About

Why shameless inspiration?

Shame: to cover

Inspiration: to breathe life into; the drawing in of breath; to be filled with exalting emotion and drive.

Shameless inspiration: to uncover our true nature and vitality with each breath

 A little bit about my inspiration

My personal journey to embrace my anxiety and transcend shame started when I chose to major in psychology. A decision that was born out of a desire to understand myself and others and to find ways to unleash myself from fear and anxiety. During university, I stopped singing and I think a big part of my commitment to shamelessness developed on my journey back to voice and performance. In all my vocal and dramatic training, I have struggled to get out of my head, to breathe and to connect with my body in a natural way. Singing, acting, clowning, improv have all helped me to see what I was trying to be and let it go so I could uncover who I am…and use that as the starting place for creating an authentic, meaningful performance. Working in mental health, I’ve also seen how individuals with mental disorder struggle so severely with shame. In fact, I feel that most people in my life are terrified of the consequences of being who they are.  That’s why I created this website because I believe this is the most important and perhaps the hardest objective in life. It requires a sense of humor, tools and strategies, self-reflection and practice. Many of us have spent our whole lives building up habits that protect us from being hurt and the process of learning new patterns requires loving support and repetition. This is why I have created a space to practice on the website through “I Am” page, GratiTUBE, questions posed in my blog posts and by submitting a guest post. I want hear about your efforts to put my shame and fear aside and to learn to live fully and courageous.  I will also share my experiences and my inspirations.

If vulnerability is about showing up and letting ourselves be seen, then this blog is about immersing myself in the light, the people I meet there and encouraging you to join us!

Acknowledgements

Thank you to everyone supporting this blog. In particular, to Alyse Krantz, you have been there since the first post whenever I’ve needed encouragement or a second pair of eyes and opinion. And to, Andrew Salmon, for teaching me about the blogging world and helping me create an infrastructure that will allow this blog to have an impact.

Much Love,

Lily