I saw the movie Bully.  Leaving the theater, I felt like I’d been run over by a truck.  The youngest child to commit suicide as a result of being bullied was 11 years old.  Eleven.  It is also my experience that the incidence of bullying is increasing, involving both a greater number of children and much younger children. It is estimated that 13 million children each year are victims of bullying.  The movie also highlights just how vicious it’s gotten.  Children are humiliated, shunned, kicked, punched and choked.  Their possessions are stolen or damaged. Bullying is no longer confined to hallways, playgrounds, and school busses, as now online bullying follows children everywhere.  Facebook, text messages, and Twitter hugely expand the audience for a child’s humiliation.  I would think that a climate that supports bullying starts in the public square, a place where our governor calls a Navy Seal who disagrees with him an “idiot”, or Rush calls a law student who disagrees with him a “slut”.  Characters on “Real World” are rejected and demeaned for sport; the “Housewives” scream, hit, throw things.  Rather than heeding the universal maxim to love your neighbor, religious groups act like the popular group at school, deciding who is in and who is out.  When bullying is minimized as kids will be kids, it reminds me that adults are not always adults.  Nearly 300 years ago Edmund Burke wrote “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men [and women] to keep silent”.

Joan Crawford was a popular actress during the middle of the 20th century.  Not long after her death her oldest daughter Christina wrote the book Mommie Dearest describing her mother’s alcoholism, rages, and abuse.  After its publication Christina was publicly vilified for tarnishing her mother’s reputation, and accused of making it up for purposes of revenge.  The outcry contributed to the near-fatal stroke Christina suffered a few years after the publication of the book. Some years later however Christine Ann Lawson wrote Understanding the Borderline Mother, where she references Christina Crawford and the plight of children of mothers with borderline personality disorder.  Not being believed can be one of the most painful and confusing parts of having an abusive mother.  While child abuse in general tends to be minimized and ignored, maternal abuse is most often discounted, and its victims, for years abused in private, are now abused in public.  It seems the notion of “motherhood and apple pie” is essential to our collective sense of the proper order of things.  Alas some survivors of maternal abuse grow up to be abusers themselves.  Those who don’t are proof that miracles still happen, and we should recognize them as such.

Secrets within a family don’t just have to involve past events or actions.  They can concern current relationships or individuals, where a particular spin is put on a situation that is actually a distortion or an out-right lie.  For example, the emotional abuse of one spouse by another or of a child by an adult can be blamed on the victim.  Mom’s drinking can be said to be the result of her son’s disrespect.  A financially comfortable family can maintain a myth that they are perpetually going broke.  The irresponsibility and selfishness of one child can be portrayed as the result of lack of consideration from the responsible and unselfish child.  The phenomenon of scapegoating in part involves the perpetuation of a familial distortion.  For example, a family can focus on little Joey’s bad behavior so that Mom and Dad don’t have to deal with conflict in their marriage.  If someone helps Joey improve his behavior, his parent’s marriage might start to show problems.  Analogous to family secrets, family myths are generally maintained in order to protect a more powerful member, or to avoid facing the truth about other member.  Generally, if a family member does not want to face a certain truth about herself, she will uphold any manner of distortions concerning other family members.