When I was in seminary, an older pastor said to me,

Nadia, I've seen you around for years now, and you give off a lot of strength.

I think that's what people see when they look at you, which is great, but what is it we don't see?

That was about the rudest question I've ever been asked.

But I answered as honestly as I could at the time.

I get my feelings hurt more than anyone would suspect, I said, which is true, but only a partial truth.

I found myself asking a form of that rude question a lot.

What's the thing under the thing?

A question which has led me to understand even if just a little bit, how shame really operates in our lives.

Because it can feel as though shame can be like a quill that writes its own story inside of our bodies,

a story that tries to tell us who we are and what we're worth.

A story that keeps us moving in the same unhelpful direction just because it's familiar and just because we're scared.

And I used to think that the people who struggled with shame were the ones who wear that story like a name tag,

letting the world know that they are who their shame says they are, the ones slouched over with trauma and wounds and a diminished self.

But I've started to see that others of us are equally defined by shame.

We just carry it in opposite ways.

We spool all our energy into trying to prove our internal story wrong. We cover the truth of what we don't want to admit to with bravado and confidence and grandiosity.

And we hope no one notices.

Because the deeper truth to the question that pastor asked me is that my youthful swagger was protective. It was brilliantly strategic.

My confident posture hides the fact that despite how my life looks on the outside,

I still can feel like that skinny, bug-eyed kid who was chronically sick and who spent years sitting by herself at middle school lunch tables.

Shame is such a powerful driving force that if harnessed, I'm pretty sure it could replace fossil fuels.

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