That Warning Angel

Healing the shame that binds me — Part I

Before gender ideology detonated Miller family life, I was already stagnating. I didn’t notice how small my life had shrunk until it could fit on the head of a pin. In the morning I was up, making coffee and planning my one-to-four hours of work for the day as a personal trainer in my garage gym—my work commute is twenty-six paces from my back door.

The dozen or so clients I train are my social life. Friends from grade school are no longer. Ditto high school. And the few college friends I kept in touch with—I didn’t see a whole lot of them.

When work was over, there’d be grocery shopping on some days. Dog walks. And naps. Lots of naps.

More and more there’d be tears that not even thirty milligrams of daily Lexapro could staunch—tears of loneliness, despair, regret and longing for a rich, full life that I could lead if only I could find a way out of my bed. My king-sized mattress pulled me to it like a magnet. Tequila and weed followed close behind my percale cocoon. Those I’d indulge in the late afternoon, but sometimes earlier, that third-person concern shimmering just above me like a warning angel on my shoulder.

I’m reading this book, Healing the Shame that Binds You, by John Bradshaw. From the first few paragraphs I knew I’d found one of those books that changes you. I’ve highlighted dozens of passages, each one resonating to the marrow. Every hurt, fury and issue I struggle with radiates from one word, one undoing—shame. It has struck me as deep as all the self-help books I have ever read, combined. How, at 54 years old, even with forays into Brené Brown, Sounds True, Eckhart Tolle and so many more, was it not this clear to me until now?

A childhood marked by abuse, neglect, belittling and betrayal causes a disorder as life-altering as any disease of the body, especially when you are already a highly sensitive creative type. It eats you slowly at first, as you run from it, trying every door to see if it will lead to your salvation. I have traveled many paths in life, always dragging chains of shame behind me. I yearned for stardom, material goods, important careers and desirable men. I have dieted, fucked and drugged, striven and failed many times, reaching highs I prayed would never end, and lows that felt like the fires of eternal damnation.

My biggest successes in life came at times when I’d scraped together enough self-awareness and authentic confidence to allow the riches in. My husband, children, two published novels and my gym are my life’s finest accomplishments.

But life is like an avalanche. It showers rocks and stones at you that are sometimes too unwieldy to grasp, and too numerous to shield against. And you get clobbered.

The trans craze was one of those things. When it undermined the trust I had in Mr. Miller a part of me crumbled. Where once I was resilient to life’s stones, now I was ripe for wounding.

Like many shame-traumatized people, Mr. Miller had become, instead of an equal, a quasi parent for me. Being in a loving relationship with him taught me about love—real love—for the first time. In the beginning it was difficult to witness his family of origin getting along and treating each other kindly and respectfully. We didn’t do that in my house, which was scarred and pocked with emotional landmines, exploding at unexpected times but always reliable.

I didn’t receive abuse from only one parent. From my father I received random rage-filled bursts, sometimes with bare-bottomed spankings, at other times being chased around the house, or a hotel room. My mother, in her own shame, was unable to protect me. If I wasn’t ailing, I bored her, and after their divorce things got worse—chaotic, foreign, isolating.

My much older brother tricked and molested me. My much older sister teased and belittled, blurring all appropriate boundaries along the way. I still remember, from when I was five or so, how her breasts looked—and felt. Another older sister stuck to herself, hidden away in her bedroom with thick textbooks and a ten-speed bike I’d sit on, pretending to cycle away to a land filled with adoring boys who’d rescue me from my tragic fate.

I spent so much time alone when I was small—enough time to dig shit out of my diaper and write on the wall. Enough time to pee on the floor when locked in my room. Enough time to make strange and glorious messes that I was beaten for, which mystified me, since I viewed my creations as offerings—not offenses.

Alone, I fostered an imaginary life where people I worshipped, worshipped me back, and for the tiniest things—the way I crossed my legs, drew ball-point hearts, or tied my sneakers… There was no judgment from others when I was alone—no losing, no humiliation, no terror. But eventually, like all deeply shamed children, alone time became fraught with those very punishments, and they came from within.

Right before I met Mr. Miller I had my first enlightenment experience, senior year of college. After dozens of fucks aimed at securing love and rescue, I got pregnant and wasn’t sure who the father was. I’d had sex with two guys the week of conception. I thought back to when I lost my virginity at thirteen, in Bermuda with a 23 year-old local while on vacation with my father. That night I wore my first bra, a lavender satin little thing.

I thought of my high school years, spotty with so many random hookups, and the shaming I received from classmates, who wrote whore on my locker. That one bitch who brought up my sexual encounters in class to the biology teacher, as I sat stunned and red-faced listening to my exploits being openly discussed. The only detail she left out was my name. But everyone knew.

Until my revelation I’d always felt misunderstood, the poor victim of serial assholes who robbed me of my dignity and virtue. Now though, it struck me that I was the thief robbing myself. No one could value a person who did not value herself. I was a victim, but of my own abuse.

The revelation was so startling that the very scene before me—my college bedroom—blazed with sharpness, color and light like I’d never seen before or since. I was reborn in that moment, whole and human and confident—at total peace and overflowing with joy. Within a month I met my husband.

I thought I was done, arrived. But one experience of enlightenment was not enough to sate me for long. Though I thrived in my relationship, my work life was one fame-and-fortune fantasy after another, and most of my friendships were fraught with drama.

I still find it impossible to make a decent salary. I work so little and wish to work more, make more, but I never seem to get there, to figure it out. Fits, starts and spurts are all I have, with a trail of beginnings with no endings clanging in my wake. I have no empire, no longevity, no continuity. My friendships suffer similar lapses, and it is slowly dawning on me again that the real perpetrator is me. The same equation that solved me enough to meet and marry Mr. Miller beckons now.

And even though these epiphanies mortify me, I know that light can only be found by stumbling through the darkness. So I stumble on.

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