The Betrayal That Created Juneteenth
- Takia Thompson
- 7d
- 6 min read
A reflection on withheld truth, chronic betrayal, and the relief that begins where denial ends.
Every Juneteenth, I find myself thinking not only about freedom, but about what happens when freedom exists and the truth is withheld.
For more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, enslaved people in Texas remained enslaved. The legal reality had changed, but the information had not reached them, or had not been shared with them.
Freedom existed.
The truth was withheld.
That part stays with me.
Because withheld truth is not only historical. It does not only live in textbooks, timelines, or national memory. Withheld truth can live in families. It can live in relationships. It can live in workplaces, churches, institutions, and communities.
And perhaps most painfully, withheld truth can live inside our own bodies.
The truths we learn not to say
As Black women, many of us have learned how to survive truths we were never allowed to speak.
We learn how to make pain more acceptable by explaining it. We learn how to protect relationships by softening what happened. We learn how to survive family systems, religious spaces, workplaces, and romantic relationships by finding language that makes harm easier to carry.
It can feel safer to say, “She did the best she could,” than to say, “My mother harmed me.”
It can feel safer to say, “He was going through a lot,” than to say, “He betrayed me.”
It can feel safer to say, “Maybe I’m being too sensitive,” than to say, “What happened to me was not okay.”
Those softer explanations may contain pieces of truth. People can have difficult histories. They can be wounded. They can be under pressure. They can be doing the best they know how to do.
But none of those explanations erase the impact of harm.
None of them automatically make the wound less real.
What denial protects
This is where many of us get stuck.
We are not always in denial because we do not know the truth. Sometimes we are in denial because we do know, and we understand that saying the truth out loud might change everything.
If I say the truth, I may have to grieve the mother I never had.
If I say the truth, I may have to stop protecting the person who harmed me.
If I say the truth, I may have to admit that the relationship, family system, workplace, or faith community I depended on was not safe for me.
If I say the truth, I may have to stop abandoning myself.
That is not a small thing.
So instead of telling the truth, we often negotiate with reality. We make the harm smaller. We intellectualize it. We become deeply compassionate toward everyone’s limitations while ignoring our own pain.
We rehearse the reasons they could not show up, could not protect us, could not love us well, could not tell the truth, could not choose accountability.
And while we are busy tending to everyone else’s reasons, our bodies keep carrying the cost.
When the body carries what the mouth cannot say
The cost can look like exhaustion.
It can look like anxiety, hypervigilance, overachievement, guilt, people-pleasing, perfectionism, resentment, numbness, or the inability to rest.
It can look like staying too long.
Explaining too much.
Giving one more chance.
Feeling responsible for everyone else’s emotional state.
It can look like waking up already tired because your body has been holding truths your mouth has not yet been allowed to say.
For a long time, I thought the work was simply about healing. I thought it was about becoming more regulated, more forgiving, more boundaried, more spiritually connected, more emotionally mature.
And I still believe those things matter.
I believe in therapy. I believe in nervous system safety. I believe in ancestral connection, shadow work, ritual, and repair.
But I am beginning to understand something more clearly now:
We cannot fully heal a wound we have not allowed ourselves to name.
We can manage the symptoms. We can soothe the body. We can create better habits. We can learn better communication. We can practice grounding. We can journal, meditate, pray, and breathe.
But if there is still a knife in the wound, the body will keep responding to the knife.
The aftermath of chronic betrayal
This is what I mean when I talk about chronic betrayal.
I do not mean one painful moment or one bad relationship. I mean the repeated experience of being failed by the people, systems, institutions, and promises we were taught we could trust.
I mean the betrayal of parents who required our loyalty but did not offer protection.
The betrayal of partners who used our love as access.
The betrayal of workplaces that praised our excellence while consuming our bodies.
The betrayal of churches and faith spaces that taught endurance but not safety.
The betrayal of a society that told Black women if we worked twice as hard, achieved more, stayed gracious, stayed strong, stayed useful, and stayed composed, we would finally be safe.
And then there is the betrayal that often hurts the most to acknowledge:
The ways we learned to leave ourselves behind in order to survive.
Chronic betrayal teaches us things.
It teaches us to doubt what we know. It teaches us to explain away harm. It teaches us to stay longer than we should. It teaches us to make ourselves smaller, quieter, more agreeable, more useful, more impressive, more forgiving, and less needy.
It teaches us to call self-abandonment love, loyalty, maturity, faith, or strength.
And then we wonder why relief feels so far away.
What if you do not need another coping strategy?
What if the issue is not that we have not healed enough?
What if the issue is that we have been trying to heal the symptoms while avoiding the truth of the wound?
What if you do not need another coping strategy?
What if you need the truth?
Not because truth is easy. Not because truth is comfortable. Not because truth will make everything immediately better.
But because truth is often the beginning of freedom.
That is what Juneteenth brings up for me.
Freedom already existed, but the truth had not been spoken. The condition remained because the information that could have changed the condition was withheld.
And I wonder how many Black women are still living inside conditions that could begin to shift if the truth were finally spoken.
Not because we are ignorant of the truth.
But because we have not yet had enough safety, support, or permission to say it plainly.
The truth that may begin the relief
Maybe the truth sounds like:
That harmed me.
That was betrayal.
That was not love.
That was not protection.
That was not my responsibility.
That system lied.
That relationship cost me too much.
That version of strength was killing me.
I deserved better.
There is a kind of grief that comes when denial ends. It can feel like the floor dropping beneath you. It can feel disloyal. It can feel terrifying.
It can feel like you are betraying the very people, systems, or beliefs that first betrayed you.
But there is also relief there.
There is relief in no longer having to twist yourself around a false story. There is relief in no longer needing to make harm more palatable. There is relief in no longer arguing with your own body about what it already knows.
Relief begins where denial ends
Perhaps relief does not begin when we forgive.
Perhaps it does not begin when we finally understand everyone’s reasons.
Perhaps it does not begin when we stop feeling angry, hurt, disappointed, or tired.
Perhaps relief begins where denial ends.
Perhaps it begins when we tell the truth about what happened, what it cost, what we deserved, and who we had to become in order to survive.
Only then can we begin asking a different question:
Who might I be if my life was no longer organized around surviving betrayal?
That question feels like freedom to me.
If this stirred something in you...
Reading the truth and living with it are two different things.
If this reflection brought up grief, anger, relief, or recognition, begin gently.
A grounding meditation for Black women who are tired of carrying what was never theirs to hold.
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