Your Darkness Doesn’t Disqualify You

There are parts of me I used to keep locked in silence.

The failures.

The compulsions.

The rage that didn't match the smile I wore in public.

I thought those things made me unworthy of healing, success, and love.

I thought darkness meant disqualification. But I was wrong.

Shame has a clever voice. It doesn’t shout — it whispers:

“You’re too late.”

“You’re too damaged.”

“People like you don’t get to become something more.”

But here’s what I’ve learned: The most powerful transformations don’t happen in the light. They happen in the dark — in the messy, quiet places where we wrestle with our pain and choose to keep going anyway.

As I wrote The Shape of Healing, I kept circling this one truth: Your pain doesn’t make you less. It makes you real.

Here’s a line from my poem Shame’s Reflection:

“She taught me how to disappear.

I taught myself how to come back.”

That’s the heartbeat of recovery. Of midlife rebirth. Of creating something true from the mess.

You don’t have to be perfect to be powerful. You don’t have to be clean to be claimed. And you sure as hell don’t have to be light to be worthy.

💥 Things I Used to Believe Disqualified Me — and What I Know Now

I believed:

• My compulsive eating made me broken

• Divorce meant I had failed

• Wanting to be touched disqualified me from being taken seriously

• Getting older made me invisible

• Not finishing things meant I wasn't a real writer

• My anger made me unlovable

But now I know:

• Hunger is not a flaw — it’s a signal

• Failure is just a doorframe

• Desire is sacred

• Midlife is a beginning

• I am a writer — because I write

• My rage was never the enemy — silence was

You are not too late.

You are not too much.

You are not disqualified.

If you're still breathing, you're still becoming.

And that is enough.