Someone asked me last night what the opposite of shame was. I didn’t have an answer. I couldn’t even conceive of what it would be like to live without it.
Only in our Puritanical culture is “shameless” a dirty word; who decided this was improper?
Someone else offered that the opposite of shame was PRIDE. It hadn’t even occurred to me.
So many of us can’t even conceptualize a life of pride instead of shame. Well, today I finally realize what it feels like to release the shame-based narrative. But the path has been fucking brutal, only made possible through my plants, fungi, and most importantly, my people.
I recently saw that I've been quietly trying to die ever since I first realized it wasn't safe to be who I was in the religion and households I was raised. So an epic internal propaganda campaign began; a process of self-gaslighting, trying to unthink my thoughts and hide what was in my soul from the all-seeing God eye in the sky—and since he could see into my innermost soul, this also meant hiding them from myself.
I knew I was attracted to women by the time I was in second grade. I can remember the moment I decided I had to forget this truth, because I was terrified that if God found it buried in my psyche, I would burn in a lake of fire. So I engaged in an active ritual of burying the truth from myself—a ritual I would repeat into adulthood, every time some subconscious part of me surfaced and tried to enact a latent desire that would get me in trouble with somebody in my life.
At times this made me behave dishonestly. I didn’t understand why I did it or like who I was becoming. It was subconscious programming, making me increasingly alienated from myself, to whom I already seemed a stranger.
I've actively tried to die a few times. While the urge to act is no longer present, the medicine path has shown me these subconscious patterns are still there. I haven’t been seeing myself clearly. But I realize now that it takes a truly safe holding space to trust your eyes to reveal the truth.
I see myself now, for the first time, in the full complexity of my humanness; the queer and trans ways I am teotlizing. Perhaps we can only truly be seen in community, our vibrating particles coming to rest when observed by another, but first, we must observe ourselves. In Nahuatl, the ancient Aztec langauge, one translation of “truth” is: “I sought out the root of the matter; I reached completely down to the place where the roots were.”
I've never wanted to be in this body. I don't feel like this skin belongs to me; there is dysphoria and dysmorphia present. But it’s shifting. I don't know what that will look like, but I know that I am held, loved, and safe.
Let’s build a world where we replace shame with PRIDE. To all who may be on a similar journey, you're not alone. I see you and I love you. And there is a movement already building all over the world, composed of those of us who see another way.
Let’s live SHAMELESS. Won’t you join me? https://bit.ly/shamelesstoday