The majority of our ineffectiveness in expressing love is based in our childhood experiences. I was well past thirty when I realized that every person I had known who struggled in his or her ability to show and receive love derived that struggle from deep-rooted childhood emotional scars. I was just as much a perpetrator as I was a victim in my inability to express and receive love effectively. I, like those around me, had allowed the scar tissue from childhood hurts to close me off to love.