Super vulnerable share (no, it’s not a sales pitch)

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• Side note – I always wonder how to do an effective trigger warning
• I imagine my trauma is fairly rare, and that this won’t actually be a trigger for most of you, but before I reveal this potentially triggering topic
• I imagine when people read that there’s a trigger warning, that each person has at least one trigger that they (unconsciously?) scan for, and that even reading the phrase “trigger warning” can put them in touch with any post traumatic stress. so to help this trigger warning not be something that triggers ptsd, but allows for ptsr (pts-reorganization),  the healer in me invites you to consider:
• What triggers do you automatically look out for when you read a trigger warning? 
• How do you prepare yourself?  Activated nervous system? Tense body?  Held breath?  Something else?
• Does that help?  
• How is your healing path around that trigger?
• Are you ready for mine?
• What happened when I reintroduced that question after having raised awareness around it?
• I have a theory that a relaxed body and easeful breath helps these stresses roll through us,rather than catch in the net of our tension
• So the thing I’m writing about is – and I can see that part of the reason I wrote all that was to delay writing about this – that I took someone’s life in a car accident when I was 17, and the topics of shame and depression more generally.

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I landed back in Detroit last night.  Revisiting my old stomping grounds.  I came here for the first in-person gathering in years, since before I found out about it, for the Hyacinth Foundation.  A group for people like me, who feel responsible for accidental death or injury.  This group serves people from around the world, and this gathering happens to be at a church affiliated with the foundation, a church that happens to be about a mile and a half from where I had my accident.

I had to come back.  I had to be part of it.  There’s a sense that there’s an opportunity to complete a piece of this karma I took on over 36 years ago.  Plus I think I have some support to offer people whose accident was more recent than mine.  I’ve felt a calling to this, because in my coaching practice, four different people felt called to work with me (sending love if you’re reading this), without knowing this about me, and eventually revealed that what had them stuck was exactly this, a feeling of guilt or shame about having responsibility for someone’s death.

So there’s an opportunity for me to help myself and others.

And it has me reflecting on guilt and shame, which I’ve done for decades now.  More recently I realized that there’s another color in that spectrum of relationship to self: innocence.  I’m curious what other words fall into that spectrum, please reply with your thoughts.

As a parent, I’ve seen in my own kids and others’, the innocence of babies, and sadly, those moments when, little by little, the bright light of innocence fades from their eyes, the idea that something might be wrong with them settles in, gets reinforced by future events, pure accidents and mistakes with outsized consequences, to grow into teens and adults wrestling with depression.

What happened to our innocence?  What are the ingredients of innocence?  Who deserves it?  Everyone?

I like these frames: 

• Guilt and shame serve as reminders to not make the same mistake a second time.  That’s important. Once we’ve learned our lesson,we can employ other methods to remember not to make those mistakes a second time without unhelpful costs of the self-flagellating re-wounding those mechanisms tend to offer.   Like commitments.  
• A distinction between guilt and shame is that guilt is feeling bad about something you’ve done.  That is, you believe you’re a good person who did a bad thing, whereas shame is believing that you’re a bad person because of something you’ve done, and believe either you are no longer a good person now that you did the thing, or the thing you did acts as evidence that you were never a good person in the first place. Shifting my relationship to my accident from shame to guilt was a huge step in my healing.
• Guilt is interest on a debt you never owed in the first place.  The mistakes you made can all be traced back to what you had and hadn’t learned at that point in your life, which is just part of the unfolding of the universe. We are part of a long chain of events, and only in the greatest moments of clarity do we do anything other than just play out our conditioning.  Owing interest for something we played out in this unfolding isn’t fair.  We can learn our lesson and move on.
• I should have known better, but I didn’t.
• An African teacher, Sobonfu Some, bless her departed soul, leader of grief rituals, told me when I shared about my accident, that in her culture they didn’t believe in accidents.  That the souls I impacted felt I needed their life force, and there was a moment of exchange.  My hating myself for it only got in the way of me doing great things with their life force.  Letting go of guilt and shame is step one in my ability to honor their lives.

The day before the accident, I was a cocky teenager.  Full of enthusiasm, a good student and athlete, on my way to a high ranking university.  While I’d made mistakes,I had a sense of innocence about me.  That accident – had me believe I owed a karmic debt, I had to do more good in the world, make no more mistakes.  Make up for what I’d done, or at least try to pay off some of it.

Those of you that know me probably see a lot of that in me now.  In one part because I’ve done a lot of work to get here, and also because some scars are only visible on the inside.

It’s part of what’s made me a chronic under-earner.  I gave away and discounted my services, welcomed or tolerated disrespect.  For many years I had little sense of my value, my innocence, or even deservingness of good treatment.  I’d give generously either way.  After all, I owed it to the world.

On a positive note, it’s made me very compassionate.  There are so few stories of the challenges people share with me, the things they hold shame and guilt around, that would compare in my mind to what I’d done.  “It’s not like you killed anyone” I’d often say, until I realized why that phrase resonated with me.

I want to reclaim that innocence.  I’m here to reclaim that innocence.
I’m here to forgive myself.
To shift this relationship to my beautiful soul.
To honor the path life has taken to make me the extraordinary human I am.

Wish me luck, and forgiveness.

Returning
the place of my youth
lost innocence
found guilt
leaned shame

seeking to reclaim
with compassionate company
the rest of my smile
a clear conscience

forgiveness