I always tell my kids that as soon as you have a secret, something about you that you are ashamed to have others find out, you have given other people the power to hurt you by exposing you.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I feel that telling my secrets makes me less vulnerable. What would make me vulnerable are the secrets I keep.
I'm not a believer in hiding things from my kids because ultimately they are going to have questions - they feel things.
I've learned that to expose yourself, to reveal yourself is a test of your humanness.
One thing you learn: if you want to reveal yourself, you also have to know where to stop.
I believe that mothers should tell the truth, even - no, especially - when the truth is difficult. It's always easier, and in the short term can even feel right, to pretend everything is okay, and to encourage your children to do the same. But concealment leads to shame, and of all hurts shame is the most painful.
Nothing is secret once you tell anyone. If you want to keep it quiet - don't tell a soul.
Scratch the surface of what's socially normal. I suppose in some way all of us have something we display to the public and things we feel too ashamed of or uncomfortable with to reveal to other people.
I spent the first 33 years of my life with secrets, and lots of them. I spent a great deal of energy worrying over what people thought and obscuring the things I was ashamed of... trying to appear what I thought was normal.
If you have a secret, and it's embarrassing to you, when you tell that story - you own it. It becomes yours, and no one can use it against you.
No one can keep a secret better than a child.