My Shame Drawer Story

Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that I'd be telling the world about my deepest darkest secret. And, that I'd be making ART with it. 

But that's what alchemists do, we turn our greatest pain into power.

This is a variation my official chapter - in the Mosai Messages Book

Purchase the book HERE (and read 12 chapters by other incredible authors!) 

[ Photo by Erik Leise, my high school art teacher. Hair/Makeup by Makeup by Holly ]

I’ll never forget the feeling of euphoria, the stark quiet driving in the car as I looked over—no one in the passenger seat, no music playing on the radio. Had I ever been in a car this quiet? I was sixteen. This was the first time I ever drove a car by myself.

I knew exactly where I was going; in fact, I had been plotting it for years. After four years of my own quiet suffering, this was my “joy ride” to reclaim my dignity.

 Let me take you back to how I got here.

I started my period when I was twelve. Getting my period was a very taboo topic in my culture, community, and family. I knew the basics, but it's like the tone of the air changed when they talked about it in sex ed class. Hush hush, don’t ask questions, but quietly fret. I remember thinking, is this some kind of cruel punishment for being a woman?

My mom left one box of pads for my sister and me in our bathroom, saying in one of those cringe mom voices that we would need these one day. Ew mom, go away, and we shooed her away.

A few months later, I got my period and I quickly went through that box of pads. After that, my mother never left any supplies again, and I didn’t ask for help. I went through four years of what I called scrounge, beg, borrow, and steal for supplies. Despite growing up in an upper middle class family, I lived through period poverty.

[ The week I got my period, my expression says it all, LOL! ]

I would take extra tampons that they put out in the ladies room basket at the tennis club. I’d take a tampon from a friend’s cupboard, knowing that her mom would always restock for her. If I was really ballsy, maybe I’d take an extra one, but even that felt naughty. I stacked tissues much of the time. I regularly went over the recommended eight hours for tampons.

When I really needed supplies, I would come up with an elaborate plan with friends—for some reason we needed to go CVS—let’s go look at makeup! Then I snuck over and bought myself a box of tampons—being sure I packed a tote bag for my discreet purchase.

[ 9th grade: smiling for homecoming, then miserable at the actual dance ]

To make matters worse, I was a competitive swimmer. I was in the pool six days a week, often for two practices a day. I never missed practice; I was dedicated of my own volition. I was even awarded as the first swimmer of the year by my Olympian coach because of my unusual dedication.

With all of my period drama and rationing of supplies, I honestly don’t know how I survived being in the pool that much. I used to pray. I almost always got my period on Saturday afternoon or Sunday—my one day off—so at least I could sit out during the first heavy day of my flow.

 I remember once, one of my teammates was on her period and clearly needed a change of tampon. Bloody water ran down her legs on the diving block, and it was my moment to walk up and stand in that red-stained chlorine water. Instead of feeling disgusted about the situation, all I could think was, surely the same thing has happened to the person behind me a time or two.

[ Watercolor drawing from high school art class. During this time I wore hoodies, jeans, and Birkenstock clogs ] 

One time, I remember being so desperate for supplies I was in panic mode. My mom said she was going to the grocery store and suddenly I pretended that I wanted to go with her. I snuck over to the female hygiene aisle, grabbed a box of tampons, and as discreetly as I could, placed it in the cart. She caught me. “You need to be careful,” she said sternly, “of TSS—toxic shock syndrome.” I was mortified. I’ll never ask her again, I said to myself. 

The worst part of all was this, we had three dogs and I instinctively knew I could not put my used pads and tampons into the garbage because the dogs would get in the bathroom trash and make a mess of it. So for four years, when I had to discard my trash at home, I stuffed it into my top dresser drawer. I hated that drawer so much. Even now I can smell the disgusting scent of rotting used pads and tampons. Anyone who knows me well knows that I’m a sucker for good smells and that I am overall a neat person. I didn’t want to be doing this, and yet the worse it got, the more I felt the need to cover it up.

[ The drawer. Instead of being filled with supplies, imagine it being filled with trash ]

That late summer day that I got my driver’s license, I drove myself to CVS. I told my parents I wanted to buy magnets for my new locker—a cover for what I had been plotting for years. I dreamed of this moment when I could buy myself tampons without being sly or sneaky. 

Then one day when I was seventeen, I came home to unusual quiet in the air. My dad, who was retired and often home, was out. My little brother wasn’t home either. Some force came over me. Without thinking, I went to the laundry room and grabbed a trash bag, then went upstairs and cleared out my shame drawer. 

I remember being so scared; what if my dad comes home right at this moment? He would take the trash out of my hand and I’d be busted. But I just kept moving. I had been to the dump but never on my own. What if the attendants asked me what was in the bag? Somehow, I'd made up this story that people that worked at the dump were this combination of police officers and investigators. How does it work again? I didn’t want to end up at the recycling station. I was trembling in fear.

I went to the dump, found exactly where I needed to go, and threw that bag into the big dumpster. And this huge weight was lifted and relief poured over my entire being.

 Soon after, I insisted that my mother take me to Ikea where I got some woven baskets (way less practical than an actual wooden dresser, by the way.) I moved the dresser out of my room.

[ Seen playing dress up in high school ]  

For over fifteen years I didn’t tell anyone what had happened. I didn’t ever want to think about that smelly, disgusting drawer again.

 And while I was done with the literal drawer, I continued to create shame drawers throughout my life. Shameful drawers where I suffered intensely, yet again in isolation.

What happened to the girl who was so ashamed of her body that she would rather suffer in silence for years than ask for help? She grew up to be a woman who had an unbelievably hard time asking for help. Asking was definitely BAD. 

 In my early twenties, I was on a bus trip in New Zealand and got a bloody nose. Instead of doing the sensible thing and, you know, asking for a tissue, I wiped my bloody nose on my purple trench coat sleeves. Why couldn’t I just ask for a damn tissue? And I loved that purple trench coat. Had I ruined it forever with blood stains? At some point my jacket got really bad and I finally asked for a tissue. The host in the passenger seat passed me a tissue. No big deal. No one cared or seemed to notice my bloody sleeves. I wondered to myself, seriously, what is wrong with me?

[ On that New Zealand trip, circa 2007 ]

I started my career as an entrepreneur when I was twenty-five. I thought I was circumnavigating having to ask for help: no more needing to ask for job opportunities or fill out a resume!

 I’m naturally creative. I can create stuff and then go out and serve people. Ha! Talk about the biggest wakeup call of my life!

I was often drawn to groups where they talked about giver’s gain. Give to others, serve serve serve, and it will come back to you! It’s a nice idea, but it only works if you know how to receive! I’ve referred hundreds of thousands of dollars to other people who made so many connections from those referrals. Meanwhile, it was often excruciating for me to ask for the sale. Be the nice girl, accept referrals when they come, keep in incessant service mode, but don’t ask.

[ My early days as an entrepreneur, 2012 as a Health Coach ]

 And yet, in a twist of fate, asking came in a way I could have never imagined, with the one person who was there through the years whenever I needed to ask: my mother.

 One of my most vivid asks happened when I was getting out of an abusive situation with an ex. He had erupted in anger. It was late at night and we were in the middle of nowhere in rural Virginia. I didn’t have my car. I was so scared, I slept on the bathroom floor. 

 The savior—at least financially—was supposed to be my new client. Earlier that day, she said yes to a $3,000 program. Thank God! I was about to run out of money. But the internet was out, and so instead of billing the card on the spot, I said I’d send her the invoice the next day.

 I should have written down that damn credit card number, because in the time between me sleeping on the bathroom floor and getting to my next destination, she emailed back and said that she had changed her mind.

 I called my life coach in one of those emergency lifeline moments—another rare moment that I actually asked. I was so shaken. He hadn’t hit me and yet my body was covered in bruises and incredibly sore—some sort of trauma reflex.

I needed her to say, “Get out! Never look back!” But she didn’t.

“Maybe he was a little emotional,” she said.

 But then, I called my mom. She transferred the money, no questions asked, for me to get a bus ticket and a night at a motel. 

 Despite my sometimes complicated relationship with my mother, she was a teacher and always held herself with an I’m-the-principal-here so you-can’t-mess-with-me kind of energy. Her daughter would not be sleeping on the bathroom floor. “My mother didn’t raise me this way,” I told him the next morning. “Take me to the nearest bus station, now.” And I got out of there.

 I would never again be with a man who made me feel unsafe. We broke up, and I said goodbye to abusive men for good.

[ 2012: Quiet but powerful turning point for what was the come ]

 My mom has been there for me more times than I can count: when I struggled financially, when I was brokenhearted, when I had no food in my house and was too ashamed to ask. Who knew that the woman I was so afraid of would be the one person who would become my hero time and time again? 

 And yet, the lesson of taking out the trash and dumping it for good always stayed with me: I could free myself.

 When I was twenty-seven, I came out for the first time about my past sexual abuse, and my new boyfriend held me in his arms as I sobbed. That was the first time I ever really surrendered and felt what it was like to be held.

 That led to telling my spiritual teacher, a healer, and my parents about my past sexual abuse. A month-and-a-half later I moved to Paris, France, where I did a fashion immersion program and basically started a whole new track in my life. 

 

[ 2013: moved to Paris, France - got an internship in Fashion PR. Sidenote: I still use this handbag! ]

 This experience made a huge impression on me. What if what I want is on the other side of my surrender, of releasing my shame?

 But it took some years until I was ready to face the story of my physical shame drawer.

 I was staying in my childhood home with a friend, and I got an urge to move furniture around in my bedroom. Right after, I sat on the ground and, for the first time, I told my friend what had happened.

 It was my deepest, darkest secret, the thing I didn’t want anyone to know. She listened with such love and compassion. She witnessed me freeing myself.

 The crazy thing is, as I divulged my shame drawer, simultaneously so many others in my life started divulging theirs as well.

My new best friend confessed that she had never had an orgasm with a partner, which I found incredibly surprising. She seemed way more sexually liberated than I. And yet, her greatest shame was the thing that came pretty effortlessly to me. 

 We all experience shame in different ways. A group of us visited a tantra teacher, and I was part of the experience as my friend had an orgasm for the first time. It was an experience I had sworn myself to secrecy over—kind of twisted, but also incredibly beautiful.

 During this time, I also unwittingly stumbled upon my then-boyfriend’s shame drawer.

 He was so different from every other man I had ever been with. He wasn’t pressuring me to do anything with him sexually. With him, for months we just . . . cuddled. Okay, it was more than that-–but the truth is, the glue of our relationship was that we were really great friends. Maybe this was my new normal, and passion can be cultivated, right?

 I was shocked when I discovered, right around the same time I was opening up about my shame drawer, that he had a drawer and it was created in parallel time to mine.

 Both of our shame drawers started in puberty. My shame was internal with period blood, his was outward with sexual desire. To deal with this, he found porn. By the time he was about thirty, he was not only addicted to porn but had a solid decade of erectile dysfunction.

 So you can imagine the girl who had freed herself from her shame drawer, who was going to sacred sexuality retreats, had taken healthy communication classes, and had been graced with the beautiful compassion by so many along her journey . . .

[ 2016 - Lake Atitlán, Guatemala.  At a shamanic sacred sexuality retreat, months before I confronted my shame drawer ]

When she found his shame drawer, she met him with all the love in the world, right?

 Wrong. She was disgusted.

 “Oh, I don’t want anything to do with your shame drawer,” my energy said.

 To his credit, he worked with a therapist and realized how porn had messed him up psychologically, and he gave it up.

 I wasn’t exactly supportive. Behind his back I told my friends about his “problem” and honestly thought he was pretty pathetic. 

 Because that is what so many spiritual women do.

 We unpack our shame drawers– but we don’t give holy space for men to unpack their shame drawers.

 They aren’t masculine enough. Their sexual nature is disgusting. Their mistakes are unforgivable.

 I broke up with him soon after, over the phone. 

 I don’t regret breaking up with him. But absolutely I look back with regret at how I subtly, and not so subtly, shamed his shame drawer.

 Some months later, one of my close friends shared, over email, that he had been molested as a child. I was the first person he ever told that to. I was about to head into a retreat. I thought I responded with love and compassion, but I got the sense I didn’t respond in the right way, the way he needed. Our communication got a bit distant after that. Here I was, the “safe person,” and yet somehow I was not being safe in the right way . . . yet again.

[ 2019 Bali, Indonesia - at Speakup Monday by Robert Ian Bonnick. Sharing my Shame Drawer story for the first time publicly - at talk titled "The Art of Asking" ]

 The ironic thing is, a decade after uncovering my first shame drawer, I pivoted into the work I do now as a fashion stylist. I’m literally in people’s closets unpacking their shame drawers.

[ Photo by Lesley Bohm, Hair/Makeup by Brett Glam ]

Clients who had held onto things—with stories that mirror the pain and shame.

[ After purging this client's closet, we gave the clothing donations to the homeless - they were so grateful! ]

Clients who mourned bodies that changed, that would never fit into the things that were their identity before.

Clients who had reached incredible levels of success, and yet didn’t feel worthy to walk into Saks or buy themselves new clothes.

[ In high school, this client stole this skirt and went to jail for it.  Led to a big fight with her mother. It was overdue to get rid of this energy! ]

 Clients with addictions or chronic illnesses, clients who had committed crimes, been suicidal, suffered unthinkable things.

[ Entire car full of old clothes to purge ] 

It’s been shocking to bear witness to how many people were sexually abused as children.

[ I worked with the mother to Feng Shui her wardrobe, then her teenage daughter did this purge thereafter! ] 

For all of the shame drawers that I helped liberate, there were some where I held back.

[ This client had over 20 bags of clothes to purge. And yet, she wanted to take the bags to donation herself, which I heard she never did ]

I had a client in whose underwear drawer I found her vibrator hidden. She opened up that a few years before, she’d had a lover and for a short window realized she wasn’t dead inside. I look back and wish I’d had the courage to uncover what deeper pain lay there.

I had a client who sold her body. I didn’t know what to say.  

[ A nod to all the Shame Drawers I couldn't open. Photo by WorkPlayBranding ]

 I’ve had this uncanny ability to pull out people’s shame drawers, often without meaning to.

[ As my Alter Ego - The Style Dominatrix. Photo by WorkPlayBranding ] 

I saw my past boyfriend stumbling drunk out of the ABC store right as I drove by. Unbelievable, I thought. Here I was remembering how he was the first one who’d held my shame drawer of sexual abuse, yet here he was drowning alone in his shame drawer. 

 I had a male friend with a porn addiction. What if this time I see things differently, a yearning for connection and a painful past of neglect? What if his fear of intimacy and choosing to live in fantasyland is a camouflage for stories untold, his subconscious not wanting to remember what he had done or experienced?

Coaches, gurus, once-cherished teachers—the ones that get all the praise—their secrets inevitably come out about who they really are behind it all. Those have been some of the worst drawers to discover, hidden behind the people who pretended not to have them.

Alas, everyone can be both the heroine and the villain, depending on the day. Heck, depending on the millisecond. 

 

[ Wildness photoshoot experience. Photo by Tony Hitchcock ] 

And yet, I know this to be true:

Everyone has experienced and done things that they are ashamed of, particularly in a world that is so fucked up about sexuality. 

What is the thing that you feel is so dirty and disgusting, that makes you unlovable?

 What if you came to realize that your shame drawer also holds the place of your power?

On the other side of dumping your shame drawer is the internal freedom sweeter than anything you’ve ever felt.

I dare you to let go of that drawer. 

 

 As I wrap up this story, I’ve just learned that one of my high school friends died. A rare cancer. I still remember her as one of the hardest working people I’ve ever met, back when she was only seventeen. What was in her shame drawer? Or was it even hers? Maybe it was her mother’s or her grandmother’s.

What was in my grandmother's shame drawer? She died of stomach cancer at age thirty. I heard a renowned trauma expert say that the link between women who died from stomach and ovarian cancer in the 1950s and 1960s was childhood sexual abuse.

Does that explain why, at age three, I thought Santa Claus was peeping in my window? “He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake” meant that I’d better change discreetly, making sure my private parts weren’t exposed to my bedroom window. Why did I do that? I wasn’t sexually abused as a child, but clearly someone in my lineage had been.

[ From my childhood photo album ]

 Does this explain why, to this day, I am scared to go into the corner basement of my childhood home? A grown woman, an energy master, can’t walk down there. 

Scared of what I may find out?

Some shame drawers open when they are ready. 

 

PS That was the end of the story for the chapter.  Two months later, guess where I went…

To that haunted corner of the basement...

A friend pointed out, this was where my mom used to wrap our Christmas presents.  Some kinky, twisted clue to the treasures hidden in the unconscious?

Over the last couple months, I have faced some of my deepest fears- telling family and friends about this story of my shame drawer.  To my surprise, people have been very receptive and they have even opened up about their own hidden shame drawers. 

The journey continues... as I unpack my latest Shame Drawers, I do believe it's an ever-evolving process.

 The night before I shared this story, I did a ceremony with my dresser and shame drawer.  Covered with red roses, flowers from the yard, sacred objects from my ancestors, travels, and spiritual journey.  She never looked so beautiful, and I thanked her for being my greatest teacher.

 I hope my story helps you free yourself from your latest Shame Drawer.

Love,

Jenn - the Style Dominatrix

 

 

[ When you free yourself from your shame drawer, that's when you truly own the stage and have the style to match. Photo by WorkPlayBranding ]

PS If you want to free yourself from your shame drawer, watch my masterclass: FREEDOM FROM SHAME DRAWERS

I share more tools and resources to not only purge your physical closet, but be free from whatever shame is holding you back - so you can be the alchemist too! Watch HERE