The spite strut stopped working... I found the poison was my medicine.
Now, when I’m hurt there’s a sadness in my eyes that those who really know me can see without words. What a change from the one whose insides never matched their outsides. I’m no longer pretending.
Psssst… Soon doors will open to my year-long program, The Fortress. Get on the waitlist to receive all the information - including waitlist only prices & altar bundle bonuses. ;)
My most recent morning practice has been welcoming my 16-year-old self to my tea ceremony. In the early light I pour myself a cup of pu’erh, say a simple prayer, and sip tea while orienting to what is well, stable and mundane in my home— creating the conditions for wellbeing (a practice I teach in The Fortress). This simple practice, I’ve learned, must come first.
Welcoming my inner teen comes next, mostly because she comes knocking with her hurt, asking to have a seat at the table. I can no longer send her away or ask her to shove down her feelings—I have capacity now for her in a way I never used to. She arrives as I place a hand on my heart and say, “welcome shame, welcome embarrassment, welcome. There is nothing wrong with you. You are not pathetic. You are welcome.”
Instantly I am brought back to that excruciating moment the first week of senior year— sitting in the glass-cage-courtyard alone during lunch (aside from the mumbling boy who was chasing a bee nearby). I’m not even sure he realized I was there.
My best friends since childhood sat on the other side of the window, laughing. Or at least that’s how I remember it. We all knew they were better than me, knew something I didn’t know, moved in harmony together with inside jokes and banter in a way I never could.
No one ever gave me a reason, but that week they pretended I didn’t exist. I was silently shunned - shamefully alone. I’d walk the hallways and say hi, only to be ignored. It was the first week of senior year, and oddly I was only going to attend this school for a week, as I was transferring to a nearby school the following Monday. The previous year my dance coach was fired for bullying students— one of them being me. It’s solidified my choice to change schools senior year. That, along with my best friend moving states & a breakup that catalyzed the season of loneliness I was initiated into.
This group of friends who had been my lifeline when home was too much suddenly wouldn’t allow me to sit with them at lunch, wouldn’t respond to my text messages, wouldn’t tell me why.
It was probably because of something I said, some kind of undiagnosed autistic moment of misunderstanding, some kind of annoying thing I did, that I wasn’t fun or cool. I was earnest & honest at the wrong moments. I felt too scared to steal or drink or break the rules— I’m still not 100% sure why, but it was probably some combination of all of it.
What I do know is I stopped existing to them— they realized I wasn’t one of them, very suddenly.
My 16-year-old body experienced this as confusion coupled with the deepest shame. I collapsed inside while acting fine, cheerful, even. I didn’t want them to see I was hurting, so I acted like it didn’t bother me in the slightest.
I was frozen and pleasant, smiling big with excruciating pain just under the surface. Shame lacquering it all in place— don’t let them see the hurt. Swallow it. Don’t let them win.
For months I continued to show up at football games dressed in my best to prove their rejection couldn’t touch me.
(A friend recently told me when you do the shame & spite strut, that actually everyone knows. How disappointing).
This was a practice I was well-versed in at home but had not mastered in public yet.
Being ignored was chillingly familiar.
When I did something my parents didn’t like, they couldn’t even look at me. Once I tracked how long my stepdad ignored me— two weeks. Two weeks of the silent treatment, of being in the kitchen together like I was invisible, and then boom he’d be over it! After days or weeks of not existing, his mood would change and he would start joking with me like nothing had happened. I went along with it, unhurt & unfazed like always.
I now know had I not moved that fall, I would not have gone to college, I would not be writing you now.
Upon moving I learned I was academically behind… by a lot. My AP Brit Lit teacher gave me a D on a paper about my own life. “Poor spelling, poor sentence structure, unable to differentiate between there, their and they’re. Needs a lot of work.” Reflecting now, he saw me as a troubled child and tutored me. I didn’t perceive it as charity in the moment, I just thought it was nice to get extra care from a kind adult. He took me in and got me ready for college, a place my parents said brainwashed kids into liberals.
All of these things are true: moving to a new school saved me, prepared me for a life apart from my enmeshed family, built an inner resiliency to go my own way, created my mask, allowed me to escape incessant bullying… I was glad for it. But as the layers of freeze have melted in my adult life, I now see that this liberating season was also insufferably isolating. So much so I didn’t let myself feel any of it.
It was in this season I learned to hide in plain sight, to acquiesce and to turn all of my pain into ambition.
Years ago in therapy, I reported that season of my life being liberating & fun. That whole year I carried around a journal and reported all of the list of things I loved. I kept gratitude close. I went to church as often as I could, and kept my orientation towards a God who loved me as I was. I worked 2 jobs and took dance lessons. I was never home. I loved my independence. I loved that no one was watching. I was free to be.
All my achievements stem from the fulcrum of shame with a tinge of spite stemming from this season.
I vowed never show my hurt, my shame or my terror of rejection. Instead I’d become exceedingly good—terrifyingly good. They would want to be me. They would want my life. They would envy who I became. They would’t be able to find a single reason to hate me… and if they did, they would feel stupid when I was kind to their face and successful, beautiful, interesting, better. I’d finally be better. And I’d do it in public for all to see. And I did.
It felt intoxicatingly powerful to learn to turn all this hurt to gold.
Hurt me? Great! That’s fuel for my success. Watch me get better and better and better! I can’t feel a thing. Do you like me now??
Under all the outside shine, however, was shame frozen underneath still running the show for years. The reality was not as shimmering as the surface performance I put on. Not only did I lose all of my friends for reasons never spoken to me, I was also avoiding being home due to an increasingly abusive environment. I filled my time to avoid being home, avoid being still, avoid feeling. I spent that year with my head down, and just in time for prom, my fickle “friends” began talking to me again. I’d won them back with my goodness mere months before moving away to college.
I acted like everything was fine.
I never brought up being ignored, bullied or mocked by those I loved most. Surprisingly, I believed I was fine— self-deceit is powerfully protective. The pain of bullying, isolation and abuse couldn’t touch me when I wasn’t feeling myself.
Now, all these years later, I have the capacity to welcome the 16-year-old into my life and listen to her. Now, all these years later, I am no longer pretending to not be hurt. Now, all these years later I am no longer over-working or proving myself to cover up my shame or sadness. Now, after all these years of healing and stabilizing myself, I’m no longer running or escaping from the pain.
No longer strutting out of spite, I sit with my tea and cry.
I sit with her every morning.
I sit with her because she matters.
I sit with her because she belongs with me.
I sit with her because she belongs.
I will not ignore her. I will not exile her. I will not make her pretend. I will not fake nice or show up, unwelcome, to prove a point.
I will not turn on myself— which is what shame does. It’s what shame is.
She belongs with me.
While welcoming in hurt and shame might seem counterproductive, or like licking my wounds, I know welcoming these young parts and all of their heart back into wholeness is exactly what shame alchemy requires.
What seems like a poison is actually the medicine.
Developing the capacity to observe the deep threat my young body was in, believing her & holding myself stable breaks the curse shame put on me. Self-observation diffuses the power of the stories and compulsive behavior that come when we are afraid. Sitting with the pain takes it’s power away.
I’m not the same sparkly person I used to me. I can’t pretend in the way I used to.
Now, when I’m hurt there’s a sadness in my eyes that those who really know me can see without words. What a change from the one whose insides never matched their outsides. I’m no longer pretending. No longer performing. No longer strutting from spite or spinning stories that it’s all good due to my shame.
I am coherent. I belong with myself.
16 year old me deserved better, and I am the one who will give it to her. 🫀
This life-changing work is what we do in my year-long mentorship program, The Fortress, which opens for enrollment May 8. Soon I’ll be sharing a micro-dose of the program in a Shame Alchemy workshop.
Register your interest here!
Let it be Easy.
Guardian the Good.
Live your Liberation.
Big love,
Madison
P.S. I found a lone, docile bee perched on my windowsill in my kitchen this morning. No clue how he got there. Felt link a wink from the boy I didn’t want to belong with. He, too, has a seat at my table. <3
