I would wake up everyday at 5am to get ready for school praying and hoping that today would be the day I fall in love with myself. I was only 12 years old. Shame was something I never understood because I grew up in Africa; there was really nothing to be ashamed of. I loved my body, my culture, and my lifestyle. My first experience with shame was when I was 10 years old. I moved to the united states one month after my 10th birthday and I was learning to adjust to the system. While learning to adjust I met my dear friend shame. My journey began the first day of middle school when all the kids laughed at my thick Liberian accent and nappy cornrows. I was so skinny my clothes could barely fit me. When I went home that day I cried and I stood in the mirror looking at myself. It was the first time in my life I actually felt ugly. The feeling continued and as the years went by my dear friend shame never left my sight. He was always there to remind me why I hated myself… By the time I was 13 years old I gained almost 60 pounds because I was tired of people telling me that I was too skinny.

By the time I was 15 I was so ashamed of my body that I stopped  hanging out with my friends. I would stay at home and wallow in self pity. I kept hearing how fat I was from every angle. People that I thought were my friends put me down and made me feel lesser than my worth. I asked my mom if there was anything I could do to lose weight apart from exercising and she smiled and said “you look perfect just the way you are.” The problem is I wasn’t looking for approval from her, I was looking for approval from my peers. People made me feel like I was so unworthy of love because of my weight. Later on that summer of 2014 I started taking diet pills. I became addicted to them, I couldn’t eat a meal without popping a pill. I started mixing the diet pills with diet tea and it was working faster just the way I wanted it to.

Two months later I lost 30 pounds! Everybody was telling me how skinny I looked and how amazing my body was, but every time I looked in the mirror all I saw was an ugly fat girl that everybody hated. So I continued popping pills ad thought it would make me better. One Saturday morning in July I was cleaning up the house. I could feel my heart beating so fast, it was beating faster than usual before I knew it I couldn’t catch my breath. I was taken into the emergency room. The doctor checked everything and couldn’t tell me what was wrong. A few hours later they confirmed that I was low on blood and also suffering from severe anxiety. I stayed to the hospital for a few more hours then left. I was given some pills to take. When I went home my thought process started to change, it took a near death experience to make me realize that I shouldn’t care what people have to say about me.

I stopped listening to people but my dear friend shame was always there making me feel unworthy. I started to azote fake confidence and before I turned 17 I was confident in my body. I stopped listening to shame and people kept wondering how I managed to do this “impossible” thing… I was able to overcome shame because I found my worth. I was introduced to Christ and since then my mindset has never been the same. I love my body not because it’s perfect but because it’s flawed. I love my scars so much I wrote an entire poem about it