Shame Monster

In today's newsletter I share about my experience navigating a stigmatized childbirth injury, the power of deconstructing shame, and finding out we're less alone and broken than we often believe.

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A few nights ago, I found my daughter in her room, curled in a little ball under the covers.

“Hi sweetie, are you feeling bad about what happened?” A little nod, then —“Go away.”

“If you want some time alone I can leave, but before I do, can I tell you something? When something hard happens, and we want to hide… that’s usually the shame monster showing up.”

“The shame monster?”

“Yeah… the shame monster is a meanie and tells us lies, like, ‘Something is really wrong with you… hiding will make things better!’ The problem is, it almost never helps. It almost never makes the feeling get smaller. It just makes us feel even more alone… even more like something is wrong with us. When we hide, we never get the chance to learn that we aren’t alone. That others have experienced the same things… felt the same way…”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’ve faced my own shame monster before. A BIG meanie huh?! I first met my shame monster when I was about your age. And it wasn’t until I was a grown up that I realized what it was… that I started saying — ‘No! I won’t hide. I’m actually not alone. I won’t keep this all inside’… and when I did, that’s when the shame monster actually started to get smaller and smaller. Less powerful… until I was stronger than the shame monster.”

The covers peeled pack, and her eyes met mine.

“Do you want to talk about it? You aren’t alone. There will never be anything so bad that we can’t figure it out together, ok?”

Edit to note: My daughter understands that the shame monster is not a real monster, but rather a helpful metaphor used to illustrate this shared experience. Not all children of all ages will resonate with or benefit from this description.

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The shame monster. A big meanie. Its krytptonite? Storytelling. Sharing our stories and hearing others’. Learning we’re less alone and broken than we believe. Building community in the midst of calamity.

I recently had the opportunity to share some of my story deconstructing shame for an article that Jessica Zucker, PhD — a clinical psychologist and author of I Had a Miscarriage and Normalize It — was writing for Oprah Daily. The article is titled, Talking About Shame Changed My Life, a title that couldn’t more accurately describe these past six years.

Almost exactly six years ago, a few weeks after my daughter was born, I pulled out a mirror and visually inspected the source of discomfort that was not improving as I was assured it would over the first few weeks postpartum. I remember googling in a panic, “why does my vagina look like a weird beetle” (I know…) and after several horrified hours down the rabbit hole, I learned what a pelvic floor PT would officially diagnose few weeks later — a grade 2 cystocele, one of several types of pelvic organ prolapse (a common postpartum condition, but you’d never know that based on the lack of coverage in almost all childbirth prep books). Months after that, I would also come to suspect (and eventually confirm) levator ani avulsion, the detachment of a pelvic floor muscle from the bone.

Pelvic organ prolapse and levator ani muscle avulsion… childbirth injuries with lifelong implications, sustained during the thing my body was “made to do.” Sustained during the intervention-free birth center delivery where I did all the right things in all the right ways (according to popular birth culture and surrounding discussions). As a former high level athlete with visions of backpacking with my baby, running trail races, and competing in gravel bike races, this was not the start to motherhood and return to athleticism I was led to believe I was likely to have based on my meticulous preparation.

I threw myself into “fix it” mode, not wanting to leave any stone unturned as I searched for solutions. Every day I followed along with virtual routines streamed over the TV, studying every angle and matching engagement cues with quite possibly more fierce dedication than I’d put into my training as a competitive cyclist years earlier. Every night I cried the kind of whole body-wracking sobs I hadn’t cried since adolescence, as I tried to piece together my sense of self and my future.

And as I turned over these stones, I turned down invitations to go on new baby walks with friends from my prenatal yoga group, giving vague explanations of focusing on rest and bonding. How could I tell them that my pelvic floor was shredded and my bladder was attempting to make a great escape? Looking back, I had internalized the belief that I had either majorly messed up or missed some critical piece of preparation to have things go so wrong… or something in me was fundamentally flawed. Maybe never even meant to be a mother.

I held my baby with hot, shameful tears streaming down my face as I whispered, “I’m so sorry love, you are perfect but I didn’t know it would be this hard. I didn’t know it would take this much from me.” I asked my husband to meet kind friends with meal drop-offs… to tell them I was sleeping. Because all I wanted to say was, “entirely broken…” when they asked how I was… and that would’t do. No, not in a society in which new babies bring unequivocal bliss, joy and only joy.