You and I don’t need fifty people to know our hard, but we do need a few who are in it with us.
And yet, it certainly does sound like she has more than just a few who know her hard. Because the small group people all know and her sister-in-law knows, which presumably means most or all of her extended family knows, not to mention her husband and the other kids in the family who presumably know and usually *do* need to know.
And when something public happens and *that* is your hard thing, you can’t help it; everyone will know. When your baby dies, everyone will know. When you have cancer, everyone will know. If you have a family member who screws up and goes to prison, everyone will know. The best you can hope for in those situations is that you have at least one dear friend, who is not part of the problem, who will listen non-judgmentally and will help you in practical ways.
