On Shame and Being an Imposter

shame: A painful emotion caused by a strong sense of guilt, embarrassment, unworthiness, or disgrace.
imposter: One who engages in deception under an assumed name or identity.

My girls started at a new school this year, and both the girls and I had only a few friends in the families at the new school. Thankfully, some of the families who we were closest to from our old school made the move to this school as well, and we have grown much closer to some neighbors who already went to this school. The last couple of weeks have been exhausting but good.

So why am I talking about shame and imposters? Because that's where I live, or at least have lived for years. It has taken me years of therapy and healing to understand that the pervading sense of inadequacy and of being an imposter that I have lived with was not Truth, but was based in the shame that pervaded my thinking. Do you understand what I mean by "being an imposter"? When your internalized sense of shame is so strong that you fundamentally believe yourself to be incapable and unworthy of the life you are living, then you always feel like an imposter.

Old ways of thinking do not leave easily, it takes time for the Light to infiltrate all the dark places. In the last few years my internal sense of inadequacy has focused on my performance as a mother and school volunteer, and most especially on my housekeeping skills. While I do know how to keep a house (I am actually quite thoroughly educated on this subject, as my bookshelf full of books on the subject can attest to), it is the consistent application of these skills that have been lacking in my life. While this might not seem like a big deal to many - it has been devastating for me.

One of my values and dreams has been to provide the kind of home where the kids all want to come play, a place of warmth and acceptance for my children and our friends. Instead, I have struggled with my housekeeping and organization very badly - and have allowed my shame-dominated thinking to warp my behavior. I have not felt able to invite my kids' friends over to our house (or any new friends that I have made), because of the shame of having an overly-cluttered and out-of-control-feeling home. I struggle with feeling like an imposter in this social environment, with feeling like I'm the only failure at this game.

But these last couple of weeks have been different, at least a little bit. I have been able to allow new kids into our house, stretching our social horizons a little bit - and I only apologized about my house a little to the mother who came to pick up her children. I have actually felt freer to work on my house, making progress with clutter that has built up for years (with my husband's help). I hope to invite more children to our house soon. I have enjoyed the work with other parents at the school that I have done, and I feel more like an equal and a peer, and less like an imposter, than I have in the past.

I wish this wasn't an issue for me at all anymore. I wish the reality of the acceptance and grace of God, and the ability to both keep house and keep my house in perspective, came easier. This is still work for me, but it's getting better and it feels good to begin to lay aside the mask of the imposter.