Stop Listening to Fear & Shame FM
Tending to Our Internal Ecologies
Letters from Love, Week 4 ½
This is a variation on my practice following Elizabeth Gilbert’s Letters from Love. It’s my second one this week because the morning started on an off note and I needed to access a kinder channel than the one I started the day with.
Instead of a direct transmission, it starts as a conversation with Love.
Love:
My dearest sweet little snail, what is making you sad in this moment?
Me:
Dear Love,
I am feeling sad because I did not get up early like yesterday. I did not meet the day and myself before I met others and the world. I am feeling shameful because I feel I am not contributing as much to home-building as I could be. I’m feeling heavy because I don’t see myself pulling my own weight, and like I’m someone who needs to be taken care of, who cannot be given equal tasks because I cannot fulfill them. I feel sad that I have so much inertia to start things, act on my initiative, and get them done, like I’m waiting for someone else to do it.
Love:
Dearest little snail, before you go on, I would have you know:
You fear yourself a burden, and you fear yourself becoming soft and dependent, useless to others and to yourself. You fear yourself incapable and complacent, and easily sliding into excuses. My dearest, sweetest little brain-in-a-shell, you could go on about your fears, and shame, but maybe you don’t need to. Because they will always be on a channel that you can flip to, all day, every day, the same programs broadcasting for eternity.
The host of this radio station broadcasts:
“Welcome to Fear & Shame, FM Radio. Where you can call in with any daily experience, and we’ll turn it into a fear you’ve never had before! We’ll reconfirm whatever you’re already afraid of! We’ll tell you ways you could feel shame in even the most positive of situations!”
Love:
Dearest little snail, you have this station on as a pre-set. It comes on first thing in the morning when your radio alarm goes off.
Some popular shows on this station are:
“The world is not built for you.”
“Others couldn’t possibly understand.”
“Just watch how quickly this good energy will crash.”
“You can’t do it.”
As well as :
“That was a lucky shot, don’t expect to do it again.”
“Others are disappointed in you, but won’t tell you.”
“You’ll always fall short of expectations.”
“Success is for others, just not for you.”
Not to mention classics such as:
“Just look at yourself. Who would think you capable of anything?”
“Why do you think you deserve respect with hair like this?”
“Do you even know how to take care of yourself?”
And, my littlest snail, just as you’re starting to fall into the spiral of shame, the radio host says this:
“If you feel these programs really speak to you, it’s because they’re simply taking you to where you really belong. This is who you really are, and that’s why you’ve come to this place to listen. This is simply you, living out your nature.”
Love:
Oh, my loveliest little snail, this is a station playing reruns on a loop. My dearest intrepid journeyer, the radio dial falls easily to this station of fear and shame. It’s a habitual path the knob clicks into when we move through our lives. Sometimes it gets jammed there, and it’s all we have to listen to. Like 90s pop songs.
Little shell-dweller, I would have you know that it is not your fault that this Station of Shame exists. It is not your fault that certain songs play in your mind without you wishing them to. This is programming, conditioning, and an effect of exposure. Anyone who came into contact with 90s pop songs cannot help but recall these tunes long after they’ve left these songs behind, even if they have no affinity for this music.
My sweetest, littlest snail, if we can see what is happening in us when the radio is stuck receiving this frequency, we can separate ourselves from it, and see that it is not us. My beautiful listening antenna of universal energy, this is a persistent station, and it is hard to tune out. It can drown everything else away.
You, as a sensitive being with many fertile creative fields, are susceptible to being easily colonized by this incessant, but subtly encroaching call, like a petri dish becoming colonized by the micro-wisps of a fungal growth. These programs were inoculated into you from a young age, by caregivers, adults, and your peers who had also suffered from its persuasion.
Dearest little snail, it is good that you felt something amiss in yourself today, and that you called on me. This is intricate work to be done, and we must do it together, regularly and diligently. The garden of our mind has become overtaken by invasive nettles - they have grown into the free spaces where our creativity is rooted. We must stop nourishing the brambles, and start placing our attention on cultivating the beautiful things we desire that will nourish us.
Dearest Little Shell, I would have you know that you did not do this to yourself. You are not sabotaging yourself when this music plays. That frequency, that kind of nettle, it has been there all along, and it is simply amplified when we put out creative energy because creative energy is a broad-spectrum fertilizer. Creative energy contains all the frequencies - it will boost the growth of everything, including nettles. And, if there is no check on the growth of an aggressive and invasive species, it will soon overrun our garden. This is what we must be vigilant to, what we must study, recognize, and treat.
We must learn, my little shell, to an expert level, the nature and characteristics of our internal landscape, the climate and weather that affects what can grow and in which season, what particular nutrients are needed for our local earth to thrive, and which plants and beings keep our little biosphere healthy. We must learn The Ecology of Our Self.
Little Snail, the next time we start feeling this fear and shame, in any amount, let us take a breath and ask: are we back on this radio station again? Have we forgotten to prune back the nettles of our internal garden? Let us put on our gloves and do some weeding, and let us change the station on the radio. There are so many more interesting things to listen to, my dearest. I think you’ll love what else is out there, and how much of it will speak more truly to you. We can turn the dial together, and discover another channel, slowly, gently. There’s no rush. Let us take our time if that feels better. May our channel switching come from a place of relaxation and ease. We can laugh whenever this old song from the 90s comes on, and then we simply turn the dial. And, very importantly, let us be mindful if we are tense, acting from aversion, and jerking our hand to the dial, because moving from this place will bring us back to this place.
But my littlest snail, my dearest shell, if it does happen that we find ourselves back on this silly old 90s radio station, it is still alright. We will learn the path forward together. I will be here with you, no matter what. I am always by your side. I am always ready to speak with you. We will do this together. Everything is alright.
If any creatives reading resonate with the idea of a fear and shame radio station, or a garden overrun by nettles as a description of their internal state and would like to collaborate on visual art, video, or other multimedia representation of this idea, write me an email.