Wow, Monday comes around fast!

Monday is here again and I'm glad to begin a new week. It's a fresh start. Last week was...well....enlightening, painful, sad, shocking... I feel like a scab has been ripped off and an old wound exposed except it's not my wound. Yet still I feel it. Still the pain runs deep.

As you all know, I've made a video to market myself and get my book published. My mom, ever my champion, sent the link to the video to old friends and family...many whom I haven't seen or talked to in decades. One person in particular, someone I was very close to as a child, contacted me after voting for my video and we began emailing back and forth...reacquainting ourselves after twenty years of separation. We shared a little small talk but mostly went straight to the heart of the matter. After viewing my video, she was suddenly aware of a small piece of my family secrets. As it turns out, she has a family secret of her own.... a secret that began when she was a small child. In fact, it was going on right under my nose at the same time when we were so close but she never told me. She was too scared to tell anyone. My family secret was occurring at the same time too yet I kept it to myself for the same reason. Fear. Shame. Humiliation. Embarrassment. We were just little kids yet instead of running straight to the people we trusted the most, we allowed fear to rule and kept quiet. We were just little kids, too young to process what was happening to us.

As we emailed back and forth over the course of the week, the secrets and confusion seemed to pile up. At one point it felt like we were almost trying to one-up each other. Almost like "oh yeah, well did you know about this....". It was a very emotionally draining week although it actually felt good to get it all out in the open....I guess I know now what it means to "air your dirty laundry". That's what it felt like...like fresh air was being let into a filthy, stinky room.

Discussing the demons from our past brought up an old memory for me. It involved me at the young age of 10 or 11 and a neighbor boy who was already a teenager. Without getting into details, let just say it was a terrifying day for me--one that could have turned out really, really badly. For the first time, I told my mom about that day. She knew nothing about it because I was home alone when it all happened. Immediately she asked me why I didn't tell her at the time and looking back, it does seem weird because we were so close. But I didn't. I was so scared....too scared to tell anyone.

This past week has really made me realize how easily we are manipulated by fear. There is definitely a time and a place for fear. When your life is in danger or if someone is harming you either physically, mentally or emotionally. When you're about to take that shortcut through a dark alley and your gut twists with trepidation. Those situations evoke a primal response--fight or flight. Fear is a necessary emotion during any of those moments but somehow we've become a species that allows it to control most of our lives. The fear you experience when you're afraid to move forward with a dream or to live your life with or without your spouse (or partner or best friend or family member or whomever). Then there's the fear that keeps you chained to a job you hate, a rut you're tired of, a life you never wanted. There's the fear of trying and the fear of failing. The fear of dying and the fear of living. The fear of dreaming and of succeeding. The fear of hoping and of the unknown. For every possible positive emotion, there is the flip side of fear. We've all experienced it. You put your head down and you hustle and hustle but then one day you look up and wonder how you got here. That's when the fear grabs you, stopping you in your tracks or keeping you running in the wrong direction. Fear holds your eyes closed, refusing to let you see the light. Fear paints everything in a dark, bleak color. It paralyzes you and stops your breathing. Fear is thousand times worse than whatever you are actually afraid of. I have never heard of anyone who actually faced their fear and then declared, "My God, that was so much worse than I thought it would be"! There is always a sense of relief when we finally stop running long enough to actually get a good look at whatever we think is chasing us. We've all heard that old quote from FDR--"there is nothing to fear but fear itself". The truth is fear really is the only thing holding us back from the life we want. I'm not saying if you let go of fear then everything will be easy but at least your life will move forward and eventually you've be exactly where you want to be. Fear is an indication that something is wrong in your life. Fear is like a bright red arrow beaming out of the darkness, pointing you in a new direction. We assume fear is an indicator of a problem...instead we should follow the bright red arrow since it's guiding us toward a solution. It's telling you that something is wrong and needs to be changed. It's trying to guide you out of the darkness.

Unfortunately most of the time fear freezes us in our tracks, holds us back, limits and breaks us. Fear becomes our prison and if we do not fight it, it'll become a life sentence. Face your fear. Stand up to it and don't back down. Say the words you're afraid of...out loud and with witnesses. Don't imprison yourself in the darkness. No matter what it is, big or small, life-altering or not...just say it, share it, face it...conquer it. Don't let fear control you for another moment longer. Break free from the prison.