Shame

Alright. Let’s get real. I am pregnant now, and pregnancy can bring up some real weird feelings of shame. There is so much that comes along, shame about deserving the baby versus women who have been relentlessly trying to get pregnant to no avail. Shame regarding how my body looks now, and the shame that follows feeling shameful about how my body looks when it is executing such a beautiful process. Shame about how I feel about this pregnancy compared to my first. Shame is a common emotion that challenges how you feel about yourself and your own worth. It can drag you through a meaningless loop of negativity.

These thoughts and beliefs and fears are so limiting. We all can sit with our limiting thoughts and beliefs and allow them to ruminate, stuck alone in our own heads and kept secret. We can give them more and more power and fuel and reasons why we deserve to feel ashamed and scared and unworthy, or, we can let them out, and choose differently. Writing them all down has already begun to alleviate them. I know that I am not the only one in the entire world to have ever felt this way. I also know I don’t have to feel this way forever, I have the power to think differently. What even is shame? It is only a feeling mixed with perceptions of yourself and the world. That’s it. It is as real and as possible as self compassion and love. Both valid. Both produce vastly different versions of reality.