Unclutter shame
Do you ever feel like the universe keeps bringing you messages that all connect one to another? Or perhaps it is just the training I am going through to become a spiritual director. (I’m in a two-year global online program brought to you by the badass nuns at the Benet Hill Monastery.)
This month’s theme is on shame. It’s not the first time I’ve learned about shame, especially through the profound work of Brené Brown.
Shame is that awful feeling that goes beyond a pricked conscience when you do something you know shouldn’t have done. Shame is much deeper than that. It says YOU ARE BAD. You are unacceptable.
Shame is especially pernicious as it severs connection. I hide from you and you from me. Hell, we try to hide from ourselves. Because, duh, I am ashamed. I am afraid that you’re going to see me pick my nose, emerge from the bathroom trailing toilet paper or get the answer to the question all wrong. All publicly.
Kids will laugh at me (oh, the trauma of school!), tight-assed old women will shake their heads at my failures and shortcomings. The young, the beautiful and the thin will sneer at me. Marketers remind me daily that I am not enough. Shame will have me shrinking and withdrawing faster than a fart ripped in a squall.
It’s so much easier to don my I-got-my-shit-together persona.
Oh my f’ing god. Can we just be real here? I don’t have my shit together. Neither do you. And the longer we keep up the pretense by our preening and posturing, the more we die inside.
Let’s unclutter shame and get real with each other. Let’s recognize that it is in our shared shortcomings we can share the human experience and ultimately learn to love ourselves and one another into wholeness.
The late John O’Donohue, put it as only he could say.
"Beauty is such an attractive and gracious force precisely because it is so close to the fractured side of experience. Beauty is the sister of all that is broken, damaged, stunted, and soiled. She will not be confined in some untouchable realm where she can enjoy a one sided perfection with no exposure to risk, doubt, and pain. Beauty dwells in the palace of broken tenderness."
