CARE.CHECK*: What is your relationship with shame?
How does your body react just to reading that word?
If it feels safe and tolerable—and while staying mindful of your breath—can you zoom in on the sensations, for a few seconds?
And can you do it without listening to any story that the brain might be offering to make sense of the feeling?
Now, can you take a step back and look around you to find something that you feel very visually pleasing? Something you can ground your awareness on, while your body fills back up with the love that beats your heart.
And FROM that place of connect: can you turn your attention again towards the body sensations that come up for you when reading the word Shame?
The goal is not to stay there. The goal is only to start building a relationship to that vibration, until you’re familiar enough with it to witness it—WITHOUT feeling identified by it.
If it feels impossible at the moment, I hope that reading this week’s letter will help shift things a little for you. And please feel invited to write to me about your experience!
In case this letter gets cut in the email, you can click HERE to read the full post now :)]
IF YOU WANT TO LISTEN TO THIS INSTEAD, you can use Speechify, an app through which this Care.Check letter can be read to you by AI Gwyneth Paltrow :)
Hi Care.Friend,
Oh what a fun subject I have to share with you today…
How excited are you to read about shame?
I understand the resistance. I feel it too.
And yet, if we could only all talk about it more, it would feel so much more bearable to lean into this very human, absolutely universal experience. So I will try my best to start this conversation for us today, in a way that feels safe and empowering—and not triggering.
I thought one of the hardest parts of this healing journey would be to reconnect with my anger. Because I was scared of anger itself, but also because I knew that underneath this fiery vibration, there was an ocean of grief. And I was scared of my grief… even more.
But that was before I realized that, after that exploration of anger and grief, would come the time to meet the shame beneath my skin.
Oh what an odyssey.
Looking back, I guess it started at the School for the Work, and it’s been ongoing ever since… but Shame had never felt as unavoidable or untamable as last week.
Indeed, I started connecting to how deeply Shame is encrypted in me last Friday morning through my morning pages... Later that day, it became the epicenter of a session with my coach, which felt like an earthquake in my inner world (so many earthquakes in New York at the moment!).
And so on Saturday morning, my entire body felt like a bath of shame… and that’s when I decided that I would allow it to be.
That I was done fighting! Done resisting…
That I was done running away.
That I would not abandon my body, nor the parts of me that were feeling this, any longer.
I decided that my Shame was mine to receive and feel. And so I chose to dedicate my day to feeling my feelings.
I didn’t exactly know how, but I knew that, this time, I would not choose to push through it—or find a way to still feel efficient, so that I could be proud of how much I achieve “even on the weekend”.
I would not escape into Netflix and numb either. No. I would not pretend that everything is fine and wonderful, because I only tolerate my face in the mirror when I’m seeing a woman who looks like she doesn’t have a care in the world.
No, I would not take the role of the resilient one, the one that puts on a brave face and hopes that it will lead the world to validate her right to breathe on Earth.
Instead, I would FEEL my shame.
So I swallowed my disappointment when, on top of that, my singing lesson was canceled, fought my brain’s explanation that I was being punished for being weak and shame-FULL, and took it as one more sign that I needed to keep on journaling until I could breathe again…
Then I downloaded a Letter from Love, from the ether.
If you’re not familiar with this practice taught by the magical Liz Gilbert through her Substack Letters from Love, the goal is to become the channel that Unconditional Love needs to write us the sweetest, kindest, wisest and most healing letter one could dream of, in answer either to the simple prompt “Dear Love, what would you have me know today?” or to a more specific prompt such as (why not?): “Dear Love, what would you have me know about shame?”
And so I started writing, while committing to breathing through the physical sensations of shame that did not betray any intention of going anywhere else.
(I hope that by the end of this letter we will all be desensitized to the word Shame forever! My goodness, I would never have thought I would ever write that word so many times in one day. And my goodness that word is triggering just by being itself.)
I breathed through the throbbing sensation in front of my eyes.
I breathed through the cold hollowness that was cursing through me.
I allowed myself to feel like I was being swallowed from the inside out, and a strange inner experience that I can only describe as a feeling of decay.
I breathed through the pain in my lower jaw, the constriction in my chest, the paralysis in my belly.
I tried to bring back some energy in my limbs.
And MOSTLY I kept my mind concentrated on only one thing: writing what I was receiving.
And the first mind-altering insight I received from Love was that moving through Shame is not like moving through Anger or Grief. At all.
Because to their core Anger and Grief are LOVE.
So it’s all about alchemy! You feel it until the love is revealed.
But Shame, like Fear, is NOT made of Love. They’re its opposite.. The lack-thereof. They’re lovelessness in essence.
And so we cannot feel our Shame into Love, we are called to FILL Shame with Love.
That shook me to my core.
Suddenly, I was not connecting to Shame in order to find my way back to Love. No. In that instant I reconnected to the Love that I am in order for Shame to find Love.
I realized that Shame cannot leave me because Shame needs me! Shame is not trying to hurt me—Shame is begging me to heal HER. Shame is not my enemy; Shame is my sacred responsibility.
What a paradigm shift.
* We cannot feel our Shame into Love,
we are called to FILL Shame with Love.*
Another thing that Love shared was that Shame needs light, tenderness, patience and care.
Now, those were action steps I could hold on to. When I'm not in Shame, I know how to look for light! And thanks to the little space that had been created for my heart to be able to anchor me through the flood of sensations, I could write myself a list of places where I would find some light that day:
I would come back to journaling as many times as my soul energy and/or my inner child asked me to.
I would listen to a few deeply inspiring podcasts about connection and authenticity.
For lunch, I would watch a talk between
and , two of my most trusted mentors (or Sahwirahs as Tererai Trent would call them) who broke so many of the chains that imprison my heart, thanks to their workshop at Kripalu last September.In the afternoon, I would spend some time songwriting!
And my only official mission of the day would be a trip to Whole Foods to deeply nourish my body through this ordeal.
Finally, I would treat myself to a movie I really loved in the evening. Something fun, sweet and inspiring.
I HAD A PLAN.
All of this would also be imbued with tenderness and care, as I committed to monitoring my self-talk with the fiercest compassion I could muster.
And, yes, I would be patient through all of this, patient with the process, with the sensations, with the feeling—and so so patient with the stories projected in front my weary eyes, by my terrified psyche.
* I reconnected to the Love that I am in order for Shame to find Love.*
Thanks to Love, I had a direction… and without me even realizing it, I had chosen self-connection so healing was already happening.
Now of course it didn’t feel healing at the moment! But healing rarely does… and that’s why we run away from our cures, poisoning ourselves with denial, misguidedly hoping it will keep us from harm—when of course it’s the main reason why harm happens.
Love also reminded me that Shame stems from the parts of me that were terrified into thinking that they should not exist—which meant that by resisting shame, I was proving to them that they shouldn’t exist indeed! That moved me so deeply.
Because there is no way I’m going to let a wounded part of me suffer alone and believe that no one cares or understands!
Because I do. I care. I care so very much.
And I do understand… After all, I was there too.
So that reinforced by commitment to tune in more and more and more.
No matter how scary, no matter how heavy, I was not going to let my body carry alone the weight of stories that I’m the only one able to edit.
* Shame needs light, tenderness, patience and care.*
Love then explained that I had witnessed the shame driving those who had traumatized me and understandably thought that, if I could only be like them, they would finally love me. And that made so much sense to me… Because I do love them so much still. And I didn’t only love them as a kid, obviously—kids worship the adults they are surrounded with.
That’s how I realized that a little one within me still believed that Shame, the root of what makes me feel unlovable, was the ticket to hold on to if I wanted people to love me… Waoh. Hopeless! And yet so relatable… And so endearing.
Right?
Those little Shameful parts were becoming more and more adorable by the minute and even though the sensations were getting more and more overwhelming, the love in my heart was also flowing and meeting them in a sacred dance I felt incredibly privileged to be witnessing.
* I had chosen self-connection so healing was already happening.*
Love added that I also witnessed how full of shame a lot of people at Church were! And they were supposed to be the ones who had found “God”, that almighty judge who could cure what was so wrong with me (whatever that was was beside the point, God would know, so I didn't have to).
So yes, that made sense again, ironically. I just had to feel enough shame to find God (!) so that I could finally stop feeling shameful (!!)—because God would cure me. Another hopeless pursuit! And yet also another endearing attempt at belonging.
And Love reminded me of something I know with every inch of my being: God was never going to cure me out of what I was made of… BECAUSE I am made of Love—just like you, just like all of us.
God (which is just another name for Life, Nature, Source, Creation, Consciousness, The Universe, Reality… or [you know which word you use]—the word itself doesn’t matter of course, what matters is the Truth our heart recognizes behind it) adores us beyond all understanding. UNconditionally.
* I was not going to let my body carry alone
the weight of stories that I’m the only one able to edit.*
Love explained to me that Shame is a flower that was forbidden to bloom and who made it mean that her beauty was an insult to the world... So Shame turned into horror, because she thought it that was what was required of her! Then Love urged me to reassure Shame that her beauty is welcome in this world. Needed even!
And we have to explain this to our shame very patiently, because Shame has no way to learn about Love if we don’t wrap our shame in Love—for as long as it takes for her to soften, open her arms and receive it.
* Shame is my sacred responsibility.*
Finally, Love gave me this promise to make to my Shame, and I want to invite you to make this promise to YOUR Shame too:
“Shame, I love you. You're precious, cherished and loved and you are welcome here. Nothing you do or do not do can change that. We love you and we're right here. Please let us in. We belong together. And there is nothing left to fear! Because Love is here.”
* Shame has no way to learn about Love
if we don’t wrap our shame in Love.*
I like to look at our emotions like tiny energetic friends, entrusted with the tough mission of guiding us on our journey.
Joy, Gratitude, Awe, all members of the so-called “good” squad, have been given the most rewarding task:
They’re meant to reinforce our intuition and well-being, thereby confirming that we are walking the unique path we’re meant to travel on on Earth. They allow us to know that we’re in alignment with ourselves, with our dreams and with Love. They are made of Love, and it’s very easy for us to trust that! They are wonderful friends and enjoyable travel companions.
But when we think about it they are not the most useful ones.
Anger and Grief have a way harder job to do for us…
They’re always walking off path to make sure that they can redirect us the second we take a step off center or in the wrong direction. They’re also made of Love, but we tend to forget that—and we vilify them when they’re the most dedicated servants and guides one could hope for on a journey as trying as the human experience.
And then there is Fear. And there is Shame.
Shame and Fear are NOT made of Love. We meet them when we disconnect completely from our hearts, from our center, from our Love. They are the martyrs of emotions, because we all hate them! We despise and disparage them. We refuse to look at them. We run away from them—and by doing so we run ever further away from our center.
Which is a tragedy in itself, because all they were trying to do was to warn us that we got lost—and all they were hoping for was that we would then become their shelter. That we would adopt them before returning to our golden road, so that they could finally experience Love too! Through us. Thanks to us. As a reward for guiding us back home.
But what happens most of the time is that we miss the warning completely and instead fall even deeper into lovelessness, in their names… Keeping everyone stuck in the darkness, while we feel hate towards Fear and Shame, and while they feel terror, on top of despair, thinking that it’s all their fault if we’re collapsing. (Realizing in horror that they caused exactly what they were trying to prevent.)
* Emotions like tiny energetic friends,
entrusted with the tough mission of guiding us on our journey.*
So my dear Care.friend, I invite you to make the choice I made this weekend and to listen to your Love’s guidance.
I invite you to receive Shame with an open heart & to let yourself experience the depth of the sensations Shame communicates through. May you let it soften and expand you.
I invite you to listen to the stories without trying to fix or change them—but only as the most caring compassionate witness. (Trust that your heart knows how.)
I invite you to trust this process and know that no feeling is final, nothing in life is permanent, and there is nothing that Love cannot bear or no one Love will not help (even small energetic beings called emotions).
I invite you on a journey of self-connection that cannot be described and only experienced.
I invite you to discover the depth and force of your Love, in the most unexpected way.
I invite you to accept Shame and realize that Shame stems from a hole within yourself that you get to fill with the most delicious holy matter ever created:
Love.
* There is nothing that Love cannot bear
and no one Love will not help.*
Finally, I invite you to treat Shame like a wounded wild animal that is only trying to survive in a world that forbade it to come alive. Because you get to change that now.
You get to allow your breath to reach your terrorized little Shame, and by doing so you get to witness a rare miracle:
Shame will indeed melt into compassion in front of your bewildered eyes and reawakened heart.
And so before I say goodbye to you—and delight at the idea of writing to you again next week—I want to take this chance to speak from my whole heart to each part of you that hold some shame, and share that:
“My dear friend’s Shame, I love you.
You're precious, cherished and loved, and you are welcome here. In my heart and on this page.
Nothing you do or do not do can change that.
We love you and we're right here. Please let us in.
We belong together.
And there is nothing left to fear!
Because Love is here.”
With kindness, love and light—because I truly believe they’re our most sacred offering to this world.
Always,
leo