I grew up believing self-love was a bad thing. It was the belief of the Christian church I was raised in, I think. But whether that was so or not, my parents had been raised in dysfunctional families, and had no sense of self-worth anyway. A vague sense of uneasiness surrounded the second and third decades of my life. I married at 28, became a mother just before turning 30, was separated within the year, divorced and enrolled in grad school by 35. How much did my dis-ease contribute to my failed marriage? "Not much." I told myself. My heartbreak was for my daughter. I believed I was coping well. It wasn't until I started dating again that I had to acknowledge my own "issues." In my graduate studies of family therapy they were identified with labels and causes. And suddenly I realized that I had always felt like a child hiding-out iin an adult body. Feelings that came up, carrying words like, "If they really knew me..." begin to register. I was thawing. I started to feel again. I must have banished former feelings to cope. I begin to understand shame. So birthed the discovery of my lost self: the pieces I had disowned in order to be ok. Losing your "self," the one that can experience joy and beauty, peace and wholeness, the one you were designed to be, is the worst thing that can happen to a human being. To lose your true self is to lose everything. You are all you have. You can get by with a false self, but when your heart stops beating and your breathing stops, it's over for you. Your mask falls, irrelevant. Is there danger of that? Can you lose you? Far too easily... The true self acquired by risking for true love ends in finding yourself forever. The false self attained by pretending: playing it safe, covering up flaws, hiding from hurt and shame ends in total loss. This self is also called the persona or the mask. I wrote this book because I know there are a lot of people who don't understand this, just as I didn't. I want to introduce a few of the main ways evil tries to trip us up and keep us in the dark. All of it comes from my experiences or those of my clients of 30 years in doing family systems therapy. Some wanted their names changed, some didn't. A few stories are favorites from other authors. This is in no way exhaustive. It's only the tip of the iceberg. It's some main points you need to know: evil's wiles that confuse us, stealing our joy, our peace our very selves. Self is a life and death matter.