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Babes in Bookland
A podcast celebrating women's memoirs, one story at a time!
Babes in Bookland
The Invisible Weapon Against Women // Melissa Petro's "Shame on You"
What if the shame you've carried your entire life isn't yours to bear?
In this unflinchingly honest memoir, Melissa Petro invites us on her journey from girlhood to empowered womanhood, challenging us to examine the roots of our own shame along the way.
Growing up with a mother who overshared inappropriate details and a father who maintained separate lives, Melissa absorbed confusing messages about her worth from an early age. As she navigated adolescence and sexual awakening, she found herself internalizing the message that her pleasure and needs were secondary to men's. These early experiences laid the groundwork for a complicated relationship with shame that would follow her into adulthood.
When financial necessity led Melissa to work in strip clubs during college, she discovered an unexpected sense of power and autonomy, yet simultaneously battled societal judgment and her own conflicting feelings. This inner turmoil intensified years later when, after establishing herself as a dedicated elementary school teacher, she wrote an article about her past sex work experience. The resulting media firestorm and forced resignation became a crucible that ultimately strengthened her resolve to live authentically.
Through meticulous research and deeply personal storytelling, Melissa illuminates how shame functions as a control mechanism, particularly for women. She unpacks the impossible, often contradictory standards society imposes: be sexy but not too sexy, be assertive but not aggressive, be a perfect mother while maintaining your career and identity. By naming these paradoxical expectations, she helps us recognize the external forces that trigger our own feelings of inadequacy and unworthiness.
The true power of this memoir lies in Melissa's practical guidance for building shame resilience. Rather than fighting shame—which only creates internal war—she advocates for accepting and understanding our feelings while developing critical awareness of shame's external sources. Her emphasis on storytelling as healing reminds us that shame thrives in isolation and silence but dissolves in community and connection.
My friend, NA, and I discuss the reflections that we had during and after reading Melissa's powerful memoir, including our own shame triggers, our efforts to stop the "shame cycle" and how to build shame resilience. The best way? Sharing our stories and our shames.
Whether you're grappling with body image issues, sexual history, motherhood challenges, or any other source of shame, Melissa's compassionate wisdom offers a path toward self-forgiveness and authentic living. Ready to unburden yourself from shame that was never yours to carry?
Have you read “Shame on You"? Share your thoughts with us! Connect with us @babesinbooklandpod or email babesinbooklandpodcast@gmail.com.
If you leave a kind review, I might read it at top of show!
Buy “Shame on You” by Melissa Petro
Melissa's article: Thoughts From a Former Craigslist Sex Worker
https://www.melissa-petro.com/articles
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Transcripts are available through Apple’s podcast app.
This episode is produced, recorded, and its content edited by me.
Theme song
Hey guys, I just have to pop in and talk about some technical issues that we had during the recording of this episode. I totally goofed. I forgot one of my mics at home. I thought, oh no big deal, we can both record on one mic. Dear gentle listener, it was a big deal.
Speaker 1:I tried to salvage what I could in the editing process. I ended up having to rerecord a lot of my stuff and I had to end up re-recording a lot of her stuff. Kept in as much original dialogue as I could, and you know the irony of it happening to me on an episode where we're discussing shame was not lost on me and instead of berating myself for not holding myself to this standard of perfection that I normally do because I work really hard to make this show sound and be as professional as it can be as mostly a one-woman show I decided to give myself grace and roll with the punches, because this conversation was beautiful, powerful and meaningful, and just because the sound isn't perfect doesn't mean that the conversation isn't any of those things. This is me putting into practice what I read in this empowering memoir. So thank you, melissa, and thank all of you for rolling with it today, but I just wanted to pop in to make sure that you all know you're not crazy. It does sound a little off at times, but it is what it is.
Speaker 1:Let's get to the episode. Hi and welcome to Babes in Bookland. I'm your host, alex Franca, and today my friend Noc-Anne is back to chat about Melissa Petro's Shame on you how to Be a Woman in the Age of Mortification. Before we get to the episode, here's a review from rjjc-14 on Apple Podcast. This is such a refreshing book podcast focused on stories of strong, resilient women. I love the structure and bringing someone in to discuss too. I'm, admittedly, not a good book club member, so it's fun to listen to this podcast and get a book club feel in terms of deep discussion and personal anecdotes Highly recommend. Thanks, rjjc, for those very kind words. Today's episode is definitely about a strong, resilient woman, with a strong resilient woman as my guest, so let's get into it. Hey Yanae, hi Alex, what did you think of Shame on you?
Speaker 2:I think for me there was a lot of things that were relatable, so I liked it more when she focused on her own personal experiences and when she brought in the stories of other women, because you do feel a sense of community Also just having you evaluate yourself and check in with your own feelings and reactions to other women at times.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I completely agree. Super well said. So, as I said in the intro, this is Melissa Pedro's memoir, but it's also a bit of a how-to. So, as I said in the intro, this is Melissa Pedro's memoir, but it's also a bit of a how-to. Melissa's hope is that she can help us first recognize how we women have been shamed throughout history as a tool to keep us subjugated, I think and then, second, she offers us ways to hopefully break out of the shame. The most important way share our stories and experiences, because shame breeds in silence. Full disclosure.
Speaker 1:Melissa slid into my DMs babes in bookland pod on Instagram if anybody wants to give us a follow and asked if I'd be interested in discussing her book on the podcast. I said I needed to read it first, and so Nicole at Penguin Random House sent me, and you and I, a copy to check out, and after reading it, we both felt that it was really right for the show. So thank you, melissa and Nicole, for facilitating reading it. We both felt that it was really right for the show. So thank you, melissa and Nicole, for facilitating.
Speaker 1:I loved reading about Melissa's personal journey and I appreciated how she gave so much space and value to other women's stories and voices and experiences in her own book to further validate this universal feeling and universal need to buck its hold on us. And I do need to say Melissa gives so much more detail and expert testimony into what shame is, how it manifests in our bodies, our responses to it and then later how to strengthen our shame resilience. So I really encourage listeners to check her book out for those aspects, because today we're really we're really going to focus mostly on Melissa's journey. That's the MO of the podcast, but we'll sprinkle some of those other things in. Okay, let's just get into the episode, because we have a lot to discuss.
Speaker 2:Sounds good to me.
Speaker 1:Shame on you was published in 2024, and this is Melissa's dedication for Molly. Okay, so before we dive deeper, let's give a little background on who Melissa is. Do you remember hearing her story, Like, had you heard of her? No, I hadn't. Yeah, I think we were both just a little too young to be paying attention.
Speaker 1:But in September 2007, melissa wrote an article for the Huffington Post titled Thoughts from a Former Craigslist Sex Worker. I'll link it in the show notes. And because of this article, she's pretty much forced to resign from her position as an art teacher at an elementary school in the Bronx, and as part of her settlement, she can also no longer seek employment in the city's public schools again. She also settles to maintain her unemployment insurance, but she refuses to feel ashamed, though the media tries to shame her up and down, and she refuses to feel embarrassed of her past, saying that her past as a sex worker has no bearing on her ability to be a good teacher. And this is really the question here. Why can't women have pasts as sex workers or be doing sex work on the side, I guess and also be good teachers and lawmakers, ceos, mothers? Insert you name it here.
Speaker 1:She's written some great articles in response to all of this. We'll link those as well, and this book is really a marriage of her story, her standing up for herself and her character, and a well-researched look into basically what I said earlier. Yeah, so let's talk about shame. Baby Melissa writes at its core, shame is an existential feeling of unworthiness and profound inadequacy. It's not just the fear that others will find you unlovable, it's a deep down fear that you don't deserve to be loved. Annie, what did you think of this definition?
Speaker 2:My immediate reaction is to identify it as guilt. But the shame, the deeper feeling of shame itself is, I mean, I definitely feel that a lot. I think that the whole deep feeling of being unworthy of love is, I mean, it's quite profound. So a lot of times I think that throughout the book, as I was reading it then, I had to kind of think about like linking feelings of guilt in the past and I was kind of processing and kind of trying to think of like does that really relate to shame itself or does it relate to just the behaviors in that moment? So that's kind of part of what I was doing when I was reading the book as well. It kind of got me to think about that. Those two I tend to use synonymously but I was like okay, let's think about it as a separate thing, because sometimes you don't want to think about that.
Speaker 1:A thousand percent. And for Melissa, she didn't feel guilty about being a sex worker, but she was shamed, and so I think when I thought about it specifically for her case, I was able to really make that distinction. But you're right In everyday life these two go hand in hand. You're feeling guilty for maybe not doing the quote unquote right thing that you were taught to do, and then you feel ashamed about that. And then there's that thing where, on top of feeling guilty, you feel guilty because you're feeling guilty about things that you're not supposed to be feeling guilty about, and you feel the shame in that, and you're just like, oh my God, it's so much.
Speaker 2:It's like the meta guilt, the meta shame.
Speaker 1:I have to tell you, when I was reading this book and outlining it, I turned to my husband and I asked him do you often feel shame in your life? And he was like no, and I was like yeah, that's it, isn't it. It is really something that feels inherent to existing as a woman. It really does, yeah, and we try to shame men and there are men out there who deserve to be shamed, but it's like it doesn't stick most of the time.
Speaker 2:No, sometimes they'd be doubling down. So, yeah, you know it is a patriarchal society, you know, no matter how you slice it. So in some ways there are just institutions in place that will constantly reinforce those behaviors. So, even though you're pointing it out, I mean just to think about the human experience. You know, nobody likes to feel negatively about how they're existing or to feel like how you, you exist, impacts someone else in such a negative way.
Speaker 2:So if, at a surface level, we can get by and not have to think about that stuff and the society backs you up on that, it's kind of easier to live that way, which I, you know, sometimes I wish I were a man because it is easier that way. But unfortunately that's not how we exist, or at least especially me. Like I feel, like I'm an anxious person. So it's like constant mental load, constant thinking spiraling out of something small and then it leads to these big feelings that you're like oh crap, it's actually this instead of this. But that amount of thinking and feelings processing it's not something that's encouraged in men anyway, so it's like never really had to do it. So I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally. She writes this about shame versus guilt. Guilt is the not great feeling you get when you've done something wrong, whereas shame is a global feeling of wrongness. It is less about what you've done, as it is an indictment of who you are. And, yeah, it just feels personal sometimes, right, and it feels like, as women, our character flaws are pointed out to us time and time again and I don't know, like men don't even have character flaws. Sometimes it feels like because even like when we're assertive, no, we're bitchy when a man's assertive, like that's a strength. Yeah, yeah. And she does write a lot about the systemic issues and gives a lot of proof as to why we feel this way, but that it really comes down to us as individuals and then as a collective to do the work to unburden ourselves.
Speaker 1:But the first step is okay. Why do we feel the shame and where does that come from? And I think a lot of it stems from the idea that as little girls, we are raised to be perfect. There's this perfect idea or standard of what it is to be a good woman in the world, and I think we're all we've been raging against that for a while. But I don't think boys are raised to be perfect, I think they're raised to push boundaries and be messy. And we're raised to reduce ourselves to fall in line and follow the rules. And boys are raised to thrive, to explore, to push boundaries, to make the rules.
Speaker 1:And Melissa writes like all girls, I learned the rules early. Be good, be sweet, be flirty, but not too flirty. Be sexy, but don't be a slut. Don't be too fat or too thin. Shave your body, cover your blemishes. Cover your body, but don't be prude. Smile more, be cool, reflect men's interests, but remain feminine. Be assertive, just don't be a bitch. Speak up, lean in, be demure, deny your appetite, suppress your needs. Society wants women to be everything it feels impossible.
Speaker 2:It's just not possible for any human being to be that, because how can we be two things at once? Yeah, it's contradictory, right. And then at the same time, but we still strive to, we've internalized those expectations and then we set those as our goalposts, and then, when we don't reach them, then we start to berate ourselves. And then that's the part that's kind of hard to reconcile, because sometimes at an intellectual level you know that it's not right that you're feeling shame or guilt, but you can't help that you feel it, it's just there, and so sometimes you're just too tired to process that feeling. So then you just kind of I still got to live, I still got to make money, I still got to survive. So you just kind of sweep it aside and carry on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Do you feel like you were raised to be a good girl?
Speaker 2:I've been reading a lot of smut. So every time people say good girl to me, I always say were you raised to be a good girl Like?
Speaker 1:well, I guess.
Speaker 2:Excuse me, mr Edward Cullen or whatever version of you is in this romance novel? Yeah, I think I was, was well being Asian as well, but then also raised Catholic, which you know. Yeah, guilt is the weapon of choice, and so I was definitely raised to be a good girl. But the thing that was frustrating because my parents were immigrants and so my mom has a very, I want to say, narrow, but I guess it's just a very traditional and old school idea of what good looks like, and at the same time it's that divide and that nuance of living in America where the standards are different for good, I think I was raised with that expectation, but I didn't really get the definitions from my mom, so she would want you to be good, but what does that look like? So to her she thought of that as 100% compliance, whatever.
Speaker 2:I tell you you need to listen. Whatever you wear, you have to do this to be like a girl that's not girly. You can't do that Very black and white and very surface level definition of being a good girl. But for me it was about being quiet and being compliant, and I think that just speaks to the Asian culture, because it's a collectivist culture, you know. So you do put your individual needs aside.
Speaker 2:But then I was a little bit in America where I was told that, like the individual matters, your needs matter, and so I had a hard time with that because it's like well, one part of my life tells me this is good, but this other part tells me you know, that's bad, this is the definition of good, and then as a child you kind of have to live with that and kind of figure it out. So maybe that's where my anxiety was born, that it out, so maybe that's where my anxiety was born. That sounds so confusing. Yeah, definitely did get that message, though, because my mom has those ingrained in her. She has those beliefs about what it is to be female. It just looks a little bit different in the culture, but very, very similar, similar broad strokes as American ideas of traditional gender roles, very, very much like that it definitely made me think.
Speaker 1:The book made me reflect in all the ways that I feel shamed about things in my life, right, which is good. I think that's Melissa's point and one of them is romance novels. Like we really are Okay. First off, it's like the highest grossing genre of literature, of fiction. But like I literally bought an e-reader so that I could read the 50 shades of gray books because I didn't want anyone to know I was reading these books.
Speaker 1:And they were so popular, and it's like we're all in these same closets, peeking out at each other, being like are you doing what I'm doing? Because I'm doing it and like everybody's like. Surprise, we're actually all doing it. Surprise, Like why are we feeling ashamed of this thing?
Speaker 2:that we all want to do, I don't. That adds to the appeal. You know you can only read it under cover of darkness.
Speaker 1:Melissa quotes the wonderful Brene Brown, writing about all the messages we receive as women of how we should be, from our smaller community of friends, teachers, faith leaders, to the wider world, media, books, etc.
Speaker 1:And although this isn't true for every culture, melissa educates us via Kimberly Crenshaw that Black women are supposed to be quote so strong as to be indestructible. This perceived indestructibility of Black women has long been an excuse for overwork and underprotection, a rationalization of our exploitation and abuse that has morphed into a dangerous stereotype that we have all too often internalized. Melissa writes what a trick weaponizing a woman's strength against herself. I found that fascinating. This is the stuff that in her book that is so eye-opening and really encourages you to pause and reflect and realize that we all don't have the same experience growing up and for me as a young white woman where I felt like being quiet and following the rules was being a good girl, and then for a young black woman to have basically the complete opposite experience and be held to such a different standard. I mean it's heartbreaking and it's infuriating as a woman and it's confusing for little girls everywhere.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it feels like an uphill climb. I think that's probably why a lot of people don't want to talk about it. I mean not that they don't want to, but it's like maybe they don't want to touch that subject.
Speaker 1:Well, it's like you said earlier. Sometimes you're just in survival mode. I mean, do you really have time to sit down and psychoanalyze yourself and unpack all of these things? And also, maybe sometimes it feels like what's the point If the world's not going to change? What can I do about that?
Speaker 2:Yep, and especially if you're just going to be overwhelmed with those feelings because you know how big the conversation is but it's not going to get anywhere. So you're just like do I really want to go there?
Speaker 1:I think that that's such a strong point that Melissa makes in this book. Is that, like, we all deserve to be unburdened by these shames and we all do deserve to take this time and realize the external forces that are at play and build up that shame resiliency? Yeah, I think that.
Speaker 2:I like that the most, where it was not so much about correcting others or you know, of course we want to like promote change in the overall larger society, but it really was focused on the self and just releasing those from yourself and unburdening yourself so that you can just live to be honest, like just to live a more authentic life.
Speaker 1:Yes, we all deserve that. Okay, Anae, where do you feel shame the most in your life? I?
Speaker 2:don't know. I feel like a lot of shame. For me when I was younger it was more for my appearance, like looking a certain way, you have to weigh a certain way. So I got that message of you have to be thin, but you can't be too thin, and then you have to have curves and blah, blah, blah. So, yeah, I didn't feel like I fit into that.
Speaker 2:My guilt and shame for some reason has a lot to do with my identity as a working individual. So maybe that just comes down to I don't know, I was brainwashed at some point in my life because I feel like I never learned these lessons in a straightforward kind of overt way. I wasn't taught directly. To be you have to be a good worker. Maybe it's a cultural thing where we want to be productive and the Asian culture I feel like is very utilitarian. So I feel like as a productive individual, that's where sometimes I feel shame, and maybe it's just honestly because it's just exposure, because I'm just there most of the time. I spend most of my day at work and so maybe I just feel it most prevalently there, sort of having this kind of residual or ongoing feeling of imposter syndrome, even though a lot of times, like you know, I know I'm putting out 100%. I'm doing the best I can. I'm keeping up with everything that I need to do. It comes down to myself as a clinician as well, because sometimes I feel like I have to sacrifice my personal ethics because ultimately I have to make decisions that are more based on systemic need and not necessarily the individual anymore.
Speaker 2:So sometimes my shame and guilt is tied to that. I feel like I can't speak for all, but I do feel like it's a pretty shared experience for first generation born people. You know, there's that ubiquitous thing where we hear you know, we hear it. I feel like it's pop culture. Now we hear it where Asian parents are constantly saying you have to be a doctor, engineer, lawyer, three, three, three presumably very secure jobs and if you do that you're gonna be successful. You gotta go to college and you gotta follow these steps and you're gonna make it. When I was younger I kind of resisted that and I felt like I wanna do something based on my passion. But now, when I get older, you're more willing and able to look at it from my parents' perspective, or your parents' perspective. When I look back, I started to realize how much my decisions and my success, or the measure of my success, also reflects on my family, and so the shame sometimes is tied to whether or not I'm making their sacrifice worth it.
Speaker 1:Did your mom ever say anything like make my sacrifice worth it? No, not at all.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, but I think it was just very common, because she she talks about this in her book as well Just the idea of comparison I don't know if that's a universal experience for women, because it kind of sounds nice that it is, because I felt like it was just my mom but always comparing to other people's kids, like, well, their kids are going to become doctors and things like that.
Speaker 1:Well, that definitely happened to me, sometimes too.
Speaker 2:So yeah, yes, it was. You know, it was always that comparison and making, making me and my sister feel like if you don't measure up to the Joneses or maybe the wins, so Melissa writes about she.
Speaker 1:Actually she speaks with a lot of women. She interviews a lot of women for her book and, upon speaking with a lot of women who were immigrants or daughters of immigrants, she writes about how the phrase model minority kept popping up. What does this phrase mean to you?
Speaker 2:For a long time when I had a more surface level understanding of even just race and culture and things like that for me to identify, you know, the oppression and the unfairness of the world. It was kind of like at a very surface level. So before, when I was younger, I saw the model minority label as something to be proud of. Wow, okay yeah.
Speaker 2:So I was just like oh yeah, we're doing it, yeah, as a child yeah and like, even as a teen, I was just like, oh, yeah, we're Asian, so it's because like you're, you're in your teenage years, you're also, you know, your identity is developing. And so now I'm just like, yeah, I'm Asian, rawr, rawr, you know. And so I was like, yeah, we're part of the minority, the model minority. And then later on I realized I was like, oh, that's kind of a term weaponized against other cultures by pointing us as the model minority and then you're using it against other cultures, you know. So then you know, when you, when you're understanding and becomes more nuanced and you mature in your thinking, then the model minority actually became something that was like very anxiety provoking, because it's like talk about comparison, right, so yeah, so it was. It was more so. One, I felt I felt guilty about being part of the minority that's labeled as the model minority. And then two, can we, can I even live up to that? You know?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's like you can't help being Asian. What the hell, dude, how are you supposed to feel guilty for just who you are? Yeah, but then, at the same time, you're just kind of like well a modern minority.
Speaker 2:You know, is that a way of controlling us as well? Because now it's kind of saying that like, yeah, why are we the modern minority? Because we don't cause problems, you know? Is it because we're so obedient and compliant? We don't speak up in the workplace, we just keep our heads down and do our work, and I'm like that's not really how it should be Weaponized against you. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's like my new catchphrase. I'm like, oh, wow, I mean, but it really makes you think. It just makes you think. Her book just made me think, man. I was like, okay, all right, so let's get into Melissa's story. I sort of tried to do this clever thing where I try, we'll see how it goes.
Speaker 1:Melissa's parents, where the seeds of shame are planted. Her mother, third generation Polish immigrant Catholic, and raises Melissa under the church's influence, even though they don't attend church. She writes my mother dreamt of no responsibility beyond raising her children and caring for her home, but instead she worked as a full-time secretary at a racetrack, while Melissa's father cycles through jobs and there wasn't a lot of financial stability. They're in Ohio. They live in the basement of her grandmother's home, where it would flood when it rained. She writes Throughout my girlhood, my mother over-relied on me for intimacy and emotional support, so I knew too much about her and my father's sex life, including details of my father's extramarital affairs.
Speaker 1:These details from my childhood are examples of what psychologists would call covert sexual abuse, as are even more commonplace experiences such as a parent idolizing their daughter's beauty or commenting on her body in relation to men. I thought that was fascinating because I never would have thought that a mother being too open with her, I mean, yeah, like no, objectively, I'm reading this and I'm like that is not OK, but the fact that, like technically it's sexual abuse, I mean that's pretty heavy stuff.
Speaker 2:I'm curious where she found that categorization of it being sexual abuse. She?
Speaker 1:right. Yes, because she just says psychologist, but she's not citing what she she's.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I that's the first time I'm here. Research changes over the years. I mean definitely emotional abuse. Yeah, right, right, Because as a child, there's some things that you're not supposed to be privy to because your mind can't comprehend it and how you know something as complex as consent. Yes, you may not understand that, and so you're going to warp that understanding at that age, so I can see how that can be considered abuse.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean and I, when she talks about like idolizing her daughter's beauty, and there were elements of that in my mom's upbringing, but I feel like that was part of culture as well. You know, like, where women are only valued for their beauty. So you have to be beautiful, you have to put so much energy. Even now my mom's regimen it's like I mean I wish I was that dedicated to my skincare routine. Dude, you're spending 30 odd minutes massaging your face and putting in your products, but I'm like, but it's working, you know. But ultimately the downfall of that is kind of I'm kind of seeing her relationship to her own beauty as she ages.
Speaker 1:Right, you won't meet your own beauty standards anymore, the beauty standards that you've been conditioned to have. You know, ultimately, you start looking in the mirror and you don't look 25 anymore, and that's been your standard. What does that do to your self-worth, your value, your psychological state?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I understood what she meant when she said that. Like when your mom kind of overly puts value on your appearance and then even your relation to men and things like that. It was very odd. There were times where my mom would be like you need to dress sexier and I'm like, but I'm like 17 for her I felt like it wasn't sexualization as in male attention. Yeah, she just liked feeling good about how she looked and getting attention as far as herself. But I don't think she understood the new one. Like even now I don. Now I don't think she understands how subtle harassment can be. It has to be overt for her to understand that that's harassment. Men looking at you, staring too long and things like that those are very uncomfortable for the female experience or for me. You know?
Speaker 1:Yeah, told me too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that that's something that she didn't quite get. It's definitely something that's there. I can see how that could be so detrimental to a girl growing up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can see how that could be so detrimental to a girl growing up. Yeah, totally, and speaking so limited, it seemed as if everything in the house was broken, dirty or used up. My father's belongings were nice and totally off limits. That would be so confusing. Growing up, I couldn't imagine if my husband had a drawer of things that I was not allowed to touch. I mean, I understand parents, adults, having nice things, but not if the rest of the home is, like she writes, broken, dirty or used up. How can Melissa view herself as anything other than unworthy in her father's eyes at this moment? That's just horrible. And she parallels this to the realization that it's a man's world. She writes I knew even as a child, my father had something unavailable to my mother. What was available to my father as a man was far better than the world his wife and children inhabited. His was a world of possibility. That's so heartbreaking that she came to that conclusion at such a young age.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know when your family is struggling and you have your own personal drawers. I'm like the audacity, like what? Seriously, maybe it's just the time of the times then? But I'm like, wow, like her mother allowed it as well Not saying that she was complicit in his privilege as a man, it could have been part of the culture as well and things like that. Or a mom saw it as normal not that she allowed it as in she's at fault, but like it was, like that was okay for them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I understand what you're saying and you know it also makes me think about what we talked about earlier, how her mother told her about her father's infidelity and yet there were no real consequences for that too. And I think that all of this shapes Melissa's own complicated relationship with infidelity, and we'll talk about that a little bit later on. But I think Melissa's just showing us like she got a lot of mixed signals growing up, you know, yeah. And then a month before high school graduation, Melissa's mother tells her that her father is gone. He had already been traveling to Louisville a lot, presumably for work, but later Melissa will discover that he actually had a whole other family there.
Speaker 1:And at the time of her memoir, Melissa writes that she can't remember the last time that she saw her father. She writes today the phrase daddy issues holds no power over me, but for years the mere thought of my father triggered feelings of worthlessness and, yes, shame. I was confused, angry and afraid of what my father's actions said about me. It is interesting how much we intrinsically tie our worth to people in our lives, especially our parental figures. I think it's hard to escape that sometimes when really we have absolutely zero control over other people's actions.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:All right. Next section high school and sex. Shame starts to bloom. Okay, Did you have any shame growing up around sex or your body?
Speaker 2:I feel like probably a negative and a positive. My mom was pretty bad about boundaries. Probably a negative and a positive. My mom was pretty bad about boundaries, so she would tout about purity and, you know, being feminine and things like that. But she also would have very frank conversations to me, woman to woman. At what ages?
Speaker 1:did these start.
Speaker 2:More leaning towards, like the end of high school, going into college.
Speaker 1:Okay, so not an inappropriate age to maybe have these talks, even though they're uncomfortable. Yeah.
Speaker 2:For me I think that she talked more talks even though they're uncomfortable. Yeah, For me I think that she talked more about she actually said that sex was important. She didn't care about sex before marriage because she said that whether or not your partner is compatible with you, she said that's actually relatively important. Just don't be stupid and get in a CD or get pregnant, you know. Yeah, Good advice. Yeah, Please, don't give me details, mom, please. But yeah, she that actually kind of went against the Catholic belief, so that kind of was weird for me. The Catholic teachings themselves are all about like you know, there's that dichotomy of like either Mary or Mary, like the pure one, versus the prostitute.
Speaker 1:Which Mary are you? Mary Magdalene or Virgin Mary? Yeah?
Speaker 2:I think that, like for me personally, because I was actually volunteering at the church and teaching CCE, then it actually kind of reinforced that feeling of guilt about that. But I think I wasn't comfortable enough in my skin to even to even worry about sex at that age. So I was actually more shamed and felt guilty and awkward about my appearance more so. So then I wasn't, sex was not even on my mind because I'm like it ain't happening for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my mom was also really open about sex. I think I was a bit younger. I have a lot of embarrassed feelings tied into that, and then also because I was being raised in the church. Yeah, just these feelings of shame surrounding sex and sexual experiences and sexual desire Wow yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that needs to be unpacked in therapy.
Speaker 1:No, I mean, now it's okay. So I think we're okay, but like I'm like in awe of women like Melissa who are just so confident in their bodyism, view sex as this beautiful, powerful tool, as opposed to this thing that you're supposed to be ashamed of unless it's in like the very right circumstances.
Speaker 2:She does a pretty good job chronicling what it took to get there and feel that way about it, you know, because she had her inner turmoil and certain things and aspects of it.
Speaker 1:I don't know, I don't know when society became the narrative that women can't enjoy the pleasures of the flesh. The men's pleasure definitely takes precedence, right, because men have to climax in order to procreate, and I think women's pleasure being equal or as important has been a more recent conversation, like in the grand scheme of things, yeah, okay. So speaking about women's pleasure, let's talk about this first sexual experience that Melissa writes about, this out of body experience where she will ultimately come to the conclusion that her pleasure is not as important as her partner's pleasure. She's 14 and she writes this. Do you remember what it was like to be a girl and those moments when girlhood was becoming something you were desperate to shake off, like how a butterfly must feel when they are breaking free from their cocoon. If butterflies were somehow embarrassed by the fact that they used to look like worms, I love that. I was like, yeah, that's kind of it, exactly so.
Speaker 1:She writes about kissing this boy in the woods and how she feels scared as he pushes up her bra and exposes her breasts and like she kind of knew him but like didn't. It's all moving fast for her. He tells her not to be scared, they don't have sex, but he ends up going down on her and she writes I was not in my body at this moment. I was in my confusion, ambivalent over what was happening to my body. It was happening to me, but I was not in control, though she does say she wouldn't she quote, wouldn't have described the experience as anything other than consensual.
Speaker 1:That night, as she lays in bed, a new emotion emerges in her chest, and I thought that was so interesting and she captured it so well. Because it's like your first sexual experience is so confusing. You don't know what your boundaries are, you don't know where your boundaries are supposed to be. That's sort of what you're figuring out. You don't really know what you're comfortable with, but you're comfortable with this thing. You're in your mind, you're in your body, things are feeling good, things are confusing and scary, and you just really hope that those experiences are with someone who, really who, wants to take care of you.
Speaker 1:It's so funny that sex scene in Cruel Intentions of All Things. I don't even particularly love that movie, but the scene where Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe's characters finally have sex and the entire time he just keeps checking in with her and asking her if she's okay, I don't know. I appreciate being exposed to scenes like that growing up, because, even though I did have a mom who would have been really comfortable talking to me about these things, I wasn't really comfortable talking to her, and so I did turn to my friends and to movies to sort of guide me on how maybe those experiences should go. That gave us the idea that, like when this, this is done right and it's beautiful and you're valued in it, that person's taking care like you're taking care of each other, you know, and her experience just seemed so confusing for her you know.
Speaker 1:So Melissa continues to see this boy on and off. She actually experiences her first orgasm with him, and then he just ghosts her what the hell, dude, what the hell little jerk.
Speaker 1:She writes my encounter with Charlie the boy, set off a craving Ravenous for approval. I learned to put my own partner's desires first. The only pleasure I came to expect would result from pleasing whatever boy I found myself with. I sought out sexual intimacy, even as every encounter left me feeling more and more devalued, dirtied and detached from my body. So, like I said before, it feels like here's where she learns that her pleasure is not important, unnecessary and it's all about the men. And you know, I would come to those conclusions too. If this boy ghosts me after giving me an orgasm, I would think, oh, because maybe I didn't give him an orgasm. I'm not good enough.
Speaker 1:Her junior year of high school she meets Rick. He's a good Catholic boy whose family said grace at the dinner table, who kissed her politely for their first kiss and who could quote look my mother in the eye. Not a bad thing to want in a partner. It's time for her to go to college. She falls in love with Antioch College where quote students weren't given grades. Instead, the professors wrote narrative evaluations and students wrote self-evaluations, and both bore equal weight.
Speaker 1:She writes I would be taught to trust life experiences as a valuable source of knowledge and insight, which honestly sounds amazing, but for a type A person I would be like. But what's my actual grade? Am I good enough? There's a problem, though. Tuition is $30,000 a year exactly her mother's annual salary. She and her mother both work really hard. They apply for all the grants and scholarships they can find. She writes all the essays and they are able to get her first year covered, and it's a really proud moment for her and probably for her mother. She writes for me. My time at Antioch and my exposure to more and different people helped me start to find and then share my true self without shame.
Speaker 2:I think college is when you're exposed to people that just aren't from your whole. You know within a certain radius that you're going to see for years at a time. You're exposed to different people who don't know you from Adam, exactly, exactly. You feel like you get to define who you are. I forget which theorist said it, but the tyranny of the shoulds, it's kind of like how it just takes precedent over everything, when all you can think about is what you should be, not what you want to be or who you are In the younger years. Then it was always I should be this, I should be that in order to be this Versus in college. It's kind of like man it's. I actually felt like it was a blank slate where you're trying things on and figuring out who the heck I am.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I had a really similar experience. Okay, let's see who Melissa discovers she is. While she's in college, during her first semester, her childhood best friend, jenny, calls her and says she started to work at a strip joint called the Crazy Horse which I love, all these strip club names. She writes the color left my face. Everything I was being taught about sex work contradicted what I knew about Jenny. She pictures her friend being exploited and basically tells her as much. And Jenny is like what do you even know about this? And Melissa realizes she's right. She's never even been to a strip club. Still, she writes I hung up and cried Of everything I had been led to believe that a sex worker could be. Jenny was none of it. She was smart and funny, beautiful inside out, the toughest bitch I'd ever met. So that winter she goes to visit her with Rick and the place doesn't look bad at all. Everyone is smiling and seems to be having a good time. Jenny answers all of her questions. She writes by the end of the night a seed had been planted.
Speaker 1:All my life I had wanted nothing more than my mother's approval. I still wanted that I wanted so badly. Yeah, it's really interesting when we come face to face with new ideas or new ways to think about things, or ways that maybe we need to challenge our belief system. When I think about sex workers, three things come to mind. First is Jack the Ripper and killing all of the prostitutes living on the street because no one would care that they were gone. But then also I think about the movie the Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and the song Hard Candy Christmas by Dolly Parton, and in that movie all of the women are adorable and amazing and that song Candy Christmas is just a gem. And lastly, hello, julia Roberts as Vivian in Pretty Woman. I mean, she was the hooker with the heart of gold. That was one of the taglines.
Speaker 1:And yeah, I feel like I was actually exposed at a very young age. Listen, I knew it was not the path that my parents would have ever wanted me to walk down and, yeah, I probably would have had the exact same feelings of shame and guilt that Melissa experienced. But at least for me these women weren't all just like evil whores who were not good people. I knew that at a very young age. I knew that it was more nuanced than that. And again, that's thanks to media and television. Yay, go movies, yeah, and I think it's great to always question why we believe the things that we do. So, my dear listeners, what are the beliefs that you have when it comes to sex work and sex workers? And then, maybe, how can those beliefs be challenged? How can you broaden your scope of the world around you? How can you get out of this black and white way of living and thinking?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think this just boils down to consent, to be honest. And then we mentioned women's pleasure and how there's no shame in feeling pleasure in the act of sex, and so I think that the more important thing is safety and consent, because when you get down to it, you know we have to suspend judgment about what we think women should be doing with their bodies and treating it like a temple, but ultimately it's their choice.
Speaker 1:Women should be able to make their own choices over their bodies. Full stop.
Speaker 2:You know more people are employed is going to help our economy. Okay, yes, exactly.
Speaker 1:Like, let's just suspend our judgment. Yeah, I wish. I wish that was really the empowering part of Melissa's memoir. For me, she provided that reminder that, at the end of the day, we can either internalize the world's judgment about us and feel shamed, or we don't, and it is our choice. Yes, of course it's not an easy choice. These thoughts, these feelings associated with how and why we feel shame, they've been conditioned in us since we were born, by our parents, by society, all the things that we've already talked about and we'll continue to talk about. But Melissa is encouraging us all to take the time to recognize where those feelings come from, why we feel them, and then decide if we want to continue giving them power or not. We're never going to get rid of shame. We're always going to exist in a judgmental world. It's never going to be perfect, but how do I take control of my own life and the way that I feel about myself, which is what I deserve to do? What the world tries to tell me about who I am and how I look is not as important as how I feel about myself. Just because my house isn't spotless and everything isn't perfectly in its place doesn't mean I'm not a good mother, and it's about strengthening that voice inside your head, and when we're able to make those changes for ourselves, they will have the rippling effect on our community, on the world around us. I really believe that. Okay, so how does Melissa do that? Let's continue talking about her journey and we will get there.
Speaker 1:So Antioch has cooperative education, where students alternated academic terms on campus with terms of work or volunteer experience anywhere in the world. Melissa chooses to go to Mexico to volunteer at a preschool for indigenous street children. She's 19 and this is her first time out of the States. She's chosen to work at a location not on the college's pre-approved list, so she's responsible for arranging all the details on her own. Her housing falls through. Then her credit card is declined. She's like, okay, something is going to happen now. And it did.
Speaker 1:She goes to a tattoo shop to get a tattoo, and I loved it, because that's such a college thing to do. To be like, oh, I'm all out of money, let me go get a tattoo. Yep, sounds right. And she's telling her tattoo artist all about her predicament. He asks her if she wants to make some extra cash and she's like, yeah, I need to. And this is how she starts working at La Trampa. La Trampa, maybe, I don't know. She writes.
Speaker 1:When I first started working in the sex industry, I had no sense that my decision would have any real far-reaching effects on my life. I felt as if I'd discovered a seemingly unending source of power and autonomy, relating in part to my newfound ability to make money and lots of it anywhere in the world. She continues I had no reason to feel ashamed and I didn't Not. Yet not really no-transcript. Shame was that their father committed suicide before they were born. And I think how can you be ashamed of that? But I knew the answer.
Speaker 1:Everyone's shame triggers are different. So she's working at La Trampa, she's making money, she's having a good time, but she does not tell her mom. Instead, she tells her that she's making some extra cash babysitting. She writes. I remember the feeling in my stomach, a sort of charged up sensation I couldn't name at the time. I can never tell her the truth. Whore is the ultimate unwanted identity, and that's true. We've been conditioned to believe that from the word go. I mean that term slut shaming. There aren't the equivalent of these words for men. There just aren't. I guess we can call men whores and sluts as well, but it doesn't have the same sting as it does for women. She continues. From the very start I avoided thinking too deeply about the choices I was making, including my decision to lie. By not telling my mom or Rick, I thought I could escape judgment and shame.
Speaker 1:A few weeks after she started work, she's taken off the schedule. She tries to find other work, but the clubs get seedier and seedier and finally she just decides to use up her money on a ticket for her mom to come visit her. They play tourist and then they go home and when she gets home everything feels different. She feels changed. She thought she could flee Mexico and what she did there and the quote shame there. But it doesn't work like that. She writes something kept drawing me back in. I was fighting with myself. I was fighting in my head with everyone who'd have told me what I was doing was wrong, because it doesn't feel wrong to her. It feels powerful. Is this a good thing? Because it makes me feel good? But yet I'm told it's not good. Like what's going on here? Who's making the rules here Exactly? Who makes the rules?
Speaker 1:She and Rick moved to Cincinnati where he's going to school and she's working nights as a hospital advocate for a rape crisis center nearby in Kentucky. She convinces Rick to let her drop him off for school and use their one car during the day and she starts working at Leroy's Topless Cabaret where she can kind of pop in and out and make a few hundred bucks during a four hour shift. Of course she doesn't tell Rick about any of this. She writes Sex work didn't begin for me as a political statement. I started stripping because I needed the money, and the fact that I enjoyed the work and wanted to keep doing it long after I needed to only confused me. When I thought of my mom, I felt angry, I felt sad, I felt guilty, I felt trapped, like whatever room I was in was losing air. I felt panic. She knows her mother would not approve of what she's doing and so she pushes her away. She stops writing and calling her as often and like that sucks.
Speaker 1:You know, even when we feel like we're old enough, we no longer need our parents' approval, there's always that part of you that wants to make your parent proud and she knows she's not doing that. That's a really hard battle that she has waging inside of herself. You know you've always been really vocal about the expectations put on you. You spoke about that earlier in the episode and how you haven't always risen to the expectations put on you by your parents. Has that battle ever waged inside of you?
Speaker 2:I think that, because every choice I made kind of went against what my mom wanted or expected. I never well, okay, I can't say never but I didn't consciously feel like I sought my mom's approval. So I actually had that feeling relatively early on because I was so I had made up my mind that what she believes is not what I believe, period. So I'm not going to follow that. I'm still going to obey her where I can because I want peace in the household. So I was very much the compliant child as in. You know, I didn't get in trouble and things like that. But I'm still going to do what I do because my parents aren't there to watch me. You know, like latchkey kids, no guilt, no shame. It wasn't like it was my own personal statement, you know. It wasn't me like yeah, I'm going to stick it to my mom and do what I want, just because I just I was almost it's almost like I couldn't. I already knew I couldn't live up to what she wanted anyway and I think as a kid I had a lot of anxiety and depression, so I knew that I just couldn't do it anyway. So I kind of gave up.
Speaker 2:I think the thing is I don't, I don't seek my parents approval in the sense of my choices, because I, my choices led me to where I am and I'm happy where I am, you know. So I couldn't imagine being what they wanted me to be, because I know I would be profoundly unhappy. And so, for example, like marrying someone right, if she could curate a man for me and choose, I would be so unhappy because there's just, it's just, it's not for me. You know, I really don't know. I don't think she knows me well enough to really choose a partner for me.
Speaker 2:I think that tying back the whole thing of wanting them to feel like their struggle was worth it and their sacrifice was worth it I didn't necessarily want their approval, but I still wanted them to be proud of me. You know what I mean. So I think that's the part I struggle with. It's not necessarily doing what you want me to do, but for me it was like I had to struggle to have the equal amount of success. Had I gone down the path they wanted me to, to prove that by my choices I've made it. You know, there are multiple paths to the same destination. So that's the part I struggle with sometimes, because I feel like I'm not quite at the monetary success that they would want. But I'm kind of like I have to be okay with that, though, because I want to remind myself that I'm happy where I'm at. I just want them to be proud of me.
Speaker 1:Has your mom ever said she's proud of you? No, of course not. That's not an Asian language, you know. This reminds me I read this thing a few years ago, before I became a parent, but it stuck with me as something that I wanted to do and wanted to add to my parenting philosophy.
Speaker 1:One day this person was writing about how they grew up in a household where they were never told by their parents that they were proud of him, and he never really heard good things out of their mouths, only criticism. And so he wanted to make a conscious effort to break that cycle. And he wanted to make a conscious effort to break that cycle and he wanted his kids to know how proud he was of them, and he decided that one way that he wanted to do it was to actually kind of compliment them behind their backs. So he talked about how he and his partner would stand in the hallway outside of his kid's room and, you know, be like, oh my gosh, blah, blah, blah was so great today, like I'm so proud of him, as opposed to just saying it overtly to his face, and I thought that that was just so cute and sweet, and there is something about overhearing a compliment, because it feels like that person doesn't have to be saying it, like there's that extra added jolt of love or recognition because they're not saying it to you, they're saying it to someone else.
Speaker 1:And so, like I said, I I implement that with my husband. We always like to talk good about our kids when they can hear us, even when they can't hear us. I mean, we genuinely are in awe of them and proud of them. But I just thought that was really cool, so I wanted to share that. In case anybody out there is looking for new ways to cultivate confident kids and I'm always looking for great ways that you have something, please share it with us on Instagram. Dm us at Babes in Bookland pod on Instagram or email me. I love finding those just really easy ways to let your children know that they are loved and that they have value and build that voice inside their head that will lead them through the hard times later in life.
Speaker 2:I feel like this might be more authentic to me as a person because I can be pretty old school in that sense where I'm not a fan of participation trophies and things like that. So it would be very contrived and unnatural for me to just outwardly praise my son all the time when I'm like, ok, you didn't really do that much, like you drew a picture, ok, it looks like a worm, but I just I think it's such a cute idea, but I, you know, I'm working on this. This is, you know, my self-improvement journey. This is my breaking the cycle journey.
Speaker 1:I love that. Let's get back to Melissa. The next spring she is in London. During the day Melissa volunteers at an organization that advocated against female genital mutilation and at night night she worked at a table dancing club called Images. Again, she tells no one. She fears she'll lose Rick if he knows the truth and she feels this weird sense of obligation to protect him from losing the flawless version he thought she was. She writes my lies had built a cage around me and I sat in it, wanting to be free so badly that I just pretended I was. Then one afternoon she gets an email from her mom. Subject line you're dancing. And the email is horrible a gut punch.
Speaker 1:Melissa writes she said she was humiliated. I know you're stripping. She said I am not a stupid or naive woman, this is all my fault, it went on. She compared my having lied about my job to my father's adultery. She said it made her want to puke.
Speaker 1:Melissa continues. The fear, distress and isolation I had already begun to experience as an individual working in the sex industry was compounded. My sense of self was shattered, my sense of trust in my mother destroyed. At the time I pushed the thought of all this away. I needed to believe she still loved me, that I was still lovable in spite of what I'd become. And I hate that she writes what I'd become there instead of in spite of what I was doing. She's more than a sex worker. She's more than a liar. Obviously she's found herself in this very dual life that she's living, full of lots of conflicting and confusing feelings and thoughts, but it seems to me like she felt like she could not live her authentic life and still hold on to the love of the people that she loved. Her mother comes to visit her in Europe and Melissa takes her everywhere, pays for everything, but she writes it wasn't fun at all, something felt wrong and the feeling couldn't be shaken. They don't talk about her dancing at all and Melissa feels lonelier than ever. She has her fifth and final internship in New York City At this point. She's been dancing on and off for three years and she continues to do so at Flash Dancers in New York City while working at another nonprofit during the day.
Speaker 1:At this point in the memoir we learn that Melissa had been cheating on Rick off and on for years, since Mexico. Again, she's living this dual life. It's almost like she's two Melissas and she. It's with one of these other partners that Melissa gets pregnant and she elects to have an abortion.
Speaker 1:This is another lie that she has to keep from Rick, and she writes throughout this section how she knows that all of this was very wrong, but that she struggled to own the part that she played because shame would not allow her to acknowledge her wrongs. And I found that so interesting. It was almost like too much for her brain, her heart, her soul to handle, to confront this part of her life, and I think she's right to feel shame here, to feel shame for lying to this man who loves her. And it's really interesting to me the distinction between being shamed for things that we shouldn't be shamed for, which I think is a huge part of her book. But I do think that there are some behaviors that deserve to be shamed for sure, and in this case, shame is informative.
Speaker 2:You know, shame needs to exist. It just, it just shouldn't be weaponized in the way that it is. She actually mentions, I think, in the beginning of the book, one of the theorists or psychologists that she had quoted says something like because we're social beings, shame is inherent in our culture and in our social lives, because there are societal norms that we have to uphold. You know, so there is a right and wrong. Yes, so I like that. She did acknowledge the fact of how shame was keeping her from doing what she's supposed to be doing, which is owning her role in this.
Speaker 1:Yes, just another way to realize how shame holds us back from living our most authentic lives. So she moves to New York after college with Rick and she writes. Despite my provocative past, I had settled into a decidedly normal life. She's still reconciling her relationship with her mother. She writes about calling her every Sunday because she'd feel guilty if she didn't and she also knew that her mother wouldn't call her. But they skate over the past and focus on neutral topics. Melissa writes I told myself to be happy, I had no reason to be sad, but everything doesn't feel fine and actually Melissa is starting to feel angry. She says Everything doesn't feel fine and actually Melissa is starting to feel angry. She says it's as if I had become the pain. She wants to be a writer, a poet. So she signs up for this guy, larry Fagan's class. He makes her feel like her writing is shit. But during a one-on-one meeting he suggests that they work privately together and she could pay for it with sex. She had written about her past in the class.
Speaker 1:She writes today, bree from college comes to visit and it's with Bree that Melissa finally shares everything. They end up falling in love. Melissa writes, and this she doesn't keep from Rick. He gets upset and Melissa comes home one night to find that Rick is gone, but all of her diaries have been pulled out and obviously read through. Melissa thinks, okay, this is it. Finally he knows there's a sense of relief and he will be done with me. But that's not what happened, she writes. The fact that he was willing to forgive me made me feel as if I had no choice but to stay.
Speaker 1:More time went by and we got engaged Deep down. He was still angry, we were both confused and I was ashamed. Eventually I called the engagement off and I know that Melissa had a bigger purpose for this book than just merely sharing her journey and her personal memoir, which I think is super fascinating. I wanted more. She just tells us about Bree, this woman that she's able to unburden herself to and fall in love with, and then that's it. She just went back with Rick and eventually called the engagement off. I wanted more, melissa. I wanted more. Yeah, she has a very interesting story.
Speaker 1:She shares this quote from 17th century Japanese poet, mizuta Masahide, which I love my barn having been burned down, I can now see the moon. She writes that she sees the wisdom in this quote now, but not at the time, because after Rick left it was just darkness. She writes I drank to fill myself up. I drank to drown the darkness. I fucked anyone to feel something, and still I felt nothing. I something, and still I felt nothing. I felt nothing. I felt nothing. Then I felt pain.
Speaker 1:Seven months after the engagement is called off, she starts to see a therapist, who refers her to a psychiatrist who gives a prescription for pills. That, she writes, makes her feel even more out of control. She also doesn't follow his advice to try a 12-step program and instead she starts trading sex for cash. She writes I told myself that sex was work, a job like any other. So what if I enjoyed it? The truth is, I didn't enjoy it as much as it offered a feeling of relief. When I wasn't working, I felt fragile, stressed out or depressed. So she sells sex online for about three months. Then she does finally attend a 12-step program. This is about a year after the initial suggestion and she writes this was my moment of grace.
Speaker 1:She continues in recovery. I was offered an opportunity to live by a new set of principles. Sobriety, I was taught, meant that I would have to learn to pass up instant gratification in exchange for the dreams and ambitions I had tossed aside. It was an opportunity to become just one person instead of two the unlovable person I feared I was on the inside and the I don't give a fuck person I presented to others. Both these versions of me were false. In recovery, they said I could become the woman I was meant to be, and I did. Her recovery was all about the radical acceptance of herself, even the dark parts, and man. When you can truly accept yourself the good, the bad, the ugly and realize that you aren't God, you know you aren't perfect, but you're still lovable and you still have value and you still have worth, that is the beautiful place that I wish we could all be All right.
Speaker 1:So Melissa starts teaching. She writes. My first day of teaching coincided with my 90th day of sobriety. Teaching was exhausting and I was terrible at first, but I was determined. She has many students who were labeled limited in English proficiency and, as an art and creative writing teacher, she quickly realized she needed a new approach than just reading to her students. She writes. My job, as I saw it, was to give my students permission to tell their truths and make art that represented their experiences. Together, my students and I explored new and familiar materials. We took risks and made discoveries. We made mistakes and we fixed them. Kids are quick to crumple up a piece of paper and take a new one, but in Miss Petro's art class there was no starting over, only turning whatever we'd begun into something else, and I loved that. I told my husband I was like I read about this thing in one of my memoirs. I want to implement it. I love this idea of not discarding anything as ugly or wrong or imperfect, but instead taking something that maybe didn't start the way that you thought it would and turning it into something beautiful and realizing that the opportunity to turn something beautiful is always there and she's finding herself more and more through her writing and through her sobriety journey and through her teaching.
Speaker 1:She has the opportunity to write an article for the Huffington Post criticizing online classifieds Craigslist founder Craig Newmark's decision to cave to political pressure to remove the erotic services section of the website. She writes I'd used my firsthand experience selling sex on the platform to support my argument that not all women on Craigslist were underage or working for a pimp, and because I was also arguing that sex workers should be allowed a voice in the conversation about women's participation in the sex industry and be unashamed to speak for themselves. I signed my name to the piece. The New York Post picks up on this. They write an article titled Bronx teacher admits I'm an ex-hooker. She's immediately banned from her classroom.
Speaker 1:She writes the internet shaming was fast, intense and seeming unending. There's so many stupid puns and titles. She's called a whore. She's deduced down, Her character questioned. She writes I held my head up high, but I was also human. I was angry and confused. I was right. I believed, but then how could the world be so wrong? Part of her hopes that some good will come of this draw traffic to the Huffington Post article, have people come to new realizations? But mostly it's just a fucking shitstorm of people laughing at her, calling her stupid, random men sending her dick pics. She writes for a long time in my mind I became exactly what the New York Post said. I was a disgrace. I have carried the shame of that experience for a decade.
Speaker 1:But she writes that ultimately there was good that came of it, because she felt empowered to finally share her story and write this book. And she also says that there's not a shame story that she can't relate to this is her taking back her narrative. She writes For so much of my life I felt irredeemable. I had so much then to reclaim. When I look back at the years lost to shame, the years of feeling around blindly in the dark of my self-hatred, I recognize the honor and bravery this took.
Speaker 1:She continues Becoming a writer. Coming clean and telling the truth of my experience saved my life, even as it further complicated my relationship with my mother. So she's been, you know, let go from the classroom. We talked at the beginning of the episode about her settlement terms. She can no longer seek work as a teacher in New York City public schools, so she's supplementing herself by writing. And what is she writing about? Obviously, this experience. This makes her mother very angry. Her mother threatens to publicly discredit her and Melissa tells her that she's sorry. She feels embarrassed by Melissa's work and she loves her very much, but she has to live her truth. She finally has to live her truth. She writes I spent a long time waiting for outside affirmation. I'm learning to give myself what I need and I'm surrounding myself with others committed to living similarly.
Speaker 2:Yeah it can be hard to figure out how to live your most authentic life because your metrics are from where your parents or society you know you have to figure that out.
Speaker 1:Melissa writes about meeting Aaron and how, before their first date, she actually purposefully withheld her last name so that he wouldn't Google her and go down that rabbit hole and maybe have all these misconceptions about her. Well, he does anyways. I have no idea how. He must have excellent sleuthing skills.
Speaker 2:I mean, I don't know. I mean, everybody does a little recon.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's true right, but he doesn't bring her past up. He lets her do that first, which is a really good move. Then he puts her at ease by telling her something equally as personal to level the playing field, and then they move on. About a year later, they get married. She writes this when it comes to dating and baggage, we've all got baggage. What works in my marriage is that Aaron and I are both teachable and we are committed to doing the work. Neither of us demand the other to be perfect, only that we both remain open and willing to learn. I thought that was such a beautiful way to write about marriage. Do you feel like that's where you are with your husband?
Speaker 2:I feel like we have to constantly remind ourselves of that. So with a partnership it's just really hard. It takes a lot of work. So with my husband and I and my partner, life partner, basically baby daddy, all of have to. Actually, he reminds me more than I remind him.
Speaker 2:I feel like I do admire that about him, that even though I am the marriage and family therapist, I fall back on old patterns and it's really hard for me because it's it's my own feelings of like fear, you know, and anxiety, but it's when, whenever we get into a tough spot, then I'm already starting to catastrophize. You know my guilt ties into it and so I forget that we are committed to learning and and changing for each other and figuring it out together versus him. Every time we get into an argument, he always reminds me that he was like you know, and when, when we get in an argument, I never think that it's gonna end. I always think how are we gonna fix this, and so that's. He actually said that to me in one of our very early big arguments before we even got married, when he was just like. That never even crossed my mind and me already I was crying because it takes me days to finally come back together to talk about it. Yeah, but I was crying for days because I was actually mourning the relationship already. So he was like I never thought, it never occurred to me to even think that it's over.
Speaker 2:I always think of it as how are we going to fix this? Yeah, and so I was like, oh damn, my thoughts are bad, you know, or not bad, but like this is where you learn your own automatic thinking and those will. All that stuff with my parents and all those rules. You know what I mean, because that also ties into shame and guilt as well, because it's basically I married somebody that my mom didn't approve of. So then now it's like, oh my god, it's proving her right. Or like, did I make the wrong choice? All of that comes back into play, you know. So it's so true, you really do have to commit to learning together and being open and giving giving your partner grace, but also giving yourself grace to go through those ugly moments and like, give me a sec to learn and I'm still growing as a person.
Speaker 1:You know, yeah, it can be really hard but like luckily, we have really great men who get us, understand us, work with us. So this leads us to another big thing that I think a lot of women have to deal with mommy shame. Melissa starts her motherhood journey. She writes a lot of women have to deal with Mommy shame. Melissa starts her motherhood journey. She writes a lot about being a stay-at-home mom and the invisible load Just had an argument about this, like my mental load, help me with the mental load.
Speaker 1:Yes, melissa writes, let's talk about how all of this is taken for granted and how we even take ourselves for granted, how we don't value the labor and packing our kids' lunches or recognize the strengths or skills it takes to advocate for our children. We undervalue our own contributions and dwell on what we didn't get done. She continues all day long. Minute to minute. I feel the pressure to work and to not work but instead take care of my family. Around every corner there's another irritating reminder of something I haven't done and I really resonated with this section. You know, melissa brings in a lot of other women's honesty and truths about how overstimulating, isolating and sometimes disappointing motherhood can be, as well as the pressure to only be grateful instead of acknowledging that it can be really, really hard. She writes about how, in the age of social media, women have been able to turn to one another to shed light on these truths. But social media also shows the happy, perfectly curated mom.
Speaker 1:I especially felt seen by one of the women that she interviews Alicia's comment. Alicia says in all my different roles there's always a feeling of I should be better, a better wife, a better mom, a cleaner household, I should be more thin, more organized. I should exercise more, but I should also be more mindful. I should give myself grace. All these seemingly contradicting things that we're supposed to be doing. It's exhausting. It feels like there's always something to remember, always something to be thinking about, always something to be on top of. How do you and your husband divvy up the mental load? You talked about this discussion that you recently had with him, and I know you brought your son into the world a little bit over a year ago and that just increases the mental load so much, because now it's not just remembering stuff for you, it's remembering stuff for the baby as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, lucky for us, we're sort of besties, and so it's with a lot of humor, we play around a lot, and so when we have little moments we'll just crack up at our failings. We're like, at least he's alive. For me, like I think the adjustment was hard even prior to the first year, but like when he was born, I actually had already settled, my mindset had already settled, like I'm going to be a childless woman, Okay, and so I'm reconciling that and I'm okay with it. So shout out to all the childless women that does not make you any less of a woman, you know. Or women who are trans women. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:It just makes the experience different. I am lucky that my partner is very involved, so even with that, that benefit in that privilege of having a person who's very aware of the responsibilities it requires. You know it's so freaking hard, yeah. So we do not need that extra external judgment, please. Yeah, the mom shaming is real. You know like it's so crazy because you see so much on social media where it's a lot of really moms coming together like sharing their experience and kind of laughing about.
Speaker 2:Sometimes you hate the job. It's a thankless job and it's okay to be frustrated. It doesn't mean that you're. That's not you as a mom. Okay, I'm just having a moment to make fun of this. I'm just having a moment to make fun of this.
Speaker 2:But damn, those comments people are maybe you shouldn't have had kids. I'm like you know what you need to chill the fuck out Totally Like you don't know. Yes, yeah, and so the thing is it's like even if you're, you know I do go through that that guilt of, because now you're seeing the explosion, the development and things changing day by day, and so I already know that in my head head I'm already feeling like he's gonna take his first steps at daycare and I'm gonna fucking miss it. You know even his first words, his first word girl. Well, technically not really his first word, because he's still not really saying things with intent, but he'd be saying coco, so much all right. Which is my sister. Oh, my god, I'm right here at home and so I'm like you need mama. Yeah, you're like mama, and so I'm like you need mama. Yeah, you're like mama. Please, no go go.
Speaker 2:I'm like oh, oh, my God, and so, but it's just, it's. I feel like, as a mom, you're kind of, or, for me, I feel like I'm always stuck in this perpetual state of guilt. Yeah, perpetual guilt. Be real, it's a really, really hard job and it's the most thankless job there is. You know what I mean. So, yeah, even though it has this joy, I mean okay, so I'm a stay-at-home mom, basically on weekends, and damn, it's hard because it's you do want to have your adult moments. You know, you forget what it's like to be an adult, and so, at the same time, you also have to remember that you, you have to feed yourself as a being, your.
Speaker 2:It's not motherhood that defines you or your job. For me, my problem was, before I had a child, is that so much of my self-worth was derived from what I did, and so if I'm not good at my job, I'm not a good person or productive person. So now it's like the motherhood layer, and so it's one of those things where you wake up and you're just. You feel like you're busy all day. Even I got to wash these dishes real quick, you know. But then you nutritious meals, trying to do as much home cooking as I can. And then you blink and you're like, oh shit, the day's over, we don't have time to do anything else yeah.
Speaker 1:There's that saying right, put your mask on before you put the child's mask on. But it's like how is that actually done? Because they're relying on you. You're a hundred percent responsible for them. You know, my husband likes to say being a parent is only hard if you want to be good at it. And it's like it's because you're putting that stress on yourself. You are, you are Cause, you see the responsibility and you accept the responsibility the gravity of it, the gravity of it, and it is a big deal, and like we do want to.
Speaker 1:I mean I want to raise beautiful, kind, compassionate humans to help make the world a better place. I can't do that if I'm not putting in the work. Yeah, but you're right, it is so important for us to like realize that we are important and that our needs need to be met, and we can't. You know, the other thing that I see a lot on the internet is like you can't pour out your cup if there's nothing in you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, If your cup's empty you know, but does our society reward that? I'm like you. I have an amazing, incredible partner who also realizes the responsibility and he loves it.
Speaker 1:He loves being a dad and I feel shame about that. Am I not being a good enough mom? Because, like, I don't want to be on the floor wrestling with my kids right now. Like, first off, my body is broken. Okay, like, let's be real and I don't know what I was taught was. A good mom is not necessarily the things that I want to do. Yeah, I don't want to sacrifice myself every single day.
Speaker 2:You know, you feel the effects of that too, because I I'm getting a taste of it now, because I feel like when you give everything there is to give and you have nothing left, man, that's another layer of guilt, because now I'm short with you know. When he cries, you know. Or there's little things that you no longer want to do because you just want to get it done quickly, like just as simple as a feeding. I want to spoon feed him because I want him to eat in 20 minutes, because we got to go somewhere. But then you're, now you're not giving him the opportunity to have his sensory experience, meeting with his fingers and things like that. Or you don't want him to get messy because you got to clean it up, and that's why, because I'm so freaking tired and I'm so drained and so now you're not allowing him to really experience his world as a kid either.
Speaker 2:You know, sometimes you have to just let him be, but then I have nothing left and so then I'll get frustrated easily and I'm like they can feel that energy, so I'm like I don't want to be that mom. So sometimes I've actually told my husband this where, you know, we talked about the mental load and you know, sometimes he forgets and he lets me do all these things because it comes natural to me and I'm good at it. But I actually I broke down and I was crying to him and I was like, I know, you think I'm good at these things and I think about everything, but I don't want to be that person. I do it because I feel like I can't rely on you to do it or I have to, but I don't want to be that person because I'm a mess, like when I'm able to knock out everything else. I'm a mess to get there, yeah, yeah, and you know what?
Speaker 1:I don't want my daughter to see that that's what womanhood is.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Yes, so true. I don't want my husband and I started doing this thing where we encourage each other to tap out and there are days where I tap out, sometimes at like 5.30.
Speaker 1:And he's like I've got the kids you know, and there are times when they come to me and he's like I need 20 minutes and I'm like, yes, go, it's just lovely to like be there for each other and I just feel so. I just feel so lucky to have people like you in my life where we can just talk about this stuff and there is no shame and there is no judgment and we can laugh about how hard it is and cry about how hard it is, and cry about how fast it's all going and wish we could slow it down, and there's a lot of crying. But Melissa talks a lot about the community that she's found for herself at the end of the book.
Speaker 2:That was actually like I think that was one of my favorite parts.
Speaker 1:I love this part so much. It's just oh, girlhood, womanhood, yes, she writes to it. The love I feel for women keeps me alive. It nurtures compassion and reacquaints me with the love I feel for myself. Platonic love is where it's at 100%. We have some great women in our lives.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we do Before we get to the last section of her memoir, which is all about healing from shame and building resistance, I wanted to share one more quote from this section. She writes moms don't want sentimentality, bunches of flowers and brunch one day a year. We want legislative victories that protect our rights and afford us more freedoms Amen, okay. So how do we heal from shame and build that shame resilience? Melissa writes telling our stories, returning to the body, feeling our truths and developing critical awareness. It isn't about fighting shame, because when you fight a feeling, you're at war with yourself. Instead, freedom comes from getting quiet and curious and welcoming and accepting the feeling so as to allow it to pass. Only then can you turn the fight to the real enemy the institutions weaponizing our perfectly natural emotions against us. Melissa really encourages journaling getting those thoughts and feelings outside of you the good, the bad, the ugly, the weird, the messy so you can pause and reflect on them. Okay, why am I feeling this way and can I give myself some grace and communication? She writes by reaching out and sharing our personal stories, however shameful, we develop a clearer sense of who we are and what we believe, and we create a world where others are equally emboldened to express who they are, understand how they feel and ask for what they need. She continues ultimately to reconnect with the world and ourselves. We must connect with other women, even when it's hard. We must learn to love by loving, and I thought that was so beautiful and it's so true. And she writes a lot about forgiveness Like I said earlier, giving yourself grace. She writes when I make a mistake. As a mom, I model self-forgiveness. I teach my daughter by example that it's never too late to accept all parts of ourselves, including our shame. When I read this section, it was a bit of an aha moment for me, a key to really being able to teach my daughter that self-love is so important, self-forgiveness is so important, and that I'm not perfect and I'm okay with that, and she doesn't have to be perfect either.
Speaker 1:Melissa also has this great section in the book where she writes about the culture of shame and writes about shamed women in our society by the media the men who really do tend to get off scot-free. She brings up names like Amber Heard, monica Lewinsky, anita Hill, plus more, and she provides this guide that I love, so I wanted to include it. She writes when you encounter a story that makes you question your self-worth or the worth of another human. Here are some questions you might ask. Is this story factual? How else could these facts be interpreted? What details are being left out? Who benefits from this narrative? And reflect on why you feel that way, maybe why you acted a certain way?
Speaker 1:And I really appreciated that checklist, that practical guide, a way to help critically think about certain situations. Yeah Well, anae, that is Melissa Petro's, shame on you. How to Be a Woman in the Age of Mortification. And you know it is a how-to guide. Like I said earlier, I gave you some little snippets of how it is a how-to guide. I feel like Melissa's book is not only a call for me, the individual reader, to find and let go of what I feel ashamed of or what triggers shame in me personally, but also an ask of all women for us to all be here for each other. Let's come together, connect, provide that safe, shame-free, judgment-free space for us to exercise all of our demons, because, like it's hard enough, let's just. Let's just be here for each other. Now, guys, come on. I just encourage all of us to ask ourselves how does shame hold me back from living the life that I want to live, that I deserve to live.
Speaker 2:I think this book was a really good reflection book in the sense of isolating shame from guilt and things like that. It did get me thinking about these things and also having yourself check in with how you feel towards other women that was a great part. Like, if you have this thought, and this is something that's always present in my mind anyway, like in general, this is part of my overall growth as a human being. I always, always try to meet people where they're at. This is just. You know how I try to approach relationships, and then this was my approach in therapy.
Speaker 2:Anyway, I'm very much about you honoring your experience and you are the expert in your life, but at the same time, you have to take responsibility for those things and also knowing yourself, and so I think that to be able to live an authentic life is the greatest blessing, and it's sad that not everybody gets to do that. You know. I know that we come from a place of such privilege. You know we just just having a career, having an education, having parents that love us, having a support system.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, Shout out to the single moms because I don't know how the hell they're doing it. Seriously, I also often think about single parents.
Speaker 2:They are amazing. Yeah, I feel like I definitely want to continue to create that kind of space, that kind of community for women, you know, because we are our best allies.
Speaker 1:Exactly. Let's be compassionate with one another, let's talk to one another, let's listen to one another. Thank you, anais, so much for doing this with me. Thank you very much and, yeah, we'll have you on the show again soon. Okay, bye, bye. Thanks for listening to Babes in Bookland. To access the full version of this episode, you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts or support us on Patreon. Visit babesinbooklandcom for more information.
