Danger of Keeping Small Town Secrets Across Generations

By Freelance Writer and Books Author Denise Turney

empty concrete alleyway in small town
Passageway in Small Town – Photo by Simon Blyberg on Pexels.com

Small town secrets grow like uncontrollable weeds. Their sting is as painful as gossip, yet worse. Unlike gossip, these secrets have a deep, dangerous root. Sexual crimes committed by a star athlete, the whereabouts of a missing person and the deception that a woman is a child’s aunt when she’s actually the child’s mother – those are but a few misplaced confidences with lasting impact.

Small Towns with Old Histories

Other real life skeletons people living in small towns, especially towns with old histories, work hard to keep hidden have affected hundreds of children and adults. Danger associated with these mysteries is what drives people to keep them hidden. If you grew up in a small town that’s known for keeping events in the dark, a few of these mysteries might sound familiar:

  • College hazing that went too far, causing the death of a student, but no one going to trial because the death was ruled an accident and the crime was never properly investigated
  • Neighbor installing hidden camera in a home then using taped information to blackmail the homeowner for acts as simple as showering, relieving themselves and making out with a town schoolteacher
  • Corruption that stems back two or more generations, putting dishonest law enforcement and other government officials in place to keep the corruption going
  • Drugs taking over an entire town, destroying families and businesses while community leaders do nothing to stop the drug infiltration because they’re receiving kickbacks from dealers
  • A handful of business owners meeting and deciding which new businesses will open in the town, cooking up reasons to disallow the strongest competitors from setting up shop
  • Two married people have a lengthy affair, creating a child from the relationship, only to lie to the child about his real parents, not once telling their son their biological connection to him. People who know about the affair and who the child’s real parents are, never tell the child, not even after the child reaches adulthood.

Shocking Small Town Secrets

It’s these types of secrets that get the wrong men and women arrested, that leave children with more questions than answers and that prevent real growth from happening to the town. Believe it or not, some small town secrets are more outlandish and traumatic than those unearthed in large cities.

The real shocker is that small towns with big secrets can look “perfect” from the outside. Everybody knows everybody. Instead of passing one another on the sidewalk without speaking while out shopping, townsfolk stop, wave and chat with each other awhile.

If you didn’t know better, the entire town would look and feel like one big, happy family. Stay in the place long enough and you start to notice relationships and events that are off, that just don’t feel right. You spot a prominent business owner entering a hotel at the edge of town with a minister’s wife only to tell his own wife that he and the minister’s wife are mapping out the details of the summer’s vacation Bible school.

Everyone Knows What You Keep Lying About

Everyone in town knows the businessman rarely goes to church, but no one questions the lie. The chance to live in a place where wrong, particularly seemingly unforgiveable wrongs, don’t occur seems like sufficient motivation to lie, deny the facts and support tragic secrets.

At their worse, small town secrets can conceal a murder. Destroyed evidence, bribes paid to a coroner and a judge and threats made to those seeking the truth, can do more than hide facts. Acts like these can ensure that the wrong man goes to prison.

But why do people tell lies or keep secrets, especially dangerous hidden facts? Desire to mask their own indiscretions is a primary reason. Fear of retaliation from powerful people is another.

Together these two can create a web that’s hard to get untangled from. Greasy Plank in Memphis, Tennessee is a town of secrets, dark mysteries. Religion won’t save Greasy Plank residents.

Break Free

If you grew up keeping secrets, it might be time to break free. Doing so can release positive energy, allowing you to start and finish work you’ve wanted to do for years, but never seemed to find the strength to get to.

Here are more rewards associated with letting small town secrets go, float away like rocks moving down river:

  • Restored relationships with people wrongly suspected of crimes
  • Freedom from unforgiveness
  • Independence from resentment and suspicion
  • Healing from trauma
  • Innocent children and adults regaining their honor

And most of all, wrongs finally made right. Oh, and another advantage. You can sleep at night, your mind lighter from no longer having to carry heavy secrets. Tammy Tilson in Spiral fights for these rewards, for herself and her family, but she has a lot to lose if she tells what she knows.

Her choice to keep small town secrets has a very high price. Yet, that’s the way it goes when you try to hide the truth. Should you be keeping secrets, especially from yourself, consider the weight you’re carrying. See if you can find a way into the light of the truth. You might be able to do it in a way that frees up more people than you know without causing more trauma, more harm.

Resources:

  1. Small Town Secrets – NBC Boston

Stop lying to yourself

By Denise Turney
“You forgot to lock your door” or “Your lover is mad at you” are statements, eliciting fear, that you may have told yourself not once but several times. Depending on how repetitive your thoughts are, just to gain a semblance of peace, you might turn back and check your home or car door. If the thought points to your lover, you might spend hours, perhaps days, trying to figure out what went wrong and how you can fix things.

What you might not do is stop and consider how many other times a thought popped into your head, telling you that you’d forgotten or neglected something or that there was a “big problem” for you to deal with when, in actuality, you’d hadn’t forgotten or neglected anything, when there was no problem to deal with. Considering how full your life is, one “to do” piling on top of another, it’s easy to see how you could miss mental patterns you get stuck replaying.

If you’re not watchful, you could get stuck in one or more areas of your life. Your relationships could go from bad to better back to bad, all because you keep believing lies you tell yourself. You could become worried or anxious each time you think you’ve forgotten something, when there was nothing you’d forgotten.  Your income could increase only to go back down again. (Oh, our precious and at times incredibly annoying “thoughts”.)

But, those aren’t the only ways lies you tell yourself could keep you stuck. If you’re generally positive, you might tell yourself that a person who appeared to be smiling at you wants to date you, when they might have been smiling at someone standing behind you. You might tell yourself that your supervisor scheduled a last minute meeting with you because she wants to commend you on the job you did on a recent project.

This type of thinking can not only alter your moods, it can keep you from moving forward. This happens because lies are like blinders, keeping you from seeing the whole picture. If you don’t think lies you tell yourself have impact, stop and think about people who tell themselves they’re going to hit the lottery (and I’m talking hit the lottery big), and the lie propels them to spend $100 on lottery tickets at a time when the person is already thousands of dollars in debt — debt that was created due to gambling.

You don’t have to be a gambler to lie to yourself.

One way to stop the lies (or at least stop believing them) is to see and accept what’s going on in your life. Don’t sugar coat or downgrade things. Take action steps to improve one situation at a time. Measure the results of your efforts. (It’s why goal setting was so big years ago.)

Don’t tell yourself something is happening if it isn’t. Don’t live on promises when you tell yourself that something “magical” is going to happen to bail you out of a situation. Also, watch how certain thoughts keep you from making decisions and taking ACTION.

One last reminder — Pay attention to your thoughts. You just might be conning yourself.

Get your copy of “Love Pour Over Me” Now at –

http://www.ebookit.com/books/0000001582/Love-Pour-Over-Me.html

Sources:

Amazon.com – http://www.amazon.com/Love-Pour-Over-Me-ebook/dp/B007MC0Z2C

Barnes & Noble – http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/love-pour-over-me-denise-turney/1109600654