It's up to us...

At some point, I realized that while I do feel that my mom and dad's siblings should know, that it was more important for my cousins to know.

Right before December 2007, I learned that some of my cousins did know, only because the uncle had tried to suggest a relationship with one of them.

It felt great to have others that I could depend on, as I knew it would be difficult to put that burden solely on my immediate family.

One of my cousins moved to LA from Chicago, and he ended up married to one of the uncles younger sisters.  They soon had a son.  I knew I had to talk to my cousin.

In the Summer of 2009, I started the gears going.  My cousins that already knew helped get some of the pieces into play. 

One night, I called my cousin.  The conversation was very fulfilling.  Though I was initially scared that he would start getting angry and act out, he was relatively calm and mainly in disbelief.  But we also talked about his son, his life.

Two days later, my cousin told me that he called the uncle the next day and told him that I spoke with him.  He also told him that he should be responsible for telling his sister, my cousin's wife.  So, the uncle and my aunt came over that night and talked to them.

That same day, I also told my cousin's sister, the eldest of my cousins.  Back in 1993, when we went to Chicago, she was the cousin who was getting married.  Her reaction was the reaction I expected from her brother.  It felt great to talk to her and open up about it.  It felt great to know that more of us were aware.

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I tried to make it perfectly clear that I wasn't telling people to make them angry, but that that was an unfortunately reaction to the truth.  With my cousins and I getting older, starting families and having kids, I feel like we need to be responsible about the truth.  We are a large family, and the unfortunately reality is that there is a high probability of it happening again.

What matters isn't what happened. 

What matters is how are we as a family going to deal with it when it happens again.