Shut Out Stories - Blog

If you’ve ever been rejected, ignored, dismissed, banned, barred, denied, estranged, unwanted, unvalued, unwelcomed, forgotten, excluded, discarded, disregarded, shunned, snubbed, cast out, locked out, ghosted, or given up on, then you have a shut out story. We’ve all had them, incidents of wanting something we can’t have: the job, house, or mate; the health outcome we couldn’t control; the super talent we’d never possess; the loved one we couldn’t pull back from the dead. A door remains closed despite our every effort to have it otherwise. Those experiences usually come with some backwash of futility, frustration, confusion, shame, humiliation, embarrassment, resentment, anger, loneliness, grief, and more.

My shut out story is what turned into The Strongbox. When I began to openly discuss the father I had, a man who refused to acknowledge my existence, my feelings associated with that, feelings of emptiness and isolation, were lessened. It gave me a say in the matter. In the telling, I wasn’t able to change the situation, but I was able to change how I feel about it, in a good way, in a palliative way.

This blog is intended to illustrate the many forms in which disconnection can occur, and to then offer an offset. It’s a way of redirecting the grief of severance. Many of these stories have come to me through conversations, and I’ve written them up and asked permission to share them here. Some of the blog entries have been given to me fully written for inclusion. I hope you’ll find all of them as interesting as I do. I’ll be adding to this page frequently, and I invite and welcome your contributions through the Contact Me page.

Sing Along

Terry Sue Harms July 19, 2019

Helen, when I asked her if she had a shut out story, it took a bit for her to come up with this one, but then she said she could recall it as if it had just occurred. She told me about when she was a little girl, and it was before televisions were in every household. Back then, her family, for entertainment, would gather around the piano and sing together. One evening, at some point, her parents began singing a song that Helen didn’t know. Her parents were laughing and having a terrific time belting out one of their oldies. In the middle of this delightful tableau, Little Helen suddenly felt left out and burst into inconsolable tears.