The nature versus nurture debate concerns the relative importance of an individual's innate qualities ("nature," i.e. nativism, or innatism) versus personal experiences ("nurture," i.e. empiricism or behaviorism) in determining or causing individual differences in physical and behavioral traits.
I’ve never realized how much the way one is raised effects the outcome of you. Growing up, I would pick certain characteristics of my family and swear, “I’d never be like that!” or “I’d never do that!” Now that I’m coming into my own, I am noticing so many similarities of things I do, towards things I swore to never do in the first place.
For instance, my family is a secretive bunch. No matter how close we are, we all keep secrets from each other. Whether it be my parents between one another, the kids between themselves or one against all; someone always had a secret. A few years ago, I tried doing that whole “family tree” thing on the Internet, to see what kind of background I came from… because like I said, my father never really talks about the background of his family. All I know is that he was born and raised in West Virginia. My dad was so nervous about it, as if I were going to find out things I shouldn’t know. Digging up my family tree upset him so much, I had to stop. This is not limited to small (or maybe big, I never will know) things, but secrets much bigger and probably is important to tell. I’m not about to air my family’s dirty laundry via blogger. My point being is, I always thought it was okay to hide things. I was taught that it is better to hide things from someone in order to protect them in some way. Not necessarily lie --- like, if I saw momma kissing Santa Claus under the tree, I better not tell dad because I don’t want to hurt him kind of hiding. Better yet, sometimes was best I kept my health issues under wraps, I guess to keep some kind of perfect-healthy-family stigma. I was also taught it's not very good to put your problems (aka health) on other people... it depresses them, makes them sad.
I love my family, no doubt. They raised me very well, and I’m sure any family has their faults. No one is perfect. This is also why having children of my own scare me; will I raise them right? My family has taught me to be loyal, to protect and to appreciate life. However, keeping secrets, or even hiding things, is not healthy.
Even though I write a very public blog, there are things I keep to myself. There are a million and one reasons as of why. I just literally typed a few reasons why and when I read them back, they all sounded stupid.
Readers; there is nothing embarrassing, scary or shameful about being sick. Whether you have MS, leukemia, cancer… you are still here and fighting it. It doesn’t matter what family, friends, boyfriends or girlfriends think; what you think of yourself and how you handle it is what matters. You may think you are protecting yourself, or someone else from the news, but it just does more damage in the long run. If you aren’t being open and honest, you aren’t being very honest with yourself.
