Naming and Releasing Shame

Dear friends,

In the second edition of Cards for Remembering, one of the new cards reads, "I practice naming and releasing shame." Despite having created it, it's not a card I enjoy encountering. Most often, I take some deep breaths, preparing myself for the work ahead. 

During my 50 days of birthday celebration, a friend used Cards for Remembering to do a reading for me: 

I treat my fear, anger, anxiety, and overwhelm with care and I ask for help when I struggle to do it myself. 

I accept the messy, beautiful flow of LIFE. 

I practice naming and releasing shame. 

To share it with me, she made a photo puzzle at a nearby Walgreens. I picked up the reading/puzzle just after a really difficult meeting that left me feeling demoralized and, quite frankly, ashamed. I was fighting tears when I walked into Walgreens.

To receive these cards in this way brought on a slew of emotions. I was grateful for the unique presentation of the reading- my predicament definitely felt puzzling! I felt self-conscious because these cards touched on exactly what I was experiencing and I wasn't too keen on others seeing those difficult emotions and knowing their source. I was relieved for the validation of my experience.   

Shame is a sneaky bugger, often masquerading as or hiding behind other emotions. Shame may forcefully or subtly appear in messages of "how dare you," "should," "have to," "supposed to," "shouldn't," "can't." We might respond to shame with avoidance, denial, or projection in order to shield ourselves from the pain of shame. 

What would our world look like if we grew our capacity to name and release shame?

I was recently at a presentation in which Hannah Drake, author/activist/co-founder of the (Un)Known Project, was talking about the importance of uncovering and grappling with our history, in this case, personal and collective ties to slavery. She said something that wasn't new, but still really struck a chord: "Shame doesn't set us free. The truth sets us free."

Knowing or discovering certain truths (whether personal or collective) may elicit shame. If we don't allow the shame to the surface, it festers within us and will likely either come out in unexpected and damaging ways or erode us from the inside out, also causing harm. 

Unfortunately, shame (and its close counterpart blame) is baked into the dominant cultural framework. It's hard to get away from the finger-wagging judgments. We may even hold a belief that shaming someone (including ourselves) can bring change. We sometimes confuse shaming with holding someone accountability. They're not the same.

Naming and releasing shame is a counter-cultural and liberatory act. It's also uncomfortable, sometimes reeeeeeeeeeeally uncomfortable. But no one ever said growth and healing were comfortable.

A persistent self-judgment I have worked with over many years relates to my ability to create and maintain order. To the best of my knowledge, no one has rejected me because my desk, my office, my house are messy and sometimes dirty. Even so, while I work in the realms of emotional messes and creative messes and feel (mostly) comfortable sharing those spaces with others, I am not keen on allowing people to see my physical messes. The cultural assumptions and judgments about people who can't or don't maintain orderly spaces don't help. In this, I've been working to release the shame and practice self-compassion. 

I know I'm making progress because recently I shared the following on Facebook: 

Dear Louisville friends- you may or may not know that, while I am skilled in many ways, creating & maintaining physical order & cleanliness isn’t my great strength. When life is full and/or when I’m stressed, I have even less capacity for it.

My hope was to have my house & yard cleared & cleaned out by my birthday. Life has been so full that that won’t happen and I’m ok with that.

However, I do want to do this work & am wondering who I know who LOVES to organize & clean (and/or work in the yard) & who has capacity & willingness to share 1-2 hours with me in March or April & can do so with the awareness that getting into my physical mess with someone else feels scarier to me than some circumstances in which I am in actual physical danger.

I am putting the request on FB because the work is big &, I believe, easiest when shared. Also I know y’all love me and that’ll be true whether I can keep my house & yard clean or not.

Respond if sharing time in this way would bring you joy- and LMK if there are particular cleaning/organizing tasks you especially love.

People I know well and some I've never met in person responded both with messages of solidarity ("I have the same struggle") and offers to help me. The outpouring of love was beautiful. Though I've barely started the actual cleaning and organizing work, I feel confident I now have the support I'll need to do it. That wouldn't have happened if I hadn't taken the risk of naming my messy truth. 

I realize that there are truths much more painful and riskier to name than the one above. So again I ask: 

What would our world look like if we grew our capacity to name and release shame?

Can we practice doing so more in our relationships of trust and care?

Can we step into courage to do so in more public ways and also honor those who speak difficult truths? 

What do you think?

I'd love to know.  

~~~

It is thanks to Compassionate Communication, that I am able to name my difficult truths without collapsing into puddles of shame. This is why I love sharing it. Starting tomorrow, March 9, my 4-week online Compassionate Communication class, Meeting in the Field of Connection, begins. There are still spots open. Come join us!


Also my two birthday offers are happening through this Saturday, March 11:
Offer 1: Buy two 2nd edition Cards for Remembering Decks, get a third for 50% off- that's $24 in savings! Go here and use the coupon code BIRTHDAY when you check out. Or come see me at Saturdays with Spirit this Saturday!

Offer 2: OR when you spend $40 or more on decks, prints, and/or original art, use the code BDAYFREESHIP to get, you guessed it, free delivery or shipping. All of my available art isn't up on the page; you can also see some of it on Instagram or Facebook. 

I also have this request: If you have taken a workshop or class that has been valuable to you, if you have a Cards for Remembering deck that gives you just the messages you need, if you have a Heart Portrait or Heart Sketch that you love and that loves you, if my writing speaks to you, please tell someone(s) about my work- forward this email, share my Facebook or Instagram pages, or tell them in a good ol' regular conversation. Thank you so much for considering this request!  

In gratitude, 
Cory

Commitment

A week ago at about the time I am starting to write this post, I was lying on the ground by a lake, looking up at a sky so unpolluted by human-made light that I could see the Milky Way and constellations whose names I’ve long forgotten.  I breathed in fresh air and listened to the night sounds that tonight enter my home through blissfully open windows.

A week ago I was at camp. Camp GLP (Good Life Project), a once-a-year weekend camp for adults, filled with many of the great things summer camp offered when we were younger: beautiful land, a lake and a pool, games, songs around a bonfire while toasting marshmallows, a talent show, and most importantly, a kind of joy that sometimes we forget to live into as adults. On multiple occasions when all 380 or so campers were gathered together, we danced. We Danced!

A week ago this night, there was a dance party.  Exhausted from the day and the previous night’s not-great sleep (the “comfort” of the beds was another indication that we were really at camp), I had decided not to go.

I was in my cabin talking to a bunkmate, when I heard the start of a song – Suavemente, bésame, Que yo quiero sentir tus labios – a song that compelled me to say to my bunkmate with an urgency that surprised me, “I have to go dance.”

Besándome otra vez – I slipped on my flip flops and jogged to the party to make sure I didn’t miss the song. I was not disappointed.

Suavemente, bésame
Que yo quiero sentir tus labios
Besándome otra vez

Once upon a time, I used to dance to it every weekend and I even sang it when I was in a Latin band. Last weekend, after the song ended, I stayed and danced with no one in particular for a while before eventually heading back to my cabin, where I slept maybe just a little bit better than the previous night.

Our camp days started (if we chose) with meditation. Despite being tired, I got up for it every morning. The first morning I stayed for yoga afterwards. The next two I chose to walk around the lake, sometimes taking off my flip flops to let my feet feel cool dew on soft grass. 

One afternoon, I attended a meet-up that included another guided meditation (bonus!).  What dominated the images in my mind were not so much pictures, but colors – red-oranges, browns, white, olive green mixed with just a hint of pink. I tried to make note of the colors, their nuances and changes. At one point in the meditation, we were guided to meet our future self, who would give us a gift. This image, not simply colors, was clear: she gave me a small box that contained a bracelet made of rusty-orange stones and clear quartz.

Later I talked to the meditation guide and told her about the question I had brought into the meditation and the images I had seen. She suggested that the message was about commitment… to myself.

I have thought a lot about that since camp. I thought I did a decent job of committing to myself, following the path I know is meant for me, when it’s straight (rarely), with its curves, in its switchbacks.

Before I went to camp, I had reached out to a couple of people who I knew I needed to speak to in order to feel at peace. One of the people I’ve seen. I had no specific words to say, no agenda but to talk and to listen to whatever might surface in the moment. The conversation flowed naturally and easily. Without asking a question, I received the answer I needed. The other person I haven’t seen, and without any assurance that I would any time soon, I sent an email with words, precise and careful, that I needed to let go. Both were acts of self-liberation, commitment to the voice within.

In one of the camp workshops about project planning (more interesting than it might sound!), the speaker talked about the importance of displacement and asked, “What needs to go in order to make room for your project?”

As I am currently getting ready to lead a delegation abroad, whose preparation and execution require a lot of time and energy, I have twice said “no” this week to events I had planned to attend. One night I spent the newly freed time sending emails and doing other delegation work. The other night I  spent most of the time walking the bridge and soaking in beautiful weather and a lovely sunset. While the first night may seem to have been more valuable than the second in terms of preparation, both were necessary for me to be able to feel ready - logistically and energetically.

 As I talked to a friend today who has been going through a rough time (“I’ve aged ten years in the last 6 weeks”), cognizant of my own renewed commitment, I asked, “What are you doing for self-care?”

After silence was the first answer, “That was the reminder I needed,” was the spoken reply.

In order to get through those times that sap our energy, that can age us months in a single day, we have to make a commitment to ourselves, even if a small one.

In order to get through life with any sense of joy and peace, we have to make this same commitment, probably over and over again, as so many things or people attempt, wittingly or unwittingly, to steer us away from our center. 

We have to recognize that our most significant relationship is the one with ourselves – it’s the only relationship we have from birth to death, at all times, in all places. The way we honor that relationship ripples out into the way we honor any other one.

A new camp friend wrote about her experience standing on stage at the talent show reading a most powerful poem she had written. She described the experience as liberating and healing. As someone who was in that room, I can say that hearing and seeing her honest and deep truth was liberating and healing for more than just her. She had committed to herself.

And so I invite you, if you haven’t already done so, to commit to yourself. Not onlyto yourself, not to self-indulgence that shrinks you instead of growing you. But first to yourself, the kind of self-commitment that expands your being, enabling you to be more of who you are. Enabling you to breathe deeply. Enabling you to accept yourself, and thereby, to accept others. Enabling you to live into the abundance that is you and recognize the same in every other person.