- You aren't wrong.
Let me say it again.
You are not wrong for feeling the way you do.
There are way too many times we are bombarded
by the feelings of shoulds and supposed tos.
But again, your feelings are not wrong.
Sadness is not wrong.
Fear is not wrong.
Confusion is not wrong.
Our pain is not wrong.
But so often we tell ourselves, it is.
We tell ourselves, we are wrong.
The truth is resisting and fighting and judging and shaming
and shunning our pain is what makes it all seem so wrong.
And yet, here's a deeper truth.
For those who are open,
even our resistance of pain is not wrong.
If resistance is what's happening in the moment,
it cannot be wrong.
It is a valid expression of life and our experiences.
That begs the question,
why do we push painful experiences away?
Often I believe, it is because we do not know
what to do with them.
Think of the last time
you had an emotionally painful experience.
Maybe it was a fight with someone you love or a conflict
with someone you don't love but have to work with.
Maybe it was something completely unrelated
that triggered a traumatic memory.
I have a question for you.
How did you react?
Were you able to emotionally work through it
and feel at peace, or did you push the memory away,
trying your best to forget the way you felt,
trying to forget the emotions and beliefs
it brought up for you, but like an unwanted guest,
does that painful memory keep intruding
on the sacred space of your mind?
Haunting your thoughts, sometimes paralyzing you with fear,
or shame, or other times, leaving you feeling enraged
at the injustice of the situation?
Oftentimes, the reason we push painful experiences away
is because we have beliefs
about what those painful experiences say about us.
Because we have judged the experience
and who we are because of the experience
with often harsh judgment or even lies regarding our worth
we take an unjust level of responsibility
for another person's actions and we find ourselves at fault.
We believe another person's behavior defines who we are.
All of this creates incongruent beliefs,
heartbreak, and unbearable pain.
So we hide, we pretend,
and we bury the falsehoods that we have accepted as true.
I call this an incongruent belief,
meaning an inconsistent truth or alleged fact.
Hoping deep down that these incongruent beliefs aren't true
but not being able to reconcile the confusion that comes
from having the truth distorted.
Instead, we carry the incongruent beliefs with us, fearing
that even a small portion of the lives might be true.
When we buy into the lies, we pick up the weight of shame.
The heaviness of this shame is disproportionate to its size.
It's so small but it grows with darkness, secrecy, and fear.
The fear that someone might find out about it,
that someone might come to find out the real me,
the fear that the incongruent beliefs are true.
Secrecy feeds the fear and the shame grows heavy
because of the darkness and loneliness of the path.
It might take months, years, or decades,
but we become crushed under the weight of shame.
The incongruent belief becomes the truth
in our mind causing darkness a distorted reality
that we have come to believe
because of the absence of light.
The shame, darkness, self-loathing and pity
have become comfortable.
It is now what we know.
In the end, even resistance is just another concept,
another judgment, another way to make ourselves wrong.
We've passed the judgment that resistance is bad
and self-love is good.
That's what we learned.
What we have not learned is how to be with it.
That's all.
How to sit with the pain and discomfort, stay with it,
shine a light on it, talk about it,
have a cup of tea with it.
See it as a beloved friend
that is trying to tell us something,
something about ourselves that we may have hidden
or buried long ago, maybe because it was too painful
and we didn't know what to do with the pain.
Maybe because you thought that part of you was unacceptable,
maybe because you were afraid
of rejection, loss, or abandonment.
So you abandon part of yourself
to make yourself more acceptable.
Let's be gentler with ourselves, kinder to our trauma.
Consider what we have been through.
We are doing well.
Our pain is not wrong.
It is an invitation, inviting us to come closer
and heal those fragmented parts of ourselves.
I love the saying,
"I thought I was broken and needed fixing.
Not true.
I was hurt and needed healing".
A completely different concept.
When love touches pain, it becomes compassion.
Ask yourself, what would it look like
to show myself love right now?
What was showing myself love feel like?
Judgment is the constricting pressure that weighs us down.
It is the fear that grips our chest tighter and tighter,
making each day harder to breathe.
Judgment can bury us under a mountain of regret.
What is the antidote to such a slow suffocating poison,
compassion, love, and self-acceptance?
I want you to consider three things.
One, if this was my child, brother, sister,
or best friend dealing with this, how would I talk to them?
How would I treat them?
I want you to write a letter of what you would say to them.
Then I want you to read it to yourself.
Receiving those words of love, compassion, and acceptance.
Number two, is the hiding, judging,
shaming, rejection working for you?
Is that serving the highest and best version of yourself?
If not, what could you do instead?
Number three, what would loving, nurturing,
and accepting yourself look like?
What would it feel like?
What are three things that you can start doing today
to better nurture, love, and support yourself?
Let go of the shoulds and the supposed tos
and the harsh inner critic.
How do you show yourself love, compassion,
and understanding?
Share with us in the comments below.
So, I wanna share just one story
of what this has looked like in my life.
And honestly, I have hundreds, probably thousands
of stories that I could share with you.
But for me, I have had a lot of blocks, a lot of shoulds,
a lot of supposed tos when it comes
to being a parent and what a good parent is supposed
to look like and what a good parent does.
And wouldn't, you know what?
Every day I've had the opportunity to grow through
that shooting on myself.
So for me, I am not a Pinterest mom.
Like that is not my jam.
That is not my thing.
And I have five kids, and there is a 10-year-age gap
which feels like a lot some days
and they have drastically different personalities,
drastically different needs.
And honestly, it's entirely overwhelming to be mindful
of each one and to support them and raise them
and then still have space for me in my own life.
And so figuring that out,
that looked like a lot of messy failures,
a lot of restarts and a lot of trying again.
But I have one, my oldest son, he is hilarious.
He wanted to basically have like Pinterest birthday parties.
And so we worked and I, I am not the Pinterest mom.
And so instead of telling myself, "Oh,
I have to do all the crafts and all this planning
and despising and hating every minute of it"
and just to let you know, like I think that stuff is awesome
and totally cool and I'm inspired by it.
It is just not my idea of a good time to personally do it.
And so after working through those mental blocks
around that, and instead of telling myself
that I'm a terrible mom for not doing this,
I gave my son my computer, I made him a Pinterest board.
He played all around on Pinterest,
pinning all the things that he was doing
for his themed birthday party.
And then I would tell him what his budget was
and how many hours I was willing to help him.
And so, and he would plan everything.
He would pick out the things and the crafts
and I would go through and tell him, "Okay,
that's gonna cost about $15, that's gonna cost about $25.
That's gonna take about 15 minutes a time.
That's gonna take 30 minutes a time."
And so we would add up the cost both time and monetarily.
And I would give him a portion of my time and attention
that I felt like I could do
and still have me fit in my own life.
And what's really funny about this story
and it was great, and we had a great time,
and this like literally went on for almost a decade.
This started when he was about seven
and ended when he was about 14,
that he would plan these themed birthday parties.
And he had a ninja birthday party,
and a Minecraft birthday party,
and a Star Wars and a Lego one.
And this might all seem so silly, right?
But it's not silly.
It's the things life is made out of.
And I had a friend mention to me.
We lived in the same neighborhood for years.
And I had a friend mention to me,
you know how cool Tyler's birthday parties always were?
And because I had just said, "You know,
I'm not a Pinterest mom.
And she was like, what are you talking about?
Those birthday parties you always throw?
And I'm like, no, no, no.
That's not me.
That is my small child that does that."
And I just support him in it.
And so, I have a question for you.
If you have things in your life that aren't working for you,
how can you reach out and get the support
so that you fit in your own life
and the people that are important to you also fit?
Because it's not a matter of you showing up and being there
for everyone else without supporting yourself.
Speaking of shoulds, this next video is about
my husband's addiction to porn.
And there isn't one right answer
but it is our story of how we worked through it.
Could you do me a favor?
If this video has been helpful for you, would you share it
with a loved one that also needs the support?
And remember to keep shining.
We need your light. (upbeat music)