I hate secrets! I hate it when people keep things from me and I hate not being able to share what is on my mind with others. I fundamentally trust those around me and I have worked really hard at creating a life in which that trust is justified. I get a lot out of sharing and processing with my friends and I have that kind of depth in my relationships with many people. The only times in my past that I have felt that I have wanted to keep things from others was when I was up to no good. So, for me, there is a link between sharing and keeping myself in integrity.

That being said, I do protect the information that others give me about themselves that they want private. Because I have this aforementioned trust with the people in my life, I don’t feel that I am often put into hard places around this. Still, J- and I have come to conflict around this issue with regards to the question of gossip. I have always felt that gossip, in some sense plays an important and valuable role in community for me. But, I have never take the time to justify this idea.

First, I thought I should get the definition of gossip. Most definitions focused on the potential idleness and maliciousness of gossip. This wasn’t really what I was looking for, if anything it supported AGAINST the case that I was trying to make. For my purposes, the most interesting thing that I found was that the origins of the word are in godsibb, which means godparent. So historically, gossip does come from a place of intimacy and trust, it is the negative aspects of the word that have stuck over time.

I continued on in my research by using, of course, google to query “Is gossip good”. In fact, this uncovered a number of articles that defend gossip in the sense that I do. That it serves to build relationships and trust between people to discuss the relationships that they see around them. That it can force accountability in ways that it may not be enforceable otherwise. Maybe most importantly, it helps shape our understanding of the rules and norms of our culture. It is through discussing issues of moral substance and importance within context that we get feedback on our ideas and are able to grow and deepen our perception of right and wrong.

I assume that my readers know that I am in no way wanting to justify malicious gossip. I also do not take lightly that it is very tricky ground to navigate this issue. And it is from this very trickiness that some of us have the most lessons (oh and they can be agonizingly painful lessons, indeed!) to learn. What I suppose I am trying to justify is that I feel this is ground worth treading into, as challenging as it may be. I am trying to tell myself, above anything else, that I do not need to punish myself when I choose to open my mouth rather than shut it. It is something to watch and work on in myself, and it may be a flaw…but for me, it may also be necessary.

As I become a mother, I am being challenged with this issue on a new and more impactful level than I have had to before. My girls are creating a story about their lives and their histories. It is my responsibility to help them form it, but also to protect it. What I choose to say and not say to my community is naturally going to influence people’s opinions and treatment of them and in, turn affect the girls’ opinions of themselves.

As I processed our decisions around the matching process, it was really helpful for me to talk details with some of my closest friends. But I also started to lose the carefulness with which I needed to be doing this sharing. Before we had full information, my head was swimming and I needed feeback from my friends to get it off my chest and to begin processing the information that I was being handed. But in the end, actually getting the full information made much of my processing irrelevent, except for the intrinsic value of the processing itself, which I do argue is significant.

Now that we have matched, a number of questions come up for our friends and family: Why aren’t they with their parents?, Why does she walk funny?, How long have they been in foster care? I know I will run into other questions from complete strangers: Are they adopted?, Are they sisters? Many people have reasons for justifying their questions. Maybe they are feeling protective of us and they hate to think of us having difficult or “damaged” kids. Or maybe it is simply curiosity and they are certain that they will not judge or use the information against the kids.

J- called to my attention that I can’t fully trust people’s intentions, even my own, because the human psyche is just not that simple. How we process and use information is complex and, as we all know…many roads have been paved with good intentions. So, as committed as I am to community and living with the input of my dear friends, I am also committed to my girls being free to shape and reshape themselves, to their privacy, and to nurturing them to be able to talk about themselves in the way that feels best for them, not the way that feels the best to me.

And this isn’t even to mention that my kids will ask me questions about their pasts, as well.  As their identity shifts and grows and as they develop more intimate relationships with others, they will be exploring these questions. As their perception of their biological parents change, they may want to know more than we are prepared to tell them.

What is most important to all of us from this time onward is telling the “story of us” and telling it together. And what the story of us is will be filled with careful new choices every day.