As the sun rose over Pikes Peak this morning I followed my usual routine. I fed my two purring pooties, brewed a pot of coffee, stretched my aching back, and meditated in the morning silence. My first thoughts, as always, were for the men and women who have given their lives in our wars. Then I closed my eyes and let my mind go.
A wandering mind, I've found, sometimes returns to home base with odd thoughts. Mine came back with a list of the things we once never talked about, not as a society and not in our families. And it came back with a question: If the things we don't acknowledge can be dangerous, what else needs to see the light of day?
When I was a child - during the Bronze Age - even married couples didn't acknowledge having sex. Ozzie and Harriet slept in twin beds, remember? Girls who "got in trouble" disappeared from their communities for a few months and put their babies up for adoption or, sometimes, disappeared for good when their families threw them out.
Racism wasn't even a common term back then. It took Dr. King to make me look around at the churches in the various communities we lived in and see that there was an unspoken rule: "Love thy neighbor as thyself ... but keep the blacks out of our churches."
Bodily functions were never discussed, either. When Archie Bunker flushed a toilet on national TV, people were shocked. The first TV commercial that used the word diarrhea embarrassed my father so much he wrote the network a stern letter. (The man almost went to an early grave when commercials for tampons and douches came out.) It was news when the ladies of The View recently discussed incontinence.
Children who were born other than heterosexual, like my brother, either hid their sexual orientation and suffered in silent shame, or faced lives of shunning, taunting, even killing.
Rape was so shameful for the victim that many women committed suicide.
Incest was so hidden that, until I read about it in college, I didn't know it existed.
Breast cancer remained hidden in families until Betty Ford went public with her diagnosis.
Mental illness was never acknowledged. Even depression was seen as a sign of weakness of character.
Speaking of Betty Ford, her public acknowledgement of a substance abuse problem allowed others the freedom to seek treatment in the new light of day.
I'm sure there are many other once-hidden topics you can add to my list. My question for you today is this: What are we still not talking about? What are the elephants in the room?
Talk to Nurse Kelley.♥