No one wants to find out, I’m fairly certain of that. Most people’s rock bottoms involve losing something: a wife, a husband, a sibling, a child, respect. We all know the main feature, no matter what you’ve lost, is shame.
Shame is such a powerful emotion. With a fist closed over my heart, I hold tight to mine. Letting it penetrate as deep as it can so as to feel it as long as I can. Shame has shaped me. Mistakes in words, actions or inactions. Those moments are the ones that I feel the strongest, the memories I wince the hardest at when they surface. Forgiveness is hard, especially when it is toward yourself.
But perhaps a rock bottom isn’t meant to be a pit that consumes us, but a turning point. We speak of them as tides of change. The moment we realized we had to stop. No more. Enough of that.
Glennon Doyle says: “but here’s the good news, when you’ve been to rock bottom before, you also know the power of it”. Watch this interview linked below, for some more inspiration on feeling the hard stuff. Feeling all the things. This talk is about relationships, but I think it’s much more than that.
I’m not ready to speak of my shame yet, but I name it in the silence of my soul and I hold it up to the sky and say HERE. Take it from me! With hand still clasped around it tightly I shake my fist and silently scream. And release.
Cut the ties. One by one. Of the shame, named in the darkness, held to the light.
It cannot hurt me here in the light.