We say we love truth tellers. We don't. Not really.
We love the movie version — the whistleblower who wins in the end, vindicated, applauded, everyone suddenly pretending they were on her side all along. But the real truth tellers? The ones who spoke up and lost friends, lost jobs, lost their place at the table? We look away. Not because we don’t believe them, but because the media or the people who are “in charge” do not want the real truth out there. The truth tellers are painted as difficult. A little crazy. A tinge unhinged.
I know this story. I've been living it since I was a freshman in a very small Midwestern Catholic school. My best friend was having an affair with a teacher — a married man with children, a family friend of their family. When her parents found the letters, they came to me. They already knew. They just needed me to say it out loud. So I did. They cried. I cried.
Mr. Zick was made to resign. Quietly. He moved not too far away and became a basketball coach and teacher at another school. No charges. No consequences. Just a fresh start down the road. I told the truth and the whole institution turned on me. Not so much my best friend, because she did not squeal on him, I did. Students were mad at me. The gym teacher/football coach was mad at me, and even called me into his office to tell me that she wasn’t his first affair and named girls I knew who had graduated.
The lesson was clear: belonging has a price, and the price is silence.
And here's the thing…I want to belong. Most of us do. Belonging isn't weakness. It's human. It's wired into us from the days when being cast out of the tribe meant you didn't survive. We want to be liked. We want to fit in. We want someone to save us a seat.
But what happens when fitting in means shutting up? When belonging has a price tag and the price is your silence?
I've wrestled with that my whole life. The truth-teller part of me — the part I think I was just born with — keeps opening my mouth. And the belonging part of me tells me to be silent.
Up North — and I say this having lived in Bucks County, Pennsylvania since the 1900’s (haha, late 1900’s) — people want to figure you out immediately. What's your politics? What's your stance? Which team are you on? They sniff around for your tribal affiliation before they decide whether to let you in. It's exhausting. It's cold. If you don’t check this box, and this box, and the people claiming to be the most tolerant were the least.
Then I came on this seeking Southern Charm book tour.
Down here, something different happens. People have manners. They take pride in themselves — not in a fussy way, but in a "I'm going to change out of my pajamas into real clothes before I leave the house" way. They look you in the eye. They smile. They say hello. They ask how you’re day is going, and they wait for an answer.
And they don't lead with politics. They don't open with ideology. The old adage still holds in the places
I've visited — you don't talk politics, sex, or religion at the dinner table. Not because people don't have opinions. Because hospitality comes first. Because making someone feel welcome matters more than winning an argument.
Sure, they might ask what church you go to. But as it was explained to me by a gentleman in the Book Cellar in Fairhope (which is a little bar attached to the Page and Palette bookstore) it's not about judging you. It's about making you comfortable. It's about saying, "If church is your thing, here's a good one nearby. We want you to feel at home."
And if you say your church is the moon and the stars, the Pelicans and the sea or if you say you're still figuring it out? They don't flinch. They don't recoil. They open their arms anyway.
That's the difference. That's what my life in Pennsylvania didn't give me and one month in visiting the South did.
On history tours in Charleston and Beaufort, I was reminded of the history I’d learned but have forgotten…especially in the divisiveness of modern day; the Founders who signed the Declaration of Independence— they lost everything. Their wealth. Their friends. Their safety. They weren't celebrated. They were called traitors. And they signed anyway.
Aristotle said virtue isn't a single brave moment. It's a habit. A lifelong practice. It's never easy. No journey worth taking ever is.
But here's what I'm learning, slowly, in the southern heat and humidity and beauty of Fairhope, Alabama; maybe you don't have to choose between telling the truth and belonging. Maybe you just haven't found your people yet. Maybe they're down here, on a porch somewhere, saving you a seat. Not asking you to be quiet. Not demanding you pick a team. Just glad you showed up.
I'm still on the road. Still telling the truth. Still figuring out where I belong. But for the first time in a long time, I don't feel like I have to apologize for either one.
Yours from the porch,
Birdie Jane Lane
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