PART 1
“we have been taught to fear the very things that have the potential to set us free”
- Alok
We are taught shame at an early age. I was taught to shrink who I am to fit into the neat little boxes society has reserved for me. But I don’t fit.
We hate people who live large and unshackled because they remind us of the freedom we forfeited to fit in our boxes, like the stepsisters in Cinderella who cut off their toes to fit the glass slippers.
Think about yourself as a child. What dreams and ideas did you sacrifice to “fit”? No one is 100% anything so to become the person we’re told we should be, we hide what is inconsistent with that.
When were you taught shame? Who taught you to shrink? When did you dim your light?
And when did that resentment turn towards me and people like me? You say I’m not real - that I’m a child with a vivid imagination - that I’m confused and I made myself up. You actually believe you know me better than I know myself. Laughable. You have never truly known me.
I belong to the mountains and the sea and no words in your vocabulary can describe me so I made my own.
“Perhaps imagination is not where we go to escape reality but where we go to remember it.” - Glennon Doyle
Remember not caring what people thought? Remember your dreams? Remember your superpowers before you betrayed that fearless child you once were? Do you miss yourself?
I honor my inner child by leading with love and imagination. When you remember your power we will be magic
Part 2
“The thing about shame is that it eats at you until it fully consumes you. Then you cannot tell the difference between their shame and your own— between a body and an apology.”
- Alok Vaid-Menon
I am immune to your shame because I love so much of myself. Learned shame runs so deep we can’t even look at ourselves naked. How can my flesh be wrong? I am the earth. My body is not an apology. Your body is not wrong or gross or strange. Shame makes us foreign to ourselves. I deviate from what makes you comfortable but I am not lost.
“I know that my body could never be inappropriate… I am of nature. I have cycles in my body that reflect the cycles of day and night, of the seasons, of the moon and the tides. My body is a gorgeous miracle. I know it is only shame…that keeps me covered.” - Adrienne M Brown
The power of my body terrifies you - the one that does not scale mountains but is the mountains - and we try to control what we fear.
Your world is organized in nice neat boxes. Where is your box for me? If you had one I could not be contained. I am light. I am wild as the wind.
Part 3
We hate the pieces of others that remind us of ourselves. We hate mirrors because we hate our reflections. When you love yourself you have no need to hate me. When you love me you love yourself. You shame me because my existence reflects back the freedom you gave up to be what you were told.
It makes you angry that you cannot control me. I do not need your approval. The more I learn about myself the more I love myself. I am becoming whole again and my power can mend broken hearts.
Stop staring at your distorted shadow on the wall thinking it’s you. The shackles are clay. Smash them against the rocks and walk towards the light. Join me and reclaim all that was stolen. It’s so much more brilliant and beautiful than you can even imagine
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