My Orange Rhino moment and the colleague who shamed it away
I remember when my daughters were both very young—only one and three—I bought a book, Orange Rhino: Yell Less, Love More. Naively, I thought, everyone would connect with the author’s explanation of why she wrote the book.
Sheila McCraith coming into my life felt like the friend I needed. She was willing to be vulnerable and admit that she wasn’t perfect—that yes, she yelled at her kids. But she also understood that none of us actually wants to be “that” mom. It seemed like a gift that I should pay forward, and I thought everyone would want in on this secret plan to yell less and love more.
When I told a former colleague, whom I’ll call Tara, that I had invested in the book, she looked at me with utter disgust, squinted her eyes with condemnation, and shook her head in disbelief. While she didn’t use words, her body language conveyed a Dickensian tale of what a terrible person I must be.
Apparently, some mothers don’t yell at all? This potential truth had never occurred to me. I was one of four children who grew up in the 70s and 80s. My mom worked the home front all day and dragged her tired body into a plastic shop for the night shift. She was exhausted, we were animals, and she yelled a lot. She also loved us, fed and clothed us, drove us everywhere we needed to be, attended every play, concert, sporting event, and teacher conference then volunteered for the PTO on top of all that.
“I wrote this book in the same tone as my blog: honest, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes humorous and never shaming. You will not read one statistic or one line about why you are a bad parent because you yelled.”
But that former colleague tried to shame me, and it worked. In a world where I already feel inadequate, it doesn’t take much to make me feel really down on myself. My daughters are now 12 and 14, and I still recall the embarrassment I felt when I read the scathing book of Tara’s facial expression and body language.
What Tara didn’t have the capacity to do was show me any grace, and for more than a decade I’ve held onto that judgment and berated myself every time I raised my voice at one of my daughters. In the theater of my mind, I was Hester Prynne, alone on the pyre so that all could cast aspersion about what a terrible person I was.
I’ve come to realize that I would make a terrible landlord—I provide way too much free headspace to people. Tara and others who’ve judged me, either overtly or subtly, are hereby being evicted. In their place, I will craft a mental “Zen den” decorated with kind words of affirmation, soft hues, and supportive mantras that remind me that I do my very best each and every day. That I am good enough.
In closing, I’ll again share words from Sheila McCraith, who wrote:
“The words of the tongue should have three gatekeepers: is it true, is it kind, is it necessary?”
There’s a new gatekeeper in my head who has been charged with ensuring that before my inner critic is given the microphone, the words she intends to speaker are true, kind, and necessary. Or else…I’ll scream!