I have someone in my life who tells lies about me. A handful of them I can prove aren’t true. Most of them I cannot. And undoubtedly, there are many that I don’t even know about.
These lies cover all aspects of my life; no stone is left unturned. For decades, I did my best to fight them, sometimes directly to this person, sometimes by attempting to correct the record with those I cared about, and sometimes just in my own head. To be clear, many of these lies were spread with the intent of undermining my physical and mental health, rattling the foundations of relationships with family members, and negatively impacting my financial well-being. And in some cases, they succeeded. Being on the receiving end of relentless and ever-changing lies is exhausting. It’s also dispiriting. In truth, it nearly broke me.
As with much of what I write about here, I feel certain many of you have some version of this lie-defense scenario in your life. And now it’s happening to our entire country on a grand government scale.
Lies are a form of violence. They’re a shock to our nervous systems and wreak havoc on our hearts and minds. Even when there’s no doubt that what’s being put forth is untrue, when there is irrefutable evidence (such as the video of Alex Pretti being executed by Border Patrol), our bodies are programmed to flip into fight, flight, freeze, fawn, or flop mode in order to protect us. And our minds—especially those of us with trauma backgrounds or raised with the belief that others (in particular, straight white male authority figures) know better than we do even about our own experiences—may wonder for a split second if what we absolutely know is not true is true.
I’m not talking about white lies, telling someone you like their sweater because it clearly brings them joy (and doesn’t make them look ridiculous). And honestly, these days, seeing the joy an unfortunate sweater brings someone does make me like it. If it brings joy, it’s a good sweater!
I’m talking about lies told with the intent of cruelty. Kristi Noem stating that Alex Pretti approached Border Patrol armed and with the intent to cause harm when multiple videos clearly show that, in fact, he was murdered. That lie is violence against Alex Pretti and his parents and his friends and his family. It’s also violence against each of us, demanding that we defy what we know to be true.
The liar in my own life has gone from lying about me to others to lying directly to me about myself. Are they delusional and actually believe the things they’re saying? Are they texting them so that if others were to read it they would look like a good, kind, supportive human (the latest lie stating that they helped me during my most challenging health years in concrete ways when in fact not only weren’t they helping me, they were admonishing other people not to help me)? Are they attempting to gaslight me? I don’t know.
Lies shoot out beyond their target. Once a lie is out in the world, it has the potential to plant the seed of doubt in anyone who’s exposed to it. We don’t always know what to believe, so in an effort to be fair, “good” people are trained to look for equivalent behavior from both parties. I get it. I too have done this. But when it comes to liars like Kristi Noem, Donald Trump, Pam Bondi, Karoline Leavitt, JD Vance, and the rest of this crew, there is no equivalent behavior. They are lying with the intent to cause harm. Sometimes there aren’t two equal parties. Sometimes one party is just fucking lying.
This isn’t to say I’m a perfect person who hasn’t said or done things that have hurt people. Hurting people is, unfortunately, an inevitable part of being human. And when I do, I try my best to take responsibility for my words or actions, as do those with whom I choose to surround myself. This is the normal scale of human interaction. We are not acting or speaking with the express intent to harm others. What’s happening in our country and by many abusers is not on the normal scale. But they want us to think it is.
Growing up, I had a mad crush on Paul Newman (he and Sidney Poitier were my lifelong heartthrobs) and saw Cat On A Hot Tin Roof at far too young an age. It’s a story about family and love and getting older and dying and class and dreams and hopes—and the toll lying takes on this fragile human existence. The damage lying does to every character’s soul is palpable. It was the first time I heard the word mendacity, which isn’t surprising as I was probably six or seven! Mendacity is the habit of lying. The moment when Paul Newman and Burl Ives’ characters, after much scraping and belittling of the other, share their most tender, fiercely-protected truths with each other in the basement of their home, their broken world, heals them. Not completely. But it is the beginning of hope.
I, too, have been in the basement, not of a Southern manor rather my own beleaguered soul. The lies against me reached a fever pitch when I was at my sickest and continued during the years of recovery. Some piece of me believed the lies must be true, otherwise why were they being told? And that piece, tiny though she was—vulnerable, confused, heartbroken, scared—wielded a lot of power. Yes, I was out there sticking up for myself. Yes, I was taking steps to correct any wrongs I could. But inside, despite knowing the truth, that tiny part of me was still accepting someone else’s reality over my own.
Until one day I sat on the couch and said the first lie aloud. I breathed it in, felt it vibrate through every cell and organ in my body, breathed it out, and said, “That’s a lie.” I felt the truth of my words, the truth of my knowing, the truth of the fucking truth resonate through me. Then I moved on to the next lie. For weeks, I did this while walking the dogs, washing the dishes, gardening, in the bath, before bed. I also took to shouting the truth in my back garden, my living room, with trusted friends. The longer I did this, the better I felt. I grew stronger, healthier, more confident.
These experiences brought me closer to myself, allowed me better insight into who I am, what I value, how I want to be in the world, and what it means to be me. They also helped me recognize when those around me, especially my college students, were likewise struggling with bullies and to help them move into their truths. I’ve always been tough, but this practice created the toughest structures to safely hold the truth. It also softened me. Soft is not something I have always been, at least not outside of my own heart. Having someone else attempt to force a false narrative onto your life provides laser-sharp clarity on what is true. As well as the power of rage, which is sometimes required to create boundaries. I used to feel that boundaries were unkind or inappropriate or overreactive or overly sensitive, but really, I just hadn’t been raised to tell liars to back the fuck off.
Author Amy B. Scher, who helped me heal my nervous system tremendously, cautions that making excuses about the liar’s behavior or ‘trying’ to have a relationship around those lies sends our nervous system into disarray, forcing us to stay on guard rather than living in a relaxed and safe state of being as we deserve. I wasted so much energy defending myself against decades of lies, a loss of energy I now believe slowed my healing. My own liar has been out of my life for a while, but the imprint they left remains, and such imprints can haunt us.
America is likewise acknowledging her lies and shouting out her truths; we only need to look at Minneapolis (and pretty much every corner of this country) to see the impact. It’s an understatement to say we have a mendacious government. Watching the global resistance grow and thrive, speak truth to the relentless lies, share energy sources—when one of us flounders, another rises—does my heart good, as my mom would have said. And it helps diminish the haunting.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the majority of the resistance grew up with a bully, with a liar, and with no one protecting them from this form of violence. And now, our country is deep in the trauma of lies—and here too, those who should be protecting us aren’t. So we’ve become our own protectors. By healing ourselves, we heal our country. By healing our country, we heal ourselves.
I often see people self-identifying as Christian whilst supporting the brutality of this regime being asked, “What about the teachings of Jesus? What about ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’?” I wonder if they are loving their neighbor as they love themselves. Perhaps they hate themselves. So they are hating their neighbors. We are up against self-hatred. And self-hatred is a violent, contagious rot.
The antidote to self-hatred is self-love. This leads to love of others, and love of the planet and her animals. Love is also contagious.
Lies aren’t just words; they’re energy that exerts a powerful gravitational force. The cruelty is the point. The violence is the point.
But love is also an energy that exerts a powerful gravitational force. I don’t mean to sound Pollyanna-ish. I’m struggling with the audacity of our government to tell outlandish, violent, cruel lies, even when incontrovertible evidence exists to counter them. I’m concerned and sometimes (often) terrified about what will happen next. I’m heartbroken. I’m furious. I’m exhausted. I’m deep in grief.
But the power of love is something to behold. And it’s happening. It is happening.
On a seemingly unrelated, yet very much related, note, I finally watched Heated Rivalry. For the first two or three episodes, I was more caught up in it out of craft curiosity: time moves quickly and the writer in me was fascinated by how they were developing character and moving the plot with these snippets and these fairly large jumps in time. And, also, how it was a show revolving around two athletes that wasn’t focused on the tension of winning.
Then everything shifts. The pacing slows way down and it becomes so tender and so beautiful. Oh my heart. It renewed my hope in the enormous power of love. Above everything else, that’s what we see exploding in our country right now: love.
My niece encouraged me to follow the two leads on IG and they’re wonderful; they always put a smile on my face.
And another seemingly-unrelated-and-yet-it’s-not note, this poem always gets me, and gets me deep. Maybe it will get you deep, too.
To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall
By Kim Addonizio
If you ever woke in your dress at 4am ever
closed your legs to someone you loved opened
them for someone you didn’t moved against
a pillow in the dark stood miserably on a beach
seaweed clinging to your ankles paid
good money for a bad haircut backed away
from a mirror that wanted to kill you bled
into the back seat for lack of a tampon
if you swam across a river under rain sang
using a dildo for a microphone stayed up
to watch the moon eat the sun entire
ripped out the stitches in your heart
because why not if you think nothing &
no one can / listen I love you joy is coming
I was lucky enough to start listening to Bruce Springsteen with the release of his first album. A friend of a friend lived in Asbury Park and turned all of us onto him in the early days. We saw him play clubs right up through arenas. We almost always had front row and we often made our way backstage. Although over the years, I’ve not always been madly in love with a particular album, I’ve never wavered from holding Springsteen in the very very very highest esteem. He’s a decent, kind, compassion, intelligent man who does so much to help people. I feel lucky to be on this planet at the same time he is. If you haven’t yet heard this song, here you go!
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How are you holding up in the throes of all this? Are the lies taking a toll? If so, any practices you’re engaged in to get through? What songs are you listening to? Have you watched Heated Rivalry? How’s your heart?
This piece resonated deeply in how it shows what sustained lying does to trust, relationships, and one’s sense of self. I appreciated the way you describe lies not as abstract ideas, but as experiences that live in the body and linger over time. Not every conflict has two equal sides, and some lies are intentional rather than misunderstandings. Thank you for writing this with such honesty and for reminding us that truth, love, and clear boundaries still carry real weight.
"Lies are a form of violence." YES. This piece is so true and so powerful. Thank you for sharing it.