What Happens in This House Does Not Stay in This House

Growing up, there were rules in our house. Not just about cleaning your plate or getting home before the streetlights came on—but unspoken rules, louder than any parent’s voice.

The biggest one? “What happens in this house stays in this house.”

I was three years old the first time that rule became my prison. My cousin—a little older, a little bigger—began touching me. I didn’t have the words for what was happening. All I knew was that it felt wrong. When my mother caught us, she didn’t ask questions. She didn’t ask if I was okay. She beat me. Because to her, I had allowed it. To her, I was the problem.

That was the beginning of the silence.

What should have been a rescue became a punishment. And from that moment forward, I learned what so many little girls like me learn far too early: don’t speak. Because no one will listen. Because you’ll be the one punished. Because the truth makes people uncomfortable.

So I didn’t speak. Not when another uncle came into my room. Not when the girl who gave me weed also forced her body on me. Not when a teacher made me eat my own vomit while my aunt watched. Not when I ran away at twelve and got pregnant by thirteen.

The silence followed me like a second skin.

But here’s what the silence didn’t do: It didn’t stop God from seeing me.

Even when I couldn’t feel Him. Even when I couldn’t hear Him. Even when I was sleeping outside under a tree in the park, pregnant, hiding from everyone who failed to protect me.

He was there. He was there when I gave birth to a healthy baby boy with no drugs in my system after years of addiction. He was there when I should have been strung out and lost, but somehow—I wasn’t. He was there when I started to see my worth through counseling, when I started to feel Him again in the quiet, when I started to learn that I was never abandoned.

I didn’t know it then, but He was writing a new rule in my life. One louder than shame. One stronger than silence.

“What happened in this house won’t stay in this house. Because I’m healing you to help heal others.”

If you’ve been carrying pain you weren’t allowed to speak of, hear me now: You are not crazy. You are not alone.

What they covered up, God can uncover and restore. What they ignored, God can transform. What they blamed you for, God has already forgiven.

The house of silence doesn’t have to be your home anymore. There is freedom in telling the truth. There is power in giving God the final say.

He saved me. And He’ll save you too.