I’ve spent a lot of years angry. You may not know it by checking out my highlight reel on social media, but I’ve been known to become so enraged with shame and disgust that I would end up letting it completely consume me. The work it takes to navigate that is dark.

Chris Stapleton sings, “pick up your sticks and your stones and pretend I’m a shelter for heartaches that don’t have a home…” I spent a lot of time hurling my own heartaches at people who didn’t own them. My shame wasn’t their fault.

The shame I felt being a teen parent manifested in unpredictable ways. I was emotional. I was detached. I was full of resentment. But I was also full of hope.

When that hope was shattered, the shame messages swirled above. The insatiable need to prove you are always bettering yourself, by doing and doing and doing is exhausting and unsustainable. My hope was rooted in someone else. No wonder I continued to be let down.

And once you root that hope in somebody else, how do you get it back? The road less traveled.

Inside. Hope is the conscious awareness that shame does not get the last word.

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“You must be fit, educated, and sexually available at all times.”

“If you don’t get up and cook your kids a full breakfast every morning before school, you’re a shit mother.”

“Breast is best.”

-Yep, I said it.

“Boys don’t play with barbies.”

“Real men don’t show their vulnerable emotions.”

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None of it’s true. If you believe them to be and hold yourself accountable to those expectations, you just might become a ball of resentment, hurling heartaches at the people you love the most.