For many friends who are being courageous and practicing authenticity in their own hard places.
I wrote this several months ago but decided to post it today. Lately, I have heard many stories of depression and almost all are woven with shame.
It’s my worst fear. It’s always been my worst fear. But lately it is harder to keep it far from my heart.
The fear that I will wound my kids so deeply because of my own wounded or messed up places.
Eggshell walking happens a little more frequently at our house these days. Oh how I remember eggshell walking. It confused me. It scared me.
Sometimes I breathe this prayer … “Mothering without wounding. Mothering without wounding.” Sometimes I have the presence of self to breathe it gently. It comes out like a desperate chant from a crazy person on the worst days. What I’m really praying for is help to get my crap together so I don’t crush these tender hearts I’m supposed to be caring for in my exhaustion and newly short-fused self.
Shame calls my name. It says, Look at what you are doing to them!
Who were you to think you would do better?
When Evan gets mad and says, “You’re the worst mother…ever.” it slices deeper than it normally would or probably should.
Meet my shame.
Shame has lost so many avenues into my heart but not this mothering one. It still owns quite a bit of property in my heart when it comes to my kids.
When everything is quiet, shame taunts me with whispers of deep fears, What if you never get better? What if it strangles everything good in you? What if they end up just like you? You are breaking them.
I grew up midwest, charismatic, christian. Sometimes in my family and in my church, there was an unspoken and sometimes spoken idea that if you are faithful, if you take it to God, you will not need counselling. After all, Jesus is called the Wonderful Counselor. The havoc-wreaking shame and stigma say if you are capable-enough, faithful-enough, God-loving enough, you and God will be able to manage it. Shame digs in so deep and we miss God’s tender and healing mercy for our humanity pretending we aren’t like a cat just burying our shit.
Shame tells me not to write this. Shame keeps its slimy fingers around my throat as long as I don’t say it out loud. Shame screams that you will pity me. And ohmygosh…there is nothing that makes me recoil like pity. Shame tells me I have really stepped over the line this time. That this is a private struggle I really shouldn’t share let alone on the blog. Shame is an enemy of my soul in every possible way because it wants me to disconnect out of fear of being seen; disconnect from my own deep heart, my God and my people.
But shame and I have done battle for several years now. And I refuse to let him win and wreck the beauty of my life. For the most part, I recognize his voice now. Mostly I recognize how my skins feels like bugs are crawling. My heart nearly pounds out of my chest. I want to run and hide...or go shopping. It’s my first impulse. I feel small. My people-pleasing instincts kick in. I want to do whatever it takes to quiet the shame and keep him from screaming my secret to everyone.
But I have learned a little about this enemy over the years. I know that if I do these things, these first impulses – he wins. He gains more ground in my heart. “Shame keeps worthiness away by convincing us that owning our stories will lead to people thinking less of us.” Shame loves perfectionist (raising my hand now, Hi! I’m Shanna and I’m a recovering perfectionist.) because we are so invested in having everything look just right. Countering shame fundamentally requires vulnerability. It is the weapon shame fears. It also strips shame of his power.
So this post is about stripping shame of its power in my heart. It is humbling. It is good. Life is not all mountaintops. I recently told my spiritual director that this season feels like a desert. Not the kind you irrigate or sight see. But the kind of desert that feels dusty and dry. The days feel long. The road winds and I’m not sure where it ends. It is a desert where you keep walking, one foot in front of the other. I want to be faithful in my desert. What will this look like?
“The ordinary acts we practice every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest.” Thomas Moore
So I have a new therapist we can’t really afford but really, we can’t afford not to. Not because I’m falling apart at the seams (though some days I am) but because I want to live my life alive to it. I’m a high functioning person. I get out of bed, I make meals, I go to work, I do all of the things most of the things I need to do. I find joy in my life. But it’s harder some days. And I don’t want this season to become my normal. I don’t ever want to go back to the way I lived before – disconnected from my soul and people and afraid of God. I don’t want my short fuse to become my new normal as a mother. I don’t want to wear masks – they suffocate. So I go to therapy. I write this shame-busting blog post. I tell my fears to a few trusted people.
I am working to not be ashamed of the depression.
I remind myself that at least I feel something. For so many years before the kids were born I functioned so far out of my heart. I was calm, cool and collected because my childhood depression became a low-grade constant companion in my life. It grew with me so I never noticed it. I thought I was just very even-keeled.
I also remind myself that I do not everwant to deaden painful emotions because the price for that is just too high. I’ve been there done that, don’t ever want to go back. I have fought hard battles and seen little miracles on my journey out of that.
My neurologist tells me depression is a normal part of illness, expected even. Is it the chicken or the egg, I wonder? Which came first? Does it even matter?
A must-read for me is Weavings: Journal of Spiritual Formation. The last edition was entitled Resilience.
What a beautiful and overused word. Over the past several months, personally and with clients I have come back to one article, Gifts from the Holy Resilient by Steve Doughty. Others have walked this desert road and share the gifts of their journey. Grateful.
When subjected to the fiercest pressures of change, the holy resilient do not just endure or bounce back. They become more: more compassionate, deeper, simpler in their desires, and more focused in how they use their time. Resilience... is not simply about getting back to normal nor is it about adjusting as well as they can. It is about transformation.
My heart says YES! This is what I long for. I can see how my health concerns and depression have become a place not just for getting back to normal but for transformation. Doughty shares a cluster of questions for discerning in our seasons of change. In this season, they are helping me find perspective, to anchor, in this space of life that holds lots of questions, hard days when I feel so unlike my normal self and beautiful gifts in the middle of it all.
Thought I’d share the questions from the article here. These questions are reminder that we do not have to dismiss or pretend hard places/suffering do not exist by encouraging people to simply have more (better) faith. Faith is expressed in the honest heart acknowledging hurting/broken places and inviting faith-filled transformation.
1. What must I/we let go of?
Even asking the question can be painful (it has been for me). The answers are seldom better. They point to everything from abilities we cherish (“good” mothering), to comfortable ways of ambling along, to life itself. Demanding as these circumstances might be, this much is clear: only if we ask the question, and only if we seek God’s grace to act on the answers, will we grow in new ways.
2. In the midst of this change that is taking place, what abides or what sustains?
What continues when so much is altered? Is it my capacity to love? Is it the Loving One I turned to in prayer, even if my prayers are angry and confused? Do special memories endure and bless me with their presence? Is some larger purpose I long valued now inviting renewed attention? This question, “what abides?” restores perspective. It also opens us to growth.
3. What of Christ am I invited to put on?
During a confusing change in my (Steve Doughty) life a friend counseled, “What grows within you during this time may be more important than all the changes whipping about you.”
4. What fresh glimpses of God’s grace do I/we see amid all that is going on?
We may quickly find answers to this question. We may have to ask for a long time. Either way, as we live with the change it is important to remain sensitive to the tiniest sign of God’s fresh blessings.
5. What models of faithful change can I/we look to?
This is a good question not just in change but when everything seems settled. What people do we know that grew through change? What lessons do they teach us? If we watch for models along the way, we are more prepared when our turn comes.
6. How might what I am learning help others?
This question turns us outward. The changes we deal with may consume all our energy while they are taking place. Ultimately, though, the lessons we learn along the way are not just for us. To be attentive to how our experience may help others is not prideful. It is an act of compassionate remember. It is recalling how God has helped us in a multitude of ways and then remaining sensitive to how what we have received may aid others.
