By Ann Estaki · August 9, 2025
The day I told my mother I was getting divorced, she didn’t pause to ask why or how I was coping. Her face, framed by the gold-threaded scarf she wore for important family moments, stiffened. Her words came out slow but sharp, like a blade that had been waiting for its target:
“Don’t come back home. You’ve embarrassed the family name.”
It wasn’t anger — it was a verdict. Final. In that moment, it felt as if I had been erased from the family ledger in one clean stroke.
Not long after, someone I once called a friend — in her pressed silk blouse and bangles that caught the light — tilted her head and asked, “So… how many times have you been married now?” Her voice carried that mix of faux curiosity and quiet condemnation that only a culture obsessed with appearances can perfect.
In our world, marriage was more than a personal commitment — it was a public certificate of worth. A woman with one lasting marriage was honorable; one with multiple marriages was a cautionary tale. And I had been cast in the latter role.
In our world, marriage was more than a personal commitment — it was a public certificate of worth.
I grew up in a place where judgment wasn’t always loud — but it was everywhere. At weddings where gold jewelry gleamed under bright lights and every table buzzed with speculation about who was “doing well” and who had “shamed the family.” At festivals scented with cardamom and incense, where a single raised eyebrow could make you wish you were invisible. Even in the market, surrounded by the warm smell of fried snacks and fresh flowers, I could feel it — the sideways glances, the whispers just quiet enough to pretend they weren’t meant for me.
In a judgmental society, there’s a difference between perceived judgments and judgments themselves.
Perceived judgments
Perceived judgments are the whispers in our heads — the belief that someone is sizing us up, silently deciding we’re too much or not enough. They can be born from a glance that lingers too long, a laugh that’s too sharp, or a pause in conversation that feels heavier than it should. They often reflect our own fears more than anyone else’s truth.
Judgments
Judgments, though, are deliberate — a verdict spoken out loud or delivered in actions that leave no room for doubt. They live in sentences like, “You should know better,” or “You’ve brought shame on us.” They are the pointed comparisons, the cruel labels, the outright corrections shouted for everyone to hear.
And my parents? They didn’t believe in quiet correction. Raised voices and direct scoldings were frequent — sharp, loud, and public, the kind designed to intentionally embarrass us, and in the process, embarrass themselves. It could happen in the middle of a sari shop, on the steps of the church, or at a temple courtyard where the air smelled of sandalwood. People would stop mid-step, eyes following the scene, ears catching every word as my dignity unraveled in real time.
In our culture, those moments were never contained. They rippled outward — from relatives to neighbors to strangers — becoming gossip, then cautionary stories told in kitchens and living rooms.
Culture was the soil in which these judgments grew. It told my parents what was respectable, honorable, and safe — and which choices would bring disgrace. They became the enforcers, filtering every decision I made through the sieve of “What will people think?”
The quick-change artist
As a child, I became a quick-change artist, slipping between versions of myself depending on the setting.
As a child, I became a quick-change artist, slipping between versions of myself depending on the setting. At school, I could laugh loudly. At home or in community gatherings, I spoke in measured tones, each word weighed for potential offense.
The difference between perceived and actual judgments matters — but when you grow up surrounded by both, the lines blur. Perceived judgments can make you shrink even in neutral spaces, while actual judgments can carve deep grooves in your identity, training you to perform for approval rather than act from your own truth.
Now, as an adult, I am still learning to pause and ask: Did they truly say or do something to condemn me? Or am I projecting my past onto the present? This is my quiet rebellion, my way of taking back the self I hid for so long.
Growing up in a judgmental society taught me how to read a room before I even crossed its threshold. But it also taught me something unexpected — not every glance is a verdict, not every silence is disapproval. Sometimes, the gavel falls only in our own minds. And recognizing that difference is where freedom begins.
Sometimes, the gavel falls only in our own minds.
Ann Estaki writes personal essays on family, inheritance, and the patterns we carry from one generation to the next.
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