4/8/2019 EP 15 - Final Episode - Podcast -The Badass Challenge - What Do You Do With The Shame (and other stuff that holds you back)?Read NowListen to the podcast Read the Blog What To Do With Shame:Reconciling badasserie* with feelings of shame *Badass definition: Being able to step into your power so fully that you are able to create the life you want to live. Last Week’s Tools:
How did you do with last week's assigment? It made a huge difference for me to cut off the negative input. I feel more spacious and have more energy. As to motivating videos, so far I like Luvvie Ajayi, Zain Asher, and Ami Morin (there is also a link to a massively badass composer and musician (a 14 year of girl!) at the bottom of the blog). Asking “what is the badass move?” slowed down a bit this week. I think I overdid it before and have now found balance. It’s not good to use anything to excess. Before you know it, it becomes a way to oppress yourself, such as: “you must always be badass” and “not being a badass is a fail,” instead of calling upon it like a celebrated super power--only as needed. I’m blown away by how much shame I'm discovering I have. In this badass training, everything is foaming up to the surface. Yay and Yikes! It seems, if you want to be a badass and if shame is located in the space where courage tries to be, shame’s going to show up like an invisible ink signature held over a candle flame. Earlier, while I was working on a song, I felt shame over the quality of my signing voice because it wasn’t yet warmed up. Shame at not playing guitar like guitar god, Mimi Fox. Shame that I gave my chance at stardom away when I moved to the States. Shame makes that mean “I could have been somebody.” As if I’m not now. As if fame made you into “somebody.” Everybody matters equally. And yet, I have so much shame, I ache with it. I feel shame for loving you, dear reader. For loving you for no other reason than that you’re in the world. Shame says I should have a better, more specific reason and because I don’t, I’m odd. And that apparently is something to be ashamed of. I feel shame at feeling shame. I feel ashamed to say that I have talks with God. I feel shame that you must be thinking I’m a noo-noo head. But I’m not too ashamed to say these things. All the shame in the world can’t stop them from coming out. Because holding in one’s truth is worse than feeling shame. The badass training makes is easier to look at this feeling. Easier to name it. And now that I have, I feel I can let go of the armor I’ve put around it. Ahhh. That’s lighter. Suddenly, there’s more bandwidth to be thinking about you instead about my shame. How are you? What’s happening in your world right now? Where are you—in your heart, in your head? In someone’s arms? Protected and cared for and happy? Or are you alone, filled with secret sorrows? Or being self-critical? We all are, aren’t we? But we’re also lovely. You are lovely. Lovely—isn’t it odd that the term is reserved only for AFAB people, for people assigned female at birth. Why? Everyone has some kind of loveliness about them. It’s not a matter of gender. There’s a whole other can of worms right there! All that shame around not being “normal” and fitting into the two, all too restrictive, gender buckets. I know for a fact, because I have seen it with my own eyes that, that however you identify, you are lovely and you are beautiful. The great 19th Century French writer, Stendhal (pron.: stoñdull), described beauty as “la promesse de bonheur,” the promise of happiness. I believe that seeing beauty is part of happiness because it is a result of reverence. Of holding something or someone as sacred. Beauty, Thomas Moore showed in his book, The Soul of Sex, is the province of the soul. I know it as one of the gateways that open a connection with the divine, such as when I see a beautiful tree or the majestic Olymics across the water. For me to come right out and say it like that is a seriously badass thing to do because concern that speaking about my spiritual beliefs would be alienating to you wants to hold me back. You feeling alienated by me would make me feel ashamed. And so the list goes on. I may never stop feeling shame, but badass training says, That’s OK. Maybe there’s nothing to do with shame, per se. Being badass doesn’t seem to do away with it, but I think it allows you to move forward even in its presence. As promised the link to the most badass musician I’ve ever come across. She is the composer as well as the pianistr. Nothing short of amazing: 14 year old Alma Deutscher. Final week’s work in bullets:
Thank you so much for reading. I say, I love you, with whatever shame I feel and that's OK. Nothing other to do about it but hold space with kindness and compassion. This is the final episode in this series. I hope it's made a difference. I know it has for me. Facing shame has been so freeing. I hope you've found something to let go of that's freed you too. Wherever you are on your badass journey, I know you are whole and wise and divine, perfect exactly as you are and as you are not right now. Bye for now.
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December 2022
Henry India HoldenI write about the divineness of life in its many forms. Writer, artist, spiritual director, life coach, tarotist. Nonbinary. |