To Everyone Who Read It and Said Nothing- family response to trauma

By Dick Gariepy | Big Thinky Ouchey

“In some families, the only unforgivable sin is telling the truth.”

The Ask Was Simple

I didn’t send the evidence because I wanted to stir the pot. I sent it because I was at the edge of something I couldn’t carry alone. I had just compiled a body of documentation that, to anyone reasonable, shows that my mother gave false sworn testimony that directly led to police intervention and psychological harm. I was preparing to go to the police with it—not to escalate, but because I felt I had no other choice.

And before I crossed that line, I needed someone—anyone—in my family to look. To understand. To say, “Yes, we see it. This is serious. Let’s talk to her before it gets worse.”

I wasn’t demanding loyalty. I wasn’t asking anyone to pick sides. I was trying to prevent this from becoming something it didn’t need to become. I wanted to offer her one last chance to face what she did and make it right. And I needed someone else to help her see that.

Not because I was trying to punish her.

I was trying not to.

Please understand: I didn’t want this. I still don’t. All I wanted was to feel like someone in this family could hold what happened without turning away. That someone could recognize the stakes without retreating into denial or blame. That someone could see the harm for what it was and help us all choose a different path.

It was never about revenge. It was about intervention. It was about repair.

But repair requires acknowledgment. And acknowledgment, I now realize, is too heavy a lift for people who would rather live in fiction than face what the truth might ask of them.

The Response Was Silence (and One Mockery)

Out of everyone I sent it to—three uncles, their wives, my sister—only one person wrote back.

Geanette.

And I wish I could say that she offered compassion, or curiosity, or even confusion. I would have taken confusion. I would have taken an awkward “I don’t know what to say.” Anything that showed she had seen the weight of what I shared.

But instead, she responded with open contempt.

She mocked me. She accused me of being disrespectful, delusional, cruel. She said I should be grateful to my mother. Said I needed “a spanking.” Called me a spoiled little boy. Said I was dragging my mother’s name through the mud because I “didn’t get what I wanted.” That I should’ve “grown up”. That I had mental health issues and wanted to crawl into my parents’ pocketbook. That I was trying to destroy a good woman who’d “devoted her life to public health.”

I had just laid out, with documentation, how I had been harmed how I had been detained, how I had tried to set boundaries and been ignored—and her response was to attack my character. Not the facts. Not the timeline. Not the actual content of what I sent. Just me.

It’s hard to describe what it feels like to be on the receiving end of that kind of response. You put yourself out there. You explain the most painful and humiliating things that have ever happened to you—not for pity, but for accountability—and you get told you’re the real problem. That you’re too sensitive, too angry, too unstable to be believed.

But as awful as Geanette’s message was, at least she said something. At least she was brave enough to tell me what it was she thought. Even if i disagree, or believe her perspective to be misinformed. She at least showed me respect by responding and engaging in discourse, and being open and honest about how she felt.

The others didn’t even give me that.

They opened the message. They read the evidence. Then they disappeared.

No “I’m not sure what to say.

”No “I need time to process.

”Not even “I don’t believe you.”

Just the cold, deliberate calculation of silence. Read receipts without acknowledgment.

A closed door.

And that hurt in a different way.

Because when people attack you, at least they’re acknowledging you exist. But when they look at your pain and offer nothing—when they erase you with silence—that’s a different kind of violence. It tells you: you are not worth the risk of discomfort. You are not even worth an awkward reply.

Geanette hit me in the face. The rest of them stepped over me and kept walking.

And I need to say this plainly: the silence didn’t come from confusion. It didn’t come from not knowing what to do. It came from fear. From complicity. From the desire to protect a version of our family that has never truly included me.

They didn’t want to deal with the truth because the truth would mean looking at Ann differently. It would mean questioning the story they’ve told themselves about her—and about me.

So they decided to keep the story intact. And they did it by erasing mine.

I gave them the chance to say something before the consequences became permanent. I gave them the chance to help prevent this from going further. And they took that opportunity and set it on fire.

Silence Is a Kind of Violence

People like to think silence is neutral.

That if you say nothing, you’ve stayed out of it. That you’re “not taking sides.” That you’re above the conflict, untouched by the mess.

But silence is not neutral.

Silence is a side.Silence is a decision.Silence is a verdict.

When someone says, “I’ve been harmed,” and you say nothing, what you’re really saying is:

“I don’t care enough to know more.”

“Your pain makes me uncomfortable, and my comfort matters more.”

“I will not risk my position in the social order to do what is right.”

That is not neutrality. That is collusion.

What my family did...what they are still doing ... is not passive.

It's not just the absence of action. It's the presence of cowardice, dressed up as wisdom.

It's the moral performance of "staying out of it," when really, they're staying in it, just on the side where the liar feels safe and the truth-teller is left alone.

That silence is not soft. It is not gentle. It is not wise.

It is violent.

And I don’t mean that metaphorically. I mean it in the deepest sense: it erodes reality. It chips away at the stability of the world for the person speaking the truth. It renders harm unspeakable. It teaches the victim that not only will no one intervene, no one will even name what was done to them.

Which brings me back to a term i think ive refered to in every blog posting and should probably just become its official sponsor ... testimonial injustice: when someone is disbelieved or dismissed not because their account lacks evidence, but because they are seen as untrustworthy—too emotional, too unstable, too “difficult” to be taken seriously.

This is what it means to be Homo Sacer: to be a person whose suffering does not register as suffering. Whose life can be harmed without consequence. Whose truth is considered expendable because their presence is already marginal.

That’s what my mother did to me when she made that false statement under oath.

And that’s what the rest of them are doing now, by pretending it didn’t happen.

They have rendered me incoherent, not by disproving my words, but by refusing to hear them. And in that refusal, they participate in the original harm. The betrayal is not just hers anymore. It belongs to all of them.

You don’t get to claim you weren’t involved when you saw the evidence and said nothing. You don’t get to call it a family matter when the police were involved.

You don’t get to say “It’s complicated” when what happened was simple: I was lied about, I was detained, and I was harmed.

And they said nothing.

Not because they didn’t know what happened. But because they didn’t want to know what it would mean to care.

I Was Not Asking for Much

Let me say it again: I was not asking for much.

I didn’t ask them to choose between me and my mother. I didn’t ask them to punish her. I didn’t even ask them to believe me blindly. I gave them the evidence—emails, transcripts, testimony. I laid it out clearly, step by step, without sensationalism. I did all the work for them. All they had to do was look.

What I asked for was simple:

• Help me show her what this means.

• Help me stop this before it gets worse.

• Help her see what happens next if she keeps pretending nothing happened.

  
  

I asked them to help not do anything, not fix everything, just help. Help her see. Help her understand. Help me hold her accountable before I have to hand that accountability over to the law.

And I did it because I didn’t want to take that step.

I didn’t want to escalate this.

I didn’t want my mother to be dragged through a courtroom.

I didn’t want her legacy destroyed by a criminal charge she brought upon herself.

I wanted her to stop—before it was too late.

So I went to the people who should have been able to reach her. The people who claim to know her best. The ones she listens to, the ones she calls for holidays and help and advice. I thought maybe, if she wouldn’t hear it from me, she would hear it from them.

But the only thing she heard was silence.

And she took that silence as permission.

I have spent so much of my life trying not to be a burden to other people. Trying to minimize my needs, to downplay my distress, to solve everything quietly and rationally before anyone even notices. I have bent myself into every possible shape to stay digestible.

So when I finally did ask for help, it was already a sign of restraint, not excess.And still they treated it like I was asking for too much.

What I’ve learned is that in families like mine, even a simple ask is too much when the person making it is me. When I speak, it’s seen as aggression. When I need something, it’s framed as manipulation. When I present facts, they’re dismissed as performance.

They don’t hear my voice—they hear their discomfort.

They don’t see my request—they see a threat to their denial.

And so the ask...small as it was...was rejected. Not with words, with cowardice. With the quiet, practiced performance of “not getting involved,” which is just another way of saying: “You’re on your own.”

But I wasn’t asking to be rescued. I wasn’t asking for someone else to carry the load. I just wanted someone to stand beside me while I carried it. I just wanted someone to help stop the damage before it became irreversible.

And that, apparently, was too much.

What This Says About Love (and What I’ve Had to Learn)

In the quiet that followed their silence, the question that kept echoing in me wasn’t about evidence. It wasn’t legal. It wasn’t strategic.

It was this:

Did they ever really love me?

Not tolerate me. Not say they loved me at Christmas.

But actually, deeply love me.

The kind of love that disrupts itself for another person’s truth.

The kind of love that says, “I don’t want this to be true, but if it is—I will not look away.”

The kind of love that costs something.

Because that’s the only kind of love that matters when things fall apart. Not the easy kind. Not the polite kind. Not the “thinking of you” kind.

And in that silence, in that calculated avoidance, in the refusal to say even one word in response to the harm I showed them, I realized they might not have ever loved me in that way at all.

Maybe they loved the version of me who smiled and stayed small.

Maybe they loved the version of me who could be pitied, but not believed.

Maybe they loved the version of me who didn’t make them question their stories.

But they did not love this me. The one who tells the truth. The one who sets boundaries. The one who says, “This was wrong, and I will not pretend otherwise.”

And that’s what I’ve had to learn. That being loved is not the same as being safe. That being in a family is not the same as being held. That people will say they love you and still throw you to the wolves the moment you stop being convenient.

It hurts. It hurts in ways that are hard to name.

It hurts to realize you were only ever conditionally accepted.

It hurts to realize that truth, no matter how clearly it’s laid out, is not persuasive to people who have built their identities around not knowing it.

It hurts to have to grieve people who are still alive, because you’ve accepted that they will never meet you where you are.

But here is what I will not do:

I will not let their silence rewrite my story.

I will not let their comfort come at the cost of my sanity.

I will not let the truth rot in my throat just so they don’t have to change their mind.

Because what I have now is more than they were ever willing to give: clarity.

And clarity is a kind of freedom.

I still believe in accountability.

I still believe harm has to be named to be healed.

And I still believe that refusing to lie about what happened is not cruelty—it’s care.

If any of them ever choose to meet me again, it will be on honest terms.

Not on the condition of silence. Not on the condition of pretending none of this ever happened.

A Family Response To Trauma ... Needs Improvement

I wish they loved me enough to make themselves uncomfortable. It sucks realizing they don't.

Sucks for my mother too, because their silence will cost her up to, without exceeding, 14 years.

family response to trauma

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This Weeks Post Comes With A Thick Thought Thumper -"Quicksand Blues (Aunt Geanette Sat Down)"