Category: being & becoming

We live in a culture that trains us from an early age, perhaps from birth itself, to disconnect from our Self. We are given the lessons over and over to disconnect from our body, to hate her, to never be satisfied with her, to not listen to her, to not feel good in her. We are given lessons to disconnect from our spirit, our intuition and our inner knowing and truth.  We soak in and believe these stories and repeat them over and over in our minds of how we aren’t enough, how we don’t matter, how we are too much, how we should feel shame in everything we do, everything we are, in existing at all.

This is what a patriarchal culture teaches us. It is how it trains us. It is how it feeds itself. By keeping us small. Obedient. Docile. And completely disconnected from who we are, what we are, how we are.

Our culture teaches us to be afraid of our power and the power of other women. While we are disconnected from our own Self we are also sitting in isolation, fearful and judgemental of other women. Especially women who dare to stand in their own light and power. Especially women who dare to show the world their strength. Especially women who allow other women to be who and where they are and who embrace their sisters, flaws and imperfections and all.

We are taught to compete. Over and over. To strive. To “better ourselves.” To catch up with Ms. Jones. To seek “perfection” and “balance” (whatever the hell those words mean). We are told in a million ways every day how we don’t measure up, how we need to do and be “better,” how we fail and fail and fail some more and how if we only tried a little harder (whatever that means) we would be perfect and successful and loved.

We are taught we can’t possibly be loved for who we are, as we are, right now, with all these flaws and deficits and too muchness.

We are taught we aren’t deserving of love.

We are taught we aren’t deserving of anything.

And we listen.

We listen to these outside voices that also live within our bodies. These voices are in our bodies because we internalized them, our mothers internalized them, our grandmothers internalized, and so on throughout our family tree. These voices are in our bodies because of trauma and fear and needing to find a way to survive.

And these voices are in our bodies because we haven’t kicked them out.

How do we kick them out?

By beginning to connect to our true inner voice. By connecting to our body and all her knowing and wisdom. By connecting to our body and soothing her fears and anxiety. By connecting to our body and healing the trauma and pain and wounds of our past, of our lived experience, and the experiences of the women who came before us.

These are not easy tasks. It takes time, work and dedication. It requires curiosity and commitment.

It will require connecting to emotions we have been told are bad and that we need to avoid at all costs. Rage. Grief. Pride in who we are.

It will require learning to have compassion for ourselves and others.

It will require us opening to love, true unconditional and accepting love.

It will require tearing off scabs and cleaning out old wounds, giving them air to breathe and salve to heal into more connected ways of being.

It will require work our culture does not want us to do. Discourages us from doing. Can’t allow us to do if it is to continue to thrive.

And yet…

We know.

We can hear our own whisperings beneath the roar of the voices our culture uses. We can hear the quiet and loud call to find out who we are. We feel the desperate need and wanton craving to connect fully to the women we are, to our body, to our unfettered mind, to our spirit, to our soul.

So, we begin. Slowly connecting to the women we are. Slowly connecting to other women who have learned to stand in their light. Slowly finding our people and our way.

And slowly and quickly, those other voices become more dull, more muddled and our own true voice becomes clearer, more pronounced.

And we know.

We know change is coming. We know transformation is waiting for us. For all the women who came before us. For our world.

Together we will tear off the leashes of our patriarchal culture and we will stand firm and proud in who we are, how we are, what we are. And this culture will try to pull us back down, but it will be too late. It will not control us and we will tear it down brick by brick.

This is the power of connecting to our Self. This is the power of connecting to our Body. Of taking ownership of our body and being and soul, again.

And as we do this work, we will be burning it all down and building anew from the ashes and rubble a world where we are no longer ashamed of existing.

xoxo.

I talk more about this concept of being disconnected from our self and the shame our culture feeds us even more in this video below. It’s about twenty minutes long, so go ahead and get yourself a cup of tea or a glass of wine and settle in.

And if you liked this essay, I invite you to subscribe to weekly love letter right here. It comes out every Saturday night and is filled with all kinds of goodness. xoxo

 

This blog post and video were part of a series to introduce my 12-month circle Wild Woman Within :: (Re)Connecting to our forgotten knowing. This circle has grown into the 6-month circle Becoming Unleashed.  To learn more you can go here.

Want to see the other posts in this series? Here’s a list:

Disconnection from Self (this post)

What we lose when we stand in our power

Stripping to our bones

Reconnection with our Self

Healing our mother wounds

Releasing internalized misogyny

Healing into wholeness

Ritual vs. Habit

Guidelines for being

Living intentionally and consciously

(The following was a daily discussion prompt I offered in the Awakening Our Womanline circle earlier this year. It felt important to share with all of you too. xoxo)

Our mothers… we know in our heads we cannot change them. They are the women they are, the women they were made to be, the women they in some ways choose to be. They show love in their own ways and that is (or was) often so deeply hurtful.

It hurts because we are part of them and they are part of us. We were created and grew within them. We were warm and nurtured in their womb and our relationship with them is bound in blood and bone and tissue. We desperately want them to love us and accept us. To allow us to be.

Here’s the deal, Shame is insidious. It’s in Every Bloody Thing We Do/Think/Feel. There’s shame around what we wear, what we eat, what our house looks like, what our hair/body/face/skin looks like. There’s shame in how we talk, how we laugh, how we grieve. There is shame in how much or how little money we make. There is shame in having too much education or not enough. There is shame in how we raise our children (no matter what we do). There is shame in being proud of our accomplishments. There is shame in EVERY.SINGLE. emotion we ever have. There is shame in our childhood and our adulthood. There is shame in our sexuality. There is shame in being alone and there is shame in being with people. …

Frankly I could sit here for hours writing it all out, and you know, I believe if you are reading this, you are an intelligent person and get my point. 😉

I believe though, that even though shame is freaking EVERY WHERE, that we can fight it. I believe we can heal it. I believe we can tame it. I believe we can tell it to sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up. I believe you believe this too.

I also believe, hell, I *know* that often even when we know a thing in our head, like we know that shame is full of shit, we don’t always have the tools to truly, deeply, down in our very bones and being, believe it.

This is why I do this work: to provide you with the tools to fight off and tame your shame beasts. When you are ready, I’ll be right here.

xoxo

If you’d like to learn more about my workshops, circles and 1:1 work, I invite you subscribe to my weekly loveletter. Each week there is an essay, a guided meditation, links to my most recent blog posts, information about upcoming circles and more. You can subscribe by clicking right here and filling out the form and confirming from your inbox. xoxo

Here’s a thing… Shame is heavy. I feel it in my chest and on my back. It weighs us down. It bends us over and tries to break us.

It sits in our guts. It makes us feel ill and anxious.

It sits in our throats and keeps us silent or worse it has us spreading shame and hate and disregard out to other human beings.

Shame lives in our bodies. It lives in our very being.

Here’s another thing…

We can fight it off. We can push it out. And when we do we begin to feel lighter. To breathe easier. To stand up taller. To learn empathy for ourselves and for others. To embrace our differences instead of being afraid of them.

xoxo

(Did you enjoy this? Then I invite you to subscribe to my weekly love letter that is filled with goodies. You can learn more and subscribe right here.)

My training (graduate school) is predominantly in family systems theory. (Interestingly, my undergraduate education — Physics– is wholly systems based too). What this means is that I was trained, and honestly I deeply believe, that we are independent beings who are integral parts of larger infrastructures.

This means, that how others interact with us impacts us. This means, how we interact with others impacts them.

It also means we all have our “roles” that we play within our smaller family units and within our larger communities and globally.

One of the premises of systems is that they tend to want to keep moving along as they are. Everyone plays their role and the system continues to function. Whether this “functioning” is healthy or not is not important. What is important is that the system is functioning.

Because systems only care about continuing to be able to function, they are highly resistant to change. In physics this is the Newtonian Law of Inertia (an object in motion, stays in motion unless acted upon by an outside force). This “Law” applies to all systems, not only physical ones. It applies to how systemic racism, misogyny and bigotry continue on in our culture. There has not been enough outside force to create a complete overhaul (yet).

In Family Systems Theory (Bowen), when a family is “dys-functional” there usually is created what we call the “identified patient (IP).” This is the child who always acts out and gets in trouble. All the dysfunction of the family is placed at the feet of this singular person. This allows the system to continue to function, without change, because the focus is on how “bad” this one person is. Even though the person was created by the system. And until there is an outside force, like the IP goes in to counseling and starts to unravel all the training they received from their particular family system, the family will keep chugging along.

Once the IP, or any family member for that matter, begins to question the dys-function of the family, all hell breaks loose. The system does not want to change. Relationships will be cut off, blame will continue to be laid, and things will become very, very ugly for a while.

HOWEVER, if the IP continues his/or her work, there is a strong possibility for the entire system to start to shift. Other individuals start to see how the system played them, what their roles were, and so on. This is the process of individual “individuation” and healing for the whole family.

Sadly, it’s doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes families can’t or won’t heal. The IP continues their work separate from the system and creates or finds a new system to be a part of. Personal healing happens and I believe this brings about shifts in our greater social systems even if it can’t change our personal family system.

My point? What you do with this one life of yours matters. As you bring about your own self-awareness and healing, shifts are happening in the world. They may be subtle. You may never know about them. You may not see them in your microcosm, and they do exist.

Desiree Lynn Adaway wrote on her Facebook page that systems do not dismantle themselves. This is true, according to systems theory and any of our lived experience. AND we CAN be the outside force that brings about change. We may not ever know the greater impacts we each have on the world, and yet we have an impact.

AND being an outside force means we also need to look within and be a part of the outside force that changes our Self. This is not glamorous work. It is messy. It is heartbreaking. As we do it we uncover the wrongs we have actually committed right along side the wrongs that have been committed against us. And it is easier, so much easier, to not do this work at all. To go with the flow.

Being an outside force means not only seeing and understanding the stories of too much and not enough that were forced upon us; the shame we were fed. It means acknowledging how we have passed those stories on, intentionally and unintentionally, to others. And this work hurts. Because, I believe, most of us don’t want to hurt others and it breaks our hearts when we finally see the ways we have.

For me, this heartbreak and messiness aren’t reason enough to not do this work. To not bring about the change I want to see in this world. To sit on the sidelines and just let it all keep on keeping on. Because the keeping on keeping on is making us all ill, and frankly it’s about fucking time we all do our healing work. For ourselves and our communities and our world.

What about you?

xoxo

Did you enjoy this? If so, I’d like to invite you to subscribe to my weekly love letter. It comes out every Saturday evening and is filled with all kinds of goodness. You can subscribe right here.