Transform Shame Into Compassion By Sharing Your Story

I’ll be honest with you. When I sat down to write the book I had promised myself I would write, I never thought it would be my real story—a memoir. My book idea was inspired by a real experience, yes, but I planned to use this experience as a springboard for writing what I hoped would be a well-written novel capturing the essence of how this experience had moved me. 

The thought of writing a memoir, in fact, completely turned me off because A) I didn’t think I had any life stories that were interesting or unique enough to turn into a compelling story, and B) the thought of sharing the intimate ins and outs of my life with strangers terrified me. 

But, as I’m sure many writers can attest, we often start with the intention of writing something that feels specific and clear in our minds, but as we write, we are shown a different path to follow, and our writing begins to lead the way. We see a curve and we follow it.

Here’s how that curve appeared for me. One semester, I was late to register for classes and all the writing workshops were full. Except for creative nonfiction. Needing at least one workshop, I signed up. I did my best to keep an open mind and rid myself of the poor expectations I had of myself for this class. Would I become a navel gazer? Would I write a piece so embarrassingly bad that I’ll feel like hiding my face and turning my camera off during every class? (This was during the pandemic when many of my classes were on Zoom.)

After writing and workshopping my first submission, something became oddly and surprisingly clear: I was finding my stride in nonfiction. What I had been trying to write for years suddenly took off with a flow I had never experienced when attempting to write my book as fiction. 

As I plunged deeper into writing what was now my memoir, however, feelings of anger, shame, and regret surfaced as I wrote about challenges I had thought were distant and emotionally dormant. I found myself feeling protective of the people I wrote about, myself included. 

Was it really a good idea to revisit all this, or was I just dredging up past hurts and keeping them active in my vibration? 

Would everyone hate me or the beloved people in my life if I wrote about everything fully and truthfully? 

Why broadcast this filthy laundry of mine? 

Did I really have to go there?

Being tasked with the duty of writing about vulnerable, traumatic experiences forced me to investigate my memories with a psychologist’s curiosity. In order to write round characters, evoke dramas, and help my readers feel what I honestly and fully felt during those experiences, yes, I really DID have to go there and analyze all the things that came up. 

And from that place, I cultivate compassion and empathy for myself and those in my life, past or present, who needed it from me. 

The gift of writing these difficult scenes, I learned, is much more than developing the book I’ve spent nearly a decade creating. The gift is the newfound freeing and healed perspectives gained from forcing myself to revisit the darker spaces of my life with the thoughtfulness required to write it into a story worth reading. 

For me, many of those dark spaces were filled with shame, the lowest vibrational emotion humans can experience. Shame expert Brene Brown will tell you, “Shame is that warm feeling washing over us, making us feel small, flawed, and never good enough.” She’ll also tell you, “If you put shame in a petri dish, it needs three ingredients to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence, and judgment. If you put the same amount of shame in a petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can’t survive.” 

And to quote the fabulous Jonathan Van Ness on writing his memoir, Over the Top, “Shame loves secrets, it thrives on them. I’m telling my story to help myself heal and remove the shame, in the hope that this might help others heal too.” 

The memories I transformed into scenes for my book, once aired out onto the page in descriptive detail, felt somehow lighter in my heart after writing them. And even lighter they lifted after sharing drafts of certain scenes with other writers and editors. Just like Brene and Jonathan share, what had felt unbearably heavy and almost too difficult to write became easier to face with every edit.

In a BUILD Series interview after publishing his memoir, Jonathan is asked by an audience member what it was like for him emotionally to write his memoir and how he felt about it after it was published. In his book, he writes of many harrowing experiences, including an HIV diagnosis. But what he also includes is how his fame and wealth helped him access medication that not only prevents HIV from progressing into AIDS, ensuring him a long and healthy life, but also makes the virus 100% untransmittable. 

Jonathan had much to say in response to this audience member’s question, but what stuck with me the most is when he replied, “The risk that I was taking in telling my truth, I felt that it was something I had to do for the people who don’t have a chance to have their dreams come true… I felt like I had to, like it was worth it…”

And worth it, it was. Not only did Jonathan enlighten me and many on this issue by pushing past his fear of sharing this about his life, thousands of people reached out to him after reading his memoir to thank him for his efforts toward destigmatizing this diagnosis and educating the masses on what can be done to improve the lives of those testing positive for HIV. Just, wow. I love you, Jonathan. Thank you for your incredible courage and for changing the world by writing and sharing your story.

So, to you, dear writer, my hope is this: Please be loving and gentle toward yourself as you summon the courage to write about the memories and experiences that may scare you or flood you with shame. Take a deep breath, plunge in, and know it will be alright. Because it will be. For you, and all of your readers. And probably much more so than you ever anticipated.

Lots of love,