Shame's Potential

“What starts as shame may end as transformation.”

– Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop

I feel like I’m living in the middle of this quote right now. I’m feeling the shame and maybe I’ve got one foot in the transformation. Shame (and anger) emerges when I think back to my mistakes throughout life, how I’ve poorly handled relationships, how I quickly adopted others’ beliefs and worldviews in the name of self-preservation and assimilation, and how often I let others’ opinions of me dictate my direction and actions. I also feel shame when I realize the racism and misogyny that I have unknowlingly adopted and ignored. I have benefitted from white privilege and so much of my life I didn’t even realize its strength and breadth. I have silently shrugged my shoulders at widespread injustice. I have judged other women based on implicitly assumed societal expectations, all while calling myself a feminist. Shame is uncomfortable, but I’m sitting in it for now and searching for compassion and forgiveness from myself so that I can move forward. I’m hoping for the transformation. I need it. I can do better. I'm done remaining quiet.

I heard a conversation between Brené Brown and Tarana Burke recently (on Brené Brown's podcast, "Unlocking Us"), talking, among other inspired things which I’ll have to unpack another time, about how we cannot use shame as a tool for social justice. Shame becomes simply another way to perpetuate the power hierarchy. I wondered where that put me, as I’m sitting in the shame I currently feel. However, this is different. No one shamed me. No one used shame as a tool against me in the name of social justice. I opened my eyes to the truth that has always been, and I feel shame. Glennon Doyle wrote in Untamed, “we need revelation before revolution.” This shame is my revelation, which I can only hope leads through to my personal revolution – my transformation, made possible when I find compassion for myself. I have to admit, this seems ridiculously difficult right now, but I'm trying. Tara Brach writes in Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha, "Feeling compassion for ourselves in no way releases us from responsibility for our actions. Rather, it releases us from the self-hatred that prevents us from responding to our life with clarity and balance." Whew. Yeah, I want that.

I hold hope that perhaps many people might have patience with themselves as they open their eyes, learn, listen, feel, uncomfortably wrestle, and eventually arise with more compassion and empathy than before.