This piece began with a powerful question asked during a conversation between women:
“What are you still holding on to?”
And the word that came up for many of us including me was shame.
At the time, I was in therapy, trying to make sense of what I had carried for years without realizing it. I had stayed in toxic environments. I had given my all in relationships where I wasn’t seen. I called it love. I called it loyalty. But underneath it, I was carrying something heavy something I couldn’t name until I let myself be vulnerable.
It was in that space raw, honest, uncomfortable that I learned the feelings I had were shame. And it was through that vulnerability that I began to break free. This poem is the story of that process. A shedding. A reckoning. A quiet becoming.
This is how I turned shame into brave.
They say I should’ve left sooner.
Should’ve known better.
Should’ve read the signs.
But they don’t know the way I love
full force,
all in,
even when it hurt.
I stayed in that job long after it stopped seeing me.
I poured into people who only held out empty hands.
I tried to fix what was never mine to heal.
And when it all fell apart,
they called it weakness.
I called it shame.
But I see it now.
That wasn't weakness.
That was love.
That was loyalty.
That was the kind of bravery
they don’t write about in leadership books.
The kind of brave
that doesn’t need applause
just the quiet truth
that I showed up.
That I stayed.
That I tried.
And maybe I stayed too long.
But damn......
I stayed with heart.
I stayed when it was hard.
I stayed when I was breaking.
I used to try to be grateful for the shame.
Like maybe if I forgave it fast enough,
it would stop hurting.
But I don’t have to be grateful for the betrayal,
for staying too long,
for breaking my own heart
just to keep the peace.
I just have to understand it.
I just have to see what it showed me.
Because shame didn’t destroy me
it revealed me.
It peeled back the layers,
forced me to sit with myself,
made me ask the hard questions.
And it was when I finally let myself be vulnerable
that I realized
what I had been carrying all along…
was shame.
Not weakness.
Not failure.
Just shame I never had words for it before.
And naming it?
That was the beginning of healing.
That’s when I started to see myself more clearly.
That’s when brave began.
And every time I answered honestly,
I became a little braver.
Not because I wanted to be
but because I had to be.
That’s the thing about shame:
If you let it,
it will teach you who you are beneath it all.
And that person?
She’s not broken.
She’s not too much.
She’s not a fool.
She’s the bravest woman I know.
And now.....I finally see her.
By Lisa V