Why do Black families have so many secrets?

Over this past weekend I was watching “Iynala: fix my life” and she was attempting to help a young lady named Kamiyah/Alexis that was kidnapped at birth and didn’t find out until she was 19 years old. As I watch this young lady struggle with her feelings I felt her pain and I understood her anger.

                     http://www.oprah.com/app/iyanla-fix-my-life-full-episodes.html

 I was in her same shoes. Anyone that knows me knows that I was raised by my grandmother and I was very young when I found out. Watching this young lady struggle with who to love, her anger and where to lay her loyalty hat made me questioned why do Black families have so many secrets? WHY???

 I grew up like any other child in the late 80’s I came from a middle class family with older brothers and sister, 12 to be exact. I had a great mother and father and life was good. I was a huge daddy’s girl growing up and I was super spoiled you name it I had it including multiple homes, toys, clothes games and went on many vacations…. the works. I was living the kid dream. Then one day my mother’s (when I mention my mother I’m talking about the women who raised me not my birth mother) father got sick and ended up in the hospital. Come to find out he had cancer and was dying. During this time was hard on the whole family and we were losing a great man. I can remember sitting in the hospital in front of his room while my mom and her sisters where visiting with my grandfather. Then a family member came up to me and says, “WOW, you sure do look like your mother.”  I just nodded because a lot people thought this and has said this to me and it was nothing new. BUT for some reason he just keep going ON and ON about how much I looked like my mother…then he turns to someone else and goes, “HEY don’t she look like her mother? She looks so much like NAME…” and then one of the older members in my family hushed him up real quick and told him to shut up…NOW I’m confused because why would he call my mother by someone else's name…and not just anything name…my sisters name WAYMIN NOW??? 

  

Now at this point I was around 9 or 10 and I pays it no mind…of course I look like my sister and mother…duh….we are family I’m supposed to look like him. So I’m still sitting at the hospital and that same family member comes back to tell me once again I looked like my mother and used that same wrong name again and he wouldn’t let it go. SO I asked my mom why he keeps calling her by my sisters name? What was he talking about? And as good old southern black women do she looked at me and said, “I’m your momma and that’s that.” So I left it alone…..BUT something about the whole situation didn’t sit well with me….So we went back home and I started looking at pictures and questioned why I looked like some members but not others…My parents would reassure me that they were my parents and to just leave it alone. 

SO I went to my older brother who was the only brother that was living with us at the time and I asked him because I knew he wouldn’t lie to me. And we sat down in his room and he closed the door slightly and told me the truth. I was in shock so much I didn’t react…I couldn't cry, or anything I was just shocked. How could they lie? How could everyone lie to me? Months later my parents finally told me the truth and allowed me to reach out to the women who I thought was my sister but was really my mother. I had sooo many questions and no one could give me the answers or wanted to give me the answers. EVEN after I found out the truth, here we are still with the secrets. My whole 10 years of life were a lie…I didn’t really have 12 older brothers and sisters; I had 12 aunts and uncles… I wasn’t the youngest, I was the oldest even my name was a lie…at that point of my life I was LOST. Who was I? Was I a Carter or a Lansdowne?

So I ask again why do black families have so many secrets. How could everyone around me lie to me? Why did they lie? Did they think they were doing me a favor? When were they going to tell me? Where they even going to tell me the truth? Luckily for me I found out about my true identity very early in life so I had some time to deal with it. But unfortunately for the young lady that was on  “Iylana: Fix my life” she found out later in life. Which is why I think her anger is what it is. I have also seen so many things online about how everyone around her is catering to her and she needs a reality check…BUT my thing is if you have been in a situation like that you have no clue what it’s like losing your identity like that. NOW I think she was wrong for how she was choosing to display her anger BUT I can understand her anger.

I think some black families don’t know how to deal with traumatic events and instead of talking about it they chose to hide it. Old school black folks have been hushing people up for generations and generations. It’s easy not to talk then to talk. Does this have anything to do with the oppression we faced as slaves? Is this something we want to continue to past down for our children and their children? 

For me I made a promise that I will be the change that I wanted to see happen. SO when my kids were at an age I thought they could understand I told them about who my mother really was and what they meant to them, because up to this point they only knew one grandmother and not about my bio- mother. In my family we have no deep rooting family secrets! I’m not my parents before me or their parent before them.