I used to think shame was the end of the story.
The silence after the headline. The part where you disappear.
But I learned—slowly, painfully—that shame isn’t the end.
It’s the raw material.
And like any raw material, it’s messy. Sharp. Heavy.
It cuts before it teaches.
But if you stay with it—really stay with it—it starts to take shape.
The shame I carried wasn’t just about the messages I sent.
It wasn’t just about the court. Or the news articles. Or the memes.
It was the deeper stuff.
The quiet things that keep you up at night.
What kind of man had I become?
What kind of man had I been?
And what would it mean to rebuild—not from success, but from accountability?
I didn’t go on a wellness retreat.
I didn’t find God.
I found supervision reports.
Community payback tasks.
Awkward silences in therapy sessions I didn’t want to be in.
But that’s where the shape started to form.
Because healing doesn’t look like forgiveness.
It looks like repetition.
Like reading a sentence ten times before you can admit it was true.
Like sweeping a community hall floor and knowing no one will ever clap for you—and doing it anyway.
Every time I sat with my shame, I asked it a question:
What did I break?
Who did I hurt?
What can I rebuild—not for image, but for truth?
And slowly, painfully, I started to shape something out of it.
Not a new persona. Not a rebrand.
Just me—without the defence. Without the denial.
I still feel shame.
I think I always will.
But now it has a place.
It doesn’t run the show anymore.
It’s not the weight on my chest—it’s the ground I stand on when I speak.
Because I didn’t shape myself out of thin air.
I shaped myself from the things I once tried to bury.