04/05/2026
I’ll never forget the first time my daughter walked into a church and saw a detailed statue of Jesus - bloody, nails in his hands and feet, thorns digging into his head, displayed on a cross.
We were at this huge event center for a wedding and she had never been exposed to such brutality. I hadn’t even seen it yet and turned around to see her eyes bulging and glued to the statue in horror.
The memory stuck with me bc in that moment I realized what I had protected her from. She felt so uncomfortable she begged me to leave the building. We turned around and walked out.
Can you imagine if I had pointed to that statue in that moment and said “that happened to him because of us. To save us from our own sins”. Her young brain would have looked back at the gruesome scene, felt the horror she was already experiencing, and then logged it with “because of me”.
THAT is psychological wiring that impacts a child for the rest of their lives (unless they choose to rewire it at some point). It would have been the first time she felt and OWNED immense shame. Which trickles into our subconscious and dictates what we tolerate for the rest of our lives.
Boundaries being crossed, acceptance of abuse, resistance to trust ourselves, shame for existing, disconnection from intuition, avoidance of goal fulfillment and even self hatred - just a FEW of the side effects of immense shame being instilled at young ages.