A Conversation With My Mum: Healing From Shame

I hope you are doing well in the continuing difficult times.

I was in Spain last week and thinking about how shame lives within relationships. It is often the very fabric of how we relate to others and ourselves and the two are so interlinked.

I can’t always share the stories of those I work with as I don’t always have permission so as I sat on my balcony at my mums I had an idea.

“Mum, would you be open to recording a conversation about how our relationship has shifted over the last 10 years since I have been working on my shame?” I asked.

She boiled the kettle and asked, “What would I have to say?”

“Anything that is your experience or feels true to you, no performance, let's just press record, but have a think about these questions: How has our relationship shifted. How is that day-to-day different, and how do you perceive me in the world now?”

So we did it.

In this 12-minute-ish conversation, I cry (I didn't expect to). A phone goes off in the background, and Mum says a couple of things I didn't expect. It was healing.

In the conversation, I spoke about how I held anger towards her for many years on the healing path, and I felt quite moved at that point because I could remember how painful that was for me and how it hung in our relationship and in my nervous system. It turned back into me as shame, “I shouldn’t feel this way about my Mum”.

And I want to say to you, before you listen, that this is how our relationship shifted. It will not look like this for everyone, but it is important to deshame the anger we may feel towards loved ones at times, whatever the outcome, it is painful - that I know to be a relative truth for many.

So here it is. A bit raw. I hope it is healing for you in some way to hear someone else's story.

After listening to the conversation you’ll hear Mum talk about how she has a ‘Mother knows best’ attitude. I want to add that this isn’t some personality defect, this is also borne of shame. Something I have written about previously, with the full permission of my Mum, is the loss of her little girl before me, Sarah.

Sarah was born with acute spina bifida and lived only 24 hours. What my Mum experienced after was intense grief and shame at this loss. Loss I can only imagine. Until I worked with my shame I couldn’t see how the shame of the loss of her first child, compounded by shame from the medical teams at the time created this intense friction between us.

But I see now that ‘mother knows best’ was borne of shame and that manifested as intense protection and fear.

She was told how it was because she was a ‘working class mother’ that Sarah had this condition which is rubbish. And then also shamed by the Catholic Priest that told her it was her fault for not being married in a church that this happened. 

All of this caused the ‘mother knows best’ but I can see now how this was a blend of personal and systemic shame. And this conversation we have had years ago has been part of our story healing together.

All made possible by the things I will share in my up and coming course Authentic Power Within.

My Mum did say after that “One thing, I thought I wanted to say is that this conversation would not have been even conceivable before”, and I wholeheartedly agree.

So thanks, Mum you are a wonder.

And thanks for listening dear one, feel free to reply if anything comes up for you and if you wish to join me on the journey, Authentic Power Within - Healing from Shame.

Or you are a practitioner and want to be more skilled at working with this with others, please join us for the practitioner track.

Working with shame is both urgent and important work right now.

There are limited spaces, so email me any questions and I can’t wait to talk with you.‌ Or you can book a call with me to chat more, we start in 9 days.