Mirror Stain Medicine: lovingkindness toward the abandoned self

This thing happens to me where I lose my ... I can't think of the word. Is it power? Is it courage? Is it willingness? It's as if all the joy sifts from the bottom of my life like sand from a broken open hourglass.I stop caring, stop moving - I go very still inside as a deep grief bubbles up and fills the inside of my chest and tightens my throat. I feel ashamed and outside of my own center, kidnapped from myself.This happens when I worry that I've overshared or been too strange. It happens when I make a mistake with money and someone else notices.I go numb and I go dark and sad while, at the same time, I become reactive and panicky, making choices designed more to cover my tracks and get 'out of trouble' (in someone else's eyes) than anything to do with who I really am.I used to experience this as overwhelming shame - and it would take me offline from my life for days, even weeks at a time.Today, there is such richness is observing the ebb and flow of these feelings. Such beauty in bringing the frightened and self-conscious part of myself into blessing. To hold her in boundaried and generous space as she thrashes through the cycle of remorse and regret, reaction and then, realization.Such love for her, this imperfect and deeply lonely part of my own heart - and a profound and fierce unwillingness to ever abandon her again.(To learn more about the Soul Call Cards that are pictured in the top image, click here.)