Memoir First Breath ~ Movement 1
Movement 1
Intro to Heidi J & Shame
Hi, I’m Heidi J.
I’m a human on a path of transformation, self-discovery, and repair—with and through the land, the body, imagination, and culture.
I wish to share my story with my community.
I wonder if I should try to make this story funny.
I wonder what would be too much.
I wonder what things we do not yet understand about ourselves.
I wonder to what extent the collective is connected to the individual.
I wonder if nature is an unconditionally loving witness, holding all of our sacred stories for us, waiting until we are ready to listen.
I wonder what your stories are, dear reader. I wonder.
***
All my life, I’ve been in deep inquiry to understand where suffering comes from, including my own. I never liked fighting. I wanted to understand the source of my rage, and the roots of feelings like shame and scarcity.
I was adopted at four days old. Forty-eight years later, I met my entire biological family on both sides (absolutely a Netflix worthy story). I’m a one-time “oops,” and honestly? I turned out great! Both of my biological families are fantastic.
And hey, aren’t we all just one big, miraculous, dysfunctional family?
I grew up in a typical American dream: Home Depot, casseroles, Pizza Hut, Scooby-Doo, Twizzlers, Slip ‘N Slides, and being secretly molested by a family member!
I found solace in the Montana mountains outside Drummond. My adopted mama and stepfather drove there every summer. I learned to drive a four-wheeler, work a wood stove, pound posts, look for birds of prey, track animal prints, and all sorts of other wonderful skills. I loved life in the mountains in the summertime.
I went to Macalester College in St. Paul, MN, where my mind, sexuality, and concept of reality were blown open: sex, LSD, garlic hummus, Bob Dylan, modern dance class. We were a very diverse crew those first years of college, and we went across the Universe together.
I took a class called Contemporary Concepts of Physics, studying topics of antimatter, relativity, quantum mechanics, and other fun topics, all of which BLEW MY MIND. So I moved to Montana to get in-state tuition and studied Physics & Dance at the University of Montana.
We’d spend hours at Charlie’s bar blending physics, philosophy, music, math, dance, love, poetry, biology, revolutionary performance art, and more. I graduated with honors in Physics and a minor in Dance.
After college, in 2000, I moved to Portland, Oregon. I landed a job as the only woman in a branch of a company that manufactured electron guns (yes—tiny weapons for electrons). I lived in a haunted studio in a 100-year-old building by the river. One night, another tenant offered me meth. I tried it and began using it to cope with my unhappiness—trapped indoors in a physics job that made my spirit wilt. Soon I was addicted.
In a twist of cosmic irony, I began doing yoga while on meth. Good for the lungs, I told myself. Six months in, I had a wake-up call in a dance club, when my skin glowed bright pink under a black light. It was chemicals seeping from my pores. That’s when I knew something had to change.
Around that time, I discovered an incredibly courageous and creative collective called La Caravana Arcoiris por la Paz, an international group of artists, visionaries, activists, and earth-lovers traveling throughout Latin America. A few dear friends were an integral part of the organization, and I decided to take the plunge and apply to join the group. I got in, and began the process of preparing for the unknown in South America.
Still struggling with addiction, I moved back to Missoula for a few months and produced a multimedia performance called The Body. The proceeds helped fund my trip to Latin America. Only after I was in The Rainbow Caravan for Peace for one year, did I stop dreaming about meth. I haven’t smoked meth since. It is a terribly addictive blend of chemical substances that have a horrible impact on the human body & brain.
In 2002, I joined La Caravana Arcoiris por La Paz—The Rainbow Caravan for Peace—a roving, multicultural, creative revolution. We lived, created, studied, and served in communities across South America. This was the beginning of my aspirationally decolonial path.
What is decolonization?
Decolonization means many different things to many different people—and that’s one of its greatest strengths. It can’t be boxed in. It’s adaptive, relational, and always evolving. For some, it’s about returning land to those it was stolen from. For others, it’s about unlearning colonial mindsets, or reclaiming cultural and spiritual sovereignty. It can be:
A political process of dismantling settler systems
A personal journey of recognizing & healing internalized oppression
A spiritual remembrance of right relationship with land and life
A creative act of culture-making beyond domination
A combination of many intersecting processes
For me, an aspirationally decolonial path has included:
Reconnecting spiritually to the land, ancestors, and cosmos
Learning to feel, process, and integrate personal & intergenerational trauma
Listening deeply to BIPOC wisdom—not to take or replicate, but to honor and be changed by
During my four years in South America, I immersed myself in practices that reshaped me from the inside out. I participated in sweat lodges, vision quests, plant medicine ceremonies, and vision councils. I studied permaculture, taught at universities, performed in schools, and made art in the streets. Sometimes I traveled with the Caravan, other times I lived and worked on my own. Everywhere I went, I listened, learned, created, and unlearned.
I developed humility. I remembered my creativity. I fell in love with the land. And I began to return to myself.
***
Back in the U.S. in 2006, I founded Open Field Artists in Missoula—an art and activism collective. Around the age of 30, I noticed a persistent inner voice that shamed others and myself:
“You’re too loud! What’s wrong with you? When are you going to get it right? All the major corporations are complete shit. Humans are crap.” I wanted to understand where it was coming from & get rid of it.
In 2009, after I returned from the World Social Forum in Belém, Brazil, something shifted, and my body spontaneously began to release my unconscious toxic shame.
Toxic Shame is the internalized belief that we are inherently bad. It arises from abuse, oppression, and inherited trauma. It perpetuates oppression & trauma.
Healthy Shame is a natural, relational signal—it tells us when we’ve harmed someone and invites us to repair and reconnect.
Thanks to years of ceremony, body practices, ancestral guidance, and art, I was ready to begin metabolizing this stored shame.
To metabolize is to consciously digest and integrate emotional, physical, or ancestral material—releasing what no longer serves and making space for new energy to emerge.
In many ways, toxic shame has been institutionalized—woven into religion, schooling, family systems, and cultural norms.
What if concepts like “original sin” are actually unprocessed ancestral trauma?
What if oppression and delusion aren’t “normal,” but inherited patterns we now have the opportunity to transform?
Toxic shame and other forms of unprocessed inherited trauma like fear of death, are the fuel for supremacy patterning. If you feel bad about yourself, even for a moment, the ego may try to get above that feeling through projection.
Supremacy is the false belief or feeling that one person or one group of people is inherently superior to others—based on race, gender, ability, culture, class, or other identity categories. It’s not rooted in truth or science—it’s a delusion reinforced by historical systems of domination (like colonialism, patriarchy, and white supremacy) and upheld through violence, fear, shame, and projection.
Delusion: A fixed false belief—often sustained by social structures, relationships, and our egos—that resists evidence or lived experience.
Patterns of supremacy often live unconsciously in the body—as tension, dissociation, judgment, fragility, saviorism, and control. They distort our perception of self and others, severing connection, empathy, and belonging.
Unwinding supremacy is both an internal process (liberating the nervous system from toxic shame and inherited trauma) and a collective practice of co-creating equitable, accountable, and relationally rooted cultures of care.
While our nervous systems hold generations of this unconscious material—they also hold the powerful capacity for release & integration!
Beloveds—
✨ I am a shame eater.
✨ I have metabolized & released lifetimes of shame.
✨ I believe we can learn to release shame together—as we choose to stop oppressing the land, ourselves, and one another.
Bye-bye, toxic shame monsters!
Hello bold authenticity, deep worth, innate value, juicy equity, creative empowerment, sexy accountability, and yummy loving connection. 💃💫
My initiation into processing shame through the body began with the uncovering of childhood sexual abuse I experienced between the ages of 4 and 6, perpetrated by a parental figure. These memories had been deeply repressed. As the unconscious material was unlocked, my system experienced shaking, crying, yelling, and temperature shifts. I allowed myself to feel these feelings.
Toxic shame arises when someone violates us and takes our power away. Because we were hurt for no reason, we internalize the harm, and begin to believe that we are inherently “bad.”
I often wonder: what forces, so long ago, may have taken away our power as a species?
