Confessions of a libra

Credit: Here

11.05.25

Let’s start with a tale. An old outdated version of me. I was living in country Victoria, the Wimmera to be exact. It was a tough introduction to Australian culture but a vivid one. We had a play and I arrived, almost running late. I go into the dressing room with all the girls and pick a spot. I start disrobing and soon I notice all the eyes turned on me. Some unashamed while others had the decency to pretend not to. I felt like a freakshow and I was confused as to why. When I lived in Zimbabwe, the girls change rooms were always a safe place. It was a place to chat, change, disrobe and be perfectly female without the curation. Everyone’s bits showing with not a care in the world. As I changed I quickly noticed, the girls weren’t actually changing out here, they were going into cubicles and coming out with new clothes. I had committed a social faux pas and I hadn’t been aware. That hit me hard like a shiv in the heart. Post-play I went into a cubicle myself, determined to evolve within my environment and become acceptable. A girl – Ashley who I still remember to this day – turned to me and said, “Why are you doing that, we already saw everything anyway?”

That was my initiation into Western shame culture. It’s actually crazy to think despite our adopted religiosity in Zimbabwe, the ancestors voice was stronger. I never realised how much more in tune we were with our own bodies. How much more in tune I had been. Coming to Australia made me re-evaluate my own body. It’s presence and the disgust that it elicited. I had falsely thought, we all had bodies and there was nothing to be ashamed of. Fast forward to an upcoming sports gala. My mum goes shopping and all of a sudden I am offended that she wants to give me the black bathers (or swimming costume for my Zimbabweans). I actually cried in store and told my mum that it would make me look more black. I can only imagine the confusion my mum felt. Yet for me, all I felt was the rising pressure in my chest for being othered. For everyone’s first, second and every other thought being about my blackness. I had lost personhood and I hadn’t figured it out yet. Living in Zimbabwe had given me the luxury of growing up in a black majority country where I was just a person. Now I was a specimen.

She bought the black bathers anyway. On sports day, I wore the bathers. There was one more rule I hadn’t been told. That girls as young as 12 in Australia were already shaving, any of their regions. They were being taught about manicuring themselves for palatability. It hadn’t mattered yet where I had came from. My boobs were small and I thought I still had years before I would need a bra. But not in Australia. Back to the sports day, I was terribly embarrassed when the girls made comments about my unmanicured public region. Once again shame hit me hard like a truck and I made room to adjust.

I tell you these jarring stories to teach you that I have had to unlearn quite a lot of shame. Shame that wasn’t mine to carry. First religious shame, then shame for my blackness, shame for my body, shame for my growing desires as a teenager and shame for having my own autonomous thoughts. I want you to consider something you may not have. That Western culture is rife with shame and that it is a secret means for societal control.

You are being subjugated every time you succumb to shame. So your shame about; your whiteness, your sexuality, your confidence…these are all learned behaviours that you can very much unlearn. You don’t conquer your demons by running away. You don’t run away from hard conversations to absolve yourself of guilt. It doesn’t work like that. Your subconscious stores all the things you think you are running away from. That’s why your dreams assault you and that’s why you drink a little too heavy to drown the sorrow. You actually just need to learn bravery, while understanding intellectually the why behind the shame. When you can name something and identify its root, you’ve taken away more than half the power. The final piece of the puzzle comes with self acceptance. Then self compassion. So let me model this for you.

Credit: Here

I realised after years that I didn’t like the feeling of being around women and still feeling shame for my body. I made a conscious effort to look at my own body in the mirror and say loving things. I realised that while people shamed me for it, I was excited with all the changes it was making. I always admired the curves of the women in my family, like my own mother. As a teenager who previously was stick thin, it was a welcome relief when the curves really popped off. I was learning day by day, through experimenting with my fashion. It wasn’t perfect but it was honest work.

I knew that I didn’t want to cultivate friendships that were steeped in this same shame. So I modelled the behaviour I wanted to receive. If I couldn’t talk someone out of their self-consciousness, then maybe I can magnetise them with my own lack thereof. Even when it wasn’t perfect and was in the making. Me crying about the bathers taught me that I had really internalised all those questions people think are so innocent. When I came to this country at the top of every conversation was “Where are you really from?” I had people make parallels of my behaviour based on the African American women they saw on TV or the other better-known African nations.

It was evident that people assumed I was; illiterate, sporty, aggressive, dumb, and worthless because I was black. Even if they never used those words, it was in the coded language and microaggressions. It was in comments about how my behaviour was ‘animalistic’. So while my mind was still wrapping it’s way around what ‘racism’ actually was, I was crying because I had felt it before I could name and decode it. I realised that grooming is a preference not a prescription. That the hair growing on my body had to be natural because it just made the most logical sense. What could be so disgusting about the thing growing on ones own body?

Up until then, I hadn’t ever looked at hairy people as less pretty. It was never an association I had and it might surprise you to know I actually thought the opposite. Some of the most beautiful girls I went to school with were hairy and I always thought the patterns of their facial fluff or arm hair perfectly matched their aesthetic. I thought it made them unique in the same way a finger print does. To be fair, I always thought those girls were blessed with the most thick luscious head hair and I wanted more of that.

I have had to forgive myself for sins both real and imagined. It doesn’t mean just because you have shame that there was ever any validity. And if there is, you are allowed to not have known better. It’s actually fine to not know everything! It’s actually fine that you can’t turn back time and change the course of events. Learn to decode your old memories with kindness. Try and put yourself in your best friend’s shoes when you look back. Allow yourself to be softened by the compassion your closest friends have for the parts of yourself you believe are unlovable. My favourite practices to help decode shame are; journaling, meditating, yoga, prayer and reprogramming affirmations in the mirror.

You don’t need to have the money for therapy to do these things, but I am one hundred percent pro-therapy. It’s enough that you have discomfort and a willingness to deconstruct. If you are religious, know that shame is imbedded into the fabric of religion. Whether you like it or not, that is how it was designed. That’s not to say, you can’t overcome it. You can. You can also choose to be the kind of religious person who models self love or self compassion without shame. We honestly have a lot more autonomy than we allow ourselves to believe. That is also by design.

So wherever you are, if you are dealing with shame for; being a man, being queer, being eccentric, being sexual or even being sexually abused, please know that it is not your burden to carry. It is something worth exploring and then releasing. You are worth of the peace that comes from self reflection. May all who remember shame be guided by the sound of their own internal compass. May you return to your own skin with awe and wonder. May you alchemise and ascend above your wildest dreams.