I’m having a really bad day today.

Not a my-wife-left-me, dog-died, lost-my-house and wrecked-my-pickup kind of day. Those are legitimate reasons for wanting to cry into your beer and/or write a country song.

Rather, I am dealing with a more insidious reason: shame. Shame from a long, long time ago, re-emerging through a series of events over the last 24 hours.

I feel so ashamed that I don’t even want to write about it. “That’s stupid, Amanda,” I can already hear someone say. “Get over yourself. Just who do you think you are?”

Good question.

But I’m going to talk about it anyway because I believe that,  when we give voice to shame, we weaken it. We can even silence it altogether – at least, for a time. And just as importantly, there’s always a chance someone will say, “Hey, me too,” which is a big part of why I write these posts in the first place.

And so, with that, here’s how and why my day got very dark very quickly.

It started last night, when I did something kind of, well, kick ass.

I was at my 9-year-old’s school’s parent council meeting (not as a council member, but as an interested parent), looking pretty fabulous and with just enough caffeine in me to make me say things before I think them all the way through.

Towards the end of the meeting, someone asked how we could get better volunteer attendance; it’s always the same core council members with a few extra parents. In a school of nearly 700 students, we could do better.

Some good ideas were thrown around, but mostly folks agreed they had “tried pretty much everything” with little change.

Well, my brain hamster was pretty high on coffee, so I shot my hand up and said, “I think we need to be more inclusive and let people know they’re welcome.”

Yep. Just like that. You can dress the activist up, but you can’t take her anywhere.

I told them I have a wife. I told them I’ve heard from other same-sex parents who are worried about not being welcomed within school communities. Oh, and then I went on to point out that everyone in the room was white, and that we should recognize that and ask ourselves why, in a school with such a diverse population, we don’t see that reflected at council meetings.

So, basically, I outed myself to a room full of people, brought up queerness and race, and said we all need to do better. I did so in a room full of parents, the principal, the vice principal and some teachers.

Oh, and I’m now on parent council.

I know I talk a lot about my life online, in the media and to rooms full of people who know what to expect. But there’s something about making yourself vulnerable on the fly that makes your now panicked brain hamster freak fall right off the wheel.

So, by this morning, I had what researcher and incredible human being Brené Brown calls a “vulnerability hangover.” It’s when you put yourself out there, and then you find yourself mortified by that fact for a little while after. That “OMG. What did I just do?” kind of feeling.

When I start my day with a vulnerability hangover (which has happened more times than I can count, given the work I do), I’m going to internalize the day’s events in ways that are far more negative than usual.

Obviously, today was no exception.

I went to a launch for a large local fundraising campaign. I was asked to go by the organizers specifically because my family has been part of their fundraising efforts, and therefore, media might want to speak to me.

News flash (I use this term ironically): No media wanted to speak to me.

Apparently, the reason is because they’ve all recently interviewed me. Between Zoe coming out and our efforts to help our friends from Finland, we’ve been in close contact with a lot of news agencies this year. It’s not at all surprising they wanted to interview other people instead.

But, of course, that’s not how Hangover Amanda interpreted it. Not even close.

“Who do you think you are?” the critic in me said. “See? You shouldn’t have come. Everyone is tired of hearing you talk. Hope you had fun, because they’ll never invite you back.”

But don’t worry, shame wasn’t done with me just yet. I also spilled Diet Pepsi all over the table I was at because I was too busy talking with my hands. And then I had nothing to clean it up with, so I pulled some used tissues from my purse to mop it up with. All class, all the time.

As the closing act to Shame-a-palooza 2016, my credit card was denied in the parking garage while 10 people were in line behind me, and then said machine ate my ticket. So I had to call for help and yell into the crackly speaker while occasionally turning around and mouthing, “sorry! I’m so sorry!” behind me.

I left with heart palpitations in my chest and a lump in my throat. Shame is balls.

Over the last couple of years, I have consciously learned to love myself. I did it to be an authentic role model for my daughter, and also because I started to realize I could not let anyone else love me if I didn’t think I was worthy of that love in the first place. And I do a great job most days. Hell, I just delivered a TedX talk on this very topic, which will be available online soon.

And yet, here I was, hating on myself today - hard. Belittling myself. Asking myself just who I think I am. So not only am I feeling ashamed by this point, but I’m feeling ashamed of feeling ashamed. Emotional inception.

I came home, and Juliet – the trans woman from Finland who’s been staying with us while she attempts to seek refuge in Canada – asked me how my day was.

“Do you really want to know?” I asked, holding back tears.

I didn’t want to tell her. She tells me all the time that I’m her hero. Despite my constant disagreement on the issue, she has this idea of me that is far more impressive than reality. I was ashamed to admit how I was feeling to this person who expects me to be strong.

But I did, because humans need help from other humans sometimes, and my brain hamster was tired of running all those thoughts around on the wheel.

And then she said something really insightful. She told me those negative thoughts are like a tree that has grown over time. The branches can grow and throw us some shade.

“You’ll never be able to get rid of the tree,” she said. “It’s a part of you. But you can trim the branches back enough to see the sun again. That’s what you have to do on days like today.”

Finnish people. They’re pretty smart.

And that’s why I’m writing this. I’m trimming the tree back. Because she’s right: I’ll never be able to kill it. That tree was planted when I was a child – back when things and other people were the ones saying terrible things to me – and it will always be in my yard. But I can control how it grows. Shame might exist in my world, but it doesn’t have to take over.

Funny enough, today is also the day I got a nice, short tweet from Bren é  Brown herself – someone I deeply admire. On a day filled with shame, this was a nice reminder that I can be pretty brave, too.

So, just who do I think I am? The girl with the pruning shears staring up at the branches, that’s who.