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
things that are alive want to flourish
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"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 felt there was no coming back from how bad I must be. At best, I was pathetic. I was alive, yes, but I was half dead inside. Frozen. Coping. I wanted to flourish. I wanted to turn towards the sun and receive the goodness of life. To be my favorite self. Every time I tried and didn't succeed, it became one more thing wrong with me. What I didn't understand was that flourishing felt dangerous to my body...because it meant betraying my mother. It wasn't safe. We begin to flourish when we feel safe enough...when we work with our minds and our bodies in a non-threatening, non-coercive, organic way rather than trying to "hack" our mindsets and nervous systems. To flourish means to grow or develop in a healthy or vigorous way, especially as the result of a particularly favorable environment. Whether you work with me in Shame School or 1:1, I am here to help you to create the favorable conditions and environment for you to flourish and be your favorite self. Much, much love, Karen |
Karen C.L. Anderson
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
[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...