Rewriting Your Shame Story: Infertility with Bree Keel
No one wants to walk the road of infertility. Its not something that I would wish on my worst enemy, and yet, some of us find ourselves walking that road without a road map or the right shoes to travel the journey.
After the disillusionment and numbness wears off, so many women find themselves trying to grapple with overwhelming grief, shame and anger because of the journey.
As a woman who suffered through 3 miscarriages, my journey of “infertility” and shame looks different from those who could never get pregnant, and it looks different from those who could get pregnant but never carry to term.
There is room to honor each individual journey and how shame and our perceptions influence how well supported we feel in the process, if we are able to reach out and ask for support, or if we self isolate to protect ourselves from pain.
In a recent podcast with Bree Keel, Co-Founder of The Unhindered Life Coaching, we share our unique journeys of pregnancy, loss, infertility and how shame colored our experiences, left us feeling hopeless, victimized by the experience and ultimately, how we overcame the shame and built communities of support to walk out the journey.
What does the voice of shame sound like?
When I was walking through recurrent miscarriages, I didn’t even recognize that shame was the overwhelming voice in my head. It wasn’t until years later that I began to recognize that shame was trying to narrate the story of my experience and how much freedom I would have had, had I known how to overcome it.
For me, shame sounded like: “What is wrong with me? Why can’t my body carry a child? Maybe I’m eating the wrong things, maybe I have too much stress.” And on the worst days “Maybe God doesn’t want me to have another child.”
Which would only further perpetuate the shame because I couldn’t reconcile why I had such a strong desire for another child if God didn’t want to give me one.
For Bree, shame sounded like “ What’s wrong with my body? God must be punishing me for past sins… my past life is catching up to me. Maybe I don’t deserve another baby, after all, the woman with a cocaine addiction at church just had her 3rd baby and here I am still struggling.”
All of this is shame based language. It is based in the idea of punishment for failures- as if conceiving a child was really in our control at all.
And these shame based thoughts begin to form a web of isolation, self hatred and victimization from the experience, only furthering the cycle of shame.
How do we break free from shame?
As Bree shares in this episode, shame is really an awful experience. It’s a deeply emotional experience that not everyone can handle, but the first step is to begin to give words to the journey.
Journaling how you feel is an excellent first step to finding words to the emotional and physical pain of waiting. Getting the words out on paper is not only therapeutic, but helps you to begin to sift and sort through the experience and challenge the narrative by asking:
Are these words true?
What is the truth?
What are the lies I’m believing?
What Does God say about my experience?
Talking with safe people. Not everyone is safe to share the journey with- especially when the journey is as hard and painful and tender as infertility. Finding 1-2 safe people is essential to begin to unhook from the tentacles of shame. This may look like finding a good counselor to unburden your heart with, this also looks like bringing your close friends in on the process. Even being as assertive as saying “This is how you can be my friend right now” can be a total game changer in the process!
Attune to your feelings: one of the hardest feelings to feel is shame. Its an emotion that most of us want to run and hide from, ignore and stuff down. But shame, just like every other emotion, needs to be FELT in order to HEAL. In this episode, Bree describes the process of attunement, how to attune to our feelings in order to self validate, learn self compassion and lean into God in the process.
Invite God into the process: If your faith is a big part of your life or you desire for it to be, one of the hardest parts of the journey is reconciling the anger, disillusionment, pain and heartache of unanswered prayers. How do we reconcile the TRUTH that God is good and always good, full of compassion and mercy, and yet your circumstances are screaming the exact opposite. This is definitely a process that takes time, but I want to encourage you that God is not afraid of your emotions or your pain in the journey. Like David, pour out your heart and invite Him to meet you in any emotion you might be experiencing!
If you’re ready to break free of shame, then make sure to join the Stop the Shame Cycle 3 week bible study where I’m going to take you through the shame to self compassion journey. Click HERE to join!
