#92 It’s Time to Disappoint Them

In this second introduction to the Child and Woman series inside Shame Out Loud, Lori Clarke offers deeper context for the story she’s been slowly, carefully telling.

This episode explores the difference between what’s visible on the outside and what’s carried on the inside — and how family systems, unspoken rules, secrecy, and inherited beliefs can shape a life long before we have language for them.

Lori reflects on growing up inside a “family container” marked by victim mentality, scarcity, and silence — and how those patterns created a covering of shame that made it difficult to see herself clearly, even years later. She speaks honestly about the ache that didn’t come from what happened, but from what didn’t happen: protection, validation, advocacy, and safety.

This is a conversation about truth-telling, reclaiming your inner narrative, and the courage it takes to turn inward — especially when doing so threatens the systems that taught you who you were allowed to be.

If you’ve ever felt unseen, invalidated, or disconnected from yourself — especially when your external life didn’t reflect your internal experience — this episode offers language, context, and validation.

Content note: This episode includes reflections on emotional abuse, secrecy, family systems, and lived experiences that may be activating for some listeners. Please listen at the pace your body allows.

Show Notes

Child and Woman: When the Outside Looks Fine but the Inside Still Hurts

Most people don’t expect shame to live inside a polished exterior. It can look like “having it together” on the outside, while the inside carries fear, doubt, and a long ache that never got named.

In this episode of Shame Out Loud on The Lorie Clark Show, Lori shares why she’s releasing a new series called Child and Woman, and why she needed a second introduction after Episode 91. At the center is a hard truth, shame isn’t only about what happened, it’s also about what didn’t happen, like protection, safety, and someone stepping up when it mattered.

Important disclaimers and content warnings

Child and Woman and the creative reflections that follow in this episode and subsequent episodes are artistic expressions, not clinical interpretations. Nothing in this series is meant to diagnose, treat, or offer therapeutic instruction.

If anything in these conversations touches a tender part of your story, please consider connecting with a qualified mental health professional, a trusted support person, or a trauma-informed practitioner. Your well-being matters and you don’t have to navigate any of this alone.

This episode may include personal reflections on trauma, including:

• Experiences of sexual harm

• Family dysfunction

• Emotional abandonment

There are no graphic details, but the themes may still feel activating or tender. Listen in a way that feels safe for your body and your story. You can pause, step away, or come back later. Your well-being comes first.

Welcome to Shame Out Loud and the Child and Woman series

Lori hosts a part of her show called Shame Out Loud, a space to talk about shame, fear, and the messy things many people hide.

This episode is the second introduction to her new Shame Out Loud series, Child and Woman, which she says will release at the end of January. She also points back to Episode 91, where she spoke about an “ache” that didn’t come only from what happened to her, but from what didn’t happen around her.

No advocacy. No protection. No place to go. No one to talk to before or after.

That absence shaped everything.

The ache that led her inward

In Episode 91, Lori described the pain of missing the basics, safety, validation, and protection. That pain pushed her into a deeper question: what is safety, really, and how do you find it when you never had it?

When searching outside yourself stops working

She describes how exhausting it became to look for safety, love, validation, and approval from other people.

It didn’t work.

So she turned inward.

She names the question many people get stuck on when they try to “go inside”:

What do we do when we go inside ourselves? Where do we go when we go inward? What does that look like?

The mirror moment, and what people assume

Lori shares a daily ritual. She looks in the mirror, puts her hand on her face, and says: “I love you and you’re beautiful.”

Then she pauses to name what a listener might think.

If you’re watching her or hearing her voice, you might assume she’s fine. You might assume her words are symbolic, or dramatic, or not fully true because she “doesn’t look like she’s struggling.”

She says it plainly: the outside has never been an accurate reflection of what’s happening on the inside.

Her visibility, how she presents, how she looks to others, hasn’t matched her internal life. That mismatch is part of the story.

The “family container” where shame took root

Lori describes something she calls a “family container.” It’s the environment you’re born into, the small group that raises you, and the rules that shape your world before you even know you have choices.

It isn’t just family, either. It can include community, religion, school, work, and other places that teach you what’s allowed.

Inside that container, you learn:

• What’s safe to talk about

• What’s allowed to be true

• What stories stay inside the home

• What topics are “unmentionable”

• What happens if you step outside the rules

These systems often carry a message that sounds like: “This is who we are. This is how we live. This is what’s possible for us. This is what’s not possible.”

And stepping outside can come with consequences.

“We are not like them”: the belief that shrank her world

In Lori’s family container, one belief was especially strong: we are not like them.

She describes a victim mentality in the family, where everything “happened to us,” financially, emotionally, socially, at work. Chaos was normal. Safety was not.

She remembers visiting other families and noticing the difference. That contrast made things harder, not easier. Instead of expanding what felt possible, it reinforced the family story.

Her family message sounded like:

• They might be doctors, but that’s not us.

• We aren’t educated.

• We aren’t smart enough.

As a child, you don’t have the perspective to challenge that. You trust the people leading you. So you take it in as fact, and you start trimming your dreams to fit the container.

She has said in other solo episodes that she believed she was stupid. She explains how that belief got reinforced, not always with the direct insult, but through constant messaging like: you’re not smart, you’ll have to deal with it.

The narrative wasn’t only “we aren’t like them.” It was also, we’re not happy, not safe, not calm, and not like other people.

“We are each other’s helpers,” and the pull of staying small

Another rule in the container was loyalty through shared victimhood. Lori describes it as “we are each other’s helpers,” meaning: we survive together, and we move through life together as victims.

It sounds like closeness, but it can also be control. It can create a silent agreement: stay with us, stay inside, don’t disrupt the story.

And when Lori tried to share her experiences, she hit a wall.

The response was: “We don’t talk about that.”

Even when she said, “But it happened,” she was met with: “It couldn’t have happened.”

So the container added more layers:

• secrecy

• suppression

• smallness

Not only were they “not like them,” they also didn’t speak the truth.

It wasn’t just family, other systems reinforced the rules

Lori expands the idea beyond her home. She mentions how environments like church, school, work, and other communities can also enforce what’s allowed, and what happens when you step outside.

She describes how she had to walk out the door and show everyone, church, school, work, extended family, that everything was perfect.

External perfection became safer than internal truth.

Reclaiming the inward story, even when it threatens the container

Lori says something she sees as powerful: reclaiming the inward narrative.

She couldn’t “peel away” the beliefs and patterns of the container while staying fully inside it. So she had to become different than the container.

That choice started early.

A childhood vow at 6 or 7 years old

Lori shares a memory from when she was about six or seven, after an experience happened and she had no one to tell.

She remembers saying to herself:

• “I can’t ever live like this.”

• “I will never marry a person like this guy.”

• “I will not have a family like this.”

Even as a kid, she leaned into something she knew was true inside her. She describes it as an internal goodness, an inner knowing that said: this isn’t how it has to be.

She also names the reality: she was a kid, she couldn’t just leave. So she pushed from the inside, again and again.

Truth-speaking as a way out

Lori calls herself a truth speaker. Not in a “special” way, but as someone who knew the only chance of not repeating the pattern was to stop living only by the group story.

That push continued through adulthood. Even after marriage, even after kids, she kept pushing against the victim mentality.

She describes an important distinction:

When she used phrases like “I’m not worthy” or “I don’t belong,” she wasn’t only describing herself. She was describing the collective story that was placed on her, the message the container wanted her to carry.

She wanted something else.

She wanted to stand on her own, to be in charge of her own life, and to choose what aligned with what she knew and wanted internally.

Blame vs. truth, and why the difference matters

Lori ends up in a fine line many people recognize.

She doesn’t want to stay in blame. She also doesn’t want to deny what happened.

Her framing is clear:

• Blame keeps us stuck.

• Truth creates movement.

She describes a turning point where she stops focusing on the people who harmed her or failed her. Not because it didn’t matter, but because she chooses to focus on learning herself, loving herself, and letting “karma” deal with others.

It’s a shift in position: “Your actions told the story, but I’m going to choose love for me.”

The needs that went unmet, and what that did to her

Lori lists the places where she needed someone to step up, and no one did:

• an adult

• her school

• her church

• her family

She says the only person who stepped up for her was her brother, and she speaks about him with deep love.

She also shares a painful detail: it wasn’t until recently, in her mid-40s, that she heard words like “we believe you.”

Years of not being believed changes how someone sees themselves.

It can make you look in the mirror and reject what you see, even when the outside looks “fine.”

The mirror as a meeting place: child and woman

The mirror comes back as a central image.

Lori describes how, as a young child before the experience, she loved herself. She thought she was beautiful. She thought she was wonderful.

Then something happened, and soon after, she looked in the mirror and felt a hard split. The message became: whoever you were before, you can’t be her now, you must be unlovable.

That’s what shame can do. It doesn’t just hurt, it steals your sense of self.

A vivid memory of who she was before

Lori shares a warm, specific memory that brings her younger self to life:

• Strawberry Shortcake pajamas

• Jumping up on the sink

• Sneaking her mom’s lipstick

• Getting Lip Smackers and putting it on thick

She remembers looking at that child and thinking, you are incredible, you are divine, you are beautiful.

She wanted that girl back.

Saying “I love you” when it feels like a lie

When Lori puts her hand on her face and tells herself she’s beautiful, she admits it didn’t feel true at first. She even calls it “crap” in the moment.

But she kept doing it.

Over time, those words started to peel back layers, and she caught glimpses of the child she had lost. The ritual became a way of rejecting the old family stories, the shroud of shame, and the idea that she had to stay unworthy in order to stay connected.

She describes the moment the tears came, and the internal self pressed through the container. The young child met the older woman again, almost like saying: I went away for a while, but I’m back.

Becoming what you never had

One of the strongest messages Lori shares is also one of the simplest.

When you reconnect with yourself, you can become the things you never received:

• the love you never had, for yourself

• the safety you never had, for yourself

• the validation you never received, for yourself

She also names that pushing against a system can be scary. It can feel unsafe to speak. It can feel like too much.

And she says it anyway: she wants to love herself more than anything in the world.

Why this series feels risky to share

Lori explains why releasing this work has been hard.

It threatens the family container, the unspoken rule of: don’t talk about the abuse, don’t talk about the verbal abuse, don’t open the internal door.

She also shares something someone once told her: “That sounds really difficult. You don’t look like you had that struggle.”

That comment made her wonder how listeners hear her story. It made her realize she might not be conveying the full context when she says words like “unlovable” or “unworthy.”

She doesn’t believe those things about herself now. She sees them as beliefs the container tried to install so everyone would stay together, and no one would disrupt the system.

What she wanted more than belonging to that system was her dignity.

And she says it directly: she didn’t deserve secrecy, and she didn’t deserve years of fighting for validation.

Neither do you.

Conclusion

Shame grows in silence, and it grows faster inside systems that reward secrecy. Lori’s message in Child and Woman is that turning inward can bring you back to the parts of you that went missing, even if it’s uncomfortable, even if it threatens what others want you to be.

She closes with a line meant to stick: it is always okay to disappoint everyone, but it is never okay to disappoint yourself. If you want to follow the series and hear more episodes and guests, she shares that you can visit luryclarkmedia.com and find her on social at the Lorie Clark Show. May you find the love you never had, and may you learn to feel safe in your own body, mind, and soul.