Shame Skips a Generation

I believe shame skips a generation. Someone who, at some point in their life, felt they were a source of shame for the family — perhaps for being born out of wedlock, or the result of an unwanted pregnancy — learns from childhood to overcompensate. They learn to adapt to that delicate situation.

So they become a millionaire, achieve social success. All of it in pursuit of a place in society, of being recognized as someone of worth. They generally end up becoming a rather arrogant, haughty person, one who imposes their views on others. But the shame they carry inside doesn't disappear. And so they pass it on to their children.

Children who had no reason to feel inferior to anyone. But who absorb the discomfort with life, with society, that their parents felt. That's how, a generation later, an inner struggle becomes visible: the struggle to feel one has the right to live. That it's good that one exists.

I believe shame is one of the hardest feelings to carry. Often, what we fail to heal or name in one generation is passed to the next as silence or unease. To heal is also to free those who come after us.