The greatest gift you can give to another is an unconditional acceptance of his or her unique presence. Another wonderful gift that brings hope is to hear what a person is not saying or what a person is not doing. The reality is that we all wear masks – masks that hide the truth of our individuality and of the deep hurts that we have experienced. The number of masks that we create depends on the frequency, duration, and intensity of the hurts experienced. Masks are defensive creations against having to re-experience the traumas of emotional abandonment, sexual violation, of ‘not being good enough’, ‘of having to prove myself all of the time’, of living under a tyranny of ‘shoulds’, ‘have tos’, of ‘having to do everything perfectly.’