Let's Talk About Shame

For the past three weeks, as I have been traveling through the south of India, I have found myself on an abundance of overnight trains, planes, cabs, and rickshaws.

This has left me with plenty of time for self-reflection, and as an incredibly introspective person by nature, this is truly sacred time for me.

For the past few months leading up to this trip, I kept "seeing" Brene Brown's book, "The Gift of Imperfections" everywhere. It was mentioned in multiple conversations, appeared in my Facebook feed, and has shown up as suggested reading for me on Amazon over and over.

Whenever something of this nature happens, I take it as a strong message from my guides, spirit, the universe, whatever, that I need to listen up, pay attention, and in this case, read!

As someone who very much relies on her intuition, to me, synchronicity is like a wink from the universe!

As I started to dive into this book, I learned that Brene Brown has dedicated her life to studying difficult human emotions like shame, fear, and vulnerability, and her book is all about loving yourself throughout the process of owning your story.

Ah-ha! There it is! Got it!

Thank you universe for once again being so timely with your messages!

For far too long, I felt totally alone and ashamed of my struggles. I had a degree in nutrition, and had spent an inordinate amount of time not only in school, but of my own accord, reading everything I could get my hands on about what to eat and why.

After all, healing the body through natural foods is one of my greatest passions.

Yet, despite all of this, I was totally struggling with my relationship to food and my body. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't seem to get my behaviors in line with my knowledge.

I would fluctuate between compulsive bingeing and then attempting to restrict to "fix" what I had done, which would only lead to more bingeing. For years, I felt totally out of control, and stuck in a viscous cycle, which had conditioned me to feel incredibly negative towards myself and my body.

I couldn't even bring myself to say the words binge eater or emotional eater out loud because I was too filled with embarrassment, shame, and fear around anyone knowing how hard it was for me.

Well guess what... I really just don't give a f**k anymore.

I have come an insanely long way since that time, in fact, it is like night and day. And if I stay quiet and stuck in feeling shameful around "my story", I am doing a HUGE disservice to all the women who I feel called to serve, all the women, who I know, I can truly help.

Here's the thing about being a human... we struggle!

We all have different ways of taking the edge off. Some people numb out with food, while others use alcohol, drugs, sex, relationships, money, work, gambling, chaos, shopping, perfectionism, the internet. The list is endless and it is truly all one in the same. Struggling is a part of universal human experience and there is really no way around it.

In Brene Brown's book, she gives us three things that we need to know about shame:

1. We all have it. Shame is universal and one of the most primitive human emotions that we experience. The only people who don't experience shame lack the capacity for empathy and human connection.

2. We're all afraid to talk about shame.

3. The less we talk about shame, the more control it has over our lives.

There is a real power in embracing imperfections and vulnerabilities. In being OK with all your scars and humanness. One of the things that really helped me to let go of some of the shame that I was harboring around my food crazy days, was finally reaching out to someone and talking about it.