Through Shame to Altruism

Original photo, Cannon Beach

Earlier this year, I attended the International Leadership Association Dialogue Lab in New Orleans. Speakers didn’t present or lecture. We opened questions to small groups and participated in inclusive and insightful discussions around the complexities of leadership responding to contemporary challenges: supervision as a sacred act of leadership, the effects of fear, fatigue and competing truths in communities, liberating the collective power of leadership, and how to strengthen compassionate leadership in professional relationships. This was a collective and immersive exchange of ideas that was addressed in a new, impactful, liberating, exhilarating—and terrifying—format.

Equally impactful and exhilarating was being in New Orleans for the first time. I was gob-smacked by the art, the music, how people greeted me as we passed one another on the street. And I was body-slammed by lead-weighted sadness and horror as I walked among those centuries’ old oak trees in Audubon Park. Lynchings. Tar and feathering. Mutilation. Shame. Shame. Shame. And it took me back to the histories of rape and mutilation and slaughter of the Sri Lankan people, my people, under the colonial occupations of the Portuguese, Dutch and British.

The first session I attended was hosted by Manoj Thirupal, who teaches at Gonzaga University. His question: how do we find healing from the hierarchical mindsets we’ve internalized. The discussion started tentatively, then quickly expanded as participants offered experiences and anxieties. The sharing deepened with stories of the strangulation of career and personal lives. And coming from my walk among the ancient oaks I, too, found my generational grief scars peeling back.

Anxieties bubbled up: who was I to be in this group, at this conference? As a person of mixed ancestries, I felt invaded by that heritage of the oppressors and the oppressed, the whip-holders as well as the whipped. My great-grandmother was either raped or coerced into marriage. My mother wouldn’t speak about her. My immigrant parents, afraid of seeming too different, strove to adapt to being British, quiet, harmless among their suspicious white North London neighbors. And now, for me at this conference, among these erudite and articulate people I, too, felt I should try to assimilate but thought I had nothing to offer.

BMC Psychology Journal describes the effects of intergenerational trauma as including “feelings of low self-worth, depression, suicidal thoughts, substance abuse, dissociation, hypervigilance, intrusive thoughts, difficulties forming relationships and attachments, difficulties controlling aggression, and extreme reactivity to stress.” Many children of immigrants can check off all, or most, of that list. Additionally, there is a sense of existing in liminal space, persistent disillusionment, and the inability to believe in self-value regardless of the number of degrees and awards. Imposter Syndrome, low self-esteem and the tendency to automatically devalue the self in social and professional situations can result in a disability to gain promotions and upward influence. This will resonate with many, as it resonated with me.

The ILA conference opened questions I’m still attempting to respond to—to find language for. Even that last sentence, awkwardly structured, is as close to the truth of what I feel now.

Shame is internal, endlessly and painfully focusing inwards. What if I were to engage in a practice that focused outwards? Would that begin healing? Altruism, for example, located on the opposite end of the spectrum from shame.

Is it possible to practice compassion and service and not be aware of that afterglow of “doing good” which makes any such act transactional? Stopping for someone who wants to cross the road, allowing someone to enter the stream of traffic from a side road, or allowing someone ahead of me at the checkout, not being immediately irritated by someone who cuts me off, or paying-it-forward at the toll booth. How much conscious practice is needed before it becomes unthinking habit? What does it take to step through the pain of being marginalized, reduced, and internalized, to create something positive and healing?

Because I feel that the pain I carry – the pain we all carry – caused by rigid positional power and hierarchical structures might be healed by becoming truly altruistic. Your thoughts?

#GriefAndHope #IntergenerationalGrief #empowerHER

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