Whose Shame Are You Carrying?
Releasing What Was Never Mine
“I’m not enough,” I think to myself, as I pass a couple in love on the street. “I could never have a relationship like that. I’m not worthy. Even if someone liked me, they’d just get bored eventually and move on.”
“I’m not enough,” I think to myself as I hit publish after writing an article all day. “I should have 5,000 subscribers by now. Then maybe my voice would matter.”
“I’m not enough,” I think to myself when I am mentioned in The New York Times. “That’s not a real feature. It’ll only count when I get a full-spread in The New Yorker.”
“I’m not enough,” I say to my therapist, trembling and crying in front of my computer screen. It is right on the surface of my psyche, and in many ways, it is fundamental to who I am.
Each time I achieve something, the goal post is suddenly flung out further in front of me, unreachable again. I do my best to achieve, achieve, achieve. Yet I metabolize my accolades and awards before I even get a second to enjoy them.
My therapist tells me to work on my anger towards the adults who failed me in my childhood (who will remain anonymous). I know I feel angry, but I don’t know how that relates to this core belief about my self and my worth.
That evening, I sit down on the crumpled corduroy green chair in my living room. I scroll back through the last three years of my text messages and rummage through decades of my memories. Those voices say to me:
“Everyone thinks you’re a bad person.”
“You’re so selfish.”
“If you think I’m favoring them instead of you, it’s probably because you think your work isn’t enough.”
I remember that last phone conversation. I saw red and told that person I needed a break from them. Then I didn’t speak to them for almost three months.
I realize that since I started therapy, even if I didn’t believe I am enough, I’ve been acting as if I am. I’ve been telling people not to treat me disrespectfully anymore. I’ve been telling others that my needs matter and my feelings are real. When people say things to try to tear me down, I don’t accept their insults or tolerate their behavior. I stop believing outwardly that I deserve to be shouted at. But these most subtle and insidious beliefs are different. People bury them way down in there: a parent, a teacher, someone you trusted in your childhood to take care of you.
I pull out my journal and delve deeper into this filth and arguing over the years. Then a new idea suddenly pops into my head. Maybe it was never about believing that I wasn’t enough. Maybe this other person is projecting their own pain and feelings of worthlessness onto me. Reinforced hundreds of times through our arguments over the years. Perhaps this is more about them, their opinions, and judgments of themselves. Perhaps this has nothing to do with me.
Something in me is changing. Deep down inside myself, I find this large, jagged shard of glass, black and glinting. I wrench it out of me. I cut open the parts of me that had tried to heal over and around it. This monster, this cancer that had never been mine. I will not carry it around anymore.
I look up from my text messages, and in my journal, I write: These are projections of low self-esteem. It has nothing to do with me or my worth. I’ve been carrying their belief about themselves as if it were a belief about me for decades.
I look up at the clock. It is 11:47pm. In 13 minutes, it will be December 5th, 2025, my two-year birthday in ACA, my group therapy program for Adult Children of Alcoholics & Dysfunctional Families. It has taken me two years of deep self-reflection and analysis to yank out that shard of glass. The new, empty wound leaves a void inside of me, slowly healing.
In our next session, my therapist asks me what I am going to do with this information. I tell her I am not sure. Yet over the next few days, things begin to reveal themselves and unravel. The load I am carrying feels lighter.
“I am happy for them,” I think to myself now, when I’m at a party, and I see a couple. “Look at them, so deeply in love.”
“What a beautiful book I have made,” I think to myself when people ask me what I do, and I pull out a copy. “I can’t wait to mention the designs, inspired by the architectural details of Mexico City.”
“It’s amazing!” I think to myself now, when I receive my first payment for books I have sold. “I can pay at least a couple of months of my rent!”
“They must be hurting,” I think to myself now, when someone says something vicious to me. “This is unacceptable and has nothing to do with me.”
Perhaps the difference is only in my mind, but it does alter how I see the world. I realize I do not want to be living any other way. That this life, of writing and creating, my chosen life in Mexico, is the best life for me. Art. Architecture. Writing. Poetry. Film. Flowers. This is a real and beautiful way to live. I have conviction. I have pride. I feel like I am getting closer to the woman I have always dreamed of becoming, sitting in that beautiful office with the white walls, the ornate plaster fastenings, and the tall windows. And an Eames chair or two.
The people in my childhood who tried to keep me small and break my spirit are dead to me now. I do not wish they were dead, but I am not waiting for them to die before I let myself live. I am living now. Not entertaining their viciousness. Not playing it low and small so that I don’t threaten them with my brightness.
Some core beliefs about ourselves take 31 years to change. Four years of therapy. Two years of reparenting myself in ACA. Two years to wrench out that shard of glass. But here I am, in Mexico City, writing, creating, living the life I’ve always dreamed of. I am enough.
💌 ✍️
Going to listen to this with my clients today. They are in recovery. Thank you Tash!!
Chills.