Ashamed Parents Quotes

The Parents, as my mother and father refer to Mr. Finch and Mrs. Finch, are insisting it was an accident, which, I guess, means we're free to mourn him out in the open in a normal, healthy, unstigmatised way. No need to be ashamed or embarrassed since suicide isn't involved.

What I want more than anything else in the world is to feel like being myself isn't something that should be hidden and a secret. What I want is for my parents to be outraged that someone betrayed me, not ashamed of my identity.

I don't know where this pressure came from. I can't blame my parents because it has always felt internal. Like any other parent, my mother celebrated the A grades and the less-than-A grades she felt there was no need to tell anybody about. But not acknowledging the effort that ended in a less than perfect result impacted me as a child. If I didn't win, then we wouldn't tell anyone that I had even competed to save us the embarrassment of acknowledging that someone else was better. Keeping the secret made me think that losing was something to be ashamed of, and that unless I was sure I was going to be the champion there was no point in trying. And there was certainly no point to just having fun.

I feel ashamed that so many of us cannot imagine a better way to do things than locking children up all day in cells instead of letting them grow up knowing their families, mingling with the world, assuming real obligations, striving to be independent and self-reliant and free.

Listen, I didn't ask for a face and body girls find attractive. But thanks to the mixture of my parents' DNA, I've got them, and I'm not ashamed to use 'em. Having a face Adonis would admire is one of the few advantages I've been given in life, and I use it to it's full potential whether it's for good or evil.

when a child is ridiculed, shamed, hurt or ignored when she experiences and expresses a legitimate dependency need, she will later be inclined to attach those same affective tones to her dependency. Thus, she will experience her own (and perhaps others’) dependency as ridiculous, shameful, painful, or denied. - Dependency in the Treatment of complex PTSD and Dissociative Disorders 2001 Authors: Kathy Steele, Onno van der Hart, Ellert R. S. Nijenhuis

The only reason that some people aren’t ashamed of their parents and/or siblings is because they know that we know that they did not choose them.

Your father, Jo. He never loses patience,--never doubts or complains,--but always hopes, and works and waits so cheerfully, that one is ashamed to do otherwise before him. He helped and comforted me, and showed me that I must try to practise all the virtues I would have my little girls possess, for I was their example. It was easier for your sakes than for my own; a startled or surprised look from one of you, when I spoke sharply, rebuked me more than any words could have done; and the love, respect, and confidence of my children was the sweetest reward I could receive for my efforts to be the woman I would have them copy.

Listen, I didn’t ask for a face and body girls find attractive. But thanks to the mixture of my parents’ DNA, I’ve got them, and I’m not ashamed to use ’em.

She thought for an instant of her late parents. She wondered if they would be ashamed of her now—just that question, not its pertinence, no qualifications—the way we always ask it.

Children, who have so much to learn in so short a time, had involved the tendency to trust adults to instruct them in the collective knowledge of our species, and this trust confers survival value. But it also makes children vulnerable to being tricked and adults who exploit this vulnerability should be deeply ashamed.

And if she liked and trusted the person who asked, she would add that yes, it was kind of a lot to deal with: her outward affect was bright and capable, and that was no illusion, but equally real was the yawning pit of exhaustion inside her. She just felt so tired sometimes. And because of everything her parents asked of her, she was ashamed of being tired. She could not, would not let the pit swallow her up, as much as she sometimes wanted it to.

It’s a crime, the lie that has been told to generations of black men and white men both. Little innocent black children, born of parents who believed that their race had no history. Little black children seeing, before they could talk, that their parents considered themselves inferior. Innocent black children growing up, living out their lives, dying of old age—and all of their lives ashamed of being black. But the truth is pouring out of the bag now.

I really just want someone to come over and brush my hair or let me cry in their lap while they pet my head and tell me I'll be okay." And I cried harder because I felt so ashamed to want that from a friend—from someone who was not a romantic partner or a parent⁠—because I didn't have either right now but I still wanted it. We section off physical comfort and intimacy so heavily. We reserve it for partners only, and platonic friends can only chit-chat and that's it. How can you tell people to be okay with being single while also telling them they can only get the basic human needs of physical touch from not being single?

Everything just feels so empty without her. She was more a parent to me than my birth parents were. She took me in, fed, dressed me, but most importantly, she treated me with respect. She taught me that my abilities were nothing to be ashamed of, nothing I should try so hard to deny. She convinced me that what I had was a gift-not a curse- and that I shouldn't let other people's narrow minds and fears determine how I love, what I do, or how I perceive myself in the world. She actually made me believe that in no way, shape, or form did their uninformed opinions make me a freak.

Under the ground seep the toxins of the population that lives above. If you have to, you will eat roots and earthworms. It is always night. Candles burn in lanterns made from tin cans. When it is nighttime up above, you can crawl out, but only for a little while. You feel ashamed of your matted hair, your torn clothes, the dirt on your face. Who would want to speak to you? They are all shiny and pretty. They have parents and house with gardens. What do you have? The earth. Whole handfuls of it. The lizard people with their slit eyes and scaly skin. Your loneliness. Your longing.

Adam and Eve don’t seem very conscious, at the beginning, when they are first placed in Paradise, and they were certainly not self-conscious. As the story insists, the original parents were naked, but not ashamed.

Do you honestly think God would make a creature as lovely and talented and good as your sister, and then make the way she looks something sinful? Something to be ashamed of? No. He wouldn’t. If anything, your sister—her face, her body, her mind, and her heart—give glory to Him. And she shouldn’t be hidden. You don’t hide something that remarkable away from the world, like your parents have done, like you want to do. That’s the true sin.

Time and again I, too, have felt so full of luminous torrents that I could burst - burst with forms much more beautiful than those which are put up in frames and sold for a stinking fortune. And I, too, said nothing, showed nothing; I didn't open my mouth, I didn't repaint my half of the world. I was ashamed. I was afraid, and I swallowed my shame and my fear. I said to myself: You are mad! What's the meaning of these waves, these floods, these outbursts? Where is the ebullient, infinite woman who, immersed as she was in her naiveté, kept in the dark about herself, led into self-disdain by the great arm of parental-conjugal phallocentrism, hasn't been ashamed of her strength? Who, surprised and horrified by the fantastic tumult of her drives (for she was made to believe that a well-adjusted normal woman has a ... divine composure), hasn't accused herself of being a monster? Who, feeling a funny desire stirring inside her (to sing, to write, to dare to speak, in short, to bring out something new), hasn't thought she was sick? Well, her shameful sickness is that she resists death, that she makes trouble.

I'm ashamed to say, I'm one of those guys who's been so busy bringing home the bacon I'm clueless about frying it.

Once when I was young-maybe more than once-when I was extremely disrespectful to my mother, my father angrily called me "garbage" in our native Hokkien dialect. It worked really well. I felt terrible and deeply ashamed of what I had done. But it didn't damage my self esteem or anything like that. I knew exactly how highly he thought of me. I didn't actually think I was worthless or feel like a piece of garbage. As an adult, I once did the same thing to Sophie, calling her garbage in English when she acted extremely disrespectful toward me. When I mentioned I had done this at a dinner party, I was immediately ostracized. One guest named Marcy got so upset she broke down in tears and had to leave early. My friend Susan, the host, tried to rehabilitate me with the remaining guests. "Oh dear, it's just a misunderstanding. Amy was speaking metaphorically-right, Amy? you didn't actually call Sophie 'garbage.'" "Um, yes I did. But it's all in the context," I tried to explain. "It's a Chinese immigrant thing.

As she bent over the child she realized that the tragedy of death had to do entirely with what was left unfulfilled. She was ashamed that such a simple insight should have eluded her all these years. Make something beautiful of your life. Wasn't that the adage of Sister Mary Joseph Praise lived by? Hema's second thought was that she, deliverer of countless babies, she who'd rejected the kind of marriage her parents wanted for her, she who felt there were too many children in the world and felt no pressure to add to that number, understood for the first time that having a child was about cheating death. Children were the foot wedged in the closing door, the glimmer of hope that in reincarnation there would be some house to go to, even if one came back as a dog, or a mouse, or a flea that lived on the bodies of men. If, as Matron and Sister Mary Joseph Praise believed, there was a raising of the dead, then a child would be sure to see that its parents were awakened. Provided, of course, the child didn't die with you in a plane crash.

I’ve alway been struck by how little adults understand children, even their own fathers and mothers. Nothing should be kept from children on the pretext that they’re little and it’s too soon for them to know. Such a sad, wretched idea! Children themselves are well aware that their parents regard them as as too small and uncomprehending, when actually they understand everything. Adults don’t realize that children can give extremely valuable advice in the most difficult situations. Heavens! When that pretty little bird looks at you, so happy and trusting, you are ashamed to betray it!

We all go through a phase—it lasts a lifetime, for some of us—when we’re embarrassed by our parents; we don’t want them hanging around us because we’re afraid they’ll do or say something that will make us feel ashamed of them.

I’m talking about the soul-crushing drudgery of day-to-day parenthood that we’re too embarrassed to talk about. The boredom, the stress, the nagging dissatisfaction, and the sense of personal failure that parents feel when raising a kid isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Perhaps worst of all is the guilt that so many women buy into because they’re too ashamed to admit that despite the love they have for their kids, child rearing can be a tedious and thankless undertaking.

But what about the experiences of second-generation kids like us—like feeling ashamed of the lunches our parents packed us because they were too “ethnic”? Or having to translate things for our parents because our English was better than theirs? Or struggling to communicate with our relatives in our home country because our Mandarin/Cantonese/Hindi/Korean/Viet was absolute horseshit?

I’d never seen that kind of love in person. My parents loved each other, but badly, and they were miserable. So were all the other couples in my neighborhood. Have you ever actually seen that kind of love?” William shook his head. He had married out of fear, because he didn’t think he was capable of steering himself into adulthood. He’d needed Julia to be his parent more than his partner. He was ashamed of this, but it was true.

Hypercritical, Shaming Parents Hypercritical and shaming parents send the same message to their children as perfectionistic parents do - that they are never good enough. Parents often deliberately shame their children into minding them without realizing the disruptive impact shame can have on a child's sense of self. Statements such as "You should be ashamed of yourself" or "Shame on you" are obvious examples. Yet these types of overtly shaming statements are actually easier for the child to defend against than are more subtle forms of shaming, such as contempt, humiliation, and public shaming. There are many ways that parents shame their children. These include belittling, blaming, contempt, humiliation, and disabling expectations. -BELITTLING. Comments such as "You're too old to want to be held" or "You're just a cry-baby" are horribly humiliating to a child. When a parent makes a negative comparison between his or her child and another, such as "Why can't you act like Jenny? See how she sits quietly while her mother is talking," it is not only humiliating but teaches a child to always compare himself or herself with peers and find himself or herself deficient by comparison. -BLAMING. When a child makes a mistake, such as breaking a vase while rough-housing, he or she needs to take responsibility. But many parents go way beyond teaching a lesson by blaming and berating the child: "You stupid idiot! Do you think money grows on trees? I don't have money to buy new vases!" The only thing this accomplishes is shaming the child to such an extent that he or she cannot find a way to walk away from the situation with his or her head held high. -CONTEMPT. Expressions of disgust or contempt communicate absolute rejection. The look of contempt (often a sneer or a raised upper lip), especially from someone who is significant to a child, can make him or her feel disgusting or offensive. When I was a child, my mother had an extremely negative attitude toward me. Much of the time she either looked at me with the kind of expectant expression that said, "What are you up to now?" or with a look of disapproval or disgust over what I had already done. These looks were extremely shaming to me, causing me to feel that there was something terribly wrong with me. -HUMILIATION. There are many ways a parent can humiliate a child, such as making him or her wear clothes that have become dirty. But as Gershen Kaufman stated in his book Shame: The Power of Caring, "There is no more humiliating experience than to have another person who is clearly the stronger and more powerful take advantage of that power and give us a beating." I can personally attest to this. In addition to shaming me with her contemptuous looks, my mother often punished me by hitting me with the branch of a tree, and she often did this outside, in front of the neighbors. The humiliation I felt was like a deep wound to my soul. -DISABLING EXPECTATIONS. Parents who have an inordinate need to have their child excel at a particular activity or skill are likely to behave in ways that pressure the child to do more and more. According to Kaufman, when a child becomes aware of the real possibility of failing to meet parental expectations, he or she often experiences a binding self-consciousness. This self-consciousness - the painful watching of oneself - is very disabling. When something is expected of us in this way, attaining the goal is made harder, if not impossible. Yet another way that parents induce shame in their children is by communicating to them that they are a disappointment to them. Such messages as "I can't believe you could do such a thing" or "I am deeply disappointed in you" accompanied by a disapproving tone of voice and facial expression can crush a child's spirit.

After all, how can we hope to raise our children to be freethinkers and free-spirited if we aren’t these things ourselves? How can we raise independent, autonomous children if we ourselves aren’t independent and autonomous? How can we raise another human being, another spirit, if our own being has been largely dismissed, our spirit systematically squelched? It may be helpful for me to share with you some of the areas in which I am learning to accept myself: I accept I am a human being before I am a parent I accept I have limitations and many shortcomings, and this is okay I accept I don’t always know the right way I accept I am often ashamed to admit my own failings I accept I frequently lose my center worse than my child ever does I accept I can be selfish and unthinking in my dealings with my child I accept I sometimes fumble and stumble as a parent I accept I don’t always know how to respond to my child I accept that at times I say and do the wrong thing with my child I accept that at times I’m too tired to be sane I accept that at times I’m too preoccupied to be present for my child I accept I am trying my best, and that this is good enough I accept my imperfections and my imperfect life I accept my desire for power and control I accept my ego I accept my yearning for consciousness (even though I often sabotage myself when I am about to enter this state). When

I remembered what it felt like to look at a parent who loves you and to be ashamed of them, and be ashamed that you are ashamed.

If you don’t do enough, you’re going to be ashamed. If you do too much, you’re going to feel guilty.

The thing about me is – essentially, I’m a coward. I am. I can’t stand weird stuff, anything that’s not normal. […] I’m a coward, and I’ve faced it, and I’ve learn to accept it. And I’m okay with that, as long as nothing happens so I have to start feeling ashamed about it, or guilty. I don’t think my parents know this about me. […] But the other thing is, I just hate it when people are disappointed in me.

How do I tell my parents that I’m gay? Gay sounds just as weird as feminist. How do you tell the people that breathed you into existence that you’re the opposite of what they want you to be? And I’m supposed to be ashamed of being gay, but now that I’ve had sex with other girls, I don’t feel any shame at all. In fact, it’s pretty fucking amazing. So how am I supposed to come out and deal with everyone else’s sadness?

Sometimes I'm ashamed of how I've clung to them with bloody, torn-apart hands, trying to make it work even after they show me again and again it's not worth it. But I'm somehow also ashamed of choosing myself now.

I am ashamed to say this, but as a child, neither my parents not my teachers pushed me to read. In fact, I did not read an entire book through until I was a grown man and had learned the awesome power of reading on my own.

And in an essential way, this was what he was most ashamed of: not his poor understanding of sex, not his traitorous racial tendencies, not his inability to separate himself from his parents or make his own money or behave like an autonomous creature. It was that, when he and his colleagues sat there at night, the group of them burrowed deep into their own ambitious dream-structures, all of them drawing and planning their improbable buildings, he was doing nothing. He had lost the ability to imagine anything. And so every evening, while the others created, he copied: he drew buildings he had seen on his travels, buildings other people had dreamed and constructed, buildings he had lived in or passed through. Again and again, he made what had already been made, not bothering to improve them, just mimicking them. He was twenty-eight; his imagination had deserted him; he was a copyist. It frightened him. JB had his series. Jude had his work, Willem had his. But what if Malcolm never again created anything? He longed for the years when it was enough to simply be in his room with his hand moving over a piece of graph paper, before the years of decisions and identities, when his parents made his choices for him, and the only thing he had to concentrate on was the clean blade stroke of a line, the ruler's perfect knife edge.

If you send a child to therapy before you've been for yourself, the child rightly discerns that you consider the child the problem. If, however, you've used therapy in your life before asking your child to go, she learns that therapy is a natural choice for people who want to live conscious, healthy lives. Therapy is good emotional and mental hygiene - just as teeth cleanings and going to the gym are good for physical health. Nothing to be ashamed of!

But Viv, if I've learned anything at all in the last eight years of my life? It's that people just like to tell themselves stories about where they came from. They can't help themselves. They don't trust the world around them--it's too good for them, or not good enough--so they tell themselves stories about it. They tell themselves an old magician who lives up in the sky made them out of clay and put them here until whenever he makes up his mind to take them out again. Your parents didn't like their creation myth, that's all--it had pain in it, and chaos, and their own parents were ashamed. So they told themselves a story that was at least partially true: about two good people who deserved happy lives. And probably at some point they started to believe that story. But the thing is, really, that it doesn't matter. For your parents or anyone else. It doesn't actually matter where we came from, or where we're going, or when. The only thing that matters is what we have to do while we're here and how well we do it.

It’s one of the things in life I really feel ashamed about. I was not very sensitive, and I hurt their feelings. I shouldn’t have. They had done so much to make sure I could go there, but I just didn’t want them around. I didn’t want anyone to know I had parents.

The Audacity of Despair "You can stand your ground if you're white, and you can use a gun to do it. But if you stand your ground with your fists and you're black, you're dead. "In the state of Florida, the season on African-Americans now runs year round. Come one, come all. And bring a handgun. The legislators are fine with this blood on their hands. The governor, too. One man accosted another and when it became a fist fight, one man — and one man only — had a firearm. The rest is racial rationalization and dishonorable commentary. "If I were a person of color in Florida, I would pick up a brick and start walking toward that courthouse in Sanford. Those that do not, those that hold the pain and betrayal inside and somehow manage to resist violence — these citizens are testament to a stoic tolerance that is more than the rest of us deserve. I confess, their patience and patriotism is well beyond my own. "Behold, the lewd, pornographic embrace of two great American pathologies: Race and guns, both of which have conspired not only to take the life of a teenager, but to make that killing entirely permissible. I can't look an African-American parent in the eye for thinking about what they must tell their sons about what can happen to them on the streets of their country. Tonight, anyone who truly understands what justice is and what it requires of a society is ashamed to call himself an American.

It's a strange feeling: to be ashamed and embarrassed of who you used to be. Even with the excuses of youth, inexperience, and influence- her church, her parents, her older brothers, her friends, almost everyone she knew- it still made her deeply uncomfortable to think of herself back then, who she might have hurt without knowing it.

Mohammad, a child of Arab parents was enrolled in a school in New York. On the first day, his teacher asked, ‘What is your name?’ The boy replied, ‘Mohammad’. ‘From now on your name is Harry as you are in America,’ she said. In the evening, when he came back, his mother asked, ‘How was your day Mohammad?’ He said, ‘My name is not Mohammad. I’m in America and my name is Harry.’ His mother slapped him and said angrily: ‘Aren’t you ashamed of trying to dishonour your parents, your heritage, your religion?’ Then she called his father and he also slapped him. The next day when the teacher saw him with his face red and asked what happened, Mohammad said, ‘Madam, four hours after I became American, I was attacked by two Arabs.

The "Old-Fashioned Girl" is not intended as a perfect model, but as a possible improvement upon [Page] the Girl of the Period, who seems sorrowfully ignorant or ashamed of the good old fashions which make woman truly beautiful and honored, and, through her, render home what it should be,-a happy place, where parents and children, brothers and sisters, learn to love and know and help one another.

Alarmingly, though, on top of the bookcase there is also a family portrait of Bea with two just-as-striking blond-and-blue-eyed sisters and a pair of handsome proud Nordic parents, whose stares make me aware of the vast age difference between Bea and me, and I am profoundly ashamed to be here buying drugs in this girl's apartment. What I'd really like to do, I think, is lie down on this couch and take a nap.

But in other ways, they may also make you even more aware of what you are missing. You may experience moments when you go to the well, looking for some feeling for your children, and find that there’s not enough there. At that moment, you may catch a glimpse of an absence of something, and it may feel deeply uncomfortable. The Feelings You Are Left With: Wanting to give, but the well feels dry. Troubled. Ashamed. Sad. Deficient. Exhausted.

Parents are strange and wonderful creatures. When you're small they seem bright, shiny, and invincible. As you grow, that image starts to fade. It's a sobering moment, but the time will come when you realize they are not the heroes you imagined. They are just people struggling to do the best they can, just the same as you are.You will feel let down, betrayed, even ashamed. This is the time,...when you need to forgive your parents for being human.

She had humor and common sense and she soon knew what she must do. She must have done with her dream world, laugh at the ridiculous Mary who had lived in it and get to know the Mary whom she did not want to know, find out what she was like and what her prospects were. It sounded an easy program but she found it a grueling one. The phantasy world, she discovered, had tentacles like an octopus and cannot be escaped without mortal combat, and when at last her strong will had won the battle it seemed as though she were living in a vacuum, so little had the real world to offer the shy, frustrated, unattractive girl who was the Mary she must live with until she died. But free of the tentacles she was able now to sum up the situation with accuracy. She would not marry and being a gentlewoman no other career was open to her. She was not gifted in any way and she would never be strong and probably never free from pain. She was not a favorite with either of her parents, both of whom were vaguely ashamed of having produced so unattractive a child, and yet she was the one who would have to stay at home with them. The prospect was one of lifelong boredom and seemed to her as bleak as the cold winds that swept across the fens, even at times as terrible as the great Cathedral in whose shadow she must live and die. For at that time she did not love the Cathedral and in her phantasy life the city had merely been the hub from which her radiant dreams stretched out to the wide wheel of the world. What should she do? Her question was not a cry of despair but a genuine and honest with to know. She never knew what put it into her head that she, unloved, should love. Religion for her parents, and therefore for their children, was not much more than a formality and it had not occurred to her to pray about her problem, and yet from somewhere the idea came as though in answer to her question, and sitting in Blanche's Bower with the cat she dispassionately considered it. Could mere loving be a life's work? Could it be a career like marriage or nursing the sick or going on the stage? Could it be adventure?

We were still so scared. Even more than before. Scared of what the Nazis could do, for no rhyme or reason, whenever they wanted. So now you know what happened to my eye. This is something I have never told anyone . . . Because I am still so ashamed, you see. I often think it is fitting punishment for all the times I could have helped that girl before that terrible day, or helped others get into the woods, or hidden them in the barn without my parents knowing. But I did not. I turned a blind eye, yes? And as the Bible says . . . Well, I just think it is appropriate.

Denial of Individual Needs and Preferences Parents who need to keep strict control because of their anxieties often teach their children not only how they should do things, but also how they should feel and think. Children who are internalizers tend to take this instruction to heart and may come to believe that their unique inner experiences have no legitimacy. Such parents teach their children to be ashamed of any aspect of themselves that differs from their parents. In this way, children may come to see their uniqueness, and even their strengths, as odd and unlovable.

She went around reading everything- the directions on the grits bag, Tate's notes, and the stories from her fairy-tale books she had pretended to read for years. Then one night she made a little oh sound, and took the old Bible from the shelf. Sitting at the table, she turned the thin pages carefully to the one with the family names. She found her own at the very bottom: There it was, her birthday: Miss Catherine Danielle Clark, October 10, 1945. Then, going back up the list, she read the real names of her brothers and sisters: Master Jeremy Andrew Clark, January 2, 1939. "Jeremy," she said out loud. "Jodie, I sure never thought a' you as Master Jeremy." Miss Amanda Margaret Clark, May 17, 1937. Kya touched the name with her fingers. Repeated it several times. She read on. Master Napier Murphy Clark, April 14, 1936. Kya spoke softly, "Murph, ya name was Napier." At the top, the oldest, Miss Mary Helen Clark, September 19, 1934. She rubbed her fingers over the names again, which brought faces before her eyes. They blurred, but she could see them all squeezed around the table eating stew, passing cornbread, even laughing some. She was ashamed that she had forgotten their names, but now that she'd found them, she would never let them go again. Above the list of children she read: Mister Jackson Henry Clark married Miss Julienne Maria Jacques, June 12, 1933. Not until that moment had she known her parents' proper names. She sat there for a few minutes with the Bible open on the table. Her family before her. Time ensures children never know their parents young. Kya would never see the handsome Jake swagger into an Asheville soda fountain in early 1930, where he spotted Maria Jacques, a beauty with black curls and red lips, visiting from New Orleans.

It’s because he’s ashamed of himself. He carries this pile of guilt around, caused by nothing but his own choices. And every day he doesn’t parent you, doesn’t treat you the way he should, that guilt gets heavier, and when he sees you, is reminded of you, it becomes unbearable. What he doesn’t realize is the difference between short-term and long-term pain. If he put up with his discomfort years ago in order to do right by you—if he had taken responsibility for his actions and tried to make it up to you—that guilt of his might have gone away. Instead, he’s doomed himself to slowly die beneath it.

If the reality inhabited by several generations of a thousand or so people can be rubbed out like a cheap hood in the wrong bar on the wrong night, what or where is safe? Hell, these days, is there still a right side of the tracks for anybody to be born on? He’s come here to sniff out the surviving traces of a vanished yesterday, but all he sees in these deleted streets are the defective embryos of an emerging future. And when finally that future’s born and we can’t bear to look at it; when we’re ashamed to be the lineage, the parent culture that sired this unlovable grotesque, where shall we banish it so that we needn’t see it anymore?

During that long summer I'd been over and over the various arguments, all the pros and cons, and it was no longer a question that could be decided by an act of pure reason. Intellect had come up against emotion. My conscience told me to run, but some irrational and powerful force was resisting, like a weight pushing me toward the war. What it came down to, stupidly, was a sense of shame. Hot, stupid shame. I did not want people to think badly of me. Not my parents, not my brother and sister, not even the folks down at the Gobbler Cafe. I was ashamed to be there at the Tip Top Lodge. I was ashamed of my conscience, ashamed to be doing the right thing.

If movements got it together about ableism, there is so much we could win—movement spaces where elders, parents, and sick and disabled folks (a huge amount of the planet) could be present—strength in numbers! We could create movement spaces where people don’t “age out” of being able to be involved after turning forty or feel ashamed of admitting any disability, Crazyness, or chronic illness. We could create visions of revolutionary futures that don’t replicate eugenics—where disabled people exist and are thriving, not, as often happens in abled revolutionary imaginations, revolutionary futures where winning the rev means we don’t exist anymore because everyone has health care.

Malcolm had often proudly boasted that a sure sign of NOI conversion was a black man’s ability to look a white man dead in the eyes without flinching. He had tested the faith of acolytes in Harlem by challenging them to attempt it on the job. Many were surprised and ashamed by their reflexive diverting of their eyes in the presence of white supervisors. “The Messenger had told me if you trust in Allah, the devil can do nothing to you,” said Jeremiah. “He will take the fear [off] of you. I never was afraid of those crackers.” Long before encountering Elijah Muhammad—as a child, in fact—Malcolm had been conditioned by his parents with a fearless sense of racial pride, combined with an assured equanimity.

Remus,” said Hermione tentatively, “is everything all right . . . you know . . . between you and—” “Everything is fine, thank you,” said Lupin pointedly. Hermione turned pink. There was another pause, an awkward and embarrassed one, and then Lupin said, with an air of forcing himself to admit something unpleasant, “Tonks is going to have a baby.” “Oh, how wonderful!” squealed Hermione. “Excellent!” said Ron enthusiastically. “Congratulations,” said Harry. Lupin gave an artificial smile that was more like a grimace, then said, “So . . . do you accept my offer? Will three become four? I cannot believe that Dumbledore would have disapproved, he appointed me your Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, after all. And I must tell you that I believe that we are facing magic many of us have never encountered or imagined.” Ron and Hermione both looked at Harry. “Just—just to be clear,” he said. “You want to leave Tonks at her parents’ house and come away with us?” “She’ll be perfectly safe there, they’ll look after her,” said Lupin. He spoke with a finality bordering on indifference. “Harry, I’m sure James would have wanted me to stick with you.” “Well,” said Harry slowly, “I’m not. I’m pretty sure my father would have wanted to know why you aren’t sticking with your own kid, actually.” Lupin’s face drained of color. The temperature in the kitchen might have dropped ten degrees. Ron stared around the room as though he had been bidden to memorize it, while Hermione’s eyes swiveled backward and forward from Harry to Lupin. “You don’t understand,” said Lupin at last. “Explain, then,” said Harry. Lupin swallowed. “I—I made a grave mistake in marrying Tonks. I did it against my better judgment and I have regretted it very much ever since.” “I see,” said Harry, “so you’re just going to dump her and the kid and run off with us?” Lupin sprang to his feet: His chair toppled over backward, and he glared at them so fiercely that Harry saw, for the first time ever, the shadow of the wolf upon his human face. “Don’t you understand what I’ve done to my wife and my unborn child? I should never have married her, I’ve made her an outcast!” Lupin kicked aside the chair he had overturned. “You have only ever seen me amongst the Order, or under Dumbledore’s protection at Hogwarts! You don’t know how most of the Wizarding world sees creatures like me! When they know of my affliction, they can barely talk to me! Don’t you see what I’ve done? Even her own family is disgusted by our marriage, what parents want their only daughter to marry a werewolf? And the child—the child—” Lupin actually seized handfuls of his own hair; he looked quite deranged. “My kind don’t usually breed! It will be like me, I am convinced of it—how can I forgive myself, when I knowingly risked passing on my own condition to an innocent child? And if, by some miracle, it is not like me, then it will be better off, a hundred times so, without a father of whom it must always be ashamed!

That’s the irony of perfection: the walls that prevent your vulnerability from being seen also keep you from being known. I also tried to be the perfect friend. I didn’t rock the boat, I kept my problems to myself, and I was a chameleon in each relationship. No one knew that I was ashamed of having divorced parents, that I desperately wanted to be pretty, or that I was one mistake from falling apart. I assumed letting people see the imperfect, broken parts of me would put the friendship in jeopardy, and that simply wasn’t an option. That’s the irony of perfection: the walls that prevent your vulnerability from being seen also keep you from being known. I was always trying to hide behind perfection because I didn’t think my full self was enough.

Stunned, I sat down on the bed, reading the message over and over again, convinced I had misunderstood it in some way. I couldn’t believe that Jack would have written something so cruel or been so cutting. He had never spoken to me in such a way before, he had never even raised his voice to me. I felt as if I’d been slapped in the face. Surely I deserved some explanation and, at the very least, an apology? I needed to talk to someone, badly, so it was sobering to realise there was no one I could call. My parents and I didn’t have the sort of relationship that would allow me to sob down the phone that he had left me by myself and for some reason I felt too ashamed to tell any of my friends. Where had the perfect gentleman I’d thought him to be gone? Had it all been a facade, had he covered his true self with a cloak of geniality and good humour to impress me?

And in an essential way, this was what he was most ashamed of: not his poor understanding of sex, not his traitorous racial tendencies, not his inability to separate himself from his parents or make his own money or behave like an autonomous creature. It was that, when he and his colleagues sat there at night, the group of them burrowed deep into their own ambitious dream-structures, all of them drawing and planning their improbable buildings, he was doing nothing. He had lost the ability to imagine anything. And so every evening, while the others created, he copied: he drew buildings he had seen on his travels, buildings other people had dreamed and constructed, buildings he had lived in or passed through. Again and again, he made what had already been made, not even bothering to improve them, just mimicking them. He was twenty-eight; his imagination had deserted him; he was a copyist.

Why don’t you ever tell me about my real parents? You’re scared they’ll love me more than you do.” “Asha, we’ve already told you,” her mom says in a cracking voice. “We don’t know anything about them. That’s just the way things worked in India back then.” “And why don’t you ever take me to India? Every other Indian kid I know goes all the time. What is it, Dad—are you ashamed of me? I’m not good enough for your family?” Asha stares at her father, looking down at his hands clenched so tightly the knuckles are drained of color. “It’s not fair.” Asha can’t hold back the tears now. “Everyone else knows where they come from, but I have no idea. I don’t know why I have these eyes that everybody always notices. I don’t know how to deal with this damn hair of mine,” she yells, clenching it in her fist. “I don’t know why I can remember every seven-letter Scrabble word, but none of the periodic table. I just want to feel that someone, somewhere, really understands me!

How old am I? Over thirty, indeed? What cream do I use on my face? How many children do I have? Really—none? They offer condolences and smack their lips over my bad luck. My husband’s family must be very upset—I am married, of course? No? Again, they offer their regrets: a great shame that nobody wanted me. They understand—it is known to happen to some girls. Usually the very ugly or poor ones. Their concern extends to my parents: They must be unhappy, ashamed even, to have an old, unmarried daughter. And the relatives, horribly embarrassed, certainly? By now, I try to insist it may not be a complete disaster to be unmarried, but Setareh feels the need to intervene and freestyle the translation a little. She explains to the girls that, in her personal view, it is indeed a little tragic for my family. That concession renders sympathetic faces all around.When Sakina steps out of the room, questions become juicier: In the West, do I walk around almost naked in the streets? And have I “had relations” with a thousand men?

Besides, after our conversation you could either go or stay. If you stayed, then nothing would happen, I’d simply know, sir, that you didn’t want this business, and I wouldn’t undertake anything. But since you did go, it meant you were assuring me that you wouldn’t dare turn me over to the court and would forgive me the three thousand. And you wouldn’t be able to persecute me at all afterwards, because in that case I’d tell everything in court, sir, that is, not that I stole or killed—I wouldn’t say that—but that it was you who put me up to stealing and killing, only I didn’t agree. That’s why I needed your consent then, so that you couldn’t corner me with anything afterwards, sir, because where would you get any proof of that, but I could always corner you, sir, by revealing how much you desired your parent’s death, and I give you my word—the public would all believe me, and you’d be ashamed for the rest of your life.” “So I did, I did desire it, did I?” Ivan growled again. “You undoubtedly did, sir, and by your consent then you silently allowed me that business, sir,” Smerdyakov looked firmly at Ivan. He

Drawing and other forms of visual art can be an amazingly powerful tool for inner child healing. Drawing, painting, and playing with clay are things that children do spontaneously, happily, and naturally. We only lose our artistic inclinations as adults, when we are made to feel ashamed of something that we've created. Drawing is so ingrained in our natural human development that it comes well before writing. Art therapy is often used with children who refuse to speak or who feel they cannot verbalize their feelings. Inviting your inner child to color and draw can give you the freedom to finally say thins you were never able to put into words. If you are artistically inclined as an adults, you know that the process of creating visual art breaks you out of rational, analytical mental states. If you suffered with very restrictive parents or an education that prioritized verbal logic, drawing can help you reconnect with your natural, childlike creative impulses. Everyone is capable of making art. It's a natural, necessary part of our development. The stifling of creativity through shame or criticism leaves very real wounds on the inner child. Drawing through our self-doubts, self-criticisms allows us to speak with the child in its own language.

I remember only too well, since I had only a moment to tell you, given the danger of being seen by your parents and mine, how I showed you so crudely what I wanted that I’m ashamed of it now. But you looked at me so fiercely that I realized that you didn’t want to.” And suddenly I thought that the real Gilberte and the real Albertine were perhaps those who offered themselves up in a single glance, one by a hedgerow of pink hawthorn, the other on the beach. And it was I, unable to understand something which I was to retrieve only later in my memory, after a delay during which the whole emotional undercurrent of my conversation had made them fear to be as frank as they had been in the first instance, who had spoiled everything with my clumsiness. I had “bungled” things more completely with them than Saint-Loup had with Rachel, and for the same reasons, although I have to say that my relative failure with them was less absurd. “And the second time,” continued Gilberte, “was years later when I saw you in your doorway, the day before I met you at my aunt Oriane’s; I didn’t recognize you straight away, or rather I recognized you without realizing it, since I felt the same urges that I had at Tansonville.—But in between, there was the Champs-Elysées.—Yes, but then you were too much in love with me, I felt that you were spying on my every move.

In such families, internalizing children often learn to feel ashamed of the following normal behaviors: Enthusiasm Spontaneity Sadness and grief over hurt, loss, or change Uninhibited affection Saying what they really feel and think Expressing anger when they feel wronged or slighted On the other hand, they are taught that the following experiences and feelings are acceptable or even desirable: Obedience and deference toward authority Physical illness or injury that puts the parent in a position of strength and control Uncertainty and self-doubt Liking the same things as the parent Guilt and shame over imperfections or being different Willingness to listen, especially to the parent’s distress and complaints Stereotyped gender roles, typically people-pleasing in girls and toughness in boys If you were an internalizing child with an emotionally immature parent, you were taught many self-defeating things about how to get along in life. Here are some of the biggest ones: Give first consideration to what other people want you to do. Don’t speak up for yourself. Don’t ask for help. Don’t want anything for yourself. Internalizing children of emotionally immature parents learn that “goodness” means being as self-effacing as possible so their parents can get their needs met first. Internalizers come to see their feelings and needs as unimportant at best and shameful at worst. However, once they become conscious of how distorted this mind-set is, things can change rather quickly.

Kestrel came often. One day, when she knew from Sarsine that Arin had returned home but she had not yet seen him, she went to the suite. She touched one of his violins, reaching furtively to pluck the highest string of the largest instrument. The sound was sour. The violin was ruined--no doubt all of them were. That is what happens when an instrument is left strung and uncased for ten years. A floorboard creaked somewhere in one of the outer chambers. Arin. He entered the room, and she realized that she had expected him. Why else had she come here so frequently, almost every day, if she hadn’t hoped that someone would notice and tell him to find her there? But even though she admitted to wanting to be here with him in his old rooms, she hadn’t imagined it would be like this. With her caught touching his things. Her gaze dropped. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “It’s all right,” he said. “I don’t mind.” He lifted the violin off its nails and set it in her hands. It was light, but Kestrel’s arms lowered as if the violin’s hollowness were terribly heavy. She cleared her throat. “Do you still play?” He shook his head. “I’ve mostly forgotten how. I wasn’t good at it anyway. I loved to sing. Before the war, I worried that gift would leave me, the way it often does with boys. We grow, we change, our voices break. It doesn’t matter how well you sing when you’re nine years old, you know. Not when you’re a boy. When the change comes you just have to hope for the best…that your voice settles into something you can love again. My voice broke two years after the invasion. Gods, how I squeaked. And when my voice finally settled, it seemed like a cruel joke. It was too good. I hardly knew what to do with it. I felt so grateful to have this gift…and so angry, for it to mean so little. And now…” He shrugged, a self-deprecating gesture. “Well, I know I’m rusty.” “No,” Kestrel said. “You’re not. Your voice is beautiful.” The silence after that was soft. Her fingers curled around the violin. She wanted to ask Arin a question yet couldn’t bear to do it, couldn’t say that she didn’t understand what had happened to him the night of the invasion. It didn’t make sense. The death of his family was what her father would call a “waste of resources.” The Valorian force had had no pity for the Herrani military, but it had tried to minimize civilian casualties. You can’t make a dead body work. “What is it, Kestrel?” She shook her head. She set the violin back on the wall. “Ask me.” She remembered standing outside the governor’s palace and refusing to hear his story, and was ashamed once more. “You can ask me anything,” he said. Each question seemed the wrong one. Finally, she said, “How did you survive the invasion?” He didn’t speak at first. Then he said, “My parents and sister fought. I didn’t.” Words were useless, pitifully useless--criminal, even, in how they could not account for Arin’s grief, and could not excuse how her people had lived on the ruin of his. Yet again Kestrel said, “I’m sorry.” “It’s not your fault.” It felt as if it was. Arin led the way out of his old suite. When they came to the last room, the greeting room, he paused before the outermost door. It was the slightest of hesitations, no longer than if the second hand of a clock stayed a beat longer on its mark than it should. But in that fraction of time, Kestrel understood that the last door was not paler than the others because it had been made from a different wood. It was newer. Kestrel took Arin’s battered hand in hers, the rough heat of it, the fingernails still ringed with carbon from the smith’s coal fire. His skin was raw-looking: scrubbed clean and scrubbed often. But the black grime was too ingrained. She twined her fingers with his. Kestrel and Arin walked together through the passageway and the ghost of its old door, which her people had smashed through ten years before.

Romans 1: 8 First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world. 9 For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers; 10 Making request, if by any means now at length I might have a prosperous journey by the will of God to come unto you. 11 For I long to see you, that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift, to the end ye may be established; 12 That is, that I may be comforted together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me. 13 Now I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that oftentimes I purposed to come unto you, (but was let hitherto,) that I might have some fruit among you also, even as among other Gentiles. 14 I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise. 15 So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also. 16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. 17 For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith. 18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; 19 Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. 20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: 21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, 23 And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. 24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: 25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. 26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: 27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. 28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; 29 Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, 30 Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 31 Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: 32 Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are

Some may argue that we shouldn't shelter our children. We should let them see and experience the sins that are all around us. By keeping the children unaware, they say, we are preventing the development of their defenses. I disagreed. We have our whole lives to experience the ugliness, our whole lives to grapple with society's misplaced priorities. Trying to give a child a childhood was nothing to be ashamed of.

Never be ashamed of who you are, that's you're parent's job.

Never be ashamed of who you are, that's your parent's job.

Seventy-five percent of those who responded to our “Parents Who Cheat” survey reported that they felt betrayed by the parent who cheated. Sixty-two percent felt ashamed. Eighty percent felt that their attitude toward love and relationships was influenced by their parent having cheated, and 70 percent said that their ability to trust others had been affected. Eighty-three percent stated that they feel people regularly lie. And yet, 86 percent reported that they still believe in monogamy!

Up until now, I still think of that boy. I still hear the words of his dad echoing in my head as I write this, and now, I’m asking myself, “Why did I fail to follow the path the parent was directing his ward?” The answer makes me very ashamed: “I didn’t know the advice could as well be applicable to me.

I will remove both the prophets and the spirit of impurity from the land. 3 And if anyone still prophesies, their father and mother, to whom they were born, will say to them, ‘You must die, because you have told lies in the Lord’s name.’ Then their own parents will stab the one who prophesies. 4 “On that day every prophet will be ashamed of their prophetic vision. They will not put on a prophet’s garment of hair in order to deceive. 5 Each will say, ‘I am not a prophet. I am a farmer; the land has been my livelihood since my youth.

Would you rather set up our child for war from the instant it’s born? If the serpiente reject our child for their throne, then you still have Salem as your heir. If my people reject it, there will be no Tuuli Thea after me.” I stepped back from her, horror seeping into my blood. My gaze flickered to the others in the room. Ailbhe’s pale blue eyes would not meet mine. Rei’s did, but then he looked away. Valene was watching Danica, her expression unreadable. My mate was the only one who would meet my gaze, her golden eyes pained. “Out,” I said, speaking to our audience. They looked at one another, hesitating. Valene first deferred, followed by Rei. Ailbhe lingered a moment longer, and I was not sure whether he did from guilt or compassion. Then we were alone, and I took Danica’s hands. “Danica, do you know what you are asking of me? Giving up my child to the Keep, to be raised by strangers, to sleep in lonely silence, to be taught to be ashamed of what she feels and what she is…and to be betrothed before she can even speak, before she can possibly understand love.” Danica closed her eyes for a moment, taking a breath. “I will never have a mate but you. I love you. And yes, I will have an heir. But you are talking about taking away my child.” “What else can we do?” she returned. “Zane, I was raised in the Keep; it is not as horrible as you think. And you would still see her--” She broke off, because she knew as well as I that the heir to the Tuuli Thea saw her parents only in formal situations. She shook her head. “Please…Zane, is there another way? Anything else that will keep our firstborn child from coming into the world only to see her land ripped apart by war?” Silence. “It will be months before the child is born,” I whispered, pleading not only with Danica, but with whatever powers might be. “We don’t have to make this decision, not yet.” Danica nodded, but still she said, “One queen cannot rule two worlds, even if she is of both.

Developing the courage to think negatively allows us to look at ourselves as we really are. There is a remarkable consistency in people’s coping styles across the many diseases we have considered: the repression of anger, the denial of vulnerability, the “compensatory hyperindependence.” No one chooses these traits deliberately or develops them consciously. Negative thinking helps us to understand just what the conditions were in our lives and how these traits were shaped by our perceptions of our environment. Emotionally draining family relationships have been identified as risk factors in virtually every category of major illness, from degenerative neurological conditions to cancer and autoimmune disease. The purpose is not to blame parents or previous generations or spouses but to enable us to discard beliefs that have proved dangerous to our health. “The power of negative thinking” requires the removal of rose-coloured glasses. Not blame of others but owning responsibility for one’s relationships is the key. It is no small matter to ask people with newly diagnosed illness to begin to examine their relationships as a way of understanding their disease. For people unused to expressing their feelings and unaccustomed to recognizing their emotional needs, it is extemely challenging to find the confidence and the words to approach their loved ones both compassionately and assertively. The difficulty is all the greater at the point when they have become more vulnerable and more dependent than ever on others for support. There is no easy answer to this dilemma but leaving it unresolved will continue to create ongoing sources of stress that will, in turn, generate more illness. No matter what the patient may attempt to do for himself, the psychological load he carries cannot be eased without a clear-headed, compassionate appraisal of the most important relationships in his life. “Most of our tensions and frustrations stem from compulsive needs to act the role of someone we are not,” wrote Hans Selye. The power of negative thinking requires the strength to accept that we are not as strong as we would like to believe. Our insistently strong self-image was generated to hide a weakness — the relative weakness of the child. Our fragility is nothing to be ashamed of. A person can be strong and still need help, can be powerful in some areas of life and helpless and confused in others. We cannot do all that we thought we could. As many people with illness realize, sometimes too late, the attempt to live up to a self-image of strength and invulnerability generated stress and disrupted their internal harmony.

While it is beneficial for a child to feel bad when anticipating a loss of connection with those who are devoted to him and his well-being and development, it is crucially important for parents to understand that it is unwise to ever exploit this conscience. We must never intentionally make a child feel bad, guilty, or ashamed in order to get him to be good. Abusing the attachment conscience evokes deep insecurities in the child and may induce him to shut it right down for fear of being hurt. The consequences are not worth any short-term gains in behavioral goals. If we find ourselves shocked by the behavioral changes that come in the wake of peer orientation, it is because what is acceptable to peers is vastly different from what is acceptable to parents. Likewise, what alienates peers is a far cry from what alienates parents. The attachment conscience is serving a new master. When a child tries to find favor with peers instead of parents, the motivation to be good for the parents drops significantly. If the values of the peers differ from those of the parents, the child's behavior will also change accordingly. This change in behavior reveals that the values of the parents had never been truly internalized, genuinely made the child's own. They functioned mostly as instruments of finding favor. Children do not internalize values — make them their own — until adolescence. Thus the changes in a peer-oriented child's behavior do not mean that his values have changed, only that the direction of his attachment instinct has altered course. Parental values such as studying, working toward a goal, the pursuit of excellence, respect for society, the realization of potential, the development of talent, the pursuit of a passion, the appreciation of culture are often replaced with peer values that are much more immediate and short term. Appearance, entertainment, peer loyalty, spending time together, fitting into the subculture, and getting along with each other will be prized above education and the realization of personal potential. Parents often find themselves arguing about values, not realizing that for their peer-oriented children values are nothing more than the standards that they, the children, must meet in order to gain the acceptance of the peer group. So it happens that we lose our influence just at the time in our children's lives when it is most appropriate and necessary for us to articulate our values to them and to encourage the internalization of what we believe in. The nurturing of values takes time and discourse. Peer orientation robs parents of that opportunity. In this way peer orientation arrests moral development.

I betrayed her.” She touched her tarnished belt buckle. “Margaret said she never wanted to see me again. She and I shared the same social circle, and we both adored the Library. But for her, it was a labor of love—she’d volunteered selflessly, giving without getting a centime in return.” “How could you leave?” “If I’d stayed, she would have lost everything, most especially the place she called home. I loved the Library, but I loved Margaret more. Too ashamed to tell friends and family the truth, too afraid of the consequences, I married Buck and left France without saying farewell. I’ve never seen my brother’s grave and hope my parents were able to claim his body.” She took a deep breath. “I ran. And until you, I’ve never told anyone.

Regardless of your individual profile, one thing is true across the board: ADHD can be very frustrating. It damages careers, disrupts relationships, makes parenting harder, and can make people feel ashamed. The many challenges this condition presents can truly bring people to tears. The good news is that ADHD can be managed—and managed pretty darn well, at that.

Nick, stop talking and listen to me. Iʻve found something I actually want to do, not something other people think I will be good at. I like playing sports, I like my new friends, and I like trivia. You and I maybe been friends since we were kids, but you donʻt know me at all. Youʻre being incredibly rude and itʻs time for you to leave. Please go back to New York and break the news to my parents that I really am, one hundred percent, in every way, lost to science." She pushed her chair back, worried she was about to burst into tears, ashamed of not being able to control herself. "You can also tell them Iʻm very happy, not that any of you really care about that." She stood up and smiled tightly at her landlady. "Maggie, thanks for a lovely dinner. Madeleine, Iʻd like to say it was nice to meet you, but youʻre kind of a bitch. Nina, thanks for the T-shirt." She took it from Nina as she passed her. "Iʻll call you tomorrow." Then she left the room, walked to her bedroom, and shut the door. After a second of silence, both dogs got up and followed her.

I’m guessing. I think your parents know a thing or two about being ashamed and ostracized. That’s why they were the only people who didn’t disappear from my life. If it weren’t for them, I’d probably be dead in a ditch somewhere, rotting for weeks before some dog walker accidentally found me.

Modern culture treats sex outside of marriagea as being no big deal. It’s considered completely normal and not something to be ashamed of; if anything, people brag about it and argue that it’s a positive good. It’s described as being a “casual” activity; something you can do with “no strings attached.” You can supposedly have meaningless “hookups,” “one-night stands,” or text your “friends with benefits” to set up a “booty call,” which is probably the most unromantic thing I can even think of. This idea that sex outside of marriage is OK is probably the biggest lie we are told, and the biggest source of our problems—not just in dating, but in all of life. I know that is a bold statement, but consider the evidence: after the so-called “sexual revolution” of the 1960s, divorce rates doubled, followed by an ongoing decline in marriage rates.1 Currently, 40 percent of children in the United States are born out of wedlock, without a stable, married, two-parent family; in the 1960s, at the start of the sexual revolution, that number was just 7 percent.2 Besides those births, there have been 60 million US children killed before birth via abortion since 1973.3 Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), which would be almost nonexistent if all people were monogamous,b are instead at record highs,4 with something like 20 million new infections in the country each year.5 Pornography use has become so common that it’s just kind of assumed for men but is also regularly consumed by at least a third of all women.6 And then you have all the ways people use and abuse sex as a way to use and abuse other people through either harassment or assault, which is a huge problem: it’s estimated that one in five women are raped at some point in their lives,7 while the majority are either harassed or assaulted in some form.8 Go beyond the statistics and think about how all these things would affect the actual people involved, and all the various costs associated with each one. Add it all up, and the impact both on society and on individual relationships is ridiculously massive.

Best-selling how-to-save-Ophelia books aside, was it even possible for any parent of a daughter in the early 1990s to do much but watch from the boat as an entire generation of girls sank beneath the surface? After your trip to the gallery, you and your mom stop at a café for French onion soup. She tries to give you words of encouragement, words to help you navigate what she imagines to be the typically treacherous waters of middle school drama. You can’t bring yourself to tell her the real problem: You aren’t pretty enough. You will never be pretty enough. You can’t tell her because you are ashamed that you have a problem so clearly unfixable, a problem that can’t be solved by working harder.

Establishing boundaries and asserting them works like a muscle. The first few times you get sore, aka you feel immensely guilty for not responding to someone and catering to their needs, but the more you do it, the better you will feel. Start small and reject invitations or requests that take your energy at the given moment. The guilt you have is coming from being ashamed of having needs because that is what your father found suitable.

In Laurus we experience the Christian ideal in all its difficulty. The novel transmits knowledge by the experience of reading it, such that one cannot say Laurus is “about” any certain plotline or reduce the novelistic truth to a sound bite. Instead, reading the novel introduces you to holiness; it becomes palpable in the life of this fictional character. His extreme sanctity increases our desire for holiness. The story is set in fifteenth-century Russia, where the realities of sin and faith permeate all of life. Because the plague has killed both of his parents, our protagonist Arseny is raised by his grandfather Christofer, an elderly and devout healer who resides beside a graveyard so that it will be easy to carry his dead body a short distance for burial. Christofer trains Arseny in the art of healing. When Christofer dies, Arseny takes over as the medicine man for his village, Rukina Quarter. He falls in love with an abandoned woman Ustina, and she becomes pregnant. Ashamed of their unholy union, Arseny refuses to allow her to go to confession or to have a midwife at her birth, and thus she dies without forgiveness of her sins, and the baby dies as well. Arseny thereafter surrenders his life for the one he feels that he robbed from her, traveling the country to heal others, risking his life during the plague, spending time as a holy fool, pilgrimaging to Jerusalem, and finally dying back in Rukina Quarter as a different man than the one who left. Some might even say a saint.

Her smile was brittle. "Well, I know Kieran's achieving something if someone like you is willing to be in a relationship with him." "Someone like me?" She gestured to me from head to toe. "Respectable. Elegantly dressed, if a little flamboyant with color. Beautiful manners, well-spoken. Clearly you listened to your parents when they told you how to behave." I choked back a snort at the thought of my biological father being Mr. Manners. The sheer audacity of it. "Kieran probably hasn't told you about all the times we had to get him out of trouble," she continued. I blinked, confused. "No." She ticked off on her fingers as she spoke. "He skipped classes, he stole money out of my wallet, he crashed our cars more than once. Not to mention the drinking, my God. He couldn't hold his liquor at all. We were so ashamed." I held back my eye roll. It was like having a conversation with a steamroller. As she continued to list Kieran's crimes, I realized that she relished this monologue, all the ways he'd done them wrong. Like she never wanted him to grow up because then she'd have to stop being a martyr. "But anyway, that's all in the past. Finally, he's become who we always wanted him to be, and we can hold our heads up." The thought of being a source of pride to these snobby, plastic people made me want to drink ten flutes of prosecco, climb onto their dining room table, and do Amy Winehouse karaoke, Diane's advice about polish and presentation be damned. But all I needed to shock them was the truth. "I haven't seen my father in over twenty years," I began. "As far as I know he's still the lead singer of the second-best hair metal band in Spokane. My mother's salary was for keeping herself in clothes and boyfriends. Sometimes I had to break into my piggy bank so that I could by Cup O' Noodles at 7-Eleven for my brother and me. I've made a good life in spite of my parents, not because of them. It's one of the reasons I fell in love with your son. I knew he was a survivor, too. But thank you for the compliments. Now, if you'll excuse me.

Maybe you don’ wanna know what you come from, but not knowin’ don’ make it so. You ashamed of your past, of me and your pa.” Mama’s words hit Jordan hard in the belly because they were true. She did her best to hide it, but she was embarrassed by her parents. They didn’t understand that the world had changed; they were stuck in backward thinking, still concerned about the rights of Negro men when that had already been earned. Jordan was going to be a part of moving the nation forward, on behalf of all women.

Malkin concluded with this advice for parents:         Be “prudes.” Be “rude.” Be “shrill.” And never, ever feel ashamed for asking out loud, “Have you no shame?”[30]

Officer Gurney ran a strip of yellow tape around the back area of the café, roping it off so no one could disturb the site. Then he scanned the crowd. His eyes lit on a comfortably plump woman wearing a red down jacket that made her look even plumper. She had a short brownish-blond ponytail that stuck out through a hole in her red baseball hat. “Brenda,” said Officer Gurney. “What do you think?” Grover was in danger of being late for school by this time. He’d already been late twice this month. If he was late again, he might get a note sent home to his parents. But he had to risk it. This was too interesting to miss. The woman stepped forward. Grover knew her, of course; everyone did. Mrs. Brenda Beeson was the one who had figured out the Prophet’s mumbled words and explained what they meant. She and her committee—the Reverend Loomis, Mayor Orville Milton, Police Chief Ralph Gurney, and a few others—were the most important people in the town. Officer Gurney raised the yellow tape so Mrs. Beeson could duck under it. She stood before the window a long time, her back to the crowd, while everyone waited to see what she would say. Clouds sailed slowly across the sun, turning everything dark and light and dark again. To Grover, it seemed like ages they all stood there, holding their breath. He resigned himself to being late for school and started thinking up creative excuses. The front door of his house had stuck and he couldn’t get it open? His father needed him to help fish drowned rats out of flooded basements? His knee had popped out of joint and stayed out for half an hour? Finally Mrs. Beeson turned to face them. “Well, it just goes to show,” she said. “We never used to have people breaking windows and stealing things. For all our hard work, we’ve still got bad eggs among us.” She gave an exasperated sigh, and her breath made a puff of fog in the chilly air. “If this is someone’s idea of fun, that person should be very, very ashamed of himself. This is no time for wild, stupid behavior.” “It’s probably kids,” said a man standing near Grover. Why did people always blame kids for things like this? As far as Grover could tell, grown-ups caused a lot more trouble in the world than kids. “On the other hand,” said Mrs. Beeson, “it could be a threat, or a warning. We’ve heard the reports about someone wandering around in the hills.” She glanced back at the bloody rag hanging in the window. “It might even be a message of some sort. It looks to me like that stain could be a letter, maybe an S, or an R.” Grover squinted at the stain on the cloth. To him it looked more like an A, or maybe even just a random blotch. “It might be a B,” said someone standing near him. “Or an H,” said someone else. Mrs. Beeson nodded. “Could be,” she said. “The S could stand for sin. Or if it’s an R it could stand for ruin. If you’ll let me have that piece of cloth, Ralph, I’ll show it to Althea and see if she has anything to say about it.” Just then Wayne Hollister happened to pass by, saw the crowd, and chimed in about what he’d seen in the night. His story frightened people even more than the blood and the broken glass. All around him, Grover heard them murmuring: Someone’s out there. He’s given us a warning. What does he mean to do? He’s trying to scare us. One woman began to cry. Hoyt McCoy, as usual, said that Brenda Beeson should not pronounce upon things until she was in full possession of the facts, which she was not, and that to him the

It must be admitted that sexual intercourse in marriage is not sinful, provided the intention is to beget offspring. Yet even in marriage a virtuous man will wish that he could manage without lust. Even in marriage, as the desire for privacy shows, people are ashamed of sexual intercourse, because 'this lawful act of nature is (from our first parents) accompanied with our penal shame'. The cynics thought that one should be without shame, and Diogenes would have none of it, wishing to be in all things like a dog; yet even he, after one attempt, abandoned, in practice, this extreme of shamelessness. What is shameful about lust is its independence of the will. Adam and Eve, before the fall, could have had sexual intercourse without lust, though in fact they did not. Handicraftsmen, in the pursuit of their trade, move their hands without lust; similarly Adam, if only he had kept away from the apple-tree, could have performed the business of sex without the emotions that it now demands. The sexual members, like the rest of the body, would have obeyed the will. The need of lust in sexual intercourse is a punishment for Adam's sin, but for which sex might have been divorced from pleasure. Omitting some physiological details which the translator has very properly left in the decent obscurity of the original Latin, the above is St Augustine's theory as regards sex. It is evident from the above that what makes the ascetic dislike sex is its independence of the will. Virtue, it is held, demands a complete control of the will over the body, but such control does not suffice to make the sexual act possible. The sexual act, therefore, seems inconsistent with a perfectly virtuous life.

Spanking and Shouting Are Counterproductive The principles outlined in this book represent what we as parents should do when we’re confronted with our children’s misbehavior. What we often do, however, is shout at or spank our children, especially if we’re tired or distracted or frustrated by their failure to obey us. Shouting and spanking are quite natural responses to misbehavior—especially continued misbehavior—but they’re also quite counterproductive. They never teach appropriate behavior, which is the number one task of parenting. In fact, they teach just the opposite: • How to shout • How to hit • How to be sneaky • How to fear • How to be ashamed • How to take anger out on others All degrees of shouting and spanking—light, moderate, occasional, rarely, always—give children the wrong kind of attention. If it’s the only kind they’re given, they may misbehave just to get noticed. Also, parents don’t always know if spanking works because they don’t actually observe its effect on a child’s behavior over time. Spanking as punishment simply drives bad behavior underground: It stops the behavior from happening in front of parents, but it doesn’t stop it altogether. In fact, children become experts at not getting caught. Parents may even say, “Don’t let me catch you doing that again!

soon he’ll reach for her because she’s beautiful, and she’s his wife. If she cringes away from him because you’ve convinced her he isn’t good enough for her, how will that make him feel? If she submits to him out of obligation, how will that make her feel? What if she approaches him and later is ashamed of wanting her own husband because he isn’t good enough for her? It’ll be hard for a marriage to last under those conditions. This isn’t what you want for Susan. Forgive him. Accept him. You’ll be doing your daughter a favor.

Passing their toilet training is the very last thing that some adults did that has made their parents proud of them.

Kahnawake August 1704 Temperature 75 degrees “It’s me! Mercy Carter! Oh, Mr. Williams! Do you have news?” She flung herself on top of him. Oh, his beautiful beard! The beard of a real father, not a pretend Indian father or a French church father. “My brothers,” she begged. “John and Sam and Benny. Have you seen them? Have you heard anything about them? Do you know what happened to the little ones? Daniel? Have you found Daniel?” Mercy had forgotten that she had taken off her tunic to go swimming. That Joseph did not even have on his breechclout. That Mercy wore earrings and Joseph had been tattooed on his upper arms. That they stank of bear. Mr. Williams did not recognize Joseph, and Mercy he knew only by the color of her hair. He was stupefied by the two naked slimy children trying to hug him. In ore horror than even Ruth would have mustered, he whispered, “Your parents would be weeping. What have the savages done to you? You are animals.” Despair and shock mottled Mr. Williams’s face. Mercy stumbled back from him. Her bear grease stained his clothing. “Mercy,” he said, turning away from her, “go cover yourself.” Shame covered her first. Red patches flamed on her cheeks. She ran back to the swimmers, fighting sobs. She was aware of her bare feet, hard as leather from no shoes. Savage feet. Dear Lord in Heaven, thought Mercy, Ruth is right. I have committed terrible sins. My parents would be weeping. She did not look at Snow Walker but yanked on the deerskin tunic. She had tanned the hide herself, and she and Nistenha had painted the rows of turtles around the neckline and Nistenha had tied tiny tinkling French bells into the fringe. But it was still just animal skin. To be wearing hides in front of Mr. Williams was not much better than being naked. Snow Walker burst out of the water. “The white man? Was he cruel? I will call Tannhahorens.” No! Tannhahorens would not let her speak to Mr. Williams. She would never find out about her brothers; never redeem herself in the minister’s eyes. Mercy calmed down with the discipline of living among Indians. Running had shown weakness. “Thank you, Snow Walker,” she said, striving to be gracious, “but he merely wanted me to be clothed like an English girl. There is no need to call Tannhahorens.” She walked back. On the jetty, Joseph stood with his eyes fixed on the river instead of on his minister. He had not fled like Mercy to cover himself. He was standing his ground. “They aren’t savages, Mr. Williams. And they aren’t just Indians. Those children over there are Abenaki, the boy fishing by the rocks is Pennacook, and my own family is Kahnawake Mohawk.” Tears sprang into Mr. Williams’s eyes. “What do you mean--your family?” he said. “Joseph, you do not have a family in this terrible place. You have a master. Do not confuse savages who happen to give you food with family.” Joseph’s face hardened. “They are my family. My father is Great Sky. My mother--” The minister lost his temper. “Your father is Martin Kellogg,” he shouted, “with whom I just dined in Montreal. You refer to some savage as your father? I am ashamed of you.” Under his tan, Joseph paled and his Indian calm left him. He was trembling. “My--my father? Alive? You saw him?” “Your father is a field hand for a French family in Montreal. He works hard, Joseph. He has no choice. But you have choices. Have you chosen to abandon your father?” Joseph swallowed and wet his lips. “No.” He could barely get the syllable out. Don’t cry, prayed Mercy. Be an eagle. She fixed her eyes upon him, giving him all her strength, but Mr. Williams continued to destroy whatever strength the thirteen-year-old possessed. “Your father prays for the day you and he will be ransomed, Joseph. All he thinks of is the moment he can gather his beloved family back under his own roof. Is that not also your prayer, Joseph?

Brianna was his blood, and his flesh as well. An unspoken promise kept to his own parents; his gift to Claire, and hers to him. Not for the first time, he found himself wondering about Frank Randall. And what had Randall thought, holding the child of another man—and a man he had no cause to love? Perhaps Randall had been the better man, come to that—to harbor a child for her mother’s sake, and not his own; to search her face with joy only in its beauty, and not because he saw himself reflected there. He felt vaguely ashamed, and struck down with greater force to exorcise the feeling. His

In some ways, the neighborhood was the poster child for bad zoning. There were shiny glass-and-steel condominiums across from corrugated and I-beam parking garages. Single-family homes perched alongside recycling plants and foundries. A new multistory school turned its proud granite façade away from its neighbor, a dilapidated relic of a car repair shop, like an ungrateful child ashamed of an ailing parent.

Adam's sin would have brought all mankind to eternal death (i.e. damnation), but that God's grace has freed many from it. Sin came from the soul, not from the flesh. Platonists and Manichæans both err in ascribing sin to the nature of the flesh, though Platonists are not so bad as Manichæans. The punishment of all mankind for Adam's sin was just; for, as a result of this sin, man, that might have been spiritual in body, became carnal in mind.10 This leads to a long and minute discussion of sexual lust, to which we are subject as part of our punishment for Adam's sin. This discussion is very important as revealing the psychology of asceticism; we must therefore go into it, although the Saint confesses that the theme is immodest. The theory advanced is as follows. It must be admitted that sexual intercourse in marriage is not sinful, provided the intention is to beget offspring. Yet even in marriage a virtuous man will wish that he could manage without lust. Even in marriage, as the desire for privacy shows, people are ashamed of sexual intercourse, because 'this lawful act of nature is (from our first parents) accompanied with our penal shame'. The cynics thought that one should be without shame, and Diogenes would have none of it, wishing to be in all things like a dog; yet even he, after one attempt, abandoned, in practice, this extreme of shamelessness. What is shameful about lust is its independence of the will. Adam and Eve, before the fall, could have had sexual intercourse without lust, though in fact they did not. Handicraftsmen, in the pursuit of their trade, move their hands without lust; similarly Adam, if only he had kept away from the apple-tree, could have performed the business of sex without the emotions that it now demands. The sexual members, like the rest of the body, would have obeyed the will. The need of lust in sexual intercourse is a punishment for Adam's sin, but for which sex might have been divorced from pleasure. Omitting some physiological details which the translator has very properly left in the decent obscurity of the original Latin, the above is St Augustine's theory as regards sex. It is evident from the above that what makes the ascetic dislike sex is its independence of the will. Virtue, it is held, demands a complete control of the will over the body, but such control does not suffice to make the sexual act possible. The sexual act, therefore, seems inconsistent with a perfectly virtuous life.

Shouting and spanking are quite natural responses to misbehavior—especially continued misbehavior—but they’re also quite counterproductive. They never teach appropriate behavior, which is the number one task of parenting. In fact, they teach just the opposite: • How to shout • How to hit • How to be sneaky • How to fear • How to be ashamed • How to take anger out on others

But sometimes parents get confused about boys. Why do parents hesitate to discipline boys? Or why do they make the mistake of disciplining them too harshly? They do it because they are shocked, ashamed, or confused—shocked because they cannot believe that their loving baby boy is suddenly so oppositional, ashamed because they feel inadequate and afraid that they really are raising a male monster, and confused because they cannot figure out how much “aggressive” behavior is tolerable in a boy. The last point is a fascinating and difficult one. How much activity and aggression should parents tolerate in a boy? And how can you tell the difference between activity and aggression?

Parents: don't be ashamed if your child wants to be a Disneyland Custodian. They know more than most cast members at the park, and get plenty of exercise. It is a good way to learn to talk with people, too, from all over the world. I think one can get many things out of Custodial as one applies oneself and works hard.

We soon got the idea that ‘Italian’ meant something inferior, and a barrier was erected between children of Italian origin and their parents. This was the accepted process of Americanization,” Covello reflected in his memoir The Heart Is the Teacher. “We were becoming Americans by learning how to be ashamed of our parents.