I read once that there’s only one emotion that is just as powerful in recollection as it is on the spot. You know, when you remember an instance of being happy or sad, you don’t re-experience the full happiness or sadness you were feeling then, but when you remember feeling shame, you have a physical reaction and it’s just as powerful as when it was fresh. Crazy.

So, write something about shame.

Jane had always been a good little girl. She tried to make everyone happy, tried to be kind to everyone and even remember the golden rule enough to apply it to her tiny life.

She happily attended Sunday School nearly every Sunday at the family church. She didn’t know many people there, but that was okay; she knew friendship would come.

One day, as a class project, they each got a piece of paper with about a dozen words on it. They were to circle the words that meant good things and cross out the things that were sinful. Jane, smiling, finished the assignment quickly and handed her paper over.

The teacher looked at Jane’s paper and frowned, making Jane feel uneasy. What had she done wrong?

“Jane, you circled pride,” the teacher said. The teacher then looked directly at Jane. “Pride is not a good thing! Pride is sinful and wrong! Where did you get the idea that pride is a good thing?”

The disgust on the teacher’s face both confused and terrified young Jane. She didn’t understand what she had done or why she had incurred such wrath with a wrong answer. All she knew in that moment was that she’d been a very, very bad little girl and that to take pride in anything was shameful and sinful.

“Pride is sinful!”

With shame flooding her very being, Jane hung her head and then nodded. She’d always been told that being proud of the good things you do is good, but maybe the other adults had it wrong…

From that moment on, Jane made it a point to never take pride in any of her accomplishments. She got rid of pride by always telling herself that nothing was ever good enough. If nothing was good enough, she couldn’t possibly take pride in it, could she?

She had a few ‘moments of weakness’, as she called them. The times when she didn’t have a firm grip on her feelings and a little bit of pride over a good grade or a project done well slipped through. Her memories took care of those, though.

Whenever she had even a moment’s feeling of pride, all the shame and embarrassment from her childhood experience flooded through her, sometimes driving her to tears.

Later in her teenage years, Jane learned the true difference between boastful pride and good pride. Even so, it was too late for Jane. Logic couldn’t overcome emotions and long-learned responses.

No matter what she did, no matter what anyone said to her, she never truly took pride in her accomplishments. She accepted compliments graciously, as she had been taught, but she never let them past the hard shell that no one could ever see.

High school and then university graduation with great grades and honours did nothing to change her feelings. Medals and certificates for arts and community accomplishments were kept but stowed away in boxes in her attic. Living independently, paying off her university loans, having a stable and secure job…

…meeting and marrying the love of her life…

She never let herself take any pride in even the smallest detail.

At twenty-eight years old, Jane gave birth to her daughter Eliza, a healthy baby with a head full of blond hair like her daddy. As Jane looked at her daughter for the first time, knowing that this was the baby she had cared for as best she could for just over eight and a half months, she felt the most pride she’d ever felt in her life. The feeling swelled within her, making her eyes tear up and her heart feel as if it would burst out of her chest.

Like in all the other times in her life, the shame followed the pride and threatened to tear down all the positive feelings within her. All the cruel whispers within her rallied to knock her away from the warmth she now felt coursing through her. The triggers had been well placed and the response was well-trained, as it was always the same.

Yet, this time…

Little Eliza opened her eyes and squeaked a little before settling back against her mother’s breast. Jane gently bit her bottom lip and smiled, the tears falling to her cheeks.

Finally, for the first time since childhood, she shoved the shame aside. Though she had always been convinced her accomplishments were nothing to be proud of, no one – not even the programming of her youth – could convince her that tiny Eliza was anything to be ashamed about.