I had a student tell our class his mom was schizophrenic

He hadn’t even told his gf. But here he was telling us

“It feels like a heavy thing to put on a relationship” he said

& I’ve never forgotten that

How sometimes we will tell a stranger,

What we’d never tell a friend

It made me realize that sometimes it’s not even about the secret itself, it’s about our fears of how the secret will impact the relationship

There are things we may not feel safe to tell everyone,

But maybe that shouldn’t stop you from telling someone?

By the way, a couple months after he told us, he told his girlfriend

And I wonder how much longer it would have taken him to tell her,

If he hadn’t told us first?