Brené Brown frequently refers to her “breakdown” as an “awakening” — using the two terms interchangeably and illustrating how good things often feel awful. It’s the metaphor of the lobster shedding its exoskeleton so it can grow a new and larger one. It’s engaging in therapy to heal from childhood trauma. It’s the newly sober alcoholic who loves that he can keep his life together but feels terrible all the time. It’s the recent college graduate with the revelation of holy crap, what now? Or the couple who just learned they’re going to be parents for the first time.
It's so many things rolled up in one big ball of shit. But shit is actually a good thing if we compost it. Initially it smells bad, carries potentially harmful pathogens, and it’s messy. But if we add some straw bale and grass clippings along with regular water (maybe just from the falling rain) and let it be, in a year it turns into nutrient rich soil that we can use to grow useful things, even food.
Pain, trauma, hardship, self-doubt, depression, anxiety, addiction, all has the potential to become the compost of our future selves. Through a thermodynamic process of composting in which instead of flushing it down a toilet with potable water we embrace it by mixing it in a relative ratio of 40% browns (straw bale) and 40% greens (kitchen scraps or grass clippings) and nurturing it with water it transmutes into an awakening.
But in the meantime, it’s still shit. It feels like shit. It even smells like it.
It’s interesting to note that flushing toilets have only been around since the 1850s. Prior to that, for the entire history of humanity we composted our human effluent. Or sort of. While people in the (civilized) cities of Europe threw the contents of their chamber pots out the window into the streets and wondered why people were getting sick all the time, the people of Tenochtitlan had a highly sophisticated system of aqueducts in which clay pots of nitrogen rich human effluent were collected daily, taken out of the city, composted, and eventually used to grow the food to feed the people.
The difference?
Not being afraid of the shit.
And also recognizing the power of it.
That our trauma and dysfunction are nuggets of gold in disguise. But not if we ignore it. Not if we flush it down the toilet and forget it ever existed. But rather when we embrace it and mix it with 40% presence, 40% processing it, nurture it with the water of love and acceptance, and let it do its thing for a while it eventually turns into an awakening.
Then with our newfound awakening we can grow new ideas, have the courage to embark on new life changes, heal relationships, and walk in a new energy born of the revelations that lead us ever closer to our true selves.
Chinese medicine looks at what comes out of the body as much as what goes into it as a measure of health. It’s common to sit in the office of a Chinese medicine practitioner, one who has undergone many years of training, who may wear the white smock of a healing professional and talk about our shit. Our literal shit. Its consistency. Its color. Its firmness or lack thereof. And from the conversation we learn about things we’re putting in our bodies that are not agreeable or healthful.
Digging into the shit of our human frailties is similar. No, the same. It tells us about belief systems that are not serving our highest good. Resentments that keep us emotionally sick. Our prejudices and judgements. Our sense of self-worth, or lack of it. It leads us closer to an understanding of who we really are and what is most important to us. It enables us to change for the better.
Not by flushing, but by composting. Not by avoiding, but by facing in. Not by standing firm in a stance of self-righteousness, but in the humility of knowing we don’t have all the answers.
And yes, it feels like shit. For a time. It always does. Until it doesn’t.
Special thank you to Joseph Jenkins, author of the Humanure Handbook for providing the original illustration for this post. We highly recommend the Humanure Handbook, as it delves deeply into the history and science of how we address what comes out of our bodies.
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Brilliant metaphor; outstanding writing.