I secretly love that 2020 has forced some people to face their shit.
I secretly love when my clients cry on calls with me.
I secretly love when people admit all the ways they’re bad to me.
I secretly love when I hear your deep, dark, shouldn’t desires.
I secretly love when people share with me all the feelings they’ve been hiding.
I secretly love to hear everything you think is wrong with you.
I secretly love when you confess to all cruel and unusual ways you’ve behaved.
I secretly love to hear about all the awful things that have happened to you.
I secretly love when you feel guilt, shame, fear, embarrassment, pain, rejection.
And it probably sounds sick and twisted.
But the secret’s out… I’m sick and twisted.
All of us are a little, or even a lot, sick and twisted.
And I love it. Bad is my favourite.
But it wasn’t always. I used to judge every dark thought and less than positive feeling with a cruel harshness. I was ashamed of my bad and it blocked me.
Growing up, I thought I could only be good because if I was anything other than good and positive then I would be deemed unworthy and left unlovable. But I had thoughts that weren’t nice, feelings that weren’t positive, and sinful desires. So I judged my bad, was afraid of what would happen if I let it out, and internalized shame about how I felt and who I was.
I pretended not to feel bad and denied any bad in me which kept me stuck in a deadened “okay”; clamped down on any feeling/hope/result that was greater or less than a middle level of okay, fine, and “good”. I suppressed my bad, which suppressed good, and in turn, suppressed myself.
My life felt empty.
I would look around at bars on a night out with friends when I was supposed to be having a great time and wonder ”Is this all?”
I would have sex and it would be good but I would think, “That’s what the big fuss is about?”
I would eat and eat and eat and wouldn’t ever feel full.
I was succeeding by society’s standards, but I felt low, hollow and unfulfilled — like a lightbulb dimmed so low it flickers.
Yet there were moments, glimpses of what could be, when it felt like the stars aligned; I was connected to everything, bigger than my body, open to life, full of boundless energy, and alive with every fibre of my being. But they were far and few between. I craved more. I needed more. I wondered how I could feel that alive more often.
Then, I had my first ovarian cyst and when they cut open my stomach it felt like something in me broke open. I was changed.
Beyond the scar on my stomach.
Beyond only being love and light.
Beyond trying to be, do, and think good things.
I was changed, and I knew I couldn’t go back.
But I fought it, fought life, resisting the pain and grief and hurt and doubt and fear and dark and bad that was revolting. I kept trying to think positively, heal, and ‘law of attraction’ myself to have good. I was trying to bypass the bad to get to the good.
In 2019 when they found a tumor after two more surgeries and the man I loved left me (again). Everything unravelled.
Despite trying so hard to do it right and be good to get what I really wanted, my life was bad. I had moments when I felt mad/depressed/despair, tried to hide how much I was hurting both physically and emotionally, and endlessly frustrated with how it wasn’t fair.
After my surgery I was forced to feel, be, and live the bad.
I know now, therein lies our power and the potential for a fully lived life.
If there was a potent truth I know that very few are talking about it’s that the answers are not in the good, they’re found through the bad.
We need to redefine and reclaim bad.
1. Yes yes, blah blah, our good is buried under our bad. Only by diving into our darkness will we ever access the light. The shame of our bad blocks our potential for joy, connection, and power for good. The more you honour the bad, the more you can let in and let out the good. (Not to mention, our bad will unconsciously rule our lives until we own it.)
2. When you’re ready for Level 2, I want to take it a step further: I want us to LOVE our bad. Not just own it, but revel in it. The bad is one half of the human experience so if you can revel in the fullest visceral sensation of bad then you will expand your capacity for really living in every single experience. No matter what life brings you.
My life is full of feeling; deep, dark, and unequivocally delicious. I’ve been learning to love every single moment; bad and good, small and big, no matter how much I want to hate it and resist it… and it’s hard to put into words how much my experience of life has changed.
Loving the bad is truly radical and revolutionary. It unblocks the beauty, connection, and fulfillment of good, shifts how much you allow yourself to do and have, and means you’ll feel fully alive. Something I want you to experience.
So I’m not here to tell you to repeat positive affirmations as though that must be the reason you haven’t “manifested your dream life”.
I’m not here to tell you “you’re worthy” again and again because then you’ll just keep thinking something is wrong with you when you self-sabotage what you really want.
I’m not here to tell you “love and light” so you further stuff the bad down and wonder if you’re the only one who feels like this.
Because if you were like me, only the good isn’t working. And I have a faster way.
I’m here to tell you the opposite;
You are bad.
You can accept you’re not worthy.
You’re swirling shadows with shame and bad feelings and are burning with dark fire.
…AND you’re okay, lovable and loved, and can be/do/have what you want.
It’s not either/or because you are all.
No shame, judgment, should/shouldn’ts of your sick and twisted here.
Revel in the bad.
Suck every last drop out of life.
Be fully alive.
The time has come to own our bad, instead of continuing to deaden our experiences, our potential, our lives.
Oh? Revel comes from the Old French word “reveler” which means “rise up in rebellion”.
Revel in the bad, love it, with me… and rise up with radical aliveness in this world that shames our bad and blocks our creative power.
How, you ask? Book your free call with me here. Because this shit ain’t taught in schools, yet it drives *everything* we do/don’t do. Loving the bad unblocks you, your potential, and your life. It’s powerfully freeing and FUN.
And if you don’t want to come face to face with your “bad”, that’s okay. I’ll be over here, loving all of you no matter what, until your life gets “bad” enough. 😉
ALL GOOD. (See what I did there?)
Okay okay, I’m out. More to come!
Loving the bad,
Always,
Deanne
The Crone of the Bad Land
Deanne Vincent
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