What Would It Feel Like to Live a Life Without Shame

It's like a sinking feeling. Cat's got your tongue. Not being able to express yourself even though that's the one thing that will set you free.

Shame replaces the sorry you should be releasing. It's constraining instead of free flowing.

That is what holding onto shame feels like in the body. Not a thought. Not a concept. A grip.

My first memory of shame was when I stole from another kid. Small. Ordinary.

The kind of thing children do and adults forget. But the body does not forget.

My most traumatic memory was being sexualized as a child.

What a giant thunderstorm of shame that billowed and overshadowed me incessantly.

It was prevalent for so long it became like a security blanket. Familiar. Constant.

Something to organize a life around without even knowing that is what you are doing.

The first time I felt shame about money was when I wanted to do extracurricular clubs at school and my mother told me she couldn't afford it. That one was quieter. But it landed. And it stayed.

Shame does not always arrive loudly. Sometimes it seeps through your bones so slowly you forget it wasn't always there.

sometimes you reach a point where you have carried it so long it starts to feel like identity. Like the truest thing about you.

You stop questioning whether it belongs to you and just start building your life around it.

At some point the weight of it stops feeling like punishment and starts feeling like proof.

Proof that you were always too much. Or never enough. Or somehow both at the same time.

As with time, emotions like waves come crashing back.

I stopped singing because the shame creeped in.

Somehow it was the thing I was most in denial about.

I try to play it cool like a cat that doesn't care about anyone's opinions because I think at the end of the day whatever I do I will always have shame to carry for one thing or another.

And yet. Shame is a portal.

The truth I have been hiding from myself is that I am so capable of everything I desire.

That shame is not the end of the story. It is the beginning of the excavation.

My whole life has been alchemizing erotic energy both negative and positive, shadow and light.

Understanding our true nature and how it is in everything in the universe.

The point of this work is to be able to look at all your imperfections and still be able to love yourself every step of the way.

How to alchemize the unprocessed shit into good.

That is not a destination. It is a practice.

One that asks you to keep showing up even when the shame says you shouldn't.

Even when it says you are too much or not enough or too broken to be believed.

What would it feel like to live a life without shame?

I don't have a clean answer. I am still in it. Still processing. Still finding new corners of it I didn't know existed.

But I know this.

People say I'm brave for going through what I've been through.

But what I think is brave is sharing what you're going through live as you're still processing it.

That is shameless.

Aho.