We
continue our 12-part series on shame, based on Brene′ Brown’s book, Daring Greatly.
Publication
days: Monday – Wednesday - Friday
Each
week we are introducing each blog with this quote from Brene′.
“People
often want to believe that shame is reserved for people who have survived an
unspeakable trauma, but this is not true.
Shame is something we all experience.
And while it feels as if shame hides in our darkest corners, it actually
tends to lurk in all of the familiar places.
Today’s
Topic …
Aging
The
shame that accompanies the aging process is a little-talked-about issue and has
some grave impact on our elderly population.
For
men, shame begins to rear its head with thinning hair. A full head of hair has been such a prized
possession in our culture. And now, is a
man “less than” just because of less hair?
Women
can suffer with hair loss as they age also.
Sometimes, their easy fix is a wig, yet the shame can be severely
felt.
And
then there is the wearing down of the body.
I remember on my 54th birthday, when I had to buy my first
pair of reading glasses. It took a long
while before I would ever been seen using them in public. Shame reared its ugly head.
And
heaven forbid, we can’t stand the stigma of being once so active and chasing a
tennis ball or racket ball all over the court, and then one day we wake up and
realize we just don’t have the stamina we had even five years ago.
Shame
can kick in in a hurry.
We
could go on naming all sorts of shame scenarios, but they only tell the
problem, not the remedy.
Some
things emerge in the reading I've done on this topic.
~ ADMIT OUR LIMITATIONS
Sooner
or later, we have to admit to ourselves and to others the extent of what we
understand to be our debilitating abilities.
People will stand in line to help us if we allow it and open ourselves
to their helping hand. This is a tough
step, but a needed one.
~DENIAL
Denial
is not a river we need to continue traveling.
Denial mostly means we are hiding the issues from ourselves when others
so clearly see what we are not willing to admit to seeing.
~PHYSICAL LIMITATIONS
Physical
Limitations will continue to increase.
We stay as active as we can, for as long as we can, and that is the way
it is. We continue to find the arena in
which we can play and be active in a safe way without doing harm to
ourselves and to others.
~MENTAL AGILITY
Mental
Agility will continue to slip away from most of us. Allow yourself room for error, use some
humor, and keep moving.
Aging
and shame having nothing to do with each other.
We often feel shame because we feel we are a bad person for getting
old. Time and again, we all need to be
reminded of this:
Guilt is “I did something bad.”
Shame is “I am bad.”
No,
you are not bad. You are,
perhaps, a victim of wrong thinking, and your body is following its natural
course of slowing down. You are normal
and you will find your new norm.
For
more information, consider these links:
P Michael Biggs
Offering
Hope
Encouragement
Inspiration
One Word
at a Time
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