Brene Brown says that secrets – and shame – thrive in the dark.

Of course, she’s right.

To start with, she’s f-ing brilliant and based on her phenomenally comprehensive research could meet a perfect stranger and intuitively know them better than they know themselves without a single bit of conversation. (For those of you who don’t know her work, she’s that good.)

So, if Brene says it is true, it is probably true.

But what makes it really true for me is that when I first heard her concept – that secrets and shame thrive in the dark – there was this sad little thing in the very far corner of my mind that reluctantly lifted her head, tried to say something, and then tucked back into a ball like she was afraid of being noticed.

She was tangibly fearful of being seen. I could physically feel her sense of dread in being discovered.*

Because while secrets and shame are doing a little happy dance in their dark places, moving and grooving to the music, those tiny, timid voices are the ones who hold the truth. And damn it if shame doesn’t want to shut them down. Forever.

These scared truths… they want to be heard… they need light… they deserve to be seen.

I’m not sure exactly what’s happening, or why, but there are times I feel like the impenetrable opaque shroud that has been so successfully gathering layers of dust and debris from my (ridiculous? chaotic? unreal???) life is starting to come apart a bit at the seams.

Maybe the weight of all those years of judgement – from myself and others – has just gotten too heavy to hold up to the gravity of time?

Or maybe those scared little voices are just done being held captive by all that fear.

So I find myself, here, now, with you, wondering why I have been so afraid for so long to tell my Truth… what I believe, what I think, what I have seen and heard and felt – good and awful and everything in between.

Whatever it is, whatever has changed or broken free, BRING IT ON!

I am done with the darkness. Friends, it is time to dance in the disco lights!

Join me?

*Just in case anyone is concerned about my sanity, don’t worry, “My mother had me tested.”**
**Bonus points for correctly attributing that quote.