Shame

"shame, shame, I know your name"

The world is changing. Something is happening that feels a little bit different. Ideas that we used to accept blindly and fall in line with are beginning to let go, letting in cracks of lights, asking us to reconsider our alignment with them.

Shame used to have a firm hold on my life. It grasped me tightly and bound me to outdated beliefs, control, and ambiguity about my personal worth. It goaded me into believing that I was dirty, washed up, and somehow less than my neighbor.

I was shamed into believing that no matter how hard I tried I would never amount to anything more than I was. Who was I to think or believe that I deserved anything different than what I had in the present. Dreaming was futile, and my escapades into my imagination were eccentric and made me an outcast.

I was born to dream big. We are all born to be whatever it is that we choose. Most of us are taught by society that dreams are for fools. “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”

Shame shackles our ability to imagine life outside of the cold hard steel that keeps us limited in thoughts and beliefs. If we don’t look or act a certain way, then we don’t belong. If we were traumatized by the choices of others, or the situations our world creates, we are left wondering where and how we even fit in.

Shame is an outdated belief, a construct of control that is losing its ability to keep us locked into a world that acts as a way for only a few to thrive and benefit from the efforts of all.

What is shame?

It’s an imaginary force wielded to make us feel as though we are less.

But we’re not.

We are one.

Am I getting too big for my britches? Maybe…

Isn’t that wonderful? Imagine if we all began dreaming big of a world we want to live in. We all seem to be waking up, remembering who we are, and reaching for peace knowing we only have this life to live.

Poppies are often linked to remembrance, peace, and the cycle of life and death. They stand for the resilience of human spirit.