30 Days Of Radical Honesty Journalling Challenge Day 3: Where Do I Carry Shame In My Body, And Why?

I carry shame like a constellation—anchored in three places that govern my posture, my breath, and my sense of safety in the world. It lives in my shoulders, my chest, and my stomach—braided into the very architecture of my body, quietly shaping how I move through space.

My shoulders bear the brunt of it, sloped and heavy with the weight of expectation, of perfectionism, of the ceaseless compulsion to be palatable. To be quiet. To be pleasing. To be less. I have spent much of my life subconsciously folding in on myself, trying not to take up too much room in rooms that were already inhospitable. The shame here is rooted in the belief that I must contort myself to be accepted. That visibility is dangerous. That I am safer when I am smaller.

In my chest, shame crystallizes as a dull ache—a pressure that constricts rather than protects. It’s the echo chamber of all the times I was told that my emotions were too much, that my softness was weakness, that my love was inconvenient. It’s the grief of being unheld, of being misinterpreted, of being met with silence when I was pleading to be seen. It is here that my capacity for connection has been bruised by conditional affection, by performative empathy, by the kind of rejection that looks a lot like apathy.

And then there is my stomach—the epicentre of knowing. Here, shame churns and knots and coils like a secret I have been told never to speak. It is the visceral remnant of every moment I internalized someone else’s cruelty as a commentary on my worth. It is the shame of being too loud, too emotional, too ambitious. The shame of having a voice and daring to use it. The shame of hunger—in all its forms: for love, for justice, for freedom, for more.

These places—shoulders, chest, stomach—they have borne the silent labour of a thousand apologies I should never have had to make. They’ve been clenched and curled and constrained by the quiet desperation to be acceptable, to be good, to be enough. And yet, I am learning now that shame cannot be exorcised by shrinking. It must be met. Held. Understood.

I am unlearning the architecture of shame. I am rebuilding my posture—standing taller, breathing deeper, softening into the truth that I was never too much. That my voice is not a weapon. That my yearning is not a flaw. That I am not something to be tolerated, but someone to be celebrated.

My body remembers what my mind has tried to forget. But I am listening now. And with every unburdened shoulder, every unclenched breath, every exhale that does not end in apology—I am reclaiming the space I was always meant to fill.

Peace, Love, and Inspiration,
~Britt Wolfe💚