Wearing The Corset Of Shame
What do you do when the Mean Girl is you?
Last night around midnight I found myself a little short of breath as I was trying the cry-it-out method of putting my daughter back to sleep.
I leaned helplessly against the wall right outside her door as she wept as if her heart were breaking — hoping she would go to sleep, praying the neighbors wouldn’t think we were terrible parents.
When she finally passed out and I went back to bed, I lay there and felt my chest getting tighter and my breathing shorter.
I could picture what was happening to me from a hundred silly movies — the mother tells the girl to breathe out, then the maid pulls the corset so tight the girl can barely breathe.
But my doesn’t she look good!
Shame seems to hit me that way sometimes.
One of the first times I remember feeling shame was around 1988, at East Junior High in Boise, Idaho. I’d made the A-team for basketball again, which was a mixed bag— part pride, part frustration. I was good enough for the A-team, but not good enough to do anything but warm the bench most of the time.
After practice one day, I was in the locker room changing when I heard nearby laughter. I turned around just in time to catch a girl who’d just…
