Rebecca
Hey Nat.

Natalie
Hey Bec.

Rebecca
Well, this is our take two of our episode on shame.

Natalie
Yup. And it’s take two, which feels like a lot right now. I’m just gonna say, this is an hour extra in my life that I hadn’t intended to be speaking about shame with you. But technology got in our way, and so we’re having to tape it again. So who knows what new gems we’ll drop?

Rebecca
Oh, there’s going to be some new gems, and you know what? I think because it’s our second time, it doesn’t feel as heavy.

Natalie
All the walls are just tumbling down.

Rebecca
Does the word even mean anything to you?

Natalie
I have no shame. But you know what, I said in our first recording that that wasn’t going to be my big thing.

Rebecca
Shame isn’t even your big thing. It’s my big thing. So you can just sit back, Nat, and watch me stew.

Natalie
Or new moments of shame are just going to emerge in this conversation from me that you’re going to be like, “Whoa, I did not see that coming.” So we’ll see how this goes down.

Rebecca
I wanted to say though, I really like this moment of banter right off the top of our episodes, because I’m really feeling niceties these days — just small chat. I’m feeling it. I used to be like, “No, every moment has to be really big. If someone says, ‘How’s it going,’ and you say, ‘Cool, I’m good.’” I used to think that was just flippant and fake. And now I’m like, “That’s nice — two people passing time together.”

Natalie
That’s beautiful, and actually probably coming out of something to do with the pandemic, no doubt.

Rebecca
Yeah, maybe it’s that a little bit.

Natalie
Because we haven’t really had that, right. It’s been these very concentrated moments of time that everybody has to create. Otherwise, you don’t want to talk.

Rebecca
Yeah. So it’s always so intentional — we’ve stopped the “Hey, how’s it going?”

Natalie
Kind of easy peasy stuff.

Rebecca
Although it’s not my normal. Because remember, my normal was asking Clifford if he cried the first time I ever met him. Do you remember that?

Natalie
Yes, I remember that moment so distinctly. You know what, that was a beautiful moment, though. I don’t know how you remember it. I mean, you laugh as you say it, but I can remember it so perfectly. Because it was the big moment — that was the big reveal, was me introducing this guy. This was post-divorce, and then after the divorce, there had been this really bad other breakup. And so this was two relationships of pain followed by, you know, this guy — I was like, “I really want him to meet Rebecca, and then mom and dad,” because I just thought if Becca likes him, then this is guaranteed. This is it. So I don’t even know why we were on the subway. We were going somewhere.

Rebecca
Because who takes the subway now?

Natalie
Well, lots of people actually, just not us. Because we try to walk everywhere that we possibly can. Unless I’m on the drive to school and back. But anyways, that’s a different story. But we’re on the subway, we’re going somewhere, and he’s kind of nervous. I remember him sitting there kind of upright and nervous, in his British sort of way.

Rebecca
Yeah. And then I decided to throw that out?

Natalie
I think you weren’t feeling great. If I’m completely honest. I think you were pregnant. I think you weren’t feeling awesome. And I think all of your walls were down. So I think you’re like filters were down.

Rebecca
I was hangry, Nat!

Natalie
You might have been hangry. And so then that’s when you just did it, you dropped one of your Becca amazings and just said, “Do you cry?”

Rebecca
Do you cry? And he didn’t.

Natalie
And he didn’t. He said, “No.”

Rebecca
He can take those kinds of questions. He can take it and pivot.

Natalie
Yes, actually, that is true. He can pivot. But I would say that what was so beautiful about that moment for him was you were just so authentically you, and it wasn’t a big thing coming from you. It was just this question you were asking and so that’s probably why he could pivot, as you say, and cope.

Rebecca
Right. Which is so sweet. I do look back on that moment, and I do have — I mean, this is where the word shame finally would come up, in that moment. I think he totally handled it, but I wonder if that was a moment where I was a little bit too much. Like, not reading the room.

Natalie
Well, he didn’t experience you as too much.

Rebecca
But upon reflection — he could take it — but when I self-examine, I need to ask, “Was that the right moment to ask such a big question?” I think it was, for a sister vetting a boyfriend. But it does bring up a bigger thing for me, where I sometimes feel this slight cringy sense of shame sometimes. Maybe that’s not even the right word, but I think it is. I think that I’m just too much, and I think it’s the right word, because it has to do with my fundamental being, which is, I think, where shame…

Natalie
Ok.

Rebecca
I wish we could have listeners in the room, because there’s always this moment where you’re keeping it light, and then it’s, “Ok.” “Ok, now I might need to talk my sister off the ledge, so I just have to be ready.”

Natalie
My fundamental being.

Rebecca
So, my fundamental being — unless you want to say anything more about Clifford?

Natalie
No, I need to take more in, what you’re going to say to me.

Rebecca
I was wondering, would it be helpful if we just unpacked shame a little bit? Could we look at the difference, for example, between shame and guilt? Because I am saying that was an experience of shame. But was it? Maybe it was… well, I don’t think it was guilt. But how would you describe the difference between shame and guilt? Because we do, you know, words, and understanding them specifically…

Natalie
And words matter, right.

Rebecca
So is there a difference for you?

Natalie
Yeah, I definitely think there’s a difference between shame and guilt. I think I associate guilt with being imposed upon people. So I see guilt as coming from the outside, as opposed to an internal thing. That’s how I worked through that word. I’ve heard some of my Catholic friends — or people who are lapsed Catholics, whatever, just people who have that in their personal history — and they will use the phrase ‘Catholic guilt.’ To me, that feeds into that idea of what that word comes loaded with. Something exterior being imposed upon. So the church, I guess. I don’t know, I guess I just sort of feel like, I can get that a little bit, because I remember when I was 12 and I said “Fuck!” at church, and I really meant it, and it was a completely true and fair —

Rebecca
Did you just yell it out? What were you doing?

Natalie
Practically. We were a part of that little pioneer girls club thing. It was like Brownies. It was happening at the church, and part of the pioneer girls thing that week was that we were setting up for a service that the pioneer girls were going to lead some coming Sunday. I was tasked with a whole crapload of items that I was supposed to do.

Rebecca
At this service.

Natalie
Yeah. I’m twelve, for goodness sakes.

Rebecca
But everyone was twelve, right? Because it was a kid’s group.

Natalie
No, there were a couple older kids, for sure. But we were the pastor’s kids, so I think there probably was some expectation placed on me. And so anyways, one girl said, “Oh, what are you doing in the service?” And I went, “Fucking everything!” I don’t even know where that fully came from except from, you know, my soul. I really obviously felt a little bit, you know, overwhelmed or something by the responsibilities. I was overworked. Oh my goodness, and seriously underpaid. But I remember that one of the ladies who led the group was nearby and heard me say the word. And then she tore a strip off me for my use of language in that space, berated me pretty solidly in a corner. So I’m supposed to feel really bad, and I’ve been taken away from the group. That was a really unfortunate moment, right, but in some ways as she’s saying it, even in that moment, I knew I wasn’t wrong. I did know.

Rebecca
You know what’s possibly worse about that even — because I do remember that that kid’s group had lots of kids from the community who didn’t go to church. I’m sure people were using all kinds of language, but she was maybe holding you up, as you needed to be this role model.

Natalie
Or something. And I’m twelve, for fuck’s sake. So anyways, it was just such an interesting moment in my childhood. So that was guilt, though. She was trying to impose guilt upon me. And I wasn’t going to own it at that time, but it was definitely there. So yeah, there’s my little example of what I imagined guilt to be — something imposed upon. I don’t know, that might not be yours. How do you interpret the word?

Rebecca
I mean, I definitely don’t have that. That is something nice about our church experience growing up, I don’t have that Catholic guilt. Maybe more Christian shame. I don’t know. I do feel guilty, I think if I squander… today, I was writing on my newsletter, I was writing about my routine, I decided to do that. I was thinking about how I have so many moments in my daily routine where often I feel like I might be squandering my time. So maybe I feel guilty sometimes? Do you have moments in the present tense where you feel guilty?

Natalie
No.

Rebecca
You’re an open book Nat. Ok, so guilt and shame are just not your little devils.

Natalie
You know what? I’m being a bit facetious with that one. I can say that, in the present tense, I might have moments of feeling like, “Am I spending enough time with Frankie?” But then I actually step back and go, “No, I’m a really present parent.” I really do make an effort to be very much here, and I’ve said before on the podcast, I’ve got the one kid and that’s my shot at parenting, so I definitely feel present. So then I squash that feeling of imposed guilt and go “No, that’s not fair.” So it’s not that it’s not potentially there, but I think I can quickly navigate the feeling.

Rebecca
Reframe.

Natalie
I reframe that thing.

Rebecca
Super fast. You are a super fast reframer.

Natalie
I try. I’ve got to get through my day, Bec.

Rebecca
You’re a speedy reframer, it’s very good. What about shame versus embarrassment? That feels a lot easier for me than shame versus guilt. Because embarrassment for me is like, kale in your teeth.

Natalie
Yeah, I remember when Jen Marcera didn’t tell me when I had a… we were flirting with boys at the… Blue Jays game, that’s what it was. Oh my gosh, it was at the Blue Jays game. We were up in the 500s and there were these boys, and we were chit-chatting. And then at the end of our hangout, when the boys walked away, she was like, “You know that you had seeds in your teeth from a hot dog?”

Rebecca
The whole time? Not a good friend.

Natalie
Yeah. So she wasn’t a real friend. No, it was definitely not my high school moment. That wasn’t a win. I would definitely say I was embarrassed in that moment, and angry.

Rebecca
But not guilty, and not feeling shame.

Natalie
No, neither of those things. So what is guilt, then? What is embarrassment? Definitely not those things. It’s coming from the outside, pretty often.

Rebecca
But it’s much simpler.

Natalie
But it’s simpler. It’s maybe only one or two layers, as opposed to going all the way into the middle of the onion.

Rebecca
Into your core.

Natalie
Yeah. What did you call it before, your being?

Rebecca
Your fundamental being. You told me some story though, about you on a bus and embarrassment.

Natalie
Yeah, ok. This was a real flaming cheeks embarrassment moment. Actually, it was that same girl. Her family had brought me to some ski place that we were all supposed to hang out at, and I don’t ski so I must have just hung out, I don’t know. Anyways, it was a little weekend. Then I’m supposed to take the Greyhound back. So I get on this bus, it’s early in the evening when I get on. By the time you settle in, it’s now dark. Darkness, and there’s this cute boy a couple rows back. And so I see him in my mirror — because I’d check my eyeliner, but really I’m just doing this so I can look in the corner and see if he’s there. And sure enough, he’s checking me out. So I’m fifteen, I think this is amazing. He ends up moving over and sits with me and we end up kissing. That’s what happened on this hour and a half bus ride.

Rebecca
That’s so bold, Nat. I’ve never kissed a stranger on a bus.

Natalie
Oh my gosh, it was so romantic, Rebecca. Well, he wasn’t a stranger because he announced his name, and it was French. So he was from Quebec, and that made it better. He could have completely made up his name for all I know, but in my mind, I’ve had Cosette as his name, in the back of my journal somewhere. But anyways, I had to get off that bus. So I walk away from this kiss and then get off the bus and have to get in the car with dad. I’ve been kissing this guy on this bus in the darkness, and now it’s the kind of sharp, shining, harsh light.

Rebecca
Your face is probably all scratched up or something.

Natalie
Yeah, a little bit. I was all read and roughened. But I don’t think Dad would have noticed a thing. I mean, there was nothing to really give it away, but I felt terribly embarrassed. You know what, probably because I didn’t feel like a little girl.

Rebecca
But any mix of guilt? Catholic guilt? Christian shame.

Natalie
I don’t think there was any Catholic guilt, or Christian shame, or ecumenical anything. I think that was just embarrassment. Shyness — that’s probably the better word, shyness. I felt shy, because all of a sudden, I wasn’t a kid. I was being like a teenager.

Rebecca
Oh yeah, you know what I used to feel? I used to feel embarrassment if Dad was giving me a hug and if he could feel my bra strap.

Natalie
Because all of a sudden you’re like, “I’m not a little girl!”

Rebecca
I didn’t want to be announcing to him that I was not his little girl anymore.

Natalie
Oh, that’s so cute, Becca.

Rebecca
It’s funny. I was talking to mom the other day about our podcast, and she was saying that her and dad had listened to an episode together. She was basically saying that dad wasn’t finding it awesomely comfortable to listen to your stories about dates. So it’s like, maybe he doesn’t need to listen. She said, “Maybe,” and then she said, “Maybe we don’t need to listen together.”

Natalie
Oh, that’s really cute too. I like that.

Rebecca
Because I think she’s just coming into the idea that podcasts are so intimate.

Natalie
Right. And they are.

Rebecca
She’s saying it’s a lot to listen to these really big stories.

Natalie
Right, especially all in one shot. They didn’t just happen over time. It’s literally an hour of jam-packed fun.

Rebecca
Of all of our big moments. The other moment of embarrassment that I can think of is when my English teacher would come into the drugstore where I worked and call me Rachel. I know I’ve told you that story, and I hope I haven’t told it on the podcast. But it’s such a funny one for me, because I didn’t correct him. So he did it, he came into the drugstore all the time maybe for a year, and just earnestly called me Rachel. And I answered. I became a different person, but I was embarrassed as I did it.

Natalie
You were embarrassed, though.

Rebecca
I was embarrassed actually.

Natalie
But like, embarrassed for him?

Rebecca
I don’t know. Embarrassed for all of us, embarrassed if he ever found out. I think I have this deep need for authenticity — that probably existed back then. So it was like, “This isn’t true.” Whereas you, you were talking about how you make up identities in front of your class — although you make up true identities.

Natalie
Yeah, I get to share different parts of myself, that’s true.

Rebecca
Maybe there’s a Rachel in me I could have embraced, as opposed to thinking it’s inauthentic.

Natalie
Right. But that would have been you really tapping into your acting skills early on, which — I think you would say they emerged a little later, right?

Rebecca
Ok, so I looked up the definition of shame from Brené Brown.

Natalie
Yeah, you like her.

Rebecca
I do like her a lot. Listeners, as you can tell, Nat doesn’t care about Brené Brown.

Natalie
I think she’s fine. I think she’s done lots of good things, and I’m happy that you enjoy her. Go ahead.

Rebecca
She says it’s an intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed, and therefore unworthy of love and belonging. So what did I say, I how did I start it? With ‘my psychological being’ or something? My state of being?

Natalie
Your deep being?

Rebecca
Whatever I said, I think that resonates with Brené. I probably had that definition in my head when I said that because I think I’ve heard her talk about this. Nat, her TED talk is the most viewed TED Talk in history.

Natalie
I probably avoid it because of exactly that. I like to be that person, right?

Rebecca
But there is the possibility that you would get something from that.

Natalie
I have no doubt. I should just do it.

Rebecca
Ok, so this deep experience of being flawed or unworthy — discuss. Do you have one of those?

Natalie
I would anticipate that somebody listening to this might imagine that the next thing that I’m going to say is something to do with my divorce. Right? And the funny thing is, that is not for me a place of shame. No. I really honestly can say that, and that can come over time — I’ll share more and more — but I want to start with a place where I know there was shame. A story for me was when I was really little, like I was six…

Rebecca
Which is I think probably where shame really gets in, weasels itself in, right?

Natalie
Yeah, plants itself, like a bad seed. And so I was six and we lived at a little house up in Rexdale. There was a family that lived next to us, these two brothers. You were little, so you were just playing on your own or with me.

Rebecca
I was playing with rattles.

Natalie
You were playing with rattles. You were just little. But this six-year-old boy and I, we would play. I don’t remember his name. It doesn’t really matter. But I do remember that he had a really short haircut. It was like a buzz cut, and that he and I would play, and then all of a sudden, one of us needed to go to the bathroom, so we ran into his house this time. So he wanted to go to the bathroom. I just went into the bathroom with him, we’re just talking, whatever. And then he takes a really big poop, and then wanted to show me, because it was enormous. And so I remember the feeling. I remember actually looking down at this poo and the both of us being like, “Wow, that’s huge.” And then as we’re staring down at the toilet in awe, his mom barges in the bathroom, and loses it, basically yells at me to get out. I had done something wrong, was what came out of this moment. I was wrong for being there. This was wrong. I just remember feeling so horribly ashamed, because somehow the blame was being put on me. It was a feeling that I had done something, but I was also really misunderstood. It was inherently misunderstood.

Rebecca
Although it sounds like it must have been triggering something for the mother, right?

Natalie
Oh yeah, absolutely. Our kids, the two littles, they would go to the bathroom together and chit-chat. We’ll hear them in there just chit-chatting away. I mean, the bathroom is a very intimate space for conversation, in many ways — somebody doing their makeup, whatever whatever, right? So I really like that we’ve never had, in either of our little families, any inclination to stop them from having that space to themselves. Because it’s a little boy, a little girl, maybe some people would feel that needs to be interrupted really quickly. Whereas this little guy and I were just buds, like it was just buds looking at poo. I mean, it was really nothing. So I think I’m mad at that mom in the past. “You shouldn’t have yelled at me! I was just little!” But also what was going on in that time in my brain? I think it was an interesting little seed planted there.

Rebecca
A moment of shaping. Something wasn’t explained. You like to articulate things. I mean, I like to articulate things too. But to put words to something, and she had no words for that experience. She just said, “Bad. Bad child.”

Natalie
Exactly. Yeah. And, “Bad me.”

Rebecca
For something that you can’t even — for what? For staring? For standing near a boy?

Natalie
Yeah, exactly. Being in this space somehow together, being in her home. Just all the things. So everything about it was shame-inducing. Which is weird, actually, because if I go back to my initial saying of what guilt was, guilt was imposed. So maybe I felt a mix of two things. I felt guilty because she’s making me feel guilty. I have to dig a little bit deeper and go, “So then what was feeling inside me? Where was the shame coming from? Why wasn’t this just guilt?” But I think the shame is that I knew I wasn’t doing anything wrong. And yet, I was a participant.

Rebecca
Yeah, because guilt probably can be useful, right? It can be a signal that I should change my behavior, or I should stop watching this show, in the middle of the day, or whatever.

Natalie
Don’t swear in church.

Rebecca
But when it goes that extra layer, when you absorb it, is that when it becomes shame?

Natalie
Maybe that’s it.

Rebecca
I can think for me, moments of shame — maybe I’ll stop repeating this after this podcast, that I’m too much.

Natalie
Yeah, I hope so. I really do.

Rebecca
Or I’ll just keep saying it over and over.

Natalie
No, because then you’re putting it into being.

Rebecca
I think this conversation is really useful for me, and hopefully for other listeners. Maybe we can expunge some of these things that we don’t need to keep carrying. But this idea of me being too much — so I have this memory of when Elsie was two, and you know, she was in her tantrum stage (terrible twos), and wearing this big snowsuit. We had gone for a walk and she didn’t want to walk home, and I remember being so frustrated. I don’t know if I had a really short fuse at that point, or if it was just standard mother — “This is frustrating, and I want to get home for lunch.” But I remember throwing her on the bed when we got home and being so angry, and just thinking that was a moment where I was out of control, I felt. I mean, not like throwing things and breaking things, but it wasn’t a rational healthy response for a child. You know when a child’s having a tantrum, we want to just…

Natalie
Be able to handle it, because we’re the adult there.

Rebecca
Right, be the adult, not be having a tantrum along with them. Or similarly, that time I mentioned where I ripped the silk shirt off my body in a fight with Simon. Which I really regret, because I liked that shirt a lot. It was from Aritzia. It was nice. Why did I do that? That was so out of control. I felt like I needed to make this big statement. Sometimes I feel I need to make big statements about stuff so people take me seriously. I think Simon would be like, “I take you seriously,” — just, you know, I’m not going to show it the way you think I should show it in this moment. I think I have some sense of shame, or I have and maybe this is the process of releasing it. Why wasn’t I in control in those moments? So, as in shame, is there a fundamental flaw in me that I’m not in control?

Natalie
Yeah, that’s a big one. Yeah.

Rebecca
Oh, I have another one. Can you handle one more, dad, if you’re listening?

Natalie
Bring it. I can totally handle one more.

Rebecca
Do you remember… it was another church event thing when we were in our 20s, and we were playing this game. It was just some board game, but I was getting really competitive — it’s so funny, because I can see all this competitiveness in Elsie now. I don’t know what I did in the game — shouted, or I don’t know. You can imagine it, I don’t think I need to enact that part. But then this older guy in the group went, “Whoa, Rebecca! Calm down!” It was so shaming for me, I think because it was coming from this older man who — I wanted him to like me. I wanted him to respect me. It felt like there was some layer of sexism in it, too. You know, women shouldn’t be so feisty. Maybe that’s where my sense of ‘too much’ comes from is that whole women thing — taking up space. I think ripping a shirt is something different, but there’s that element of…

Natalie
We can pin that one.

Rebecca
Let’s pin that as something completely other. I just felt like too much in that moment, again. So there’s been these series of events where I’ve felt that same thing. Is it just me repeating those events, or writing those events down and trying to work with those events? Is it that that makes them bigger in my mind?

Natalie
No, but I am hearing in both of our stories — the ones that we are choosing to tell right now. In that this is the second round through this podcast episode, I feel like the stories that we’re telling are coming out more naturally in that we could have come up with others, but this is still the one I’m choosing to tell. I think maybe what you’re describing — feeling too much. In my stories, both have been about feeling misunderstood, or not fully seen. Point to something, right? These really are legit parts of our states of being, or whatever was your initial sentence. And that’s something interesting about who Natalie and Rebecca are, I guess.

Rebecca
I wonder if mine, if it’s like you see me too much. Versus you don’t see me.

Natalie
Yeah, that’s a writerly way of framing them for sure.

Rebecca
Although that’s something I choose, I’m putting out that part of myself and then maybe I regret it. Anyway. Do you know the podcast Hidden Brain?

Natalie
From you, yeah.

Rebecca
I only listen to ours. No, that’s not true. I need to actually download more. I was listening to a couple of really good ones for a while.

Rebecca
You listened to the Glennon Doyle one.

Natalie
Yeah, I didn’t like that one.

Rebecca
Is there one you liked? Do you listen to The Daily, Nat? That’s the New York Times one. Just don’t answer. But this Hidden Brain one is a good psychology one. This psychologist was talking about how your genetics can dictate how optimistic you are. I’m thinking the guy yelling at me in the game or saying, “Woah, Rebecca!” — I could have just slept that off.

Natalie
Or celebrated it.

Rebecca
Yeah, or celebrated. “Woo-hoo, yeah, I am!” Taking it for my team.

Natalie
Yeah. Cause I just took you down, son.

Rebecca
Or being called Rachel in my store. Yes, I am Rachel, and you are some other name. So your genetics play a role, so I do think I have a propensity — and you were saying something about that. You had talked with mom about that?

Natalie
Yeah. I was asking mom, “Have I always had this proclivity to reframing?” and she said very clearly, “No. You were obsessing about it in your PhD time.” I was like, “Obsessing? Oh boy.”

Rebecca
Was ‘reframing’ one of your PhD words?

Natalie
Well, yeah, it was the thing that actually tied everything together, because as soon as I stumbled across this framing store where they were actually selling shadow box frames, that’s when I said, “Oh my gosh, here’s how I’m going to tie my whole time in the jail together,” — with these found objects that I had rediscovered from prison. And I was like, “I’m not just framing them. I’m reframing them! Oh, my gosh.” It was this really big moment. And so, if (as mom has said) I was obsessing, it seemed to emerge from there. But she then did follow with a very gentle, “But you have always been more positive or optimistic, just as a person.” So perhaps I come by it naturally. At some level.

Rebecca
So maybe not telling and retelling the same negative stories.

Natalie
Maybe. I think that’s not been as much my thing.

Rebecca
I appreciate that you are digging for the stories of shame, to have this conversation. But it is cool that they’re not as present tense. I think we’re remarkably healthy, considering what we have grown up in, right? So we’re pastor’s kids, which are called PKs. And there is kind of a joke that PKs tend to be really screwed up.

Natalie
Yup. You know, maybe fairly, because not everybody’s had a church experience like ours, where we’ve had such thoughtful…

Rebecca
Yeah, ours has been fairly positive. I think partly it’s been us being able to process things together, but I do think we have absorbed some shame from our Christian upbringing, right? I mean around sex, bodies. I don’t remember having any sex-positive conversations in Sunday school, even though it was wonderful women usually teaching us and having really good intentions for us. Did you hear that word in dad’s sermon on Sunday? I listened to it, and he talks about schizophrenic morality.

Natalie
Why did I miss that? I mean, I listened.

Rebecca
Anyway, I really like that idea. I feel like we absorbed years of schizophrenic morality.

Natalie
Oh, isn’t that interesting.

Rebecca
Do you like that?

Natalie
Oh, I’ll have to sit with it. I don’t know if I like it. But I have to sit with it.

Rebecca
I like the term. People trying, but people not knowing how to unpack things for themselves. So at one level, maybe that woman is teaching you something positive, but then making you feel guilty for using the word ‘fuck’. That to me is an example of the schizophrenic morality.

Natalie
That’s interesting. I don’t know. In church, or just life in general — I’m going to go back to that divorce thing, because I started by saying that. You were wondering, initially, did church have some sort of impact on our feelings of shame? And I started earlier by saying, I don’t feel any shame around my divorce. Obviously I’ve now lived that for a while, right? But even when I was going through it, in the early stages, I didn’t feel shame. And God and I had worked that one out, we were in a place where I was in the clear — in that I knew where I stood, and I had been very open in my own talking about what I was feeling and thinking and crying about in my alone time, with my spiritual sense of connecting to God. I didn’t feel able to do too much of that with people. I think that a lot of that probably didn’t come from shame, but from a definitive sense of people not getting it — like, people weren’t going to get me. I also do think that there were lots of people who didn’t like what I was doing. They didn’t like me splitting from my husband, they didn’t like me now trying to stay very present at the church, including trying out new people to date, and bringing them to the church — doing these things that I was doing to try and be authentic, in opposition to the schizophrenic morality. I was really just trying to be truly me in that space. But I was obligating everybody in that space to do it with me.

Rebecca
And you were asking people that have this pretty conservative space to process at this pace you were processing at, and to accept. I mean, they hadn’t even unpacked it for themselves. They didn’t even know, probably, what they were feeling, but they didn’t want you to represent divorce. It’s so complex to me.

Natalie
I’m choosing my words carefully here because I don’t need this to be all of a sudden the divorce podcast, but I do think that shame should be attached to it — in that that’s the most obvious answer to the question (and my ‘should’ here is in quotation marks). Somebody listening to this will go, “Oh, yeah, she might feel shame because of this thing she failed at.” But that wasn’t the word that I would have attached. I think disappointment and sadness and all those things.

Rebecca
Yeah, I don’t think you should attach shame to that, Nat. I mean, are you hearing that from me, thinking that you should…?

Natalie
Not from you. But I bet you that was what was going through some folks’s minds.

Rebecca
And maybe they wanted to see that. Like, why is there no remorse?

Natalie
Yeah. Where’s the train wreck, right?

Rebecca
Which is so funny — as if we aren’t experiencing this whole array of feelings, but they want you to experience that one. That’s the one that seems like it makes the most sense for their story of the world.

Natalie
Yeah. Well, there you go. That whole idea of their story of the world.

Rebecca
Or their story of Christianity.

Natalie
So I don’t think I fit into a lot of those boxes at the time, or even now. And that can be maybe adding to my own sense, at different times, of not feeling understood. But I think I’ve just become more accepting of that.

Rebecca
Yeah, you have this kind of oppositional spirit, which I like. You rise up. “What you think I should feel right now is shame. I’m going to take that, and” —

Natalie
Try something different.

Rebecca
Wait, I need to finish it. You take a bat, you take a ball. Or smash the wall of shame, whatever. But you’ve always gone really against the grain in so many ways, which I think is really inspiring.

Natalie
It’s been lonely. There’s a loneliness to that.

Rebecca
Yeah, going against the grain is lonely.

Natalie
Maybe that’s why I’m not listening to Brené Brown, Bec, because everybody’s listening to her. But she’s probably good for me.

Rebecca
I just read an article about her in The New Yorker. She has some new book coming out. But she was acknowledging that her research on vulnerability and shame has been a lot. She uses those expressions like “It’s kicking my ass.” It’s taken a toll.

Natalie
She’s worn.

Rebecca
Yeah. You also bracket — you’re a really good bracketer, reframer. I mean, maybe it’s the artist side of me. I was reading the artist St. Vincent, who has a masterclass on Masterclass. Nevermind, don’t do any of the masterclasses that I do.

Natalie
But I know about them.

Rebecca
And she says that it’s the artist’s job to metabolize shame. Processing it and making vulnerable art out of it.

Natalie
I can see that. I’m glad I’m not a full-on artist.

Rebecca
But she says, seriously embrace the shame, because the worst thing that happens is it’s a bad idea. But you didn’t do anybody harm, you didn’t exploit anybody (I’m not sure why she goes there, particularly). There are so many people who succeed time and time again on bad ideas. Why not you? So just like, screw it, go for it. That’s what I got out of that. But you gotta take all those feelings and let them through you. Do you have a piece of artwork that you can see the artist metabolizing shame, and you like it?

Natalie
I think that’s the line I like. I don’t think that sounds like Brene Brown’s definition of shame. It’s two very different versions of a word, which I think I appreciate, because again, words matter and we have to give context.

Rebecca
In that case, it seems like she’s equating shame with guilt, or vulnerability.

Natalie
Yeah. I’m not sure if that’s necessarily the way that I would look at it, but I don’t know that that matters, because I think that the line about metabolizing whatever is the place of vulnerability where you’re at. I think it’s a great idea, making use of it, making use of something that you have. I mean, I’m making use of all of my traumas all the time in my teaching, right? I’ve said that before. A piece of art that I would say right now I’m really appreciating for that kind of vulnerability and metabolizing is Adele’s new song, Go Easy On Me, for anybody who can hum it with me. Anyways, it’s a song where she’s singing to her former partner, lover, whatever, and basically saying I was so young that I didn’t really know, and I barely had understood life, let alone myself, and just go easy on me. And it just makes me think of Clifford — any time I have gotten a little hard on memories of my past, he’ll literally put his arm around me and say, “Now you got to put an arm around that Natalie,” like the Natalie of then.

Rebecca
I like that he’s a therapist sometimes.

Natalie
He really does have a lot of really good, useful lines.

Rebecca
He stays quiet, and then he brings out this really awesome gem.

Natalie
Yeah, gem, right? Dropping gems. I think that there’s something in that. So whether it’s shame or guilt or embarrassment even, any of those kind of terms wrapped up all into to one, the idea of going easy on ourselves, I think is a beautiful line. Thanks Adele for that, because I just think that there’s something so true in it. If we could just go back and care for…

Rebecca
That little girl looking at the poo?

Natalie
Yeah. Oh my gosh, it was ok.

Rebecca
Just put an arm around her. The girl playing the game, thinking I could just go full out in a game, and that would be ok.

Natalie
Just be yourself. Yeah, and it should have been, right?

Rebecca
I wish I could go back and just be like, “You’re fine.”

Natalie
“In fact, you’re awesome.”

Rebecca
“That is an awesome thing. Go hard.”

Natalie
Yeah, exactly. And win.

Rebecca
And don’t retreat.

Natalie
Because of some random person’s response.

Rebecca
Arms around our old selves.

Natalie
Our younger selves.

Rebecca
Our old and young selves.

Natalie
Yeah, because I mean, we’re going to have to say that kind of line to ourselves right until the end. I mean, if anything — I’ve observed in literature, anyways, a lot of the older characters…

Rebecca
Oh yeah, cause you know, that’s the thing. Stuff comes back as you’re older, right.

Natalie
Think Margaret Laurence, like The Stone Angel and stuff like that. It’s all these older people who are super filled with regret. Probably regret and shame go together at some level, and if anything, it’s just like, “Oh man, be kind to yourself.”

Rebecca
And grandpa had regret right at the end, right? I mean, I know that dad has really absorbed that story of grandpa really being filled with regret at the end.

Natalie
Yeah. Which is such a bummer of a way to go out. I want to go out blazing, Bec!

Rebecca
But you know what, we’re talking about it and we’re metabolizing.

Natalie
Oh my gosh, we’re full on metabolizing and reframing at the same time. So much good is coming out of this, two hours in.

Rebecca
We are going to have a great day tomorrow, Nat. We don’t need to talk about shame for a really long time.

Natalie
Totally. I love you.

Rebecca
I love you.