The Shame We Carry

Many years ago, before I met my husband, I was in a pretty serious relationship.  He was a high school boyfriend that turned into my college live-in boyfriend.  As far as I could tell at the time, this was the person I was going to marry.

Obviously, that didn’t happen.  After college, our relationship ended.

To say our breakup was dramatic would be an understatement.  The gory details aren’t important in this post, but it ended with his infidelity mixed with numerous criminal charges against him.

I was shattered and in deep despair.  I required therapy that I never actually sought out. 

I slowly recovered from the breakup in due time.  My heart eventually mended and the tears dried up, but the weight of shame that I carried was not easily lifted.  I didn’t dare tell anybody what actually caused the breakup.

What would people think?  What had occurred could have been the plot of a Lifetime original movie…deception, lies, arrest warrants, guilt, the list goes on.  (As humor often aids in healing, my sister and I joked about who would play me in that movie. Reese Witherspoon? Julia Stiles?)

If I told people what really happened, I was sure they would think I was guilty by association.  Or that I should have left the relationship sooner.  Or, maybe the worst, they would just quietly whisper “What was she thinking?”

Because of that, I rarely talked about what really happened but carried the weight of it constantly.

I walked around with his shame for years. 

That’s what shame does to us.  We carry it quietly and fear judgment.

There is nothing inherently wrong with shame.  As kids, we break a lamp and hide the evidence out of shame.  As teenagers, we go to a party we’re not supposed to, and then lie to our parents.  As adults, we find a mistake we made at work and quickly try to correct it before anyone else notices.

It’s a natural feeling that happens.  We should understand it and process it.

The problem occurs when we carry someone else’s shame that never belonged to us to begin with.

It took me years to realize I wasn’t actually carrying my own shame.  I was carrying baggage that didn’t have my name on it.

Contrary to what I had convinced myself, no one would have judged me if I told them what had happened.  They would have stood with me and seen me as a victim of a really crappy situation.  We would have looked in together saying “wow, what a disaster.”

I would have had support.

Years down the road, well into my happy and healthy (read: not crappy situation) marriage, I met a woman who was going through a very messy divorce.  Her divorce was, unfortunately, similar to my breakup.  There were secrets, lies, and criminal charges against him.

As we sat at her kitchen table and she told me some of what was going on, I could see the tears well up in her eyes as she tried desperately to keep a stiff upper lip.  I could see the shame fill her face – a shame that didn’t belong to her.  I recognized it immediately.  I could feel what she was feeling.  It was like looking in a mirror from years prior.

She told me about the poor choices her husband had made and how he had emotionally hurt her.  She told me how embarrassed she was and that she feared telling anyone what had really happened.

Knowing how similar our stories were, I told her briefly of what I had been through, then I said these magic words:

“You don’t need to carry his shame.  That’s for him to carry, not you.”

Instantly, the despair drained out of her face.  A weight was lifted off her shoulders.  Though she was so wrapped up in this crappy situation, the idea that she was actually just a recipient, not a participant, was so lightening.

Don’t carry shame that isn’t yours.

They would be words that, in my handful of adulthood years, I would repeat to women as they sheepishly told me the stories on their hearts.  Awful stories of the hand they’d been dealt.  Hearts that were weighed down by shame that never belonged to them.

Shame is a feeling that we will all experience.  And sometimes it’s a healthy thing.  It can help us right our wrongs, our strongholds and get back where we should be.

I will acknowledge my own shame, but I have no space in my heart to carry someone else’s.