truth be told

Sunday, March 23rd, 2025

Lately I’ve been confronted with the concept of truth. And of honesty. And of how they relate. How deeply important they feel to me.

Authenticity has been as the forefront of my thought for the past few years. After living the kind of inauthentic life that is often found in survival mode, I discovered that stepping into your true self also involves, at some point, a sharing of that self. The healing doesn’t remove the discomfort of that and the guaranteed rejection to follow, but it simply makes it feel worth it to face, to endure. In order to eventually find the spaces that do not reject you but embrace you fully… and even like what they find!!!! Wild concept to be sure.

This involves sharing the truth, or rather, your truth. Very subjective but because we are all unique individuals, it ought to be. So many arguments stem from the exhausting quest to agree on one truth that feels objective, rather than listening to and remaining curious about the unique subjective truths at play. “Feelings are not facts” many therapists remind clients in their sessions. Someone does not have to agree with your perspective in order to honour it. They do not have to deem your feelings “correct” in order to hold space for them. What matters is the curiosity towards this subjective experience of the other, understanding them as they are, not as you are.

My boyfriend is very good at this. He is a great listener and holds space for me whether I am snarky in a traffic jam, fiery with inspiration from a photo I took or shedding tears about a racehorse in the Kentucky Derby (…he was the only surviving horse in a barn fire and won the race with 99-1 odds, a true long shot, but a few brave people believed in him!!!). There is room for so much of me and for that I am grateful.

In recent turbulence, we confronted this head on. My subjective experience threatened his because it was different. His ingrained reaction was to challenge my perspective and to defend his. But I wasn’t asking to be right, I was asking to be heard and to be respected. And he didn’t need to be deemed wrong. We could both be valid in our truths and from that point, forge a path forward, together.

But in that shame that his truth was being threatened (and maybe “wrong”), honesty was the first thing to go. He had begun to withhold information that could make me uncomfortable. He had stopped mentioning it to me, even though he was very much living it on his own. This cover-up was intended to spare my discomfort, but more so, to spare his own fear that his truth was not welcome, and perhaps, not even valid.

This is the thing about truth- it requires honesty to carry it out into the world. And that is something that I hold dear. So dear that this withholding hurt me. Honesty and trust go hand in hand and I would rather an uncomfortable truth than a comfortable lie. I would rather be confronted with the reality of your authenticity than be placated by a beautiful fallacy. And I would rather be hurt by your honesty than hurt even deeper by your lie.

And that became the path forward because at the heart of it, we both value honesty. We both hold this dear and the challenge is to hold tightly onto that even in times of fear. And what you can do as a loving being is both hold yourself accountable to your truth, and embody a safe space to receive theirs. A loving act to both the self and the other.

But like many things worth doing, this path of honesty is uncomfortable and sticky. Vulnerable. And if you are lied to, it is not blaming yourself to wonder how open you were to their truth. It is an opportunity to be a safer place. If you are asking for their honesty and yet not able to hold it, how much are you contributing to this fear?

My pattern is one of silence. Faced with an uncomfortable truth, I have often retreated inwards. I do not want to speak dishonestly, so I clam up. I dissociate. I run inside to process my feelings because I am still learning how to share those outwardly, with others. I have compassion for the many painful reasons that this is a pattern of mine, but I am also aware that this isn’t fostering a ton of emotional safety. Inside it feels like overwhelm. On the outside, silence.

So as I work to embody my truths and to communicate outwardly with honesty, and to receive both of those things lovingly from others, I am also finding it important to spot those who value these things in a similar way. And what I am finding is that honesty is not as heavily valued as I wish it was. It seems that in modern day, as people find it harder than ever to be uncomfortable, being honest is simply less attractive than other easier options. It is easier to say that you are busy with work, the kids are sick, or something came up. Excuses run rampant and when did it become so acceptable to be dishonest? When did little white lies become the norm?

An ex of mine applauded my practice of honesty, specifically in how it related to his work. He believed my praise of it to be genuine (it was) which he hadn’t always felt. He instead had felt many fawn responses, perhaps laced with fake approval or strategic creative networking. But mine, good or bad, felt real to him and that was a massive compliment because it was. I believe(d) him to be brilliant so it was easy to praise, but he knew that I would not be one to dish it out if I didn’t feel it. This makes me think of how often we want to protect the feelings of the other by being dishonest and instead of finding this noble, or even kind, I wish we could recognize it for what it is. Manipulative. That dirty word that implies scheming and mind games, but really, is an exercise in control over another person. You decide that they can’t handle the truth. You decide that it is better that they hear this tiny “harmless” lie instead of what is really going on. You decide, for them, because at some point, you learned that the truth was too big, too scary to trust another person to handle it. To trust yourself to handle it. But the more you avoid it, the less capacity you have for it. The more you practice being dishonest, the less you practice confronting the truth. The more you consider this to be a gesture of kindness, the farther you retreat from your own vulnerability.

I look around the world and recent events practically scream how little the concept and practice of truth are respected. Objective truths based on the scientific method have now been labeled subjective. Human rights that feel objective to some feel subjective to others. And the ability to listen to subjective truths that differ from your own is reaching a low point. I remember growing up in a time of respecting certain people or positions as truth tellers- teachers, elders, scientists, authors. Instead I look around now and all I see is fear and distrust.

Our relationship to truth is changing. The internet, something that once was an exciting tool of research and information, is now the source of “misinformation". On a large scale, I often find this hard to conceptualize and to consider what the antidote is. And perhaps this relationship needed to evolve. We are living in very modern times and change is inevitable. But I often find it helpful to approach these questions on an individual level where the first step is to consider your own practice of honesty. How willing are you to live authentically and openly? To speak your truth to those around you, even when it is not held as it should be? To then seek those who can hold it? To hold others’ with safety? What is your relationship to the white lie? To withholding? How often do you prioritize comfort over the truth? What is it that you fear?

My next challenge is to be honest before I am asked. This is reaching a level of transparency that I believe in. A few months ago, friends would ask me to hang out and I’d reply honestly that I was going through a bit of a hermit-mode. I was dealing with some BIG feelings and scary growth, repeating my pattern and retreating. I didn’t blame work. I didn’t make an excuse. I answered honestly. BUT, I also waited to be asked. I waited for them to feel my absence and to come to me for clarification. I would love to live so openly, so candidly that I share these things, in process. I believe that is loving, for both self and other. I believe these are every day decisions that repair and strengthen your relationship to truth. I believe these are changes on the small-scale that ripple outwards, slowly creating a world of authenticity, a world so spacious that there is room for subjectivity and room for everyone so that the truth is not a threat. It is an invitation for curiosity and the wonder of discovery.