[MUSIC PLAYING]
One of the things I want to emphasize that this book is
also about, it's about keeping secrets
and what keeping secrets do to us.
You say, "When we force our truths and stories into hiding,
secrets can become their own trauma, their own prison.
Far from diminishing pain, whatever we deny ourselves,
the opportunity to accept becomes as inescapable
as brick walls and steel bars.
When we don't allow ourselves to grieve
our losses, wounds, and disappointments,
we are doomed to keep reliving them."
Thank you so much for saying this
because all therapy is grief.
You know, my granddaughter is here right now.
And when she was born, the pediatrician said that she
may become a ballerina.
And I said, oh, now I can die because my blood is in her.
But when she went to Bishop School
and asked me to buy her a dress so she can go to her dance
and I came home, and out of the blue, I was crying.
And I didn't get it.
How come I am crying?
I just bought Lindsay a dress.
And it made me realize that I didn't cry
because Lindsay went to a dance, I cried because I never
went to a dance.
I had this experience that became clarified
when I read your story.
So let me tell you, one of my dear friends who was--
I'm the godmother of a young girl who is my best
friend's daughter-- and when she was a little girl, her mother--
she was at my house, and she was like three years old.
And she said to her mother, mom, can I have some strawberries?
And her mother said, ask Auntie O if you
can have the strawberries.
I said, sure, you can have the strawberries.
And I watched her mother cut the strawberries for her in little
tiny little-- and made a little flower
and handed them to her to eat.
And the delight and joy that she experienced watching
and watching her mother do that, I thought,
oh, that's what a mother does.
That's what a mother does.
And I started to cry watching them.
And I-- until I-- because I thought, well, that's what love
is, that's what a mother does.
And it wasn't until I read your book that I realized I wasn't
crying about the strawberries, I was crying for the loss
that I had that no one had ever done that for me.
Thank you so much for saying that.
Yeah.
Yes, because it's not what happened,
but what didn't happen.
It's that's what's so powerful about this book.
Yes.
That's what's so powerful about this book.
It's not just what happened, it's also what didn't happen.
What did not happen.
Yeah.
Well, that's what I got.
And all this time I was thinking,
oh, I'm crying about the strawberries.
I'm crying because, oh, that was so loving,
and I get to see what love is.
I'm really crying for the loss.
Because I ask especially women,
when did your childhood end?
Hmm.
And I think that is very important.
Because you have been abused or touched inappropriately.
Yes.
You had the shame.
Yes.
The shame, the shame that you carry with you.
And then you grow up and you end up shaming yourself.
Yes.
And what creates the shame--
for everyone who's listening to us--
what creates the shame is the secret.
Yes.
Is holding the secret.
Yes.
It takes so much energy to resist.
Yes.
And have your secret.
Yes.
And then the secret has you.
And the secret has you.
So when you learned that the secrets actually
force us to relive the pain--
But not to get stuck in there.
Not to get stuck.