How to Turn Shame into Self-Love and Emotional Resilience

“The less we talk about shame, the more control it has over our lives.” ~Brené Brown

The pain and suffering I experienced as a child, which I kept hidden for over a decade, was the very seed that gave me the strength, resilience, empathy, authenticity, and courage that I possess today—but only because I surrendered the old story to embrace a new one. I alchemized my pain into my fuel, my traumas as contributions to my triumphs, and my curses into my greatest blessings.

But all of this came with a very hefty price.

Growing up with a single mother …

“The less we talk about shame, the more control it has over our lives.” ~Brené Brown

The pain and suffering I experienced as a child, which I kept hidden for over a decade, was the very seed that gave me the strength, resilience, empathy, authenticity, and courage that I possess today—but only because I surrendered the old story to embrace a new one. I alchemized my pain into my fuel, my traumas as contributions to my triumphs, and my curses into my greatest blessings.

But all of this came with a very hefty price.

Growing up with a single mother who worked two jobs to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table and with an estranged, abusive father who robbed me of my innocence and self-worth taught me that life’s odds were against me. This shaped my identity.

I believed I couldn’t rely on or be safe around men and that a scarce number of resources were available for me. The abuse plunged me into a world where I felt I wasn’t good enough to be loved, heard, or seen, or to have the shiny life that the “Jones’s” had.

Over the next decade, this led me down a long, windy path of reckless rebellion. It wasn’t safe to be home, and it wasn’t safe to be in my own body, so I found outlets to continually check out from reality because, back then, reality sucked most of the time.

I had no concept or actual experience of life having consequences besides being grounded occasionally. While my mother was doing her best to keep the lights on, and without a healthy masculine role model at home, nothing was slowing my self-sabotage down<