Lets Talk About Shaming

Reflection.

Are you perfect? No I'm not either. If you said yes, just move along.

I have a few things about myself that some peeps would judge as faults. I am very interested in what people consider faults. Because "what is one man's trash is another man's treasure." I have learned this. And I no longer judge.

When we have overcome various challenges in our lives, we can become very judgmental about others who are still on their learning pathways, and sometimes we become defensive, or protective, or overbearing, or just any number of behaviors that SHAME others who are not like us.

We forget to step into their shoes.

This shaming happens to me because I smoke cigarettes. I imagine you also have habits that others might judge, whatever they are - eating, dressing differently, makeup, coloring your hair, not coloring your hair, your sexual preference, how your home looks when compared with the "Joneses," etc.

I've done the work. I've analyzed the reasons why I started smoking, and it just breaks your heart. It also makes me, my older Yoga Mama self, which I have yet to become, bend over and take my little child self, who was 13 years old when she started smoking, into a huge embrace and say, "It's okay. It's okay. You're human. And this is the human part of yourself. I love you anyway."

For the first ten years of my life we traveled just like an army family only my Dad was Exxon - a civil engineer, designing all manner of things all over the planet to improve lives - such as the link in the Alaskan pipeline that allows it to expand and contract underwater to bring much needed oil to warm people in frigid temperatures, such as the spiral design of metal within bridge supports that allows them to move when an earthquake happens such that the bridge doesn't go down, such as wastewater treatment plants that take the poisons out of water and make it pristine clean again, such as courthouses that have all kinds of protective rooms, floors, gear, and everything else when really dangerous criminals are brought in. You're welcome. My Dad was amazing.

So with all the travels we experienced with his career as he went about enhancing people's lives, I missed out on what most, or many, people have in their youth, which is a sense of belonging.

We moved about every two years, Malaysia, Japan, England, Italy, and other places. I never belonged. I was always, always the new kid on the block. I soaked up the art, the museums, the architecture, the history, and these things seasoned my personality like wonderful spices. They gave me something that many others didn't have. But I wanted to belong.

So when we finally settled and my mother told my father that she wanted the children to go through middle school and high school without more overseas moves, I set about figuring out how to belong.

My parents chose to live in New Jersey, just 45 minutes outside of New York, where the pace is fast and the people are mixed, which at that time, in the 1970s, was not a comfortable thing. I experienced much bullying, got pushed down the stairs at school, beat up when I went out, beaten when I came home for various reasons, and it became critical for me to find a way to belong to some kind of group that would befriend me and support me.

That turned out to be the smokers. God bless the gentleness of this discovery, as it could have been a lot worse.

"You got a light?"

"Sure, here."

Automatic membership.

I started by stealing my parents' cigarettes and a pack would last me a couple of weeks.

I remember when I was two years old, they'd go off to get dressed on Sundays after their breakfast, and I would toddle over to the table, sipping the last dregs of their cold coffee from pretty cups and sucking on their extinguished cigarette butts. I didn't know what I was doing.

And when I started stealing their cigarettes, I didn't know what I was doing either. But I knew that it got me "in."

It kept me in for all the years through middle school and high school, which were wicked years full of bullying and survival.

When I left home at 20, I was addicted to the nicotine, though like all youngsters, I believed I could quit any time I wanted to. Well I could not.

I experienced so many wonderful times with cigarettes and built-in friends - it was common ground. It worked for years and years and years. Automatic, spectacular friends at work, when traveling, at conferences, at social events, at home, in the social times with men, it worked great.

And it still does.

Except that there is a cotillion of people who believe that their job is to sidestep this unpleasant part of the human vulnerability of life. Kind of like a religious factor. They dig their heels in - You are not acceptable. I must warn you.... I must shelter others from you.... I must cross you off my list.... I have overcome that kind of vulnerability which makes me better than you are....

Well my grandfather smoked a pipe. He smoked cigarettes for all the early part of his life, shortly after cigarettes became marketable, and they were marketed as being "good" for you, so everyone smoked. After his health started to suffer from not only cigarettes, but having to design war weapons, since he was also an engineer and had no choice during World War II, he switched his occupation after the war, and he switched from ciggies to a pipe. Oh, it smelled so good. He'd puff on it sometimes out on the porch, and he was such a loving human being, so kind and gentle, so trying to recover from the activities he was forced into during the war...I loved my grandfather puffing on his pipe. I figured he could do anything he damn well pleased because he'd earned it.

AND the other side of my family were tobacco farmers. They lived in Virginia, yes, we are Southern, and they raised acres and acres of beautiful tobacco and cured it in the smokehouses and it was good and clean and wonderful. These were my father's parents and grandparents. It was a lifeway for them. In the early days, before the chem companies got a hold of tobacco, it was a fairly clean, gentle, plant that brought about a sense of relaxation and peace. Now, with the chemicals and "firesafe" ridiculousness, really good tobacco is hard to come by.

So, I just want to announce that I am feeling shamed by others about my vulnerability and the coping mechanisms I discovered that brought to me what I needed most desperately, at the time. Allow me my learning curve, as I allow you yours.

Break out your Febreeze, and do check the ingredients and health studies on that as you go. Plug in your smell-good Glade products, and make sure to check the reports on those too. Squirt your perfumes and do your laundry with products that actually make it absolutely impossible to breathe without incurring great difficulty, and then point your finger at me.

With every pointed finger there are three pointing right back at yourself. Glass houses, you know.

Do not shame me. If it kills me, that is MY choice. If I overcome it, that won't happen as a result of you throwing guilt and shame my way. It won't kill you. Let's get real.

Do what you need to do, but do not dare shame me, because I am human and I am vulnerable and I'm working on becoming YOGA MAMA, but you have not walked in my shoes. And in fact, I prefer to be without shoes.

No judgment. No resistance. No Fear. Just love.

Just love. Just laugh. Just r e l a x.

Just love peeps.

Namaste,
Jen