Sharing her heartsong with LMP this week is Tova Rinah!
Tova is, simply, sunshine. She wears her heart on her sleeve, and she gently encourages you to do the same through her openness and her courageous vulnerability. Though I’ve only encountered Tova in the wild three times, I can assure you that every encounter with this walking ray of sunshine is a warm hug and a gentle squeeze.
The way I met Tova was perfectly serendipitous yet exactly on time. In the late summer of 2021, I was lunching with previous LMP guest Jaye Davidson, who was visiting from out of town, at a new food hall in west Atlanta.
We’d eaten and treated already and had just settled down into some slightly gaudy chairs1 in the middle of the breezeway to chat.
And who should appear but Jaye’s friend, Tova!
But Tova didn’t just appear, she marched right up to Jaye and confronted her about the plans that they’d made to meet at the food hall that very same day.
A loyal Gryffindor, Jaye was shocked and perplexed. How did she forget that she’d made plans with Tova – who lived out of state – and manage to arrive with me instead at their exact meeting arrangement?
Frazzled, Jaye looked at me for help. But I could only offer a blank stare in return, for I had no idea what was going on.
This ruse went on for quite some time until, finally, Tova giggled and admitted she was just pulling Jaye’s leg and then plopped down in her own gaudy, green chair to chat.
After this playful greeting, I assumed an observant role and listened to Jaye and Tova catch up. I learned that they’d met through shared faith; I learned that Tova is a musician and singer/songwriter; I learned that Tova was in a point of professional transition (from corporate to creative); I learned that Tova was experiencing exclusion in communities that she cared for deeply.
I then got to witness a raw sharing of hearts between Jaye and Tova that I hadn’t experienced before. It was a beautiful, balanced dance of confidence, where both parties shared, listened, and commented thoughtfully on each other’s insights. The exchange was lovely, and it was amazing to me that they were able to be vulnerable with each other immediately, without regard to the busy environment that wasn’t the least conducive to intimacy.
Quietly I sat, transfixed and in awe, until Tova turned to me and asked if I had any insights or thoughts that I wanted to share.
I paused and considered and saw two paths light up in the multiverse ahead of me. Path I was comfort and security – sharing something surface level. Path II was murky and its destination unknown – sharing something real.
By then, I’d learned that with Tova, you have to share something real. So, I took a deep breath, I tapped into Path II, and I shared a new realization of mine: at that time, most of my life’s decisions were made from shame.
Shame is a complex emotion. It is innately human. It runs to the core of one’s being. It hurts. And even though it’s a shared, universal pain, shame seems like an essential – though, perhaps, unintentional – pillar of many belief systems, including organized religion, political power structures, any of the ideological “-isms,” and traditional, professional environments.
It also seems like people who have shame or who are ashamed as a result of going through these systems often spread their shame to others. Shame’s capacity to spread makes sense, as shame is heavy, and its heaviness can have a pendulous influence on one’s integrity if not dealt with in a healthy way.
In my case, shame is the emotion I’m the most acquainted with, though I couldn’t articulate or identify its power until just before I met Tova in 2021. Now I know that my shame directly influenced my self-worth and that it held me back from failing and growing upwards.
Which is unfortunate because – fun fact about me – I love to fail!
I mean, not literally all the time in every circumstance, but I do love to try new things and to get better at them over time because that’s how I learn!
I love to learn, therefore I am accepting of failure. And yet, when I reflect on my path so far, I can see that an incredible amount of my energy has gone instead to feeding the amorphous and all-powerful Shame – nourished not from failure itself but from others’ reactions to my attempted ventures.
As a sensitive, identity-seeking, open-minded individual who craved to be deemed as “good” by everyone, everywhere, all the time, I now realize that I tend to give too much weight to others’ expectations and that I need not let the weight of a single opinion or experience derail my train of authentic play.
Though I can’t pinpoint one breaking point that shifted my mindset to the shame train2, I do know that somewhere along the line – in response to others' perceptions – I learned these hypotheticals as truths:
If I fail or take too long to grow, then I will be removed from things I love
If my contribution is not objectively best, then it will not be appreciated
If I express myself authentically, then my identity will be made light of
If I speak, then I won’t be understood
If I play, then I will be stopped
In response to learning these “truths3,” I also learned to protect myself from potential future shaming by promptly removing myself from the timelines in which those futures existed, as soon as the shame was anticipated.
The problem arises in that protecting myself from anticipated shame also has deprived me from potential success and has left me underdeveloped in many areas that I think would bring me great fulfillment. And despite its helpful intention, this reaction doesn’t even protect me from shame itself. Actually, this underdevelopment more often turns the secondhand shame of others into further shaming of myself because I feel inauthentic depriving myself of things that I know I would come to enjoy.
In other words, the more I choose not to learn in one environment, the more shame I feel in not learning there, and the more shame I feel in not learning there, the more more weighted down I feel, discouraging me from trying to ever learn in that context again.
So, while this self-removal is definitely a defense mechanism – and while I do prefer undercooked cookie dough – I think this underdevelopment has done me more harm than good.
When I met Tova, I was frustrated. I was frustrated with obediently taking direction when I knew I had much more to offer. I was frustrated with giving too much to the shallow relationships in my life. I was frustrated with not feeling like I deserved to pursue my interests. I was frustrated with all of the lost life paths I could have taken. And, above all, I was frustrated with letting myself carry the weight of my shame for so long.
But now, a year and a half or so after our meeting, Tova and I have come full circle, and I’ve finally started to use my shame for good.
Voicing that I felt my decisions were made from shame allowed me to create a friendship with Tova and planted a seed of change in my guarded heart. It took me a long time, but I’ve finally warmed up to the ideas that I deserve to take up space, I deserve to share my voice, and that I deserve to play.
Of course, I still feel Shame and its cousins, Guilt and Embarrassment, from time to time. But I now try to reframe those heavy feelings into springboards for how I can change for the better instead of dwelling in self-flagellation. And I also try to let kind people like Tova help me.
It turns out that being just a teensy bit vulnerable with people you trust can shift the trajectory of the path you’re walking. Even just turning one degree will set you on a different course with a different destination and a different adventure in store.
I am so grateful to play along the path that encourages me to create, to befriend, to philosophize, and to reflect along the way. This conversation with Tova was poetic, cathartic, and vulnerable, and now, with Tova along on our quest, we can truly sing for joy.
Sing along with Tova on Instagram. And keep your ears out for her future creative projects, sprouting soon!
Referenced people & materials:
The Works food hall on Atlanta’s upper westside
Unlocking Us with Brené Brown (Brené on Shame and Accountability)
All music for the podcast lovingly created by Ian T. Jones.
I can say this because I, too, have slightly gaudy velvet chairs.
Bet your boots that I can identify lots of small cracks, though.
And many more!
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