Tell Your Fucking Story

There is something I want to say to every adult who has publicly given the report card on their childhood.

Good for you.

Seriously.

Whether you wrote a memoir, started a blog, made a TikTok, uploaded a YouTube video, talked about your childhood on a podcast, answered a question online, turned your experience into research, or simply told the truth somewhere people could hear it, good for you.

Because a lot of us grew up thinking we were alone.

When you’re a child, your family is your first universe. You don’t have enough information yet to know which parts of that universe are normal and which parts are completely fucked.

You know what happens in your house.

You know what your parents tell you.

You know what you’re punished for.

You know what you’re expected to tolerate.

And if everybody around you acts like this is simply the way families work, eventually you start wondering whether the problem is you.

Then you grow up.

And somebody tells their story.

And you think:

Wait.

Your mother did that shit too?

Your father said that?

Your parents threatened you with money?

They called you ungrateful when you disagreed with them?

They treated obedience like love?

They told everybody else you were the problem after you finally stopped participating?

Holy shit.

Maybe I wasn’t crazy.

Maybe this wasn’t normal.

Maybe I wasn’t the only one.

The Family Has Had the Microphone Long Enough

Dysfunctional families benefit tremendously from silence.

Every family has privacy. That’s normal.

But privacy and secrecy are not always the same thing.

Sometimes we don’t talk about family business really means:

We don’t discuss anything that might make the people with power look bad.

You can be humiliated privately.

Hit privately.

Manipulated privately.

Threatened privately.

Controlled privately.

But apparently speaking about it publicly is where everybody suddenly develops standards of decency.

Now you’ve gone too far.

Now you’re embarrassing the family.

Now you’re disrespectful.

Now you’re airing dirty laundry.

Interesting.

The behavior wasn’t too shameful to do.

It only became shameful when somebody described it.

That distinction has always fascinated me.

Some Young Person Needs the Report Card

This is probably about as altruistic as I’m going to get, so enjoy it while it lasts.

I want people to keep telling these stories because somewhere there is a young person currently living inside the kind of house the rest of us survived.

They may not be able to leave yet.

They may be financially dependent.

They may still be counting birthdays.

They may be lying in bed wondering why their family seems so different from everybody else’s.

And perhaps most dangerously, they may believe what they’re being told about themselves.

Difficult.

Ungrateful.

Disrespectful.

Selfish.

Bad daughter.

Bad son.

Bad child.

Then they find an adult telling a story that sounds disturbingly familiar.

Maybe that adult is 30.

Maybe 50.

Maybe 70.

And suddenly this kid has evidence that there is a world beyond the house they’re currently trapped inside.

Other people lived through this.

Other people eventually left.

Other people built lives.

Other people set boundaries.

Other people became adults their parents could no longer control.

That matters.

Because when you’re young and stuck inside something, knowing that there is an outside can be its own form of oxygen.

You Might Get Disinherited

Now let’s get to the less inspirational portion of today’s program.

There is a decent chance that setting boundaries with a dysfunctional family will cost you something.

Sometimes emotionally.

Sometimes socially.

Sometimes financially.

And yes, sometimes that means inheritance.

Money is one of the last pieces of leverage a parent can have over an adult child.

Don’t do this.

Don’t say that.

Don’t embarrass me.

Don’t stop speaking to me.

Don’t tell people what happened.

Or else.

Maybe the threat is explicit.

Maybe it isn’t.

But plenty of adult children understand the arrangement.

Compliance has benefits.

Disobedience has consequences.

Personally, I don’t think an inheritance is worth purchasing with my silence.

And if telling the truth gets you disinherited?

Well.

Make the inheritance back.

There. That’s my inspirational message.

Put that shit on a mug.

They’re Buying Your Silence for Cheap

Let’s also be realistic about this inheritance everybody is supposed to be terrified of losing.

Most people aren’t Rockefellers.

You could spend twenty years swallowing your boundaries, answering calls you don’t want, attending holidays you hate, tolerating behavior you wouldn’t accept from anybody else, and protecting somebody’s reputation because maybe, someday, you’ll inherit something.

Okay.

How much?

Seriously.

How much are they paying for your silence?

After the mortgage, debt, medical expenses, long-term care, end-of-life costs, taxes, and whatever gets divided among siblings, what exactly are you expecting to receive?

Obviously, some families have substantial wealth.

Most ordinary people don’t.

And if you’re going to sell your silence, you should at least know the fucking price.

Because you may discover you’ve spent decades protecting somebody else’s reputation for cheap.

Your Story Might Be Worth More Than Their Money

When I say make the inheritance back, I don’t mean everybody needs to become a writer.

Maybe you can write.

Maybe you can talk.

Maybe you’re hilarious on TikTok.

Maybe you know how to tell a story on YouTube and keep somebody watching for twenty minutes.

Maybe you start a podcast.

Maybe what happened in your family becomes part of a research question you pursue in graduate school.

Maybe it becomes a thesis.

A dissertation.

A book.

A documentary.

A lecture.

A speaking career.

A business.

Or something neither of us has thought of yet.

The point isn’t the format.

The point is to flip the shit.

Take something that was used to diminish you and turn it into knowledge, art, scholarship, entertainment, income, opportunity, or whatever else you can build from it.

Not because what happened to you was secretly a gift.

Fuck that.

Some things are simply shitty things that happened.

But they happened to you.

That makes the experience part of your story too.

Your family doesn’t get permanent ownership of the material just because telling the truth makes them uncomfortable.

And your story may turn out to be worth more than whatever they were dangling over your head.

One TikTok probably isn’t going to make you rich.

One essay probably won’t either.

But one video can become an audience.

One audience can become a platform.

One research question can become expertise.

One essay can become a body of work.

One story can become something you own that nobody can disinherit you from.

Maybe you make $500.

Maybe you make $50,000.

Maybe you make considerably more.

Maybe you don’t make a dime.

Maybe the return is simply that somebody else hears your story and finally understands their own.

Lovely.

We’ve reached the altruistic portion again.

But if you can make some fucking money from it?

Please do.

They already gave you the source material.

You might as well see what it’s worth.

Protect Yourself First

There is one important qualification.

Do not turn yourself into a martyr for disclosure.

If you’re still dependent on abusive people, your safety matters more than anybody’s need to hear your story today.

You can wait.

You can write privately.

You can record something and save it.

You can change identifying details.

You can use a pseudonym.

You can keep the draft.

You can collect your thoughts.

You can build your exit first.

There is no prize for telling the truth before you’re safe enough to survive the consequences of telling it.

Sometimes silence is strategy.

That’s different from silence being permanent.

You get to decide when your story becomes public.

You get to decide how much you reveal.

You get to decide which names are used.

You get to decide which details remain yours.

Telling your story does not require surrendering control of it.

Silence Helps Somebody

We’ve romanticized silence in families for generations.

Keep the peace.

Don’t embarrass your mother.

Respect your father.

That’s still your family.

Some things should stay inside the home.

But silence isn’t neutral.

Silence creates an environment where every person experiencing the same kind of dysfunction can believe they’re experiencing it alone.

Silence protects reputations.

Usually not the reputation of the child who was hurt.

So yes.

To everybody publicly giving the report card on their childhood, I congratulate you.

Keep talking.

Not because every private experience belongs on the internet.

Not because disclosure automatically heals anything.

Not because strangers are entitled to your pain.

And not because everything terrible that happened to you needs to be transformed into some inspirational fucking lesson.

Tell it because your life happened to you too.

Your parents don’t own the story simply because they were older when it happened.

And somewhere, somebody may recognize their own childhood in yours and realize for the first time:

Oh.

It’s not just my family.

I’m not the only one.

There is an outside.

And if telling the truth costs you the inheritance?

Fuck it.

Go make the inheritance back.