You can love your way there.

On shame, vacation (😭🙌🏼), and the story that can shift us back to life.

Hi friends,

It’s almost hard to believe, but I’m writing to you from home. Well, my home city, Colorado Springs. I’m sitting across from Ryan in a coffee shop, in the same booth where my agent and I dreamed up my next book (a year ago? two years ago? After so much change, I honestly can’t remember.). After two whole months away from home for surgery and recovery, I’m trying to settle into this part of my story—the part where I get to trust that things can and are getting better.

Perhaps the worst part of trauma—of all kinds—is the scar it leaves over the tender flesh of our trust.

I had eight fewer surgical scars the last time I sat in this booth. I was lighter in pounds and possibilities. I had no idea how much pain was ahead of me. I had long been practicing trusting that I could receive goodness, not just grief. I just had no idea how much grief was ahead.

I’m sitting here—which, first, can I just say how good it is to be well enough to be sitting upright in a coffee shop doing normal things like staring at a blank screen for thirty minutes straight?—and I can’t stop thinking about you and your scars. Maybe you didn’t spend as many dollars as I did in doctors’ offices and hospitals this past year (or maybe you did, and ouch), but I imagine quite a few of you are reckoning with the same amount of damage.

Maybe the bones of what you once believed ended up crushing your family.

Maybe you lost a friendship you imagined would be lifelong.

Maybe you don’t recognize yourself in the mirror.

Maybe you don’t know how to hope anymore.

Maybe shame has been the soundtrack to your life for so long, you aren’t sure what else can move your body and soul forward.

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I feel like I should confess to you that right now, right after writing those moody-ass lines, I started listening to Mr. Blue Sky by the Electric Light Orchestra. Sorry for the lack of a seamless segue. I promise I’m not about to patronize your pain.

It’s just that, somehow, sometimes, something deep within us shifts, and the sky turns blue again.

But, damn, the shifts we long for in body and soul take determination to deal with our damage with devotion.

Last week, I went on vacation and felt well. 😭 After three weeks apart from Ryan for the second half of my surgery recovery, we reunited in the Denver airport with my family on our way from Montana to Disney World (!!).¹ My brother pushed me up the jet-bridge in my wheelchair and as soon as I saw Ryan, I stood up—amazed to be together, proud to finally show him that I could stand after six weeks without putting any weight on my legs. I still can’t stop smiling thinking about that reunion.

We spent the week laughing—utterly amazed that I had energy to play and eat and participate in life again.

With my dad in the Magic Kingdom. Here’s what I had to say about our vacation on Instagram 👇🏼👇🏼

kjramseywrites

A post shared by @kjramseywrites

One day, after I caught a glimpse of a photo of myself that was disorienting—my body still looks so different from the body that exists in my mind—I looked down at the electric scooter that was carrying me across the Magic Kingdom and the cane that was helping me stand, and I thought about damage, distance, and determination.

I remembered the me of one year ago, who practically danced across Disney beaming with childlike joy in the healthiest version of my body I’ve experienced as an adult.²

I remembered that just six weeks prior to our vacation, I could barely hold much of a conversation or leave my bed because of the damage disease had done to my bones and immune system.

And then I relished how far I’ve come. I let myself feel amazed that this body can and has healed so much.

And, there in a sea of Mouse Ears with a pretty pink castle behind me, I let the me of yesterday exist with the me of today, and realized, I had loved my way here, and I will keep loving my way back home into as much health as I can.

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You can love your way into life.

Shame is a strong motivator of short-term change, especially for religious or formerly-religious folks—myself included. Shame casts an eye toward the damage done to our bodies, faith, or families and says we better work harder and faster to return to a state that secures our belonging.

Here’s what most of us haven’t heard enough in the places we were told are most holy:

You have always belonged.

And no person or pain or problem can take your belonging away.

When shame has stood outside the door of my stretch-marked skin shouting that I better get my body back in shape faster, I’ve listened for the fear underneath the shouts. There is still a little kid in me who is afraid of change, who believes the sad and shallow story that my belonging and belovedness are bought through being strong, small, and successful. And, damn, she needs a hug.

Love already wrote a better story. I’m just learning, over and over again, how to love my way into a life where no matter what happens to me, what I look like, or what I can do, I am secure.

When I show up at the pool to swim my way into more strength, it’s love moving my limbs.

It’s love moving my fingers over these keys, so fucking grateful to be able to write again, because I have looked at my damage with devotion and it has shown me that at the bottom of all of our brokenness is belonging.

And now, all I want for me and for you, more than a return to the bodies that didn’t seem as broken or the buildings that once held our prayers is to look again at our lives with a Love who has already looked at us, called us good, and is delighted to be walking (or wheeling) us home.

May we love our way back to life.

—KJ

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Your turn:

Tell us in a comment what this stirred in you.

Or, tell us what you are learning about shame and love in your life right now.

I’m not the only one here worth listening to.

1. Somehow, right before I left Colorado for surgery at Mayo in MN, I found out that I had won a competition with my fave cozy things brand, Cozy Earth. Firstly, I thought it was hilarious—because I had totally half-assed the competition and barely posted about it seeing as I was fighting so.many.diseases. Secondly, I was stunned. They gave me a few thousand dollars for a vacation, and after the medical mountain of dollars I’ve climbed this year, I could hardly believe we could afford a vacation. It still seemed far-fetched that I’d be well enough to go on the family vacation to Disney World that had been planned for over a year, but I hoped, set aside the money, and…somehow, WE GOT TO GO. 😭

2. Here’s what I wrote last year about being at Disney World—interestingly, also about how trauma truncates our trust and how becoming like a child again really can restore what we once had lost: