Subject: The smell of shame Last time, I wrote about being bad at something—and about how the discomfort of being bad is part of growth. If you haven’t read it yet, that piece lives in the archive here: [[26-1-26]] In Season 4, Episode 3 (“The Smell from Hell”) of TLC’s *My Feet Are Killing Me*—a medical reality show about painful and complex foot issues—a woman comes in to talk about a smell coming from her left foot. Here’s a clip:  She was born with a deformity that made walking painful. Surgery helped, but not enough; she still couldn’t walk without pain, so she wore a brace. Then she had a child, and slowly stopped taking the brace off at all. She says she sleeps with it on. Showers with it on. She hasn’t even *seen* her foot in two years. The doctor is baffled—almost judgmental—that she would ignore the pain, ignore the smell, and refuse to look. When I watched it, it made complete sense. There’s a very natural, almost [[Default setting|default behavior]] in all of us: when something about ourselves feels vulnerable, we want to cover it. And covering isn’t always bad. We cover wounds to prevent infection, and we cover intimate details with strangers because not everything needs to be visible. In her case, the brace was practical—it helped her walk. But it also did something else: it hid the deformity. It kept it out of sight, even from her. It let her pretend she wasn’t different. Each of us has our own differences—the quirks, the extra care we need, the things we don’t want others to see. Covering them can feel protective. But there’s a word for what happens when we *refuse* to look at them at all. That word is shame. Shame isn’t always about something we did. Sometimes it’s about something we are. Sometimes it’s about being different, or a mistake, or a history, or a part of ourselves that feels unsafe in the light. And the thing about shame is that it *seems* like it goes away when we ignore it. But it doesn’t. It rots. It festers. It becomes the smell from hell. From the outside, other people’s shame can look strange. What they’re ashamed of might not feel shameful to us at all. That’s what the doctor couldn’t understand. But that outside view can also be healing. One way to loosen shame is to let someone else see it. To say it out loud. To let another person respond with, “Oh. That’s it? There’s no reason to hide that.” Not because the thing is trivial—but because it doesn’t deserve exile. Shame shrinks when it’s exposed in the right environment. So here’s the invitation: What are you ashamed of? What part of you have you been keeping covered? What would it look like to let it breathe—to show it to yourself, to someone you trust, to the light? It doesn’t have to be your whole story. Just one honest moment. Just enough to stop the rot.