The power of shedding our shame and owning our weird
AKA Change is coming; prepare to meet the Primal Mothers
A few months back I heard a podcast interview with the author Richard Osman, who spoke about the subject of shame.
In an answer I’ve quoted at least ten times since, Richard (whose books are brilliant) described how, as humans, we all think we’re weird simply because none of us are the same as as anyone else. However, he went on to say, so often our actual weirdness comes not from the thing we think makes us weird.
No no, that thing is actually what people appreciate about us. It is the unique spark of us-ness that draws people to us and makes us thrive. Instead, the thing that makes us weird is the way we try and hide that uniqueness in a bid to seem “normal”.
That theory hit my brain like a bolt of lightning. Not just because of my personal experiences – although we’ll come back to those soon, but because the energetic repercussions of the idea made me feel physically sick.
After all, if all my years of working with people and energy have taught me anything, it’s that our deepest power can be found in the unique spark of us-ness that only we can bring to the world.
In my experience, when we learn to not only recognise and honour that spark but also own it, in every part of our lives, that’s when our lives can start to flow, we begin to feel more fulfilled, and our energy can really soar.
But when we not only hide that spark but feel all out ashamed of it? That’s a whole other story.
The price of shame
David R. Hawkins wrote that the lowest vibration of our emotions is that of shame. He believes that shame more than any other feeling not only takes us from our power, but also drains our energy, making us more and more unwell over time.
I almost added “something anyone who has ever felt shame will understand” to the end of that last paragraph. Then I realised that was ridiculous; because really, in this world of ours, who among us hasn’t felt shame?
Sometimes for the allegedly awful things we’ve done or the apparently thoughtless things we’ve said (both of which, nine times out of ten, are nowhere near as bad as we think!), But more often than that, far more often, simply for who we are.
We live in a world that is only too keen to tell us all of the ways we are “too much” of one thing and “not enough” of another; to hold us up against one another and all manner of ideals that are often entirely unattainable and then list those unattainable ideals as the reasons we aren’t happy, rich, successful, and whatever other qualities and experiences we long to claim for ourselves.
Let’s be clear here. The fact that life feels nowhere near as easeful as we’d like it to generally has little to do with the fact that we’re “too much” of x or “not enough” of y, but has everything to do with the fact we live in white supremacist, patriarchal, capitalist, ableist, heteronormative, classist societies which let no out outside of a very particular group of people anywhere near the “enoughness” bracket.
That’s not something the rest of us spend much time questioning though. Not when we’re so busy questioning ourselves.
Not when we’re so busy being ashamed.
The effort of hiding our brilliance
But it’s not just the draining energy of shame that wears us out is it? It’s also the effort of keeping our own radiance hidden.
Always having to watch our tongue, mind our actions, stay tucked into the tight little box of smallness that we’ve created for ourselves can so often leave us absolutely exhausted.
Because let me be super clear here: I firmly believe that it takes more effort to hide our uniqueness than it does to show it, and that it is far more draining to pretend to be small than it is to live in our greatness.
Yet how many of us do it to some extent? As Marianne Williamson once wrote, “our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond all measure.” And givem the amount of tensing we do to try and keep our power tucked away, it’s easy to think Marianne’s right about that.
But then I wonder, is that really our deepest fear? Or is it a fear that’s been given to us? An old story we haven’t quite re-written, or an spell it’s long past time we break.
Now I don’t know about you, but I’m sick and tired of it.
And so for me, I’m choosing to let the spark of my own potent weirdness out into the world.
Holding out my spark
I don’t remember when I first began connecting with Spirit – seeing them has always been as natural as seeing my own reflection in a mirror.
I do remember though, around the time I stopped telling people what I saw and heard.
I must’ve been about eight (I know, I’m fortunate – for a lot of people it happened much earlier), and a teacher with pink talon-like fingernails had begun to pull me up on all of the ways I was not enough or too much for her liking. Including the fact that I “daydreamed” too much… because of course she thought that’s what I was doing.
That was perhaps the first time I was told it was wrong to be me; something that I know many people had experienced before the age of eight and I’m certain that almost all of us have experienced many times since.
And for me – as, I’m sure, for many of us – the part that has been most mocked, vilified and shunned over the years has been my connection to all things unseen.
Over the years I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been mocked for my views, criticised, bombarded with testing questions that left me feeling like a lab rat, or feared.
I’ve told the story before about the vicar who – while visiting to talk about my grandad’s funeral – called me “evil” and “a devil worshipper” because “Jesus is the only person who can talk to the dead”.
But I also vividly remember the ex-boyfriend who would say, “I’m sure you believe what you’re saying, but maybe you should read some Derren Brown to see why I don’t”; not to mention the best friend who backed my connection to Spirit 100% until I told her something she didn’t like, then spent eighteen months gaslighting me until I could barely trust my physical ears, never mind what I heard from Spirit.
Not that I blame any of those people for the fact that I began to keep what I saw and heard largely to myself; that was wholly down to me and the desire to be accepted.
But recently, as I’ve listened to Richard Osman’s ideas about the fact that we make ourselves weird by the ways we hide our brilliance, I’ve started to think about all of the ways I’ve done just that.
The fact I’ve gotten used to over-explaining myself; trying to come up with a “logical” way to have come to a particular conclusion or learned a particular fact rather than simply saying “I heard it from Spirit”.
The ways that so many of the people I care most deeply about only know a certain percentage of who I am because I still keep so much of what I see, hear, feel, experience and am from them.
The many times I’ve given the readings, experienced the client sessions and, yes, even written the blog posts I thought I should because to do what Spirit was suggesting – what my own Soul was nudging me towards – may well be considered too weird.
And the years I spent hermitting myself away because it was so much easier than trying to balance what I was actually seeing, feeling and experiencing with the perfectly normal conversations and experiences going on around me that other people expected me to be wholly present in.
Those things definitely made me feel weird. And you know, I think Richard’s right; they probably made me look weird too – much weirder than I would look by simply, you know, owning my damned radiance!
What happened when I stopped?
The experience of doing that began, I guess, during a conversation with my dear friend Jo.
I was preparing to host a workshop on The Morrigan and told Jo in a voicenote how the lady herself had given me some tips during a conversation while I was out dog walking.
“Hold up,” Jo said. “You were talking to the Morrigan on a dog walk?!” Her message shocked me – partly because Jo sounded fascinated rather than dismissive or mocking as I’d so often heard before. But more to the point, it shocked me that I’d simply come out with that statement after years of hiding the extent of my conversations with Spirit from so many people around me.
It continued a few months later when, during a conversation with another friend, I mentioned a new guide I’d met on last year’s visit to Cornwall and, despite having spoken to my friend almost every day since that trip about anything and everything in my life, realised I’d told him absolutely nothing about that guide. It felt weird, disingenuous almost to have hidden such a big part of my life.
And perhaps the need to own my weirdness was solidified this week, when a passing comment from a client suddenly explained an intense experience I had with Spirit a few months back. One even I had found too weird to share with anyone but my most trusted confidants.
Over and over again the message was clear: It’s time to not only trust your connection with everything you have, but also to trust the people who are there to receive what you share.
That the final piece came right as we were working with the energy of shame in my Re-Weaving Your Story programme gave an even clearer message: It’s time to feel all of that shame that’s been programmed into you, and own your damned spark anyway.
That’s a message and an invitation I pass onto you, and it’s also one I’m owning for myself.
What’s changing?
Which leads us to here. I’ve always known I was being told things that needed to be shared, things that, as far as I know, no one else is receiving.
And now it’s time for me to step into that role. As a writer, a teacher and – for want of a better word – a seer.
From next month onwards, I’ll be reviving the paid section of this Substack, and using it to share what I’m so often told by Spirit.
That means I will be sharing more from the Primal Mothers; a group I believe were the very first human women on this Earth and who are returning to us now to return us to the greatest wisdom of our ancestors, the deepest power that lives in our bones, the brilliance of our unique Souls, and the magic that is our birthright now and always.
It means I’ll be sharing more from the Queens in the North; the name I’ve been given for the immediate descendants of those women, and the last ones to own and embody their full power before anyone tried to sever it.
And you know, who knows what else it means. Because for the first time ever, as I step more fully into my own weirdness, I’m more than willing to accept that even I don’t have the full picture yet of everything I’m being called to share.
It’ll still be a Divine Feminist publication – you know I believe the spiritual and the human are, at their heart, one and the same. And let’s be clear, I can’t talk about words like “power” and “wisdom” without also talking about the world today. But while the whole of this site will have a spiritually grounded approach to those things, the paid section especially will bring the new, the weird, the truth of me. And I can’t wait to share it.
So watch this space. I’ll be sharing my first post on those subjects over the coming days and giving you all the opportunity to read it for free. And you know what? I can’t wait.
Because as scary as it is, I’m hugely excited to fully own – and share - my weird.
And more, I long for a time when we all feel ready to do the same.
Wishing you a very happy Lunar New Year for yesterday and a blessed Imbolc for the days ahead. May the spark of your own brilliance always burn brightly for you.
P.S.
Just one thing I want to share with you this month: This July, Project Earthwork will be returning to Glastonbury with a special weekend workshop. The event is selling well, but there are still a few final spots available. Click here to read more and book your place to join us!