End The Shame Game

Ever worry that you aren't "enough" just as you are? Then you need to read this guide to selfacceptance and the massively improved health status that comes along with it.

- By Kristin Canning

When Jennifer Pastiloff was eight years old, she got into a fight with her dad over smoking. He'd promised to quit his four-packs-a-day habit but wasn't following through. She flushed a bunch of his menthol cigs down the toilet. "I told him he always broke promises and I said, 'I hate you!' the way young kids do in those situations," says Jennifer. "It wouldn't have been that big of a deal, but it ended up being the last thing I said to him."

He died from a widow-maker heart attack shortly after, at just 38. "I thought I had caused the stress that killed him," she says. "I was so ashamed that I wouldn't allow myself to grieve; I thought I didn't deserve to be a person. I developed anorexia as I tried to fade away."

Jennifer eventually recovered from her eating disorder but she still carried shame from the experience and her father's death, which tanked her confidence in other aspects of her life. "I lied all the time, saying I wasn't sad about my dad, or that I was auditioning for acting roles when, really, I was only working at a restaurant. I refused to admit I had a hearing disability."

When she was 34, Jennifer had had enough and began writing in an effort to heal. To her surprise, her brutally honest essays were met with support online. "When I saw how sharing helped people, I decided I was done hiding," she says. Jennifer is now a yoga teacher and the author of On Being Human: A Memoir of Waking Up, Living Real and Listening Hard, and also leads "Shameloss" workshops on self-acceptance. "Being honest and vulnerable in spite of shame - that's my superpower," she says.