A week after my brother died ten years ago, I walked into an Al-Anon meeting for the first time. I slowly began to work the steps and struggled throughout them to stay focused on what each step required before moving onto the next. I didn't want to face myself in the process. I wanted to face my brother. To deal with my grief and to let go of my anger and pain at his leaving my life so suddenly and completely. I remember at the time, looking at each step and wondering, what does this have to do with my brother, his drinking, his death and my grief?
Everything.
The Twelve Steps teaches you to become accountable and responsible for yourself. To not look to fix someone else's problems but rather, to face your own behaviours, to be accountable for your responses to an addict's behaviours (and everyone else's in your life) and to own your responses.
One of the most challenging steps for me was the 4th step -- To make a searching and fearless moral inventory of yourself.
I would make the inventory, and when it got to those things for which I carried great shame, I'd sugar coat them, dress them up, pretty them up. I wouldn't let them stand in their stunning awkwardness without supporting them with lesser truths and observations that took the spotlight off what I perceived to be their glaring truth about my lack of humanity.
What a dichotomy. I am perfectly human in all my imperfections and yet, I felt anything but human because I couldn't accept I wasn't perfect. Throughout my life I had behaved in ways that hurt me, hurt others, and caused pain in the process. How could I have done that, I wondered? I love these people, yet I hurt them? How dare I? And what about the pain my brother caused me, the inner child screamed. What am I supposed to do with that?
When I wrote, The Dandelion Spirit, a true life fairytale of love, lies and letting go, I struggled with revealing the depth to which I sank, because I carried my shame into each word.
I had to let it go.
Shame debilitates me. It keeps me stuck in unforgiveness. Its sticky, gooey yuckiness keeps my wings feebly struggling to rise above me. It weighs me down so that I cannot fly.
Shame hurts me.
The definition of shame, according to Answers.com is:
Shame (shām) n.
- A painful emotion caused by a strong sense of guilt, embarrassment, unworthiness, or disgrace. Capacity for such a feeling: Have you no shame?
- One that brings dishonor, disgrace, or condemnation.
- A condition of disgrace or dishonor; ignominy.
- A great disappointment.
In everyday living, there is a healthy dose of shame required to help us move forward, to grow, to learn and to evolve. When any emotion becomes too intense, however, it unbalances us, disturbs our status quo and causes stress.
In living with my grief and sorrow about the past, my shame had mushroomed into a toxic cloud of demoralizing waste that kept me trapped in self-condemnation, blame and regret. To move beyond shame's grip on my psyche, I had to face myself in the mirror and love myself, exactly where I was at -- a broken, wounded, frightened and sorrow-filled woman. A victim of her own life.
Letting go of my feelings of shame was instrumental to my claiming my place on my healing path. Letting go of shame let me lovingly face myself in the mirror and speak honestly, truthly, and knowingly about what I had done, who I had become -- without giving the tirades voice within me the opportunity to drown me out. What a shame that would have been! To let self-deinigration, condemnation, denial, blame and regret hold me back from claiming my right to be accountable and responsible for what I had done so that I could claim my right to do and be all that I am meant to be.
Shame is on my mind this morning. I didn't know that when I first started writing -- which is why I love this process.
Shame is there because yesterday a friend told me about some things another woman has said about me regarding that journey into hell with Conrad. I know that her truth is not my truth. But in the darkness of wanting to stand up and shout, "Listen you b...., you don't have the right to talk about me like that. You don't know me." I wandered into the zone of past regrets without taking my flashlight with me.
Not a good idea.
My self-defeating characters stand watch waiting for any moment to jump out of the bushes and claim my light.
It is my responsibility to walk in my truth. My responsibility to stand free of the darkness so that I can live freely in this moment without the past shadowing my every move and casting a pall on my tomorrows.
Can't change the past. Can't see into tomorrow.
I can choose to live freely in today. To keep my mind and heart open to the wonders, joys, and opportunities today brings and to hold my hands up and out so that I can fly.
Sure, there might be moments of frustration -- who knows? The day has not yet unfolded. As long as I stand in my light, I will deal with those moments when they arise and step freely of their shadow without regret.
In this moment, right now, where I sit typing, I am completely present to this moment, letting the cloying tendrils of regret, sorrow and shame drift back into the shadows so that I can walk freely in the light of knowing I am perfectly me, beauty and the beast, a wondrous woman, walking my path with truth, dignity and grace.
This is my journey. My one and only life. Let me be me.
May you journey through this day with joy, confidence and the knowledge that whatever you've done is nothing compared to what you are capable of doing today.
Today, you have the opportunity to turn up for yourself, speak your truth and be completely free of the past as you soar into the joyous truth that you are awesome.
May you live an inspired day.
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