"Don't Tell Anyone..."

 Some families don’t just keep secrets—they assign children the responsibility of protecting them. In this episode of our series Healing for the Holidays, Alexis explores the often-unnamed role of the dark secret keeper in narcissistic households: the child who is expected to know what happened, never speak about it, never grieve it, and carry it quietly into adulthood. 

   Through personal storytelling and trauma-informed insight, this episode examines how coerced silence, forced proximity, and religious justification compound harm—and what it takes to reclaim your voice when silence was once required for survival. This is a survivor-centered episode about truth, boundaries, and putting down what never belonged to you. 

Content Warning: This episode discusses family violence, murder, child sexual abuse, religious abuse, and coercive silence. No graphic detail is included, but themes may be distressing. Listener Care: If you need to pause this episode, please do. Your nervous system matters more than finishing a podcast. 

Resources:

 • 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (U.S.)

 • RAINN Sexual Assault Hotline – 800-656-HOPE 

In loving memory of Jane.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:05

Content Warning. This episode discusses family violence, murder, child sexual abuse, religious abuse, and coercive silence within families. There is no graphic detail, but the themes may be distressing, especially for listeners from narcissistic or abusive households. So if you find yourself becoming overwhelmed during this episode, you are encouraged to pause, take a break, come back later. Your nervous system comes first. But there are some very important things in this episode. Things that took me a lifetime to label and learn and process. So I'm gonna help skip a few of those steps for you and help bring some clarity for some of you who have experienced these things in your family. Okay? But your nervous system comes first. So this episode is going to be difficult for me, but it is shared for the purpose of education, validation, and healing, not just for myself, but for other people. So harassment, victim blaming, or justifying violence won't be tolerated in any comments on my social media or messages connected to this show. This space is not a debate space, it's a space for survivors. There are families that keep secrets. Then there are families that assign children the job of keeping them. In narcissistic households, silence isn't just expected, it's enforced. Not to protect the children, but to protect the family's image or their beliefs or their power structure. Today's episode is about what happens when a child is made into a dark secret keeper and how damaging that role can be long after the secret itself is supposed to be over. In healthy families, adults handle adult realities. But in narcissistic families, children are often recruited into the emotional labor that they cannot consent to. One of the least talked about roles is the child who is expected to one, know what happened, two, never to speak about it, three, never to grieve about it, and four to carry it quietly into adulthood. The trauma isn't only the event itself. It's being forced to hold it alone. For years, decades even. So I am calling this segment The Secret.

SPEAKER_00: 3:18

When I was a child, my mother's brother murdered his wife while their children were in the house watching cartoons. My cousins.

SPEAKER_01: 3:55

When I was told about what happened, I wasn't really allowed to ask questions. I was never allowed to attend any funerals or memorials. I was told explicitly, however, and repeatedly that I was never to tell a single soul. And that wasn't a one-time silencing thing. It wasn't occasional.

SPEAKER_00: 4:22

It was rehearsed over and over and over.

SPEAKER_01: 4:33

So all throughout my childhood, after this happened, anytime something good was about to happen for me, like a first day at a new school, a pool party, a week at camp, my mother would bring up the murder in the car. Not to check on me, not to comfort me or check my feelings, but to remind me of my role, to coach my silence. Even if I wasn't even thinking about bringing that up, she had to remind me not to bring it up. And so every time I walked into something that was supposed to be fun and joyful and meaningful, she reminded me of the weight that I was assigned to carry. And I had to carry it all through my childhood, all through my special moments, all through my milestones and my struggles, I was assigned that role. It was used to regulate me, my trauma. It was used to regulate me for their benefit, not to regulate me in a healthy way. Part three, uh, forced proximity, okay? It didn't stop with the murder. That wasn't even the bulk of the trauma, believe it or not. So my uncle went to prison, he had turned himself in, and he would call the house. He would call my mom multiple times a day. And it was always a collect call from the Minnesota State Correctional Facilities. My mother would always have me pick up the phone and she would have me wait. My uncle would say his name. And it was always a collect call, so I had to, you know, say that I accepted the charges. And then I had to, you know, chit-chat with him until my mother was ready to take the call. So yeah, every day, several times a day, I would get triggered every time the phone would ring and I would have to pick it up and I would have to hear his name. I would have to say hello. I would have to be forced to stay on the line and listening to him until my mother decided to take the call.

SPEAKER_00: 7:07

And when she did take the call, they spoke of this as it was all a part of God's plan. I was never allowed to cry about it.

SPEAKER_01: 7:21

I was never allowed to object. I was never allowed to speak about it afterwards. According to them, my aunt deserved what happened to her. I heard them make up story after story after story about why she deserved that. That belief lived in the room, and so did I. That was awkward. So, why was this so traumatizing? I mean, do I even have to ask that question? But we're gonna name this bullshit, okay? So this is what coercive silence looks like. This is why people stay in abusive relationships for so long. Because they're groomed over and over and over to be secret keepers. It was a little bit easier for them to do that to me because I was just a kid. I already knew that they were capable of hitting me if I, you know, quote unquote disobeyed them. I didn't know what they were gonna do if I exposed this. I was scared to death. Scared to death. I was scared to death that my uncle would serve his time and come out and appropriately punish me for speaking about it. I had nightmares of that every night and I wasn't allowed to talk about it. Uh, they forced me to participate in their bullshit. Um, when children are made to hold adult violence or be exposed repeatedly or pretend nothing is wrong and remain loyal to a narrative that harms them, the result is chronic hypervigilance. Remember, I said I was freaked out every time the phone rang? Yeah, there's a murderer on the other end. Holy shit, dude. Okay. You also get moral injury. You don't, you're, you're, you're thinking of what you think is right and wrong is being constantly distorted every fucking day by these people. So you're deeply confused and an ingrained fear of speaking, even decades later. That's why I'm a little nervous making this episode because I made promises to my mother as a small child never to speak about this. So my nervous system is really freaking out right now. Okay, while I'm talking about this, I want you all to know this is hard for you to listen to. This is hard for me to talk about. Um, but I've needed to talk about this for a very long time. This is part of what heals you as a person. Now, the next time I share this story, it's gonna be easier for me. But this is honestly the first time I'm sharing this really like much. I've mentioned it, but I've never disclosed this whole thing. So I appreciate you guys listening. So here's the next part: the layer that broke everything open. Okay. So years after this, I had to deal with this like day after day after day after day. I was schooled on how my uncle was innocent. My mom took it a notch further. She integrated our religion into what he did and would try to take the Bible and justify what he did. And it even got to the point where the people who who ended up taking custody of my cousins, my mother was was instructing us to pray against the family that was caring for my cousins.

SPEAKER_00: 11:10

I was instructed to hate the people that took care of my cousins. And people want to know why I'm a stage.

SPEAKER_01: 11:23

Okay, keep listening, folks. I gotta laugh about this because I can't cry no more. Years later, when I finally just I had it with all this bullshit, I left home at 17, guys. I was 17 years old. Okay. I I moved out and I lived, I decided to, you know, stay with my sister for a stint. I did not know my sister was an overt malignant narcissist at the time. So at the time she was just my older, annoying sister who was always bullying me, but she accepted me into her home. So I went and stayed with her. And during this time, okay, my sister's 14 years older than me for reference. So she'd been out of the house quite some time before I had. Uh, she was still my very big older, sophisticated sister. Um, but so I was 17. My sister, well, this when my sister disclosed this to me, I was probably like, I was probably 18. She didn't disclose any of this to me when I was a kid. Uh, but anyway, so I'm I'm I left my home at 17 to live with my sister, turned 18 shortly after that. During this time, my sister disclosed to me that this same uncle had molested her years earlier when she was three years old. I want to be very careful when I talk about this because this is my sister's story. My sister was a child when this happened, so I'm not gonna get into the details of this. But what she told me shattered me. And it wasn't just the fact that she disclosed this, what happened, it didn't surpr it shattered me, but at the same time, it didn't surprise me because I knew he was already an evil man, obviously. But the worst part that shattered me as my as as her sister was learning that she was still writing to him. She said she still was writing to him, and I said, What do you mean, still writing? They would write to each other, and she said, Well, we pray for each other. At that moment, I understood something clearly. That my family did not want healing. It wanted silence, it wanted loyalty, and it and it used spiritual justification. I was never gonna survive in that system. I still tried. I still tried for almost almost 20 more years after that. But I can say I was never gonna survive inside that system. So I break my promise to my mother, the one she made me promise over and over and over that I would never speak about. Here's what I know now. A promise extracted from a child through fear is not a moral obligation. If I could go back in time, I would tell everybody what happened. Because I was a child, and I lost my favorite aunt, and I also lost a relationship with my favorite cousins. I never saw some of them again. And I wasn't allowed to share that part of my life that had gone missing. I walked around with holes in my chest as a child and as a young adult because of the secrets my mother forced me to keep. She made me feel like in order to survive, I had to keep that secret. But that was what was killing me. You know what? Survival tactics, they are allowed to expire, you know? I don't have to keep that secret anymore. It was never my responsibility.

SPEAKER_00: 15:38

I was a kid. I was a kid in a happy face sweatshirt. When all this went down, you guys. And I still had to walk around with my happy face sweatshirt for years. Because of her.

SPEAKER_01: 16:09

My mother. While I was hurting inside. Silence was not love. Loyalty was not protection. And distance from those people does not make you cruel. Healing might look like naming the role that you were forced into. Healing might look like finally allowing the grief that was delayed or forbidden to come through. Healing might be telling your story once to a safe witness or choosing not to tell it at all, and simply reclaiming your right to peace. You decide, and that is the point. No one should be forcing you to be a secret keeper. There's NDAs for that. But I was a kid, I couldn't consent to that. You know? So if you were ever made to carry something that never belonged to you, you're allowed to put it down. Right now. While you're listening to the show, you can put that shit down. Even if no one else ever does.