You may remember months ago that I wrote about vulnerability and voice in a post called "Out Loud Anna." Update on those singing lessons, by the way: after coaching from a dear friend earlier this year, I'm now on to regular Monday lessons through the Detroit Community Music School! Terrifying! Which is how I know that it is the exact right thing for me to do. I've also come to make a habit of singing loudly as I bike through town, and sometimes when I am home, too. It is a wonder to begin to get used to my own voice: its funniness and unexpected force, its rawness and its newness at making the sounds I ask myself to make.
My essay turned on the thinking of Brené Brown. It is perhaps unsurprisng that Brown's exploration of vulnerability has enveloped shame as well. Shame is capable of suffocating our own hearts, to say nothing of our ability to connect with the hearts of others. It is the cold chase in our core. It provokes the choice of numbness rather than feeling.
Her talk on shame is worth sharing here, and speaking of.
As I share this, the sun is setting. That means that it is the wakening of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement in Jewish tradition. For all of us, wherever we find our faith and wisdom, my hope is that we will feel forgiveness and lovingkindness for our own brilliant and bloody hearts, so full of death and life. Maybe even speak it out loud.
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