The Unspoken Social Shame of Having to Heal Yourself
- Ambreia
- Apr 2
- 5 min read
“No one is coming to share their oxygen or save me. So I have to find and use my own.”
A friend said something like this as she sat across from me on the couch. Her presence was abnormal. I don’t have visitors often. And now, as I’m doing deep, painful attachment work, I want them even less. But after learning I’d spent the better part of the week crying in deep grief, she insisted she come by and bring hot chocolate. I agree, at first reluctantly.
We talked about attachment wounds, intergenerational examples of self-love and self-loss, and the disillusionment that accompanies healing while partnered. It wasn’t lost on us that we are the cycle breakers, even though it feels like we’re stumbling in the dark.
The women before us, even one generation back, lived lives where no one was coming, and if someone did, they usually brought new “troubles,” as the old folks say. Her use of the oxygen metaphor was equally apt and layered. It was a deeper acknowledgment of generations of women who were systemically and familially unprotected and blocked from the ability to breathe any deeper than what would keep them alive for others’ use.
You Pick: Tragedy or Failure
Still, I noticed something more as I listened: First, we’re already in a state of severe and possibly hopeless crisis if we need oxygen support. It means maintaining our final body functions, alongside our heartbeat, is our best hope. We’re aiming for survival, not wellness.
It worked well because it’s a metaphor for a worst-case scenario in which the responsibility for saving lives is placed in a small, non-inflatable bag. It’s rarely mentioned that we need this tool because several layers of safety checks and balances likely failed. (Or that most people are using their time squeezing in the last moments of productivity instead of listening to instructions for use, and feel unprepared when a crisis hits.)
Second, I felt (or projected, lol) her unspoken shame at having to resource herself and supply her own oxygen. Many of us feel a quiet sense of shame and failure when we must find ways to rescue ourselves because someone else's love (often a man's) wasn’t enough to save us. Black mothers and other women of color seem especially vulnerable. There’s a suggestion that our family was too broken, our ability to choose a quality partner failed, or our life plan failed.
Black mothers are consistently celebrated for what I call Martyr-Based Motherhood. “Your resourcefulness (or resiliency, or strength) is the gift from tragedy and injustice,” they tell us.
It’s never the consequence of multi-generational patriarchy that dehumanizes our mothers, children, and men alike. It couldn’t be a culture of capitalism placing profits over people and limiting families’ ability to bond and care for each other, or the inability to unanimously agree that the trauma you experienced after centuries of trafficking and genocide impacted your wellness. And it’s certainly never necessary to break down to regrow a healthier, more developed self.
In this framing, our evolution and self-sufficiency are the monsters to avoid in the closet. Keep the life you have. You do NOT want to be the woman who had the breakdown.
But my developing inner voice offered a reframe in a series of questions:
What if there’s actually no shame to carry?
What freedom is there in decoupling our need to love and resource ourselves from anyone’s failure?
Is it possible that it is always our job to love and care for ourselves, regardless of the family and relationships we find ourselves in?
Might this reframe keep us resourced as we fight to change the system and circumstances that created these vulnerabilities?
Not a breakdown. But a buildup toward a Love Container
I’m living this reflection as I begin a year-long journey to build a Love Container.
The name sounds cheesy, but it is a direct nod to something I’ve learned about myself. When I’m offered new information without context or prior understanding, I rarely remember or have the understanding to apply it. The reasons for this are many, but the result is the same.
The idea came to me while reading Anxiously Attached by Jessica Baum. My love reserves were empty, and I was always one perceived rejection away from a breakdown. It dawned on me. I don’t have a reserve for self-love, let alone a place to hold the love I get from others. As a result, I’ve lived the last 30+ years loved and staved, with no place to keep the love if I were lucky enough for anyone to send it my way.
This brings particular pain to me as I move through healing work. It makes sense. I’m a first-generation Black woman healing anxious attachment.
Building a love reserve—for myself, not my husband, children, or friends—is the only way to make it out of this world alive. (lol, even tho no one does.)
Shame isn’t necessary
I could write about the dearth of conversations about the challenge of learning to love yourself after you have already made the two huge life commitments of love and marriage. I won’t. But i will say that lack of acknowledgment, space, and support is why so many of us feel like we’re either moving from crisis to crisis or dying on the inside.
That talk with my friend released a shame I hadn’t known I was carrying and spoke a truth I didn’t realize I needed to hear. And a quote EbonyJanice included in her most recent Soft Sacred Sovereign newsletter tied the loose ends perfectly— “Shame has never been a necessary component of this relationship.”
We don’t have to be ashamed because we’re building our own capacity for self-love. We are not less than others because we find ourselves on this journey in our thirties and 40s. But we are powerful and insightful enough to realize self-love was missing from the life equation we’ve created for ourselves.
My Love Container Journey is just starting. But life keeps sending me cues and reminders that I’m on the right path for this moment. Yet life keeps sending revelations and instances my way to let me know that I’m on the right path.
If you find yourself on a similar journey because you’re navigating shifts in relationships with children, friends, or loved ones, or because you’re just exhausted and want a new relationship with yourself, I invite you to join me.
Because what’s the point of a life without self-love?
May we love ourselves BIGGER and BOLDER than we love everyone else.
The Threads Keeping Me Sane
I’m listening to:
Holy Room - Some
I’m reading:
What now?
Reflect: What blame and shame do I carry about needing to heal?
Remember: You are not less than others because you find yourself building a love container in your 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, or older. At least you did it.
A Black feminist quote: “Your crown has been bought and paid for. Put it on your head and wear it.” — Maya Angelou
- In search of liberated mothering, Amb, the aspiring Free Black Mama
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