We live in a world of beauty and barbed wire. The stories we have to make sense of that world and our experience in it are often difficult to sort through because of that conflicting reality. When we experience both, we ultimately struggle with a lack of peace with ourselves and with the story in which we find ourselves. But there’s a way through.

The barbed wire often leaves us with a sense of unease or dismay rooted in toxic shame, the sense that we are, on some level, irredeemably broken. Every weakness and mistake we see in ourselves is further confirmation of that reality, and we simply accept that version of things. It then makes us dislike ourselves and assume that others feel the same.

The way through is a recognition and integration of a healthy awareness of our own limitations and shortcomings, that weakness, mistakes, and a degree of pain are an inevitable part of the human experience, but that these do not need to define or defeat us.