I was a highly anxious new mother.  I had a three-ring binder where I kept notes on the pregnancy and parenting books that I read and research on the top recommended baby products.  It was color coded and cross-referenced.  Once my son was born, I had another notebook in which I meticulously recorded feeding times, sleep patterns, and diaper contents.

It was extreme.

I look back on that season and I kind of want to bury my head in a pillow and hide in embarrassment.  I was so intense and so over-the-top, and I fear that my friends and family were rolling their eyes and trying not to laugh at me.

I think about that and I immediately feel silly and ashamed.

Some of us are more prone to shame than others, but all of us carry the capacity for shame.  Shame is a core human emotion, a deep and visceral experience that screams that at our center we are wrong and not enough.  Shame is not the same as guilt; guilt says we’ve done something wrong, shame says that we are wrong.

I don’t carry guilt with those new mom memories, but I do feel embarrassed and a little ashamed.  I wish I had been one of those cool new moms who was calm and unflappable, who trusted in her ability to know what her baby needed without compulsive research, and who sailed smoothly into her motherhood journey.  But that wasn’t me, and so I label myself as silly, ridiculous, lacking, or just plain wrong.

Then I slow down and step back.

I was a new mom, far from my family and support system.  I love my son so very much, and I was doing the absolute best that I could to love him and care for him well.  I was seriously sleep deprived.  I was coping with my anxiety and loneliness through research and obsessive tracking, which isn’t ideal but also isn’t directly destructive or harmful.  I was doing my best.

Being a new mom is hard.  Honestly, being a human is hard.

When I slow down and step back, I don’t feel embarrassed for my new mom self anymore.  I feel compassion for her.  I want to go back in time and give her a hug and hold the baby so she can take a nap and a shower.  I want to tell her that she will be okay, that at some point she will feel like herself again.  I want to tell her that precious little boy is going to be okay too.

Shame can overwhelm us and cloud our perspective.  When we feel flooded with shame, we need to push the pause button and slow down.  We need to take slow and deep breaths and ground ourselves in the present moment.

Then we can look back.  Take a look at your younger self, whether it is 30 years younger or 30 minutes younger.  Look at your younger self with compassion and kindness.  Extend the same respect and gentleness to yourself that you would to someone else.  Remember that you were doing the best you could.

Imagine your now-self going back in time and giving that younger self a hug and a kind word.  Imagine your now-self extending grace to your then-self.

Then, move into connection.  Connection is the antidote to shame.  (Connection is also a powerful force against anxiety, and coincidentally was the force that moved me out of my new mom anxiety).  Tell someone safe about the shame that you are carrying.

Once we say it out loud and share it with someone else, the shame loses its power.  Shame doesn’t stand a chance against self-compassion and connection.

Most of us have shame stories in our past, stories around awkward relational missteps, career mistakes, dating, parenting, or just the brutal turmoil of adolescence.  When we invite self-compassion and connection into our shame, we can begin to heal and move forward with freedom and grace.