Breakfast was scheduled several weeks before I started this blog series on shame. Almost immediately as we were seated, he said, “I’m enjoying your series on shame. I’m in Faithwalking 201 and just this week I’ve done the homework on learning about my shame voice.”
Then he told me this story.
As a kid I wasn’t much of an athlete. I played sports but was never any good. On my baseball team I played in every game based on the league rule that everyone played two innings and had at least one at bat. Generally, I would strike out but one day I got a hit. My celebration at first base ended abruptly when I overheard my coach say to the rest of the team. “If he can hit it, any of you can.”
Suddenly I was filled with a sense of not being enough. It’s the first memory of shame that I can recall. As I got clearer about my shame voice, I realized that
I lived in a lot of shame.
I came home from a recent trip with a gift for my son. He responded, “Is this all you got me?” I noticed that I was ashamed. I’m not enough as a father. I went to work the next day and in a conversation with my boss, he said, “When will you complete that project?” Once again, I was flooded with shame. I was not enough as an employee.
Sensitized to my shame voice, I suddenly realized that it was everywhere.
As my friend talked, I realized how alive he seemed and how deeply connected I felt to him. I felt connected because once again that I was with someone with whom I did not need to pretend.
I believe that we live the fully human, fully alive life when we love deeply and well – not just friends and family but strangers – even enemies. When we have a mature capacity to love everyone we encounter, we are fully alive and our aliveness fosters a community and a common good that is life giving.
In my own learning to love in that way, I discovered that shame was one of the biggest obstacles to that kind of love. So I set out to learn to live shame free.
In previous posts, I’ve written about courage and compassion as keys to a shame free life.
Connection is also an important key to shame free living
Shame caused me to hide my true self. Fear of judgment and rejection caused me to wear a variety of masks, pretending to be someone I wasn’t – pretending that I was self-sufficient and ok – while inside loneliness was a constant companion eating away at my soul. As I developed courage to talk about my shame and learned to be compassionate with myself in the weakness and fear that I experienced, people began to come out of the woodwork.
I thought I was the only one.
Not all men have been emasculated like I was. But as I shared my shame story I discovered that virtually everyone was either looking for their strength or running from it. Either they felt weak and powerless or they had used their strength in damaging ways. In both cases, the result was shame.
It’s not the similarity of our wounding that draws us together; it’s the universality of shame that connects us at a deeply human level. As I vulnerably shared my shame stories, I experienced a human connection unlike any other. For the first time, I began to know what real love was.
I’m living into a vision of life filled with loving people and loving communities. I’ve found that my most powerful resource is my own authenticity. All of my communities are populated by people who were wounded as children and who carry a burden of shame. While we can’t prevent the wounding, we can create endless possibilities of fully alive human beings who are capable of mature love – in large measure because they learn to live shame free lives.
What is your shame story? Who can you tell it to? I’d love to hear it. You can write me at jim@faithwalking.us or message me on my Facebook page. If you’ve never told it before, it will require you to be courageous. Remember, courage isn’t the absence of fear. It’s doing it scared.
Join me today no matter where you are in a commitment to developing shame free communities.