Soulshine

“Loneliness can only be understood, never escaped or overcome—except temporarily.” Darlene Lancer , Conquering Shame and Codependency Loneliness and codependency often go hand-in-hand. For years I tried to bury my loneliness through losing myself in other people. I thought that if I could just fade into someone else, all of my emptiness, all of my loneliness would dissipate. But it never did. When fading into someone else wasn’t alleviating my inner-emptiness, I tried to escape my loneliness through other addictive behaviors. Shopping always worked best for me. Buying anything gave me that TEMPORARY respite from my loneliness and my emptiness. But it was always TEMPORARY—very temporary. The problem here is the solution we addicts so often use. We want to escape from our uncomfortable feelings. Escaping is a solution that never works. Instead of trying to escape from difficult feelings, like emptiness, loneliness or anxiety, we need to welcome these feelings. We need to...

I am in the womb of my emptiness. And I am exploring the scar tissue I find on the walls. Fear and shame have caused the greatest scars, and have etched an image of a god into the deepest recesses of my emptiness. It’s the god I was raised to believe in. It’s the god that is fear, shame, hate, judgment and revenge deified. And it is a god that is now dead. Clearly, my mind, my heart, my soul—and all of the empty spaces within me-- now officially declare this god is dead. There may be a vast womb of emptiness within me, but there is no longer any space for a god of hate to dwell. Nor is there any space for those who use fear and shame in the name of a hateful-god. I will wash myself clean of this god. And I will wash myself clean of its devils. The god I grew-up with, the god taught to me by adults and Church, is dead. My empty spaces have become its tomb. Within myself I sense death and stillness like earth buried beneath winter snows. I gasp for new life as all of me begi...