The Other Side of Shame: What Nobody Tells You About What's Waiting There

I am not Brené Brown. I am not an expert on shame. I haven’t read enough on her work, or anyone else’s, about shame to qualify as someone who has knowledge or depth in this field.

What I have is life. What I also have are lessons. And what I lastly have are ears who have heard what’s been said about this topic — I’ve listened long enough to what’s been said about shame from pulpits, podcasts, and people trying to make sense of it.

I’m 32. I’m Black. I’m a woman. I’m Christian. I’m a New Yorker.

Each of those things adds a different layer of lived experience and expression.

I don’t think I should, or will, be able to get into each of the layers. But what I will say is that within my lived experience as a 32-year-old Black Christian woman from New York, I have heard enough about experiences of shame from people who have “done something to be ashamed of.”

As a 30-year-old Christian, I am finally assured that we indeed ALL sin and fall short of the glory of God. I can VERY humbly admit that I’m part of that number.

But when I look around the church scene and scope out the groups, I see the harmful and I see the harmed.

Often, when I hear messages preached about shame, it’s from the perspective of the harmful:

• David, when he killed Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband, so he had reason to be ashamed

• Peter, when he denied Jesus three times after he said he would never and after Jesus had been taken to be crucified

• The prodigal son, who demanded his inheritance, wasted it and had to run back home

• Adam and Eve, who disobeyed God, ran from him and He had to go looking for them

But I feel that often, the stories of the harmed go untold. The weight of shame that people put on them is ignored:

• Tamar, who was raped by her half-brother, didn’t do anything wrong but bore that shame

• Job, lost everything he had and people speculated that he must’ve done something to God to suffer the way he did, lived in shame

• Hagar, who minded her business and followed the instruction of her master, had a child with a married man and carried the shame of a baby and abandonment while she was already a slave and foreigner

• The woman whose period would not stop did not do a thing to cause her diagnosis, and she lived with shame until she was healed

Society calls Tamar’s trauma a scandal. Job’s suffering, bad luck. Hagar’s abandonment, “complicated.” The bleeding woman, a medical mishap. But rarely do we call it what it is: shame they didn’t choose and shouldn’t have to carry.

One label I didn’t give myself earlier was divorced.

Because it’s a shameful word. Heavy with grief, not truth. Even if the truth sets you free, the label still carries what people project onto it, the lies told about it, and the explanation you feel you have to give for it. Especially in the church.

The truth of the situation, your side of the story, the real of what happened does not make the label any less full of shame.

And I want to break the shame.

I don’t only believe in a God who redeems broken situations, but I believe in a God who allows you to be in broken situations you didn’t create to rescue you back into His arms.

Without the rape, Tamar would’ve never received justice and had been forced into speaking her truth and disrupting abuse. Without the loss, Job would’ve never had the depth of conversations with his friends, and ultimately with God, to show that He controls, arranges, and recovers all. Without the baby, Hagar would’ve never come to know the God who sees her and honors the overlooked. Without the blood, the woman would’ve never had her dignity restored or came to know healing through Jesus.

Without the divorce, I would’ve never remembered the strength in my village, the hope in my willingness to trust the next step, and the grace that God has given me to live happily.

I would’ve never known that God is concerned with my true smile.

Shame keeps you silent, whether you’ve harmed or been harmed. It tells you to lie, shut up, avoid, turn the other way, run, and hide.

Recently, my church has been doing a study on the Holy Spirit. Most recently, the lesson was about the Holy Spirit as a restrainer.

However, an important note that was raised in the study is that the Holy Spirit as a sort of “conscience,” is different from your natural reactions that are shaped by your personality, upbringing, and traumas.

This was important to me because my natural reaction IS restraint. The Holy Spirit restrains us from harmful actions, but my natural restraint was keeping me from necessary ones.

I am deathly quiet, calm, and calculating for a LONG time. By the time I do explode, it’s actually too late. All the while, I believe the Holy Spirit could’ve been nudging me to step further, use my voice louder, walk harder, express stronger.

And I restrained Him. Because of shame.

If I had let the shame go, and let the Spirit guide, I may have left sooner.

I definitely would have left sooner.

If I was okay removing the shame and sharing that I was being abused — maybe, just maybe, my voice would have grown stronger sooner.

For the one who harms, shame looks like avoidance.
For the one who’s been harmed, shame looks like pride.

It’s “I can’t believe this is happening to me.” “I can’t tell anyone this is my life because I need to keep up the facade.” “I can’t reveal the truth because I’ll look weak.” “I can’t get into it because I’ve never fallen apart before, and I won’t start now.”

But pride is just grief with armor strapped to it.

And it’s time to take the armor off.
Place your pride aside.
Let the shame go.

Because your silence was never protection — it was a prison.
And your story is the key.