Owning the Lies

Abstract

This autoethnography contests notions that family secrets and lies are always disruptive to family cohesion by exploring how secrets and lies hold a family together. Drawing from shared memories, I address my siblings directly to reveal our experiences of navigating our parents’ secrets and lies from each other that contributed to our own adoption of such practices. The story shows how we eventually found better ways to support our parents and one another into adulthood by learning to “own the lies” and not eschew them. Owning the lies means knowing each of our love debts to one another and to the social worlds we inhabit beyond the family dynamic.