Author of You Are Not Your Mother: Releasing Generational Trauma & Shame and Difficult Mothers, Adult Daughters: A Guide for Separation, Liberation & Inspiration
countering the bowed posture of shame
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When my husband and I got engaged in 1997, my mother had just met the man who would become her third husband. They had a whirlwind romance and as we planned for our wedding, my mother suggested we have a joint wedding. I had the wherewithal to say no. She then asked if, instead of throwing my bouquet to all the single women at my wedding that I give it to her. I hadn't planned on a bouquet toss (I am not big on tradition) so I made a show of giving it to her during our reception. She and her husband were married six months later. This past weekend I came across a candid picture of my mother and me at her wedding reception. There we are, our hands holding our forks the same way, our eyes cast downward at whatever it was were eating. She in the foreground, me by her side. My body language says it all. Just looking at it I can feel myself shrinking, my body curling inward, my head bowed, almost like a turtle trying to pull its head inside its shell. But still in lockstep with her. It would be another 12 years before I consciously started to take back my life, and my power, from her. That I had given it to her in the first place makes all the sense in the world to me now, but I shamed myself for years because in my mind, "letting her" have that power meant I was weak, pathetic, passive, and ineffectual. What I know now is that "letting her" have that power was a highly intelligent adaptation my body made to keep me alive. Her fight was too much for my nervous system so it "chose" freeze/appease. It knew that fighting back would never work. Which isn't to say I had no fight in me. I just turned it inward and hurt myself, quite literally. Unshaming anger, and learning that it is a part of me that loves me and that I can trust (and more importantly be safe with) it has made all the difference. Much, much love, Karen |
Karen C.L. Anderson
Author of You Are Not Your Mother: Releasing Generational Trauma & Shame and Difficult Mothers, Adult Daughters: A Guide for Separation, Liberation & Inspiration
I've received a bunch of questions about the Shame School Community and I've got answers :-) Can you share a "sample curriculum?" There will be 52 weekly, bite-sized lessons, practices, tools, activities, writing prompts that fall into four categories: general, creating safety, creating intentional identity, and creating healthy boundaries. Each lesson explores concepts and different ways to put them into practice because not everyone resonates with the same techniques and practices. Each...
If your mother has narcissistic tendencies, you probably experience shame. Here are five things you can do to help yourself: #1 Let her have her alternate reality (and notice what happens inside you when you do). I once had a conversation with my mother in which she recounted a situation that not only do I remember very differently, my husband does too. I felt myself reacting. Anger was rising…defenses were triggered. “She’s gaslighting me!” and underneath that, “She thinks I’m stupid!” and...
I got a lot of responses to "I am not chasing my mother" all basically saying the same thing: "I WISH my mother would just leave me alone...she chases me, not the other way around!" More specifically... What if I am the one who want to move on but my mother doesn’t let me do it? I am divorced and she doesn’t accept it. She is always in the victim role and she keeps saying that she is dreaming of me and my ex-husband remarried. I blocked her so that she cannot text me privately, but she keeps...