This is feminist wellness and I'm your host, nurse practitioner, functional medicine expert and life coach Victoria Albina. I'll be full heart. Welcome my love let's get started.

Hello hello my love I hope this finds you doing so well. Last week we talked all about the difference between privacy and secrecy,

and how the roots of secrecy are so often shame, fear,

and worry about what others will think, say, or do when they learn our truth.

And I made note and want to make note again of how logical and understandable it was for us to decide as children that being secretive was safer

because it often was as children. It was the smart thing to be and do.

So, we get to both honor that and find a new way forward as adults,

a way of living that includes more radical honesty, less shame, an intentional decision-making

about what to keep boundried as sacred privacy. Before I proceed, if you haven't listened to last week's episode, I highly recommend that you do before diving into this one.

I'd like to start us off with a quote from Rilka.

The point of partnership is not to create a quick commonality

by tearing down all boundaries. On the contrary, a good partnership is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude.

And thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. Trust.

So beautiful.

I love to think of my partners and the people in my intimate circle

as the guardians of my solitude, as folks who want the best for me as I want for them

and who recognize that privacy is a vital part of health and wholeness, that privacy built intimacy, self-knowledge, self-awareness, self-actualization, and in relationships, privacy

builds trust. Privacy is a sacred and beautiful thing. And I call it sacred privacy

because it's about your autonomy, which is something I hold sacred because I worked

for many years to know, honor, and embrace my own autonomy,

coming from my deep coddependent thought habits.

So my autonomy, my sense of self, my knowing who I am and knowing that I make the best decisions for me, I hold that to be sacred.

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