Adverse Communication and Otherness: The Afterlives of Suicide Loss and Queer Family Secrets

Through critical reflection on the family communication and secrets surrounding my dad’s sexuality, HIV/AIDS, and suicide, this article considers how adverse communication about adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) – including the silencing of stigmatized experiences and identities – can constitute an ACE in its own right. I offer a layered account that draws insights from qualitative and autoethnographic research on queer secrets in my own family into conversation with existing communication and ACE literatures. I argue that the communicative silencing frequently faced by childhood survivors of trauma teaches them that parts of themselves are Other and must remain hidden. These communicative lessons encourage dissociation and compound the original ACEs, with lifelong impacts on identity and belonging. I conceptualize queering ACEs as a theoretical reworking of cumulative ACE frameworks that foregrounds communication, stigma, and Otherness as central to how adversity is produced and sustained.