Fifty years ago, in the spring of 1976, I auditioned in New York City for a dream job. If I got it, I would spend the entire summer at Disneyland in California, singing in their Bicentennial show and parade. I didn’t have any sheet music, but I wanted it so much, I convinced a friend to cut class and go to New York with me as my accompanist.
Thousands of performers showed up to the open call. We were brought in, five at a time, to sing our prepared audition song and do the dance combination. The man running the auditions, a choreographer named Larry Billman, barely glanced up from his clipboard as the people ahead of me, armed with glossy eight by ten photos and resumes, sang their well-worn show tunes.
I’d only read about the audition the day before. I stopped at the photo booth in Penn Station on my way in from New Jersey and got one of those skinny strips of tiny black and white photos. I clipped the best one to a sheet of notebook paper listing the shows I’d done in high school and college.
When it was my turn, I joyfully began belting out a little-known song by the Fifth Dimension. Billman put his pencil down and looked up. He smiled and leaned back in his chair.
“You’ve got a beautiful voice and terrific presence,” he said when I had finished. My whole body lit up. Was this really happening? Then he dropped the bomb. “If I cast you, can you lose ten pounds before June 10?”
I was desperate. I was, without knowing the word for it yet, running entirely on the fuel of shame.
My heart dropped through the floor. Weight had been a struggle for me all through high school. My mom made me announce my weight each day before breakfast. She put me on strict diets of 800 calories a day, but somehow I couldn’t keep it off. Would I be able to lose ten pounds that fast? I didn’t know, but I said yes. Of course I said yes.
A few weeks later I got the call. I was in! And then the war began.
For eight weeks I crash dieted, starved myself, slipped, binged, punished myself for slipping, starved again. I bargained with my body, trying to force it into submission. I was desperate. I was, without knowing the word for it yet, running entirely on the fuel of shame.
Suddenly it was June 7th, my twenty-first birthday. I was home in Illinois, a few days from flying to California. My mother made me a chocolate cake. I looked at her face, at the candles, at the sweet treat that had taken all afternoon to bake, and I couldn’t say no. I ate the cake. I told myself I would make up for it.
By the time I arrived in Anaheim, I was actually a couple of pounds heavier than when I had auditioned. Larry Billman looked at me with unmistakable disgust and shook his head. I felt like a failure.
I ended up losing more than ten pounds that summer. Not by forcing myself, but in the sheer joy of singing and dancing every day. But I still came away feeling shame.
The Core Truth It Took Decades to Finally Understand
The pattern of trying to make myself change went on for years. I crash dieted for events only to put the weight back on when the pressure eased. I honestly believed I just needed more discipline. And then one day, I heard something that rocked my world:
Shame doesn’t mobilize us, it numbs us. It holds everything exactly in place.
Punishment NEVER produces change.
Of course. We cannot beat ourselves up and expect it to produce healthy habits. Punishment produces shame. And shame doesn’t mobilize us, it numbs us. It holds everything exactly in place.
With this new awareness, I looked back at that twenty-one-year-old girl who was desperate for approval and felt sad. No amount of self-punishment was ever going to get her to lose those ten pounds. Not because she was weak or undisciplined or didn’t want it badly enough.
I thought being hard on myself was the same thing as being committed.
The critical voice that had woken me up every morning of my childhood, the one reflected in my mother’s eyes and from the number on the scale, had become a constant presence in my head. I thought being hard on myself was the same thing as being committed. I thought it was keeping me accountable.
I lived with constant demands until I couldn’t keep it up and the other voice would take over. The one that said, “Oh it’s ok, it’s your birthday. You can start again tomorrow.” I toggled between demands and indulgence, never knowing there was a third option.
If demands and pressure didn’t work, and coddling myself definitely didn’t work, what was the alternative?
The Voice That Never Lets Me Down
It knows that the way through is not punishment but ownership — real, clear-eyed, loving ownership of what is true and what you actually want.
The voice that actually produces change isn’t the voice that says just try harder, you can do it if you don’t give up. It is something deeper, a steady presence that sees and accepts you fully. It knows that you cannot shame a person into freedom. It knows that the way through is not punishment but ownership — real, clear-eyed, loving ownership of what is true and what you actually want.
I call this the voice of my inner Nurturing Parent, the one who always responds with truth, compassion and infinite hope for who I can become.
It’s the voice at the heart of the R.E.A.L. Transformation approach. A voice that offers the invitation to change and illuminates the path through deeper responsibility, emotional vulnerability, adult authority, and ever-deepening self-love.
Lucid Moment: Punishment never produces change. A steady, loving invitation to responsibility is the only thing that ever does.
Learning to cultivate this voice has been the single most impactful change in my life. It’s the voice that guided me to leave my first marriage, to become a life coach, to start Lucid Living. It’s the voice that helped me dream the most meaningful dreams of my life, including the leap to our new home on Bainbridge Island, and saying yes to the dream of my one-woman show.
Do I still hear the voices of the Critical Parent and Indulgent Parent within me? Of course. They pop up, offering me a vacation from responsibility, and sometimes they can be quite seductive. But I know they have never once taken me where I truly want to go.
Instead I turn to the voice that will challenge me and ask more of me, never once demanding it. I turn to the voice I can trust.
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