Back in August I published an essay on the Medium platform based on my experience working with thousands of women from around the world. Since then I’ve been asked to make it public so it can be more easily shared, which I’ve done below. Feel free to pass it along to anyone who might benefit. Comments and questions welcome.
“Living Breath and the Death of Shame” © Alicia Dara 2021
Every woman I know identifies as a nonviolent person. Many have experienced some degree of violence in their lives and firmly resolved not to replicate it. They would never do unto others what was done to them. Yet there is one scenario that eclipses this imperative to be peaceful: every woman carries her share of toxic shame, and, if given the chance, not a single one would show it any mercy on the killing floor.
Each day in my job, as I coach women to find their most powerful voice and use it at work, I will myself to stay silent about the shame vibrating in their voices. I won’t speak about it unless they ask me too, and not a single woman ever has. Each of us has had to prevail heroically in the face of toxic shame. Sacrifice, compromise and denial abounds, and the price we pay for these things can be astronomical. Coaching is not therapy, and that line should remain unblurred. Yet I’ve observed that it is ferociously therapeutic to work on freeing our voice. I hold space for that when I work with women, even if they’re just articulating the text of an office presentation. Often I can hear what their full, free voices would sound like, and it’s magnificent and heartbreaking. It haunts my dreams.
Of course we’re not talking about healthy shame, the kind that humans need to give and receive occasionally for social bonding. When we’ve hurt someone and need to apologize, a touch of shame for our actions can signal that we are genuinely remorseful and want to make amends. A little healthy shame is conducive to connection with others, and to our own integrity and self-esteem. Toxic shame is decidedly corrosive to those things. I’m referring to the specific kind that comes with identifying as female, in whatever form that may yield. The kind that sprung from the head of Patriarchy as a weapon of sublimation and oppression, and is part of the root of all human suffering. The kind that drains women’s vital life force, and keeps us small when we could be massive.
Most of us don’t face the world with our toxic shame out front. It lives inside us, and we live inside it also. It is in fact interstitial, a sticky, noxious river that flows in the spaces between all other states of being. It’s there in the way that we negotiate our place in the world. It’s there in our very thoughts, seeping into the private but vivid dialogue that we have with ourselves. Yet that is not its full measure. Shame is also a shadowland that we have mapped on our bodies, and it comes out when we speak.
Especially when a woman is speaking up for herself, she will inevitably reveal the presence of toxic shame in her voice. You can hear it clearly if you know what to listen for. It sounds like a tiny razor, humming in the air beside her vocal cords, perilously close to slashing through them. It gets edgier when she raises her voice above a certain volume, up to the place where it feels like shouting because she is a stranger to her full vocal power. You can also hear it when she is overcome by emotion, and unable to steady the trembling tone of her words. At those moments her voice sounds breathless and icy, like the stillness just before an avalanche.
I refuse to get used to the sound of shame in women’s voices. This is my personal act of rebellion. Staying shocked by their shame keeps me strong, and renews my resolve to fight it in them, and in myself. How many women on earth have had the experience of getting completely free from toxic shame, even for a moment? I suspect the number is staggeringly low, so low that as a culture we can’t even recognize when it happens. I am lucky enough to have seen it with my own eyes, and it’s extraordinary.
Here is what I’ve observed from my work: when a woman fully frees her voice, she also lets go of her shame. It happens quite suddenly, often in the middle of a sentence. She stops talking and starts crying. Not a small, leaky-eyed snuffle. A belly-whopping wail that echoes for miles. Her breathing is heavy, her lungs lit up like torches. A realization dawns on her, and it demands her attention. So much time has gone by, all those years holding herself back. They can never be reclaimed, only mourned, and she is in mourning. Her waves of pain are acute, and she must allow them to pass. Gradually her breathing slows. She opens her eyes and looks around. Something feels different: she is through the channel now, at the mouth of the river where it rushes out to sea. At least for this moment the horizon is open, and she can make her way toward it with fresh courage, and something like faith.
Don’t get me wrong, this doesn’t happen often. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen it. Each time something ferocious and elemental was unleashed in the woman, which can be terribly destabilizing until she gets used to her new paradigm. In any case, even if she’s able to find a moment of freedom, she will have to keep pushing back on the toxic shame that comes at her from all directions. She might even forsake that moment and regress back to old, shame-guided patterns, which is completely understandable. Yet every day I root for the death of toxic shame in the voices of my clients. Small changes do take place, and I guide women toward them gently. “Breathe deeper,” I say, “Slow down and feel the sound moving through your body. Give yourself permission to make your volume stronger.” That’s half my job: encouraging women’s voices to roar, and to soar.
That’s also what I continue to do for myself. As a young girl I had almost no strength in my voice. In the choir, while learning my first solo, I was told to keep my volume “modulated and pretty”. Anything else would sound like egotism or aggression, both unacceptable in girls. I was instantly terrified, and stayed that way for years. It wasn’t men who imparted these rules, it was the older women around me, each speaking from her own personal reservoir of toxic shame. We inherit what is concealed inside others, the lies they have accepted as truth. We breathe their shame into our lungs like frost, shivering it down until it melts into our blood and stains our lives.
Time can certainly lessen the effects. After decades of singing and speaking, I’m no longer afraid to let my voice ring out. Each time I lecture or perform it feels powerful, yet I am aware of how long and how far I carried that early shame in my sound, and the power it had over me. I try not to think about it too much. Prioritizing hope is the other part of my job.
Some days are less hopeful than others. A woman once told me that during episodes of deep depression, when she was sliding toward suicidal feelings, she consoled herself by remembering that in death she would be, at last, free from shame. The look on her face when she said this was exquisitely grateful, as if she’d just fallen asleep on a feather bed after decades of lying on the blade of a sword. Her voice was so breathless that I had to lean close and watch her mouth, to be sure of her words. I think of them often, with equal parts tenderness and terror. I don’t know what happened to that woman. I hope she has prevailed beyond survival, and is thriving in a wonderful place. I hope she can breathe freely.
Wherever I go in the world people ask for my “takeaway” from having worked with thousands of women, as if our vast and varied experiences could be condensed down to a single decree. Please understand: I recognize that it is ridiculous to even try. Yet I will make an attempt, if only to provoke further questions about what women need in order to thrive. What I know is this: it’s useless to pretend that we can continue on with the toxic shame that lives inside us. Although we may try to enact boundaries around it, as we would a difficult friend, toxic shame is not friendly. The damage it does to us, individually and collectively, is extreme. Toxic shame deserves death, the most permanent of endings. In order to be completely free, we must kill it off forever.
So how can we do it and still remain rooted in non-violence, which is needed now on Earth more than ever in our lifetime? What would a peaceful death for our toxic shame look and feel like?
I have an idea that is only a beginning. It’s a visualization that we can do as a regular meditative practice, with our mind and body fully engaged. It comes through our breath, the most powerful and cherished evidence of being alive. You can do it any time, anywhere, for as long as you want.
Do it with me: sit back in your chair, and put your feet on the floor. Uncross your arms and legs. Unclench your jaw and your fists. Release your shoulders down to their stable resting position. Now bring your attention to your breath as it moves through your body. Don’t push or pull, just allow it to pass through. Relax your belly and let it settle. Stay there for a while, and allow your breathing rhythm to slow itself down. Now take a deep breath, and push it out as if you were blowing on the head of a dandelion gone to seed. Visualize its feathery white halo trembling, cleaving and scattering to the wind. You are breaking up toxic shame and releasing it from your body and mind. It is dying as it rises. Now it will be lifted to the scorching edge of the atmosphere, and cremated there. No need to mourn its passing: this is a time for celebration. Open your eyes, stand up, and breathe free.