Soulshine

There’s only one essential ingredient to being successful in life: Self-love. That’s the primary ingredient to succeeding in anything, including recovery. Since most of us with addictive personalities grew-up with little to no self-love, we often don’t know how to begin to love ourselves. And yes, it’s easier to say than do, but we can do it. We just have to choose to start rebuilding our self-love. I’ve chosen to begin the process of reclaiming my self-love by identifying my shame. Why begin with shame? Because shame is the one feeling that thoroughly destroys self-love. Shame is so devastating because it centers its warheads on who we are inherently. Shame says “you were born a mistake.” It points its nasty finger in our faces and says “you cannot be lovable because you are gay, or female, or the wrong skin-color, or born out-of-wedlock, or stupid, or ___________.” And we can all fill in the blanks with the many, many other ways in which shame has been telling us we are una...