True enough, Steve, but I only have one Real Self, and, like a fine scotch, if I hand it out to everybody, there won’t be as much left for me and my close friends.

Seriously, having heard many people’s close personal story so many times that it becomes boring, I worry not only about making my story boring to others, but especially to myself.

As the old British comedy team of Swann & Flanders said of (lehavdil) unprintable words, “If people use them all the time, what will they have left for special occasions?”

“I really don’t remember,” the woman said in her charming foreign accent.

By chance it turned out she came from a city with a small Jewish community where I happened to know a family. When I mentioned this, she showed no interest in continuing the conversation.

From that exchange I got the feeling that there was something she didn’t want to discuss. As time went on, both I and our hostess became close friends with this woman. I became convinced that she was a gioret, mostly from the circumspect conversation we had at that first lunch.

When her father passed away in Europe she shared her secret with me, and yes, she was a gioret. She didn’t want anyone to know because she feared discrimination against her children.

This story, which really took place over the good part of a decade, taught me not to ask baalai tshuva to share their stories. If someone wants to share, they will share. Otherwise, please don’t inquire.

I hope I’m not a rarity, but that’s exactly what BTs and gerim sharing their story do to me, plus engendering ever greater respect for them and inspiration to attain their level of mesiras nefesh. Which is why I frequent BBT :)

Like other responders to this piece I found the best way for me to stop the inevitable inquiries is to turn-the-tables on would-be inquisitors and ask them a lot of personal questions.

They either love the attention and enjoy speaking about themselves, or they get the point and the conversation will meander in a different direction.

Here’s why telling my story was not a healthy way for me to interact with FFB society writ large: I felt used.

FFB society is one in which there are very few socially condoned diversions/entertainment options. In addition to much desired diversion, encouraging a BT to tell his/her story provides a “feel good” bonus that serves to reinforce an FFB’s own sense of superiority & good fortune in having been born an FFB.

Encouraging me to tell my story was a callously voyeuristic experience for many FFB’s. My sharing rarely served to bond us and bring us closer or engender greater understanding (my motivations for disclosing). Many simply got their kicks from me and moved on. I was invisible now with no secrets to conceal.

I hear you, Jeff, but in my case, the fact that I’m a convert and my still-beloved biological family are non-Jews, tends to silence me. I am, however, the only one of my siblings who has never attempted suicide nor been hospitalized in a mental institution, and I was always the “extreme” one.

Shoshana–thanks for a clear expression of what so many of us feel.

I think I was always a stranger to the cult of mass self-revelation and “over-sharing” of personal experiences. In my family, baring your soul, your psychotropic meds, or your intimate life was considered about as gauche as walking up to a stranger and starting to cut her hair.

And about this, I don’t think they were so wrong.

Perhaps some grow tired of hearing of her relate this, though apparently she never tires of telling it. She draws strength from her past.

(granted, she is not a BT but I think the point is the same, some feel they have moved on while others feel constantly connected with their past)

In my case, I grew up in a very traditional household. Shabbat, Yomin Tovim, Kashrut, and more were not particularily foreign ideas. And, my parents were stricter about media than plenty of Orthodox families. My husband, who went to day school and Yeshiva through High School, has to inform me about pop culture because I usually have no clue (!).

I don’t get asked for a story too often, but sometimes when I am asked I feel like the asker is simply fishing for juicy information, of which there is very little, (or private information I won’t share anyways). . . .

When I do share information, the receiver seems disappointed. I was never a drugged out, punked out, kid from a broken and disfunctional home. While I have a broad set of life experiences and acquantiances that might entertain the person asking, I basically am a lot more like them than they expected. And, that just isn’t too exciting.