Weeding out shame and blame from the garden of my heart to make room for self-love and self-compassion.
Collage by Maharani Faleiro
Image in center by Annikaayakoy
In weeding the garden of my heart of all that was unbeneficial, I had overlooked the out of the way places where deep-rooted, unexamined beliefs grew wild and blocked me from moving forward.
Image by
Karen Massari on PexelsThere I found SHAME
whose roots had spread far and wide.
These roots of shame
did not allow for seeds of
self-care,
self-love,
self-forgiveness
to flourish.
The long-held beliefs
absorbed and learned
was that shameful people
are unworthy, defective, unimportant, unlovable, undeserving, “bad”.
Society, employers, teachers, parents, friends, lovers use SHAME to achieve compliance.
When I finally had the COURAGE
to analyze what I felt ashamed about,
they fell into two categories:
#1.
Things that I could not help:
temperament,
biology,
physiology,
race,
religion.
#2
Things that were the result of
OTHER PEOPLE’S
disrespectful,
inappropriate,
unkind
actions.
Since these actions came from those who had responsibility, authority and power, I never questioned and simply accepted that the fault was mine. In both cases, I could not do anything to change it, so the SHAME simply remained.
Image by
@anntarazevich on PexelsSHAME is different from GUILT.
In guilt, it is your own actions that
cause the suffering,
so you can take responsibility and
make amends for the actions.
With shame you can’t.
Image by
@yankrukov on PexelsThe other unexamined belief was BLAME.
I realized that the burdens of blame actually prevented me from taking additional responsibility for my well-being simply because there was no more room on my shoulders.
When I dissected all the things that
I accepted BLAME for,
I found that, in fact,
I had taken on the
DEFERRED responsibility of
those who had AUTHORITY and POWER
but did not take RESPONSIBILITY
for their actions.
I was so used to accepting
deferred responsibility that
I also unquestioningly took on more.
Image by
@leeloothefirst on PexelsNow, I have chosen to
DISCARD the shame but
I wholeheartedly take
full responsibility for GUILT.
I also have set aside the burden of deferred responsibility in the form of blame. I can’t make anyone take back responsibility but I no longer need to carry it.
After this thorough weeding, the garden of my heart has space for the seeds of self-care, self-love, self-compassion.
23 April 2017|
Re-edited 1 August 2020
Image Description of Collage
A collage of heart images, garden images and quotes. Center image: Anatomical illustration of the heart surrounded by flowers by Annikaayako
