Shame as a ticket to love

On Sunday, I wore an outfit that was particularly fun for me to put together. My baby-doll dress was silvery gray with blue polka dots. My stockings were dark purple with knee-high black boots. My camel jacket tailored and flirty. I buzzed with color and springtime as I walked. And when I arrived at my destination and greeted my friends, I was suddenly overcome with shame. Why should I feel shame for looking cute?

For me, it dates back to being the chubby girl as a kid. I just never felt worthy of looking as good as everybody else. There were other experiences wrapped up in that, of course. Public humiliations about what I looked like from well-intentioned though terribly misguided family members were a regular feature of my childhood. Private humiliations too. But, I've done a lot of work on those issues and released a lot of that old pain.

Still, it surprises me how much pain and shame is still hanging out inside me, just waiting to bubble up irrationally, even unexpectedly. And I'm grateful for it.

Grateful, Nora? Now you've lost me.

Whenever I feel shame, it's usually because I'm betraying some law of family dysfunction. Even though my family's a lot more functional now (shout out to my awesome, growth-oriented family members--you guys rock!), back in the day when the family system was suffering from more, well, STRESS, there were certain roles and dynamics that all of us fell into in order for the rag-tag family system to work. When we venture outside the roles of that system, the powerful conditioning of the experiences we had as children often creates feelings of shame, fear and sadness. These feelings are designed to have us stop engaging in whatever new/growth-oriented behavior we're trying out and go back to following the rules of the crazy family game.

Interestingly, even when members of our family have recognized that the crazy family game doesn't work for them...even when they are capable of showing up in new ways, the old conditioning is still inside each one of us, just waiting to grab us by the throat if we stray too far off the reservation. How do I know this? Because many of my family members HAVE worked on themselves. Many of them have said to me, "Nora, I know this happened to you" or even "I know I did this to you...and it was wrong." Jackpot, right? In many ways, yes, absolutely.

But it turns out that my soul-devouring shame and fear like to mess with me no matter what anyone else is saying or doing. And it points me again and again to the fact that my feelings have, at most, a tangential relationship to the words and behavior of others. My feelings, my pain, my shame--they're all mine now. They're all part of my process. Childhood is finished. Signed, sealed and delivered. I've got memories and interpretations of it that are different from each one of my family members' memories and interpretations. And none of us have the exact same interpretation of anything. (I find this delightfully ironic since it shows me that there's absolutely NO WAY to know a definitive version of "WHAT REALLY HAPPENED" because we all see things through our own limited human experience.)

So, now what? Now, I get to recognize that there is no action, no word, no apology that anyone can offer that will fix, change or cure me. Yeah, my family members made mistakes but none of them actually caused my pain. None of them could ever control it. None of them can ever cure it. And neither can I. Because it turns out that no one's at fault or to blame for my pain. My pain is just part of my life and my experience the way a stubbed toe is part of my foot. Shit happens. People stub their toes. Families get funky.

When I stub my toe, I shout a swear word or two, maybe get annoyed and then hold my foot till it feels better. When my pain comes up, sometimes I get angry, sometimes I cry, often I call a friend, and then I get to be with myself, hold myself and comfort myself until I feel better. Pain isn't something any of us can cause, control or cure. It's just part of life. And the grace is that when we're willing to lean into it and learn from it, it actually brings us to deeper levels of peace, love and health on the other side.

When I sat with my shame on Sunday afternoon, when I honored the fact that looking good made me feel crappy, the coolest thing happened. The shame slipped away. And instead of the defensive, fearful posture I'd been carrying with me as I walked, I got to feel something else. As the shame ran its course, I began to feel more peaceful, more connected, more available to the other people in the room. When I told people about the shame I was feeling, they were compassionate and generous. When I asked them about themselves, they shared more of themselves with me than they had in the past. I found myself listening intently and gratefully to their stories and feelings.

Who could predict that on the other side of my shame would be peace and connection? My shame is about feeling different, isolated, unworthy. When I share it, I discover that I'm not alone in my *feelings* of isolation, uniqueness and worthlessness. Isn't that crazy-wonderful? We're all alike in that we feel so different! We all belong to the community of people who feel like they don't belong. And that community of people includes just about everybody. When I'm willing to open up about the pain of my nuclear family, I feel like an integral part of the human family. In this paradigm, I can love my nuclear family members as members of my crazy human family, whether they subscribe to that paradigm or now. Eventually, it all comes down to whether or not we use our fear and pain to find common ground with other humans.

You can hide your pain and feel alone. Or you can find loving people to share it with. Hint: these people may seem crazy or strange to you at first since you might be used to interacting with people who have a hard time offering compassion in the face of pain. So, keep listening, keep learning, keep loving and keep honoring your process. You get to take as long as you want to get as healthy as you want. There's no rush, no deadline and no graduation. Welcome to the human family. Glad you're here.