In an age of oversharing, women often don’t talk about some of their biggest problems, such as loneliness, lack of intimacy with their spouse, abortion, sexual abuse, and serious illness.
Jessica Zucker hears a lot of these secrets in her practice as a psychologist specializing in reproductive and maternal mental health. Her new book encourages women to talk more openly about their experiences and help erase shame. It’s called Normalize It: Upending the Silence, Stigma, and Shame That Shape Women’s Lives.
In Zucker’s previous book, she wrote about miscarrying and grieving without a sense of shame. However, she learned that many women do feel shame and believe they caused their own miscarriage. Others around them often say, “At least you can get pregnant, at least you're young … at least you have a thriving career,” Zucker points out.
Although these phrases are well-intentioned, they lead to more alienation and loneliness, she explains. Because society doesn’t openly discuss loss and pain, people scramble and just say what they think might be helpful; they want to create a “silver lining” or siphon the pain.
Instead, it’s better to lean into their pain, be present, genuinely ask “how are you?” and show up for them, Zucker advises.
And while therapy is a safe space to bare our souls, it’s also important to be able to get support from friends, neighbors, and family members, she adds. “Wouldn't it be wonderful if they had the tools and the language to be able to meet us where we are?”
During her work as a psychologist, Zucker says she is most concerned about the “strident trifecta of silence, stigma and shame” because women end up feeling like there’s something wrong with them, they’re bad or deserved what happened.
“I think it comes from girlhood. We are groomed from the get-go to think that things are a making of our own. If we try hard enough, maybe we can ace that test, we can get that job. … But when it comes to reproduction, we don't have that kind of control. I watch as women blame themselves and think, ‘Oh, maybe it's the coffee I had. Maybe I shouldn't have gone to the gym. Maybe I didn't want to be a mother badly enough. Maybe I wanted it too much.’”
Credit: PESI Publishing, Inc.
Many topics involving sex also aren’t publicly discussed, she says. Normalize It contains personal stories, including from Naomi (pseudonym), who’s happily married to her wife. They have kids, but their sex is boring or non-existent. This is common among young couples who become parents.
Zucker says the antidote is to replace silence with storytelling. “If somebody shares with their friend, ‘I'm not really having a lot of sex anymore. I'm not interested,’ that friend will likely say, ‘Wait, really? Me too.’ And so once we gather the courage to say it out loud — and now this is not always the case, of course, but oftentimes when we do, we get to hear back, ‘I feel the same way.’ And that changes the game.”
However, the MeToo movement seems to have made women more willing to communicate about what’s happened to them, especially with abuse, Zucker acknowledges. “We can read the statistics about sexual assault, about divorce, about miscarriage, but somehow that doesn't shore us up. It doesn't make us feel less ashamed when it happens to us sometimes. When we hear the stories of other people, it somehow moves the needle.”
But is there ever too much sharing, like picking at a wound? Sometimes it happens with social media, where a performative aspect exists around disclosing trauma, Zucker points out.
What’s key: The person who wants to stay private (online) at least acknowledges what they’ve been through — by investigating it in their journal, with a therapist, partner, or friend.
After writing this book, is there something Zucker feels more comfortable discussing? She points to her 2021 breast cancer diagnosis and having to take tamoxifen (a medication that blocks estrogen) which has caused physical and psychological side effects. Sharing this would let other women know they’re not alone when going through breast cancer.