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Sunday, June 22, 2008

Welcome!
We have created this site in the hopes of aiding those of you whose childhood and/or adolescence was impacted by the divorce of your parents. All of our blog team has been touched personally touched by divorce. The long-term impacts of parents divorcing is a topic particularly close to the hearts of several of us writing this blog who have also had to learn to navigate through the pain, sadness, anger, conflicted feelings, conflicted loyalties, and all the many other feelings experienced by Adults who have grown up in divorced families.

We particularly focus on the emotion of shame.
Shame is not a popular word or emotion
. We don’t like to admit to ourselves that we feel Shame or are ashamed of ourselves. Our Society SHUNS Shame and does not encourage us to talk it. We are a self-sufficient society and honor only self-assertion, self-esteem, and success.

But, Shame is exactly so devastating because it embodies those feelings about ourselves that we feel most sensitive and most hopeless to change. Shame says “you are worthless, you are bad for …., you’re too …..” These feelings of shame drive us to hide them and ourselves from others, sometimes causing us to isolate large parts of our lives. Many of us dealing with divorce issues can identify with the nagging sense that somehow we are damaged people – and that is shame talking. Sometimes we deny even our sense of shame, or can’t name it, because it is too painful to admit even to ourselves.

Our blog is informed by a new approach to resolving Shame presented by our professor/mentor Brene Brown, Ph.D. in her book I Thought It Was Just Me (but it wasn’t)(“ITIWJM”). Her work provides the hope of freeing ourselves from shame through building Shame Resilience. Build Shame Resilience involves four important skills: Identifying our own Shame and Shame Triggers, Practicing Critical Awareness, Speaking Shame, and Reaching Out to others.

To learn more about Shame Resilience
– How shame is different from embarrassment, guilt, or humiliation - and the four skills in building Shame Resilience – go to Glossary on our sidebar and click on Shame Resilience Terms.
– For more on Dr. Brown’s book and work go to Favorite Web Links and click on her website.