FUCK SHAME.
Shame,
I know your name.
You have dressed yourself
as humility.
As goodness.
As politeness.
As morality.
As spirituality.
As being…
“appropriate.”
You have convinced whole generations
to apologise
for their laughter.
Their grief.
Their hunger.
Their brilliance.
Their bodies.
Their tenderness.
Their rage.
Their desire.
Their voice.
You taught us
to edit ourselves
before we were even fully spoken.
You whispered…
“Don’t let them see.”
So we folded.
Smaller.
Quieter.
Kinder to everyone
except ourselves.
We called it maturity.
We called it being the bigger person.
We called it healing.
We called it fitting in.
We called it survival.
We called it adulthood.
We called it love.
We gave beautiful names
to the slow disappearance
of ourselves.
Until one day
we looked in the mirror
and mistook
our own absence
for peace.
…
Shame,
I know where you came from.
You were never born inside me.
You arrived
in a look.
A laugh.
A slammed door.
A silence.
A sermon.
A classroom.
A bedroom.
A family table.
A culture.
A religion.
A society
terrified
of people
who know
who they are.
You arrived
after violation.
After betrayal.
After abandonment.
After being touched
without reverence.
After being spoken to
without love.
After being told
my needs
were too much.
My tears
were manipulation.
My anger
was dangerous.
My joy
was embarrassing.
My desire
was something
to hide.
Shame is what happens
when someone hands you
the consequences
of their actions…
and somehow
you spend years
believing
they belong to you.
No more.
Today,
I refuse
to kneel
before an illusion.
Shame,
you are not truth.
You are fear
wearing sacred robes.
You are inherited silence
passed from trembling hands
into innocent hearts.
And I…
I refuse
to pass you on.
I invoke
every part of me
I was taught to hide.
The loud woman.
The sensual woman.
The grieving woman.
The joyful woman.
The furious woman.
The holy woman.
The impossible woman.
Come home.
Every exiled piece.
Every abandoned prayer.
Every dream
buried
before it could breathe.
Every word
swallowed.
Every boundary
dissolved.
Every desire
buried alive.
Every inch of my body
that forgot
it was once innocent.
Return.
Return.
Return.
I am no longer interested
in being acceptable.
I am interested
in being
undeniably alive.
Society profits
from people
who are ashamed.
Ashamed people
buy approval.
Buy beauty.
Buy certainty.
Buy belonging.
Buy permission.
A human
who remembers
their own worth
becomes
beautifully difficult
to manipulate.
Shame…
you were never
my identity.
You were simply
the last lie
I agreed
to carry.
Today,
I remember
who the fuck
I am.
Ami ❤️🔥💋
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Ami, “We gave beautiful names to the slow disappearance of ourselves” reveals how shame can borrow the language of virtue until self-erasure feels like maturity, goodness, or love. Your repeated “Return” changes the poem from indictment into summons, calling each exiled part back into the body that learned to survive by folding smaller. The final remembering carries spiritual force: worth becomes difficult to manipulate once a person stops outsourcing permission for her own aliveness. Thank you for writing reclamation as a homecoming fierce enough to break inheritance before it reaches another generation.
The prim and proper mothers would warn us not to be ourselves. I found myself in the company of women who defied decorum