I had just finished watching an episode of Red Table Talks on mom-shaming when I originally wrote this piece back in 2020. It made me so grateful for my journey of owning my own insecurities and shame.

I learned years ago that we don’t shame or point out the insecurities of others unless we have them ourselves. We can’t shame others if we are not shaming ourselves. One of the greatest tools I learned is to look at myself when I’m judging others. That’s why I start my book, where I do. We won’t be able to fix anything we are struggling with if we don’t take a look at ourselves.

When I blame or shame others, it’s because their behavior is triggering something inside me. This doesn’t mean there isn’t a healthy way to stand up to injustices. That’s what I often get when I say things like this, but using revenge tactics are us aligning with fear, lack, and separation. We aren’t make the world better with an eye for an eye, we are just aligning more people with the energy we SAY we don’t want.

It’s the way we do stand up for justice that says if our own inner shame and/or insecurities are triggered. This is part of the reason I started writing from a loving place. I wanted to focus on communicating with myself and others from a place of love, not my insecurities and shame (which come from attachments to fear, lack, and separation).

I’m so grateful that when I catch myself judging others, I start digging deeper, because when I can find my compassion or a perspective that will help me getting to a loving place, I KNOW I won’t take on the very energy that I don’t want to be a part of. I can’t represent peace from a place of hate in my heart.

When I read the book, Loving What Is by Byron Katie, it got me to see others as my mirrors to what was really going on inside of me. I also saw how I was choosing to view others came from my own perspectives of interpretation. She taught me to look at how my thinking about others got in my way and created blocks in my life. Her book was the catalyst that got me to read other books on codependency and shame.

My formal education in psychology, lifespan development, sociology, and cultural anthropology, got me to see, I was as healthy as the thoughts I projected onto to others, and I was as sick as the the thoughts I would project onto others. This was so essential for my healing after ten years of narcissistic abuse.

Owning what I believe about myself gives me the power to change the beliefs that work against me (remember belief is just a perspective of thought that we choose to buy into). If I’m not living the internal life that I want to live in this moment, it’s because I have beliefs (perspectives of truth) keeping my prisoner.

I have to work on myself on a daily basis to make sure that I’m aligning with love, abundance, and peace. I do slip, and I own my slips. When I take something someone says about me or a group I identify with personally, I have to look at how and why their judgments trigger me, because if I react from the same place their coming from which is fear, lack, and separation, I’m just FUELING that energy out in the world.

I keep having to look at myself with honesty, respect my feelings, feel them, and then if I feel called to respond, I do it from a loving place. If you are wondering how I do this, I have the voices of those who have done it before me in my head.

I think often about the journey of a butterfly when I’m going through this process. I don’t just get to fly, it takes work to soar without the weight of being a caterpillar. The things that hold us down to struggle for survival, can be transformed into what gives us our wings…IF we choose to sit in our chrysalises to process and transform those perspectives of truth that are keeping us prisoner. Many come from those insecurities and buried shame.

The beautiful thing about owning my shame is once I recognized it and shared it…it had NO power over me. It became an important part of my journey of learning to be and live my life on my terms. I know for me, I can’t live from a loving place if I don’t treat myself that way.

I get little cues on how I’m treating myself by how I treat others, including my kids. They are AMAZING teachers to show me where my insecurities and shame are still hidden. I’m so grateful for the opportunities to see how to become a better me.

Part one of my book is filled with letters that are meant to trigger people to see where they hold their judgments. These are many of the situations where I had to look at my own and still do at times. When we focus on what someone else is doing, we aren’t paying attention to the one person’s feelings, thoughts, beliefs, and actions we CAN change.

We give our power away when we fall into someone’s else’s energy of fear, lack, and separation. If someone else’s energy takes us down—fear won, lack won and separation won. This isn’t about what other people are doing, it’s about what WE are contributing through our own insecurities and shame or our empowerment, which comes from owning what is and transforming it to create more love, abundance, and peace. Go inward today and take a look at what you see.

Today’s Aligning

Love

Today, I commit to looking at myself when I find myself judging others.

Abundance

I’m grateful I can OWN MY insecurities and shame.

Peace

Repeat with your hand over your heart: I am at peace with myself in this moment.

Just focus on one moment at the time, and watch how your thoughts about others shift as you hold the peace within you longer and longer.

With Love, Abundance, and Peace,

©Rachael Wolff 2020, 2024

Author of Letters from a Better Me: How Becoming an Empowered Woman Transforms the World