Tuesday morning, 1:30 AM; 2:30; 3:30. I tossed into a dark night of the soul….Yet, I awakened with resolution….One of the many silver linings of this pandemic, amid the myriad of tragedies, is opportunities to confront my shadowside. I hear it’s happening for others, too. What’s no longer working? What’s no longer serving me? What’s triggering me, catapulting me into the misery of old wounds?

Last night. This weekend….It was shame.

In a time when we are coming together, we’re also creating new ways to more than social distance from each other. Sure, there’s the usual party affiliation, religion….But this is a new thing. Who’s doing social distancing right, and who’s not? Lest one be on the perceived not side, as I’ve been more than once, twice, thrice, it’s also been an opportunity to exercise shaming. To be shamed.

But. If this sounds like a victim story, it’s not. ‘Cause no one makes anyone feel a certain way. We hold the power of our emotions. Yes, others hold the responsibility for what they say and do, but this was an opportunity, under the guise of COVID-19, to look at an old emotion that dated back to childhood. I was getting triggered. Old shame wounds were scraped and had begun to ooze.

It took me a couple of days to label my discomfort. To unpack my anger and resentment. My eldest sister helped me uncover compassion for a friend who’s been majoring in fear at every click on Facebook:  It is my friend’s way of coping with her fear, to accuse others of not doing it right. And just like politics and religion, there is no way to convince anyone that there are different strategies other than those they had perceived and devised for themselves.

…It always feels good. A small victory to find that missing puzzle piece and see the image, again, is the little girl that felt picked on, that was laughed at for her mathematical ineptitude. For being too skinny, or having hair that didn’t look right when she went with her mother to visit a neighbor. Once I see her and know she’s hurting, I can calm my inner child and remember that she still lives in me, and that, even though I’ve grown up around her, sometimes she still cowers from that old shame game.

Seeing her. Naming her pain, leads me to compassion for her, for me now, for those around me wading in their own pain.

This is understanding. Of one’s wounds. Of others’. It’s recognizing that we are all walking wounded. Some healed more than others. May I have compassion for her, my little girl. For the big me. For others. Especially now.