(n.) – the act or process of collecting; an accumulation of objects gathered for study, comparison, or exhibition.
I’ve been on an 80s kick lately with my daily music journeys. Especially as I’ve begun reentry into the outside world again. Music has a way of setting the tone for our day, removing us from the confines of our analytical minds, alleviating stress, and elevating our mood. It can also be a source of inspiration, or stop you dead in your tracks and take you down a rabbit hole of emotional exploration. And as spring is upon us one year after the world was completely changed by the pandemic, being able to open the windows and the sunroof is giving me life.
I think the magnitude of this past year is finally catching up to me a tiny bit. I miss my friends. Social normalcy. Not having to remember to cover my face up just to leave my house. Not living in fear of potentially getting sick every time I walk in to the office at work. It feels like everything needs to be planned around COVID. I miss the spontaneity of getting in the car and just leaving town for a couple of days because my gypsy soul speaks to me. And honestly, I can only breathe recycled air in my house for so long before it starts making me feel like a caged lion. Yes, it’s getting better and the vaccination is becoming more widely available. To a degree, this offers hope. But alas, spring also offers hope so I’m thankful that porch sitting season has finally arrived until hell shows up to destroy us for the summer.
I’m an introvert, but I also miss the things that help me counterbalance my emotional uproars. With so much time on our hands these days, it’s hard to avoid thinking. And in my case, it’s been hard to quit overthinking. Isolation offers some positives, don’t get me wrong. It allows me to spend a tremendous amount of time with my husband, our kids, and my dogs. It allows me to organize my house (which I find incredibly cathartic). It’s also given me time to perfect my makeup application by giving me time to explore the black hole of makeup tutorials (and there are WAY too many opinions and application processes for which I can’t keep up). So basically, I’m pretty much a professional makeup artist now.
Extra time on my hands hasn’t been terrible. I’ve learned a lot this past year, outside of various ways to apply makeup and the insanity of the beauty products industry. I think many of us can say we have taken lessons of varying degrees after 2020. I’ve learned patience deeper than any year prior to 2020. As I was driving the other day, ‘Til Tuesday’s song “Voice’s Carry” came on during the random shuffle I was jamming out to from my 80s playlist. It’s been so long since I’ve listened to the songs I grew up on that I felt the dusty playlist needed a bit of attention. I remember mom my rocking that song so hard when it came out in ’85. I couldn’t help but laugh when it came on remembering this little tidbit of my childhood. I also found myself going back and listening to it again at least three times before I got to work. Which also made me laugh because it occurred to me that growing up, my parents used to do the same thing with certain songs. And then I wondered if they did that for the same reason I do it now—because some days certain songs just hit you harder, emotionally speaking.
I’ll circle back to this particular moment later, so stick with me…
I grew up listening to all genres of music thanks to the vast tastes of my parents. Music was an essential in our household. Just like milk, butter, and eggs are staples in all southern households (you know…in case a tornado or snow comes). Now that I’m older, I think back on all of those times when we would have “Music Night” or “Garage Party”. I realize not only did I get to experience the freer aspects of my parent’s personalities, but also, I was really getting a glimpse into what my parents were experiencing or had experienced, emotionally speaking. I can recall so many situations that my adolescent and teenage brain was unable to comprehend at that point in time. And now as an adult, it all kind of makes sense. While I can’t necessarily tell you specifics (because the truth is, I don’t even know myself), I can tell you that there were times I think each of my parents needed a release of sorts, and music was usually the outlet. I know for me, personally, there are songs I can tie back to a specific place or a specific time and recall those moments. I have a wide collection of music that helps me remember these parts of my life, for which I am incredibly thankful. Some good, some bad—but many songs in my collection make me smile because it reminds me of a moment in time that I felt happy for one reason or another, not always necessarily tied to a particular event or people. And I find myself at times turning to a random playlist or embracing the random shuffle from my epic collection just to escape the pressures and confines of adulting, even if for just one moment. After the isolation 2020 brought to us thanks to Carole Baskin and bats, I think music has saved me on multiple occasions from having a meltdown.
I’ve always found that the beauty of music is similar to that of literature: open to interpretation. Granted, there are songs that clearly have a specific meaning. And these days, there are a lot of songs that have literally no meaning at all and are just catchy. Or unsophisticated. Take your pick; there are plenty. I also adore the fact that I’ve taken this part of my childhood and have applied it to my son’s life—he loves music. He loves dancing in the car with me, or at home in the kitchen. This is something that I will forever remember when I’m old and recall when he was a child. I only hope he catalogues it as one of his fonder memories of when he was a kid.
So back to my ‘Til Tuesday moment…
Produced by Mike Thorne for the band’s debut album, Voices Carry appeared in 1985. Back when MTV was about music videos, the video was equally as impactful as the song itself. According to Wikipedia, the song peaked at number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100. It is said that Aimee Mann, the lead singer for the group, garnered her inspiration for the song about a female acquaintance and wrote it from a man’s point of view. Others say the song was inspired by an argument between Mann and Michael Hausman, another bandmate/former boyfriend. There are apparently live versions of the song that have the gender swapped as well as an omitted verse from the original studio recording. Whatever the case, I think it is a song to which many of us can relate. Mann’s voice is full of paranoia, potency, eeriness, and absolution. And just incase you haven’t heard the song or know the lyrics; you can watch it here.
Up until last week, this song mostly reminded me of my mom and riding along with her blaring it in the car. But as I mentioned before, sometimes lyrics hit you differently even if you’ve grown up listening to them and never thought much about them. I think often times lyrics will trigger an underlying sentiment or feeling in that moment, too.
And on this particular day it got me thinking…how often do we silence our inner voice in order to appease those around us?
While this song errs more on the side of a woman being silenced by her partner because he feels shame, I think the message of the song can extend in to most circumstances in life where those who feel shame are driven to manipulate those around them in order to gain control over someone or a situation. As I read last summer in Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly, “Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging” (69). I think about all of those moments in my life where I was afraid to speak up and be heard because I felt shame for one reason or another. How I looked. How I felt about myself. How I see myself as a mother. How I perceive myself as a partner in a relationship. Who I am as a friend. My abilities professionally. How I treated my mother when she was alive. How I was raised. How I operate financially. My level of intelligence. My progress in life.
Am I enough?
The shame categories Brown discovered in her research for Daring Greatly were summed up in to twelve types, and at one point or another in my life I have experienced every single one of them. That was rather eye opening, because I didn’t recognize that it was shame looming in the shadows that governed my responses to each of these areas of my life. I believe in connectivity; however, I was lacking in a lot of these ranges until I actually sat down and figured out what the underlying cause of my shame was with respect to these areas.
The real answer to the matter was this: vulnerability in life was absolutely and intensely frightening to me, therefore I sheltered myself inside of a protective bubble. Because you can’t get hurt if you hide, right? I tried to control every aspect of my existence, to the point of mental and emotional overload. I expected incredibly too much of myself and often found myself overcompensating to make up for what I perceived was lacking. And what I was lacking was the acknowledgement that I needed to learn to be authentically who I am without being afraid. And Brown is right: the only way to be resilient to shame is to just embrace being vulnerable.
Acknowledge your shit and sit in it.
So epic discomfort began.
This takes work. And for me personally, an incredible amount of work. Daily, in fact. Vulnerability doesn’t come easy to me and it’s an everyday practice. And what do we do when we meet shame head-on? We blame others or our circumstances, we apologize for things that aren’t our fault, or we hide. Hiding is my specialty, and I have a very intimate relationship with how to do it effectively. I still find myself at times silencing myself and withdrawing because I don’t want to be perceived as difficult, or incapable of being a good friend, partner, or professional.
I’m not ashamed to admit this now. It has taken me ten years to come to terms with who I am and where I want to be in life. It has taken countless conversations with people I trust. It takes me acknowledging my flaws and being okay with not being okay. It takes me recognizing what is triggering me and why I am behaving a particular way toward the issue at-hand.
I still stumble. Every day is filled with risk and our ability to interact with it, and when you are a self-proclaimed risk manager the reality of life’s circumstances and our relationships with people present opportunity to encounter it. It also doesn’t help that I’m a perfectionist. I’ve also survived some heavy life shit—which means I’m conditioned to run, hide, or attack. It’s quite a nasty collection of behaviors I’ve accumulated over my lifetime thus far, but I now work on embracing connectivity over fear. The largest lesson I’ve learned about shame is something to which Brown speaks in Daring Greatly: “…shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we can change and do better” (72).
Because the real truth and the most powerful lesson I’ve learned in life is that we are all capable of change and we can all do better, no matter how great or small. We aren’t victims of our own life and we can always choose growth over inaction. The more we hide, the less connected we become. The less connected we are, the more painful life becomes to navigate. We expect disappointment. We fear love. We control. We don’t strive for professional advancement. We tolerate toxic behaviors from others. We become less satisfied with who we are. We expect the worst. We engage in destructive behaviors. We avoid anything that has the ability to enrich us for the better. We attack anything that has the potential to be healthy to our existence. And eventually, we become so entrenched in privacy and keeping our shame a secret that we self-destruct.
Brown accurately conveyed it when she said: “Shame thrives on secret keeping, and when it comes to secrets, there’s some serious science behind the twelve-step program saying, ‘You’re only as sick as your secrets’” (82).
“You’re only as sick as your secrets.” Ouch.
The first step to change—real change—is to sit with your shame and talk to it. Get to know it. Then go find your village of trusted people and introduce it to them. Speak it. Give it an identity. Then tell it to fuck off.
So how did I face my own? I started writing. After my mom died, I made a choice and drove myself to change. Eventually, I started talking about it to my tribe—the people I respect and who have earned the right to sit on my bench. I became stronger and more of the person I aspired to be because I quit being afraid. Afraid of failure. Afraid of disappointment. Afraid of using my voice. Afraid of saying no. Afraid of removing myself from toxic circumstances. When I learned to embrace vulnerability, my life became significantly better.
Empathy and understanding are incredible ways to help you overcome your shame. The authentic version of yourself will emerge and you will know who is committed to you and who is not. The people who matter will always show you empathy and understanding. They won’t judge. They will support your growth. They will love you unconditionally. They will sit with you when you falter and they will help you stand back up.
Men and women deal with shame differently—which makes sense because we are biologically hardwired differently. I can’t speak from the male perspective (obviously). However, as a woman my greatest struggle is the idea that I must be everything to everyone. I used to see it as the definition of strength—you can only be a strong, independent woman if you can do all of the things. And you’re only strong and independent if you don’t need anyone and you execute all of the things perfectly. At least this is how I used to see strength. I don’t want to speak for all women, but in the circle I trust and run with, this seems to be the most common sentiment shared. This is, hands down, the hardest thing I still deal with present day. This is also the most ridiculous belief among women. And what I’ve learned is that being this way makes me more prone to attack those around me, criticize those around me for not being mind-readers, and feeling more empty than necessary.
This is where establishing boundaries saved my life. Enforcing them is also still an active work-in-progress. Old habits tend to die pretty hard, and I’m also stubborn as hell so sometimes I have to whip out my bad bitch playlist and remember who the fuck I am. I also recognize (finally) that I wasn’t meant to go about life alone—we all need someone with whom we can navigate this life. Whether it’s a friend, a husband, a wife, etc. Connectivity makes all of the fear and disappointment life has to offer bearable. Because there will always be something to fear and there will always be disappointment. Having real intimacy, authenticity, and vulnerability with someone is truly an existence like no other.
We establish vast collections of things over the course of our life. But it’s what we do with our collections that increase their longevity or their value. This also comes with the recognition that all collections weren’t meant to be kept either. Sometimes we have to part with what feels comfortable and step into discomfort in order to increase our own value.
And just like Aimee Mann sang about in “Voices Carry”, we should always embrace the voice speaking to us from within.
— BWT