Historical Injury & The Anxiety of Defiance

A Prose Poem

Shame is not born. It is assigned.

It arrives wearing someone else’s voice, carrying someone else’s judgment, and knocking on the door of a body that never asked for it.

It does not speak in full sentences. It speaks in glances. In edits. In exclusions.

It says, “Be quiet.”

It says, “Be better.”

It says, “Be less.”

Shame is not a bruise on the ego. It is a blueprint carved into the bones.

It is the ache of being made to feel wrong before ever being known.

For some of us, shame came before we had words—passed down in the silence between generations, in the stories that weren’t told, in the pride that had to be hidden for safety’s sake.

We learned it early:

that our accents were too thick,

that our hair needed fixing,

that our names were too much,

that our brilliance had to arrive gently so it didn’t disturb the room.

Shame taught us to contort.

To smile when unseen.

To nod when interrupted.

To decorate ourselves in excellence so no one would question our right to exist.

And yet, no matter how brightly we performed,

it never felt safe enough to be whole.

Because shame is not an individual failure.

It is a system’s success.

It was taught in schoolbooks that erased us,

in dress codes that policed us,

in histories told in voices that did not sound like our own.

It was inherited, not chosen.

Absorbed, not deserved.

But here is the quiet truth:

Shame is not ours to carry.

We are not broken—we were broken open.

We were not unworthy—we were unwelcomed.

We were not invisible—we were ignored.

And so we begin the return:

To speak the language they told us to forget.

To lift our heads without apology.

To stop explaining our existence as if it were a mistake.

This is the end of shame’s inheritance.

It stops here.

We return it, not with violence, but with clarity.

We say: You may have built systems on our silence,

but we were never silent by nature, only silenced by force.

Now, we are remembering.

And remembering is a sacred act.

It is how we stitch our names back to our dignity.

It is how we call our ancestors back into the room.

It is how we say, finally and fully: There is nothing shameful about surviving.

There is nothing shameful about being.

There is nothing shameful about me.

Sometimes it’s a whisper at the edge of your voice,

a flutter in your chest before you say what must be said,

a tremor in the spine when you dare to take up space.

This is not just fear.

This is memory.

The body remembers what the history books omit

what happens when the wrong people speak too loudly,

when the right questions are asked at the wrong time,

when truth is voiced in the presence of power.

This anxiety is not irrational.

It is not weakness.

It is wisdom

passed down from generations who learned

that safety often meant silence,

that peace was the mask obedience wore,

that survival sometimes meant swallowing your own voice.

We feel it when we say no for the first time.

We feel it when we enter a room and refuse to shrink.

We feel it when we name the harm that others have learned to ignore.

It hums beneath the skin, this ancestral vigilance.

It says: Be careful.

Be nice.

Be smaller than the truth you carry.

And yet

beneath the shaking hands,

beneath the tight throat,

beneath the pulse that rises when we speak

There is a kind of courage that does not look like fearlessness.

It looks like trembling and telling the truth anyway.

It looks like staying in the room after the silence falls.

It looks like choosing clarity over comfort. Again. And again.

Anxiety is not a stop sign.

It is a signal.

It asks:

Is this fear from now, or from then?

Is it trying to protect me or remind me?

Who taught me that my power makes me unsafe?

The truth is:

To lead while carrying history is to defy more than injustice.

It is to defy conditioning.

To defy the voice carved from old survival.

The one that says: Sit down. Stay quiet. Be good.

But we are done shrinking.

Done softening the truth so it doesn’t sting.

Done apologizing for the clarity liberation demands.

Anxiety may still walk beside us.

It may rise when we speak,

tremble when we act,

ache when we choose presence over performance.

But still

we speak.

We act.

We stay.

Because this defiance is not new.

It is our inheritance.

It is our medicine.

It is our remembering.

And we are not afraid of remembering anymore.

🔳 Affirmations Inspired by

The Shame of Historical Injury, the Anxiety of Defiance, and the Longing for Recognition

🧭 I. Grounding in Self-Worth

• I am not an interruption to history—I am part of its correction.

• I am not here to prove my humanity. I embody it.

• My worth is not earned through performance—it is ancestral and inherent.

• I do not need permission to be whole.

• I carry complexity, not contradiction. I contain multitudes and still belong.

• I am not too much. I am not too loud. I am not too late.

• I am not broken—I was born into a broken narrative. I am rewriting it.

• My existence is not conditional. My presence is not a privilege. It is a right.

• I am not here to be palatable. I am here to be present.

• I do not need to disappear to be respected. I do not need to dilute to be seen.

• I belong—not despite my history, but because of it.

  
  

🧠 II. Emotional Clarity and Integrity

• What I feel is not a flaw. It is data. It is depth.

• I trust my emotional truth, even when it’s inconvenient.

• Fear does not mean stop. It means listen.

• My nervous system holds more history than any textbook.

• I am not fragile—I am finely tuned.

• I do not need to rationalize my grief. It is intelligent. It is ancient.

• I honor my anger. I listen to my longing. I protect my tenderness.

• Regulation is not repression. Feeling fully is not failing.

• I don’t bypass my emotions—I build a relationship with them.

• Emotional literacy is not a skill I perform. It is a language I reclaim.

🪞 III. Belonging and Recognition

• I deserve to be seen, not edited, not explained, but seen.

• I am not made for assimilation. I am made for embodiment.

• I do not have to translate my truth to be understood.

• Visibility should not cost me safety. Belonging should not cost me myself.

• I long for recognition because I know I am real.

• My difference is not a deficit. It is a direction.

• I will not trade dignity for approval.

• I bring my whole self into the room—no rehearsal, no revision.

• I do not exist to be digestible. I exist to be free.

• Recognition is not vanity. It is justice. It is breath. It is life.