Before Words | Journal No. 03
What family secrets teach us before anyone says a word
There was a period in my career when I was supervising clinicians who worked with families from the Connecticut Tri-State area.
Because of where I was from, staff would sometimes bring these cases to me knowing I would understand something about the culture their clients came from.
The schools. The expectations. The achievement. The social circles. The pressure to look like everything was fine.
And sometimes, the secrets.
I remember hearing a new case and thinking:
I have one of those families again.
I didn't mean that these families were bad.
I meant that I recognized the system.
I recognized the complicated relationship between achievement and identity, between reputation and shame, between loyalty and silence.
I recognized how easily a family can become organized around protecting something that nobody quite knows how to talk about.
And I recognized how often the person who eventually walks into therapy isn't necessarily the person who created the problem.
They're the person who has been living inside the system.
The Family Behind the Headline
That's part of what came back to me when I began thinking about Alex Kelly.
Almost thirty years ago, I was a young television reporter covering his case.
I remember standing outside Stamford Superior Court.
I remember the cameras.
And I remember the photograph.
I'm the blonde reporter behind the camera.
But I also remember something the photograph doesn't capture.
The sneer sent a chill down my spine.
That's how I remember it.
At the time, I didn't have the language for why that moment stayed with me.
I was a reporter.
Get the shot. Ask the question. Do the job. Keep moving.
Years later, as a therapist and supervisor, I began seeing another layer of the story.
Not just the story of Alex Kelly.
Not just the story of the young women who accused him.
The story of the family.
The Travel Agency
There is another moment I remember.
I was reporting a completely different story about Connecticut's tax-free week. I had just finished talking with the owner of a local shop, and we were walking out together when I saw a woman leaving a brick-and-mortar travel agency nearby.
I recognized her.
I looked at the owner and asked:
“Is that Alex Kelly's mom?”
He said yes.
Then he told me she owned the travel agency.
I remember thinking:
How convenient.
And then, half joking and half not, I remember thinking:
Some communities keep secrets too, I guess.
I was a young reporter then.
I didn't have the language I have now.
I wasn't thinking about family systems, family-of-origin patterns, shame, or the ways families organize themselves around secrets.
I was simply struck by the proximity of it all.
The story was happening in the newspaper.
The cameras were outside the courthouse.
And here was his mother, walking out of her business, going about her life.
Years later, I understand that moment differently.
Not as proof of anything.
Not as evidence that I knew what was happening inside that family.
But as one of those moments when two pieces of information collide—and something in you notices.
The stories we tell publicly are rarely the whole story.
How Family Secrets Affect the Entire Family System
Alex Kelly fled the United States shortly before his trial and spent approximately eight years as a fugitive, traveling through Europe before surrendering in Switzerland in 1995. Contemporary reporting documented that his parents visited him in Europe and sent him money while he was on the run.
There was another devastating layer to the family story.
Kelly's older brother, Christopher, died of a drug overdose in 1991, while Alex was still a fugitive. His younger brother Russell later died in a 2004 accident.
Think about that for a moment.
A family dealing with a son who was wanted by authorities.
Another son who had died.
A family under scrutiny.
A story playing out publicly while enormous amounts of private grief, fear, loyalty, and uncertainty were happening behind closed doors.
I wasn't inside that family.
I don't know what happened around their dinner table.
I don't know what his parents believed.
I don't know what they feared.
And I don't know what they told themselves in order to keep going.
I don't want to pretend that I do.
But I have spent years working with individuals in similar families.
And I know this:
When something enormous happens to one member of a family, it doesn't happen to only one person.
The entire system reorganizes around it.
Family Secrets, Shame, and Silence
In recovery, there's a saying:
“You're only as sick as your secrets.”
I've heard that phrase many times over the years.
But the older I get, the more I think about what happens when the secret doesn't belong to just one person.
What happens when the whole family is keeping it?
What happens when everyone has a different reason for not saying it?
One person is protecting the family.
One is protecting a child.
One is protecting a marriage.
One is protecting a reputation.
One is protecting themselves.
And the children are watching all of it.
They may not know the facts.
But they know the rules.
Don't talk about that.
Don't ask questions.
Don't embarrass the family.
Don't tell anyone outside the family.
Keep everything looking okay.
The child doesn't need a family meeting to learn those rules.
They learn them through tone.
Through silence.
Through the conversation that stops when they enter the room.
Through the subject nobody is allowed to mention.
Through the parent's reaction when they ask the wrong question.
Before words.
The Communities We Come From
I've thought about that moment at the travel agency many times over the years, particularly because of the work I've done with families from the Tri-State area.
There can be a particular culture across parts of Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey where achievement matters.
Reputation matters.
Schools matter.
Careers matter.
Social standing can matter.
How your family looks from the outside can matter.
And sometimes, keeping things private can become almost an art form.
That doesn't mean every family from the Tri-State area is secretive or dysfunctional.
Of course not.
But I have worked with enough families from these communities to recognize the particular pressures that can exist when achievement, reputation, family loyalty, and shame intersect.
Sometimes the family doesn't say:
We have a problem.
Instead, the message is:
We don't have problems.
And those are very different things.
Understanding Family-of-Origin Patterns
This is some of the work I do in therapy.
We don't only look at:
What happened to you?
We also look at:
What did your family teach you to do with what happened?
Were you allowed to be angry?
Were you allowed to question your parents?
Was reputation more important than honesty?
Did someone always have to keep the peace?
Did you become the responsible one?
The successful one?
The invisible one?
The difficult one?
The one who carried everyone's anxiety?
The one who made sure everyone else was okay?
Did everyone know something was wrong, but nobody was allowed to name it?
These patterns can become so familiar that we mistake them for personality.
I'm just anxious.
I'm just a perfectionist.
I'm just independent.
I don't like conflict.
I don't need anyone.
I like to keep the peace.
I'm fine.
Sometimes those aren't simply personality traits.
Sometimes they're adaptations.
Family-of-origin work gives us an opportunity to examine those adaptations with curiosity. We can begin to understand what they once helped us navigate, what they may be costing us now, and whether we still need to carry them.
The Truth Is Not Always Easy to Carry
There is another perspective I can't leave out.
I'm a mother.
And maybe that's part of why this story makes me sad.
Because I can imagine (and have experienced) the pain of being a parent and discovering something about your child that you don't know what to do with.
What do you do with a truth that changes the way you see someone you love?
What do you do when the person you're supposed to protect is also the person whose actions have caused harm?
What do you do when loving your child and holding your child accountable seem, for a moment, like opposing acts?
I don't know.
I don't think there is an easy answer.
And I don't want to pretend there is.
I only know that I wish families had somewhere safe to bring those questions.
Somewhere a mother could say:
I love my child.
I'm scared of what I'm learning.
I don't know what to believe.
I don't know what to do with this truth.
And have someone stay with her in that uncertainty.
Because sometimes loving your child means accepting that you cannot choose who they become.
You cannot make their choices for them.
You cannot take away the consequences of their actions.
And you cannot carry their responsibility for them.
But you can love them.
You can tell the truth.
You can seek help.
You can refuse to participate in denial.
And you can create a place where the truth is safe enough to be spoken.
What Recovery Taught Me About Parents
As a mother, I think one of the first places we can go when something goes terribly wrong with our child is self-blame.
What did I miss?
What should I have seen?
What did I do wrong?
Where did I fail?
Could I have prevented this?
We want to believe that if we love our children enough, protect them enough, teach them enough, or pay enough attention, we can keep terrible things from happening.
But recovery has given me another language for this.
There is a saying in recovery:
You didn't cause it. You can't control it. And you can't cure it.
That doesn't mean we don't have responsibility.
It doesn't mean we don't have choices.
It doesn't mean we stop loving someone or stop holding them accountable.
It means recognizing the limits of what one human being can control in another human being.
For a parent, that can be an incredibly painful truth.
Because sometimes loving your child means accepting that you cannot choose their path for them.
And perhaps that is part of what I wish for families carrying something they don't know how to say:
Not a place to hide the secret.
A safe place to bring it.
Accountability Still Matters
Kelly was convicted in 1997 of rape and sentenced to 16 years in prison. He later pleaded no contest to a second rape charge involving another teenager; the sentence ran concurrently.
In 2005, while incarcerated, Kelly sought parole. During the hearing, he described himself as hypercompetitive and self-centered and apologized. The parole board denied his application.
He was ultimately released from prison in November 2007 after serving about 10 years, receiving credit for good behavior. He was then subject to probation and other conditions of release, including sex-offender registration.
That distinction matters to me.
Because understanding someone's psychology isn't the same thing as excusing their behavior.
Understanding a family system doesn't erase individual responsibility.
And compassion doesn't require us to abandon accountability.
We can ask:
What happened here?
What allowed it to happen?
What did people know?
What did they not know?
What did they choose not to see?
And still hold a person responsible for what they did.
Those questions can coexist.
What Families Protect—and What They Lose
Maybe that is what stays with me.
Not simply the crime.
Not simply the years in Europe.
Not simply the courtroom.
But the family system surrounding it.
Because when something cannot be spoken, it doesn't necessarily disappear.
It moves.
It moves into relationships.
Into marriages.
Into siblings.
Into addiction.
Into anxiety.
Into anger.
Into perfectionism.
Into silence.
Sometimes what we inherit isn't the actual secret.
We inherit the rules surrounding the secret.
Don't talk.
Don't question.
Don't embarrass the family.
Don't tell outsiders.
Keep the peace.
Protect the family.
Be successful.
Be fine.
And eventually, a child becomes an adult who may not even understand why honesty feels dangerous.
A Safe Place for the Secret
I don't know what happened inside the Kelly family.
I wasn't there.
I can't know what each member carried as a parent, sibling, or child.
But I do know what the story brings up in me.
Sadness.
I wish they had found help.
I wish they had somewhere safe for the secrets.
Somewhere a mother could say:
I don't know what to do.
Somewhere a father could say:
I'm terrified.
Somewhere a sibling could say:
This is hurting all of us.
Somewhere someone could say:
I love my child, and I don't know how to reconcile that love with what I'm hearing.
Somewhere the truth didn't have to threaten the entire family system.
Because that is what I hope therapy can sometimes be:
A safe place for what couldn't be spoken anywhere else.
Not a place where we excuse.
Not a place where we judge.
A place where we can finally tell the truth.
And begin to understand what the truth has done to us.
What We Carry Forward
We don't have to condemn our families to understand them.
We don't have to excuse what happened to understand where it came from.
And we don't have to keep carrying the secrets simply because the people before us couldn't put them down.
Sometimes healing begins when we can finally say:
This happened.
This is what I learned from it.
This is what it cost me.
And this is what I don't want to carry forward.
Maybe that is what family-of-origin work is really about.
Not changing the family we came from.
But changing what happens next.
Learning that loyalty doesn't have to mean silence.
That love doesn't require denial.
That success doesn't have to be the price of belonging.
That someone else's shame doesn't have to become our identity.
And that we can tell the truth without destroying ourselves.
Sometimes the body knows that long before we have the words.
Before Words.
— Jennifer Goggin, LPC, LMHC, SEP
If you recognize yourself in some of these family patterns, therapy can offer a place to explore them with care and curiosity. I offer virtual therapy to adults in Florida and Connecticut, integrating traditional therapeutic approaches with Somatic Experiencing.
Learn more about Trauma Therapy , Somatic Experiencing, Stressed Moms.
