Right now, the country is quaking, hungry, often violent, overcome with threats. Politics, systems, and rules have suddenly changed lives and livelihoods. In the world we inhabit, there is a raw wind that can blow inside your chest as blood runs hot, hyper-vigilant, flooded. 

This glowering presence, like a poison, can sweep through your body with its undeniable contraction. Fear is a mind killer, spreading through the veins and the bones, reminding us of all that has betrayed us. It can manifest as anger and vitriol, or as a deadening cloud on the soul. You—generous or kind, or terrified, most need one another and the best from yourselves.

Toxic shame: the trademark debris from a survivor's sense of self after abuse... It spreads like a rash, turns to puss, and seeps through the soul. You feel it in the pit of your stomach, the tension in your shoulders, on your skin, in your heart... your heart.  

Toxic shame is often unnamed, and ironically, unfelt.  

Plenty has already been said about the issue of healthy shame. You recognize healthy shame when you have hurt someone or something. You confront your values, integrity or conduct. You take responsibility and make amends with regret, grief, remorse—and truth.

This is the hard season.

Right now, when so much has been ripped apart for so many, it is easy to curl up in a ball and shut down.

But we cannot shut down.  

If we are to honor all the work and pain and life itself, we must re-member our selves.  How we love and how we live depend on it.

Today, I stand under one of the tallest trees in the world. A fire burned through this forest recently, which altered the land and all that grew here. These great redwoods were hollowed out yet still stand in witness. Their wise silence is only altered by the wind. 

On this day, south of the Redwoods, other fires have been raging. I myself was born there. People I know and love have just witnessed much of their lives burn to the ground. But then I look at the base of the great charred redwood. I am struck by a fierce energy coming from beneath the ground.