Today’s blog is written by guest blogger Ashleigh Barker.
For years, the shame has been the quiet voice in the back of my mind: “You are not enough. You will never be enough. Why would you think you have worth with the smell of his skin still on your side?”Why are you worthy of food?Why are you worthy of taking up space?Why are you worthy of sharing your life and your mind and your pain?You’ve met people worthy of those things – they stare at you with cracked smiles of judgment and “bless your hearts” that only add to the game.The game of life, of driving around in a car with plastic people just trying to get by.We’re all just trying to get by. The shame is trying to get by the pain which is trying to get by the mind, trying to get out of the prison cell of life.Is it any wonder the shame says “you are not enough, you are not worthy of love?” The shame seeks liberation from the confines of my mind, the solitary confinement of these past situations which plague the halls and the walls, stuck in time.For we are all just a masquerade of people walking through the halls trying not to let them know of the hurt bottled up inside.Inside the walls of the fortress of our lives.All we need is the drawbridge to break and release our white flag of surrender that says “you win, shame: I am not enough, I will never be enough, I will never be worthy of life.”For when our white flag is raised on surrender day, we can name the shame. We can at last name the shame: Sir. Family. Sir. Poverty. Sir. Bipolar. Sir. Anorexic. Sir. Compulsive. Sir. Failure. Sir. Trauma. Sir. Alcohol. Sir.Enough!Once we give resonance to the tiny voice in the back of our minds we can realize, it all comes back to a name.In that, in our white flag, in saying such a painstaking name – there is no shame. There can be no shame.For in the calm, quiet voice, there is still a heartbeat. It may be a tattered, barely beating heart filled with pain, but in that heart there is worth. There is love. There is enough.With my tattooed wrist across my beating heart, I can say “I am enough,” to once and for all silence that numbing voice of shame.
