BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

My counselors and therapists told me this over and over and over 7 years ago: DON'T KEEP TOXIC SECRETS I fought and argued with them repeatedly about this for a good 18 months or more, until the stark truth came to me. They were right. Secret keeping is TOXIC. I am not talking about privacy here. Things like your personal information, your intimate life and so on aren't this topic. This is about things that people try to shut you up about. Or things that you learned to be in active denial or 'cognitive dissonance' about. I went on many spiritual learning quests over the last 15 years or so. I have been twice to Sedona, Arizona for meditation and retreats. I've seen healers and spiritual teachers. I went to lectures at the Kabbalah Center. Lectures at the Open Center. While each and every one of these experiences was restorative and instructional, not one touched on the sickness that was eating away at my (and many other people's) personal founda...

I was raised staunchly Catholic. My father converted (much to the horror of his family) to marry the Polish Catholic girl he was in love with. And he embraced Catholicism with all his heart. It helped give him purpose, direction and a compass - something that had been lacking in his Protestant upbringing. When we moved to Central New York when I was 9, we went to the big Catholic Church in town. And there it started, the hypocrisy... the unnecessary meanness... the do as I say not as I do... Even corporal punishment. When I was 17 I was teaching Bible Studies to a Christian Youth group at the local Baptist Church's community center. The Church issued me a warning... for READING THE BIBLE! Then one day, my brother - who was coming down with the flu - forgot one of his books for his CCD class. The nun made him walk all the way back to his school (4 miles) in the driving snow - instead of putting him on the bus. When he got to school he had a 102F fever and went to the hos...