Shame is such a destructive thing, especially for young people and children, who may carry childhood shame into adulthood where it affects their lives, undermining their sense of self and their ability to succeed in relationships, in their work, in their self worth. This was a painful theme for me to imagine visually–a hard thing to think about and decide how to portray. I thought of shame, that we all feel at some time–that initial heat of embarrassment and the feeling of helplessness and remorse, followed by anger and then despair. Perhaps someone steps up to help you recover your dignity, mend your failing, or perhaps your own sense of proportion allows you to recover, but maybe that despair persists, deepens and you begin to view yourself as worthless, as despised, unloved, shamed. This is when things can begin to fall apart, never to be made entirely whole again. Esteemed psychologist and expert on self-esteem, Marilyn J. Sorensen, says, “Unlike guilt, which is the feeling of doing something wrong, shame is the feeling of being something wrong.” When we believe ourselves to be wrong, to have failed totally, we can achieve very little, nor can we find much happiness.

The only way I could bear to deal with shame in this work was as abstraction. Successful lives consist of pieces that fit comfortably together–shame intrudes and the center no longer holds. The stitches fail, the edges slip, the ties no longer bind. Things fall apart…

Things fall apart
18″ x 40″