A reflection on how silence doesn’t save families or relationships.

With the holidays approaching, I’ve been considering a possibility I never wanted to face: maybe silence doesn’t prevent harm, maybe it only postpones the inevitable break. And by speaking my truth this year, I’ve seen the illusion of what I believed my family to be finally fall apart. Not because I wanted it to, but because honesty has a way of exposing what silence tried to conceal.

Recently, I’ve been learning something that has changed how I see myself, my past, and the stories that have shaped me.

I used to think that calling out harmful or toxic behaviors was what tore families or relationships apart. Shining a light on what hurt somehow caused the fracture. But I’ve realized the truth: honesty doesn’t destroy anything that wasn’t already cracking under the weight of silence. It’s the behavior itself—the patterns, denial, and pretending—that cause the damage. What I also learned was that saying it out loud only reveals what was already there.

For a long time, I believed silence kept me safe. That denial protected everyone. That if I absorbed enough, tolerated enough, or stayed quiet enough, the illusion of “normal” would hold. But silence doesn’t save you, and it certainly doesn’t heal anyone.

Pretending has never protected my soul.

Families don’t fall apart just because someone finally speaks up. They fall apart because someone was hurting, and everyone else was expected to act like the pain was normal. Healing doesn’t ruin families; it shatters the illusion. And sometimes, the illusion is the only thing that keeps people comfortable.

So, if speaking the truth is what ultimately exposes everything, then it was never the truth that caused the damage. It wasn’t honesty that led to the fallout; it was the behavior no one wanted to admit to or acknowledge that someone was not taking accountability.  Which seems to be an overused word, but somehow always applicable. What’s even more intriguing is that I now know I’m not breaking anything. I have only revealed what needs to be rebuilt, with honesty, tenderness, safety, and most importantly, my own accountability.

And if my healing makes others uncomfortable, that doesn’t mean I’m doing something wrong. It simply means my truth challenges the myth they relied on. That is no longer my burden to carry. I am allowed to heal, even if my healing sounds like butterfly language to those still living in caterpillar worlds. I am allowed to name what hurt, even when the truth threatens the cocoon others wanted me to stay inside. I am allowed to stop pretending because butterflies were never meant to fold themselves back into chrysalis-shaped expectations.

And finally, I have the right to choose myself, even if or when the illusion collapses.