Portrait of a Dominican American woman in front of shattered glass, golden cracks glowing through her skin, symbolizing resilience and survival after trauma.

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Golden Scars — A Whispered Survival | We Don’t Talk About That by JBE Mindful Pathways

Golden Scars — A Whispered Survival
We Don’t Talk About That | JBE Mindful Pathways

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Shame is violence wearing perfume. It doesn’t come at you screaming; it slips into your bloodstream quiet as a drug, smiling while it poisons. It teaches you to laugh when you want to cry, to say you’re fine while your insides rot. And the cruelest part? You start to believe it. You start to mistake the cage for home.

They didn’t break you — they just made you bleed for their own fear. They handed you their cowardice, wrapped it in silence, and told you it was love. They dressed their abuse in family honor, in God’s name, in law and order, and then they told you to carry it like it was your fault.

But shame has cracks. You hear it when someone’s voice shakes telling the truth. You see it when a mask slips at the dinner table. You feel it in your own chest — the scream you swallowed so many times it’s become a heartbeat.

This isn’t a story about forgiveness. This isn’t a pretty bow tied on trauma. This is a story about defiance. About naming shame out loud until it shatters. About dragging it out of your body and shoving it back into the hands of the ones who built it.

Because you were never the ruined thing. You were the proof they couldn’t destroy.

The Poison

Shame doesn’t scream — it seeps. It poisons quietly, like mold threading itself into the beams of a house. You don’t notice at first. You just breathe it in until your lungs burn, your laughter sounds hollow, your whole body carries the faint trace of rot.

I was thirteen when I learned silence could keep my mother alive. He pressed the barrel of a gun to my forehead and told me if I ever spoke, she would be next. That wasn’t metaphor. That was poison being injected straight into my bones.

And when I finally clawed my way toward the truth, my mother didn’t put her arms around me. She told me to forgive him. She told me to keep quiet — because “he’s still your father” and “the family doesn’t need to know.” Poison again, this time with my mother’s voice.

That’s what shame does: it doesn’t only invade you, it recruits others. It convinces the world to hand you silence as medicine when it’s really more venom. It teaches you that survival means swallowing it down, drop by drop, until you can’t tell where their violence ends and your body begins.

But silence is not survival. Silence is suffocation dressed as obedience. And still — I need you to hear this — you survived. You survived what you should never have had to. That doesn’t make you weak. That makes you relentless.

Maybe you coped in ways the world would rather shame than understand. Maybe you drank until you couldn’t feel. Maybe you gave your body away because it was the only currency you thought you had left. Maybe you shut down, went quiet, disappeared inside yourself. Whatever you did — it was survival. It was you finding a way to live one more day. And that counts. That matters.

The poison was never yours. The shame never belonged to you. Every scar you carry is a record of someone else’s failure to love you right — not proof that you’re broken beyond repair.

So let me say it plain: you are not ruined. You never were. And if all you can do today is sit here and feel the sting of recognition in your chest, that is enough. That’s more than enough.

Because enough is survival. And survival itself is defiance.

You are living proof the poison didn’t win. That the silence didn’t swallow you whole. And when shame claws back — because it will — meet it with this truth: you are still here.

And that is the loudest answer you’ll ever need to give.

The Inheritance

Shame is rarely born in isolation. It’s passed down, like a family heirloom no one asked for. A necklace made of thorns, handed from one trembling hand to the next.

In my house, silence was stitched into the walls. It wasn’t just my father’s violence or my mother’s warning to “forgive and forget.” It was the way neighbors never asked questions, the way aunts and uncles smiled tight and looked away, the way entire cultures treat the body like a battlefield that must never be spoken of.

That’s the inheritance: generations teaching us that to be good, to be loved, is to keep quiet. To dress modestly. To stay small. To smile when you want to scream. The unspoken rules get passed at dinner tables, in pews, in classrooms, in whispered advice between mothers and daughters: don’t bring shame on this family, on this church, on this community.

But here’s the truth no one tells you: shame is not protection. It’s a muzzle. And when we inherit it, we don’t just carry our own silence — we carry theirs. Our mothers’ silences. Our grandmothers’. Our whole bloodline’s unscreamed screams.

That’s why shame feels heavier than any one body can bear. Because it isn’t just yours. It’s centuries of girls being told their worth hangs on keeping quiet about what was done to them. It’s boys told their tears make them weak, so they choke them down until rage is the only language left. It’s whole communities policing each other into silence, afraid that truth might unravel the pretty picture they paint for the world.

But an inheritance isn’t destiny. You can put the heirloom down. You can say: I won’t carry this anymore. You can break the chain.

That’s what terrifies the ones who rely on silence most — not just the shamers, but the institutions that protect them. Because if one of us speaks, it creates cracks in the wall. If enough of us refuse to keep inheriting the shame, the wall doesn’t just crack — it collapses.

And when it does, the sound won’t be quiet. It will echo. It will remind every silenced throat that the inheritance ends here.

The Masks of Shamers

Shamers don’t usually come at you with fangs bared. They come with masks. Masks that make them look like fathers, like mothers, like teachers, pastors, bosses, protectors. Masks that smell like authority and sound like morality.

The abuser says, this is love. The enabler says, don’t ruin the family. The institution says, forgive, forget, move on — for the sake of honor, for the sake of God, for the sake of peace.

Each mask is a performance, a shield. Behind it is fear — fear of losing control, fear of exposure, fear of their own rot being dragged into the light. So they build these disguises and force us to play along. Because if the mask holds, the lie holds. And if the lie holds, they never have to face themselves.

But masks slip. You notice it in the way your father’s “discipline” feels more like rage. In the way your mother’s “forgiveness” feels more like betrayal. In the way your community’s “morality” is selective — quick to condemn you, slow to hold him accountable.

That’s the cruelty of the masks: they don’t just hide the shamers. They force us to wear them too. We smile through the family dinner, laugh at the joke, sing the hymn, bow our heads. We put on the mask of silence because taking it off would mean breaking the whole performance — and breaking it would mean we’d finally be seen, raw and unfiltered.

Shamers depend on those masks like oxygen. Without them, their power crumbles. Because stripped bare, the abuser is just a coward. The enabler is just afraid. The institution is just another machine built on control.

And the moment we start naming the masks, pointing at them, tearing them off one by one — their game is up. That’s when the shame boomerangs back to where it always belonged: not on the broken child, not on the silenced survivor, but on the ones who built their thrones out of our silence.

Part A — The Weight of Belief

You know what the cruelest mask is? The one that stares you down and says, prove it. The mask that tilts its head, folds its arms, and makes you bleed your story a hundred times just to be told you imagined it.

That’s the mask that breaks you twice. Once when it happened. And again when you dared to speak.

You go to the police, they ask why you showered. You go to your family, they ask why you waited. You go to the so-called protectors, and they ask what you wore, how loud you screamed, if maybe you led him on.

They’re not searching for truth. They’re searching for escape routes — ways to protect the mask, not you. Because if they admit your pain is real, then the mask crumbles. Then they’d have to do something.

So they hide behind procedure. Behind honor. Behind family. Behind God. Every excuse is just another layer of costume, another way to keep the lie intact.

But let’s rip it bare: disbelief is not doubt. Disbelief is complicity. Disbelief is violence with a clean face. And the moment you call it out, the mask slips. The coward shows.

Part B — The Unmasking

Here’s the thing about masks: once they slip, you can never unsee what’s underneath. And underneath is never noble. Underneath is rot. Underneath is the stink of fear and cowardice dressed up as power.

Take off the mask of the father, and you see a man who called his violence “discipline” because he couldn’t control his rage. Take off the mask of the mother, and you see a woman who called her silence “forgiveness” because she couldn’t stomach the truth. Take off the mask of the church, and you see an institution that calls its cover-ups “grace” because it fears losing power more than it fears losing children.

And the mask of the law? That one is the ugliest. It smiles with procedure and asks you for evidence — as if trauma leaves neat receipts. As if your word, your pain, your scarred body, your shaking voice, isn’t enough. They want you bloodied and broken, standing with your wounds still fresh, before they’ll even glance your way. If you scrubbed yourself clean, if you tried to feel human again, if you tried to survive on your own terms — suddenly you’re not credible. Suddenly, you don’t count.

That disbelief is a violence all its own. Every time someone says “Are you sure?” they might as well be holding the abuser’s hand. Every time someone says “Don’t ruin the family” they are laying bricks on your cage. And every time someone whispers “please behave” — what they really mean is don’t speak, don’t embarrass us, don’t rip the mask off in public. Those two words are a leash. Not for your manners, but for your truth.

This is how shamers survive: not only through their acts, but through the armies of enablers who hold the mask in place. Families, communities, entire systems — built on keeping you silent. Built on protecting reputations. Built on shoving your body, your pain, your truth under the rug and pretending it never existed.

But what happens when we stop playing along? When we refuse the mask they hand us? When we tear it from their faces and say, “Here. This is who you are. Not protector. Not priest. Not mother. Not cop. Coward. Enabler. Liar.”

The glass doesn’t just crack. It shatters. The whole performance collapses. And for once, it’s them who are left exposed, scrambling, naked in their shame.

Because that’s the part they never tell you: shame doesn’t die. It only transfers. And the moment you name it, the moment you say, this was never mine to carry — it boomerangs back to its rightful owner.

And without their masks, without their silence, without our compliance, they can’t breathe.

The Masks of the Shamed

Here’s the truth most people don’t want to admit: the shamed wear masks too. Sometimes more masks than the shamers themselves.

Shame doesn’t just chain you; it costumes you. It tells you, hide this, bury that, wear something the world will accept. So you put on a smile that doesn’t reach your eyes. You play the “good girl” who forgave, the “strong one” who says nothing ever happened, or the “wild one” who doesn’t care who touches them.

And here’s the part that stings: some of us get comfortable inside those masks. We sit in shame because it’s familiar. Because it’s what we know. Even when hands reach down to pull us up, even when doors open, even when love is offered — we crawl back into the cage. Because freedom feels scarier than the prison we’ve learned to decorate.

That’s not weakness. That’s survival logic twisted by trauma. Shame convinces you that the mask is safer than your bare face. That pretending you’re okay is better than being seen shaking. That pushing people away will hurt less than letting them close enough to betray you.

But the mask doesn’t protect you. It suffocates you. Every day you wear it, it digs deeper, until you start believing the lie it represents. That’s why we have to talk about these masks — not to judge the ones wearing them, but to name them. Because what we name, we can eventually lay down.

Part A — The Mask of Toughness

“You don’t know me.”
That’s the anthem. The glare, the slam of the door, the don’t-fuck-with-me posture. It looks like anger, but underneath it’s fear. The mask of toughness is born from the same place as silence: survival.

When you’ve been hurt, when you’ve been betrayed, when the people who were supposed to protect you handed you over to wolves, softness feels like a liability. So you build armor out of attitude. You curse loud. You walk sharp. You puff your chest, roll your eyes, cut people down before they can cut you first.

But here’s the thing: that armor is heavy. And it’s lonely. The mask of toughness keeps danger at bay, sure — but it keeps love out too. It tells the world, I don’t need you. When inside, the truth is I am terrified you’ll leave if I let you in.

And it works — until it doesn’t. Because no matter how thick the armor, the hurt leaks through. The sleepless nights, the spirals, the panic when someone touches too close. Toughness can silence the world, but it can’t silence your own body.

That mask doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means you learned how to survive in a world that taught you love was dangerous. But survival isn’t the same as living. And toughness, no matter how sharp, will never heal the wound it was built to hide.

Part B — The Mask of Cleanliness

Some masks don’t snarl. They shine. They glimmer like polished glass, like a spotless kitchen, like a carefully posed family photo. The mask of cleanliness doesn’t scream stay away — it whispers see me as pure, untouched, perfect.

For some of us, shame doesn’t turn us hard, it turns us into erasers. We scrub our skin raw in the shower, desperate to wash off what happened. We overperform goodness, politeness, holiness. We dress ourselves in perfection because deep down, we’re convinced if anyone sees the stain, they’ll see the “truth” we were taught: that we’re dirty. That we’re ruined.

But here’s the cruelty: no matter how much you scrub, the feeling never leaves. No matter how clean the house, no matter how flawless the makeup, no matter how tightly the smile is pinned on your face, the rot you’re running from still hums under your skin. And the more perfect you look, the more invisible your pain becomes.

The mask of cleanliness is dangerous because it wins applause. People point and say, “Look how well she’s doing.” They clap for the white picket fence, the neat children, the curated Instagram life. But what they don’t see are the 2am breakdowns, the whispers in the mirror: If I can just be good enough, maybe I’ll finally feel clean.

The mask demands impossible things: never slip, never spill, never let the stain show. And when it cracks — because it always cracks — the shame doubles. Not only do you feel “dirty” for what was done to you, now you feel like a fraud for pretending it didn’t touch you.

But here’s the truth the mask hides: you were never dirty. You were never ruined. What was done to you doesn’t make you impure. Scrubbing and smiling and perfecting will never erase the memory, because the memory was never yours to erase. It was theirs to own — the ones who hurt you.

The mask of cleanliness is seductive because it feels safer to perform purity than to admit you were violated. But the performance is just another prison. And the moment you stop performing — the moment you let the mask drop and say, I don’t have to be spotless to be worthy — that’s when the shame starts to lose its grip.

Because healing doesn’t come from scrubbing yourself until you bleed. It comes from remembering: you were always clean. Always enough. Always worthy of being seen exactly as you are.

Part C — The Mask of Numbness

Not every mask looks like armor or polish. Some masks are made of nothing at all. Blankness. Silence. The flat stare of someone who has learned that feeling is a luxury they can’t afford.

The mask of numbness doesn’t shout or shine — it erases. It’s the empty eyes at the dinner table, the “I’m fine” delivered in a monotone, the body that moves through life like it’s running on autopilot. On the outside, it looks like composure. On the inside, it’s a frozen battlefield.

For some survivors, shutting down wasn’t a choice. It was survival. When the pain was too much, when the terror was too sharp, the body learned to switch off. To disappear. To ghost itself from its own skin. It’s a trick that keeps you alive in the moment. But years later, it keeps you half-dead.

The mask of numbness is praised too. People call you “strong” because you don’t cry. They call you “resilient” because you don’t break. They don’t see that the reason you don’t break is because you already went silent inside. They mistake absence for strength. They clap for a ghost.

But numbness carries its own poison. You can’t feel the terror, but you also can’t feel the joy. You can’t touch the pain, but you also can’t touch the love. You start to wonder if maybe you’re not even human anymore — just a shadow walking in your own life.

The danger of this mask is that it convinces you that you don’t need anyone. That you’re safer alone. That if you don’t feel, you can’t be hurt again. But the truth is, the numbness itself hurts. It corrodes from the inside out.

And here’s the secret the mask of numbness tries to hide: the fact that the feelings are still there. They didn’t die. They’re buried, waiting, trembling in the dark, desperate to be let out. And yes — when they come back, it will ache. It will feel like breaking all over again. But it won’t destroy you. Feeling again is not weakness. It’s resurrection.

Because numbness is not peace. It’s pause. And you don’t have to stay paused forever.

The Cracks in the Mask

Masks don’t hold forever. You can only rehearse the smile so many times before your jaw aches. You can only nod through so many lies before your neck stiffens. Pressure always finds its way out.

Sometimes the crack looks like numbness. A body that shuts down so it won’t have to feel. You pour the cereal, pack the lunches, drive to work, answer calls, wash the dishes — and nobody notices you’re running on empty, hollowed out so the memories don’t cut through. Sometimes it’s a sudden snap. You’re correcting your kid and halfway through the words, your voice breaks because you’re not talking to them anymore — you’re yelling at ghosts. Or you’re folding laundry and a shirt smells like him, and suddenly you’re not in your own house anymore. It doesn’t take a scream in the pillow. It can be a tremor in your hands. A pause too long. A silence you can’t swallow down. That’s how the cracks start.

But cracks aren’t just for the shamed. Shamers bleed too, though they try to patch it over with power. The father who beats his child is terrified of being seen as weak. The mother who silences her daughter is terrified of losing the illusion of family honor. The racist who sneers at difference is terrified of facing his own smallness. Even the man who destroys others is often driven by the shame of his own emptiness.

Here’s the cruel symmetry: both masks are built on fear. The shamed fear what people will think of them — that they’ll be called dirty, broken, complicit. The shamers fear being seen for who they really are — cowardly, cruel, hollow. One wears the mask to hide wounds. The other wears the mask to hide rot. But both are bound by the same poison: shame rooted in fear.

And once a crack forms, it spreads. A numb survivor suddenly speaks. A violent man suddenly slips, his rage too naked to disguise. One fissure becomes two. One tremor becomes an earthquake. And once the mask shatters, there’s no putting it back together.

You want jaw-dropping? Here’s the truth: cracks don’t just leak, they spill. They spill the things nobody wants to hear. The daughter saying, he touched me. The mother saying, I knew, but I was too afraid to stop it. The man screaming into his hands because the rage he threw at everyone else finally ricocheted back and crushed him. The community whispering in kitchens about the priest, about the uncle, about the cop — but never daring to say it out loud, because to speak it would be to torch their own illusions.

Cracks expose the filth underneath the wallpaper. The bruises under the long sleeves. The truth that every family barbecue, every church sermon, every perfect Christmas card has a shadow nobody wants photographed. You think silence keeps the family together? No. Silence keeps the abuse alive. You think denying it makes it disappear? No. Denial is just a breeding ground — for rot, for rage, for repetition.

And let’s say the ugliest part plain: every shamer knows their mask will slip one day. That’s why they double down. That’s why the uncle at the table smirks louder when you go quiet. That’s why the cop rolls his eyes when you say you were hurt. That’s why your mother hisses please behave when company is over — because she knows if you ever tell the uncut version, her mask cracks with yours. Their greatest terror isn’t your pain. It’s exposure.

The cracks scare them because cracks are contagious. One confession sparks another. One breakdown gives another woman permission to scream too. One survivor’s raw truth is enough to tilt the whole damn house of cards. That’s why they guard silence with threats, with shame, with every mask they can find. Because once the silence breaks, once the glass shatters — it’s over for them.

The Breaking of the Mirror

You are not your shame. You’re not what your father did. You’re not your mother’s silence. You’re not the lies your family spun about you to keep the peace. Fuck that peace. It was never peace — it was a cover-up.

You are the person who survives when nobody thinks you will. You are the one who still laughs, still sings, still throws your hips to the beat even when the world told you to sit down and shut up. That’s you. Not their version. Not their mask.

And don’t ever forget this: they came for you because they saw your light. They smelled it. Shamers don’t waste their poison on the empty. They go after the ones with fire in their bones. They wanted it. They couldn’t grow it, so they tried to steal it. They tried to stomp it out. They tried to wear it like a mask and call it theirs.

They failed. You’re still here.

So let me make it plain: you’re not dirty. You’re not broken. You’re not complicit. You’re not ruined.
You’re alive. And every breath you take is proof they didn’t win.

You want permission? Take it. Say it out loud if you have to: I fucking give myself permission to be me. Permission to love myself, scars and all. Permission to laugh too loud. Permission to cry when I damn well need to. Permission to take up space they told me I didn’t deserve.

Stop waiting for them to call you worthy. They never will. Worth was never theirs to give you. It was always yours.

So smash the mirror. Shatter it. The fake reflection that told you you were too much, too dirty, too broken? Let it bleed out in shards. Step over it barefoot. Let it cut. You’ll heal.

Because here’s the truth:
You were never the ruin.
You were always the threat.

Lean into the light—resources for the journey forward

You’re not carrying this alone, even in the silence. If you need it, here are places survivors trust:

(These are global or U.S.-based resources; if you’re outside those areas, the RAINN link can guide you to local support.)

With grace, grit, and a love that refuses to quit.
Keep showing up—even when it feels like no one’s listening.
Your voice is powerful. Your story is breaking chains.
From one storm survivor to another—

With strength and softness,
~ JBE Mindful Pathways
Wellness Advocate | Writer | Mother | Still Learning, Always Loving

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