I was in my home, sitting on a\u00a0chair, facing a lovely woman, I\u2019ll call her Ellen, whose healer friend had introduced\u00a0us. She had been HIV positive for many years and she had nearly died. Back in\u00a0the eighties when she contracted the virus, there was only one available
option, a pill called AZT that was meant to extend your life but it was killing\u00a0people at the same time. She had avoided death by eating macrobiotic and now\u00a0that there were medications they called \u201cthe cocktail,\u201d it was no longer a\u00a0death sentence.<\/p>\n
Ellen was at my house because she\u00a0had written a manuscript about her healing journey. She wanted editing and any\u00a0suggestions I might have. She looked so small and fragile on my long white\u00a0couch but I found out pretty soon that she was the polar opposite of fragile.\u00a0As she told me her story, I realized that she was one of the strongest women I\u00a0had ever met.<\/p>\n
She had contracted HIV from her\u00a0husband who had died of AIDs. He had pleaded with her to keep his diagnosis a\u00a0secret and tell people he had cancer. When she got her own diagnosis he pleaded\u00a0with her again to keep it secret so it wouldn\u2019t expose his. She had agreed and\u00a0helped him die with his secret intact. But there was a lot more to that secret.\u00a0While she and I were working together, she discovered that her husband had had\u00a0a male lover and he was having unprotected sex with both of them.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs hard as it was to watch my\u00a0husband die and to feel the betrayal,\u201d she told me, \u201ckeeping the secret was much\u00a0worse. I felt isolated from my friends and family and that was what nearly\u00a0killed me.\u201d When she finally told the truth, a great burden was lifted from her\u00a0chest and her\u00a0 day to day life became much easier.<\/p>\n
As a ghostwriter, keeping secrets\u00a0is part of my job. The NDA I sign for each project has the word \u201cperpetuity\u201d in\u00a0the contract:<\/p>\n
\u201cYou agree not to divulge any\u00a0information or the existence of this agreement to any party other than our\u00a0representatives, in perpetuity.\u201d Forever.<\/p>\n
That gives the client the freedom\u00a0to tell me anything she wants while it gives me the burden of carrying her\u00a0secrets to the grave. It also gives other people the challenge of trying to\u00a0trick me into spilling the beans on someone. I never have. First of all, I\u00a0signed on the dotted line which would mean a nasty law suit for me if I \u00a0broke the contact. But there\u2019s no risk of that. I would never do that to anyone, no matter who they were, what they did or how much money someone dangled in front of me. I would never tell someone else\u2019s secrets which has taught me to avoid having my own.<\/p>\n
When I was about to start writing\u00a0my memoir, I had a decision to make. Was I going to expose the truth about\u00a0myself and tell it like it is or would I tell it like I wanted it to be? Would\u00a0I be transparent and talk about things that embarrassed me or would I save\u00a0face? I decided to tell the truth. I figured if I had done something, a lot of
other people had done it too. They just weren\u2019t ready to talk about it and I\u00a0was.<\/p>\n
I feel that it\u2019s a writer\u2019s\u00a0responsibility to tell the truth about things that other people might keep\u00a0hidden. After the book came out, a friend invited me to her book club to\u00a0discuss my memoir. There were about 20 women gathered and at some point, a\u00a0woman asked me, \u201cHow could you have told the truth about your abusive marriage?\u00a0Didn\u2019t it make you feel weak and humiliated?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt did,\u201d I said, \u201cbut I didn\u2019t\u00a0want to keep secrets.\u201d I looked around the room. \u201cIs there a woman here who\u00a0hasn\u2019t made some bad choices when it comes to relationships?\u201d<\/p>\n
Everyone looked down at their feet.\u00a0I understood that we were all the same, but I had found the courage to talk\u00a0about it, to expose the secrets that every woman carries.<\/p>\n
Human beings crave connection and\u00a0community and secrets isolate us. They cause us to hide our \u00a0vulnerabilities. It\u2019s like wearing a suit of armor over your heart.<\/p>\n
There are countless quotes on this\u00a0topic:<\/p>\n
\u201cThree may keep a secret if two of\u00a0them are dead.\u201d\u00a0 Benjamin Franklin<\/p>\n
\u201cThe hardest thing about keeping a\u00a0secret is not telling anyone.\u201d\u00a0 Anonymous<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat you don\u2019t tell someone is\u00a0just as debilitating as what you do.\u201d\u00a0
Jodi Picoult<\/p>\n
I need to add here that there are\u00a0some secrets worth keeping. Maybe you don\u2019t want to hurt someone by exposing\u00a0them. When someone wants to tell you something in confidence, something that
might hurt someone else, you have to make a decision about whether you want\u00a0that responsibility. I\u2019ve said, \u201cDon\u2019t tell me about it,\u201d when it felt like it\u00a0was too much for me to carry around. When someone says, \u201cYou\u2019re the only person\u00a0I\u2019m telling this to,\u201d I pass. I was once invited to a concert I really wanted\u00a0to see, when the person who invited me said, \u201cDon\u2019t tell our other friends I\u00a0invited you or they might get jealous.\u201d<\/p>\n
I declined the invitation. \u201cAs much\u00a0as I\u2019d like to go,\u201d I said, \u201cI might mention it by mistake since we\u2019re all so\u00a0close. But thanks for the invite.\u201d<\/p>\n
I try to keep my life as stress-free\u00a0as possible so keeping secrets feels like a burden. It makes me remember a\u00a0famous comment by Judge Judy said, \u201cIf you tell the truth, you don\u2019t have to\u00a0have a good memory.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was in my home, sitting on a\u00a0chair, facing a lovely woman, I\u2019ll call her Ellen, whose healer friend had introduced\u00a0us. She had been HIV positive for many years and she had nearly died. Back in\u00a0the eighties when she contracted the virus, there was only one availableoption, a pill called AZT that was meant to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2710,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2711"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2712,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2711\/revisions\/2712"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}