Shame and stigma are used to keep us in line and keep us quiet. Some of it is quite obvious, while other parts of the shame and stigma are more subtle and a little harder to recognise. From girlhood, we are taught that we should look and feel a certain way. The expectations of motherhood, our careers, our bodies, whether or not we should choose marriage are all laced with taboos.
Today’s guest is Dr Jessica Zucker. Jessica is a clinical psychologist with a PhD who specialises in reproductive health and the author of the award-winning book I HAD A MISCARRIAGE: A Memoir, a Movement. Today we are going to unpack some of the concepts of her second book titled Normalize it: Upending the Silence, Stigma and Shame That Shape Women’s Lives.
We speak about:
- Jessica’s own miscarriage and how women tend to blame themselves when they experience miscarriage
- Being told to keep pregnancy a secret until 2nd trimester & how it can leave women feeling unsupported
- The trifecta of silence, shame and stigma and how they all feed each other
- “At least” comments and how they try to ‘tidy up’ pain
- Objectification theory
- Navigating diet culture and health messaging with our kids
- The language we use when it comes to health and conditions like cancer of ‘beating it,’ ‘be strong’ and ‘fighting’
- Perfectionism and it’s link to anxiety
- The narratives of what we ‘should’ want to be like married and mothers
You can get a copy of Dr Jessica Zucker’s new book here: Amazon
Find her on Instagram: @ihadamiscarriage
And more from her website: drjessicazucker.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode was recorded on Cameragle Land. Hi guys, and
welcome back to another episode of Life on caut.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
I'm Laura, I'm Brittany.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Now it is no surprise to anybody listening and something
that we've spoken about quite a bit on this podcast
over the years, that we very much live in a
society and a culture that uses shame and stigma to
keep us in line, especially as women, to keep us
quiet and to keep us being the good girls, which
is very much a term that we've spoken about and used.
(00:36):
Some of it is very obvious, while other parts of
shame and stigma that we live in are far more
subtle and are far harder to recognize. From girlhood, we
are taught that we should look and feel a certain way,
that we should dress a certain way, and there's an
expectation around bodies, the expectation of motherhood, our careers once again,
our bodies as we age whether or not we should
(00:56):
choose marriage, are all lace with different types of taboos
and expect Yeah. Wow, no pressure, no particularly no pressure.
But today we have a wonderful guest. Her name is
doctor Jessica Zucker, and Jessica is a clinical psychologist with
a PhD, who specializes in reproductive health and the author
of the award winning book I Had a Miscarriage, A Memoir,
and a movement. Jessica is the creator of the viral
(01:18):
hashtag I Had a Miscarriage campaign. Her writing has appeared
in The New York Times, The Washington Post, New York Magazine, Vogue,
and Harvard Business Review. Now we're here to talk about
her brand new book that has come out. It is
tired to normalize, it upending the silent stigma and shame
that shapes women's lives. Jess Welcome to the pod.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
God, what an intro that was. How much you've written about,
how much you've spoke about your qualifications, It's all very incredible.
I'm going to really get into it and I'm very
excited about the chat. But before we do, we kickstart
every guest with an accidentally unfiltered your most embarrassing story.
So do you have something to share with this today?
Speaker 3 (01:57):
I do. I mean, I don't know if it's the
most embarras story in my entire life, but it is
an embarrassing story that happened not too long ago that
kind of reveals the stage of life that I'm in.
Last summer, we were preparing to take a family trip
to London for our son to play basketball, and we
(02:17):
went to get passports renewed and new ones, and I
got to the window and the person asked me the
most basic question, what's your name? And I said Jessica.
And then I looked at my husband and he was like,
what are you doing And I said, I can't. I
(02:38):
could not come up with my last name. Okay, this
is ridiculous and embarrassing, mostly because this is perimenopause. Now
we can get into that, because the book gets into
that if you want to or not, but in your
fifties or maybe sooner, this whole concept of grain fog
(03:01):
and not knowing what you know is absolutely delightful and
horrifying all at the same time.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
You know what, It's like so upsetting about that as well.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
It's like, it's interesting that we've now recognized that it's
part of perimenopause and menopause. But for a lot of
people it would have just been kind of back in
the day, I would assume it would have been reduced
down to like she got dementia, Like is she losing
her mind?
Speaker 3 (03:24):
You know, I just asked my oncologist recently if it
was dementia because it feels like it is, yes, and what.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
They say, no, Well that's the kind of true.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
I'm like, what did she say? She looked at me,
she had a smirk, and she said, I can guarantee
that is not what it is. So I mean, I'm
banking on her answer.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Is it similar do you think? I mean, I have
had none anybove, but is it similar to baby brain?
Like that fog that you get when you're in your
pregnancy and post birth? I wont like, do you think that?
I mean, you've.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
Experienced that LRD full of homones.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
I think it's worse, But that's just me.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
I was going to say, I don't have the comparative,
but I think baby brain kind of is multiple things.
Sometimes it's the tiredness, sometimes it's the hormones, but like, yeah,
there's definitely a lot of things change and shift during
that time as well. Jessea, what was it that made
you get into really researching and understanding this idea in
psychology around shame and stigma that and I know it's
something that does also relate to men, but it very
(04:28):
much relates to women.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
So I'm a psychologist, as you said, I specialize in
women's reproductive and maternal mental health and have done so
for about fifteen years at this point. And prior to
pursuing my PhD, I worked in public health, so I
have a background working internationally, and my focus was women's health,
women's rights, and so when I started my clinical practice,
(04:53):
my vision was to kind of marry my background with
my PhD and the one on one work. So at
the time I was just passionate about all things women,
all things women's health, until I was sixteen weeks into
my second pregnancy and I had a miscarriage while I
(05:13):
was home by myself. So for years I had been
sitting across from women who were talking about the silence,
the stigma, the shame, the feelings of alienation and isolation
in the aftermath of pregnancy and infant loss. But of course,
not all therapists can walk in the shoes of every
single patient, and so all I knew up until that
(05:36):
point was what I had read conferences, I had gone
to consultation groups until I was one of them, and
it was the most you know, traumatic, surprising, dramatic things
the of course that I've ever been through to date.
(05:58):
So I was humed by myself. The baby emerged, I
had to cut the umbilical cord myself, coached by phone
by my obgyn, and then I promptly began to hemorrhage
as my husband was darting through Los Angeles traffic trying
to get home to me. And then we brought the
fetus in a bag to my doctor's office to be tested,
(06:21):
and to make matters all the worse, I then underwent
an unmedicated DNC. Oh my goodness, it's unimaginable. The sound
of the machine is still seared into my psyche. And
all of that to say that I could not sort
(06:42):
of sit back. Not that I had been sitting back,
I had been so engaged with my patients, but because
I now knew the hormonal shifts and this feeling of
intense grief in a way that I hadn't previously, I
felt like I had to do something about it. So
I went to the research, and the research found that
(07:05):
a majority of women are blaming themselves, think that they
did something to deserve this outcome, and even report feeling
a sense of body failure or even body hate and
this outraged me. Luckily, I myself did not experience those feelings,
(07:25):
and the only thing that I can think of as
to why I didn't was because I had already had
a healthy son. So I think I just like intuitively
felt like there must have been something wrong with the fetus,
Like I don't feel like my body failed me here,
like I just I actually felt like my body really worked.
And it does turn out that there was a chromosol
(07:46):
abnormality and that's why the miscarriage did happen.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
So sorry you went through that. Well, how if you
don't mind me asking how far along were you when
you had your miscarriage?
Speaker 3 (07:56):
I was sixteen weeks the term miscarriage.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
People do speak about it so much more now, but
you don't necessarily speak about what it actually looks like.
Like you'll hear somebody be open enough to say I'm
having a miscarriage. I had a miscarriage, and you immediately think, okay,
there was some blood, you might have gone to the hospital.
But I have never thought when someone has said to
me they've had a miscarriage, I've never thought that that's
(08:20):
what they could have gone through, That they could have
been at home birth in a child taking it to
the hospital. I just think it's so important we have
these conversations because I don't think people are understanding what
it actually looks like to go through something like that.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
I think you're right, but I will say for the
listeners that this is an incredibly unusual circumstance. A majority
of miscarriages happened within the first trimester, and I've never
heard a patient tell me a story like this. So
mostly people, you know, yes, they start to spot, they
(08:53):
go to their doctor and there's no heartbeat, and then
they can schedule the DNC, have medication, wake up. They're
no longer pregnant, but at least they weren't awake for
the process. So you're right, though, I mean, I feel
like we just need to unearth these stories because they're
(09:14):
happening in this sort of hush hush, don't tell anybody,
just kind of quote unquote move on or move forward.
At least you know you can get pregnant. God doesn't
give you more than you can handle. God has a plan.
All of these platitudes that are so off putting and
so scientifically incorrect. Sometimes we just need to replace the
(09:36):
silence with storytelling so that we feel like we have
community in the aftermath of these traumas.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
I think a big contributor to it is, you know,
for so long, there's been this kind of like just
general knowledge and expectation that you don't tell someone that
you're pregnant until you past the first trimester.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
You keep it to yourself.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
And I even remember, and I hate it now I
think back on it, when my sister first told me
that she was pregnant. She'd been trying for a really
long time, and she was so happy and so excited,
and she must have only just found out, so she
was only a couple of weeks, And my reaction wasn't excitement.
I was like worried that she told me so early
because I didn't understand and I was quite you know,
(10:16):
young and naive at the time around my understanding of
pregnancy myself, and I was so worried about how she
would feel if something went wrong. Whereas like now I
look back on that time and I feel so sad
that that was my reaction, but I just I didn't
think of it in any other way except this fear,
because I was like, I'm not meant to know that information.
Speaker 4 (10:33):
That's your information. Why are you telling me? Right?
Speaker 3 (10:35):
But so my sort of feeling about that is that
even though a majority of miscarriages happened in the first trimester,
it feels like what the doctors are saying, and again
I know they mean well, but I think though that
the message is don't share your good news because in
case it becomes bad news, then you don't have to
share that either, and you can just start again. But
(10:58):
my feeling is why not share our joy? And if
a joy evaporates or the joy ends, then we have
the people that we love and we need around us.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
I also think you rob yourself the opportunity to have
those conversations because if you don't talk about it and
people around you don't know, then they don't know how
to support you either. So it's been this incredible disservice
to women for so long. And that's not to say
I'm sure there are some women who do want to
keep it private for their own personal reasons, but I
would say overwhelmingly there is a lack of support in
(11:32):
the workplace. There is a lack of support in general
for women who are experiencing miscarriage, and it's changing, but
it's because for so long it has been so unspoken.
Speaker 4 (11:40):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
I think that it's time that we shout it from
rooftops if somebody is inclined to do that, which I
ended up doing, which I would never have thought I
would be the person sort of getting on Instagram and
saying it all and writing in all these places and
writing a book about the contents of my person life.
I just never would have pictured that. But it feels
(12:03):
like if not us, who, If not now? When?
Speaker 4 (12:08):
Right?
Speaker 3 (12:08):
So? I feel like for future generations of girls and women,
we need to start talking about these normative outcomes of pregnancy.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Talk to us a little bit about the silence, shame,
stigma cycle that you speak about, and some of the
more insidious ways that shame shows up for women, because
it's not just limited to miscarriage and early pregnancy loss.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
Now it's not. So I sort of see it as
this strident trifecta, like it goes in a circle. I
think that the silence begets the stigma, begets the shame,
and then we start all over again. The shame, I think,
is obviously the most painful part in terms of emotion,
(12:50):
in terms of potentially leading to feelings of depression, anxiety
being very cut off. And you're right, it shows up
in a variety of avenues and elements of our lives.
So my book Normalize It starts with girlhood, so menstruation.
So from the get go, girls are told to not
(13:13):
talk about the symptoms of menstruation. They are made to
feel sort of awkward in their changing bodies, and that's
where the silence seems to begin. And then it makes
our way through our lives, ranging from motherhood, abortion, pregnancy, loss, perimenopause, menopause,
(13:35):
all of these milestones that most, if not all, people
go through are just under talked about. And so when
we live with the shame inside of us, my fear
and what I have seen in my practice over all
these years is it can eat us alive. And so
when our stories are untold, we make narratives out of
(13:57):
our stories. I'm bad, I don't deserve to be happy.
So this shame kind of if it festers, can be dangerous.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
It's interesting how young it starts.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
When you think about the first time you got your period,
or the first time that you had an accident with
your period where it ended up on your dress at
school or something like that. Like the pure embarrassment around it.
Even now, I think if someone was to accidentally get
period blood on their pants, they'd be like, oh, for
fuck's sake, Like how am I this is? It's not
something that where like, oh, don't worry about it, it's cool,
Like it is still something that we see as being
(14:29):
like relatively embarrassing.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
I was about to almost say the opposite laws. And
I say this because I was just thinking it happened
to myself like three weeks ago here, and it happened
to somebody else one.
Speaker 4 (14:39):
Of our work in our colleagues.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Like I was like, oh my god, I have period blood.
Luckily I was wearing jeans, was on the inside of
my jeans, but you could see it through the outside.
Absolutely nothing I could do. When you're young, if you
fall over and scrape your knee and you're bleeding through
your pants and someone goes, oh, you're bleeding your knees bleeding,
and you're like, oh my god, I have hurt my knee,
you're not embarrassed. But the second that it's because it
(15:01):
comes from menstruation, all of a sudden, we're supposed to
be mortified. But I wasn't mortified. It was an inconvenience you.
But I wasn't embarrassed. I was like, fuck, what am
I supposed to do?
Speaker 3 (15:09):
Now?
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Like, I agree, But I would also say that you
were in close company with your closest girlfriends. If I
was walking down the street, yeah, if you were in
the office with like our male bosses, I think you
probably would have felt slightly different about it.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
I think about girls in school, and I went to
co ed school in primary school, and I still remember
I had this visceral memory of a little girl getting
up to get an award at the front of school,
going up and walking up onto the stage with the
principal and stuff, and she had period blood on the
back of her dress and everyone in the school was like, which,
totally right, how humiliating for a little twelve year old,
(15:42):
But like, this is seed in my memory because I
felt so sorry for her, embarrassed. I was like, you,
poor thing, that is so humiliating. And now I look
back on it and I'm like, God, I wish I
wish that that hadn't been so significant that as a
thirty nine year old woman, I still remember it for
this little twelve year old girl.
Speaker 4 (16:00):
You know, I was only twelve at the time too.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
Yeah, I mean, but what do you think will make
the difference? Like, what do you think would change the
stories the narrative around this culturally. I just I keep
trying to figure it out because my daughter is eleven
and I'm assuming she'll be getting her period soon, and
I'm sort of tying with this, like do I want
to have like a period party? Want to.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
Embarrassing?
Speaker 3 (16:28):
I know that's going to be embarrassing too. It's like,
what's the path forward that could be comforting, you know
what I mean.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
I think it's changing a lot from even the advertisement
for period products and things like that, and the way
brands are talking about periods and destigmatizing it. You're seeing
billboards for period products. Now you're you're seeing a lot
of people like us talk about it really openly. I
do think that a lot of the stigma and the embarrassment,
and I don't want to point fingers. I'm blamed, but
I think it will always come back to men. And
(16:57):
I'm not blaming them, but I'm saying I don't think
a lot of women are around sorry girls around menstruation.
I don't think they're embarrassed because other females have seen
that they're menstruating. It's coming back that men are seeing
their menstruating. How they going to laugh? And it's because
they don't understand it. I think it all comes back
to a lack of understanding and maybe education as a whole.
So I think it's not so much. I'm sure most
(17:20):
parents are doing the right things at home. I think
it's just the broader conversation.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
I completely agree, And I think that there's two parts
to it. Like I think having the same conversations with
little boys that we have with little girls. We prepare
little girls so much for the things that change in
their body, but we don't really have those conversations with
boys because we think we don't need to. But then
that just treads to the kind of the mystery and
the weirdness of it and all that sort of stuff.
And I think about when we were I mean, I
(17:44):
know it's changed hugely, but when we were in school,
boys weren't taught about periods. It was completely not something
that was relevant to them or that they needed to
know about. And so this lack of understanding made it
funny to them, and it became a point of almost
like something that they could make jokes about the flip
side to that is, And I know we've talked about
advertising brid but it's still interesting to me that there's
(18:05):
a lot of advertising rules around period products. For the
longest time, you weren't able to show blood. You weren't
able to show anything that was red. It had to
be blue dye that was used.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
I don't understand that, but yeah, I think.
Speaker 4 (18:17):
That those things are very subtle.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
They're very subtle, you know, when you think about it,
They're quite subtle in terms of marketing or advertising. But
it adds to the shame. Well, if we're not seeing
that the product, we've not seeing.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
Blood, why it looks yeah?
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Right, So I think that those things there's quite a
multilayered reason why we're still so weird about talking about it,
especially for young girls.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
I know we brushed over it, but I want to
go back for a second. When we are talking about
pregnancily loss and miscarriage for the people that you see,
what is the main issue or the reason that shame
is attached to that? What are people experiencing the most?
Is it the fact that they believe that they're failing
because their body couldn't hold onto the pregnancy, like, is
that what you're seeing.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
I'm seeing it's at a majority of the time that
women end up going to this place of my body
failed me, what is wrong with me? And yet you
know they're saying, but that woman you know that's walking
down the street is pregnant, so she must have done
something differently, or she must be better than me in
some way. But I also think the shame comes through
(19:22):
the silence around the topic. So again we're back to
this swirling trifecta, because I don't know that people would
instantly feel ashamed of a loss if they were met
with a communal discussion about it. So if everybody was
just shouting from rooftops or openly talking about their miscarriages,
(19:42):
would we go to the place of body failure? Because
we know that one in four pregnancies ends this way,
So maybe instead people would say, oh, it was likely
a chromosomal issue. This is actually my body doing its job.
Something was wrong, and I'm going to find out more.
But I am going to keep loving myself through this,
(20:05):
or at least trying to. So I think the shame
comes from even female to female conversations being stunted or
being met with these platitudes that are so off putting
that people want to run for the hills because being
met with at least you have a healthy child, or
at least you know you can get pregnant, or at
(20:26):
least you're young. I totally understand why people say those things,
but really what they're doing is minimizing the pain, and
they're not wanting to be in the discomfort with the
person who's grieving.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
Yeah. I can resonate with this so much.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
I also think when you speak about miscarriage, that's when
you find out that you're actually not alone in it.
So I mean, to Allisoners, this isn't you. But I've
had two miscarriages and I've spoken about both of them,
and the first one was very different to the second,
not in terms of what I experienced, but in terms
of people's reactions to the first time. I guess like
(21:02):
the realization I had is that once I started speaking
about it, I realized I was part.
Speaker 4 (21:07):
Of a much bigger community.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
You know, I had read the statistics of the one
and four or the one and five, and I was like,
where the fuck are these women exactly? And then all
of a sudden, you know, my mom and my mother
in law and like my friends, and it opened up
to people that I'd never realized or knew about, they
just hadn't spoken about it. But the second time, it
was really different, and that was because it was after
my first child, and it was exactly that response of like, well,
(21:32):
at least you already have a baby, And it really
damaged some of my friendships because it really made me
clock the people that I could talk about the things
that were upsetting to me with and the people who
I felt dismissed what was important. And absolutely there was
no part of me that was invalidating the fact that
I had a baby. But I was like, also, I
(21:53):
still feel sad, like I'm still allowed to have these
feelings simultaneously alongside the gratitude. And I think that it's
exactly it really is what you said, this idea that
along with shame and stigma, we find it very difficult
to hold space for grief and we don't like to
ask people if they're okay in so many situations when
grief is involved because we don't want to upset them.
(22:14):
You know, we don't want to make it worse, is
what we think. But you know, I very rarely think
you're making it worse by asking if someone's okay.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
Well, I agree with that, and I actually think it's
a poor excuse for not making yourself vulnerable and not
being uncomfortable with the griever because to say, well, I
didn't want to bring it up because in case she
wasn't thinking about it, I just wouldn't want to upset her.
It's like number one, she's a big girl, so he
doesn't want to talk about Yeah, well, number one, she's
(22:43):
probably thinking about it. And even if she's not, she'll
tell you that, and she can say thank you so
much for thinking about me or caring about me, but
I'm not up for talking about it, or I'm actually
feeling good today or whatever. But unless we ask, we're
not going to know, And so we end up feeling
pretty alone around our loved ones at times, which is
(23:04):
just a terrible feeling.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
I think when it comes to grief, this isn't something
that is just isolated to women. And I say this
because I feel like men often find it really difficult
to have these conversations, and recently I saw it in
my own husband. He had a friend who had gone
through a really traumatic family loss and they'd gone out
for lunch together and he came home and I was like,
did you speak to your friend about the loss that
(23:29):
they've just had? And he was like, oh, I didn't
want to bring it up because I didn't want to
make him uncomfortable.
Speaker 4 (23:35):
And I think that.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
It is very prevalent in men as well, that they
don't want to ask about divorces or breakups or things
that do feel vulnerable for fear of eliciting that response
in the person. And you know, I think that that
gets into a whole other conversation around masculinity. But I
do think that it's something that we struggle with on
both sides of the gender spectrum.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
I couldn't agree more. I don't know if you know
this about my history, but two weeks after my first
book came out, the one that you know is a
memoir meets manifesto about miscarriage, I was diagnosed with breast
cancer and I was met with the most sort of silly,
not unimaginable. I mean, I had heard these words before,
(24:17):
but sort of like all of this warrior language that
surrounds breast cancer, we wouldn't say this to men. You're
such a warrior you're so strong, You're going to beat
this quote unquote, And I just found it fascinating as
I was laying there, taking in the fact that I
had this diagnosis, that I had two young kids, that
(24:38):
I was faced with something that can of course be fatal,
and I was like, wait, people's responses are to tell
me that I'm a warrior, which just made me kind
of giggle because it made me see myself like on
a horse wearing yes. And I thought, well, actually, I
(25:02):
feel like what I need to do more than anything
is lean into my body, lean into self compassion. I
don't want to fight, you know, this war or this
battle against my body. The opposite, I felt.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
You know.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
So it's interesting. And then on the gender note that
you just mentioned, I mean, aside from my father and
a couple of cousins and my uncle, the men in
my life were unable to find words to ask about this,
to really be with me through this because they haven't
been taught to ask about this or to sit with
(25:38):
the uncomfortability of a woman having to undergo a mastectomy
or a change in her body that's so unimaginable.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
Ye, I think this is an important time to talk
about the language that we're use in these situations, and
you've just made me think of something. Just a couple
of days ago, a friend of mine was diagnosed with
cancer very young, and I was looking she put it
on social media, you know, this is what's happening in
my life. This is where I've been, and I was
looking at the commons and I felt very similar to
(26:07):
what you just said. The people that telling her that
she's got this, she's strong, she's gonna be fine, You're
gonna beat this, And I thought, that's probably not what
she's thinking right now. She's like, let's be realistic. Telling
me that I'm strong and going to and I've got
this is not what I want to hear I am
riddled with cancer. Like, let's just call a spade a spade.
And I had this moment in that situation where I thought,
(26:28):
she probably just wants someone to say I'm thinking of
you here if you need that, not like you are
going to beat this. You're so strong. There are people
saying you've achieved so much in your life, like this
isn't even going to touch the sides. And I thought,
what a crazy thing to say to what. Yeah, just
like they're trying to be so positive, like there's no
malice in it at all. But this is an interesting
time to have these conversations. And you were just mentioning
(26:51):
the at least language around pregnancy loss, like, well, at
least you know you can fall pregnant. Well, at least
you're still young and you can try again. For me,
I get it all the time. I struggled to get
embryos and I managed to get three after getting none.
I know what three means. It means nothing, but the
number of people that are like, well, at least you've
got three, I'm like, that's just not helping, Like, and
(27:12):
I know it's not. It's not lace in anything. But
I think it's an important time to talk about thinking
about the types of language that we're us in these situations.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
I think that this does create shame. I do. I
think that the language then informs how we feel. Because
if everybody's saying you're so strong, for example, what if
I didn't get through the cancer, what if your friend
doesn't make it, does that mean that we weren't strong
enough quote unquote, like that we didn't fight the battle
(27:44):
with enough verve. I mean, it just puts the onus
so much on the woman to get through whatever it
is she's trying to get through. And I think it
can make people just fold in on themselves because it's like,
if I'm going to be met with all of this
bullshit or these words that you know are trying to
stave off the pain of what's happening, then maybe I
(28:09):
won't really tell people. I mean, I think that's what
ends up happening, and then there's like a shame spiral.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
So what do you think some examples of some really
great things to say in those situations.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
Well, well, what you just said that you were tempted
to write in the comments, that's exactly what I would recommend.
So whatever the trauma may be, it's I care about you.
I'm here for you. I want to talk with you
if and when you're ready. I'm here to listen. And
I think touching base showing up. So even your husband
(28:40):
could reach out to his friend who he had lunch
with now and just say, I know we didn't get
a chance to talk about it, but I want you
to know that I'm here if you want to. We
can always circle back. And I do think consistency is
key because we are all so busy and somebody has
a miscarriage or receives a diagnosis, or there's a death
(29:01):
in their family, and within I don't know, two to
four weeks, everybody else has sort of moved on and
they expect the griever has two and then they're kind
of left alone. And actually this may apply to early
motherhood as well, right when a baby's born. Everyone's there
in the beginning, and then suddenly they're gone. And then
women are like, who is this postpartum depression? Like I'm anxious,
(29:25):
Like I feel very isolated. So I think the antidote
to these platitudes are really simple. It is just being
present with your loved one.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
What do you think is that antidote to us fixing
the shame that women feel apart from the storytelling element,
and I guess us feeling as though there's kind of
safety and numbers of the other people who have similar experiences.
What would you say and what do you recommend to
your clients who come and see you, your patients that
come and see you, how they can kind of break
(29:59):
this shame it's not cool.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
Well, usually I find with patients that the shame is complicated,
like it is for all of us. You know, so
I kind of get into connecting the dots between childhood
stuff and what's going on right now, because it seems
like in a lot of cases, whatever happened at home
in our early lives, you know, with our attachment figures,
(30:23):
with our parents, with the people who raised us, that
can really inform the way we let in the shame
the way we don't. And so I like to try
to sort of help people make sense of why they
are who they are by looking back. But I also
think in a more practical way, because of course not
everybody's going to be in therapy, and not everybody wants
(30:46):
to look all the way back to the beginning of
their lives. I do think that getting our stories out
in some way releases the potential shame. And so I
know I've been talking about, you know, getting on a
soapbox and creating this movement and stuff. But other options
are things like writing in a journal. So you might
(31:10):
even just want to write about the friends that were
disappointing in the aftermath of loss, or a sexual assault
experience that your family doesn't even know about, or whatever
the case may be that was traumatic that holds some
shame that you have kept tucked inside. It can be
even just written on a page, and then it can
(31:32):
even be burned, you know, if somebody's that worried about
it being read. So there are various ways I think
that we can release what we hold inside without it
having to be super public or super well known to
those around us.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
One of the things we were talking about earlier, and
it was in reference to something you speak about, this
objectification theory and women's bodies in particular. Can you talk
us through what that means? And I know that, like,
I mean, we've kind of circled on pregnancy loss a
little bit, but something that is such a common thing
for women to feel shame around is their bodies, whether
(32:11):
it be the way their bodies look, or have been
shamed for being too sexual, or it's always like there's
a thing that's too much or too little.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
Oh yes, And the pressure that we feel as mothers
to look like we were never pregnant at.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
All, yeah, like never grow another human.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
You know, within weeks you're supposed to have a pre
part and body as if you didn't just give birth
to life. So objectification theory is really just about sort
of the way that others view us objectify us, make
us feel the sexualization, all the things that we already know.
But then what's interesting and really troubling is self objectification
(32:51):
that starts to take place because we are so used
to this. So girls in my daughter's class in fifth
grade read at eleven are wearing crop tops. Why how?
I mean, I feel grateful that she doesn't want to.
I don't even know what I would say or do
if she did want to. But it's like, oh, they're
(33:12):
seeing this on the billboards as they drive down Sunset Boulevard,
They're seeing this in the magazines that their mom is
maybe reading. They're seeing this, you know, with the older
girls around them. And so we begin to kind of
sometimes take on the objectification we've received throughout our lives
(33:32):
and we self objectify.
Speaker 4 (33:34):
It's so fascinating when you say that.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
I mean, I have a almost six year old who
watched the Taylor Swift conset, and in my mind I
was like, Taylor Swift, is that is safe territory? She
watched the Tailor Swift conset, Sailor Swift, Taylor Swift to
the Aristol and was obsessed with wanting to wear a
crop top, and it was really hard because I like,
every time she'd come down the stairs, she would have
pulled pants right down and pulled a top right up.
(33:58):
And she doesn't understand she's a fine year old. She
doesn't understand the implications of what that means or what
course that is. You know, how that is not age
appropriate for her. And so we have a rule she
can't wear anything that sugars her belly when she goes
out of the house. But I didn't expect to be
at that point of having to place that rule in
my household having a five year old, I know.
Speaker 3 (34:16):
I mean, that's the thing. I mean, that's what I'm saying.
It's like, I just feel grateful that my daughter doesn't
want to because the idea of making these rules is
also tricky. Yeah, because the more I mean, so I
let my daughter. We have all types of food in
our house because of the body stuff. I don't want
things to be off limits because the more rules there
(34:38):
tend to be sometimes this can lead to more body
image stuff, eating disorder stuff. The more we aren't allowed
to have something, maybe the more we want it for fruit. Yeah,
So I just kind of let our cabinet be filled
with lots of different things and my hope is that
because it's available, they want it less, like there wouldn't
(34:59):
be sort of this hoarding or obsession over wanting it.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
But Jessica, do you do I think that's something that
a lot of families and moms would struggle with because
you don't want to instill in them that anything is bad.
You can't eat that because you might put on weight
and then that's not attractive, Like you don't want them
to take anything from it. But then how do you
navigate it? Because they're still very unhealthy foods that are
not good for you for health reasons that have nothing
(35:23):
to do with aesthetics. So do you say that they
are just like sometimes foods because of the sugar content,
or how do you Because so many moms would be
listening to this right now being like, well what do
I do?
Speaker 3 (35:33):
I know? And I don't know what to do. I
want to ask somebody else what you have to do
with a psychologist?
Speaker 2 (35:39):
You have to give us an ad?
Speaker 3 (35:42):
Yeah, well, I don't work with children, and I you know,
I do have a sixteen year old son, and I
don't think these things over like you mentioned earlier, half
as much as I do for her. Yes, I try
to talk about it in terms of that sugar is
ultimately not good for our bodies, and that is just true.
And I try to talk about balance, that we want
(36:03):
to eat foods that help us grow, and then we
also can once in a while have these things that
people call treats whatever. But I don't have her like
earn anything. I'm not going to like let her have
dessert because she ate her dinner. I try not to
pair things with like good behavior equals you get a
jelly bean or whatever. I mean, I don't think it's productive,
(36:27):
and I'm scared. I mean, I think our girls are
growing up in a very strange world. I mean, I
live in Los Angeles, and the amount of you know,
half naked bodies walking around starting when they're teenagers is
just pretty unbelievable. So I try to talk to her
about sort of a love of a body and being
(36:50):
healthy and just trying to take care of ourselves. But
you know, once in a while she'll say stuff like
do my legs look like yours like? Or she'll comment on,
you know, how petite orus Then I am and I worry,
and I am at a loss sometimes for exactly what
to say or do, but I hold myself back when
(37:12):
she's like scarfing down cheesecake, you know, to be I mean,
I did say the other day, I'm like, slow down,
you know, like you can have this, just like slow down.
I don't want you to feel sick. But to be honest,
my instinct was to be like, just have half of that,
like you just had dinner. You don't need all of that.
But I did not. Those words did not come out
(37:33):
of my mouth. Would you think the same thing for
your son? It's a really good question. I don't think
that I did.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
Yeah, it's so interesting, isn't Because we have our own
internal biases around it as to how we've been raised
and like our aversions to food and everything else. Something
I think was really interesting is this like connection between
anxiety and perfectionism. You know, you said that it's a
really tricky time for women growing up women in the
world now in terms of social media and everything that
(38:01):
there is, But it feels as though perfectionism has been
dialed up, and also so has anxiety. We talk about
anxiety now more than we've ever spoken about it. Can
you explain what the link is and also whether you
think it is something that is increasing, or just that
it's getting more airtime.
Speaker 3 (38:17):
I would think it's getting more airtime honestly because of
social media. I think social media can do so much good.
And for so many years, that's all I felt like
I was exposed to because I was only following people
that were in my sphere, so other psychologists or people
in the grief space, and so it just felt so meaningful,
and I was meeting women around the world who had
(38:38):
had similar experiences. Now I'm realizing though, as I scroll,
especially as you know, my book is coming out, then
you see people with you know, all this press or
their book is getting this attention, and I see how
easy it is to get caught in the comparing and
(39:01):
contrasting game for sure, and thinking you're less than you know,
or even someone's on a more beautiful vacation then you're on,
you know. So it's like, I do think that this
is creating a sense of maybe I'm not good enough,
or you know, maybe I chose the wrong path, or
(39:21):
maybe I'm not beautiful enough whatever. So I think those
images are not helping, and then it is I think
fueling perfectionism. Well, maybe if I was thinner, maybe if
I accomplished X. Maybe if I had another child like
she does, maybe I would feel more fulfilled. And it's
(39:42):
like a rat race, though, I mean, what gives.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
I don't want anyone to listen to this, and men
to listen to this, because we do have male listeners.
Men do feel shame as well. I know plenty of
men in my life, friends, different family members that feel
shame around their bodies or maybe their income or their
work or whatever it is. I think it's just that
the expectations are higher on women, so that the shame
shows up differently, because I know men feel internally, but
(40:07):
it's almost like society doesn't want to give that space
because the expectations not as high.
Speaker 3 (40:14):
Yeah, I said this to a couple just the other day.
I mean, I feel sorry for men in our culture
because they're taught to keep things stifled even more than
we are. So we are pressured to look a certain
way and be a certain way and do it all
and be all the things. But they're not taught to
express their emotion. They're not necessarily even in touch with
(40:37):
what they are feeling sometimes. And I know we are
making generalizations and there are exceptions, of course, but I
think we're all suffering in a way because of it.
Speaker 4 (40:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
I also, I mean something I think is interesting around
what it is that we want versus what the reality
is of what it might be that we're seeking. I
think that, you know, when we kind of like touching
on this idea of the we very much are the
patriarchy and how it impacts women and men. But this,
you know, the idea of like the stereotypes first the
reality like women wanting to be married, women wanting to
(41:10):
have children. But then and you even just said, you know,
maybe having wanting to have another child. The correlation between
is it actually going to equate to happiness or fulfillment
can be two very different things. And statistically, a lot
of people and the statistic outcomes around women who are
the happiest are not the ones who are married who
(41:31):
have children. Unfortunately, regardless of what society tells.
Speaker 3 (41:34):
Us exactly, I think times are changing. It seems like
this generation is opting out of parenthood and for good reason.
I mean, they're looking around thinking how can I afford
to raise a child in this world?
Speaker 4 (41:50):
You know?
Speaker 3 (41:50):
So I think it is financially motivated, and I think
maybe they're looking at their parents or their friends or
older generations and things. I don't want that. Yeah, and
they're opting out, and I mean I think that's okay.
I don't know what it'll mean for sort of the
population on the planet, but the expectation that we all
(42:11):
become mothers is fading, you know. I just don't think
that every woman wants to take on that role. It
is such a role, as you know, you know, I mean,
it's a full time job, and not everybody feels cut
out for it or supported enough to be able to
undertake this.
Speaker 4 (42:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
I mean from very much a subjective observation, but I
would say from a lot of people who I've spoken
to or that have written into the podcast, or people
who I'm friends with, it's not an equal thing that
you walk into for a lot of women. And you
know this idea that like, Okay, you'll go back to
work and you'll do do this, But for most women,
they're also running the household. They're also doing majority of
(42:52):
the parent load, taking care of the kids. Like one
part is financial, but the other part is the sheer
volume of everything that there is expected to do when
you become a mum and maintaining every part of that relationship,
and so many women are like, I don't fucking want
to do that. I'm not wanting to break it on
my own but also take care of a partner at
the same time.
Speaker 2 (43:09):
You know why too, It's because a lot of people
more open about how hard motherhood is and how maybe
it's not as fulfilling as we were always led to believe.
Whereas there was always shame again around saying anything out
loud that was negative about motherhood. So growing up, you
would never hear anyone say that they regretted their choice.
Doesn't mean that they don't love their child. You would
(43:30):
never hear anyone just say they don't enjoy motherhood. It
wasn't what they thought. If they could go back, that
change it. But you hear that now people are not
feeling so much shame, and I think that is planting
the seed in other people's heads of being like, oh,
hang on a minute, it's not what we've always been
fed to believe by the patriarchy, by society.
Speaker 3 (43:46):
Well, and we're seeing so much divorce and so much
divorce because you have children. I mean, who knows, you know,
maybe you wouldn't you get divorced anyway, But the pressure
of raising kids together changes the dynamic of the marriage.
Speaker 4 (44:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
I think it's interesting though. The perspective on divorce has
changed so much. I remember divorce, I mean that was
shameful in itself. People didn't want to get divorced because
it was embarrassing that your relationship didn't work out. People
having divorce parties Now people, I mean, people talk about
the best decision I ever made was to leave my husband,
you know, on social media. Like the shame around divorce
and the shame around relationship failure doesn't exist in the
(44:25):
same way, dependent on the culture that you come from, obviously,
Like I'm not going to say it's the same for
every place and everywhere, but I would say for a
lot of people who listen, who have made the decision
to leave relationships, they don't necessarily feel shame around those
decisions now, and that.
Speaker 4 (44:41):
Is because of the volume and the normalizing of it.
Speaker 3 (44:43):
Yeah, I mean, actually, I think I take this on
in normalize it, I will show everybody else by the way,
somehow I have the example of somebody getting a divorce
and she's not broken by it, you know. I think
people just assume that people are bereft or this is
the end of her life or you know, she must
(45:05):
be in the depths of grief, and maybe she is,
but maybe she isn't, And actually maybe she's the one
that wanted this, and maybe she was the one cheating,
or maybe she wants to go off and create a
different career, live in a different country.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
I think it also comes back full circle to the
language that we use again, So when people say, like
it was a failed marriage, just because it ended doesn't
mean it was a failure. And maybe it was amazing
for the time that it was there, and maybe you
got what you needed from it and it was successful
for both of you and changed both of your life
and it was time to move on. But it's again
this idea that we attach everything to being.
Speaker 3 (45:40):
A failure exactly, and it's so dichotomous. It's success versus failure.
And it's like you're saying, you could be happy for
ten years and then you grow apart and that can
be normal and okay exactly.
Speaker 4 (45:54):
Jessica, thank you so much for being a part of
the podcast. Normalize It. Your book.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
We have be going to put all of the links
and the show notes. It's available now. But also I
think that this is something that so many women will
be able to relate to because shame and stigma and
feeling as though you can't talk about things that universally
women go through every single day is an incredibly common
conversation that we do have here on the podcast. But
the reason for that is because it's so common to
(46:19):
every woman exactly.
Speaker 3 (46:21):
Well, thank you so much for having me. This was
such a profound and meaningful conversation.
Speaker 1 (46:25):
Thanks Jessica,
This episode was recorded on Cameragle Land. Hi guys, and
welcome back to another episode of Life on caut.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
I'm Laura, I'm Brittany.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Now it is no surprise to anybody listening and something
that we've spoken about quite a bit on this podcast
over the years, that we very much live in a
society and a culture that uses shame and stigma to
keep us in line, especially as women, to keep us
quiet and to keep us being the good girls, which
is very much a term that we've spoken about and used.
(00:36):
Some of it is very obvious, while other parts of
shame and stigma that we live in are far more
subtle and are far harder to recognize. From girlhood, we
are taught that we should look and feel a certain way,
that we should dress a certain way, and there's an
expectation around bodies, the expectation of motherhood, our careers once again,
our bodies as we age whether or not we should
(00:56):
choose marriage, are all lace with different types of taboos
and expect Yeah. Wow, no pressure, no particularly no pressure.
But today we have a wonderful guest. Her name is
doctor Jessica Zucker, and Jessica is a clinical psychologist with
a PhD, who specializes in reproductive health and the author
of the award winning book I Had a Miscarriage, A Memoir,
and a movement. Jessica is the creator of the viral
(01:18):
hashtag I Had a Miscarriage campaign. Her writing has appeared
in The New York Times, The Washington Post, New York Magazine, Vogue,
and Harvard Business Review. Now we're here to talk about
her brand new book that has come out. It is
tired to normalize, it upending the silent stigma and shame
that shapes women's lives. Jess Welcome to the pod.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
God, what an intro that was. How much you've written about,
how much you've spoke about your qualifications, It's all very incredible.
I'm going to really get into it and I'm very
excited about the chat. But before we do, we kickstart
every guest with an accidentally unfiltered your most embarrassing story.
So do you have something to share with this today?
Speaker 3 (01:57):
I do. I mean, I don't know if it's the
most embarras story in my entire life, but it is
an embarrassing story that happened not too long ago that
kind of reveals the stage of life that I'm in.
Last summer, we were preparing to take a family trip
to London for our son to play basketball, and we
(02:17):
went to get passports renewed and new ones, and I
got to the window and the person asked me the
most basic question, what's your name? And I said Jessica.
And then I looked at my husband and he was like,
what are you doing And I said, I can't. I
(02:38):
could not come up with my last name. Okay, this
is ridiculous and embarrassing, mostly because this is perimenopause. Now
we can get into that, because the book gets into
that if you want to or not, but in your
fifties or maybe sooner, this whole concept of grain fog
(03:01):
and not knowing what you know is absolutely delightful and
horrifying all at the same time.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
You know what, It's like so upsetting about that as well.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
It's like, it's interesting that we've now recognized that it's
part of perimenopause and menopause. But for a lot of
people it would have just been kind of back in
the day, I would assume it would have been reduced
down to like she got dementia, Like is she losing
her mind?
Speaker 3 (03:24):
You know, I just asked my oncologist recently if it
was dementia because it feels like it is, yes, and what.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
They say, no, Well that's the kind of true.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
I'm like, what did she say? She looked at me,
she had a smirk, and she said, I can guarantee
that is not what it is. So I mean, I'm
banking on her answer.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Is it similar do you think? I mean, I have
had none anybove, but is it similar to baby brain?
Like that fog that you get when you're in your
pregnancy and post birth? I wont like, do you think that?
I mean, you've.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
Experienced that LRD full of homones.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
I think it's worse, But that's just me.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
I was going to say, I don't have the comparative,
but I think baby brain kind of is multiple things.
Sometimes it's the tiredness, sometimes it's the hormones, but like, yeah,
there's definitely a lot of things change and shift during
that time as well. Jessea, what was it that made
you get into really researching and understanding this idea in
psychology around shame and stigma that and I know it's
something that does also relate to men, but it very
(04:28):
much relates to women.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
So I'm a psychologist, as you said, I specialize in
women's reproductive and maternal mental health and have done so
for about fifteen years at this point. And prior to
pursuing my PhD, I worked in public health, so I
have a background working internationally, and my focus was women's health,
women's rights, and so when I started my clinical practice,
(04:53):
my vision was to kind of marry my background with
my PhD and the one on one work. So at
the time I was just passionate about all things women,
all things women's health, until I was sixteen weeks into
my second pregnancy and I had a miscarriage while I
(05:13):
was home by myself. So for years I had been
sitting across from women who were talking about the silence,
the stigma, the shame, the feelings of alienation and isolation
in the aftermath of pregnancy and infant loss. But of course,
not all therapists can walk in the shoes of every
single patient, and so all I knew up until that
(05:36):
point was what I had read conferences, I had gone
to consultation groups until I was one of them, and
it was the most you know, traumatic, surprising, dramatic things
the of course that I've ever been through to date.
(05:58):
So I was humed by myself. The baby emerged, I
had to cut the umbilical cord myself, coached by phone
by my obgyn, and then I promptly began to hemorrhage
as my husband was darting through Los Angeles traffic trying
to get home to me. And then we brought the
fetus in a bag to my doctor's office to be tested,
(06:21):
and to make matters all the worse, I then underwent
an unmedicated DNC. Oh my goodness, it's unimaginable. The sound
of the machine is still seared into my psyche. And
all of that to say that I could not sort
(06:42):
of sit back. Not that I had been sitting back,
I had been so engaged with my patients, but because
I now knew the hormonal shifts and this feeling of
intense grief in a way that I hadn't previously, I
felt like I had to do something about it. So
I went to the research, and the research found that
(07:05):
a majority of women are blaming themselves, think that they
did something to deserve this outcome, and even report feeling
a sense of body failure or even body hate and
this outraged me. Luckily, I myself did not experience those feelings,
(07:25):
and the only thing that I can think of as
to why I didn't was because I had already had
a healthy son. So I think I just like intuitively
felt like there must have been something wrong with the fetus,
Like I don't feel like my body failed me here,
like I just I actually felt like my body really worked.
And it does turn out that there was a chromosol
(07:46):
abnormality and that's why the miscarriage did happen.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
So sorry you went through that. Well, how if you
don't mind me asking how far along were you when
you had your miscarriage?
Speaker 3 (07:56):
I was sixteen weeks the term miscarriage.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
People do speak about it so much more now, but
you don't necessarily speak about what it actually looks like.
Like you'll hear somebody be open enough to say I'm
having a miscarriage. I had a miscarriage, and you immediately think, okay,
there was some blood, you might have gone to the hospital.
But I have never thought when someone has said to
me they've had a miscarriage, I've never thought that that's
(08:20):
what they could have gone through, That they could have
been at home birth in a child taking it to
the hospital. I just think it's so important we have
these conversations because I don't think people are understanding what
it actually looks like to go through something like that.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
I think you're right, but I will say for the
listeners that this is an incredibly unusual circumstance. A majority
of miscarriages happened within the first trimester, and I've never
heard a patient tell me a story like this. So
mostly people, you know, yes, they start to spot, they
(08:53):
go to their doctor and there's no heartbeat, and then
they can schedule the DNC, have medication, wake up. They're
no longer pregnant, but at least they weren't awake for
the process. So you're right, though, I mean, I feel
like we just need to unearth these stories because they're
(09:14):
happening in this sort of hush hush, don't tell anybody,
just kind of quote unquote move on or move forward.
At least you know you can get pregnant. God doesn't
give you more than you can handle. God has a plan.
All of these platitudes that are so off putting and
so scientifically incorrect. Sometimes we just need to replace the
(09:36):
silence with storytelling so that we feel like we have
community in the aftermath of these traumas.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
I think a big contributor to it is, you know,
for so long, there's been this kind of like just
general knowledge and expectation that you don't tell someone that
you're pregnant until you past the first trimester.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
You keep it to yourself.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
And I even remember, and I hate it now I
think back on it, when my sister first told me
that she was pregnant. She'd been trying for a really
long time, and she was so happy and so excited,
and she must have only just found out, so she
was only a couple of weeks, And my reaction wasn't excitement.
I was like worried that she told me so early
because I didn't understand and I was quite you know,
(10:16):
young and naive at the time around my understanding of
pregnancy myself, and I was so worried about how she
would feel if something went wrong. Whereas like now I
look back on that time and I feel so sad
that that was my reaction, but I just I didn't
think of it in any other way except this fear,
because I was like, I'm not meant to know that information.
Speaker 4 (10:33):
That's your information. Why are you telling me? Right?
Speaker 3 (10:35):
But so my sort of feeling about that is that
even though a majority of miscarriages happened in the first trimester,
it feels like what the doctors are saying, and again
I know they mean well, but I think though that
the message is don't share your good news because in
case it becomes bad news, then you don't have to
share that either, and you can just start again. But
(10:58):
my feeling is why not share our joy? And if
a joy evaporates or the joy ends, then we have
the people that we love and we need around us.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
I also think you rob yourself the opportunity to have
those conversations because if you don't talk about it and
people around you don't know, then they don't know how
to support you either. So it's been this incredible disservice
to women for so long. And that's not to say
I'm sure there are some women who do want to
keep it private for their own personal reasons, but I
would say overwhelmingly there is a lack of support in
(11:32):
the workplace. There is a lack of support in general
for women who are experiencing miscarriage, and it's changing, but
it's because for so long it has been so unspoken.
Speaker 4 (11:40):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
I think that it's time that we shout it from
rooftops if somebody is inclined to do that, which I
ended up doing, which I would never have thought I
would be the person sort of getting on Instagram and
saying it all and writing in all these places and
writing a book about the contents of my person life.
I just never would have pictured that. But it feels
(12:03):
like if not us, who, If not now? When?
Speaker 4 (12:08):
Right?
Speaker 3 (12:08):
So? I feel like for future generations of girls and women,
we need to start talking about these normative outcomes of pregnancy.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Talk to us a little bit about the silence, shame,
stigma cycle that you speak about, and some of the
more insidious ways that shame shows up for women, because
it's not just limited to miscarriage and early pregnancy loss.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
Now it's not. So I sort of see it as
this strident trifecta, like it goes in a circle. I
think that the silence begets the stigma, begets the shame,
and then we start all over again. The shame, I think,
is obviously the most painful part in terms of emotion,
(12:50):
in terms of potentially leading to feelings of depression, anxiety
being very cut off. And you're right, it shows up
in a variety of avenues and elements of our lives.
So my book Normalize It starts with girlhood, so menstruation.
So from the get go, girls are told to not
(13:13):
talk about the symptoms of menstruation. They are made to
feel sort of awkward in their changing bodies, and that's
where the silence seems to begin. And then it makes
our way through our lives, ranging from motherhood, abortion, pregnancy, loss, perimenopause, menopause,
(13:35):
all of these milestones that most, if not all, people
go through are just under talked about. And so when
we live with the shame inside of us, my fear
and what I have seen in my practice over all
these years is it can eat us alive. And so
when our stories are untold, we make narratives out of
(13:57):
our stories. I'm bad, I don't deserve to be happy.
So this shame kind of if it festers, can be dangerous.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
It's interesting how young it starts.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
When you think about the first time you got your period,
or the first time that you had an accident with
your period where it ended up on your dress at
school or something like that. Like the pure embarrassment around it.
Even now, I think if someone was to accidentally get
period blood on their pants, they'd be like, oh, for
fuck's sake, Like how am I this is? It's not
something that where like, oh, don't worry about it, it's cool,
Like it is still something that we see as being
(14:29):
like relatively embarrassing.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
I was about to almost say the opposite laws. And
I say this because I was just thinking it happened
to myself like three weeks ago here, and it happened
to somebody else one.
Speaker 4 (14:39):
Of our work in our colleagues.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Like I was like, oh my god, I have period blood.
Luckily I was wearing jeans, was on the inside of
my jeans, but you could see it through the outside.
Absolutely nothing I could do. When you're young, if you
fall over and scrape your knee and you're bleeding through
your pants and someone goes, oh, you're bleeding your knees bleeding,
and you're like, oh my god, I have hurt my knee,
you're not embarrassed. But the second that it's because it
(15:01):
comes from menstruation, all of a sudden, we're supposed to
be mortified. But I wasn't mortified. It was an inconvenience you.
But I wasn't embarrassed. I was like, fuck, what am
I supposed to do?
Speaker 3 (15:09):
Now?
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Like, I agree, But I would also say that you
were in close company with your closest girlfriends. If I
was walking down the street, yeah, if you were in
the office with like our male bosses, I think you
probably would have felt slightly different about it.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
I think about girls in school, and I went to
co ed school in primary school, and I still remember
I had this visceral memory of a little girl getting
up to get an award at the front of school,
going up and walking up onto the stage with the
principal and stuff, and she had period blood on the
back of her dress and everyone in the school was like, which,
totally right, how humiliating for a little twelve year old,
(15:42):
But like, this is seed in my memory because I
felt so sorry for her, embarrassed. I was like, you,
poor thing, that is so humiliating. And now I look
back on it and I'm like, God, I wish I
wish that that hadn't been so significant that as a
thirty nine year old woman, I still remember it for
this little twelve year old girl.
Speaker 4 (16:00):
You know, I was only twelve at the time too.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
Yeah, I mean, but what do you think will make
the difference? Like, what do you think would change the
stories the narrative around this culturally. I just I keep
trying to figure it out because my daughter is eleven
and I'm assuming she'll be getting her period soon, and
I'm sort of tying with this, like do I want
to have like a period party? Want to.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
Embarrassing?
Speaker 3 (16:28):
I know that's going to be embarrassing too. It's like,
what's the path forward that could be comforting, you know
what I mean.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
I think it's changing a lot from even the advertisement
for period products and things like that, and the way
brands are talking about periods and destigmatizing it. You're seeing
billboards for period products. Now you're you're seeing a lot
of people like us talk about it really openly. I
do think that a lot of the stigma and the embarrassment,
and I don't want to point fingers. I'm blamed, but
I think it will always come back to men. And
(16:57):
I'm not blaming them, but I'm saying I don't think
a lot of women are around sorry girls around menstruation.
I don't think they're embarrassed because other females have seen
that they're menstruating. It's coming back that men are seeing
their menstruating. How they going to laugh? And it's because
they don't understand it. I think it all comes back
to a lack of understanding and maybe education as a whole.
So I think it's not so much. I'm sure most
(17:20):
parents are doing the right things at home. I think
it's just the broader conversation.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
I completely agree, And I think that there's two parts
to it. Like I think having the same conversations with
little boys that we have with little girls. We prepare
little girls so much for the things that change in
their body, but we don't really have those conversations with
boys because we think we don't need to. But then
that just treads to the kind of the mystery and
the weirdness of it and all that sort of stuff.
And I think about when we were I mean, I
(17:44):
know it's changed hugely, but when we were in school,
boys weren't taught about periods. It was completely not something
that was relevant to them or that they needed to
know about. And so this lack of understanding made it
funny to them, and it became a point of almost
like something that they could make jokes about the flip
side to that is, And I know we've talked about
advertising brid but it's still interesting to me that there's
(18:05):
a lot of advertising rules around period products. For the
longest time, you weren't able to show blood. You weren't
able to show anything that was red. It had to
be blue dye that was used.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
I don't understand that, but yeah, I think.
Speaker 4 (18:17):
That those things are very subtle.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
They're very subtle, you know, when you think about it,
They're quite subtle in terms of marketing or advertising. But
it adds to the shame. Well, if we're not seeing
that the product, we've not seeing.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
Blood, why it looks yeah?
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Right, So I think that those things there's quite a
multilayered reason why we're still so weird about talking about it,
especially for young girls.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
I know we brushed over it, but I want to
go back for a second. When we are talking about
pregnancily loss and miscarriage for the people that you see,
what is the main issue or the reason that shame
is attached to that? What are people experiencing the most?
Is it the fact that they believe that they're failing
because their body couldn't hold onto the pregnancy, like, is
that what you're seeing.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
I'm seeing it's at a majority of the time that
women end up going to this place of my body
failed me, what is wrong with me? And yet you
know they're saying, but that woman you know that's walking
down the street is pregnant, so she must have done
something differently, or she must be better than me in
some way. But I also think the shame comes through
(19:22):
the silence around the topic. So again we're back to
this swirling trifecta, because I don't know that people would
instantly feel ashamed of a loss if they were met
with a communal discussion about it. So if everybody was
just shouting from rooftops or openly talking about their miscarriages,
(19:42):
would we go to the place of body failure? Because
we know that one in four pregnancies ends this way,
So maybe instead people would say, oh, it was likely
a chromosomal issue. This is actually my body doing its job.
Something was wrong, and I'm going to find out more.
But I am going to keep loving myself through this,
(20:05):
or at least trying to. So I think the shame
comes from even female to female conversations being stunted or
being met with these platitudes that are so off putting
that people want to run for the hills because being
met with at least you have a healthy child, or
at least you know you can get pregnant, or at
(20:26):
least you're young. I totally understand why people say those things,
but really what they're doing is minimizing the pain, and
they're not wanting to be in the discomfort with the
person who's grieving.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
Yeah. I can resonate with this so much.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
I also think when you speak about miscarriage, that's when
you find out that you're actually not alone in it.
So I mean, to Allisoners, this isn't you. But I've
had two miscarriages and I've spoken about both of them,
and the first one was very different to the second,
not in terms of what I experienced, but in terms
of people's reactions to the first time. I guess like
(21:02):
the realization I had is that once I started speaking
about it, I realized I was part.
Speaker 4 (21:07):
Of a much bigger community.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
You know, I had read the statistics of the one
and four or the one and five, and I was like,
where the fuck are these women exactly? And then all
of a sudden, you know, my mom and my mother
in law and like my friends, and it opened up
to people that I'd never realized or knew about, they
just hadn't spoken about it. But the second time, it
was really different, and that was because it was after
my first child, and it was exactly that response of like, well,
(21:32):
at least you already have a baby, And it really
damaged some of my friendships because it really made me
clock the people that I could talk about the things
that were upsetting to me with and the people who
I felt dismissed what was important. And absolutely there was
no part of me that was invalidating the fact that
I had a baby. But I was like, also, I
(21:53):
still feel sad, like I'm still allowed to have these
feelings simultaneously alongside the gratitude. And I think that it's
exactly it really is what you said, this idea that
along with shame and stigma, we find it very difficult
to hold space for grief and we don't like to
ask people if they're okay in so many situations when
grief is involved because we don't want to upset them.
(22:14):
You know, we don't want to make it worse, is
what we think. But you know, I very rarely think
you're making it worse by asking if someone's okay.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
Well, I agree with that, and I actually think it's
a poor excuse for not making yourself vulnerable and not
being uncomfortable with the griever because to say, well, I
didn't want to bring it up because in case she
wasn't thinking about it, I just wouldn't want to upset her.
It's like number one, she's a big girl, so he
doesn't want to talk about Yeah, well, number one, she's
(22:43):
probably thinking about it. And even if she's not, she'll
tell you that, and she can say thank you so
much for thinking about me or caring about me, but
I'm not up for talking about it, or I'm actually
feeling good today or whatever. But unless we ask, we're
not going to know, And so we end up feeling
pretty alone around our loved ones at times, which is
(23:04):
just a terrible feeling.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
I think when it comes to grief, this isn't something
that is just isolated to women. And I say this
because I feel like men often find it really difficult
to have these conversations, and recently I saw it in
my own husband. He had a friend who had gone
through a really traumatic family loss and they'd gone out
for lunch together and he came home and I was like,
did you speak to your friend about the loss that
(23:29):
they've just had? And he was like, oh, I didn't
want to bring it up because I didn't want to
make him uncomfortable.
Speaker 4 (23:35):
And I think that.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
It is very prevalent in men as well, that they
don't want to ask about divorces or breakups or things
that do feel vulnerable for fear of eliciting that response
in the person. And you know, I think that that
gets into a whole other conversation around masculinity. But I
do think that it's something that we struggle with on
both sides of the gender spectrum.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
I couldn't agree more. I don't know if you know
this about my history, but two weeks after my first
book came out, the one that you know is a
memoir meets manifesto about miscarriage, I was diagnosed with breast
cancer and I was met with the most sort of silly,
not unimaginable. I mean, I had heard these words before,
(24:17):
but sort of like all of this warrior language that
surrounds breast cancer, we wouldn't say this to men. You're
such a warrior you're so strong, You're going to beat
this quote unquote, And I just found it fascinating as
I was laying there, taking in the fact that I
had this diagnosis, that I had two young kids, that
(24:38):
I was faced with something that can of course be fatal,
and I was like, wait, people's responses are to tell
me that I'm a warrior, which just made me kind
of giggle because it made me see myself like on
a horse wearing yes. And I thought, well, actually, I
(25:02):
feel like what I need to do more than anything
is lean into my body, lean into self compassion. I
don't want to fight, you know, this war or this
battle against my body. The opposite, I felt.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
You know.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
So it's interesting. And then on the gender note that
you just mentioned, I mean, aside from my father and
a couple of cousins and my uncle, the men in
my life were unable to find words to ask about this,
to really be with me through this because they haven't
been taught to ask about this or to sit with
(25:38):
the uncomfortability of a woman having to undergo a mastectomy
or a change in her body that's so unimaginable.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
Ye, I think this is an important time to talk
about the language that we're use in these situations, and
you've just made me think of something. Just a couple
of days ago, a friend of mine was diagnosed with
cancer very young, and I was looking she put it
on social media, you know, this is what's happening in
my life. This is where I've been, and I was
looking at the commons and I felt very similar to
(26:07):
what you just said. The people that telling her that
she's got this, she's strong, she's gonna be fine, You're
gonna beat this, And I thought, that's probably not what
she's thinking right now. She's like, let's be realistic. Telling
me that I'm strong and going to and I've got
this is not what I want to hear I am
riddled with cancer. Like, let's just call a spade a spade.
And I had this moment in that situation where I thought,
(26:28):
she probably just wants someone to say I'm thinking of
you here if you need that, not like you are
going to beat this. You're so strong. There are people
saying you've achieved so much in your life, like this
isn't even going to touch the sides. And I thought,
what a crazy thing to say to what. Yeah, just
like they're trying to be so positive, like there's no
malice in it at all. But this is an interesting
time to have these conversations. And you were just mentioning
(26:51):
the at least language around pregnancy loss, like, well, at
least you know you can fall pregnant. Well, at least
you're still young and you can try again. For me,
I get it all the time. I struggled to get
embryos and I managed to get three after getting none.
I know what three means. It means nothing, but the
number of people that are like, well, at least you've
got three, I'm like, that's just not helping, Like, and
(27:12):
I know it's not. It's not lace in anything. But
I think it's an important time to talk about thinking
about the types of language that we're us in these situations.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
I think that this does create shame. I do. I
think that the language then informs how we feel. Because
if everybody's saying you're so strong, for example, what if
I didn't get through the cancer, what if your friend
doesn't make it, does that mean that we weren't strong
enough quote unquote, like that we didn't fight the battle
(27:44):
with enough verve. I mean, it just puts the onus
so much on the woman to get through whatever it
is she's trying to get through. And I think it
can make people just fold in on themselves because it's like,
if I'm going to be met with all of this
bullshit or these words that you know are trying to
stave off the pain of what's happening, then maybe I
(28:09):
won't really tell people. I mean, I think that's what
ends up happening, and then there's like a shame spiral.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
So what do you think some examples of some really
great things to say in those situations.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
Well, well, what you just said that you were tempted
to write in the comments, that's exactly what I would recommend.
So whatever the trauma may be, it's I care about you.
I'm here for you. I want to talk with you
if and when you're ready. I'm here to listen. And
I think touching base showing up. So even your husband
(28:40):
could reach out to his friend who he had lunch
with now and just say, I know we didn't get
a chance to talk about it, but I want you
to know that I'm here if you want to. We
can always circle back. And I do think consistency is
key because we are all so busy and somebody has
a miscarriage or receives a diagnosis, or there's a death
(29:01):
in their family, and within I don't know, two to
four weeks, everybody else has sort of moved on and
they expect the griever has two and then they're kind
of left alone. And actually this may apply to early
motherhood as well, right when a baby's born. Everyone's there
in the beginning, and then suddenly they're gone. And then
women are like, who is this postpartum depression? Like I'm anxious,
(29:25):
Like I feel very isolated. So I think the antidote
to these platitudes are really simple. It is just being
present with your loved one.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
What do you think is that antidote to us fixing
the shame that women feel apart from the storytelling element,
and I guess us feeling as though there's kind of
safety and numbers of the other people who have similar experiences.
What would you say and what do you recommend to
your clients who come and see you, your patients that
come and see you, how they can kind of break
(29:59):
this shame it's not cool.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
Well, usually I find with patients that the shame is complicated,
like it is for all of us. You know, so
I kind of get into connecting the dots between childhood
stuff and what's going on right now, because it seems
like in a lot of cases, whatever happened at home
in our early lives, you know, with our attachment figures,
(30:23):
with our parents, with the people who raised us, that
can really inform the way we let in the shame
the way we don't. And so I like to try
to sort of help people make sense of why they
are who they are by looking back. But I also
think in a more practical way, because of course not
everybody's going to be in therapy, and not everybody wants
(30:46):
to look all the way back to the beginning of
their lives. I do think that getting our stories out
in some way releases the potential shame. And so I
know I've been talking about, you know, getting on a
soapbox and creating this movement and stuff. But other options
are things like writing in a journal. So you might
(31:10):
even just want to write about the friends that were
disappointing in the aftermath of loss, or a sexual assault
experience that your family doesn't even know about, or whatever
the case may be that was traumatic that holds some
shame that you have kept tucked inside. It can be
even just written on a page, and then it can
(31:32):
even be burned, you know, if somebody's that worried about
it being read. So there are various ways I think
that we can release what we hold inside without it
having to be super public or super well known to
those around us.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
One of the things we were talking about earlier, and
it was in reference to something you speak about, this
objectification theory and women's bodies in particular. Can you talk
us through what that means? And I know that, like,
I mean, we've kind of circled on pregnancy loss a
little bit, but something that is such a common thing
for women to feel shame around is their bodies, whether
(32:11):
it be the way their bodies look, or have been
shamed for being too sexual, or it's always like there's
a thing that's too much or too little.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
Oh yes, And the pressure that we feel as mothers
to look like we were never pregnant at.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
All, yeah, like never grow another human.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
You know, within weeks you're supposed to have a pre
part and body as if you didn't just give birth
to life. So objectification theory is really just about sort
of the way that others view us objectify us, make
us feel the sexualization, all the things that we already know.
But then what's interesting and really troubling is self objectification
(32:51):
that starts to take place because we are so used
to this. So girls in my daughter's class in fifth
grade read at eleven are wearing crop tops. Why how?
I mean, I feel grateful that she doesn't want to.
I don't even know what I would say or do
if she did want to. But it's like, oh, they're
(33:12):
seeing this on the billboards as they drive down Sunset Boulevard,
They're seeing this in the magazines that their mom is
maybe reading. They're seeing this, you know, with the older
girls around them. And so we begin to kind of
sometimes take on the objectification we've received throughout our lives
(33:32):
and we self objectify.
Speaker 4 (33:34):
It's so fascinating when you say that.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
I mean, I have a almost six year old who
watched the Taylor Swift conset, and in my mind I
was like, Taylor Swift, is that is safe territory? She
watched the Tailor Swift conset, Sailor Swift, Taylor Swift to
the Aristol and was obsessed with wanting to wear a
crop top, and it was really hard because I like,
every time she'd come down the stairs, she would have
pulled pants right down and pulled a top right up.
(33:58):
And she doesn't understand she's a fine year old. She
doesn't understand the implications of what that means or what
course that is. You know, how that is not age
appropriate for her. And so we have a rule she
can't wear anything that sugars her belly when she goes
out of the house. But I didn't expect to be
at that point of having to place that rule in
my household having a five year old, I know.
Speaker 3 (34:16):
I mean, that's the thing. I mean, that's what I'm saying.
It's like, I just feel grateful that my daughter doesn't
want to because the idea of making these rules is
also tricky. Yeah, because the more I mean, so I
let my daughter. We have all types of food in
our house because of the body stuff. I don't want
things to be off limits because the more rules there
(34:38):
tend to be sometimes this can lead to more body
image stuff, eating disorder stuff. The more we aren't allowed
to have something, maybe the more we want it for fruit. Yeah,
So I just kind of let our cabinet be filled
with lots of different things and my hope is that
because it's available, they want it less, like there wouldn't
(34:59):
be sort of this hoarding or obsession over wanting it.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
But Jessica, do you do I think that's something that
a lot of families and moms would struggle with because
you don't want to instill in them that anything is bad.
You can't eat that because you might put on weight
and then that's not attractive, Like you don't want them
to take anything from it. But then how do you
navigate it? Because they're still very unhealthy foods that are
not good for you for health reasons that have nothing
(35:23):
to do with aesthetics. So do you say that they
are just like sometimes foods because of the sugar content,
or how do you Because so many moms would be
listening to this right now being like, well what do
I do?
Speaker 3 (35:33):
I know? And I don't know what to do. I
want to ask somebody else what you have to do
with a psychologist?
Speaker 2 (35:39):
You have to give us an ad?
Speaker 3 (35:42):
Yeah, well, I don't work with children, and I you know,
I do have a sixteen year old son, and I
don't think these things over like you mentioned earlier, half
as much as I do for her. Yes, I try
to talk about it in terms of that sugar is
ultimately not good for our bodies, and that is just true.
And I try to talk about balance, that we want
(36:03):
to eat foods that help us grow, and then we
also can once in a while have these things that
people call treats whatever. But I don't have her like
earn anything. I'm not going to like let her have
dessert because she ate her dinner. I try not to
pair things with like good behavior equals you get a
jelly bean or whatever. I mean, I don't think it's productive,
(36:27):
and I'm scared. I mean, I think our girls are
growing up in a very strange world. I mean, I
live in Los Angeles, and the amount of you know,
half naked bodies walking around starting when they're teenagers is
just pretty unbelievable. So I try to talk to her
about sort of a love of a body and being
(36:50):
healthy and just trying to take care of ourselves. But
you know, once in a while she'll say stuff like
do my legs look like yours like? Or she'll comment on,
you know, how petite orus Then I am and I worry,
and I am at a loss sometimes for exactly what
to say or do, but I hold myself back when
(37:12):
she's like scarfing down cheesecake, you know, to be I mean,
I did say the other day, I'm like, slow down,
you know, like you can have this, just like slow down.
I don't want you to feel sick. But to be honest,
my instinct was to be like, just have half of that,
like you just had dinner. You don't need all of that.
But I did not. Those words did not come out
(37:33):
of my mouth. Would you think the same thing for
your son? It's a really good question. I don't think
that I did.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
Yeah, it's so interesting, isn't Because we have our own
internal biases around it as to how we've been raised
and like our aversions to food and everything else. Something
I think was really interesting is this like connection between
anxiety and perfectionism. You know, you said that it's a
really tricky time for women growing up women in the
world now in terms of social media and everything that
(38:01):
there is, But it feels as though perfectionism has been
dialed up, and also so has anxiety. We talk about
anxiety now more than we've ever spoken about it. Can
you explain what the link is and also whether you
think it is something that is increasing, or just that
it's getting more airtime.
Speaker 3 (38:17):
I would think it's getting more airtime honestly because of
social media. I think social media can do so much good.
And for so many years, that's all I felt like
I was exposed to because I was only following people
that were in my sphere, so other psychologists or people
in the grief space, and so it just felt so meaningful,
and I was meeting women around the world who had
(38:38):
had similar experiences. Now I'm realizing though, as I scroll,
especially as you know, my book is coming out, then
you see people with you know, all this press or
their book is getting this attention, and I see how
easy it is to get caught in the comparing and
(39:01):
contrasting game for sure, and thinking you're less than you know,
or even someone's on a more beautiful vacation then you're on,
you know. So it's like, I do think that this
is creating a sense of maybe I'm not good enough,
or you know, maybe I chose the wrong path, or
(39:21):
maybe I'm not beautiful enough whatever. So I think those
images are not helping, and then it is I think
fueling perfectionism. Well, maybe if I was thinner, maybe if
I accomplished X. Maybe if I had another child like
she does, maybe I would feel more fulfilled. And it's
(39:42):
like a rat race, though, I mean, what gives.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
I don't want anyone to listen to this, and men
to listen to this, because we do have male listeners.
Men do feel shame as well. I know plenty of
men in my life, friends, different family members that feel
shame around their bodies or maybe their income or their
work or whatever it is. I think it's just that
the expectations are higher on women, so that the shame
shows up differently, because I know men feel internally, but
(40:07):
it's almost like society doesn't want to give that space
because the expectations not as high.
Speaker 3 (40:14):
Yeah, I said this to a couple just the other day.
I mean, I feel sorry for men in our culture
because they're taught to keep things stifled even more than
we are. So we are pressured to look a certain
way and be a certain way and do it all
and be all the things. But they're not taught to
express their emotion. They're not necessarily even in touch with
(40:37):
what they are feeling sometimes. And I know we are
making generalizations and there are exceptions, of course, but I
think we're all suffering in a way because of it.
Speaker 4 (40:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
I also, I mean something I think is interesting around
what it is that we want versus what the reality
is of what it might be that we're seeking. I
think that, you know, when we kind of like touching
on this idea of the we very much are the
patriarchy and how it impacts women and men. But this,
you know, the idea of like the stereotypes first the
reality like women wanting to be married, women wanting to
(41:10):
have children. But then and you even just said, you know,
maybe having wanting to have another child. The correlation between
is it actually going to equate to happiness or fulfillment
can be two very different things. And statistically, a lot
of people and the statistic outcomes around women who are
the happiest are not the ones who are married who
(41:31):
have children. Unfortunately, regardless of what society tells.
Speaker 3 (41:34):
Us exactly, I think times are changing. It seems like
this generation is opting out of parenthood and for good reason.
I mean, they're looking around thinking how can I afford
to raise a child in this world?
Speaker 4 (41:50):
You know?
Speaker 3 (41:50):
So I think it is financially motivated, and I think
maybe they're looking at their parents or their friends or
older generations and things. I don't want that. Yeah, and
they're opting out, and I mean I think that's okay.
I don't know what it'll mean for sort of the
population on the planet, but the expectation that we all
(42:11):
become mothers is fading, you know. I just don't think
that every woman wants to take on that role. It
is such a role, as you know, you know, I mean,
it's a full time job, and not everybody feels cut
out for it or supported enough to be able to
undertake this.
Speaker 4 (42:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
I mean from very much a subjective observation, but I
would say from a lot of people who I've spoken
to or that have written into the podcast, or people
who I'm friends with, it's not an equal thing that
you walk into for a lot of women. And you
know this idea that like, Okay, you'll go back to
work and you'll do do this, But for most women,
they're also running the household. They're also doing majority of
(42:52):
the parent load, taking care of the kids. Like one
part is financial, but the other part is the sheer
volume of everything that there is expected to do when
you become a mum and maintaining every part of that relationship,
and so many women are like, I don't fucking want
to do that. I'm not wanting to break it on
my own but also take care of a partner at
the same time.
Speaker 2 (43:09):
You know why too, It's because a lot of people
more open about how hard motherhood is and how maybe
it's not as fulfilling as we were always led to believe.
Whereas there was always shame again around saying anything out
loud that was negative about motherhood. So growing up, you
would never hear anyone say that they regretted their choice.
Doesn't mean that they don't love their child. You would
(43:30):
never hear anyone just say they don't enjoy motherhood. It
wasn't what they thought. If they could go back, that
change it. But you hear that now people are not
feeling so much shame, and I think that is planting
the seed in other people's heads of being like, oh,
hang on a minute, it's not what we've always been
fed to believe by the patriarchy, by society.
Speaker 3 (43:46):
Well, and we're seeing so much divorce and so much
divorce because you have children. I mean, who knows, you know,
maybe you wouldn't you get divorced anyway, But the pressure
of raising kids together changes the dynamic of the marriage.
Speaker 4 (44:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
I think it's interesting though. The perspective on divorce has
changed so much. I remember divorce, I mean that was
shameful in itself. People didn't want to get divorced because
it was embarrassing that your relationship didn't work out. People
having divorce parties Now people, I mean, people talk about
the best decision I ever made was to leave my husband,
you know, on social media. Like the shame around divorce
and the shame around relationship failure doesn't exist in the
(44:25):
same way, dependent on the culture that you come from, obviously,
Like I'm not going to say it's the same for
every place and everywhere, but I would say for a
lot of people who listen, who have made the decision
to leave relationships, they don't necessarily feel shame around those
decisions now, and that.
Speaker 4 (44:41):
Is because of the volume and the normalizing of it.
Speaker 3 (44:43):
Yeah, I mean, actually, I think I take this on
in normalize it, I will show everybody else by the way,
somehow I have the example of somebody getting a divorce
and she's not broken by it, you know. I think
people just assume that people are bereft or this is
the end of her life or you know, she must
(45:05):
be in the depths of grief, and maybe she is,
but maybe she isn't, And actually maybe she's the one
that wanted this, and maybe she was the one cheating,
or maybe she wants to go off and create a
different career, live in a different country.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
I think it also comes back full circle to the
language that we use again, So when people say, like
it was a failed marriage, just because it ended doesn't
mean it was a failure. And maybe it was amazing
for the time that it was there, and maybe you
got what you needed from it and it was successful
for both of you and changed both of your life
and it was time to move on. But it's again
this idea that we attach everything to being.
Speaker 3 (45:40):
A failure exactly, and it's so dichotomous. It's success versus failure.
And it's like you're saying, you could be happy for
ten years and then you grow apart and that can
be normal and okay exactly.
Speaker 4 (45:54):
Jessica, thank you so much for being a part of
the podcast. Normalize It. Your book.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
We have be going to put all of the links
and the show notes. It's available now. But also I
think that this is something that so many women will
be able to relate to because shame and stigma and
feeling as though you can't talk about things that universally
women go through every single day is an incredibly common
conversation that we do have here on the podcast. But
the reason for that is because it's so common to
(46:19):
every woman exactly.
Speaker 3 (46:21):
Well, thank you so much for having me. This was
such a profound and meaningful conversation.
Speaker 1 (46:25):
Thanks Jessica,
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