Let’s talk about shame for a minute.
I recently had a very significant experience with shame during my healing journey. I have spent a lot of time healing inner child wounds and generational trauma, but there was still something holding me back from everything that I was trying to accomplish. I was surprised during my Breathwork session when it came out as shame.
Shame is a complicated emotion. It comes in so many different forms. It’s also one of those hard emotions to deal with because we don’t talk about it….because we’re ashamed to, of course. So we are all walking around with some sort of shame inside but we are not helping each other heal it because we don’t want any one else to know what it is that we are ashamed of. It’s a vicious circle. In my case, as with many women, much of my shame stems from body issues. Or does it? As I explored this concept of shame further, I found that its roots were much deeper than that.
I developed at a very early age. My mother noticed that I was holding my breasts when I was running and decided it was time for me to get a bra. Actually, she literally whispered to me that it was time to go bra shopping and I wasn’t sure why it was such a secretive thing. I was 9 years old. After that I was teased mercilessly about my ‘big boobs’ and my back was always red from having my bra strap snapped. The boys would dare each other to try and get in a squeeze. I started to realize that it didn’t matter what I wore, it would always be revealing unless it was heavy and baggy. And those large breasts stuck out like beacons, even when I didn’t want them to. When I think back, it was around this time that I adopted the stance of crossing my arms over my chest. To this day my posture is terrible because I was always hunching my shoulders trying to keep my chest from sticking out too much.
By the time I was 11 years old I had my period, and it was made very clear to me that I could now get pregnant. It was never really discussed, however, how I could get pregnant. Sex was something that my mother never talked about. I could never ask questions about it because the simple answer was that we didn’t need to talk about it because you just didn’t do it outside of marriage. Everything I learned about sex (other than it was bad) I learned at school, or through my friends. I was often teased by these friends who seemed to know much more than I did. So…imagine being a 12 year-old girl who could easily pass for a young woman; but has no clue about sex. The attention from older men was confusing as it both intrigued and embarrassed me.
I want to make a little side-note here that also confusing was the way other girls and women treated me at times. I was often branded a flirt or a slut, even though I was rather shy and a virgin. Years later I watched my daughter go through a very similar situation. She also developed early. I remember that one day she was wearing a regular V-neck T-shirt and more than one time I heard one of her friend’s mothers tell her to pull it up and that maybe she would be more comfortable if she changed. I also heard it mentioned that she was so curvy that perhaps she should wear a one-piece bathing suit rather than a bikini, so she didn’t attract the wrong kind of attention. I remember this bringing so much rage in me because I related it to my own shame. I have always made sure to teach her to be proud of her body, not matter what size or shape. Why are we doing this to our daughters? Why do we continue to teach them to be ashamed of their own bodies?
The messages of shame from my mother stuck with me, and I held onto to my virginity longer than most of my friends did. And then I got teased about that. I believed my mother when she told me that if a boy really loved me he would wait. So I dated a few boys and never gave in to their pleading. And then, I fell in love for the very first time. He was perfect, we were perfect, everything was perfect because he loved me too and we were going to be together forever…until we weren’t. He loved me, but he couldn’t wait, so he left. I was destroyed. After that I didn’t care. I slept with the very next boy that I dated; because in my mind, it didn’t matter. Either you gave in, or you got used to being alone. Add to this a low self esteem and ‘daddy issues’ and I was pretty easy prey.
So…I was ashamed of my developing body. I was ashamed of the attention I was getting. I was ashamed of myself for enjoying the attention. I was ashamed for not having sex, then I was ashamed for having sex. And I turned all of this into a hatred for my own body. It didn’t matter whether I was slim or heavy. It didn’t matter how beautiful other people told me I looked. It didn’t matter how many things I accomplished or how nice a person I was. When I looked in the mirror all I saw were my physical flaws. At one point in my life, due to health issues, I had lost an extreme amount of weight. My skin was dry and my hair was falling out due to being malnourished. I look back at photos now and realize that I looked sickly and I was basically skin and bones. But at the time, in my reflection I still saw the chubby girl with the big boobs and bad posture looking back at me.
These issues stuck with me for most of my life. In my younger years I didn’t care who I slept with as long as I got some affection in return. Sex was just something that had to be done. It wasn’t enjoyed, it was a chore—a trade-off. Always hoping that just once, I would mean more to someone than just a chance to get lucky. As I got older and had more serious relationships, sex continued to be an issue because I was so ‘uptight’. I was taught that sex was shameful and should be done when necessary but not talked about. That caused a lot of problems because I could never completely relax. I was with a man for 20 years and right up until the end of our relationship I had to have the lights turned off before I got undressed for bed. I was told by more than one partner that they felt like I was impossible to ‘please’.
It took me 50 years to figure out what exactly I was ashamed of and where this shame came from. We talk about young females and their body issue and photoshop and the images and advertisements that our society reigns down upon their young, impressionable minds. But do we ever really look at the depths of these issues? My shame stemmed from before I was born. My pregnant 17-year-old mother being ashamed of her situation in the late 60’s. My prim and proper paternal grandmother and her shame in knowing that her son got a girl pregnant, had to have a shotgun wedding, and then ran away from his responsibilities. I was the result of his indiscretions, and I always felt the resentment from her. More shame from my mother as I got older and she taught me to hide my body, wanting to make sure that I didn’t end up in the same situation that she did. The body issues I had (and still sometimes have) are what I call ‘surface shame’; and ‘surface shame’ is a by-product of years…sometimes generations of inner wounds that have never been healed.
We can never be sure where the shame stems from for each and every individual, but we can help them discover what the roots of that shame are. Yes, for a lot of young women it comes out as body issues. And yes, the way that our society portrays women in the media continues to magnify the situation. I can only tell my story from a women’s perspective; but men are living with shame as well. Men are taught not to show emotion, don’t cry, only weaklings have mental health issues; and they are often shamed when they seek any kind of support or treatment. But if we want to fix this, changing our advertisements and societal views is only the beginning.
I believe that those of us who have discovered the value of healing must bring more attention to it. We need to both nurture our own souls and support each other in that healing process. We must believe, and teach our children to believe, that loving oneself is not selfish…it is selfless. We need to teach future generations the importance of valuing ourselves so that we can value each other. We need to build a foundation on the premise that value comes from within, not from what society or the media tells us is valuable. It is only by talking about our shame that we will no longer be ashamed by it.
Much love and healing,
Sandy