LIFE
The Weight We Carry: Transforming Pain, Shame, and Regret
Pain, shame, and regret have defined much of my life.
Pain — in the suffering I’ve caused others.
Shame — in the abuse I endured as a child and the demoralizing mistakes that followed.
Regret — in how I handled the trauma, how I turned my pain inward and then outward, leaving wreckage in my wake.
For most of my life, I carried these things like invisible stones in my chest. They shaped every decision I made and every relationship I entered. I didn’t understand that I was living through old wounds, repeating stories that weren’t mine to carry, yet I claimed them as my identity. I thought my mistakes were me. I thought my past defined my worth.
But life, recovery, and awareness have shown me something different. Pain is not punishment. Shame is not truth. Regret is not the end of the story.
The pain I caused others taught me empathy, not as a concept, but as a living practice. When I feel someone else’s suffering now, I recognize the echo of my own. I understand how easy it is to act out of fear, loneliness, or self-hate. I know what it’s like to be lost and still crave love. From that understanding comes compassion, not only for others but for the broken parts of myself that were doing their best to survive.
The shame I carried from childhood ran deep. It was the kind of shame that silences you, that makes you believe you’re different, unworthy, unlovable. It kept me hidden for decades, behind substances, behind success, behind noise. What I’ve come to realize is that shame loses its power when it’s brought into the light. Speaking the truth of what happened, and how it shaped me, doesn’t make me weak. It makes me whole. It’s how I take my story back from the shadows.
And regret, maybe the hardest one of all. The things I wish I could undo. The people I hurt. The years I wasted chasing illusions and numbing my spirit. Regret can drown you if you let it. But it can also wake you up. It reminds me that my actions matter, that I have the power to choose differently now. Regret, when faced honestly, becomes a form of grace. It humbles me. It makes me teachable.
Today, I try to live in a way that honors the lessons, not the pain. I’ve learned that I can’t heal what I refuse to face, and I can’t move forward while dragging the past behind me like an anchor. So, I let it become my teacher instead of my tormentor.
Pain became compassion.
Shame became humility.
Regret became wisdom.
When I work with others, whether in recovery, massage, or the deeper work of presence and healing, I see the same story in different forms. We all carry something heavy. We all have moments we wish we could rewrite. The difference now is that I no longer want to escape my story. I want to understand it. I want to use it to connect, to comfort, and to remind others that they are not alone.
What once defined my suffering now defines my service. The same fire that burned me down now fuels my purpose. There’s a quiet power in owning your story, in saying: Yes, this happened. Yes, I’ve caused pain. Yes, I’ve been broken. But I’m still here, learning how to love anyway.
Healing isn’t about becoming someone new. It’s about remembering who you were before the world taught you to forget. It’s about forgiving the parts of yourself that didn’t know how to do better, until now.
The weight we carry doesn’t have to crush us.
Sometimes, it’s the very thing that teaches us how to rise.