Welcome, Rage.
I want to see all that is deemed wretched truly made holy.
When I chose the word “dignity” for my word of the year, I hadn’t yet made the connection that dignity is the embodied inverse of shame… and in order to truly heal from shame, one must regain access to healthy aggression, clean anger and disgust. To heal shame, you’ve got to know how to hand shit back.
(I wrote a bit about this right here).
I’m not naturally easy to anger. I’m a pleaser. Overly-eager. Annoyingly earnest and approval seeking.
Historically, I’ve moved towards connection indiscriminately, desperate for acceptance.
When I was a young one I wanted nothing more than for those who abused me to like me.
I jumped through hoops and achieved all of their dreams for me. Scrambling for what would please them— I became more of a pretty little product than a person. A self-perfecting filter, deleting anything not acceptable. A commodity of niceness, serving myself up on a platter.
“Do you like me now?”
This is the hope fantasy so many of us who have lived through the impossible cling to:
If I try harder, if I get better, if I am kind, if I am compassionate, if I open my heart more, if I don’t get angry, if I don’t cry, if I am good… maybe then they will be good to me.
Maybe if I’m a very good girl, then someone will find me worthy of protecting.
No one ever came.
No one ever fucking came.
There are only so many tears you can cry before you realize no one is coming. Only so many broken boundaries you can set before you stop trying. By the time I was 16 I’d learned to suck the tears into the back of my neck, down behind my heart. I’d control my breathing until my scalp tingled. I’d wait until my heart rate dropped and my face blank. I was vibrating somewhere so subtle and hidden even I couldn’t feel it.
I did this so many times that I stopped crying altogether… for 10 years to be exact. Even with food poisoning, I wouldn’t throw up. Contained and perfectly controlled.
I swallowed all of it.
What sadness??
What anger!?
Why enforce boundaries when I can’t perceive the unkindness at all?
“My arms are open! Come on in.”
I’m a little embarrassed, looking back, at how willing I’ve been to abandon myself by re-creating these dynamics. So willing to be anything. So willing to become anyone to be received into the fold of what feels like family… even if said family watches me be mistreated and looks the other way.
I was always surprised at why I’d forget my strong opinions altogether when in a group setting, or not notice when people were being mean to me. I’d take them at their word. Moving hopefully towards those who smile to my face yet leak their contempt like paper-cuts to the spirit.
Like a tape on loop, feeling nothing while waiting for someone to say something.
They never did.
I never did.
My inner protector was frozen. My discernment was frozen. My anger, frozen.
A pause for my practitioner hat: These are the relational dynamics early imprints can create, leaving us repeating our most painful wounds until we are supported and they can complete. When early experiences signal to our body how relationships "always go," we often get what we know. Unconsciously, we find others who have similar imprints - be it personal, ancestral or karmic - which leaves us re-creating familiar dynamics, wondering what's wrong with us or projecting our past hurt onto new people. Luckily, the body wants to heal and these imprints want to complete, so all that’s familiar becomes an opportunity for something new to happen. In that, we can bless & depersonalize the situations that suck so fucking bad, because they can be our biggest opportunity for healing.
And something did change this year as I did deeper somatic alchemy work— The freeze that once left me confused, protecting those who hurt me and waiting to be rescued melted.
I see what I see and I trust that I know what I know.
In the melting, the missing piece of my Muchness has returned.
Welcome, Rage.
Now I know: I can protect my fucking self.
I’m learning how to read what’s underneath niceness & pleasantries. I see what I see and I know what I know, and I will act accordingly.
Is this not the definition of a boundary?
“Soft hearts need protection.” -AuroraWhen my abuser reached out in February, I watched my flight response move my legs into dance— I just couldn’t. stop. moving. Thank goodness. Terror surged through me and electrified my body. I let the waves crash like a dam creates electricity. I welcomed it all.
When he emailed his “apology” in June, I felt the heat emerging and laughed at how meager it read. No longer afraid of this power inside me. No longer protecting him from how he hurt me. No longer protecting myself from being seen in my humanity. I could see it all so clearly and what I saw was just so fucking sad.
All these years trying to prove something to this small man simply stuck at 11 years old. I corrected his “misremembering” and clarified his misunderstandings. I handed back his “what I want you to understand” because I will never understand… and also, I have never understood more clearly than I do now.
The “significant” shift in me is so simple at it’s core:
I am no longer protecting people from how they hurt me.
That’s the difference.
I am no longer pretending it doesn’t hurt. No longer swallowing shame or trying to change myself. I am no longer annihilating myself, striving to be good, making perpetual bridges in hopes they will see themselves.
I will be the mirror they made me anyway.
I will let my rage, not my respectability say:
Do you see yourself?
I was once a receptacle full of projections.
What’s respectable about that, exactly?
So fucking sorry for what must be wrong with me to make others treat me so poorly. So willing to receive it all right to the core. So willing to take it to heart, and to tens of thousands of dollars of therapy trying to own my part. So willing to become nothing at all, to feel nothing at all, if it means creating a bridge between us.
No more.
Codependency, at it’s core, is rescuing others from the consequences of their own behavior. I now understand what grace really means: grace isn’t saving them from their remorse, it’s letting them have what is theirs.
Because it’s in our healthy remorse where our hearts soften and bring us back into integrity— like re-setting a bone. It hurts because it’s supposed to hurt. This is how we heal.
This is different than shaming, making accusations or invoking harm. Not all suffering is bad, actually. That’s what I didn’t know.
All this time, needing someone to rescue me from my suffering and there I was rescuing them from theirs. All this time, swallowing the remorse and shame of others. All this time, being so sorry for being the mirror they made me. All this time, annihilated by their shame, projections and fear.
No more.
I hand it back.
I reclaim my Muchness in full.
“Have some self-respect!” I wrote— and I finally do.
Dignity has returned. Rage has returned. Grief has returned.
I have returned.
Muchness is here. Aliveness is here. All of me, finally, finally here.
I’m not rescuing any of us from what is ours alone to feel.
As I reflect on dignity, I am reminded of this piece I wrote years ago. I knew somewhere within, even then, how to be a mirror.
I want to be undignified.
I want to laugh loudly at the wrong moments
chuckling at the social norms
that weave us together in some sort of
fabricated connection.
I want to be disillusioned
in public
so all can see me
naked and unafraid.
I want to watch the discomfort
as my womanhood is expanded
beyond pretty, sweet and small.
I want to trust that
their discomfort
is their medicine.
I want to watch men squirm
and mothers recoil
at the precision of my rage.
I want to watch brains scramble
and a loss for words
at the unexpected grace that appears
as I become undone.
I want to make art
of myself
of my life
of this undoing.
I want them to feel it
every inch of their judgment
like blood in their mouths
as they spit it out
only to themselves
become undignified.
I want to see
all that is deemed
wretched
truly made holy.
I won’t ask anyone to “try me” because I’m not about to test the universe… (I always get what I want). ;) But if anyone does, I know what to do. I know how to feel it. I know how to hand it back.
Things are different now. I am different now.
I earned this, and I am never going back.
With love and dignity,
Madison
P.S. I am now enrolling the Muchness Mastermind, which supports folks to embody ALL of themselves so they can experience their vitality, visibility, deep intimacy & sacred self-expression.
Experience the Bigness of You (without posturing, pretending, performing, or collapsing in shame).
If you’re interested, book a call with me & let’s chat about who you are when ALL OF YOU is welcome at the table. <3
P.P.S.
Thank you to all my paid readers, who have supported me with monthly contributions as I have pulled back my writing to work through this internal process. It’s taken all of my energy to digest this— one of the deepest and most challenging imprints of my life. I am coming back to life, and am eager to write to you more as the dust settles & I feel into how I want to share here on the other side of this re-awakening.
