I was working myself up to writing about shame when my three-year-old, Six, came in the house howling. He was covered in dirt, with the epicenter somewhere near his face. I heaved him up over the edge of the kitchen sink, trying to rinse the dirt out of his eyes, but quickly realized a more extreme approach would be called for.

Taking him under my arm in a football hold, I charged into the bathroom and started the water running while Six screamed, begging me not to use the sprayer. But this was a job for the sprayer. A bath just wasn’t going to do it. His scalp was covered in dirt, and it was stuck to his neck and all over his face. Five did it, he claimed angrily.

I soaped him up and came after him with the sprayer, trying to avoid his face. Six is a fan of only one type of bathing – the type that doesn’t involve getting his face or hair wet. I braced myself, and his screaming reached a crescendo.

There was a low moment when I used one of my hands on the top of his head so he couldn’t propel himself forward, while his arms windmilled and he wailed like a wild creature. My other hand held the sprayer, pointed at the rivulets of dirt and soap running down his body. But it got worse.

As Two burst into the room to make sure I wasn’t murdering Six, he flew out of the tub, hit the floor with a wet foot, and went sprawling. I picked him up and put him back in the tub, water flying everywhere, and continued to try to rinse the soap and dirt off of him.

Two blasted into the room a second time as Six again flew out of the tub, screaming bloody murder and ending up flat on his back again. I slammed the door against Two trying to come in; if she opened the door wide, she would run it right into Six, who was struggling on the floor like a beetle stuck on its back, feet in the air.

I lifted him back into the tub to finish rinsing. There was commotion outside the door as the other kids tried to determine whether or not I was trying to kill Six. He didn’t stop screaming until I finished rinsing him, let him climb out, and plopped a hooded towel over his head.

Moments later he was calmly hunting through a laundry basket for a shirt.

He admitted soon after that the story about Five being involved in the dirt flinging may not have been entirely true. It seems like he was the one trying to throw the dirt, and it didn’t fly as far as he’d hoped. We had a conversation about the importance of telling the truth.

I am still trying to calm my heart.

It’s moments like these that remind me why I don’t have room in my life for shame.

Real life, everyday stuff, is plenty. I don’t need the heart-racing, wanting-to-hide,  urge-to-fly-away sensations of shame in addition to that. I can get my tachycardia* in other ways, thank you very much.

But Shame doesn’t care whether I want her or not. She still drops by with some regularity.

I was giving report to another nurse one morning a month or two ago, and she shared with me that her husband had been staying home with their child and had recently finished grad school and was looking for a job in his field.

She shared her ambivalence about this. While she supported her husband’s search, his working might mean they would have to arrange childcare for their baby. When the baby was with her husband, she knew it was safe and didn’t worry when she was at work. She knew what a gift that was and was loathe to give it up.

She talked about the difficulty of finding a job that is a good fit for her husband’s skills, interests, and the schedule he wants to keep.

I don’t share much at work. But when my fellow nurse mentioned her husband’s job search, I wanted to let her know she wasn’t alone. I understood the ambiguity of her position. The Chaplain had lost his job just a few months before, and the job search and subsequent transition had been hard on all of us. It had also led to a job the Chaplain loves and finds great meaning in.

I briefly told her about my own husband’s job search after being let go. I told her it had opened the door for something he otherwise never would have found.

“Oh, but my husband didn’t LOSE his job,” was her hurried reply.

The attempt to connect was completely lost. Since I already tend to be guarded at work, it was easy to zip the wall right back up, instead of getting defensive like I might have with someone I was closer to.

I didn’t visibly react, but I was a little shocked. Why was she so quick to make me feel like our family was unlike hers? Both of our husbands were in similar positions. Did it really matter so much how they got there?

I didn’t see her again until weeks later. By then, it would have felt awkward to bring it up, but I wish I could have shared with her how it felt to be vulnerable and to be shut down so quickly.

If I’m being generous, perhaps after I left from work that morning, she silently chided herself for being insensitive. There’s also a chance she sighed and felt a wash of relief that she wasn’t in my shoes.

That conversation was one of the most recent times I experienced shame.

I’ve been thinking a lot about shame. It’s been a theme in my own life, and was coming up with regularity in the books I was reading about sex. So I went on a Brené Brown audio book binge and listened to Rising Strong: How the Ability to Reset Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead,  Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone, and I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn’t): Making the Journey from What Will People Think? to I Am Enough.

Whew. That’s a mouthful, right? I’m going to switch right into book review mode, so bear with me.

Rising Strong and Braving the Wilderness were both good books.  The audios were read by the author, and she’s a fantastic narrator. Like my beloved Usborne books, there is just enough overlapping content that reading these two back-to-back felt a little like I read two different versions of the same lovely book. I felt I could’ve gotten what I needed by reading just one.

I listened to Braving the Wilderness first, and I liked it better than Rising Strong, although there were some powerful anecdotes in Rising Strong that set it apart. I think if you listened to/read them with a few months in between, it each one would be a valuable experience and the overlap wouldn’t be as obvious. Both books covered a lot of territory for both business and personal application. Given their epic titles, adding my own synopsis seems unnecessary.

The third book is an older one (the first two were published in 2017, this one in 2007), and is much more focused: it is just about shame. Unfortunately, it isn’t narrated by Brown, but the content has been so good that I’ve been able to mostly get past the sound of the narrator’s voice (a little congested and hissy for me). Brown provides a five-page worksheet on her website that goes along with the book.

While I didn’t mind the more diffused approach of the other two books, I’ve appreciated the laser focus of I Thought It Was Just Me. It provides tools for thinking about shame, ways to figure out what causes it for each of us, and how to be aware of our triggers. It provides a plan for how to take the stigma of shame away from ourselves and others.

Brown’s thoughts about body image and motherhood in regards to shame were very fleshed out. The information on anger and shame, sex and shame, and to a lesser extent, trauma and shame, felt more like a tease to me. I understand the tools she provides in the book can help the reader overcome shame in any area, but I was looking for a little more meat in these areas, be it in the form of anecdotes, specific ideas for the application of her principles, or examples. These are things she provides plenty of in other sections of the book. (I actually went back and re-listened to the sex and shame section – I mean, maybe I was distracted when I listened to that part, or too critical? – but my impression was the same: Brown breezes right into addiction and shame just as she’s getting warmed up and starting to be be helpful with sex and shame.)

I was all in with the book until close to the end, when the areas I cared most about were the ones Brown skimmed over. Then, she redeemed herself with her section on men and shame. It was helpful, thoughtful, and I was left interested to learn more without feeling like I’d been baited. I hope Brown continues her work with men and perhaps also with helping both men and women help each other cope with shame. I think she does some of this in subsequent books. (Note: She does! Here’s my review of Daring Greatly.)

I’m not naturally an auditory learner. When I listen to audio books, I have to listen hard, and often find myself backing it up to make sure I heard something right. While I’m very confident in print, listening requires a lot of work for me. Overall, I Thought It Was Just Me has been worth the extra effort. In fact, all three of the books I listened to contained timely content for the personal work I’m doing.

At one point in I Thought It Was Just Me, Brown starts listing things that bring shame (either from others or from within). Statistically, she points out, everyone reading the book has either dealt with one of those issues, or knows someone who has.

There IS no “other.” We’re all here, struggling. And I’m tired of hiding and letting Shame win.

So yes, being open with my coworker and getting shot down immediately was pretty tough. But I pulled up my Big Girl Pants, and marched on. Putting myself out there and chancing rejection is an important part of being a grown up. For the times when someone isn’t ready to receive it, there will be another opportunity where both of us are receptive and we can make a connection.

I’m going to keep trying.

To heck with shame.

*Tachycardia is medical speak for an elevated heart rate.