have plenty of stories in our families that we don’t think of as stories, but they are. They are untold because they’re embarrassing things that have happened to our relatives or us. The shame keeps family members from exposing those stories. But they are stories and they are examples of life and what happens to people. For example, there is the story about a lie or a secret that a family member gives in answer to a serious question, such as why does grandpa wear women’s clothes. Sometimes the family member is so embarrassed that they don’t try to explain it. They keep it a secret. The question is: does that lie or secret affect only the person making up the lie or keeping the secret? Or does that lie or secret affect the entire family? For example, if I ask my mother why she didn’t know her father very well, and she said it was because he was always being called to serve this country when in reality he was in jail because he was a pedophile, what affect would that have on me? Was my mother afraid that I would somehow “catch” this disease and become a pedophile, too? How would I be affected by that lie? Would the effect be the embarrassment or shame of the fact that the father was a pedophile? What would withholding this information do to improve the family? What would telling everyone do to improve the family?
If you found something like that in your family, what would you do? If you find out that a grandparent or parent killed someone, just murdered them right out, how would that change your life? Would you believe that you were meant to kill someone? What kind of person would you be after finding out that your grandparent or parent actually took someone’s life? Would you suddenly understand why you didn’t like people? Or had difficulty around people? Would you be unchanged and live your life the way you are?
In Blessings and Curses, Olivia Douglass finds out something about herself and the effect of that secret causes Olivia to hold her own secret that she struggles with all her life. What would have happened if Olivia had known about what happened? People have choices. They can either accept something or change it. We find out things about us that we may not want to know, but does that information have to cause a change? Some of these facts we find out are the things that make us human. Some of these things we can use to make us stronger. Some of these things we find out can weaken us. How would you handle Olivia’s secret?
Blessings and Curses can be found at:
Let me know what you would do.
Love a Good Story 