By Jackie Brousseau-Pereira

I hate secrets, unless of course they are mine to keep.
Having grown up Catholic, I'm not sure if it's a cultural thing or if it's just the individual weird nature of my family, but a lot of things in our house were supposed to be kept as secrets.

My father's affair, my parent's divorce, my sister's teen pregnancy, subsequent child and rapid marriage, then her divorce and rapid remarriage. There were so many things that we were warned not to talk about outside of the house - my parents didn't even fight in front of us - no wonder I suck at that in my own relationship.

Being the "touchy-feely" child in my family, I had a very difficult time keeping problems and emotions to myself and something about my family's particular brand of avoidance caused me to rebel. To my credit, I think my survival and emotional well-being are due in part to the fact that I am compelled to share (hence the blog). I talk. To almost everyone. In fact, I don't think I am able to figure out how I feel about something until I've processed it to death with all of my friends.

Talking helps me to clarify where I am. It's how I figure out who I am.

I suppose I should thank my family for this gift. Maybe if they had been more open, I wouldn't be who I am. To this day, my mother and sister keep secrets - and they are always things that make no sense to me. For example, my mother somehow found my blog post about her and was not pleased. She did not tell me about this herself, however; instead I heard about it from my spouse, who wasn't supposed to tell me.

When I called her to talk about it, I said that there was nothing in the post that I had not already said to her. I think it felt very public to her and she would NEVER have told me that she read it or that she was uncomfortable with what I said. The idea of sharing one's thoughts in this way is truly foreign to her. She doesn't know why anyone would want to keep a blog and she advised me that it wasn't a good idea to talk about things like going to the bathroom on the internet, because other people would be able to see it. (Um, Mom, that's the whole point of a blog.)

Surprisingly, my dad has been refreshingly open and honest these days. Our relationship has really changed. We talk about things that I never would have expected to share - life, love, raising kids. I've discovered that I'm more like him than I thought I was. It took a long time to get there but I'm so glad to have this relationship with him. I think he is past all of the secret keeping and for that I am not-so-secretly grateful.