Our culture teaches us about shame–it dictates what is acceptable and what is not. We weren’t born craving perfect bodies. We weren’t born afraid to tell our stories. We weren’t born with a fear of getting too old to feel valuable. We weren’t born with a Pottery Barn catalog in one hand and heartbreaking debt in the other.

Shame comes from outside of us–from the messages and expectations of our culture. What comes from the inside of us is a very human need to belong, to relate.