[Taking a moment to welcome you, if you're new here. Today's Love Note is on the longer side, it's about a 6-minute read] ~~~ TL;DR: The experience of shame makes us feel unsafe and feeling unsafe tends to also feel shameful. This isn't a personal failing, it's partly evolution/adaptation and partly cultural. Understanding the nature of shame and knowing how to navigate it can help us feel safer, individually and collectively. ~~~ Several years ago I heard part of an interview with Saeed...
11 days ago • 4 min read
Question from a reader: “I am estranged from my mother and now my adult daughter is thisclose to estranging herself from me. Can you help me so my daughter will feel loved by me? So I don’t repeat the patterns?” I applaud you for your awareness, the work you’ve already done (because it’s hard!), for the example you are setting, and for your willingness to do more. Your intentions are truly beautiful. Of COURSE you want the very best for her. OF COURSE you want to be part of her life. OF...
18 days ago • 2 min read
...rather than on being a disappointment to her. If it's hard, remember, not only were you taught not to focus on being a joy and a delight to yourself, you were probably actively discouraged from it. From earliest childhood those of us socialized as women were taught and persuaded to survey everything we are and everything we do in terms of how we appear to others. Our own sense of being in ourselves is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated by others. Others act and we...appear. Others...
24 days ago • 1 min read
I was silent discoing on the boardwalk yesterday afternoon, reveling in how totally alive I feel when I partake of this relatively-new-to-me activity when a thought barged in: "It's about time you figured this out...too bad it took you until your 60s." Insert sad trombone sound here. I nearly stopped in my tracks and said to myself, "Seriously? That's what you're going to offer me?" But I didn't want to have a full-blown argument with myself, so I simply reminded myself: "How human of me...of...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Scene: family holiday gathering Them: [insert the thing they say every time, which you really wish they wouldn't say] You: [queue anger, regret, resentment, guilt, shame, self-recrimination] ~~~ Here's how it's going to go down instead: They get to say what they want (no matter how much you wish they wouldn't). You get to make a request: I’d prefer not to talk about that. [notice what comes up when you think about saying that...imagine the many tones of voice with which you could say it] They...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
I see the parallels between a mother who abuses her daughter, and social / political / religious / cultural systems that abuse people. One way to understand it is through the concept of vertical and horizontal morality. Vertical morality is based on authority: "I brought you into this world, and I can take you out." In other words, I created you and I own you and I can do what I want with you. In a vertical morality system, violence isn't wrong because it harms someone, it's wrong only if you...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
I have a purpose in the world and it is to help adult daughters with narcissistic, neglectful, cruel, authoritarian mothers become the emotionally mature parent to themselves they never had. My values of dignity, expression, and audacity (and my Human Design 6th Line) ask me to be a role model for that. So here we go. If you're like me, you may be reckoning with feelings you really, REALLY don't like having right now. If you're like me, you wanted to wake up yesterday and not feel...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Brittney Cooper on the difference between joy and happiness: "Joy is not based on happiness or things going our way or that all is well in the world. Joy is rooted in a deep internal sense of purpose. That we have a reason to show up here and do our work with righteousness and integrity and care. And any time we secure an sustain the conditions to be able to do that, there is a reason for joy. Particularly for those who believe, even in the face of deep injustice, that ultimately justice will...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
"I've been breaking my own heart since I was five," she said, because she has been expecting her narcissistic mother to care about her. You haven't been breaking your own heart. She broke your heart and then taught you to take over (which is the insidious nature of internalized shame). Despite how it feels, it is not a "you" problem and it never was. If you're grieving this profound loss, it makes sense and you're not alone. If you experience shame about any or all of this, it makes sense....
about 2 months ago • 2 min read