It’s another weird late December morning.  It will reach 60° again today, though it looks like the last warm day.  The world is shrouded in fog, and my head too is a little foggy from the late night last night and the wine.  It’s a peaceful kind of foggy though.

No pressure today, no ghosts of the past filling me with longing this morning.  Nor the demons of shame, or guilt, for my part in what happened.  I loved, that’s all.  I loved deeply, intensely, without limit, beyond reason.  I don’t now, I will again. And today, I will let it go at that.

It’s easy to see our flaws when we look backward.  It’s easy to chastise ourselves.  But why?  We are all the same thing, the universe manifesting itself through us.  We are here to evolve, to grow, to learn.  Bitterness will take away the beauty of the lessons we learn.  I choose to hold them dear to my heart, so that as the future unfolds, greater joy will come into it because I didn’t waste the lessons.  I didn’t waste the time.

Like my current favorite teacher Brene Brown says, (and I am paraphrasing), we are hard-wired for struggle, we come into this life that way.  But we are also, from the moment of our conception and for no reason other than we exist, worthy of love and belonging.

I have read  a few blogs this morning about shame, our personal shame, and how excruciating it is.  Let me say, that verbalizing the shame, and not burying it, is the only way through it.  Allow others to feel empathy for us, because empathy is the death of shame.  Iyanla Van Zant says those things that we bury do not die.  They rot and they fester and they will make us sick.

I believe in putting our shameful experiences out there.  I believe in sending the energy to the universe, and that the universe, as a loving parent of us all, will atone, and make right what we did.  I believe that in owning our stories, we gain strength, and perspective, and understanding and compassion.  More importantly, we also make connection possible.

Shame isolates us.  Owning our stories, and letting go of the shame connects us.  To feel isolated, is to feel separate from others.  How can we be separate, when we are all created from the same stardust?   Shame, and isolation is us not believing we are worthy.

We are.  Each and everyone of us.