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

Celebrate with Me!

Dear friends,

Tomorrow I celebrate 50 years of being alive, but in truth, I've been celebrated and celebrating since January. Starting on January 11, friends and family have conspired to give me the fullest birthday celebration I've ever had, with different people celebrating my birthday with me for the last 50 days. Each day has brought surprise and delight as someone(s) new has taken the time to love me in some special way. While that part of the celebration will end, I have other plans to continue celebrating even after tomorrow. 

Receiving and receiving in this consistent way has been overwhelming in the most glorious sense of the word, leaving me dripping with gratitude. In all truth, it has also brought up regret for not celebrating some other people with the same care that I am being celebrated; I want to do differently. I wish all people were honored so fully and I want to be a part of making that happen.

A couple of days ago a friend posted this on Facebook: 

I move that we create Milestone Day. A day when we celebrate personal accomplishments & milestones. Because no matter who you are or what you do, you’ve accomplished some things. It would be a GREAT day – we’d greet one another with a high five. Maybe a pat on the back or a “congrats.” On Milestone Day, we don’t necessarily declare our milestones to one another – after all, they may be personal … things we do for ourselves, perhaps BY ourselves: Making a difficult, but right decision. Reaching a health-related goal (or simply committing to a goal). A sobriety milestone. Or simply getting up and going each morning.

No matter who you are, you’ve accomplished something. Who doesn’t need a day to be reminded of this?

While I know some people are exuberant celebrators (as evidence, just look at the picture above and all the cards I'm holding, the ones on the mantle behind me, and the headband I'm wearing), I suspect that some of you are like me, not always marking your own or others' milestones well, but rather moving onto the next thing without honoring the significance of something that has happened or that you've achieved.

The question arises: Why limit our celebration? Why not celebrate every sweet thing? 

Here in Kentucky daffodils and crocuses are blooming. Soon more trees and flowers will burst into luscious and vibrant color. Would we ever want to restrict the generous beauty of it all? If the answer is no, then why would we want to limit or stifle the generous honoring of beautiful human experiences?  

What if we had a Milestone Day?   
What personal milestone(s) would you celebrate? 
Who else's accomplishments would you like to lift up and reflect back to them?

I'd love to know. 

~~~

To honor my 50th year milestone business-style, I have two offers and a request:
Offer 1: Through March 11, 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. 

Offer 2: OR also through March 11, 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. I'll add more over the coming days, but you can also see some of it on Instagram or Facebook. 

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 shows you just how beautiful your heart is, 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. My gratitude is already like a chocolate cake with white icing (my personal favorite). This would be like adding sugar roses and other fancy embellishments to the cake! Thank you so much for considering this request! 


Along with all the birthday fun, I have a number of events coming up in March! Starting a week from tomorrow on March 9, my 4-week online Compassionate Communication class, Meeting in the Field of Connection, begins. Tomorrow, March 2, is the last day to get the early bird registration rate! 

I'll be at Saturdays with Spirit on March 11, and am offering an in-person workshop, Creating Conversations that Connect, at The Inner Warrior on March 25. Want to see all events at once? Go here to see all the details. I'd love to see you this month! 

In gratitude and celebration, 
Cory

P.S. If you missed my interview with Michaela Daystar last week, you can check it out here: Reiki Crossroads & Connections.  We talk about intersections of energy work, art, peacemaking, mysticism, and more! 

Imagining Ourselves Into...

Dear friends,

A couple of days ago I had the joy of being a guest speaker for a class at Bellarmine University entitled "Faith and Imagination."

Wanting to spark the imagination of students, I pulled out an excerpt from adrienne maree brown's Emergent Strategy (you can find the excerpt at the end of this blog post). We read the excerpt aloud and then I guided students through a group writing experiment. I invited students to begin to write a stream-of-consciousness response to what they had just read and heard. After writing for a couple of minutes, they passed their paper to another student to continue writing. And then another, and another. I told them that they could respond to the previous writer, continue along the same vein, or take the writing in a totally different direction. I had no idea how it would go or what would happen on their pages. 

At the end of the experiment, students received the papers they had begun and read all that had transpired. One student said the writing time was too short to get her thoughts in order. I replied that the purpose wasn't to get thoughts in order, but to get the thoughts on paper, which are not always the same. We had a little time to discuss what did find its way to paper: questions about imagination and reality, what they are, and how they interact; dismay that imagination is often encouraged in children, but discouraged as we move to and through adulthood; comments about how imagination can both lead us toward contruction and healing or destruction and harm. There was so much richness I wish we'd had more time to explore.  

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Christian season of Lent. Many people engage in Lenten pactices, often giving up something for the season (who among you Catholics or former Catholics has given up sweets or meat for Lent?) Three years ago, I decided that instead of giving something up, I wanted to engage my imagination and take something up. Each day I made a 4" x 6" watercolor painting with a reminder for myself. The first was "I am allowed to rest"; the last, "I trust in abundance."  This daily practice helped ground me during the early days of the pandemic, when it felt like we were being uprooted and tossed about. I didn't know how much I needed the creative practice and I didn't know that these reminders would become Cards for Remembering. My imagination hadn't taken me that far. It was only as I took step after step into creative imagining that I discovered the messages and images weren't just for me.

I use the cards now regularly. They still ground me, affirm what I know,  challenge me ("I am allowed not to know" has been appearing frequently of late), and invite me to imagine ("In challenging times I lean into cReaTivity"). As I type, I am considering what to take up this year for Lent. I don't yet know. I hope to find clarity soon. I'll take time later to allow my mind and heart to wander and imagine me into a practice. 

What about you? 

How do you engage your imagination?

What have you imagined into being?

I'd love to know. 

~~~

I imagine a world in which we are connected to our needs, our feelings, our body's wisdom (both individual and collective bodies) and, through that connection, we live into our core of love and we thrive. These imaginings fuel my work and I am excited to have a number of events and offerings coming up that I hope will take us a few steps closer to the world I imagine. 

At 1:00 ET today, my interview with Michaela Daystar in her YouTube series Reiki Crossroads & Connections premiers. We talk about intersections of energy work, art, peacemaking, mysticism, and more! You can listen when it airs or later on. 

I also have a number of Compassionate Communication offerings coming up. on Monday, February 27, join me for a 1-hour introductory workshop: What's Beneath Our Words?  Starting March 9, we delve into the foundational pieces of Compassionate Communication with my Meeting in the Field of Connection class. Whether these are refreshers or your first time with these skills, come join me! 

Finally, as my 50th birthday fast approaches, I've been imagining how I might celebrate with you! I'll soon be sharing special offers on my art- Cards for Remembering decks, prints, and original art! 

Wondering about and imagining our next connection, 
Cory

---

Excerpt from the introduction to adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategy

A visionary exploration of humanity includes imagination…

Imagination is shaped by our entire life experience, our socialization, the concepts we are exposed to, where we fall in the global hierarchy of society.

Our ideas of right and wrong shift with time—right now it’s clear to me that something is wrong if it hurts this planet. But if we don’t claim the future, that sense of loyalty to earth, of environmentalism, could become outdated. Kenny Bailey helped me understand this—that justice, rights, things we take for granted, are not permanent. Once there were kings and queens all over the earth. Someday we might speak of presidents and CEOs in past tense only.

It is so important that we fight for the future, get into the game, get dirty, get experimental. How do we create and proliferate a compelling vision of economies and ecologies that center humans and the natural world over the accumulation of material?

We embody. We learn. We release the idea of failure, because it’s all data.

But first we imagine.

We are in an imagination battle.

Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown and Renisha McBride and so many other are dead because, in some white imagination, they were dangerous. And that imagination is so respected that those who kill, based on an imagined, racialized fear of Black people, are rarely held accountable.

Imagination has people thinking they can go from being poor to a millionaire as part of a shared American dream. Imagination turns Brown bombers into terrorists and white bombers into mentally ill victims. Imagination gives us borders, gives us superiority, gives us race as an indicator of capability. I often feel I am trapped inside someone else’s imagination, and I must engage my own imagination in order to break free.

All of this imagining, in the poverty of our current system, is heightened because of scarcity economics. There isn’t enough, so we need to hoard, enclose, divide, fence up, and prioritize resources and people.

We have to imagine beyond those fears. We have to ideate—imagine and conceive—together.  

We must imagine new worlds that transition ideologies and norms, so that no one sees Black people as murderers, or Brown people as terrorists and aliens, but all of us as potential cultural and economic innovators. This is a time-travel exercise for the heart. This is collaborative ideation—what are the ideas that will liberate all of us?

The more people that collaborate on that ideation, the more that people will be served by the resulting world(s)…

It is our right and responsibility to create a new world.

What we pay attention to grown, so I’m thinking about how we grow what we are all imagining and creating into something large enough and solid enough that it becomes a tipping point...

As Toni Cade Bambara has taught us, we must make just and liberated futures irresistible. We are all the protagonists of what might be called the great turning, the change. The new economy, the new world.

And I think it is healing behavior, to look at something so broken and see the possibility of wholeness in it. That’s how I work as a healer: when a body is between my hands, I let wholeness pour through. We are all healers too—we are creating possibilities, because we are seeing a future full of wholeness.