So many of us were treatedly unkindly, unfairly, even harshly, in childhood...often by those who professed to love us, whose very job it was to protects us from the injustice of the world. In talking with a friend about her childhood, she gained the strength to finally speak aloud of the things that had gone before, the actions that had shaped her adult being, and suddenly the pain of her past hurts poured from her like steaming lava. It crawled over us both, searing and scorching, but in the end, it cooled and hardened, leaving a shell that binds us together in the sharing of her secrets, and in protection of her still-fragile heart.