I Want To Talk About Shame.

The antidote is share.

I want to talk about shame.

I want to talk about all of the subtle and insidious ways in which we are taught that we are wrong.

I want to subvert them. I want to unmask them. I want to thwart them.

And finally, I want to make something beautiful out of what was once just Pain.

I want to talk about how and why we come to believe what we believe.

I want to talk about the power of believing.

I want to talk about how we learn to have faith in ourselves.

I want to talk about hypocrisy, complicity and internalised misogyny. The excuses we make for The Way Things Are, as if justifications would sweeten the deal. As if the ability to rationalise was what was needed. As if all of this was just a case of needing to think.

I don’t want to talk about Brexit. This is a different type of deal.

We get lost in words to distract from our feelings.

I want to talk about rawness: who we are and what we hide behind. The disparity between appearances and reality; the instability of ‘reality’ itself; the disappearance of a ‘private’ self; the notion that we can never truly be ‘known’; this so-called ‘epidemic of loneliness’. The fact that we are born alone and will die alone yet still, inexplicably, are tied together. Inextricably, too. Without me, there is no we. I understand myself in relation to you.

I want to talk about what we’re afraid of.

Hell, I want *us* to talk about what we’re afraid of; conversations are much more interesting.

I’ve read many times that “the antidote to shame is share”.

I want us to talk until we’re no longer afraid.