Shame and the Girl with the Yellow Meal Ticket
“Shame cannot survive being spoken . . . and met with empathy.” ~ Brené Brown
This has been a year of massive transition in my life and with my family. Among other things, my son and first-born child moved across the country to attend college and begin his own independent life. And, my mother and sister who have lived with me for the past several years recently moved in with another one of my sisters.
All of this transition has led to the decision to sell my house and down-size. As part of this process, I had been purging clutter like nobody’s business. {The folks at the local Goodwill know us by name now.}
After all the people were moved and the clutter was purged, the next step was to organize the house so it would show well in photographs and to potential buyers. This posed a challenge, especially in the bonus room/bedroom that now contained only a piano and a sleeper sofa with a broken leg.
One day last week, I spent the morning with my realtor touring other houses for sale in our area that were similar in size and features so that we could get a feel for the appropriate listing price.
What an eye-opening experience! All of these houses looked like model homes in a showcase neighborhood ~ gorgeous furniture, stunning decor, gleaming appliances and surfaces that would pass a white-glove test prior to a visit from the queen.
All I could think about was my home that at the time housed dust bunnies that had spawned colonies of baby dust bunnies, half-empty rooms with mismatched furniture, and appliances and surfaces that were in need of some 409 and elbow grease. Ugh!
That evening, it was time to tackle the bonus room. We spent two hours trying to arrange, rearrange, and re-rearrange that room with some odds and ends of furniture, but nothing was working.
That was when I lost it. Something came over me and I became very irritable, grumbling, griping, and yelling something like, “This is pathetic! We are like the Clampetts in The Beverly Hillbillies! You can’t rearrange Early-Attic crap and make it look good ~ it’s still just a bunch of mismatched crap!”
I finally had to walk away in defeat, feeling angry, frustrated and overwhelmed.
The next morning, I woke up with this same feeling of stress and overwhelm and had to convince myself to go get some fresh air and exercise.
As I headed out on my walk, I thought about the way that this feeling had come over me almost as if I had no control over it.
A part of me knew that it did no good to get so frustrated and to make everyone around me miserable. But there was another, more forceful part who felt angry and didn’t care about any of that ~ all she wanted to do was rant and rave!
What I’ve learned about those “less constructive” parts is that they operate under the surface and will continue to act out {irrationally and somewhat dysfunctionally} until they are brought to the surface and given their say.
So as I headed out on my walk, I asked myself {and all her parts} where this mood I couldn’t shake was coming from. Not surprisingly, I heard from my old friend Type-A-Control-Freak-Stress-Monster who had been pushed to her limits by this large undertaking: How could you have scheduled that photographer for Monday? Do you realize how much there is to do and how long everything is taking? We’ll never get done on time! WTF were you thinking? It’s all going to be a disaster!
Once the larger part of me assured Little Miss Type A that it was a pretty crazy deadline and said “I hear ya,” the voice of another part showed up and said, “It’s the Yellow Meal Ticket all over again!” What? Huh?
Oh, the Yellow Meal Ticket. . . now I get it.
This was the voice of my 14-year-old self who lived in a constant state of shame, humiliation and fear about what others would think, say or do when they found out that my family was existing well below the poverty level.
My parents had divorced, my dad had not taken it well and refused to provide child support, and my mother had a severe spinal injury incurred while working at one of her three jobs that left her unable to work at all.
Since we were living off of food stamps, I was eligible for my high school’s free lunch program. Every week, I would have to go and pick up my “meal ticket” ~ the size of a large index card and in a yellow so bright it nearly glowed. I was required to present this beauty to the cashier in the lunch line so that she could hold it up high and mark it with her hole punch to indicate that I had received my allotment for the day.
I dreaded that moment every single day as I’d approach the cashier with my stomach twisted in a knot and my face on fire with embarrassment, mortified that all in my school would see “who I really was.” It was impossible to hide that neon yellow card. The cashier may as well have stood on her chair, grabbed a megaphone and announced to the entire cafeteria, “Hey everybody! Here’s Holly ~ you know, the new girl, the loser who is living on the dole. Feel free to snicker, sneer, judge and ostracize away!”
I was the perpetual new girl, having lived in at least 25 different homes by that time. And I was the new kid again, as we moved to this small town in Northern California mid-way through my freshman year in high school. For the first time, this place felt different. I really liked it. I really wanted to fit in, make friends, and feel like I had a hometown.
And yet here I was, wearing a scarlet letter in the form of a neon yellow meal ticket for all to see. This was even worse than the three weeks in December a couple years earlier when my family was living out of two cars in a series of truck stops in Tennessee because we just couldn’t make ends meet. At least that was my own little secret. I had no real witnesses to that private humiliation ~ other than my family and they weren’t going public with it either.
[Fast-forward 35 years to the crazy-pants woman standing in the middle of a bonus room, upset over mismatched furniture . . .]
I could now see that this feeling of living like the Clampetts ~ people who are pretending to fit in a neighborhood that is well above their “place” ~ had been a program that was running under the surface without my even knowing it:What would people think or say when they tour our house and see our bonus room with the Early-Attic decor? Will I finally be exposed for the fraud I am ~ someone who has never had any business living in this neighborhood?
Yes, this was definitely the Yellow Meal Ticket all over again.
Only now, on this morning walk last week, I was able to bring to the conversation a stronger, more self-accepting and self-loving voice ~ the voice of my Self.
The Self who could feel the tears of humiliation and shame of the Girl with the Yellow Meal Ticket stinging her eyes as those old feelings, which had been stuffed deep inside for decades, were allowed to be released . . . and who could at the same time feel a sense of peace and certainty that all is well.
The Self who knows that all those thoughts and voices are not “who I am” ~ they are just stories that were created at a time when I was living in fear and hadn’t yet discovered this more expanded Self.
The Self who thanked this 14-year-old girl for somehow finding a way to hold her head high, to make friends and treasured memories, to run for student council and to participate in sports every season . . . despite the stigma of the Yellow Meal Ticket.
The Self who could see how fortunate I was to have had people show up in my life during this formative time who kept me from crawling in a hole and hiding my light in shame:
- a circle of true friends who knew that I had very little money and liked me anyway;
- Mr. Southard ~ the student activities director who saw something special in me and treated me like a person who had a bright future, and who also silently and behind the scenes found a way for the school to buy new cleats so my sister and I could participate on the track team;
- Mr. Peralta, who would often give me a lift to school in his PG&E pickup so that I didn’t have to walk the couple of miles in the rain and cold, but always made it seem like he had just happened by, somehow seeing a proud young woman who would not have accepted the ride if she knew it was a handout.
And the Self who could appreciate the gift of experiences that gave rise to a drive to succeed, fueled by a voice that said, “Never again.” {Of course, that drive helped to create Little Miss Type A, but that’s all perfect too, since all of these various and sundry parts have contributed to the wiser, more well-seasoned person who is writing this to you now.}
By the end of last week’s “power walk,” my dark mood had shifted back to one of gratitude, excitement and love for my life {and my beautiful house}.
I hadn’t told the Girl with the Yellow Meal Ticket to be quiet or excommunicated her from my life. In letting her speak, I had freed her from the dungeon of my subconscious and given her a place in my conscious world, where I can see her and appreciate her ~ and where she no longer feels the need to kick the walls of the dungeon and rattle chains to be heard.
From that freer and lighter space, I returned to the bonus room with an open and clear mind. I quickly made the decision to get rid of the sleeper sofa with a broken leg {donating it to the Kidney Foundation who was happy to come pick it up}, pushed together two chairs into a little conversation area, and bought a large green fern to bring some life to the space. Done!
Perhaps more importantly, I have a fresh new perspective as I realized that anyone who would look at my furnishings and make a judgment about me is not my concern ~ and certainly not someone who is a good fit for this house.
No, the people who will love this house are those who will look at the spartan bonus room, and the living room with the somewhat flattened sofa cushions and the fringe on a carpet that is frayed where our recently-passed Golden Retriever chewed the edges when she was a puppy ~ and they will see a warm, inviting house where a family had lived, loved and laughed {a lot}. And they will feel right at home. . .
This is my wish for you ~ that you look at all the parts of you that feel like they don’t quite measure up to the showroom display, that you allow those parts a conscious voice when they arise {so they can finally stop driving your unconscious behavior}, that you welcome and thank them for their contributions, and that in doing so, you create a space for your true, amazing Self to come forward more often and for all the parts of you to feel right at home.
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