Credit Nathan Bingle
Episode Summary
As we go through life, we inevitably come upon moments that are difficult. Some might be incredibly personal ones that it feels like few other people could understand. We have some options in those moments. We can ask for help, of course. And we might also create a ritual that is uniquely perfect to address our own needs.
Episodes by Topic
→ Episodes on Rites of Passage: https://ever-changing.net/rites-of-passage
→ Episodes on Authentic Weddings: https://ever-changing.net/authentic-weddings
→ Episodes on Grief & Loss: https://ever-changing.net/grief-loss
→ Episodes on Challenging Times: https://ever-changing.net/challenging-times
Support the Show
→ Subscribe In Your Favorite Player: https://kite.link/shamepinata
→ Rate & Review: https://ever-changing.net/rate-sp
About the Show
Shame Piñata is hosted by Ritual Artist Colleen Thomas, a Certified Meditation and Mindfulness teacher who helps people make sense of life through ceremony. Music by Terry Hughes.
Listen If
→ You’re feeling stuck
→ You’re going through a tough time
→ Something significant has happened and no one gets it
Full Transcript
You know that feeling when an inconvenient emotion is gnawing at you, bothering you, and you just really wish it would go away? It might feel like no one would understand what you're going through anyway, so why even try to explain it? Maybe, just maybe, that thing is you trying to get your attention with an important message.
As we go through life, we inevitably come upon moments that are difficult. Some might be incredibly personal ones that it feels like few other people could understand. We have some options in those moments. We can ask for help, of course. And we might also create a ritual that is uniquely perfect to address our own needs.
This is Shame Piñata. I’m Colleen Thomas. Welcome to Shame Piñata where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions. A lot of our interviews are with people who have created ceremonies to honor life transitions that are socially acknowledged. The birth of a baby, a wedding, and death are known as the "big three" by celebrants, but there are plenty of other transitions we celebrate publicly, including getting a new job, graduating from school or finishing a training program, moving into a new home, a relationship anniversary, a friend anniversary, getting a promotion at work, committing to a partnership in community. Most of us have experienced ceremonies like these, as well as the wide variety of what constitutes "ceremony" for these events, which could range from receiving a card from a friend, to flying to Hawaii for a wedding. The function of these moments is usually to recognize publicly that this person is now different. Their label has changed, one of the many badges they wear in the world has been swapped out or added to. They're a mother now, they're a manager now, they live in the city now, or the country now, "I now pronounce you” The list goes on.
These ceremonies alert the community to their new status and also invite the person to step more deeply into the new role, knowing that on some level, other people care about this change in their life and will hold them accountable to the expectations that come with it. Some couples even ask everyone present at their wedding to help them honor their wedding vows as they move forward in life as a couple, and ask that they speak up if they see the couple failing in that regard.
In addition to helping us honor our changing selves publicly, ritual is also a wonderful way to walk ourselves through personal transitions, the kind that we might not feel comfortable sharing with the world, the kind of personal milestones that society wouldn’t see or wouldn't recognize.
Today we're kicking off a small mini series called, "Do You Need a Ceremony?" in which we'll focus on a variety of life experiences where ceremony might be helpful and see if it's something we might like to explore. In part 1, we'll touch on the important personal moments we might see coming as well as those that might surprise us.
So what are some personal transitions we might see headed our way? Here are some random examples. We might be anticipating our last child leaving the house, the anniversary of a traumatic event might be on the horizon, or the passing of a parent from whom we've been estranged. These are each somewhat nuanced and potentially complicated moments, which we might or might not feel called to work with. But if we do feel called to support ourselves through them in some way, we can turn our mind and heart toward how that could best happen.
While the socially-recognized moments often have a framework we can build a ceremony on, the personal ones may not. So here we are invited to dig deep into what is changing for us. We might begin by asking ourselves some questions like: What is shifting? What needs to be marked? How does this change make me a slightly different person? What do I want to have witnessed in this transition? How might community be part of a ceremony?
Someone once asked me if I do a ritual every month to honor a significant personal moment. My answer was no, I don't do ritual for moments of personal growth unless I'm having a moment of personal growth! My point is, you will know when you need a ritual. To help you identify those moments and consider what you might do with them, here's a simple ritual sketch.
The first thing is to begin to cultivate an even deeper self-awareness than I might already have so that it's easy to identify anything that's trying get my attention. Is anything gnawing at me? Or scaring me? Or worrying me? Is something coming up that I don't feel super comfortable with? Does my heart need some extra care around a loss? Is there something I'm really hoping someone else will do for me? What do I need?
So let's say I create this kind of open dialog with myself over time and one day I realize there's something there. There's something that is asking for my attention. I might spend some time kind of getting to know it. What does it feel like to be in touch with this need, this thing? If I journal about it, or let my mind float to it while I'm taking a walk, what do I learn? Do I have any judgments about it? "Oh, that shouldn't matter," or "I'm being selfish," or my personal favorite, "I should be over that by now." The judgments are important, so I want to hear them out. I know they come from a good place, a part of me that's trying to avoid conflict. So I hear them out and then thank them and set them aside.
Bringing a curiosity to the process will help the need or desire to show me what's happening with it. If it's a fear, it might feel tight and want comfort. If it's anger or longing, it might already be moving and just need some channeling. I might sense into where it wants to go and imagine the most supportive setting possible. Does it want to hide under a pile of blankets? Does it want to storm and rage and break things? Does it just want to say how it's feeling about a hard situation? I'll spend some time feeling into it.
As I do this, I might begin to imagine what actions would meet its needs and what it might be like to be witnessed doing those actions in a supportive way? If it's a fear that wants to hide, what would it be like to invite a friend to hide under a blanket with me and tell them about this terrifying thing? If it's rage, what's the safest way I could break a bunch of stuff and maybe even yell and scream about what I'm mad at? You see where I'm going here... the ritual creates the container and the action helps the emotion move. And the witness... the witness is magic. There's something about being seen in our deepest moments that transforms us beyond what we can do alone. I really can’t explain it.
Once I have a sense of what would feel really good, really supportive to this part, it's time start bringing everything together by deciding/intuiting the details of who, what, when, where and how. I'll remind myself to be bold and brave, really go for it and ask for what I want. I'll be getting vulnerable so it's super important to remember to take care of myself in terms of who I invite and how I share anything about the event. Mostly, I'll do everything in my creative power to honor this thing, feeling, need, and take it seriously. I know that I'm actually doing healing beyond my own when I honor an important moment for myself.
[MUSIC]
It's so great to have you with us today! If you value what you hear on the show, you can become part of the Shame Piñata community by helping us build our Podchaser page. Podchaser is donating 25 cents to Meals on Wheels for every review in April. Find the link in the show notes & don't forget to subscribe to the show in your favorite pod player if you haven't already.
Let's go through this with a concrete example. Turning 35 was a significant moment for me, because it meant outliving two strong women I admired and wanted to be like. Both my great-grandmother and a close friend of the family who helped raise me never reached that age. Each of them died at 34 and a half in very heartbreaking ways. At some point, probably between turning 34 and turning 34 1/2, I realized it was coming, the moment of having a birthday they never had.
That feeling. I don't even know what it was. Some combination of dread, loss, heartbreak and just plain fear. That was what I was working with. It was real and it was in my face and it was alerting me that I had some work to do, and that I had some feelings to process. So that was step 1, finding "the thing", the "pain point" as the saying goes in business. The thing that is coming up to be addressed.
The next step was to sense into how those feelings wanted to move and design a ceremony to facilitate that. It took me some time to build that ceremony, as simple as it ended up being. It was really kind of a long, slow process of sitting with the feelings as they came up, journaling, talking with friends, doing some small rituals, visioning and healing. I focused on coming to terms ever so slightly more with what happened to each of them. And I spent time reminding myself that I was actually a different person than them and it was okay for me to have my own story. I imagined what it might be like to chart my own course beyond their example.
Ultimately, I decided to have a large gathering of friends come over on my birthday and to simply tell them the whole story, let them witness everything. When the day came, we all jammed into my little yellow cottage for a big celebration and we really enjoyed being together. Eventually everyone settled down for me to tell the story. It was heartbreaking to go into it and it felt kind of awful to share such grief with my friends. But they stayed, and they listened, and they honored how much these women meant to me, and how scary it was for me to go on on my own. And then, quite spontaneously, they gifted me with an angel tunnel, which was formed diagonally in the little cottage and through which I walked with closed eyes between two lines of friends who whispered to me how much they loved me as I passed, the things they admired about me, and the ways I had touched their lives. The angel tunnel wasn't part of the plan for the event, it evolved on its own and it was the perfect conclusion to the ceremony because it was a birthing, a bridge into the next part of my life, the part where I would begin to map my own way forward. And it also bridged me quite lovingly into being 35, and set me on that path knowing that a whole bunch of people who loved me had my back as I moved tenderly forward.
The steps again are to identify the "pain point", sense into what it needs, and design the ceremony to support that. I invite you to give it a try the next time something is gnawing at you.
You are invited to join us for parts two and three in this short series called "Do You Need a Ceremony?" They'll be headed your way later this spring and early summer. Our music is by Terry Hughes. Learn more at shamepinata.com. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.