The Shrinking

Chapter 3: Shame

This is week three of nineteen.

Each Tuesday, one chapter of my book, Trusting How We See.

Francis Bacon, Study for Portrait, Number IV (After the Life Mask of William Blake), 1956. "We nearly always live through screens… perhaps I have been able, from time to time, to clear away one or two of the veils."

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Born whole, born radiant—

then told we were broken things.

The lie, not the light.

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Who laid this foundation?

When? Before language.

Before choice.

Before we knew our own names.

The message: you are broken by nature.

You require fixing. First came the voices. Then the scoring. Now the verdict.

I remember the shrinking. Not a thought — a posture.

Shoulders curling in.

Eyes dropping.

The body learning to take up less space, as if smallness might keep us safe.

Shame replaced our original goodness with original brokenness.

And broken people don’t get to define life for themselves.

Broken people wait to be fixed.

So what’s underneath this false foundation?

Our original goodness that doesn’t need to perform.

Doesn’t need to prove itself.

Older than any teaching. Deeper than any correction.

Can we see our newborn self?

Can we remember our first breath into the world?

We were the shameless universe looking out through fresh eyes.

We are that.

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