I’ve been thinking about this recently. it’s something we talk about a lot in group. we wrestle with, at the same time, trying to maintain this sense we’re OK as we are, and where we are, being works in progress, while striving each day to climb out of someplace dark over to somewhere brighter.
it seems as though shame is always kind of hanging around very close by, if not actively attacking us, in either of those moments. it’s a constant fight simultaneously to accept that we’re enough as we are, and trust the process that we can become better.
I don’t know that most understand how easy it is to make someone feel abject. shame is used as a weapon in society to get people to feel badly about things they should not feel badly about. there are people who are ill who feel shame about their illness. it’s not their fault. but we shame people for substance abuse disorder and depression. we put them in a box and label it the same way we label files or clothes.
for bad moral and cultural interaction, there’s room for shame. that’s it’s only function. but when you’re going through something dark, and especially when you believe enough in the change you want to make that you are willing to do the hard work, even if that means experiencing the twinges that never quite go away on the path to becoming better, where’s the shame in that?
being surrounded by people who are on the same journey is the best way I know to do the hard work. we show up for it everyday. shame shows up, too, but it’s not an invitation we have to accept. we don’t have to do what it wants us to do.
there are words like shame, and shameful, and shameless. there’s no word, I don’t think, for, oh, this person is doing something to make themselves better and they’re going to live with the shame you’re throwing on them. so when shame comes for you, you can just duck it and move on.
oh, and this is a cover of Friday I’m In Love by The Cure from last Friday’s group meeting:
cookie nieves 
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