Okay, I'm going to blab again, just ten seconds after my last post.

I decided to tell my aging parents because they were going on and on believing the sheer load of you-know-what that was being dealt out by my abuser. They had to know the truth. My sister was the only one in the fam that I had initially told and she was against me telling our folks. But, like you, my therapist thought it would be a good idea and another dear friend said it was about time that I stopped being held captive by the secrets.

I did it to regain my own ground.

My innocence was stolen from me as a little bitty girl. I was not about to have my adult years of living in truth stolen from me, too. And this time, I DID have a choice.

And... now that I think about it, not telling added a kind of fuel to the fear. It added affirmation to the disgrace rather than adding affirmation to me in my own right. Telling threw open the windows on my soul and allowed me to embrace my own mother who, as it turns out, was abused by her older brother when she was a child, too!

Not telling would have kept us from that depth of sharing.

That's me, though.

Just don't protect anyone else but you.

If telling liberates you, then tell. If not telling keeps you safe, then don't tell.