Toxic shame: the trademark debris from a survivor's sense of self after abuse... It spreads like a rash, turns to puss, and seeps through the soul. You feel it in the pit of your stomach, the tension in your shoulders, on your skin, in your heart... your heart.  

Toxic shame is often unnamed, and ironically, unfelt.  

Plenty has already been said about the issue of healthy shame. You recognize healthy shame when you have hurt someone or something. You confront your values, integrity or conduct. You take responsibility and make amends with regret, grief, remorse—and truth.

This is the hard season.

Right now, when so much has been ripped apart for so many, it is easy to curl up in a ball and shut down.

But we cannot shut down.  

If we are to honor all the work and pain and life itself, we must re-member our selves.  How we love and how we live depend on it.

Today, I stand under one of the tallest trees in the world. A fire burned through this forest recently, which altered the land and all that grew here. These great redwoods were hollowed out yet still stand in witness. Their wise silence is only altered by the wind. 

On this day, south of the Redwoods, other fires have been raging. I myself was born there. People I know and love have just witnessed much of their lives burn to the ground. But then I look at the base of the great charred redwood. I am struck by a fierce energy coming from beneath the ground.

What now?

The earth is rumbling with turbulence.

But above the planet debris, the blue remains so utter, air so still. 

Everything clamors for your attention: the world, the wind and wildfires, the work, the cravings, the people you cannot fix, the hurts, regrets, shame—yours or others passed down to you... your deep grief, its unexpected losses and realizations, your fear of the future, fear of the now, that incessant drumbeat that insists on constant production, the performance of a version of yourself that is not you, the child inside that begs to be heard.