Ep #122: Collective Shame with Chanci Dawn

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Kim: Hello, hello, and welcome back to the More Than Mindset show. I have a guest for your today, her name is Chanci and Chanci and I are going to talk about healing collective shame.

This is something that we’ve been speaking about amongst ourself and both of us have gotten private messages and warnings and like all of this stuff come through in our practice. And so we’ve been talking about it and decided let’s just get on and have a little conversation and see if we can kind of break through some of this shame.

Chanci, welcome. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Chanci: Thank you Kim. So yes, my name is Chanci Dawn and I am an integrative life coach, and feminine embodiment coach. And this is at the root of so much of what I do so I am so pumped for this conversation.

Kim: So, let’s give a little backstory to what are you seeing come up with your clients that has to do with this that we’re calling collective shame or healing collective shame? Could you give an example just to someone who may be experiencing it for themselves but has not put like a name to it.

Chanci: Yeah, so I mainly work with women who have a massive history of dieting. And just really feeling quite disconnected from their bodies. Trying to make themselves smaller so that they can feel better and like they actually belong. And at the root of this is what I would call frozen tension.

So frozen tension are these emotions, are these internal felt senses that are not moved in the body, they get stuck inside. And this, really, what leads to this is collective shame. So these are like conditioning stories that we’ve been told, ways that we’ve been raised. Even like underlying currents of thoughts and beliefs that we don’t even realize are there in our society that create this like frozen tension where we feel inherently something is wrong with us, something is broken.

And then this leads to a lot of issues in all different areas of life. And then for me, like I said I like to focus in on the relationship with your body aspect of what this leads to. So it’s collective shame as well as individual shame, but women are walking around full of shame. Which, like I said is the undercurrent of I’m not enough, something is wrong, something is broken, I need to be fixed.

Kim: But dieting just happens to be one of those things that we’re like, “Well, if I were smaller, I wouldn’t be feeling this. It’s because of my size that I’m not being accepted. Or it’s because there’s a defect within myself.” And we go into, whether it’s elective surgeries or, you know, just trying to fix something.

And the actual collective shame that we’re speaking of, the stuff that is inherently passed down through conditioning, through what we’ve been told and taught. And also just what’s been experienced in our body as children that we weren’t able to fully experience, articulate, or process that’s coming up now.

So we, you and I both, have spoken about like even in our teenage years things happening and then us being told to be quiet about it or to pray for someone else, or like hidden in this shame. Hiding it so someone else wouldn’t be called out or like hiding it so that someone else wouldn’t be seen as the one who did the thing. You want to kind of talk on that? If it’s too private we can keep it out of the conversation.

Chanci: No, it’s not too private. No, I talk about this all the time because it’s something that really needs to be talked about. I grew up in a very, very strong Christian home, and I still have like deep faith. Definitely a beautiful relationship with my creator. But I was raised to, really it was almost like it was important to be pretty because then men would be attracted to you and you could find a husband. Yet you had to keep yourself pure, and then once you were married then your body actually ultimately belonged to your husband because if he wanted to have sex then you did, like end of story, right?

So this is the climate that I was raised in and I went to bible college. One of my best friends, who I thought was my best friend, raped me and I had talked to my youth pastor about it when I got back. He’s the only person I talked to, and he was the first person I talked to, well the only person at the time.

And he sat me down and he said, “Chanci, it’s really important that you pray for forgiveness for being tempting to Matt. That you put him in this position and then this is what happened. And God will forgive you, you can be free from this.”

And that sent me, I was like 18 or 19 at the time, that sent me into a spin, Kim, for 15 years of my life. It led me to get married to someone that I was actually terrified of. Because I was like terrified to date, terrified that I was, you know, damaged goods. That something was wrong with me that this would have happened to me.

And it wasn’t until I started doing my own work as a coach that I realized that I was holding the shame within. And then I had to go through the process of releasing the shame, of moving it. And as a result, being healed in it, understanding ultimately nothing was actually wrong or broken with me.

Kim: It’s being able to fully experience our humanity in all of it.

Chanci: Yes.

Kim: The whole sex taboo and hiding in shame, and not calling out, and protecting other people, that’s where all this people pleasing comes from also. You know, worrying about what we do or what we say and being responsible for how someone else takes that or sees that. And so we have to hide our own truth. Like we can’t be honest either.

I had an experience in high school also, at a camp. And I remember like being told I couldn’t say anything because then we wouldn’t be able to go back or their parents would find out or whatever. But I did not get to tell anyone about the incident.

And I remember years later I was in a deposition and the question came up about sex and like they were, I don’t know if you’ve been through a deposition but it’s pretty dreadful, you know, asking all kinds of intimate information. And it just so happened that the incident happened at this lawyer’s house. Now, why didn’t I use that experience to say, “Oh yeah, there was and it happened to be here. And this is what happened with your kids.” Right? I couldn’t do it so I lied. I lied in the deposition.

But it wasn’t to protect me. It was to not call out and not be able to say it because it needed to be hidden, you know, that was that shame, right? That collective shame, or the conditioning that I couldn’t say. You know, it’s almost like dismiss it, it didn’t happen. And then when we have this little girl that’s so angry inside of ourselves because we can’t be honest, because we’ve had to dilute and hide who we are. The reason you just said, like for tempting.

Chanci: Yes.

Kim: For tempting, as if it’s the responsibility. Which this is kind of the story that brought up this whole topic, right? Do you want to share that?

Chanci: Sure. So yeah, last week I just bought a new hot tub, and I go in it naked, and I put a screen up and my backyard is super private. So I put a screen where someone might be able to see, mostly because I just don’t want to be in there with people watching me naked, right?

So I was in there and the screen blew down. And I’m like, “Oh my God, what am I going to do?” Right, because like my neighbors can see me and all of this. And I’m like, I just started laughing. I was talking to you, I was actually texting you when it happened. I’m like, “I can’t believe this has just happened.”

So I took a snapshot and posted it on social media. And I was like, “Here I am, naked in my hot tub, screen just blew down. How am I going to get out?” That’s it. And everyone was laughing. And I ended up, I got out, like I held myself high, went and got my towel, went in the house, thought it was hilarious.

And I got a message the next day. And she said, “I know you’ve been on this freedom path.” Or something like that, I didn’t even really understand what she was meaning by that. And then she said, “It’s a very fine line between that and it being a stumbling block for men who are addicted to pornography or in abusive relationships.” I assume she meant he is an abuser in a relationship and trying to heal from that. And she just said, “Be careful, watch yourself.”

Kim: And I saw the picture, it was a picture of your toes.

Chanci: Yeah, my toes.

Kim: Literally, your toes and the screen down. And I remember like this same kind of thing happening with myself also. Just talking about something in general and then getting this message, private message, about me doing Christianity wrong.

Chanci: Right. Oh yes, I’ve been told I am the worst Christian ever. I get messages in my inbox constantly of women, they’re from women, saying “I’m praying for you. I’m praying for you.” You know, and I just, every single time, this is what happens Kim, every single time I get that, I get a surge of shame in me. Like, “Oh, am I doing something wrong? Is God displeased with me? Am I leading people astray?”

Every single time because it’s still there because I’m a human woman. And even right now I’m feeling it, right, I’m feeling this like flare of emotion in my body. So for me, the practice that has helped me is when I start to feel this hand on heart, hand on womb, two very, very powerful centers for us. Breathe into this emotion, breathe into these internal felt senses and move it.

And remind myself in this, like breathe and make sound, I’ll go, “Ah.” and remind myself, there’s nothing to be shameful. This is your work, this is your calling. It’s okay that this is coming up for you, it doesn’t mean that anything’s wrong. And then moving it through my body. So again, it doesn’t keep me stuck and playing small or going and eating, you know, all the things in my pantry or then cutting myself off of all the things in my pantry so I could be smaller. Because that is how traditionally I have handled these senses of shame, not realizing what it actually was.

Kim: I agree, right? So we eat because it’s uncomfortable, so we eat to try to numb out the emotions that are coming up, the feelings that are coming up. And then we deal with the, my body’s not the right size for society, right? So that can’t be accepted. So it’s almost like we’ve been set up for a lose, lose. You heal, you express, and then other people come in and they’re displeased with that also.

And so it kind of comes back to the whole people pleasing and worrying about what someone else is thinking or someone else is feeling. Like we’re responsible for the way someone else feels, most likely because it brings up their own crap.

Chanci: I was just going to say the thing is, is when anyone is thinking, or saying, or doing anything about things that you’re thinking, doing, or saying it’s their own shame. And that’s what’s the saddest thing about it.

Like this woman who messaged me, she is a lovely lady. I’ve known her for years. And my heart breaks for her because I know that this is part of the problem, it’s part of the collective shame. She truly, when she said, “I’m praying for you.” She means it. Because she has this, again, all of this stuff going on inside that she doesn’t know how to deal with. So then she’s looking outside of herself and trying to control others so she can feel better. Right? And that’s what we do.

Kim: And also making an excuse for the one who’s not doing their own work and putting other people responsible for them.

Chanci: Yeah.

Kim: So women should hide, not come out the house, like not love their own bodies, not even be comfortable. This is why we’re not comfortable being thinner, and loving ourselves, and dressing in a way that feels
good.

Chanci: Or even, like I’m bigger than I, like physically bigger than I have been most of my life. I feel better now, because of the work I’m doing, than I ever have. Right? Now in this body I work it, I feel beautiful, I feel sexy, I’m curvy, I’m strong. And I love it because of this work. It has nothing to do with our body size, right?

So when I’m looking at this, it is just such freedom that is there for us when we know how to heal it. And in saying this also, you know, I was thinking a lot about it and it’s really interesting that it’s women that are targeted in this. Because in the same way, say a pedophile who’s attracted to children. No one is saying to the child, “Shame on you for being so tempting.” So when does it start? Does it happen when we start developing breasts? When we start having these curves? Like where is it that suddenly women are dirty?

Kim: Yeah. So what I saw or experienced for myself is we had someone here a few years ago local that was riding a bike at one o’clock in the morning. And this guy comes up behind her, hits her, takes her. And the thing that I heard more than anything else is she shouldn’t have been out at one o’clock in the morning on a bike, she was asking for it.

And I was a bike rider at the time and so everyone was like, “You shouldn’t be riding your bike. You shouldn’t be on that highway. You shouldn’t be doing that.” And coincidentally he takes this body and he comes and throws it right here by my house, like passed in front of my house and they found it. They found it down a road about a mile and a half from here.

And I remember thinking at the time like, “Wait a minute, society is putting her at fault when he’s the one who invaded the space. When he’s the one who had no boundaries and took what he wanted, what was most important to him in that moment, at all costs, no matter what.”

So if we’re at a bus stop at 7:30 in the morning, our children are at a bus stop or we are as a six year old, it’s our fault that some asshole passes by and decides that he wants this?

Chanci: Yeah.

Kim: Like that had me so heated back then and that’s what this reminds me of.

Chanci: It does, right? Because, you know, similar to like the big T and little t trauma, right? This is like on a grand scale, and then it’s these small little drips of conditioning that we get. Right? So it’s like, it’s not okay to hot tub naked in your backyard because someone might be tempted.

Kim: It’s not okay to ride your bike at one o’clock in the morning.

Chanci: Yes. So from the smallest little things to the big things, like you’re speaking of. And it’s all the same, it’s all the same.

Kim: What I think is happening is the person who is saying it is trying to find a way for them to feel safe as if it won’t happen to them because I would never do that. I would never get on that bike at one o’clock in the morning and be riding home, you know, whatever, then I will be safe.

Chanci: Right.

Kim: So the mind is just looking for the reason that it happens, trying to make sense of it. There is no sense of it, by the way, when someone is invading space, and avoiding boundaries, and going into someone and man handling or pushing themselves, whatever it is. But I believe that we say it to make ourselves feel safe. And that’s why I was like, well then what about the kid who’s at the bus stop at 7:30 in the morning?

Chanci: Exactly. Yes. So here we are, as women, walking around, number one, feeling like we’re broken, something’s wrong with us, and we’re not safe. We’re not safe. If we can’t feel – I texted this to you, I forget the wording but like when you asked me how this felt and I said, “If a woman can’t feel safe in her environment, how is she supposed to feel safe in her own body or the other way around?” It’s the same, right?

If I can’t feel safe here and like feel my emotions, feel these senses, be able to move through this. If all of this is numbed out and trapped and then I’m just going and distracting from it all or numbing out further, how then can I feel safe in life? How then can I truly show up as my full self and live my life to like the biggest experience? I’m so passionate about this, like right now I’m just like, “Ah!”

Kim: And you know I’m heated because it starts off with if you don’t behave, Santa won’t come. And then if you do this, Jesus won’t whatever or God won’t –

Chanci: Forgive you, you’ll go to hell.

Kim: I mean, it just doesn’t stop. And you know I’m really heated right now because I had an experience of a catechism teacher saying that if you have sex or if you drink alcohol that you’re going to go to hell. And then you’re going to do it repeatedly over and over and over and over and over, because it’s eternity and it’s never going to stop. And this is actually what is being told to our children. To our teenagers, to our children in Christian Catholic schools. I’m a little heated about it.

Chanci: Yes. When you sent me that clip of your granddaughter talking and I could hear her voice, like I could hear the emotion in it I sat on my balcony and I wept. Like when is this going to stop? The stop has to start somewhere, and this is the conversations we need to have.

And someone actually, on my posts someone said, “Well, why are you shaming her by posting this of what she said?” And my response was, “First of all, if I would have put her name and like posted it all out there, definitely that’s not appropriate. But sharing what happened and sharing her words, the shame has to come out of the shadows. When it’s out of the shadows and into the light then we can deal with it head on.”

But just like what happened with you when you were little and what happened with me as a teen, it was like, “Shh.” So then we hold it in and then we feel worse. And then we teach our daughters. Right? We teach our children because no one knows how to handle this.

So I love, Kim, that you’re someone that your grand baby was able to come to and say this is what’s going on. Change it all. I do believe it’s possible.

Kim: I get the threat. Like I get it, I’m sure I’ve probably said it. I was taught it. Like I get that that’s our attempt to try to keep them safe, to keep our children safe, to keep ourselves safe, whatever it is. Like I get it. I’m not going to blame anyone for that. I just think that this shaming and kind of bullying and threatening, this is the God we portray. You know, it’s like the fire and brimstone and the eternal, you know, suffering. And like it’s emotional manipulation. And it’s intense because of the age that it is suggested to the children. And so it is like implanted into their psyche.

And here we are as coaches helping with relationships, and this is a big part of the problem with sexuality, even in marriage. And they don’t realize, but it’s the unconscious root cause which is preventing the lack of intimacy in the marriage because they’ve been told it’s wrong, and it’s bad, and it’s unsafe, or it’s whatever. Whatever the thing is. Most people don’t remember it because this was taught at such a young age.

Chanci: Yeah, and then all of a sudden you get married and then it’s supposed to be okay and enjoyable.

Kim: The unconscious is like still running.

Chanci: Yeah, I remember in my marriage saying yes when my body wanted to say no, when everything about me wanted to say no. And I was feeling assaulted. And that’s definitely not his intention. But it was my body going, “What is going on here? This is not what you want. This is not okay.”

But then we are taught to be so disconnected from our bodies that we even think there’s something – Here’s the thing, women in marriages even think there’s something wrong with me if I don’t want to, right? Like there’s just so many lessons and conditioning here. It just runs so deep.

And I believe, I just read a book, I forget what it’s called, but it’s about Mary Magdalene. It’s beautiful. It’s a beautiful book. And it actually talks about the true history of Mary and how she was the apostle to the apostles. She was Jesus’s like most precious love in this. And she has her own gospel that was never released, right? It’s definitely not. And Jesus would share these teachings and these, you know, really important things to her that he didn’t with the other apostles, because she was the closest to him.

And then once, I think it was Peter, had said, “Hey Mary, can you share, you know, what Jesus is telling you?” So she did in trust, and then he couldn’t handle it because he was jealous that she was a woman, you know, and Jesus was doing this. So then that’s when the lie started that she was a prostitute.

And it seems like all women, we have been for centuries attacked for our bodies and the sexuality. And that is the way we’ve been controlled. And like I said, and at the root of it has created all of this shame. So to heal it, the conversation, bringing it out in the light and then moving forward.

Kim: This is the scuba diving where we get to the root cause of what’s happening with these broken relationships. Whether it’s marriage, or personal relationship, or Christian relationships, like all of it, right? It’s our relationship with spirituality as well as with our partners and society. It’s all of it, because there’s so much shame happening. But shame has been used as a tool of discipline for a very long time.

Chanci: Yeah, and control.

Kim: Burning people at the stake, sticking your nose on the chalkboard, kneeling down in the gravel. All of that is for shame so that you won’t do it again. If we can get you to feel this intense emotion it’s going to teach you to never do it again. We’re going to paddle you in front of everyone, we’re going to pull your hair, we’re going to display your sin. We’re going to display it.

So it is deep. It’s so much bigger than us too. And this is where I was, you know, upset about is the amount of conditioning that’s happening at a young age, that’s happening with our children in the school system is so much bigger than us. We’re here on the outside in the later years, right, 30, 40, 50, 60 year old women who are coming clean with all this stuff and wanting to heal because they’re dying of illness, and disease, and chronic pain, and thyroid conditions because they have no voice. They’re not able to speak up.

So it shows up in our physical body. It shows up in our health. It shows up in broken relationships. And then it’s passed on because it’s not healed. When we can stand in the gap between the generations and we can heal the cycles, that’s when things begin to change. But when we’re doing that and then we’re catching it from our sisters, like from other women, and that shame, the thing is we want to shut down, close the door, and say, “I quit, I shouldn’t do this. It’s dangerous.”

And I think that is basically this consciousness that runs through us that says if you stand up for something you will be killed. Because that’s what has happened in society. And that is what it feels like in your body. When I started talking about self-healing I felt at risk. I felt like I was going to get arrested, right? You can’t say that because that’s not what the medical system says. That’s not what the religious system says. That’s not, you know, that’s not okay.

Chanci: Yeah, exactly Kim. And yes, for me, my entire career as a coach, as a feminine embodiment coach, and helping women heal this body shame and make peace with food, and so they can live in freedom. I’m constantly, that little voice behind me, “What if this is wrong? What if you’re going to hell? What if you die and then God says that you did wrong?” Right? So then, just like I said, I could feel it bubbling up. And that’s when it’s like that’s where mindset comes in, right? We need to feel it, and then train ourselves to believe the truth.

Kim: The thing we are most afraid of is displeasing God. And we have been emotionally manipulated. And it has been suggested that the very nature of your humanity is displeasing God. That’s the problem.

Chanci: Yeah, born sinful.

Kim: Exploring humanity, trusting integrity and inner authority, that hell is separation from yourself and from God. Hell is displeasing yourself. Like when you want to know what’s right or wrong or what to do or not do, does it bring you closer to God? Does it bring you closer to love? Or does it separate you from Him? Does it take you further away? Does it take you to emptiness, and darkness, and void, and regret? That is hell. Have you ever sat in regret? Have you ever sat in separation? That is hell.

Chanci: That is hell, yeah. That is hell, yes. And here’s the beauty of it though, those emotions of regret and separation, when felt in a safe place and you’re taught how to move it, you can go through that and then find freedom and find God. It’s like God is there, right?

Kim: Yeah, it’s us that separates.

Chanci: Exactly.

Kim: Because of the conditioning, because of the self [inaudible], you know?

Chanci: Yeah, and not understanding that the source, God, whatever you want to call it is always present. It’s right there in you. And the one thing that I am so convicted in, in my own business and my life is we’re not actually here on Earth. The purpose of Earth, and the purpose of coaching, and personal development and all of this, it’s actually not to heal, it’s to live life fully. It’s to like just soak up all of this experience of being a human and living.

And through that, that’s how we actually heal. Because we come home to our essence, we come home to our wholeness, understanding we were never actually broken. Right? So I think it’s like sometimes this, I want to leave it like this for me, because it can feel so heavy, right, and it’s like, “Uh.” But it doesn’t have to be.

When we have these conversations we’re like, “What? This is what’s actually going on.” And we understand, then we can like start living. That’s the key word, living in the freedom. And the stuff will bubble up and you can move through it, and it’s safe, right? So the opposite of shame is, it’s safety, it’s freedom. And it’s available to everyone. And that doesn’t mean it’s not going to still bubble up, because it will, but we don’t have to be afraid of it when we understand what’s going on.

Kim: And it’s the stuff that’s bubbling up is the stuff that doesn’t belong there anyway. It’s the stuff that we’ve been hiding because we were afraid to expose, you know, and like someone said about putting that out is you shaming someone else the same thing with an email that came. But it was actually, no, it was me using my voice because this is happening behind the scenes. Why is it happening behind the scenes? Why aren’t they doing it publicly?

Chanci: Exactly.

Kim: Like, you know, and so it’s really just exposure, and it’s our own questioning. Which we all have the right to, you know, and to kind of figure things out. But I never believe in shaming another sister, you know, in order for their convictions, you know. And especially whenever they’re like, “I’ve had that too. Like I’m praying for your soul, I’m praying for you.” You know, praying, like, “I’m glad you’re praying for me, you know, I really am. I’m very grateful for that.”

You know, and at the same time like I don’t know, Chanci, I believe that, I know your heart and my heart, it’s always been to please God. Like we are Jesus lovers. Like that’s the very essence of our being is to be the conduit, create a clean heart in me oh Lord. Let me be a vessel of your work, of your love, and example. I call this the embodied gospel.

Chanci: Oh, I just got shivers. Yes, and I believe that God is, like wherever God is, is like, “Yay, you go girls.” You know?

Kim: Like embodying the teaching, embodying humanity, you know, all of it. And leading with love, leading with the love. We don’t need the fear and the threats, and that’s what we’re – If we’re healing anything, it’s those limiting beliefs.

Chanci: Yes, exactly.

Kim: All right my friend, thanks for coming on, discussing this.

Chanci: Thank you.

Kim: You know, if anything, I hope it gives someone just being heard.

Chanci: You know, it’s living life and that’s where the healing is, and living in that freedom. And you’re not alone, so if you’re a woman watching this, you’re not alone and you deserve to feel so free. Yeah, and full of love. Yeah. Kim, thank you for having me on.

Kim: You’re welcome. I’ll link Chanci’s information in the show notes. If anyone wants to reach out and have this conversation in privacy, just have a place for it to land on and maybe start doing this work and finding yourself, coming back home to yourself, being safe in your own body, and gosh darn it permission to experience pleasure without being punished.

Chanci: Yeah, yes, exactly. Exactly, oh my gosh, I love this. My eyes want to water and my mouth is like twitching a little bit in emotion. So this is just so powerful. And I’m so honored that you asked me to come and speak about this. Any single time I will, like all day. Okay, Kim, thanks hon. I love you, bye.

Kim: All right my friends, that’s what I have for you this week. It may be a little deep, it’s really meant just to give a voice to some of the stuff that is happening regardless if we can see it or not. And to give ourselves permission to fully experience all of the conditioning that is buried within our own bodies. And actually come back to our own authority and trusting that we are integrity, we are love, and that we are seeking that close relationship with God. And that we don’t have to punish ourselves because of the human experience. I think it’s really deep. I think this conversation needs to happen again, and happen more often.

If this is some of the work that you have to do, reach out to Chanci, reach out to me, we have Self Healing Masters, Chanci does one on one coaching. And start exposing some of this stuff so that you can fully heal this collective shame that may not even be yours. It could be something that was handed down from generations and then landed on you and it’s something that’s buried inside of your own body.

So I wish you well. I hope this wasn’t too intimidating for some people. I know it’s not a comfortable conversation for many, but we felt like it was a conversation that needed to be had. Love you all and until next week.

Thanks for listening to this episode of More Than Mindset.