Whisper #4When Fire Meets Shadow

Last week, I posed a quiet ultimatum:

Achieve your goals, or wake up in love with yourself.

You can find it here if you missed it.

This week, we dive deeper.

Because something about that whisper didn’t sit right with me.

So I sat with it. And then it hit me:

If you ask anyone, “Do you love yourself?”

Most people say yes, unless they’re drowning in grief or depression.

But my dear reader

Who exactly do you love?

The successful you?

The one who’s surrounded by love?

The one that looks good in the mirror?

The one that gets all the attention when they walk into a room?

I don’t say this to question your love.

I say it to shed light on the unthought known behind our declarations of self-love.

Because if the world gets all of you,

and you don’t,

that isn’t love.

That’s performance.

A beautifully wrapped mask with no one left behind it.

My invitation today is simple:

Unclench your jaw.

Relax your shoulders.

Breathe.

It’s only a whisper.

---

From the age of five, I practiced martial arts.

What was supposed to build strength became a quiet hell.

I was the only kid in my classroom who practiced Karate.

Most boys loved football.

I didn’t.

I carried an extra backpack every day with my kimono.

At first, I thought it made me special.

But then someone had an idea:

“If we beat up the karate kid, no one can question our strength.”

And so it began.

Every day after school, I was cornered.

My bag stolen.

My kimono thrown in the dirt.

Sometimes they fought me one by one.

Sometimes in groups.

Sometimes my seniors saved me.

Most days, they didn’t.

Then I’d go straight to training, learning how to defend myself while still carrying bruises I couldn’t explain.

Over time, I developed a sixth sense.

I could smell danger before it arrived.

I learned to flee strategically,

to clench my jaw,

to never cry, even when surrounded by 8 legs kicking me like a sandbag.

In the mornings, I’d stare at the clock, counting the hours until I could go home.

Back then, it wasn’t called anxiety. It was “just kids playing.”

I was the martial artist who couldn't defend himself.

Who got beanten up on daily basis.

---

To this day, most of my friends don’t know I practiced Karate for 17 years.

That I competed nationally.

That the martial artist in me was born in survival, and raised in silence.

I remember that boy.

Curled on the ground.

Guarding his face.

Wondering why no one came.

Wondering what he did wrong.

At night, I prayed to become Bruce Lee.

Not to be famous.

But to never feel that helpless again.

That’s how you build an angry yet fragile boy.

One who wakes up every day asking the same question:

Why me?

Eventually, I buried that part of me.

Shame rooted itself in my heart, and I grew a new identity to cover it.

Shame turned into anger.

Anger turned into a performance of strength.

That performance became my shield.

Passive-aggressiveness.

Cutting words.

A sharp mental edge I used to shake others’ confidence before they had a chance to swing.

I thought I was strong.

I didn’t know back then I was just defending a wound I had forgotten how to name.

Can I say I loved myself back then?

Maybe.

But what about that boy?

---

For years, I couldn’t even look at him in my memory.

Until one day, everything collapsed.

The goals.

The strength.

The identity I’d built to stay safe.

I had to sit with him again. The boy I left behind.

I listened—finally—to what he had to say.

I let him cry.

I let me cry.

And in that moment, for the first time,

I realized the shame wasn’t mine to carry.

That was the turning point.

The beginning of return.

Not to an image of strength, but to a truth that could hold me.

---

Loving the lovable parts is easy.

Loving your achievements, your light, your discipline, that’s not hard.

But what about the part of you you skip in old photos?

The one you hide from the world?

The version you buried so deeply you forgot it even existed?

That’s where the real love lives.

Because self-love isn’t a performance.

It’s not a concept.

It’s not saying “I’m kind” while betraying your boundaries.

It’s not smiling when life slaps you and pretending it didn’t hurt.

That silence?

That was the real betrayal.

---

We all build layers to survive, layers that become personas.

Personas that chase success to bury shame.

Personas that set goals we swear are soul-led, when in truth, they’re just echoes of the pain we never grieved.

If your self-love is tied to titles, achievements, or being the “nice one”,

That’s not love. That’s a strategy.

As Brené Brown puts it:

When we bury our story, the shame metastasizes.

If you find yourself triggered, controlling, overly agreeable, or exhausted by people-pleasing.

it’s not because you’re broken.

It’s because part of you still believes that if you show the whole truth, you’ll be left.

But here’s the paradox:

The more you abandon yourself for others, the more you’ll fear others will abandon you.

And this is where Sacred Selfishness comes in.

---

Not the ego-driven, arrogant kind.

Not the “I don’t care about anyone” kind.

But the kind Osho speaks of when he says:

Only a person who loves himself can love others.

The kind of selfishness that says:

Before I give you all of me, > I must return to the parts of me I left behind.

You cannot be in two places at once.

You cannot fully love others while abandoning yourself, just as you cannot tend to a wound while pretending it doesn’t exist.

To meet your shadow, you must become temporarily unavailable to the outside world.

To set a boundary, you must risk being misunderstood.

And yes, you will feel guilt.

But guilt is not always a sign you’re doing something wrong.

Sometimes it’s a sign you’re doing something new.

Sometimes it’s proof you’re finally choosing yourself for the first time.

---

This is a journey.

A peeling away.

An act of trust

between you

and the child you abandoned.

Because you’re not here to be agreeable.

You’re not here to perform worth.

You’re here to return,

whole, unhidden, unashamed.

So my dear reader, the next time you say you love yourself

Don’t call it love until you’ve made peace with the parts you prayed no one would ever see.

Until next time,

Allow yourself the space,

choose gently.

Choose truly.

Choose you.