NORMALIZE IT by Jessica Zucker: Author Q&A!
Hey y’all,
Dr. Jessica Zucker is a Los Angeles-based psychologist specializing in reproductive health, and author of the award-winning book I HAD A MISCARRIAGE: A Memoir, a Movement. I was lucky enough to snag this Q&A with her about her second book NORMALIZE IT: Upending the Silence, Stigma, and Shame That Shape Women’s Lives, out this week!
A brief intro:
In Normalize It, Zucker addresses a multitude of challenges women face—including girlhood, body image, motherhood, reproductive choice, sexual trauma, menopause, and more—that so often incite shame and overwhelming cultural pressure to stay silent. Based on patient stories, coupled with cutting-edge psychological research, Zucker fearlessly shares her insights into the shame and stigma that shroud so many women’s experiences and explores the liberation that can follow when we get vulnerable and talk about the hard stuff.
Yes, this is basically my dream book.
Q: OK first, tell us about why you decided to write this book!
A: I’ve always loved to write. I started writing as a child and this creative outlet continued to unfold over the years—in college and in graduate school as well. I became deeply engrossed in writing my dissertation en route to completing my PhD in clinical psychology and it was then that I knew that writing would be part of my career trajectory. This is my second book. I decided to write this book because I think this is a timeless but also incredibly timely topic that rests on the minds of most, if not all, women. My hope is that Normalize It is the mirror, the motivator, and the manifesto we’ve all been craving. Perhaps this book can act as a guide in helping us, once and for all, replace the antiquated cultural silence with storytelling. It is a nuanced look at what it means to be a woman that yearns to make readers feel seen, heard, and empowered to tell their stories. By normalizing talking about difficult things, we open the door to creating cultural change that acknowledges and supports women’s truths. The book tackles topics from girlhood through menstruation—and everything in between—with the aim of illuminating just how insidious cultural messaging can be, starting in girlhood and weaving its way through the various milestones we navigate over the course of our lives. Composite patient stories bring these issues to life by showing (not just telling) how people wrestle with each phase, with the taboos that strangulate, and how they come to better understand why they are who they are in the therapy setting (and outside of it). In these fictitious examples, patients work through their struggles out loud in the therapy room and grapple with how to speak their truths in other spaces: with friends and family, in support groups, in writing, in public forums, and elsewhere. We get a window into the complexity of what it means to scour our pain, our joy, our hopes, our anger, our disappointments in an effort to live with more freedom and flexibility. To shed shame. To step into more ease and vulnerability. And step far, far away from silence and stigma that no longer serve us.
Q: You weave in women’s stories throughout. What are some of the common struggles you see in your practice?
A: In the first chapter of Normalize It titled “Where It All Begins” I unpack the various stereotypes and cultural pressures girls and women are bombarded with throughout their lives. The “shoulds” we contend with, the expectations placed on us, the assumptions that loom. Girlhood is typically the place where it all begins (silence, stigma, shame, repeat). We begin to muffle our voices (presumably unknowingly since we are too young perhaps to be conscious of this while it’s unfolding). We learn not to speak up or take up space in a bold way. We learn to not know what we know. Dr. Carol Gilligan researched this extensively and published her seminal book on the topic in 1982, In a Different Voice. In her work, she explored how the sense of shame girls begin to feel about themselves shapes their behavior and creates feelings of isolation as they age. Her research over subsequent decades has greatly informed psychology’s understanding of girlhood and helped illuminate the roots of shame and silence many women carry. She found that young girls don’t need to find their voice; they start out with one, but as they get older and increasingly receive cultural messages about themselves—their bodies, their brains, their desires, their worth—that voice is slowly silenced. I had the honor of studying with Gilligan many years ago, and listening to her in our small group discussions and learning about the countless girls she worked with while conducting qualitative research was enlightening and deeply troubling. In writing this chapter, just like when I was studying with Gilligan, I was poised to do a deep dive into my own childhood experiences, to think back and try to understand the ways in which I was impacted by cultural and familial norms, and how the societal pressures—both subtle and demonstrative—shaped the woman I am today. We can’t undo the past, but we can connect the dots between the historical and present day, find meaning, and attempt to create more consciousness around why we are who we are and perhaps carve out a path forward that might be a bit different, a path that includes pockets of liberation.
I see these “shoulds” illuminated day in and day out in my clinical practice. As a psychologist that specializes in reproductive and maternal mental health, I commonly sit with women who are trying to conceive, struggling with fertility issues, grieving following pregnancy and infant loss, stillbirth, terminating for medical reasons, and navigating perinatal and postpartum mood and anxiety disorders. There is a strident trifecta swirling around the topic of miscarriage (and all of the other topics I take on in this book) — made up of silence, stigma, and shame. As I discuss in-depth in my book, each aspect of this trifecta stokes the next. The cultural silence provokes the blanketed stigma. The stigma ignites the insidious and all too pervasive shame. It’s a troubling cycle we find ourselves in as we navigate life after loss, as we are slapped by a society that shuts down when it comes to conversations around out of order loss. In turn, grievers are often met with stilted, awkward platitudes, whispered saccharine-coated sentiments, or worse, complete and utter silence. The current zeitgeist, then, further proliferates the silence. As the silence permeates, the griever might begin to question themselves and the very thing that just left them shattered. Was this my fault? Am I not supposed to talk about this? Maybe I should be over it by now… Alienated and thrust to the outskirts of communities, grievers begin to embody and potentially even embrace the stigma. And this lays the groundwork for shame to fester. The simplest way to achieve an antidote to this unhelpful cycle is to speak our truths. To persist in telling our stories. To gently and unequivocally resist self-blame — looking to the science and research about the actual reasons miscarriage occurs, rather than creating elaborate stories in our minds that all too often center on somehow having had the control to bring about a different reproductive outcome. To remember that we are, in fact, not alone. Approximately 1 in 4 pregnancies result in miscarriage, yet somehow we don’t seem to know of anyone who has been through it until we speak about our own. In no longer being hush hush about these profound experiences, we can change the cultural tide. We can live in a world that acknowledges miscarriage and the resulting emotions. We can cultivate a society that honors grief and hard conversations. We must work to do this for ourselves and for future generations, particularly because miscarriage is not going anywhere. There is no cure. This is a constant. It is therefore time that we collectively determine to normalize what is in fact a normal outcome of pregnancy.
My sense is that people blame themselves because, with the lack of a cultural framework for speaking openly about and addressing pregnancy loss, they turn inward. They turn in on themselves. I think we can agree that women are groomed to blame themselves for too many things from the get go, and miscarriage is a ripe opportunity to hurl harsh statements at oneself or to believe that somehow you could’ve done something differently that would have brought about a different result. We struggle with miscarriage in part because all too often we are surrounded by images of glowing baby bumps that we imagine got there easily. We live in a society that relies on happy endings in order to get through. We were raised in a world that commends achievement, accolades, and positivity. We were taught that if we try hard enough to achieve something, we can and we will. Pregnancy, and all that can happen within it, falls outside of this ubiquitous trope. We cannot control chromosomes, genetics, or things unbeknownst to us that may be happening in our bodies that can take a pregnancy off course. We don’t have all the control. But we turn to questions like: What if I exercised too much? Was it that sip of wine? Did this happen to me because I was ambivalent about becoming a mother? Or, alternatively, did this happen because I wanted it too much? The throughline being: I did something wrong. My thoughts and/or my actions were the cause. If only I had done something differently, I would have brought about a different result. When it comes to pregnancy and its loss, the onus does not exist on these types of actions or inactions. The research informs us that these things did not provoke the miscarriage. But, the mind fiddles. The mind yearns for understanding, meaning, and closure. The mind wants to believe: Now that I know what I did to create this loss, next time I will do something differently. It’s magical thinking. It makes sense that we grasp onto this way of thinking amid grief, even if it is faulty and ultimately unproductive. My hope is that if the cultural conversation surrounding miscarriage became a mainstay—and it was integrated into society—the knee-jerk reaction to place blame on oneself might dissipate.
Q: What advice would you give to someone who wants to share their story but fears judgment or dismissal?
A: Normalize It is dedicated to illuminating the various ways people can get out from under the weight of shame by sharing their stories. There is no one way to do this. Throughout the book, each composite patient example reckons with not only how to talk about their hardships in the therapy setting, but also wrestles with how to talk about these things in other settings as well. Some journal, others write a piece using a pseudonym, some join online support groups, others hop on a public stage, some decide to share with a neighbor, a trusted loved one, and others go public on Instagram. There is no right or wrong way to step into vulnerability and to begin shedding shame through storytelling. It makes sense to fear judgment or dismissal. And sometimes we are met with just that, especially by those who have yet to excavate their own lives. But that’s okay. I think we need to share, first and foremost, for ourselves. For the health and wellbeing of us. We aren’t sharing because we know someone will be empathic or celebrate our hard won wisdom. We don’t know. That’s the crux of vulnerability. We just don’t know what we are stepping into sometimes. Nevertheless, I argue that saying it—speaking our truths out loud—no matter the outcome is worthwhile. It is where freedom lies. It is the place of potential liberation.
When we speak our truths into the world, we not only validate our own lived experiences, but we also give others the permission to do the same. As we usher in a new era of normalizing talking about the myriad experiences that go hand in hand with being human, we create an entirely new psychological landscape for ourselves and future generations. There is hope, resilience, and joy in this practice. This book offers an antidote to the silence, a roadmap for unlearning the shame and dismantling the stigma.
Q: What are some insights you gained after writing this book?
A: In the composite patient examples throughout the book, patients work through their struggles out loud in the therapy room and grapple with how to speak their truths in other spaces: with friends and family, in support groups, in writing, in public forums, and elsewhere. NORMALIZE IT gives us a bird’s-eye view into the complexity of what it means to investigate our pain, relish our joy, explore our anger, and sit in our grief in an effort to fully feel the spectrum of feelings and maybe even experience a sense of liberation as a result.
Curating these stories felt effortless in many ways because of the hundreds of women I’ve sat with in my office over the last decade and a half. Due to their openness and eagerness to do the work in therapy, I have had the privilege of getting to know people in such dynamic and emotionally intimate ways. In some cases, it felt quite complex delving into these patient portraits as I was also attempting to be mindful of the trajectory of my life and the things I’ve navigated over the years, wanting to be sure to pepper in aspects of my own life lessons—the pitfalls and the triumphs, the pain and the hard-won wisdom. This book is not a memoir, but I wanted to be sure to look at myself, too, and the lived experiences I bring as a psychologist to the therapy setting in order to do the book justice.
I gleaned insight into the human psyche, the resilience people often muster when faced with unfathomable hardship, the pain people carry deep in their souls, and the hope that often remains nevertheless. Turning to the research on the various topics covered in this book also yielded important insight about the poignant statistics surrounding the loneliness epidemic, the percentage of women struggling with shame, and the ways in which our early lives affect the people we become.
Q: What’s one piece of advice you wish all women knew?
A: The work of creating more empathy and authenticity in our lives and communities begins with telling our stories. Especially the hard ones. Your stories matter. You matter! For the women who live with their stories untold, you are not alone. When we speak our truths, we have the potential to be part of igniting a personal and cultural revolution. If and when you’re ready, dare to share.
Let’s dare to speak what we have been taught to think is the unspeakable.
Let’s muster the courage to believe in our stories and the power they hold.
Let’s, once and for all, normalize talking about the hard things.
Where to buy the book:
How to connect with Jessica:
Love,
Becca