Maybe you haven't been shown much unconditional love. Maybe there is someone who should have been there for you in your life, but wasn't.

Behind many a happy face hides a hurting heart, and maybe that describes you. The happy face helps you live in a temporary denial of the pain inside, and it keeps other people from knowing a you that you're afraid they might not accept. Like the beach ball that you push farther and farther under the water, the deeper you bury it, the higher it's going to go when it's released. You can't bury the real you forever. As far as everyone knows, maybe you're the happy one or maybe even the hero, but you know that there's a wounded monster inside you. You're a wounded person with no place to bleed.

Sometimes it's easy to feel like you're a bird locked up in a cage wanting to be free. Your cage may be your painful memories, a broken heart, or a broken dream.

Maybe you're caged in by an addiction, a habit, or some anger that is eating you up inside. It also might be depression or even suicidal thoughts that have you held in. There's a cover on that cage, whatever it is. It's dark in there and there isn't anything to sing about.

There’s a little town in West Virginia situated in a long, narrow valley. The sun doesn't rise high enough to shine on that town until mid-morning, so it is dark for quite a while each day. There is a mountain that overlooks the valley, and from up there, the view is beautiful. When you can get above the valley, that panoramic view makes everything look different. If you're spending some time in your own valley right now, that may be something you need to remember.

Maybe you have a "banged-up" life. You've been treated poorly, you've been made to feel that you never measure up or that you're a loser, people have undervalued you and passed you by, or maybe you've ended up pretty hard and angry inside.