I think the worst part of child-abuse is the story you tell yourself about yourself as a result of the abuse.

I think the worst part of child-abuse is the story you tell yourself about yourself as a result of the abuse. 10, 20, 30, 40 years later you can still be telling yourself that same story. In a way, you’ve become your own abuser because that’s all you know.

I learned as a little boy that I was ugly, worthless and a failure. It was the resounding message of my childhood and youth. When you absorb that conclusion into your core at a young age, it’s not surprising then that you go through life finding evidence for it every day, a hundred times a day. It’s not even that you really “find it,” you actually go searching for it. It’s as though it is your sealed fate, and there’s no escaping it. But there is escaping it… not all at once but in time if you’re willing to fight for it. What we believe about ourselves shapes our possibilities for being. Early in life we walk into a story not of our making. But then at some point you realize you are free to write a new one.