Thank you to the many kind souls who reached out last week, regarding Welcome to My Nightmare. I feel you, and I love you for caring. When I started writing online, I used to fear any response. Good or bad, I told myself: "you can't handle The Truth!" Which, as we'll see today, is yet another crafty way shame holds us back. Twenty-five years in, part of me still fears any response. Whatever your art, we learn: it’s only ever as good by how squirmy it makes you to hit publish. Today I’m at Third-Nipple-Reveal-Levels-of-Squirm. It’s got me wondering: Will someone somewhere hate me for this? Will it set somebody free? Once you drop that letter in the slot, there's no taking it back.
Even when I was determined to not believe— God has shown me repeatedly we can write our dreams into existence. When you're conscious of that power, you better be impeccable with your word. (The first of The Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz).
Whether writing punk rock, or giving a deposition, you only have one job. Did ya tell the truth? I'm blown away by artists, teachers, and everyday, solid humans who this seems to come naturally to. Shame hides the truth from us, so we may hide it from others. I’m not saying it’s OK. I’m staring down a mountain of lies I told myself. Fortunately, this also means I’ve found a vine-covered trail marked Healing Road.
Walk with me.
The Dark Crystal
Healers and energy workers have pointed to a large, black fragment inside of me. It’s more my style to pretend it’s not there. I now see it as my Shame Body. Eckhart Tolle called it the Pain Body. Picture a black javelin I may have caught as a little boy. Except, no one is ever supposed to catch a fucking javelin. We throw them like lawn jarts. Our truths and dreams, launched out in front of us, claiming ground in our lives.
I've thrown far more than I've caught. Except I caught a whopper by my young boy standards. Like a lead black, pool-noodle sized splinter.
Shame arrives in many forms. It could be a terrible lie you believed about yourself. It could be your lost innocence. It hurts like hell to even remember it's there. Like, a javelin entering the crown of the head, tearing down through our heart. Exiting through my left foot, dragging behind me on the ground. My shame body is a skewer that kabobs pieces of me together. Like an invasive species, the longer we work around it, the more it holds us together.
Trauma installs shame like malware, becoming a glitchy operating system. Not because we're weak. That's the shame talking. Shame starts running things, warning us that to remove it means certain death.
The shame body whispers bullshit like: "Feeling bad is human. But you should feel very bad about feeling bad." Or my favorite: "No matter how many lives you touch, or save, or set free to thrive... Your own life remains an unlovable mystery.
But are we telling it that it sits on a throne of lies? That it reeks of beef and cheese?
How’m I Gonna Be an Optimist About This?
My Grandfather made me an optimist. Even when the darkest, scariest stuff comes for us in the night— and lately I’ve got more charter buses full than a Cracker Barrel— we must hold the light. My uncle once shared that my Poppa's Dad used to lock him in a closet when he had night terrors. To make him tougher? To cure his fear? That is some old world, medieval parenting. I would destroy anyone who even thought about doing this to our precious son.
I'm wondering now, if my Pops' childhood trauma made him an optimist. As his eager, young student in life, he definitely made me one. If you've followed my work, you know this. I need us to give ourselves Permission to Glow, because it's what our Creator wants, and needs for us. To laugh maniacally into our darkness and throw the damn switch anyway.
I need to believe that light is more essential to my nature than my pain body. What gives me hope? That my Soul has to be the older brother to its evil twin. The shame body was born later, in childhood. When we caught somebody’s misguided javelin.
My optimism, although certainly genuine and well-intended, can also be a workaround. My light in the world is a rebellion to unspeakable shame. It likes to tell me it's unspeakable, anyway. Our twisted, existential inside joke.
The tiny, bold move is hope.
I’m seeing that I’m brave to even look at this thing. To admit that I have zero idea how to remove it, or if that’s possible. That to fix whatever this defect is, will keep me stuck in another 48 years of assuming I’m unloveable. My hope, is that I stay awake in seeing the whole of myself. I’m exhausted from hiding. From running away from the wound. Sprinting toward the next and the next and the next. Worried that no one will want to keep up. I feel more like carefully dismantling all the decorations and facades I’ve given myself.
Making peace with this guy Kris Carter. Maybe he held more light and innocence than I remember. Built different muscle groups, cared deeply— and differently. That’s all OK.
I’m just lucky to be walking the road. It’s a beautiful day to be alive.
You with me?
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“Today I’m at Third-Nipple-Reveal-Levels-of-Squirm.” That made me laugh. Laughter through tears is one of my favorite emotions.