Are you like me? Do you also have a secret (or a few) you don’t want to tell anyone? I get it. I do. One reason we choose not to share with others the toxic Twinkies our shame-filled secrets are, is we think we know how people will feel about us if we disclose our darkness. Because of the unsavory way we feel about ourselves over our missteps.

The night my husband confessed his affair to me, I learned volumes about secrets; including why we attempt to keep them and the negative effects of doing so. At 2:00am, too wracked with gut-wrenching guilt over what he knew he needed to tell me, he hadn’t yet been to sleep. The terror of having to tell me what he’d done had wired his brain to static awake. Long before he found the courage to speak, his palpably anxious energy woke me. Upon hearing me stir, he haltingly declared, “Jodie, I have to tell you something.”

Continue reading “Ending your too-long struggle with secrecy and shame: tell your hard story to break the heavy bonds of self-imposed silence and finally begin to heal fully.”