This year my brothers birthday came and went without a lot of unnecessary drama. I noticed it and gave it plenty of thought but my grief didn’t engulf me like it has in the past or at other times in the last five years. On the 2nd of August he would have been forty three years old. He was my older brother and throughout my childhood he was, in most ways, my hero. I was his copilot and shotgun man.
My brother died virtually by his own hand… although possibly unintended. I’ll spare you the details since they’re not really important. How it happened is less of a concern but I want to lean more into the “why”.
Within our own society, men and women take their own lives. What seems certain is that their pain is unbearable and horrific desperation exists. I’ve been there. I’ve felt broken. I’ve been completely overtaken with the deep belief that my existence was fundamentally wrong and wasn’t sure if I could carry the weight of it all. I am, in fact, a fuck up. I can find evidence everywhere if I’m looking.
Our network of positive social interface helps us tease apart the parts of ourselves that do need to be adjusted and the parts that need deeper levels of acceptance.
Self love involves a cocktail of things that make up an outcome that’s fleeting. We feel it at times and at others we don’t. It’s involves acceptance, patience, and even celebration at a certain point for the parts of ourselves we normally hide. You can add your version of what you do here_________.
I think that we live in a society that promotes the lack of accepting ourselves as being human. We make mistakes, we’re imperfect but mostly that’s used to exile ourselves from humanity. What the fuck is wrong with that?
Brené Brown is one of the biggest voices around shame right now. She states that the opposite of shame is courage. Courage leads to vulnerability and without vulnerability we can’t have intimacy. Do you see where I’m headed?
Isolation and feeling the depth of being alone in our reality is the most painful thing we experience. The loss of love, whether the love we need to give ourselves, what we need from others or even the loss of connection to our higher power (god). We fuck up and lose our place in grace.
I’m going to make some broad generalizations but stay with me, shame drives the best of us to self hate and that’s the antithesis of self love. Shame is a pandemic in the world. I haven’t met anyone yet who didn’t dance with it at one time or another or has special dance party’s still on occasion.
The point… share with trusted connections the special parts of yourself that you hide and sift through what needs love, blessings and deeper acceptance and get assistance around your behavior that stems from that, that needs to be updates so you don’t have negative impacts on those you care about and love.