The Boy I Left Behind: Going Deeper

This week, David Lohman DeVore explores the complex relationship he discovered he had with shame resulting from abuse and growing up gay and Catholic. He shares how he began to unravel this shame and evolve his relationship with god, which ultimately led him to a harsh realization that he had experienced sexual abuse and now had a big decision to make - report the abuser or not.

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I went to the first class at Oneness University, still feeling overwhelmed with anxiety. As much as I wanted to change, grow, and awaken, my life in Chicago didn’t seem that bad. The familiarity of my suffering had become comfortable to me, as I knew nothing else. I was afraid of changing who I had come to believe I was, after all, it’s all I had known.  

The class rustled as a beautiful Indian monk in a white robe entered the room. As she spoke, the room calmed into perfect silence. She led us in a deep contemplation that rocked me to the core, as I began to discover the shame within me. Spiritual shame, a deep subconscious unworthiness that had kept me feeling separate, and isolated most of my life. I had grown up Catholic, and at young age knew that I was gay. As a child I had bought into a reality that I was condemned by God, and had spent most of my life seeking acceptance and love. I was looking for a God and a world who could love me as I am. And I wanted peace at all costs, often diminishing myself in the process.

In many ways, this was the introduction to my own shame. I delved into secrets that I had repressed and locked away in caverns of my own self-contempt. I cried the first week more than I have ever cried in my life. Through all retreats, workshops, and self-help work I had done, becoming a psychotherapist at age 32, and thinking I knew myself so well, I was only scratching the surface of what was really keeping me stuck and not living my life fully.

 India proved to be one of the most liberating yet frustrating and exhausting experiences of my life. A spiritual boot camp that began at 6:30 in the morning and ended some days well after midnight. We began every day with mediation, rituals, and Deeksha, followed by some of the most profound spiritual teachings that I had ever heard. Outside the campus stood a colossal white temple with flags of all world religions. The basic teaching is that religion is framework used to comprehend the immense power of divine intelligence and answer questions about our very existence. The inherent truths in all religion lead to the same God, and each of us have created a unique construct of God based in our perception, that often doesn’t serve us. My God was judging and condemning, and I began to recreate a God without so much human baggage.  

I was having major lightbulb moments every day as I surrendered to the processes, visualizations, yogas, and shamanic journeys. It was relentless. Resistance became my friend as we started each new practice. I even felt an attachment to my Catholic roots at some points as I struggled to hold onto something for dear life. Some days were incredibly rough and I wished I could leave. I would take a few deep breaths and imagine that I was a reporter who was there to experience and discuss this process. I even kept a video journal documenting the "spiritual science experiment of David", after trying everything on the curriculum that day and observing the effect. Some of the practices I learned there are now part of my spiritual arsenal, and what I teach today, and some I left in India.

The last Saturday night of the retreat, after being guided through a particularly trippy shamanic journey, I danced to drums and felt deeply connected to everyone there, to myself, and to God. I walked alone outside the temple under the light of a full moon, feeling everything and nothing; timeless. I entered a bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. My eyes were fully dilated as I scanned my face. "You’ve been really hard on yourself David", I whispered as a tear ran down my cheek. It was as if I was observing myself for the first time. I vowed to have more compassion for myself when I got home. I realized that I had spent a lot of my life believing I was a droplet of water trying very hard to get somewhere fast, only to discover I am a part of the divine ocean itself. Fully supported like a cell to a body. I wished to hold on to that calm and fully present state of being forever. I try to remind myself of this on the days I feel disconnected and alone.

            I had come quite a distance on my spiritual journey and understanding the ways I was sabotaging myself in my life. The role of my mind, operating like a computer executing fear based programs and keeping me in survival mode. But there was still something I was missing.

When I got home from India, I went to visit my mother to tell her about my trip. She seemed very serious when I got there and told me she needed to talk to me about something important. Somewhere deep in my heart I knew what it was.  

A year before my trip to India, my mother had found out that I was in a sexual relationship with a priest when I was thirteen years old. This was a secret I hoped she’d never find out. She had introduced me to the priest because my father was emotionally unavailable and spent most of my childhood fully reclined in a lazy boy chair watching TV and drinking martinis. She thought I needed a strong male influence in my life.  

She was furious in a way I’ve never seen before. I sat and listened to her speak and remained relatively calm.  A few years earlier, I probably would have run right off that porch. I answered all of the questions that she read off a paper neatly folded on her lap. Her hand shook and she trembled when she spoke.

 Then she looked up at me and said, "You answered the questions the way they said you would. You answered the questions like an adult survivor of childhood sexual abuse." My heart raced. "Did she say sexual abuse? Abuse?  No. That didn’t fit. She was dead wrong about that," I thought. She had reported him to the Catholic Church and requested that I do the same. I absolutely refused.  

In my mind, my first relationship, at the age of thirteen just happened to be a priest. I loved the guy and would have done anything for him. We had become friends. I wanted to be with him all the time. I was in love with him. Sexual abuse didn’t fit.

What would happen to him? Who would take care of him? How would the community respond? He’s getting older. I felt incredibly protective of him. Defensive. Loyal. Reporting him almost thirty years later would be a tremendous betrayal. I couldn’t imagine it. And at the same time, I could not deny that the intensity of my resistance was a red flag to me. Maybe this is exactly where I needed to focus my attention.

Read Part 3: Sexual Abuse Report - Telling My Story

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David Lohman DeVore, M.A. is a shame recovery coach, and survivor or childhood sexual abuse.   He began his career twenty-five years ago as a wellness coach and personal trainer.   He became a psychotherapist in 2003 and developed a mind, body, spirit life coaching practice.  Over the last eight years, David’s spiritual and healing journey became his main focus.  He made the discovery that shame was subconsciously holding him back in all areas of his life.   It has become his passion to share practices to assist survivors in waking up from the shame driven world that blinds us from the joyful purpose-driven life we were born to live.

Find out more about David’s work at Awakeyou.com 

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