#sham

This was not guilt: guilt is what you feel when you have done something wrong. What I felt was shame: I was what was wrong. ↗

— Atul Gawande

#shame #science

It's important to talk about fringe-of-the-fringe experiences, not just to show the humanity of intuitives, but to show humanity the commonness of intuition. ↗

— S. Kelley Harrell

#intuition #shamanism #supernatural #true-paranormal #experience

I vowed that I would never tell anyone of my shame. They say that when you kept a secret, it eats you up inside, but I felt it was better that way. I wanted to appear strong in front of my children and my family. I didn't want anybody to know. And I would maintain my persona as Jenni, the Rivera Rebel who had never lost a fight. But deep down inside I knew I had lost a piece of myself that I would never recover. My soul had been shattered, but to the outside world I did just as I had been taught since I was a little girl; I kept my head up and continued forward. It is, after all, the Rivera way. ↗

— Jenni Rivera

#rape #shame #strength #survivor #family

Midland City had a goddess of discord all its own. This was a goddess who could not dance, would not dance, and hated everybody at the high school. She would like to claw away her face, she told us, so that people would stop seeing things in it that had nothing to do with what she was like inside. She was ready to die at any time, she said, because what men and boys thought about her and tried to do to her made her so ashamed. One of the first things she was going to do when she got to heaven, she said, was to ask somebody what was written on her face and why had it been put there. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#depression #face #goddess #self-concept #shame

Posing the question: does the god of love use underarm deodorant, vaginal spray and fluoride toothpaste? ↗

— Harlan Ellison

#liberation #sex #sexuality #shame #love

Soul, if you want to learn secrets,
 your heart must forget about shame
 and dignity. You are God's lover,
 yet you worry what people are saying. ↗

— Rumi

#identity #love #rumi #shame #love

Oh! that look of love!" continued he, between his teeth, as he bolted himself into his own private room. "And that cursed lie; which showed some terrible shame in the background, to be kept from the light in which I thought she lived perpetually! Oh, Margaret, Margaret! Mother, how you have tortured me! Oh! Margaret, could you not have loved me? I am but uncouth and hard, but I would never have led you into any falsehood for me. ↗

— Elizabeth Gaskell

#deception #dishonor #falsehood #love #shame

Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. ↗

— Charles Dickens

#tears #rain

Phaedra keeps saying she's being selfish. That she hates herself for it, but she does it anyway. She can't deny herself what she wants, even if it brings about her downfall and his." "And have you learned anything from our literary parallel?" "Not really, I keep thinking that she would do it all over again if there were a chance...a chance that it could go right. Even if 99 times out of a 100 the story ends badly, it's worth it if only once she gets a happy ending. ↗

— Cora Carmack

#chance-and-fortune #desire #garrick #guilt #hope

It was then that my gaze happened to fall on the bookcase, on the gap there, where the old paperback of "Nine Stories" had fallen flat. "Where's the thing?" I said. "What thing?" "The mesh. My mesh." She shrugged. "I tossed it." "Tossed it? Where? What do you mean?" In the next moment I was in the kitchen, flipping open the lid of the trash can, only to find it empty. "You mean outside?" I shouted. "In the dumpster?" When I came thundering back into the room, she still hadn't moved. "Jesus, what were you thinking? That was mine. I wanted that. I wanted to keep it." Her lips barely moved. "It was dirty. ↗

— T.C. Boyle

#dysfunctional-relationships #passive-aggression #shaming #home