July humbled me

Congratulations on surviving Mercury retrograde in Cancer. That transit was no joke. I knew it would be intense for me right off the bat, since Mercury is my yearly timelord and Cancer is the sign in my 10th house. Angular transits will not allow you to ignore them, that's for damn sure, so I knew I would be facing some… unignorable things. And face them I did.

There's something soooooo embarrassing and also freeing about being forced to re-learn something you've been teaching. It's humbling to greet those moments in life where you are directly confronted with the question, “Are you going to practice what you preach?" Especially when you think you know something well enough to transmit that knowledge to others. No, even then you can still have your ass handed to you and it will make you question if you ever knew anything at all.

Earlier this month, I called my grandma (the one with the garlic farm) to wish her a happy 80th birthday. She had just retired from her job the day before. When I asked her what she was up to, her reply was, “I was just out working in the garden--no, I don't work anymore. I was just out playing in the dirt.” She has a way of reminding me that I'm taking life way too seriously. But at the same time, how can I not take life this seriously? I have so many responsibilities now, I want to tell her as my 9-year-old self, the one who spent long summers playing in the dirt in her grandmother's garden.  

I am a shame alchemist. I call myself that on purpose because I recognized early on that one of my strengths is helping people actually move their stuck shame stories, or even dissolve them completely, so that other stories can be given the chance to unfold. I think I have a quite healthy relationship to shame, and I teach and write from that foundation of confidence. 

And yet. And yet.

And yet, over the last month I have found myself embroiled in a shame spiral so strong that it had me wondering if running off to the garlic farm to play in the dirt for the rest of my days was actually a viable option. Avoidance is a tool which shame wields, and it's also a mechanism which my nervous system unfortunately learned to rely upon for its survival, over who knows how many years. I have spent all of July confronting this mechanism, and what I found when I did that was often devastating and always emotionally draining.

The truth of the matter, which I had to arrive at in my body despite my mind already knowing it, was that despite all of my best intentions I have still been living in a state of general avoidance toward my life. 

This was the devastating part. 

I can see my own avoidance patterns playing out, but knowing and doing can be miles apart. I don't know what shifted exactly or what had to happen in order to make this possible, but the acceptance and forgiveness I needed to direct toward myself arrived in my body over the course of this Mercury retrograde. It did not arrive easily, and felt like a flash flood in certain moments. The weather this month was marked with uncommonly prominent thunder and many instances of lightning, which often felt like it was reflecting the oddness and electricity I was experiencing internally. 

I don't have the answers to avoidance, and I also am not retiring the title of shame alchemist for myself. If anything, I feel through this process that I understand shame even more deeply than I did before. I found myself in a dark cave once more and clambered my way out yet again, emerging with more wisdom to share and more compassion for those caught in the tendrils of shame & avoidance. 

And of course--annoyingly so--I was reminded that shame thrives in dark caves of the mind. Every time I had to have a hard conversation recently (which was many times), I felt the strongest urge beforehand to crawl into a cave and die. I felt like this was the end for me. And somehow, each time, I walked away not only still alive, but feeling profoundly more supported than I ever expected. It's annoying because I fell for it! I fell for the lies shame whispered in my ear about how I was alone and should remain that way. But I teach these things! How could I have been so blind?

Like I said, living out your own work can be humbling. At times, it is downright humiliating. But the purpose of this type of humiliation is to bring you closer to the human element of what you do and why you do it. At least, that's how I've been experiencing it.

If you've also been feeling the wobbles of shame and avoidance sneak back into your life, or if you're feeling yourself outgrowing old shame-based narratives without knowing how to replace them with something better, then clear your calendar for this Saturday, because I will be hosting a shame alchemy phoenix ritual by Megan Griffith inside The Mycelial Network. 

Megan is a life coach for misfits and black sheep, and someone whose work I deeply admire and have been impacted by. She will be leading us through a ritual to set aflame lingering narratives within that are causing shame to retain its power, and then birthing new narratives within the ashes that reflect where you're headed on your path. 

This will be a great opportunity to alchemize your Mercury retrograde experience--if it was as tumultuous as mine, LOL--and to create your own rite of passage into the next version of you.

I hope to see you there.