The Pain and The Power of Shame

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Shame

The power of shame is mighty. I was 12 the first time I ever felt shame.

“Ew, look. She has holes in her shoes.” A seventh grade classmate, a girl, remarked to her friend, loud enough for me to hear. She wanted me to hear. She wanted to make me feel small. Mission accomplished.

I never knew before then that we (my family) were white trash. I had no conception of class. I knew we couldn’t afford certain things and that my mom was constantly battling bills and that the PG&E or our phone was regularly getting shut off. But I never thought of us as poor. Both my mother and stepfather had jobs; my father also worked and paid child support. We always had food. My stomach was never grumbling from a missed meal.

We were the working poor, and the girls at school lived in houses their parents owned. They were driven to school in new cars, not beat up Chevy Novas. Seventh grade was when I started asking my mom to drop me off around the corner from school. Young girls have a keen ability to ridicule, shrill laughter akin to a cackle. That keen ability is sharpened to a perfect point by full blown womanhood.

By the time I ran away from home at 15 I had no room for shame anymore. I lived life big and bold and made no apologies. Fear and shame were not in my vocabulary because I couldn’t survive with those emotions. And I needed to survive. I’m sure people still tried to shame me, but I would either turn away uninterested or cut deeper than I was cut, depending on my mood.

Abused Becomes Abuser

I survived for many years having turned the tables. The abused becomes the abuser, doesn’t she? I cut people down with my words, cold hearted and relentless. If I was attacked I would slice with my words and rip and tear tender feelings without a backward glance.

It took me a long time to realize that we shame others as a defense mechanism. We are mean because we are hurting. We cut because we are cut. Now, I can look at any malicious person and see the pain. We are all wounded. It is not our wounds but how we deal with our wounds that makes us who we are. The problem is we think we are our wounds. So we bleed freely, licking ferociously, spraying our pain all over everyone in our vicinity.

I never grew back my ability to feel shame. Fortunately, instead, I chipped away at my hard exterior and found my compassion and my empathy. The abused becomes the abuser becomes the defender of the innocent.

All Grown Up

Those girls who picked on me, pulled my hair in the hall, crowed about my ripped leggings or the smell of smoke that clung to my clothes from my parents indoor smoking habit, are now internet trolls. Those girls, and the men who love them, wander the internet casting shame with their superior tones, their holier than thou lives, their perfect advice on their newsfeeds.

The world in many ways rewards bullies. The people who cast shame are typically in positions to do so. Rarely do you find a historically oppressed person shaming a historically privileged person. Poor people don’t shame rich people. That is not the way the world works, at least not the western world. So the kids who sneered and slobbered their disdain all over me and others like me were in positions to do so. Society then favored them with good colleges, good jobs, nice houses, fancy cars, and kids who sneer and slobber their way through their generation, until the cycle is broken.

Compassion for the Villain

It takes an enormous amount of grace and humility to realize that the pickers have also been picked over. I distinctly remember a scene from The Outsiders where Cherry tells Ponyboy that he doesn’t understand the life of the Socs. He has no idea how hard it is to be rich. Ponyboy is in a state of disbelief at first. He cannot imagine how it could possibly be difficult to be rich.

I understand what Cherry means. The world of wealth and the accumulation of wealth is often an ugly one. It requires constant work and struggle to win favor and stay in favor. Wealthy accumulation often means presenting a false face, putting on a show, being absent from the home, and a family in chaos. The pictures look nice; the reality is often not so pretty.

Kids who grow up in that environment behave like their first role models, their parents, who learned from their parents. And the cycle continues.

Instead of hating them, shaming them, and fighting with the people caught in this cycle, I have come to understand them. I feel for them, and just do my best to avoid them. Sometimes, though, I just have to wade in.

The Internet

The internet is a funny place. It can change lives; it is a font of information, good and bad, and it is a wonderful place for community building. At the same time it can become a rabbit hole of shame.

“I was on a plane last week…”

This man on Linked In begins his story of how parents were letting their children watch iPads (gasp!) on the plane. He unleashes this long didactic lesson about how in his day he rode skateboards and spent time outside or reading. He is so glad now that he didn’t grow up with the horrible technology that is ruining children and destroying families. Blah blah blah.

I am a big proponent of moderation in all things, and I am also of the mind that children today are fortunate to be learning tech at such a young age as they will need to be highly tech literate in their futures.

I said as much in this man’s comment feed and got overwhelming support from, you guessed it, moms. Professional women in suits and lipstick smiles on their profiles pics, still moms.

A Facebook friend recently told a story about how she was “politely” shamed by a bookstore owner for not enjoying Jane Austen. “Well, if you were better read…” the woman booksplained.

I reassured her that the attempt to shame comes from the shamer’s inadequacies and not her own.

And then there was my previously written essay about the woman who dedicated an entire article to shaming women for their own particular self care practices.

Champion of Women

I know that boys and men get picked on, too. But I find myself in this shame game a champion of women.

Mothers don’t need to be told “breast is best.” Working moms don’t need to be shamed to stay home. Stay at home moms don’t need to be made to feel lazy or useless for choosing to stay home, and they certainly don’t need to be pushed back into work once their children are in school.

Women don’t need to button up or unbutton. Older women don’t need to be pushed to get surgery. Younger women don’t need to be told they are too fat, too thin, wear too much makeup or not enough.

And what they especially don’t need is all of that from other women.

“I only missed one shower when my child was an infant. One day.” This a tweet from a woman I admire in response to a news story that one woman hadn’t showered in ten days and had used her children as “an excuse.”

I Let Her Get In My Head

I didn’t feel ashamed, but I hadn’t showered the day before; I have two kids and a husband and millions of things on my plate, and sometimes showering gets overlooked.

So I decided I was going to take a shower when my infant woke up from her nap this morning. I couldn’t risk her waking up while I was in the shower. So she woke up, we cuddled, I nursed her, she was happy, and I was ready.

I turned on the shower, told her what I was doing, pulled her jumper into the bathroom, gave her a pacifier, and set her in the jumper while I climbed into the shower.

And then she screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed. For the entire ten minutes it took me to wash my hair and body, condition my hair, and shave my legs. She screamed so loud her face turned red, snot ran out of her nose and tears ran from her eyes down her cheeks. She was less than five feet from me and she could see me the entire time.

This is what it means to shower when my husband is not home. And we have opposing work schedules. So I can either shower to the relaxing sound of my ten month old’s screams, or I can shower at night when I get home, which cuts into this glorious writing time.

“I let her get in my head.” I reported to my husband later on when he got home.

“I can’t believe you let some lady on the internet get into your head. You of all people.”

That is the power of shame.

When It Matters

The truth is, I wanted to shower, damn it. And I used that tweet to fuel my determination not to be ruled by a 20 pound baby. But the reality is, I am mostly ruled by a 20 pound baby when it comes to things like that. And a five year old on other occasions.

But when it really matters, when I want something or I’ve made a decision to do something or live a certain way, I don’t let other people’s shame affect me. And my goal in life is to reveal shamers for what they are, suffering from their own feelings of inferiority or inadequacy. And to help women rid themselves of the shaming process.

“I take showers!” We shout, to drown out other things we may feel guilty for.

“My kids aren’t addicted to iPads!” We celebrate, anxiety ridden about not spending enough quality time with them.

“Breast is best!” We yell, worrying the whole time that we don’t make enough money to support our family.

My mission is to help people, especially women, find common ground and minimize the shaming.

Granted, sometimes shame is essential to life.

Parenting

“Everyone is watching you.” I crouched down really close to my daughter, at eye level with her when she was just two. She was preparing to throw her very first temper tantrum, in Trader Joe’s no less.

“Look around. Everyone sees you. This is what you want? For people to say, oh look at that little girl embarrassing herself in the store?”

Celaya straightened right up, got a serious look on her face, and has still never thrown a temper tantrum to this day. I have had to whip out the shame game on a few occasions, and it always works.

But it is rare, and I use it painstakingly, and only for good.

She is not perfect. She gets out of bed one hundred times (exactly) after bedtime every night. She has even taken to training herself to wake up after I have gotten home from work. She comes out quietly, “I have to go to the bathroom,” she’ll say. She snuggles at my desk with me, asks what I’m writing about, and then “lets” me carry her back to bed.

She will not grow up shaming other kids. She will not ridicule people on the internet someday. She is learning compassion, kindness, and empathy. She is my chance to break the cycle of shame.

Community

I think that one of the main reasons I have been so long virtually immune to shame is that I am surrounded by people who genuinely love and care for me. My husband thinks I hung the moon. My mother, for all her faults, has always praised me as brilliant and strong, and my friends and family express real respect and care for me.

This is a vaccine I can share. I believe that everyone deserves respect and love. And we can build communities around that, women’s circles of respect and love, where we build each other up, support each other in our endeavors, and provide words of strength and confidence. Women around the world have the power to heal each other, to learn from each other, to teach each other.

This is what I do in real life and on the internet, I look for women to build communities with, to join together to change the world, to empower. I will continue this work and expand it until we can form a circle around the world of women joining hands. We can do anything when we are united.

Together, we can, shamelessly.