This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - Healing Complex Shame with Dr. Zoe Shaw | 420

Starting point is 00:00:00 Are you one of those media strategy people clicking through slides, scrolling spreadsheets? Yes? Good. This is for you. Because on Spotify, there's an audience that's different. Locked in. Loyal, invested. They're called fans. Fans don't just listen to music. They feel seen by it, like it belongs to them. So when your brand shows up on Spotify, that's who you're talking to. And you're right next to artists like me, Lizzo. So, are you ready to talk to fans? Spotify Advertising. You're among fans. Hey, y'all, it's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder what if?

Starting point is 00:00:34 Like, what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit Wayfair. Wayfair, every style, every home. I am Nicole Khalil and you're listening to the This Is Woman's Work podcast. We're together. We're redefining what it means, what it looks and what it feels like to be doing women's work in the world today. And friend, we can't do that without talking about the stuff we've been trained. to avoid. I know none of us want to, but it's imperative that we get honest about the not so postworthy stuff that's actually driving our behavior and our choices. And I'm not just talking about

Starting point is 00:01:21 the stuff that shows up on the surface, but what's underneath it. Because we will talk all day long about people pleasing, anxiety, self-doubt, overachieving, perfectionism. We have on this show and we'll continue to as long as it plagues us. And we have to acknowledge that it's easier to talk about about those things because we can all look at each other and nod and say, yep, that's me too, and know that we'll be in good company. But what if those things are just a byproduct of a deeper problem? One, we don't raise our hands about in a crowded room. Heavier, stickier, harder to name, because we don't want to say it out loud things like grief or trauma or the topic we all know about but don't want to talk about so we're talking about it today. And that's shame.

Starting point is 00:02:09 And I'm not talking about the momentary kind that we all feel when we mess up or fall short. I'm talking about the kind that gets internalized, the kind that shapes how you see yourself, the kind that decides what you believe you're worthy of, what you will and won't tolerate, and how small or safe or big or risky you're going to play. Because if we don't understand that deeper layer, we're going to keep trying to fix the behaviors without ever addressing what's actually fueling them. And here's the truth most of us don't want to admit. Ignoring it doesn't make it go away.

Starting point is 00:02:44 It just gives it more control. And my personal experience, when you name it, when you say the thing, when you share your shame, when you put language on it with somebody that you trust, it starts to lose its power. So that's what we're going to do today. Here to help us dive into shame is Dr. Zoe Shaw, a licensed psychotherapist, author, speaker, relationship coach, and hosted the podcast, Stronger in the Difficult. places. After 15 years in traditional therapy, she stepped away from the couch to create a more

Starting point is 00:03:15 dynamic approach to healing, blending psychology, faith, and feminism. She's best known for coining the term complex shame, and through her work, she helps women break free from it so they can reclaim their voice, boundaries, and self-worth. Dr. Zoe, thank you for being our guide through what can be a really hard topic to talk about. And I'd love to ask you to start by defining or describing complex shame. Is it complex shame or complex shame? I'm not even sure. So what are we talking about here?

Starting point is 00:03:46 I call it complex shame, but complex works as well. Nicole, first I have to say thank you so much for having me on. And that was the best introduction, both to the topic and myself that I've ever heard. So thank you so much. Yeah, so shame. It is a very unsexy topic. And I talk about it with a smile on my face because there's so much hope about about when we get over it. And I've done that myself. And so most people understand that shame is that

Starting point is 00:04:16 kind of that feeling like that, that physiological deep gut, body feeling that makes you feel bad about yourself, right? But I want to kind of open that up a little bit so people can understand. So first, we can't talk about shame without talking about guilt because people get them very confused. Guilt is this feeling that I've done something wrong. Guilt is a very healthy feeling. When you've done something wrong to break your own moral code, you feel a feeling, and that feeling motivates you to change. It motivates you to go back and repair, to apologize to, and even if that doesn't work, you can say, I will not do that again. So guilt is a healthy feeling that motivates you to change. Shame says, I am wrong. And when you have this feeling that gets attached to your identity that says,

Starting point is 00:05:02 I am wrong, there is nothing for you to do but run or hide, right? And so that's what happens with shame. And shame is always unhealthy because shame makes us hide. And when we hide in our relationships, when we hide from ourselves, we usually do damaging things. And nothing good comes of it because you can't repair if you've already decided I'm wrong. Now, the difference between complex shame and shame is that complex shame is a type of shame that doesn't go away when you talk about it and you receive some external compassion. So Bray Brown became famous talking about the way to. to get rid of shame, right? We talk about it. Someone else gives us compassion. People say,

Starting point is 00:05:42 me too. And all of a sudden, our shame dissipates. And that's beautiful. And it's almost miraculous when it happens. And that's what I call simple shame. But there's a type of shame that when you do that thing and someone gives you external compassion, it doesn't go away. And it actually makes you feel worse about yourself. And so what happens is you've got this complex shame. You talk about it. and two things can happen. Either someone will give you this compassion, and then what happens internally is you say, oh, but you don't really understand. If you really knew the depth of my shame and really knew what I did or it was done to me, you wouldn't give me that compassion. And so we can't accept it. And so the shame just goes deeper. The other thing that happens, and this happens a lot

Starting point is 00:06:26 with marginalized communities, happens with women. It happens in lots of scenarios where someone will talk about their shame and then they're gaslit about it. They're told, probably didn't happen. You're exaggerating. Why are you playing that card? Right. And so what happens is they don't get any compassion. Shame stays, goes deeper.

Starting point is 00:06:46 And so that's the difference between simple shame and complex shame. Now, how it develops a whole other thing, right? So shame, we experience as early as 18 months old. Yikes. Shame is something that unfortunately our society runs on. I could talk on and on about it because I just saw this. this Instagram post where people were just deeply shaming someone and felt that it was important to shame someone to change their behavior. And what we don't understand as a society is that when

Starting point is 00:07:17 you shame someone, their behavior doesn't change. But it looks like it does because it goes underground. And so we think that it's a useful tool. We start it with our children as early as 18 months. We shame. And so simple shame is always there starting from 18 months old. Complex shame is a little more complex. And that happens. And I like to think of it as a snowball. So we have our normal shaming experiences, right? And then we may have some trauma or we may have some things that happen on top of it. And I think of it as a snowball going down a hill, just collecting more and more and more shame. And it gets to a point where it's kind of compounded. It's very difficult to just kind of obliterate it, if that makes sense. And so it develops these layers, right? And that's why it's so difficult to untangle. And so. So in order to work on complex shame, we've got to kind of untangle all of the layers to get to the root of it and to understand it deeply within ourselves so that we can free ourselves from it. Well, thank you for going through that. I think that was a really powerful distinction. I was going to ask you about guilt. I'm glad you covered that. And I said in my intro about putting words on it, and that has absolutely helped me and made my simple shame lose a lot of its power. Yes, yes. And so I'm not saying that you don't agree.

Starting point is 00:08:38 I stand by that for myself. It's this deeper level of complex shame that we want to dive in today. And you use the word untangle. Obviously, we're not going to be able to just talk about it, but can't just be addressed, this untangling. What does that mean? What does that look like? How do we even begin?

Starting point is 00:08:57 Yeah, in my book, I share eight steps to untangling complex shame. And I also share my very personal story of how I developed complex shame and came to understand what it was going on with my clients and myself. But we begin to untangle it by starting back to initial shaming experiences that we can recognize are still very much haunting us. And so we've got to, there's an eight-step process. I won't go through the whole thing. But we've got to go back to those initial shaming experiences.

Starting point is 00:09:26 We have to understand the messages that we were told to us. And one of the things we don't think about often is that when we get out of unhealthy experiences, family relationships, other relationships, we think that we've left them and moved on. But what we often do is we just pack up all of the unhealthy words and we carry them with us. We just back them up, carry them, and then we repeat them to ourselves and they become part of our language, our internal language. And so we've got to understand that too. But the thing with complex shame is that because we aren't experiencing external

Starting point is 00:10:00 compassion or can't take it in. What we have to do that is something that kind of goes counter to traditional therapy, which is learning how to just kind of exonerate yourself. So if someone, let's say someone was a victim of a crime, right? And they go into therapy and they talk about it. Often therapists are trying to help them understand it wasn't your fault, right? How can you stop blaming yourself? I actually do the opposite because I understand how the brain works. And this might feel like victim blaming, but this is what we have to do with complex shame. Because our brain says, I am to blame. I am unworthy. And what we have to do is actually look at that and say, what am I blaming myself for? So maybe it's, I didn't respond quick enough. Maybe it's I went to that person's,

Starting point is 00:10:49 you know, apartment. Maybe it's I fought back. Maybe it's I didn't fight back. When we can actually start to look at the things that we blame ourselves for, take accountability, even micro-accountabilities for it, and then work on forgiveness. That is something that works with our brain and allows us to release some of our own shame. And so it's about acknowledging accountability, and I'm not saying that you did anything wrong, but that's what your brain is saying. No, you don't understand, right? So acknowledge whatever your brain is telling you that you did wrong. or you are accountable for, forgive yourself for those micro decisions or sometimes those macro decisions and then work on acceptance. And that's part of the untangling process.

Starting point is 00:11:39 I actually really like this. I know that sounds crazy to say, but I have a really hard time whenever I feel like I'm lying to myself affirmations on one hand or in this case. Like if I feel like I'm to blame, you can tell me until I'm blue in the face that I'm not. But if I believe it, all I'm doing then is resisting or as you said earlier going into that you just don't understand. Yes. Whereas I think if we are allowed to explore, what are we blaming ourselves for? And I could be way off base. Please challenge me.

Starting point is 00:12:12 But it almost moves us more into that guilt. I've done something wrong. And you're allowing me to acknowledge it. But then I can forgive or I can acknowledge or I can be accountable and I can repair, which is what you said was the difference between guilt and shame. I've done something wrong versus I am wrong. And allowing us to explore what we believe we did wrong, even if we didn't, allows us to, I don't know, do something with it.

Starting point is 00:12:42 Am I way off base? You are so accurate there. It moves because remember I say guilt is healthy. shame is not. When we take it from identity to behavior, then there's something we can do about it. And then when we've forgiven ourselves, then guess what? We can move towards vulnerability. We can talk about the thing that usually when people have deep complex shame, it's not easy for them to talk about it. But when you've gotten to a place of acceptance, accountability, and self-forgiveness, you can talk about that really hard thing. And even if someone else does not give you compassion, you've already given it to yourself and so it's okay.

Starting point is 00:13:18 I talk about my story all the time. It just came out in People magazine. Oprah Winfrey Network did an entire episode on my story. And I can talk about it despite all the haters because I get a lot of that too. But I'm okay with it because I'm good with myself. I understand deeply what actually happened. So I don't have a sense of, oh, you don't understand unless it's, I mean, they might not really understand and I'm okay with that because I understand.

Starting point is 00:13:43 And so the thing you can do now is be vulnerable. The thing you can do now is release it. you can maybe go back and repair, even just repairing with yourself. So this makes me feel very hopeful, but I don't want to send the message that this is easy work. I can't imagine it is. So I was going to ask if you could share a bit of your story as a way that we can think about exploring our own complex shame stories and really how that shapes how we see ourselves. Right. Yes. You're right. It's not. easy. And if it weren't worth it, I'd say don't bother. Just keep on about life. Cover yourself up and go.

Starting point is 00:14:25 But the freedom on the other side of releasing your shame is worth all of the pain, all of the difficulty getting there. So yes, I will share my story as quickly as I possibly can. I grew up a black girl in an all-white farming rural community in Maryland around a lot of Minanites. and I developed some racial identity shame. And there's lots of types of shame I can talk about in that process. But when I was 15, I got pregnant. And I also grew up in a very fundamental Christian home in the height of purity culture. My dad was a prominent doctor in the community.

Starting point is 00:15:02 And the response was, my parents' response was, this isn't happening here. You were a bad influence on your siblings. You have to go away. And so they sent me away to a pregnancy home in Lynchmark, Virginia, with the understanding that I would come back without a child. And me being a very compliant child that I was, I stayed at the pregnancy home. I gave birth unmedicated in Lynchburg, Virginia hospital. And I left my daughter in the hospital to go back home to pretend like nothing had ever happened.

Starting point is 00:15:30 And so you can imagine all of the guilt, all of the shame, all of the waves of grief and trauma that I was pushing down as I came back home to live a normal, quote, teenage life as if nothing had ever happened. And I doubled down. I pushed, you know, I hurt myself by over-accomplishing. I doubled down on academics. I doubled down on athleticism. I got a scholarship to UCLA. I competed at the highest college level, coached by Olympic coaches, Bobby Kersey, and hurtled and excelled at UCLA as an athlete, excelled academically. I went on to get my master's, my doctorate in clinical psychology. I got married very early to kind of exonerate myself from that purity culture. And all the while, pushing down these deep waves of shame, I hid my secret. And I'll fast forward very quickly to when my first kept daughter was born. And she was born with a very rare genetic disorder called Prader Willie Syndrome. We didn't even know if she was going to live at that time. And that was a moment for me when my shame damn broke because I concocted this story that God was punishing me for placing my first daughter for adoption.

Starting point is 00:16:43 She was punishing my daughter for what I had done. And that's when I really began to spiral. And so both as a clinician, I'll save the story for someone who wants to read it somewhere else. But as a clinician and, of course, as someone really struggling with deep shame, I dove into trying to figure out what was happening here. And so over years, I worked on healing myself. I started to understand the difference between this different kind of shame that Brunee Brown than what Renee Brown talked about, and that's how I came up with the idea, the concept of complex shame, both in walking my clients through this type of shame and myself.

Starting point is 00:17:24 Sorry to break in, but this part matters. Rate the show, share it, and support the sponsor so I can keep making episodes worth interrupting you for. Do you find it hard to sleep at night? Then the Sleepcove podcast can help you. Hi, I'm Christopher Fitten, the voice and voice. clinical hypotherapist behind Sleep Cove. Sleep Cove features sleep hypnosis, meditations, and bedtime stories, all designed to help those of you who struggle at night to achieve a restful and peaceful

Starting point is 00:18:00 night's sleep. Search for Sleep Cove on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and see why Sleep Cove helps millions of people sleep deeply all night long. First, I'm sorry that you live that experience. I think what stands out to me is for all of us, whatever our experiences are they, I don't know, inspire us not the right word. Impact isn't either, but they basically create the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves. I know Brne Brown talks about that a lot. Right. But it impacts how we see what's happening to us. Your example, when your kept daughter was born, you saw that as a punishment.

Starting point is 00:18:48 You saw that as a, you did something wrong and you had to pay for it. And we all know there were bazillion ways to see that set of circumstances. But in your experience, and please correct me if I'm saying this wrong, that was the only way you could see it because the shame was in control. Exactly. I felt so inherently unworthy. That was the only lens through which I could see it. And I had been taught it as well. Sure.

Starting point is 00:19:17 Right. So how do we begin to separate how we're seeing things? And we feel like the way we see it is right and true and factual because of what we've been taught and because of our experiences. How do we begin to separate that into other available options? Yeah. That is a process. And what you're also talking about is confirmation bias. Because when we are taught something and we believe something, we will see it.

Starting point is 00:19:46 our brain will actually unsee. There's blinders, right? It'll unsee things that contradict what we believe, and it will hyperfocus on any little small point that confirms what we believe. So that's confirmation bias. And we have to understand that that happens to us in multitudes of ways all the time, right, in our lives,

Starting point is 00:20:07 and especially with our shame. So if you're carrying this deep shame, your brain will find ways to confirm it for you. And so sometimes just understand, that and asking yourself if maybe I wasn't inherently wrong, right? If maybe I'm not being punished. If I am actually loved and worthy and okay, what would I see in the world that would confirm that? And that's work and that's a lot of kind of untangling and first understanding the messages that you have because a lot of us, because we grow up in the water and the soup, we're steeped in it,

Starting point is 00:20:45 we aren't even aware of the messages that we carry, the messages that then we reinforce for ourselves. And so it starts with understanding what they are and recognizing, you know, Joseph Wynn wrote an amazing book that's called Don't Believe Everything You Think. And I love that book because the reality is, is that there are plenty of things that you believe deeply to be true that just aren't. And if you can hold that, and a lot of people have been. difficulty holding that, especially when it comes to faith, you know, really deeply held ideas. There's no one person in this world that could possibly have all of it right. And so that applies to you. It applies to me, which means that things that you believe deeply, Nicole, things that I believe

Starting point is 00:21:33 deeply, some of them are just completely untrue. Right. And if we can hold that in our hand, kind of hold that in our minds and be open to the reality that there's something different that could be true for us or true for the world out there, then we can begin to start accepting, you know, some of these ideas that are shame-free. I feel like what you're describing is like the deepest, hardest level of curiosity we could possibly be talking about. Yes. Yes. When we think about this closely held beliefs and experiences, we tend to be toughest on ourselves. Absolutely. And I'm curious your thoughts on this. Sometimes when I have a really, really hard time giving myself any sort of grace or or seeing things from a different perspective for myself,

Starting point is 00:22:19 I will ask myself, what would I say or think if my daughter was in the situation or my closest friend or somebody I just love at the highest level because what I find is God, I would never say to my daughter, you know, God is punishing you or anything. I wouldn't believe it. I wouldn't say it because I would not even fundamentally believe that. Yes.

Starting point is 00:22:43 And I know I should be able to find it for myself. Sometimes I can't. And when I can find it for somebody else and then go, okay, if I would say that to her or if I would do that in the situation, then that's what I get to say to myself. Any thoughts on that? Is that like a healthy or not healthy approach to something like this? I love that. And as you were talking about it, I was thinking of an exercise that I do in what I call the maintenance stage of shame. because I've worked for years on myself. I work, you know, with other people, and I've gotten to a place where I'm in that maintenance stage. But shame will always show up. And so what I do is, number one, you have to know when it shows up. And what I have this term called the phantom critic. The phantom critic are those shame messages,

Starting point is 00:23:33 those shame words that we say to ourselves. And so when I hear myself wanting to say those negative things, I'm like, oh, okay, that's the phantom critic. But when the phantom critic shows up, I think about shame as this thing that's like, I'm standing on the side of a riverbank, and I see shame coming, and it's just coming down the river, right? And when it gets in front of me, usually what I do is I do what shame wants me to do, which is to hide. But when I see shame, I recognize it, oh, that's the phantom critic. Oh, that's shame. I know what it wants me to do. It wants me to hide in many different ways. I'm going to do the opposite. And I'm going to let shame just kind of flow down the river. And so when I let shame flow down the river, I then garner what I call the courageous truth teller. And the courageous truth teller is kind of what you talked about, is the person who would talk to your daughter, right? The courageous truth teller tells me the truth about who I am, about my worth. And that's what I work on garnering. And so I'm always paying attention.

Starting point is 00:24:33 Is this the phantom critic that's talking? Or is this the courageous truth teller? because I want to make sure I'm walking mostly having conversations with the courageous truth teller. I love that. Visually, I am going to absolutely borrow that. And when you ask yourself if this is the courageous truth teller, what would you say to the person who's like, but how do I not slip into toxic positivity? How do I still challenge myself or be honest with myself in a courageous truth telling way? without shining everything up or trying to make everything feel good. You know, here's the thing. So remember, she's a truth teller. She's not just a Pollyanna affirming woman.

Starting point is 00:25:18 She's a truth teller. But also what I notice is that when someone is walking with their phantom critic, and the phantom critic is saying all kinds of terrible things to you, rarely does anyone say, you know, I want to make sure I'm telling the truth to my. No one ever says, I don't want to say that because that's not fully true, right? We just kind of soak it up.

Starting point is 00:25:44 But then the second you say something positive to yourself or say something that feels like maybe, you know, toxic positivity or Pollyanna talk, then you question it. Like, oh, I don't know if that's fully true. So my ask is that if you're going to question the positive things about yourself, then you must also question those negative. things about yourself. It needs to go both ways. And so, and yet still, I understand that concern. I'm not that concerned about it, to be honest with you, because I think that we can pump ourselves up and tell ourselves really wonderful things. And we can also use the courageous truth teller that says, yeah, you did that thing, and that's not who you are. Yeah, you made that mistake today, and that's not who you are. And you can do something different tomorrow. You're not the same person you were

Starting point is 00:26:31 five minutes ago. And so that courageous truth teller can say those things. We're not saying, you're perfect. We're not saying, you know, you're going to, you know, win the lottery tomorrow or whatever. We're acknowledging the truth about who you are. And it's also okay to pump yourself up. So that may be the best personal lesson I've had on this podcast in a very long time. And let me be clear, I get a lot of great personal lessons from this podcast. I feel like lovingly called out in the best way because my brain does that. My brain goes, oh, you might be being too positive. But my brain doesn't go, oh, you might be being too negative. Like, it's just crazy. So thank you for that. And I want to ask this last question. I said in the intro, you know, we talk a lot about people

Starting point is 00:27:15 pleasing and self-doubt and anxiety. And your work and your book says that this is probably a byproduct of complex shame. How do we, I don't know, recognize the connection? And then is your a recommendation to start with the complex shame, or do we deal with some of these more surface level things that everybody's talking about first? What are your thoughts? So I'll answer the second question first. It's both and. We can work on boundaries. We can work on people pleasing as we also work on our own complex shame. And so the way that they are connected is that remember if complex shame says, I am bad, I am unworthy, the result. is we must hide. So if we're hiding, we're hiding everywhere, we're hiding in our relationships.

Starting point is 00:28:07 And so in our relationships, we are showing up with a false persona. It may be to a large extent or it may be to a small extent. It depends. But in some ways, we are not showing our full self. And so then when someone loves us, what happens internally, and this person may actually generally love and like us, but internally we have that same sense of if they really knew me, they would not love me. And so then we respond as if we are not loved and it's this whole dynamic, right? And then we're also responding in a way that's trying to hustle and earn love because we don't feel worthy. And so this dynamic happens in codependency because if you're a codependent person, if you can control the emotions and the experience of the person you're in relationship with, then you feel safer, right? And it's a false sense of safety because remember, you're still hiding. And so then you're people pleasing and you are controlling emotions. And a lot of people think that codependency is weak. Co-dependency is actually about power and control. I want to control how you feel, so I feel better. And so that's how it's connected. And yet then what we do is we self-abandon at the same time because we're trying to feel better. And so we self-abandon. We don't take care of ourselves. We're trying to

Starting point is 00:29:30 control the other person and it's this kind of just negative soup, but it's all based in shame. Okay, Dr. Zoe, I said that was going to be my last question, but I have one more. As we think about rewriting the narrative or rewriting our story, given the experiences and the beliefs that we have up to this point, if we want to rewrite our story toward resilience, towards self-worth, towards value and confidence and whatever is important. What are the best steps to do that? You talked about hiding. How do we show ourselves to ourselves, to the people closest to our, basically, where do we go from here? Yeah. Where do we go? I get it. Because a lot of people listening and I want to honor someone who's listening and thinking, oh, my gosh, like, I think that's what's going on with me. What do I do next? So there's a couple of things. Number one, I want you to just start to acknowledge. And now it's going to be hard not to see shame and look. and parts of your life as you're showing up,

Starting point is 00:30:32 if you are people pleasing, if your boundaries are low, you may want to ask yourself, where do I feel bad about myself that's making me need to control this person's emotions or to please, right? It's starting to just pay attention. Now, one of the biggest steps

Starting point is 00:30:50 is learning to talk about your shame. And that is one of the hardest steps, but it's not the first step. The first step is really starting, starting to understand those shame messages. So what I would like someone to do who's listening right now is get a pen and paper or get on your phone wherever you take your notes and ask yourself, what is, like, what's my deepest shame? And let me tell you how you find it.

Starting point is 00:31:18 Anywhere in your life where you are hiding, where you get a sense of, oh, I don't want them to know, oh, if they found out, that's exactly where your shame lies. And most people kind of have an idea of what that is right now as I'm talking, right? That is where your shame lies. And that's what I want you to start writing down. Just write down that thing that, oh, I don't want them to know or him or her to know. There it is. And that's where we start.

Starting point is 00:31:45 And now we've got to figure out where did that come from. Now we've got to figure out where my blame is, right? Where is your blame about that? There are steps. They're in my book. But the first is to understand where are the places that you hide in your life? right now and in your relationships. Well, friend, if like me, you're hearing and seeing yourself in this conversation, I am going to encourage you to go, I mean, like run, don't walk for the love

Starting point is 00:32:10 of all things wholly, find wherever you go to your local bookstore, Amazon, wherever you buy books, get the book stronger in the difficult places. And you can also find out more about Dr. Zoe in her work on her website, Dr. Zoe Shaw.com. We'll put those links in every other way to find and follow her in show notes. Dr. Zoe, thank you for an incredibly important and impactful conversation and for talking about something that's so hard to talk about in a way that felt loving and safe and all of the things. So thank you. Thank you so much, Nicole. All right, friend, your story has had a lot of contributors, some invited, some not. But at the end of the day, you're still the author, which is great news because that means you get to decide what stays, what goes, and what

Starting point is 00:32:57 gets rewritten. Your past may explain you, but it doesn't define you. And shame was never meant to be holding the pen. So write your best story, truer and braver, something that honors who you are and who you're becoming, because that is woman's work.

This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - Healing Complex Shame with Dr. Zoe Shaw | 420

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