. Brené Brown’s definition resonates the best: “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging.”

Covering up freckles, desires, or opinions, shame ricochets in different ways — there is, of course, that hollow footstep sound everywhere you go when you’re not entirely you . And who can blame you for holding back?

The risky, unfiltered joke you haven’t fully thought out, the undignified morning stretch upon waking up before you regain full... See more

I’d like to believe one’s public persona is largely informed by their private self — at the very least, it has to feel organic and true to us, otherwise we wouldn’t be so charmed and enthralled

To locate authenticity is to look shame dead in the eye first, which is a bone-chilling, lonely process. Where does it hurt to be you? You may not want the answer. I certainly don’t. But I know that my relentless willingness to face the worst of hardships yet a total embargo on looking within is hypocritical at best, especially when I’m telling you... See more

performative charm is never charming — it’s alarming, if anything, operating on a certain desperation to be liked, as though your entire world will crumble any minute

Adult shame is a slow burn, a feeling equally nagging and neurotic, as though I don’t deserve to be in places I find myself in, that I’ve gotten up to this point by some hasty error and will be escorted out of the room at any moment. I feel it at social events, I feel it naked, when I stutter on the phone, when I’m expressing an unusual thought or... See more