I was talking to someone yesterday about shame. Shame is a powerful, powerful thing. Once submitted to, it can control you, shrink you, morph you into someone unrecognizable. I have lived with shame for so long. I was ashamed of my depression, my cutting, my drug use, my promiscuity. Ashamed of being raped. Ashamed of failing at everything I tried to do. Embarrassed about marrying so young, and ashamed of letting the marriage fall apart. I felt imprisoned by my shame. Not only did it make me feel like an absolute shipwreck of a human being, but it prevented me from ever growing or evolving. Shame drowns you; it wraps its spindly fingers around your hair, pulling you down beneath the surface until you can’t breathe anymore. And if you don’t fight it, if you don’t kick and struggle and swim towards the light, the shame can eventually kill you.

But things are different for me now. I did fight it, and it doesn’t define me anymore. As I was explaining this to my friend, I started to think about our resilience as human beings, our ability to heal.

“Think about our bodies,” I told him. “If we cut our skin or break a bone, our bodies know exactly what to do. They send out the troops to stop the bleeding, grow new skin, reconnect the bones. And all of this takes place without any input from our brains. We don’t think to ourselves, ‘ok body, time to heal.’ It just happens. So think about it. If our bodies can do all of this completely without the direction of our conscious selves, imagine what our minds and our hearts are capable of.”

We’re amazing, us humans. My own resilience has astounded me on more than one occasion. My strength and persistence and will to survive, even at my deepest and darkest moments, is miraculous. And every time I overcome something big, like shame or guilt, I grow and become better. I am just that much stronger and able to deal with the next hurdle I encounter. I feel so blessed to be here on this earth, living in this body. I may hate my thighs, my eyelashes may not be quite as long as I wish they were, but my god. Look at me. I am a living, breathing, fighting, healing wonder. And I think that’s amazing.