by Pamela Wampler

Not long after I received my master's degree, someone asked me, "So, now are you going to have children?"

I felt stunned, as if someone had slapped me. Still celebrating my hard-won achievement, I wasn't thinking about kids. However, I heard the implication that I should be. I wasn't doing it right. My choices were inadequate. My life path was skewed. Under the stare of my questioner, I felt my accomplishment shrink. All I wanted was to disappear.

What happened to make me react so intensely? I experienced shame.

Researcher BrenŽ Brown, author of I Thought It Was Just Me (But it Isn't), defines shame as the painful experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging. In that moment, I exemplified her definition to a "T."

Because I wasn't considering motherhood, I thought there must be something wrong with me. I suddenly felt like a misfit.

Brown's research validates my reaction - and hopefully some of yours. After interviewing more than 300 women, she reached this conclusion: Shame routinely surfaces in our daily lives, often fueled by expectations about what is acceptable for us as women.

"These expectations dictate who we should be, what we should be, how we should be," she says.

Because these gender-based expectations filter through our communities, they vary. We belong to communities based on race, ethnicity, social class and faith, to name a few. They present different expectations for women's roles, dress and behavior.

Whatever the specifics, we feel the pressure these expectations exert, sometimes launched from multiple directions. When we fail to measure up, falling short of perfection, we're primed to experience shame. All it takes is some judgment and ridicule - often from ourselves.

In my scenario, I met the expectations of the academic community. As a 30-something woman at the time, I was coming into my own, empowered by my newly gained knowledge. When the questioner presented me with a different set of expectations, I saw myself as I imagined she did. I judged myself negatively.

Familiarity of shame

Brown discovered shame usually does not hide in the dark recesses of women's lives. Instead, it lurks in 12 areas: appearance and body image; motherhood; family (structure, dynamics, marriages, divorces, problems); parenting (how we raise and interact with our children); money and work (income, credit, employment); mental and physical health; sex; aging; religion; being stereotyped and labeled; speaking out (being perceived as a loudmouth or pushy); surviving trauma.

Looking back to my story, my shame fell within the area of motherhood. Brown learned that mother-related shame is an overwhelming issue for women, even for those who don't have children.

"In some communities, the expectation of motherhood has many layers, including norms of what's too young, what's too old and what gender babies should be (as if mothers controlled this)," she says.

Women who are married with one child are not necessarily immune from mother shame. Inquirers sometimes ask when they're having a second. Women with four or five children might be asked why they had so many.

On top of the expectation of motherhood defining womanhood, society holds some rigid expectations about what a good mother does. Unfortunately, these perfectionist standards creates shame in many women.

Despite learning how ubiquitous shame is, Brown delivers a message of hope and empowerment: We can develop "shame resilience."

Although we can never be completely free of shame, we can learn to recognize it and move through it constructively. This will prevent us from lashing out at others, beating up on ourselves internally or acting self-destructively.

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