We all have dark parts of our past or present. Those secrets we hide from ourselves and the world.
Our loveless marriage or traumatic childhood we’d rather forget. That one-night stand we never told anyone about.
Our soul-crushing job with that pretty title so eloquently masking a torturous reality of meaningless work and mind-numbing tasks that belittle our intelligence.
All of these experiences fill us with shame, leaving an imprint and dictating our life choices.
Shame creeps in without us even knowing. It keeps us in the same job and relationship too long. It causes our shoulders to curl and our heads to hang low.
We carry shame all of our lives and continue to make choices that validate its presence.
Shame terrifies us so much that we sit in silence and hide–hoping no one will discover our pain.
It’s the darkness that creeps in, killing our creativity and growth–keeping us feeling small.
Shame has the power to eat us alive because of our fear of being rejected or appearing flawed.
Shame feeds our fear of being seen and silences our deep desire to be seen.
But little do we know; our suffering is all the same–all of those things we’ve done or experienced, have happened to someone else.
Which is why we crave other people’s stories so much. Because it’s these stories that momentarily relieve us of our pain and distract us from our neurotic tendencies.
And those people whose judgment we fear—they are too caught up in the misery of their own shame to pay attention to yours.
So we must give the pain of our experience a voice and dethrone our shame.
And when we unpack and process it, we soon realize that shame is a story that we’ve constructed in our head.
But we can always rewrite our stories and be set free.
And finally, let the light in.