Shame is a dark emptiness in your core that says, "You are wrong."
Shame is not embarrassment, which although it stings warns, "You have done wrong."
Both shame and embarrassment can serve a purpose if you have done something wrong and crossed lines. In that case, shame and embarrassment can warn you about behavior and motivate you to make a change.
But what about people suffering from the shame of abuse? Those who carry the shame of their abusers' sins? Many of those people hide in the shadows. Other people bury their shame by overachieving and striving for perfection. Still other people drown out their shame with addictions.
Do you carry this shame or love someone who does?
Deborah has written this story for you.
Her certainty that she was wrong started early. She took on the shame of what she was sure was her fault by the time she was four years old. After all, she felt that surely grownups could never be to blame.
By the time Deborah was six years old, her parents had divorced.
Deborah's story progressed to another level when she turned nine and innocently told her father, "I don't want to go home" at the end of a Christmas visitation. Her father agreed but made it clear he was only taking on the inconvenience because she had asked.
For the next six months, Deborah lived through isolation and sexual, emotional, and psychological abuse-not only at her father's hands, but also by Them, the five sadistic adults her father lived with, and often left her alone with.
That abuse, and the shame it triggered, colored all that followed.
At twenty-three, Deborah met her future husband on a psychiatric ward. She was in a fragile state after being abandoned by her soulmate.
Deborah's new relationship started with love and light and some of the best times she had ever known. Then other sex began to encroach on her love-flirting progressed to a threesome to a swinging group.
When Deborah finally left her marriage, she searched for new purpose in the world. She failed and failed-until, finally, she hit rock bottom again.
From there, Deborah's story is one of facing fears and overcoming limitations. Deborah grew tiny step by tiny step toward her ultimate goal: to be whole and happy. Along the way, she developed skills, tools, and wisdom that she shares in this unblinking story of growth and healing.
And what could be better than that.
Leah, Deborah: - Deborah Leah is a former nanny living in Quakertown, Pennsylvania. When she is not writing, she enjoys time with her friends and her two cats, Poison Ivy and Harlequin. She still gravitates toward children at church and when out and about.She enjoys making art. Most of the time she creates and then discards it, and that is just fine with her.She loves to cook and feed people.Deborah is still active in the Milford ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Whether teaching or creating the weekly bulletin, she enjoys serving and continuing to make new friends there.Deborah was born in Boston, Massachusetts. She attended high school in Flemington, New Jersey, and worked and lived near Princeton, New Jersey, throughout her marriage. After thirteen years in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, she moved to Quakertown, where she is living happily ever after, reveling in the reality of whole and happy.
