Founder of Shame School and author of You Are Not Your Mother: Releasing Generational Trauma & Shame and Difficult Mothers, Adult Daughters: A Guide for Separation, Liberation & Inspiration
“She said, you met a lot of hurt people who wanted you to feel the same/you used to tune them out, but now/in the quiet corners of your day/you regurgitate all of the negative opinions they used to throw your way…” ~ poet Rebecca Dupas What her brilliance here. Much, much love, Karen We slay that dragon in Shame School. Get on the wait list.
I received many responses to "when your mother hates you" and wanted to share this one: "...it goes both ways. It's only human of us to hate them sometimes, too. I actually made an ENORMOUS stride of progress a couple months ago when I admitted to myself I was feeling hatred toward my mother. I was in an awful but all too familiar moment of anger and frustration towards her, and I can't remember if I said it out loud to myself or just in my head, but the words were, "I hate her." Immediately...
She was celebrating a significant career achievement at a large public event where she would be honored and where she was keynote speaker. As she was leaving the hotel suite where colleagues, friends, and family had gathered prior to the event, her mother, who was behind her, yelled out: "You know...you look fat in that dress!" She froze. Then had the wherewithal to turn and say, her voice taut with pain, "MOTHER!" before rushing to a restroom where she cried as a friend consoled her. Later,...
I will never forget the time someone suggested that I "take responsibility" for the emotional pain I was experiencing in regards to my mother. I was simultaneously furious and full of dread. Furious because I thought taking responsibility meant it was my fault. Underneath that (unbeknownst to me) was shame. Full of dread because I suspected it would require some sort of massive change on my part, that I didn't know how to change, that ultimately I wouldn't be able to, and I would continue to...
"Things that are alive want to flourish." ~ Lindsay Gibson in this NYT interview Compassion For Your Parents Can Be A Trap Shame does NOT want us to flourish. At best, it blunts and dims us, keeping us small. At worst, it annihilates us. It destroys our relationship with our actual experiences, feelings, and true selves. Not because we deserve it, although when internalized it feels that way...as if it were etched in stone and written in the stars. Permanent. At worst, there were times when I...
[listen to me read this over on Substack] “The revolution will NOT be psychologized.The revolution will be alchemized.The revolution will be ancestoralized.The revolution will be an offering.The revolution will be a flood of grace.The revolution will be ritualized.The revolution will be poeticized.” — From The Emerald podcast episode “The Revolution Will Not Be Psychologized” by Joshua Michael Schrei When we are born, we have both the fire of the opal and the watery coolness of oceans within...
Question from a reader: My mother has been a hurtful presence in my life for as long as I can remember. I am going to my home country soon and need to decide if I will visit her. If she was a reasonable distance from where I will be, I would go, but she is in a city that is a day-trip each way by train or driving. At least seven hours each way. I’m trying to decide if a 45-minute visit (which is probably all she'd want) is worth the 14+ hours of travel, when we have other family and friends...
The other day I packed up six relatively new, gently used bras and sent them off to The Bra Recyclers, an organization that provides bras and underwear to women and girls in transitional programs and shelters who lack belongings and safety. When I purchased them this past fall I had no idea that come March 3, I'd no longer have breasts. While I don't miss wearing them, I had a pang when I put those bras in that box. They were really pretty. They, and others like them, were a part of my...
Healing your mother wound does not necessarily mean healing the relationship you have with your mother, it's about healing the relationship you have with yourself, as a result of the relationship you had with your mother. @byermeas If your mother doesn't love you, that's not your failure, it's hers. You didn't fail to get her love, she failed to love you. bell hooks teaches us that abuse and love are mutually exclusive...they can't coexist. Your mother might believe she loves you, she may say...
I had a conversation with someone who said she felt the need to figure out what happened in her past that made her want to overeat. In looking through old journals she noted that she had written things like, “I don’t understand why I eat when I’m not hungry” and “I must want to be fat so I can be unattractive because something horrible must have happened to me as a child.“ She said she had been prompted by therapists, self help books, and the media, to look for something she said "simply...