If you're having a hard time maintaining your boundaries with your mother, try this: Ask yourself how and where she's making you responsible for her emotional experience (and you're unconsciously agreeing with her that it's your job). It's one thing to help her out with practical tasks. It's something else altogether when she expects you to help her manage her emotions. Much, much love, Karen The second round of Shame School starts in February 2025. Click here to get on the wait list. Want to...
6 days ago • 1 min read
I read Dear Abby pretty much every day. Sometimes my husband (who reads it before I do) will say, "There's a Dear Abby with your name written all over it" when someone writes in about an issue with a family member (often a mother) and at the end asks: "Should I feel guilty?" Or, "Am I overreacting?" Or, "Is it wrong to feel this way?" In my head I say, "Noooo! Don't outsource your emotions! Not even to Dear Abby! You get to decide...do you want to feel guilty? What if none of your feelings...
12 days ago • 1 min read
No sense shaming the shamer so I corrected this... ...but the sentiment is near and dear to my heart. One of the students in Shame School shared this the other day (and gave me permission to share it): "I'm too happy. I'm too easily excited. This makes me annoying to others. I start comparing how everyone else seems so calm and I'm just too happy, too smiley, too loud - too much (images flash of having my father and stepmother roll their eyes at me)" I, too, was shamed for my happiness,...
15 days ago • 2 min read
Have you ever had the experience of telling someone that you felt hurt by something they did and they dismissed you, got defensive, said something like, "I guess I'm just a terrible person!" or gave you a non-apology apology (i.e., "I'm sorry you feel that way")? They did that because they have shame on board that they're unaware of and it's so painful that their stress responses kick in. Some people call that narcissism. Maybe you've had a similar experience with someone telling you they...
19 days ago • 1 min read
The revolution will be counterintuitive. And silly and naive. And all the other words we use to shroud magic in shame. ~ Alok Vaid-Menon In Shame School we have been exploring the origins of shame, both generally and the specific flavors that live within us. I shared that one of the ways shame becomes internalized is when – as children – we make specific meaning* of whatever overwhelming / distressful / scary / uncomfortable thing happened AND no one corrects or disabuses us of this notion....
20 days ago • 2 min read
The best kind of anger is the anger you trust. The problem is that we tend to have a complicated relationship with anger and our experience is that it's not something we can trust. We’re either afraid to feel it or we don’t like who we are when we act on it. We feel unsafe with it. We’re at the mercy of it. We think it’s wrong. We don’t want other people to think we’re angry (or “emotional,” “irrational,” “hormonal,” etc.). And so we haven’t learned how to take responsibility for it, and...
22 days ago • 2 min read
Book recommendation: Big as the Whole Wide World: Finding Peace Beyond My Karmic Family Ties by Sherle Stevens helped me understand my mother in a way that she hasn't or won't be able to show me. A big part of this memoir is the estrangement the author experienced with her adult daughter. "I'd always given up my power to everyone, not just to the men I married. To anyone I hope would loved me. Especially my child." ~~~ You know the saying "if mama ain't happy ain't nobody happy"? Here's why...
28 days ago • 1 min read
"Should I tell my mother that her words and behavior are hurtful to me? How should I approach it?"Dear Adult Daughter...I will never forget a conversation I had 15-ish years ago with my father-in-law, who died in 2015. He was a soft-spoken, unassuming, and very wise Lutheran pastor originally from Canada.I was telling him about the difficult relationship I had with my mother and what I might do to make it better.He listened patiently and replied – quietly, simply, and with a cadence and lilt...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
This morning I found out that I don't have breast cancer. I had been waiting for the news since August 28, which is when I had two stereotactic core needle biopsies on my right breast (two separate locations). As the days turned into more than a week of waiting for the news and the potential to have to wait through another weekend, I found myself in a weird dichotomy where two seemingly incompatible things were true at the same time. #1 My life is pretty damned amazing right now. #2 I might...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read