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22. Shame Doesn’t Like Daylight — 7 Comments

  1. My mother was shamed because her own mother had been born illegitimate & raised by her grandmother to cover up the mistake. Then my grandmother had to get married because she got pregnant; ditto my mother but her marriage failed so she returned to live with her mother with her daughter. An older half brother took advantage of her there & she had two more children. Finally she married my father after giving up her son for adoption but passing all her children off as by the first husband. When I was born 5 years later my father didn’t want anymore children & my mother wanted a boy to be named Geoffrey. After years of shaming I can attest to its power to destroy a family home & marriage. I finally am healing from all these secrets & now have my voice again. Silenced children can only perpetuate family shame!

  2. There is community shame in Canada about the treatment of Indigenous peoples and rightly so, especially the residential schools that children were forced to attend; having their hair cut, being punished for speaking their languages, having to dress in European outfits, and more. Sexual abuse was actively going on underground as the world now knows. There was an official apology from the federal gov’t years ago but I thought it was really fake and lame. I felt ashamed of the loser apology.

    There is also shame on the other side of the coin! There are Native people who liked the schools. A woman named Rose where I live spoke out about how wonderful the Sisters were, no abuse, loved chemistry. There was a boy on the other side of the school, she said, who really liked the welding shop. She was shut down and silenced right away because people thought she must be either lying or a traitor out to endanger the claim of abuse, that the schools had to be 100% evil for 100% of the children in order to be valid and believed by white people. My heart broke for the abused children and I still feel ashamed. I also believed and had empathy for Rose, I often wondered what happened to her after her public shaming.

    • Dear Mary,
      Thank you for telling this. And for not looking away, but taking in and going through the shame. I strongly believe it will help the entire country heal. Many countries have done aweful things to indigenous people. The healing is, fortunately, getting stronger. And so is the redemption that is coming for them.
      Greetings, Mireille

  3. Excellent information!!
    With removing shame we should use all 9 steps?
    Thanks
    Adam

  4. in the indian context i can think of ‘women’ as a community though they are a sub-group of the whole community. especially in a traditional patriarcal society ‘little self worth’ syndrom is passed on to the daughters from mothers. in fact, dauthers are oftern forced, emotionally blackmailed, given a secondary status & are often reminded of the same even if the mother/parents are not out and out cruel. it must be a mechanism in the society to create a submissive serving class; the members of which are supposed to have shame!
    i liked the ‘Erase shame’ paragraph very much. till one is suseptible to be pushed into shame – worthlessness – slavery by the way of being or remaining unaware, the mechanisms/systems in the society powerful and would continue doing exactly that. to be aware on different levels of one’s existance MIR is GOOD!

    • Dear Vidula,
      Yes, and that is exactly why I am so happy that the MIR-Method is picked up by so many women! About 80% of the people that use the MIR-Method is female. Fortunately more men are joining too. May we conquer shame and regain our self-worth!
      Greetings and thank you for your kind words!
      Mireille Mettes

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