I have been through a lot over the last 3 years. I have divorced, suffered from cancer, and started a new relationship with someone I care a great deal about. One of my problems is that I have been trained professionally to be a very secretive person. I have kept things and told lies to this person because of my secretiveness. Needless to say, it has created problems in this relationship. I know that this is wrong, but when you are trained this way, it is a hard habit to break. Please give me some insight as to how I can break this habit. Thank you. Marie

Your request is to overcome the 'habit' of your secretiveness. It is one thing to say that your secretiveness comes as a result of the work you have done, but it may be true that you chose the work you did out of a desire to be secretive. Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

In your case you have been protecting yourself and doing your best to avoid being hurt any more than you have already been hurt. You have created the idea that to be secretive, to close down, or to hide is the best way you know to protect yourself. This keeps you from letting someone in, and it keeps you from being able to come out. There is the fear that if one were to know you completely, they would not like you or love you. There is the fear that if you love or that if you are loved, you will ultimately be hurt.

There are many ways to experience life's lessons. Every experience can teach you something, yet the same experience might teach ten people ten different things. If one reaches into their oven to take something out and they are burned, one person might say that reaching into a hot oven will cause you to be burned. Another person would say to use your oven mitts when reaching into a hot oven to prevent getting burned. Another person may decide that baking is dangerous and they give it up altogether. Some people might think that they had been stupid and deserved to be burned. You can see that the same experience can offer people many different conclusions. You have had certain experiences and based on those you came to believe that it is better to hide and better to not love or be loved. Those conclusions do not need to be your truths any longer.

If you think it is better to hide so that one cannot know you and have the opportunity to not like you, you also close the door to the opportunity for someone to like you for who you really are. The key here is for you to break the "habit" of not liking yourself and being afraid to love yourself.

Spend some time each day contemplating what you can do every day, what tiny step you could take that day toward liking yourself and loving yourself. Eventually you will look forward to the opportunity to be honest and to put yourself out there. Eventually you may go to the one you are in relationship with now and say to him honestly, "I am sorry I have not been truthful. I did not know that I was afraid that you might not like what you found and I did not know that I was afraid to love and be loved. I want to like who I am. I want to share that with you, and I want to learn to love and be loved."

You have everything you need to be able to make that statement and mean it.

Blessings to you, precious one. Amen.