Raw Conversations with Corinne Blum

We all have a story. We all have experienced a version of suffering, pain, trauma yet we don’t often talk about it because we’ve been taught that all those “negative” things are something to be ashamed of. And too, it’s vulnerable. We live in a culture that has conditioned us to believe that all hard emotions are negative and that pain or trauma is something to be ashamed of. We’ve been taught to always be happy and positive and successful. But are we really happy? Are we really free? It’s my belief and experience that when we learn to own our experiences with love and full acceptance, naming the shame and actually coming towards ourselves rather than trying to “get rid” of parts of ourselves, pretending they don’t exist (which only deepens our shame), we feel fully liberated. Because when we own our entire experience and humanity within ourselves, we feel relief, empowerment, wholeness and safety. And when we feel safe within ourselves, sharing our vulnerability—or just our humanity, to be honest—becomes an empowering act. It becomes liberating. I share a bit of my story today just to open the door for you to perhaps know that there is no shame in your story either. That all things can be healed and transformed if we hold them with love. There’s nothing wrong with you. There never was. Life happens and sometimes it hurts. However, it offers us the opportunity to discover who we truly are beneath the many layers of who we think we should be. May this be an invitation for you to begin the conversation with yourself, someone you love, someone you trust. *I want to add that in doing the healing work, I’m not insinuating that we need to relive our trauma. I’m sayinginstead that the act of holding our wounded parts with love, without getting into the story of it, is what I’ve found to be the fastest route to healing. It’s about giving ourselves loving attention. It’s about holding ourselves instead of rejecting or abandoning these parts of ourselves that maybe we don’t like. It’s about walking towards rather than away. The simple act of showing up for ourselves with love vs judgment, is life changing.

I think we all have an idea of what our life “should” be like. We get asked the question, “What will you do when you grow up?” when we’re, like, 4 years old. And so we learn to measure ourselves by what we do and we feel like failures if what we “do,” isn’t hugely successful. Somewhere along the way we create this expectation that we need to have it all figured out by the time we’re 25 and that the path there should be linear and easy. And then Life happens...The only thing is, nobody prepared us for what life is REALLY like.

What I see most working with both couples and individuals, is that we take things personal. We get triggered. We react. We argue. We get hurt. And then we repeat and repeat again. Today I talk about what it looks like to not take things personal and the positive affects that arise when we tend to our own stuff first, so that we can meet each other at the table and show up from our vulnerable, authentic selves. When we don’t take things personal, and when we can drop into a more transparent, vulnerable state of being and get to the real stuff beneath the surface, we are able to build a bridge between each other and create connection and deeply fulfilling love.

Today I’m diving into the topic of fear and how if we can embrace it, it acts as a catalyst for growth and as a pathway that brings us closer towards ourselves. Fear isn’t the enemy, it’s the messenger often coming from the little girl or boy within us that is simply needing our loving attention.

In this intro episode, I’m diving into the deep end and putting out a rough cut of my new podcast series: Raw Conversations. Today I’m just touching the surface on perfection, being human, being in relationship and softening into our vulnerability. I’ll dive deeper into these topics and more. If you want to ask a question or suggest a topic for me to talk about in this series, please leave a comment. My desire is for this to be an ongoing conversation on what it’s really like to be human. Not what we should look like, how we should act, or “should” anything...but what it’s really like to be in this strange and beautiful experience of being human.