Hello, my name is shame.
I am terrified of being completely vulnerable for fear of being judged.
Terrified of daring to love, daring to build relationships for fear of being rejected and abandoned, hence my high raised walls of protection.
I often say to myself that I am not good enough.
Not worthy enough
Not lovable.
You will often find me dressed to impress, most often looking good.
I am a slave of good fashion, but don’t let that fool you. Underneath all the layers of clothe, I am a little child trapped in shame and eager to escape the ugliness that haunts me from within out.
“Vulnerability is not weakness. Vulnerability is emotional exposure.” Dr. Brene Brown
Often times I receive compliments on how beautiful I look, how gorgeous my shoes and clothes are, and when I drove a Hummer I received compliments on how stunning my car was, but none of those words ever fell to solid grounds, because underneath all the external beauty, lay the hidden truth that I felt ugly and unworthy of every good the world told of me.
Enslaved in a dark cloud engraved with the words “ugly,” I can never fully receive compliments, in fact I do my best to stray away from such conversations. Often times I can tell when a compliment is coming my way, in that moment I immediately divert the attention from me to the person by showering them with compliments before they get the chance to shine the light on me.
I call myself an introvert, but to be honest shame keeps me locked up in this cage.
In the core of my being, I am a compassionate and loving person.
I love to engage 1:1 with people, tell them how beautiful and loved they are, but I find it difficult to be effective in this role when I am buried in shame. The only time I feel safe enough to explore this gift, is when the light is not shinning on me, when I am in my self defined safe zone where my true self is free to be me but not really free because the truth is, somewhere hidden in my heart is a drowning spirit filled with shame of self.
“I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”
Psalm 139: 14
For many years I struggled to utter the words from Psalm 139:14 mainly because a big part of my heart never truly felt fearfully and wonderfully made.
All I could see were imperfections that diminished the value and authenticity of this verse.
“Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging.” Dr. Brene Brown
I believed and I still do that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, “if that’s true only God was and is capable of ever seeing the beauty He created in me.” I said to myself.
“No man could or can possibly view me as beautiful,” I convinced myself.
After all, I was and I am still layered with tonnes and tonnes of imperfections one would be crazy to fall in love with, or invest in relationship with me.
“Only God,” I said to myself.
“Only He was and is capable of seeing the beauty in me,” meaning here on earth, no man can ever see my beauty.
There were days I remember when I wished I was never born, or that I would have been born different. May be then, I thought to myself, “I would find the beauty that God saw in me. The beauty others saw in me.”
I wish I viewed God’s love as ENOUGH. I wish like you that I would have been fully content with the love of God, which is by the way the greatest kind of love.
Oh how I wish.
Instead, I longed for man’s kind of love.
The kind that comforts you when you are down. The almost envious teenage puppy kind of love that often times is so innocent and temporal. The love that showers you with gifts, holds you tight never to let go. The love that often utters the words, “I love you,” shouts to the world how crazy madly in love they are with you.
That was what I deemed REAL TANGIBLE love. All else just didn’t measure up.
God’s not so much. It was good, but not nearly as good as this tangible love that I so longed for.
As I write and declare this, I can only imagine how painful this must be for God our Father to hear and read. Although being God, none of this is a surprise to Him.
To know that His unconditional love is not nearly enough for His child. What a blow to His AMAZING spirit.
Many times like so many people, the love much like God’s that is so easily accessible, and oh so easily given is the kind of love that we take for granted.
Kind of reminds me of how easily accessible regular stones are to us, so much so that I have never given it much thought or even so desperately longed for it. However, when I think of Gold or Diamonds, all over sudden a rush with a desire to have, want steps into my heart. Suddenly, stone is no longer just stone. Stone is beautiful and desirable. Sadly enough, that’s the only way I can think of to describe my feelings towards this AMAZING love freely given to us by God, yet least desired.
Shame my friend, will rob you of every good planted in you.
I love what Dr. Brene Brown says:
“Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.”
I remember when I first heard the statement, “we are all BROKEN CREATURES,” boy did I feel redeemed. Finally, I had an explanation for my shame. How I related with this statement which dared to fully define who I was, who I am.
Broken in every sense of the word.
My friend Gaby and I had lunch this week. Seated in this beautiful Asian restaurant, tucked in the middle of downtown LA on a sunny Wednesday afternoon, she dared to remind me how good spirited I am. How worthy of love I am. Everything that causes my skin to crawl, because in the depths of my bleeding heart, shame robs beauty. Beauty then ceases to exist.
Deep down, shame is a longing for love. Unconditional love.
Still, she kept grinding on, feeding my heart with positive affirmations. Replacing all my negative thoughts with thoughts of good.
She later pointed out that just like me, she struggled to receive and embrace the good in her. The worthiness that so exists in her beautiful heart and body. So much wrong had been done and had happened to her. So much hurt ache. How could she not have felt that way about herself?, yet I never viewed her that way. All I saw was this amazingly beautiful Mexican friend filled with love love and more love.
Shame once again, dared to rob her of the beauty planted in her.
Shame lost
Growing up my parents never told me they loved me, and I don’t blame them. They too were raised in a similar way. However, having been raised in a world, greatly influenced by the western world of abundant and visible displays of love, never hearing those words sort of created the demon in me that feels unworthy of LOVE, and is always then searching for LOVE and sometimes searching in all the wrong places.
“I LOVE you. I LOVE you. I LOVE you.”
Hearing solidifies the feeling. Meaning if I heard it over and over, I am more apt to believe it of myself.
I remember as a teenager and youth, I looked to men to fill this void of love that seemed to grow deeper and deeper into the emptiness of my heart.
I struggled to accept a male friend, as just a friend. I longed for more than friendship because for some strange reason, more than friendship meant that I was TRULY LOVED.
Friendship wasn’t good enough. Friendship did not equate to love.
And to that I declare that I was a HOT mess.
Now a work in progress…
Because of my shame filled self, I aimed to please everyone.
Pleasing everyone equated to love all around.
It meant that I would have once again escaped my fear of rejection. Something that as a shame filled child, I strived so hard to escape. This later on led me to hang around people I really didn’t care for, do what I really didn’t care to do, all for the sake of escaping rejection, and welcoming love.
I so desperately wanted to belong, yet never knew how to.
I beat myself up for my imperfections.
“If only I was perfect enough then everyone would want to be my friend, everyone would love me.” I told myself.
For most of my life I lived a life buried and trapped in shame, and fear of being completely vulnerable.
For the longest time I found my worth in my career. I had achieved much at such a young age, and I was later to realize that work doesn’t demand vulnerability out of me. At work I am confident in my abilities, there was seldom space for shame to reside in, it was easier then to define my worth with my career success.
I stayed far away from building and investing in relationships for fear of rejection and hurt.
I expected others to take a risk with me, and risk being rejected, while I safely tucked my heart away in my safe zone.
I loved, but not fully loved
“Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weakness.” Dr. Brene Brown
The sad fact about shame, is that it robs one of the possibility of experiencing and building authentic relationships, and in that the possibility of experiencing real love.
In the very beginning of motherhood, I witnessed myself unintentionally denying my children the possibility of experiencing real love.
I knew without a doubt that I loved them, but because I had never known how to give and show true love, my love was given from afar. Never too close enough to bring out the emotions that come with love.
I ached to show them this kind of love. This love that dares to fully give. This love that for all my life I had so longed for, but did not know how to give it.
Shame once again, almost won.
It was later on into motherhood, that I dared myself to conquer shame, and dared instead to experience authentic, raw, unconditional love with my girls.
The thought alone was terrifying.
I dared to give my girls the kind of love that I dreamt of as a child.
The kind that kept me up late into the night imagining.
The kind that caused my eyes to glue itself to the television watching Prince Charming fall madly in love with Cinderella. Or, the simple kind of love that the Flintstones had for each other.
Its the kind of love that is not afraid to hug and kiss.
It loves over and over to the mountain tops and back.
Unconditional love.
That’s what I dared to bless my girls with.
A love that is free from judgement, condemnation and shame.
Free from perfectionism, but rather recognizes that we are all broken creatures, and our imperfections are what makes us beautiful.
I dared BIG.
You may ask why I have decided to unveil my heart naked before your very eyes?
Theodore Roosevelt once said:
“It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly…who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at best, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
I say this because like many others, I dare greatly.
I dare to defeat the shame within my spirit, and I dare to free you of that as well.
I realize that by baring my heart naked before your very eyes, that I risk rejection, unworthiness and a feeling of shame.
More than likely, I will wake up tomorrow morning wondering what on earth possessed me to publish these thoughts. I might even wish to have the ground open up to swallow me alive for fear of being judged, and experiencing deep shame once again. But that my friend, is a risk worth taking.
See, the way I see it now, by revealing my deep dark thoughts, shame no longer has power of over me.
I dare to set you free.
To free you of the burden that I have carried with me all these years.
To give you instead hope for a much better life, and to let you know that if you struggle with shame like I do and like millions of others in this world, you are not alone. You are loved, fearfully and wonderfully made.
Believe that.
I love Dr. Brene Brown. She has given me hope at a time when I thought hope was dead. Listening to her, has not only helped shape and re-write the scripts of shame that has for so long played over and over in my mind, she has also revealed to me the power I have over shame. Given me a desire to fight my battle with shame, and because of that I am a better person today. I dare you to spend a few minutes listening to her talk, you will be encouraged and blessed.
{to enjoy this video, simply scroll to the right corner of the blog and pause the blog music}
To that I say good-bye shame, and hello WORK IN PROGRESS…….
Until next week, have yourself a shame free week!!
Love: Christine
