On shame and aliveness

Allowing ourselves to follow our longings

Oct 22, 2022

On stage as Aphrodite Jones, November 2019. Photo credit: Rob Brazier

Part of me does not want to share my stories. It believes I should keep my head down and stay quiet. It tells me I should be content with my roles as wife, mother and supporter of others. That my desires and longings for creative freedom and adventure have no place. It tells me that if I continue to follow those longings, I will have no place.

This is closely linked to my identity as a woman, and the collective unconscious narrative on what being a ‘good’ woman means. It is also linked to my own experiences of living in a female body. The actual physical danger that can bring.

As a girl I was required to kneel beside my friends whilst the teacher checked our skirts touched the classroom floor. I was urged not to draw attention to myself, for fear of unspeakable outcomes.

What kind of woman enjoys being seen? A woman who is asking for trouble.

For me, this is the primary reason it feels safer to stay hidden. I didn’t know it at the time, but it is why I sat around boardroom tables in silence, despite my mind buzzing with ideas. It is why when I did speak up, it demanded so much energy. It is why in my early days as a solopreneur I wrote countless articles that still sit in a folder on my laptop.

Hiding to avoid failure and disappointment is the more obvious, socially palatable first layer. The layer related to living in a female body is the one I would prefer to keep to myself, but that only makes it all the more potent.

I stumbled my way into the world of Burlesque when another woman recommended it. She was a trainer at the front of a beige-walled conference room. I had rarely experienced a woman in a professional setting so bold and liberated. So completely at ease in her own skin.

There are millions of clips of Burlesque performers on YouTube, and I fell down that rabbit hole with abandon. I haven’t been able to find the video since, but there is one woman I remember in particular. She was what medical professionals would deem overweight, but she owned her body. Every inch of it. Her moves weren’t fancy. There was no intricate choreography. Her confidence was not the ‘look at me’ kind I’d seen on some of the other videos. It was more ‘isn’t it wonderful we get to share this moment. You, in the audience, and me on the stage.’

Witnessing her made it easier to breathe. When she removed her bra and threw her head back for the final flourish of her act, the music was barely audible beneath the audience’s whoops. I felt as though I was sitting right there, on the other side of the world, alongside them.

I am grateful to that woman. For her choice to allow herself and her expression to be seen. She embodied the opposite of shame. She embodied the life-force that runs through all of us. Through each human, every animal, the earth, the moon, the oceans, the stars. In those four minutes, she reminded me of my own aliveness.

As I continued to follow my curiosity, it was anything but a straight line. I hated my first experience of Burlesque, in a dingy hall at the back of a badly lit car park. I did my best not to look directly in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors. We had to strut around the wooden floor in our high heels, and the teacher told us our faces needed to match our moves. That anyone would think we were at a funeral. And so, I did what every good girl does on request: I smiled.

After putting Burlesque in the ‘definitely not for me’ category for almost a year, I felt called to try again. Perhaps the good girl in me needed some time to come around to the idea that there was something there for me worth exploring.

When I found the right teacher, I discovered an art form about full expression. Not performing pre-determined choreography designed to make your waist look smaller and your boobs look bigger. When you create an act that feels good to perform, your audience feels it too. You don’t have to think about your facial expressions. You can’t help but smile.

I am expert at morphing myself into what I believe will be accepted. I use the present tense because I still lose who I am every day, in some way or another. When I listen to the part of me that wants me to strive upwards, not dive deeper. When I say what I believe I should say, rather than what feels true. When I hide.

But the only way to strengthen the connection to the untethered me that lives underneath all of that, is to follow what makes me feel alive and trust the unknown it leads to.

I nearly wrote ‘joy’ rather than aliveness. But it is not always joyful. It is inevitable we’ll meet parts of ourselves that are trying to protect us. There are reasons we have distanced ourselves from what makes us feel alive. When our younger selves expressed or threw our hearts into something we cared deeply about, perhaps we were shown that it was not welcome, needed or appropriate. That we were not appropriate.

When we follow our sense of aliveness, perhaps the fact it isn’t all joy and light is confirmation we are on the right path.

May we each hold ourselves with compassion on the journey. May we remember we are never alone. May we remember that as we nourish ourselves, in the weird and wonderful ways we feel called to, we nourish others in ways we may never know.

With love and shimmies,

Claire

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