The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

It has taken me years to acknowledge the shame I feel around body image. Progress is slow, but it adds up.

I spent most of my life ignoring and minimizing how I felt about my eczema

Perspective by
Lily contributor
July 24, 2019 at 12:16 p.m. EDT
(Connie Sun/For The Washington Post)

I spent a lot of my life ignoring and minimizing the shame I felt about my eczema. Instead, I went about life without dealing with the emotional consequences. It’s surprising how much shame around body image can affect our self-esteem, even when we know it shouldn’t.

Learning a vocabulary for how to talk about my experience of shame has been life-changing. I share this piece of my journey in the hope that, for others, it lessens the power of that which we hide and cover up.