Shame

Voices against abuse

Today I felt what the spiritualists call The Great Shift. This account isn’t a current events aggregate, or a news source. But you will know what I mean. The tight grip of the secret power grid is revealed, like invisible ink. No one knows how this moment will play out. But we cannot un-see what it is showing the world.

For me, as for many others, the last few months have felt extremely personal. One of its gifts has been learning how many other people besides me have carried secret shame, the burden of someone else’s misbehavior. The extra layer we did not ask for, that nevertheless became OUR identity, while they walked free, their only concern if we would try to speak. While we understood that the world would not listen to us, either way. This is a very common experience. Now I know.

My victimhood is mild in comparison to others. But it gives me enough in common with the many who are raising their voices now to vibrate along with them.

And so, as the dam breaks and the tension of our current but soon-to-be shattered power structure flows out, I try to write.

Yesterday I came across a one-star review of a sci-novella I published last year. The reader said only, “what even was this.” I admit, I laughed. What indeed.

It was a story of an illegal refugee who was trafficked and abused, only to be rescued by androids she later must go to war against. Her trauma leaves

Photo by JOHN TOWNER on Unsplash

her broken. She is only healed in relationship with others in a similar situation. The villains are those who hoard people’s data. Those who own everyone else, by virtue of our footprint. (Vole in Paradise, Thora Wolf.)

You can see how everything swirling around us would matter to me.

But as someone who spent a lifetime becoming an “expert” in creativity/creative block, with a MFA in Writing, you would think I could bounce back into starting new projects.

As I study my list of self-published books that I am both proud of, and cripplingly embarrassed by, I understand. The shame they put on victims to silence us becomes as deep as the voice we use to name their crimes. It is in me. It is always telling me that the one-star review is correct, not the five-stars. What even am I.

It is the work of a lifetime to find the courage to continue creating stories of survival and redemption, and to keep finding it. If you are there, looking for ways to keep going, I am here with you.

Let’s pool our courage, and go together.