I was waking up this morning and opened the email app on my phone. One of the new emails was from an organization I had previously signed a petition for and they were promoting a free “RBG sticker.” I continued to read the email and the following block of text got me worked up:
Shame Spiral
That last sentence in bold sent me into a shame spiral: “But Ginsburg didn’t agonize. She organized.” Only a couple days ago, I had published a story that was filled with agony. The creeping “not good enough/never good enough” inner voices were a choir in my head. How dare I agonize over the work to be done, the work I hadn’t done, and the work I had not been invited to do?! This was some of what the choir of inner voices were chanting. I deleted the email and laid there feeling shame, inadequate, sad, disappointed, and then, I got angry.
Anger
Why angry? This organization and several organizations like them perpetuate white supremacy intentionally and unintentionally. This narrative about Ruth Bader Ginsburg is an example. It is an example of “perfectionism” and “only one right way,” which are listed as “The Characteristics of White Supremacy” on the Showing Up for Racial Justice website (Jones and Okun 2001).
“Perfectionism” as portrayed in the story about RBG is a lack of appreciation for having emotions and feelings and what it is to be human. It is also lacking in reflection, discussion of self-improvement, and identifying “agonizing” as being wrong.
“Only one right way” is illustrated above as “the belief there is one right way to do things” (Jones and Okun 2001).
In order to continue Ginsburg’s legacy and take up the fight, the implication is that there isn’t time or space to have emotions, nor agonize. The only way to honor RBG is to do so devoid of emotion — the “one right way.”
Furthermore, I got angry because how does anyone persist, achieve great heights, become successful, or do anything to change and improve lives if not for feelings? How do we continue striving through adversity if not being fueled by a vehicle of agony/despair/anger/disappointment? Humans are capable of having feelings and also getting sh*t done. Just because we wear shields of armor on our faces, hearts, and minds does not mean that we are impervious to feeling sick, disgusted, and/or fed up with the way things were in the first place. To disavow, discount, and not acknowledge Ginsburg’s human suffering or any champion’s and hero’s suffering is to strip some of their humanity. We need to stop mechanizing our heroes and relegating them to humanoids and robots.
RBG
Ruth Bader Ginsburg showed us that in order to make change, empathy is necessary. “Even though the intent of discriminatory legislation may have been to protect women, she observed, it nearly always worked to their detriment” (Current Biography Illustrated 2018). Ginsburg attributed her work to her mother and her mother’s influence. “In a rare departure from her usual reserve, however, she paid a moving tribute to her mother in her acceptance speech on June 14, 1993, in the White House Rose Garden: ‘[I want to thank] my mother, Celia Amster Bader, the bravest and strongest person I have known, who was taken from me too soon. I pray that I may be all that she would have been had she lived in an age when women could aspire and achieve and daughters are cherished as much as sons’” (2018). These two examples illuminate that while RBG was known for “reserve” she still had feelings and used empathy to further progress equity.
Shame Resilience
Once, the anger and the realizations started taking over the shame slipped away. I will not feel less because I agonize and choose to share it. To recognize that my agony is part of my power to heal, to persist, and to move forward, as well as support people in agony is how we all make change.
Dr. Brené Brown studies shame and has published several books on her findings. In Brown’s book, I Thought It Was Just Me: Making the Journey from “What Will People Think?” to “I Am Enough” there is deeper discussion about levels of shame and their respective spectrum scales. I have included an image of Brown’s “Shame Resilience Theory” below:
When I read that email and began the nosedive into a shame spiral I was closer to SHAME, a 0 to 3 on the “Shame Resilience” spectrum scale. I felt “isolated” and began to feel “powerless.” Then, I started thinking about what I had written a couple days ago. I was writing about being a perfectionist my entire life and one of the major themes of my being a perfectionist was never being told I was “good enough” or feeling “good enough.” This realization got me angry because I have been unlearning perfection (Dr. Brown has also written about perfectionism) and the more I saw myself tearing me down, the angrier I got. So that now in writing this story, I am somewhere on the EMPATHY side of the spectrum scale, a 9 to 12.
However, before I got to the top spectrum scale of the Shame Resilience Theory model, I had to work through the preceding spectrum scales first. Starting with “speaking my shame.” I reached out to two friends and ranted in my message about how I was feeling. I went from a “limited understanding of my shame” to an “increased understanding of my shame” and “increased options and strategies for developing my shame resilience.” This “speaking my shame” combined with the next spectrum scale “reaching out” helped remove me from “remaining alone” and solidified our “identifying and naming common experiences” while also “sharing laughter” and “creating change.”
After reaching out to my friends and sharing those experiences, I was launched into the last two spectrum scales of “critical awareness” and “acknowledges personal vulnerability.” It is in these two spectrum scales that I am moving forward through typing my story. With critical awareness, I am moving through “reinforced, individualized, and pathologized” norms of white supremacy culture to “demystifying, contextualizing, and normalizing” human feelings and emotions. In acknowledging my personal vulnerability, I have sat with “confusion, judgment, fear, anger, and blame” and risen to “recognition, awareness, protection, and support.”
Dr. Brown’s work and theory model help demonstrate that with negative feelings we can be moved to persist, to change, to improve, and to slide into/inch towards positive feelings. It also shows that organizing “takes a village,” but also takes a negative event or outcome to occur and be transmuted into a positive healing and learning instance. To process our emotions and feelings is an act of dissention, an act of persistence, and a radical act of self-care and empathy.
Final Thoughts
It is my hope that my example has taught us all something, including myself. The way we tell stories and the words we use to tell them are significant. Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s legacy and stories that are told about her after her passing should be told with great care. May her legacy be an inspiration and motivation for us to speak up, reach out, and empathize.
References
Brown, B. (2007). I Thought It Was Just Me: Making the Journey from “What Will People Think?” to “I Am Enough”. Penguin Random House.
Ginsburg, Ruth Bader. (1994). Current Biography (Bio Ref Bank).
Jones, K. and Okun, T. (2001). The Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture. Showing Up for Racial Justice. https://www.showingupforracialjustice.org/white-supremacy-culture-characteristics.html
