oh the shame

In this blog I want to put my old stories under the magnifying glass and blow some dust off them. I'm calling it dissolving illusions.

In the 44 years I’ve been living I would say the last couple of years have been the most challenging and rewarding period. I do not have a partner or children and living alone. Of the shame! Well, that’s what I’m telling myself and it can be painful. As a woman I’m at times having difficult thoughts about how I ‘should’ be in society. I've been noticing the benefits of meditation in being able to see these thoughts with more clarity. I know I’m not alone in this although I can feel as though I am when I'm thinking 'it's only me'. Sound familiar? I’m talking to parents who also struggle with the same things. Comparing themselves, longing for intimacy, support, love, a sense of belonging etc.

I'm working with dissolving limiting beliefs, I like to call them illusions. Watching the films replay in mind as old stories or an imagined future that doesn't exisit, putting them under a magnifying glass to make them bigger, bringing them into the light so that I can face them and give empathy to those places in me that are longing to have needs met, or I can sit and stare and get caught up in the story and watch the suffering take it's grip. I choose the first option and it's worth every effort. This work has helped me to open the cage of limitations and feel a freedom that I've only tasted in the past. I'm more robust, trusting and deeply grateful. When I experience these shifts in myself I'm more able to support others to make them too. Being with our humanity together.

I'd like to share a self-empathy message that I learned from a dear friend of mine whom I met in California whilst assisting on the BayNVC Leadership Programme in 2013 (baynvc.org). You can use it when you notice that your system is contracting in response to a limiting belief eg I'm not good enough, It will never work, I'm not lovable, There's something wrong with me or some kind of version of that. Whatever you're thinking and believing you are never alone although you can believe that it's only you who thinks like this. Every human being on the planet has some kind of version of these.

“I am so longing in this moment to relax into trust in myself... to be grounded in the knowing of the truth of who I am. Without any doubt, there isn't, and there can’t be anything wrong with me. I so want this truth to live in me as a deep knowing of my being, a knowing, that no matter what, cannot be shaken” (Aya Caspi, certified NVC facilitator)