So shame is something that has dominated and owned my life. And there are three pivotal moments of my past that up until very recently, up until losing what I have lost, I have let direct my life. One of those moments almost ended my life. But these are three things that have brought me immense shame that I have let define me rather than meeting them, acknowledging them, and owning them instead of in reverse. Before I get into this, I want to say thank you. I uh I'm a little taken aback and overwhelmed by the amount of comments that I got in my video. I I I started making these videos to face the fears of holding on and keeping in. And I wanted to open up in hopes that other people out there uh that may be going through things and suffering or struggling or have found their way through the moments could uh resonate. I could resonate with them and help them. Little did I know that it was the other way around. You have all helped me so much and I just want to take a second to say thank you. I pinned a comment in that video. Go back and read that pinned comment. I am so appreciative and grateful. I've read every single comment, the good and the bad, and I wish I could respond personally to each and every one, but I have read them and I see them and I just want to say thank you. So, uh yeah, I want to share this. These things are things that I have never shared before. Very few people in my life know all of these things. And um I'm going to keep uh facing the fears that I have and uh talk about shame today. So I had as I'd mentioned a very abusive life and upbringing and the first thing is my father. Shame of my father. Shame of my family name. Shame of where I come from. Now, I can't get into details of a lot of the things that um happened in my life. Unfortunately, I don't really know what YouTube allows or what would strike down, but everything happened in my household in in terms of abuse, all of it. But there were two big moments in my life uh that really shifted how I felt about who I was and where I came from. And that built into the next thing that was a moment of shame which built into the next thing that really have defined my life for the past almost 40 years. So when I was young I loved bubble gum. I loved gum. I just loved any type of gum. I was the kid that you know when I was like two and three years old I would put my hand out if you were chewing gum and I would have taken it from your mouth and I would have chewed on it. I just I loved I loved gum. And um my father being an abuser um there was a moment where it was just him and I and he had asked me you know what I wanted for dinner and I was about 3 years old at this time and um I remember this moment. I remember a lot of moments unfortunately from when I was young but I had responded gum. I said I want gum and um he lost it. He lost his mind and I remember him screaming at me and smashing things and smacking his hand on the table. Anyway, we got up and he was like, "Oh, you want gum? You want gum?" So, we went to a little convenience store and he bought double mints. I I'll never forget because this was a gum that I never touched again until my early 20s. I was I stayed away from this gum. He bought four packs of double mint strips of gum. And um I remember the car ride back just sitting in silence being, you know, a little little kid. I didn't really understand what was happening. I knew he was mad. I knew I had gum, but I knew I probably shouldn't eat that gum because he was unhappy that that's what I wanted to eat for dinner. We got home and he sat me at a table and uh he basically force-fed me all of the gum. I was choking. I I have no idea how many pieces of gum I had in my mouth. And if I couldn't fit more gum in my mouth, he would force more gum in my mouth and hit me in the face while I'm crying and chewing on gum. So again, I'm I'm going to try and not to get uh too emotional here, guys. But that was one moment, you know, as a kid to look at my father who was like supposed to be my protector. Um, it's funny that was something that made me shameful of myself from a young age. And then the another final moment, this was a moment with my father again where um I I kind of stopped looking at him as my dad. And I was 6 years old at the time. And I I used to get nightmares uh as a kid. And um he did not like if you had nightmares and entered the room. And there was just a night that I had a really really bad nightmare. I couldn't stay in my room as a six-year-old. And I got up and I ran in there. And again, he freaked out, flipped out, chased me back in my room, and you know, physically, I'll just say it, like, you know, assaulted me. Um, I had like a little Fisher Price. I don't even know if Fisher Price, I still think it exists. It was a a children's toy maker. It was like a little woodworking set and there was like a little 2x4 piece of wood, a little saw. And, you know, he took that little 2x4 and he was slamming my door open and shut, open, and shut. and you know so bad in fact that I had marks everywhere I couldn't go to school for about a month and uh my mom uh felt that you know maybe I'd get taken away I don't know but you know I couldn't go to school until those those bruises went away. So those two moments in in a sea of many moments of abuse in my upbringing really rooted me in the shame of where I came from. And it put me in a place where I kind of avoided being around and having people around and having anybody come in and out of the house. Uh I didn't want people to see who my father was. that it was just I was afraid of how he would react and it and it it made me kind of sick to my stomach to think that that is where I came from and that's who I came from. So that's a moment of shame that has lived with me forever. Um as an adult I have been embarrassed about where I come from and who my family is. I legally changed my name to drop his name. I was so ashamed. But that also led into my next thing of shame. And um as sad as it is, and maybe I shouldn't be shameful of this, but this probably was the most shameful thing. And and and only two people know about this that I've actually brought this up to personally because it is a source of immense embarrassment for me. So based off of of those things, food, you know, the gum thing, my father had a lot of control issues and food was something that he controlled and I had a bad relationship with food uh with my dad and because of that and in my youth I put on a ton of weights. I put on a lot of weights. Uh at my heaviest when I was 12 years old, I got to about like 170 pounds. I would uh eat multiple meals, you know, I'd eat breakfast at my own house. I'd go to my friend's house before we caught the bus and I'd eat breakfast there, you know, trying to get snacks at recess, dunkaroos, fruit roll-ups, all these things. I was at the time, I didn't realize, but I was using food as a as a coping mechanism. I was lost at school. I was lost at home. I didn't feel safe at school. I was getting into trouble at school. When I got home, I was scared to be at home. I didn't know what would happen at home. And and looking back now, food was a crutch for me. Food was a comfort for me. And I didn't I didn't know at the time that's what it was. But I just was eating because I I wasn't allowed certain foods. I wasn't allowed many foods at home. And so when I could get something like snack-wise or or maybe unhealthy wise, I would eat it. And I would hide food. I would eat multiple times a day. I'd get up in the morning to catch the bus, ate breakfast at home, and to go meet my friend at his house a little bit early so I could eat at his house. And I never told anybody I was eating twice, but you know, I was eating, you know, twice all the time, eating twice, two breakfast, two lunch, two dinners even. And I put on a lot of weight. Um, it got to a point where I developed an eating disorder. I guess I had two eating disorders. one, which made me gain all that weight. Like I said, I got up to 170 lbs at 12 years old. And it was more of like an OCD thing more so than your typical eating disorder for like anorexia, but I lost all that weight and I got down to 65 pounds and it was in a very quick period of time. I remember I finished out my grade eight year at school and I had lost a lot of weight, but I looked healthy still. And um that summer I dropped like a ton of weight. I don't even know what I was at, but like I said, I I got down to my lowest at about 65 lbs. So imagine um where I lived at the time, junior high school was 7 to 9, high school was 10 to 12. So I was in the last year of junior high. uh entering into the same school, same teacher, same kids, but I had lost so much weight. I arrived at school and um people didn't know who I was. People thought I was a new kid and I did not have it within me to correct them. So I remember the first class going by, nobody talking to me. Like these were my friends that I saw the year before, you know, two months before, three months before, but I had lost so much weight, they didn't recognize me. And then we went to the second class on the first day, and the teacher that I had, it was a previous math teacher, he was talking, joking, looking at different kids, and he and he points at me, and he's like, "Oh, we got some new faces that I've never seen before." And uh I just remember like panicking and I could not believe what I've done. I knew I I messed up. I knew I really really really messed up. And I um put my hand up and I'm like, "Can I go to the washroom?" And I went and grabbed my stuff. And I lived close to school and I I went home. That was a very difficult year in my life. I had seizures. I had a seizure in front of the whole school. I was taken out with ambulance. It was a lot. But so, so again, out of shame and embarrassment, it led me to a point where I basically almost took my life. And to do that in such a public way, it's funny because now here I am in a public way again, but hopefully in a more positive sense. But to have that happen as a child in front of your peers, your friends, people that don't like you, um it was a lot to process and I I could get into that in another video, but that whole resolution of that moment of my life was a negative thing as well. it it's a it's a common see-through line of my life that uh anything that I have acquired or overcome has been with a lot of work and with a lot of resistance with a lot of failures. So that has loomed over my life as something that even to this day as an adult I am saddened that I did that to myself because I disliked who I was so much. I disliked what I saw. I disliked who I was. I I was willing to get to a point where I I, you know, I wasn't going to be here. And I took it all the way there. And finally, in the latter years of my teens, 17, 18, 19, obviously my father was abusive. I was getting older. There was a lot of things happening in life. And my family was moving. We had lost our home. And we were living kind of in a transition where we were living in this really not so great apartment and my father was crazy and I I was getting panicked. I did not want to be there anymore. They were moving to a totally different place, you know, very far away and I didn't want to go and continue to be in the same home as my dad. I was nervous that something would happen to me or in anger something might happen to him because of me. And I was panicking. We were poor. we didn't have much and you know I was going to go to school but I didn't have really money to live on my own and at the time I was dating somebody and um it was kind of cutting down to the wire. I felt that I was in love with this person and I was thinking like okay I can't live on my own. I can't do these things on my own but if we're together perhaps we could get like a cheap apartment. So I felt between the two of us student loans maybe a part-time job we would be able to get by. But she was religious and her family would not let her live with me unless we were married. So I was in another predicament. I basically was going to be stuck. I couldn't stay there unless I had somebody to live with. I didn't have a lot of friends. We moved around a lot. So I really didn't have anybody in my life at that time that I could have roommated with. And that was kind of even if I could have found a roommate, you know, it was short a lot. you know, I left it till the end. Um, or I would have to marry this person in order to avoid having to be with my father. So, that's what I did. At 19 years old, I got married and that was a disaster. uh it was um an individual who kind of got into a religious extremism, got uh involved with a church that at the time it was called like Fresh Fire Ministries. It was this like um church that was all about spiritual awakenings, you know, gifts and it I I don't want to get into it too much, but it it it didn't work out obviously, and it was another thing that blew up in my face. And so, for my whole life, I have let many things dominate the direction I go and the choices that I made, but they've all led from these things. ashamed of where I come from, ashamed of who I am, shame of the decisions that I've made, the mistakes that I've made, and it kind of forced me to avoid my past. These commonalities of shame and avoidance, right? I got married because I was so shameful and I was so avoidant of my home life. Now, granted, there was violence. Granted, I was very concerned because now I was an adult and I was able to maybe hold my own. I was I was nervous. Was I gonna go to jail? Was he going to go to jail? But shame and avoidance and being in a place of instability continually pushed me into unstable choices. And I think that is life. When you're starting off on a broken foundation or a toxic foundation, you're more likely to make toxic choices or move in toxic directions. And interestingly enough, in my in my 20s and 30s, I went fully the opposite. I I really tried to do everything right and make the right decisions. But again, I was leading from a place of shame, coming from a place of avoidance. And so even though I was doing the right things and making the right choices, I kept meeting resistance and I kept meeting failure because I wasn't coming from a good place. I kept coming from a dark place because I was just I didn't want to admit that that's who I was. I didn't want to admit that that's what I'd done or that's what had been done to me. I didn't want to admit these are my people. This is where I come from. This is who I am or this is who I was. and that I could be somebody different. I didn't even want to consider that. And at each juncture of my life in my 20s and my 30s, I was able to achieve things that I set out to achieve. And it was never easy. It was really hard. But something was never right. You know, I made a video about hating myself. I was never good enough for myself because I hated everything about where I came from, my past. So much shame, you know? It's like, how can I hate the roots of the tree and not hate the tree, right? They're both the same thing. They come from the same thing. And I could never connect that in my life. I could never connect that because of shame of things even outside of myself. Granted, I made some decisions in my life that hurt me, but and overall, you know, they were things outside of my control, but I I I never connected that that shame also would reflect within me. And unless I was willing to resolve that, meet that, acknowledge that, I'd never be able to let it go. And I always try to fill that emptiness and that pain by doing things. And a lot of people that come from where I come from and have gone through what I've gone through end up doing negative things and choosing negative things. I, like I said, chose positive things. But things that should be positive won't have a positive effect if not done under the right circumstances. And so no matter what I did, no matter what I achieved, no matter how far I got, I I I I could not escape it. And rather than face it, I kept seeking other things. I kept, well, I'll do more. I'll get more. I'll be more. It's, you know, we live in a day and age where it's like hustle, work hard, get in good shape, go to the gym, get girls, get a good job, learn a skill, get rich, be flashy, be whatever. Or maybe not all those things are one of those things. And even though being healthy and being successful and having a skill is not a bad thing, if they're not done in the right way, they're not going to feed you in the right way. They're not going to feed your soul in the right way. Not going to help your mind and your heart. And I and I had to lose everything. I had to lose everything to finally go and meet these things head on. I've always known they've been out there. So I am meeting them head on and I'm opening up these things and I'm putting that out there. And in this in a way makes it impossible for me to have shame because now you know at least thousands you know of people will know as well. But by making it okay, it allows me to move on from it and not have those things be in pursuit of me and control of me. And now I know maybe some people will have gone through these things. Some people may have gone through worse things, other things, but I think the sentiment is the same. How we lead and where we lead from in our lives is going to dictate the outcomes of where we land and the destinations that we get to. And even if we decide to try to make good decisions and choices, if they're fueled by negative things, I got good things, but they always still ended up bad. They always still ended up not being what they needed to be to elevate me and secure me in my life. And um this is a in a way so others maybe don't make the same mistakes or don't go and continue in their life their whole lives ignoring and being embarrassed and being ashamed of all the things that maybe didn't go the way you wanted or the mistakes you made or the things that you had no control over that defined who you were for a portion of your life. I I know this has been a secret for me and uh it has defined me in my value and my self-worth and how I moved through my life and today you know I want to do it differently. Uh again, I just want to thank you for allowing me the opportunity to share and open up. And by reading comments from other people, I hope that me sharing my shame and embarrassment is also going to allow you to find a way to heal. Uh I know I'm not alone. I have always known I'm not alone, but reading all these comments and seeing all these people have really really confirmed that we're all not alone. We're all here together and I'm I'm very grateful for that. So, until the next one, everybody.