The Burden of Shame

I openly admit I went through a period in my teens where I doubted – sincerely – the existence of God. But my doubts were set to rest on a magic summer night while I was at camp – I can still recall it in perfect clarity, even though it was back in 1993.

And so having experienced what it is to doubt, I have empathy for those who are still unsure whether there is a Greater Power or not, but I have to also say in the same breath that I kinda don’t understand how their doubts persist if they’re paying attention to life.

Because I am constantly delighted and constantly surprised at how tenderly, how specifically, how lovingly the Universe cares for me. I am always sent what I need at the time I need it.

Here is the most recent example.

I have been studying and opening to witchcraft for almost three months now. I stumbled upon (that means guided to) a particular witchy website that has just blown me away with the quality of the articles and all the rest of the content. Its creator is practicing witch, author, and life coach Carolyn Elliott, and I am unspeakably grateful to her for the impact she’s had on me spiritually, emotionally, and mentally in the last month.

But particularly yesterday.

Because two articles I found on her site have absolutely rocked me to my soul. Changed me in a way that I have desperately needed to be changed. Brought healing that, in retrospect, I see was headed straight for me for a while, and then capped off with her articles.

The articles are about shame, about how drastically and overwhelmingly shame changes us as soul beings, as humans. How shame represses us, locks us down, hides us away in prisons.

Specifically, she talks about how sexual trauma causes a kind of shame that absolutely handicaps our personal power not only as witches, but as souls having a human experience. It keeps us from creating the lives we were truly meant to live, from knowing and sharing the gifts within us, from realizing the true magic of being alive.

I feel like I am rambling, running off at the mouth – so much came out of this, so much tied up in this – I can’t seem to communicate everything I need to here.

So I will let Carolyn do some of it for me. The article that absolutely reached a hand in and changed me in the few minutes it took to read it is here:

https://badwitch.es/it-follows-on-sexual-shame-magic-and-horror/

I was flabbergasted, I was rocked to my core, I actually had to stop reading for a few moments and collect myself.

For someone I’d never met to describe so much of my personal experience, so much of my emotional life, so much of my individual struggle since I was 8…. Incredible. I wrote it this way in my journal:

I’m reeling – this hit me in the very pit of my stomach. So deep. So … powerfully –it is heavy and light at the same time, peaceful and emotional at the same time, and that is how I know it’s true.

I feel humility, relief, comfort, torture, hope, pain all at the same time.

My heart is beating rapidly, as it does when something strikes me hard in realization. In truth. In awakened change.

I am reeling. Mind blown.

I feel an opening across my chest on the inside even as my heart simultaneously feels like it’s turned into a tight lead ball.

Hallelujah. Someone who knows. That’s all I can think.

It’s overwhelming and yet – at the same time – grounding to hear something so true about you at your deepest level explained so clearly, so intimately, so deeply by someone you don’t even know.

Gratitude – thank God. Thank you God for this, for the healing I know this is bringing to me even in this very moment. Thank you that I am not alone, that someone else out there – at least ONE PERSON WHO ISN’T ME knows what I’ve been through and what my life has been.

Relief. Waves of emotional relief. Spiritual relief.

God, just relief. Comfort.

And I know this isn’t by accident. I was guided here. Led here. This has been provided for me by the Divine. Perhaps by my Highest Self as well.

Thank you.

There’s an opening deep down in my belly now – a release, a gentle, fluid expansion. Like something residing there, taking up space, lurking, finally left. I imagine that’s exactly what happened.

And just as I was grounding myself from all this emotional and spiritual catharsis, I read another of Carolyn’s articles:

https://badwitch.es/amor-fati-notes-magic-raw-power/

She carries on the shame theme here, and advances the healing needed to overcome it, deprogram it so that we can be what we truly are as beings: FREE.

I realized so much after reading these articles – about feeling stuck and disconnected in my life, about not feeling any real life purpose and aimlessly drifting through my time on Earth, about my struggles with my love life and how disappointing all my dating experiences have been….

I realized that I have been carrying so much shame that everything about me was shut down under it. My perceptions of my talents, abilities, self efficacy, ability to be independent, to do what I want, to create a life I love, to follow my dreams and passions, and even finding my own relationship with a man.

I’ve been ashamed of myself – every part of myself. My body. My mind. My heart. My sexuality. My spirit. I’ve been ashamed of existing at all.

Re-reading my journal from yesterday, it seems the biggest lesson right now was receiving love, especially from a man. I wrote this:

And I realized… I’ve never had it because I have never really been open to it. My capacity to have that kind of confident, wild, free, sexually-joyful and sensuously free love has always been closed off by my shame. By the limits I imposed on myself because I felt ashamed.

I can’t very well have it if I am NOT OPEN TO IT.

None of the men I dated before were open to that kind of love either, so they were mirroring to me my own closed door.

I just never really, truly, fully realized what that closed door was hiding, why it was closed. I have cottoned to the fact that I felt shame, a lot of shame and unworthiness, but I never put things together like THIS before.

And so, knowing this, I can open up to what I’ve never had before. And there’s every reason for me to have it now that I am opening to it.

I regret that I cannot convey more clearly how huge this is for me, how much healing this brings to every single aspect of my life. My self-confidence in EVERY SINGLE AREA OF MY LIFE – job, money, relationships, self – bam.

Changed forever.

And I pause to think – how many of us on this earth right now are also carrying crippling burdens of shame?

This morning, waking up after processing all of this for a while – I noticed a subtle but clear sense of freedom, of being physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually LIGHTER. Shame, like guilt, is so very, very heavy.

Setting it down, walking away from it…. Into freedom….