Shush Your Shame

An Interview with Jennifer Jones, LMFT

Photography by Zoë FAITH Reyes

Jen Padilla Burger: You and I met over a decade ago working alongside each other at a non-profit organization that served children who had been abused and/or neglected. Our role was to provide therapy to children, foster families, and to support women in domestic violence situations. Since then your work has shifted to providing supervision to therapists who are supporting families on their wellness journey.  In your role as a therapist and supervisor, how do you see the role of kinship impacting children?

Jennifer Jones: Wow. I am transported back to one of the first experiences I had in my role as a “baby therapist.” The identified client was a teenage girl, but the more time I spent with the family, I became aware that the family was steeped in shame; their secrets were keeping them sick. The mother’s secrets that were once keeping her sick were at that point affecting her children severely. Shame can almost be contagious like that. As the mother began to open up, we arrived at a point where I needed to make a mandated report. The cycle of abuse was generational, and people were at risk of abuse. The mother had not been safe either. No one believed her or came to her rescue, so she learned to bury her feelings and her voice. And when the cycle repeated itself, and her daughter, wrought with shame, begged her mother “not to tell,” not to rock the boat, her mother shrunk as she had for so many years. She didn’t tell anyone, again. Without a doubt though, I knew what I needed to do. There was no question in my mind even if my heart was breaking for what I knew was coming. I consulted with my supervisor at the time, and at our next family session as I sat on the ottoman and this mother and her two young daughters sat on the couch, as we formed somewhat of a circle, I shakily and on the verge of tears broke the news. And it was as I expected. It was crushing for the family. They were not ready to silence the shame that had been silencing them for so long. There I was about to break that silence wide open. I knew I was doing the right thing. Sometimes the right thing is the hardest thing. Truly, the only way out is through. And sometimes, the passage to liberation is laden with pain. Not long after that session, the family no longer wanted me as their therapist. I anticipated that, and though it didn’t feel good, I understood. I also understood my assignment, that maybe I was just a small part of their healing journey, on their passage to liberation. So how do I see the role of kinship impacting children? Just like that mother transmitted some generational trauma that I guarantee hadn’t started with her, I have to believe that was the beginning of her transmitting generational healing. So really, kinship in the life of a child is everything. It’s a great privilege and profound responsibility. It’s a gift to be developed and nurtured. The ripple effects are endless, and we have agency over the direction of the current.

Jen: Jennifer, you speak regularly about growing up in a biracial family. Your father was Black and your mother’s family was White. Your mother married your father in 1969, just two years after interracial marriage was made legal. Because interracial marriage was unacceptable at the time, most of your mother’s family disowned her. You speak about being told as a child that you are “Black because you look Black.” Your experience of being biracial in America left you with a sense of “not being enough” as you didn’t solidly fit into the expectations of either race. In your blog, “Growing Up Biracial: How I Learned to Embrace Diversity,” you write about building connection through community. You state, “Through relationship, we learn about who we are and gain a sense of belonging.” Can you speak about your journey towards understanding your story and how it has impacted your view of kinship?

Jennifer: I’m indebted to my mother for having the presence of heart and mind to raise me with pride in my Blackness in a world that can often reject that part of me and either use my Blackness to exclude me, see my Whiteness as a way to exclude me, or use my Whiteness to explain any beauty or goodness I do have. There is a unique story that develops around biracial identity in that my heart expands with compassion to know everyone’s story, both sides. Instead of splitting, I seek ways to connect because my very existence depends on it. I have a diverse group of friends that make up the community that has carried me throughout life. I have White friends, Armenian friends, Nigerian friends, Jewish, Filipino, Latina, you name it. It’s a funny thing that people have guessed I am from so many different ethnic groups, as though I look like a melting pot, and many times people speak Spanish to me in hopes for a response. After doing my Ancestry DNA kit, I was saddened to find out that although I love and appreciate the Latino culture because of some of my long-time friendships, I have no blood ties. And let me tell you, I was semi-hopeful for my DNA to come back with some Native ancestry. My dad told us we have Native American blood and the results came back to prove otherwise. Some time later I read an article that reported many Black people would tell the story of having Native American ancestry to explain some of their physical features when in actuality they were features birthed out of rape by White men. That made so much sense to me that they wanted to explain away the trauma they endured. I think that’s the deepest sorrow of every Black person in America, that questioning of who we are and where we belong because we were intentionally stripped of every truly knowing. Identity: Knowing who you are and where you come from is your superpower. On a micro and macro level. Kinship is something we are wired for, and the trauma of having to restore that through slavery shows our resilience, and it also drives home the need for kinship. Kinship keeps us alive.

Jen: Trauma can have such an important impact on how we understand the world and our place in it. Personally, you have shared painful childhood experiences that include loss, homelessness, and other hardships. Now you are in a healing role as you support others in understanding trauma and how it influences their lives. Through your own experiences and in your role as a therapist, what are your findings about how trauma can affect our sense of belonging?

Jennifer: Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, coined the term “wounded healer.” While I am by no means a Jungian expert, I recently happened upon learning this concept through my own work in therapy, and by way of a dear friend who happens to be well versed in Jungian psychology and is a therapist herself. I think if we’re honest, there’s an arrogance that convinces us that someone has to “have it all together” before they can tell us anything at all. That’s an impossible and unnecessary standard for anyone to meet. It’s an isolating space to be in, and that’s where trauma can come in and paint a picture of our pain that feels chaotic and dark. Trauma feeds into feelings of shame that silence us and keep us stuck. When we can tell our stories in safe spaces, shame is silenced and trauma loses its grip on us. I love Brené Brown’s quote, “​If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can't survive.” When I can show up in my full humanity and you greet me with compassion, a genuine connection is created, and that inspires me and nudges me closer to the courage to keep showing up and keep telling my story; I know that I belong in those moments. You don’t need to be a therapist to be a part of this very human way of being in relationship with others. So no, we shouldn’t hold people to standards of perfection before we believe they belong in our circle, or we belong in theirs. What we can hold someone to is that they’re in trenches doing the work, too. My wounds create character and depth–they make me human–and my humanity is the very thing that brings me closer to the people I serve. My wounds remind me that the healing work is never done. Some of my wounds, they have scars now, and they too exist to remind me of the treasure of my humanity, my resilience. Desmond Tutu, a South African Archbishop and Nobel Peace Prize Winner for his role in opposing apartheid in South Africa, once said, “My humanity is bound up in yours for we can only be human together. We are different precisely in order to realize our need of one another.”

Jen: Serving your community has been your lifelong work. You serve both professionally as a therapist and as a church leader at the Inglewood Southside Church. Last year you led some members of your congregation through a Mental Health & Wellness group session series via Zoom. The series was designed to support your church family with understanding mental health, wellness, how to recognize challenges, ways to cope, and how to increase understanding and compassion. Can you share your observations of how education and healing can affect our sense of belonging?

Jennifer: Education is the first step in breaking any stigma. Stigma separates us, and knowledge and understanding brings us together. I learned that through my own journey with my herpes diagnosis. The less people knew about it, they were either curious and asked questions, or they criticized me harshly for it. More often, especially when I first started sharing with people, they condemned me; I was desperately seeking to connect with people and know I still belonged, and any thought of screening who to tell went out the window. I initially internalized that to mean something was wrong with me. What I learned over time was that the people whose hearts were to judge me instead of love me were uneducated and misinformed about the virus, and they were projecting their own feelings of shame onto me. Judgment outcasts people, and love and compassion brings people into the fold, even when it’s uncomfortable; when we’d rather sit in judgement of someone, it’s likely we are running away from discomfort. For the church, this is a layered issue that needs to be addressed and brought to the forefront. It’s one thing to read scriptures and preach loving like Jesus, and it’s another thing to actually live that out. Years ago I shared my testimony of receiving my herpes diagnosis and overcoming that shame, so my church family knows me as being “the therapist” and someone who isn’t afraid of a good, raw, vulnerable story. I saw so many light bulbs go on during the course of teaching the series. People came to me personally and shared how the class opened their minds and hearts. I had the privilege of holding space for people and modeling ways we can compassionately respond to our brothers and sisters when they share hard things with us all on Zoom. It was a beautiful experience. I taught the series, and I learned from their stories. We all learned from one another. That feels like belonging to me.

Jen: Shush Your Shame was created to help people understand the power of shame and the importance of telling their story. You write about how shame can eat away at our insecurities, wounds, and has the potential to diminish our self-worth. Last year, you bravely shared a personal experience that propelled you into your calling on the Shush Your Shame Podcast (Episode 9, The Metamorphosis of Shush Your Shame). Can you share how your story and the telling of it has played a role in your own healing?  How has sharing your story inspired others?

Jennifer: I feel like the part of my story I shared on the podcast about having herpes is so much a part of my purpose here on Earth that I’ve touched on it here and there already. My story has grown my capacity to love like nothing else ever could including learning to love myself, flaws and all. It shined a light on areas within me that needed excavating and restoration. I learned how to take responsibility for my part of my story. I always tell people that I went to school to become a therapist on paper, but it’s my life experience, my story, that charges me to come alongside people as compassionately as I strive to do. The more I’ve told my story, the less power shame has held over me. It’s just facts. It can be the absolute hardest thing to tell your story, and that’s how you know it’s powerful. No one has ever tried to stop someone from doing something they believed had no impact. In sharing my story, people have privately shared their experience with having herpes with me. People have sent people my way that received the diagnosis and were devastated just like I was. Simply sharing my story has shown me that courage is contagious. It may not be herpes, but we all have a story we tend to tuck away. We all grapple with the stronghold shame has to silence us, and if there’s one thing I know wholeheartedly, it’s that telling our stories in safe spaces has the power to silence shame.

Jen: In your work as a therapist in private practice, you support clients in understanding themselves and their relationships with others. The therapy room offers a safe space for clients to lay out their stories and examine the messages about culture, connection, and worth. To manage the impact of Covid-19, our social interactions have decreased as many of us are working and schooling our kids from home. This abrupt shift to our daily patterns has brought on loneliness and forced us to reckon with past painful life experiences that otherwise might have gotten ignored in the “busyness of life.”  Your office has been a comforting place for people to unpack their stories and find support. In your experience, how does therapy support people in sharing their stories and gaining a deeper understanding of themselves?

Jennifer: Therapy is such a beautiful gift. The miracle of therapy is in showing up to be seen with compassion and undivided attention week after week. We all crave that, and we all need that. Many of us don’t receive that kind of unconditional positive regard as children. The salve of therapy is the corrective experience that can be created in a relationship intent on building trust and warmth in a way that fosters connection. The healing and the growth is really cultivated and takes root through compassionate connection. When people show up in the therapy room with me, whether in person or virtually, I am all in–all my senses are engaged in my efforts to come alongside them in their joy, pain, laughter and tears. As I see them more fully, they see themselves more fully. I know this from being in the therapist’s chair, as well as being the client. 

Jen: You and I have had several conversations about the importance of friendship. It seems that you have carefully crafted a support system that aligns with your interests, goals, and values.  Sometimes the idea of “kinship” can make us think of those that we share genealogy with, but it seems like the definition might be broader than that. What are your thoughts about kinship outside of the traditional family unit?

Jennifer: Kinship outside of the family unit is a significant part of my story. From a young age, I understood the need for connecting with people outside of my family. At school, I felt seen. I felt like I was good at something, and I was affirmed and praised. At home I felt invisible aside from being punished for things I can’t even remember warranting punishment. Punishment was physical, verbal, or it was isolation–sent to sit on the couch in silence for hours. Sometimes my dad would permit me to read or hand me a Bible to read, and I cherished that. I always felt like I was on the outside in my own home and within my own family. Other places, I felt like I was on the inside, and so I knew that would be an integral part of my survival. To this day I have connections with friends, mentors, and teachers from elementary, middle and high school.

I think it is important to note that our first attachments do have some bearing on how we relate to people outside of the traditional family unit. Do we trust people? Do we seek out unavailable people? Are we looking for love in all the wrong places? I hold friendships close to my heart in ways people who have a strong nuclear family sometimes don’t. For a long time that felt like a curse, and a loss, something I’d missed out on. It is a loss I do contend with from time to time. I now know I’m not alone in my experience. I believe we can all benefit from investing in relationships with people outside of the traditional family unit because it broadens our lens on life and enriches the community that can help us navigate through life. Kinship within the traditional family unit can be limiting, notably when we consider how pervasive generational trauma and family dysfunction can be. As we’ve discussed, trauma can keep people stuck. Getting outside of that bubble of painful familiarity is a sure fire way to heal and grow.

One thing that’s extremely important to me because of my experiences with my family of origin, and which makes this more challenging, is to cultivate connection and closeness within my own family so my children know the beauty and value of having both traditional family and being in community; both are essential. Having a blended family complicates that, and I’ve struggled with shame around that; nevertheless, I’m so sure the circumstances that led to the decision to be a single mother, and then grow a blended family were the healthiest. Choosing to become a single mother wasn’t without its grief; I spent valuable time with my daughter’s paternal family and finally felt like I had the kind of extended family I’d dreamt of, and when I walked away from that relationship, I had to learn to accept that that would change; while it is to be expected at some level, it still stings sometimes, especially for my daughter’s sake. My children know how much my friends mean to me, too. They are so good at making cards for friends to let them know their thinking of them, or to cheer them up; friendships mean the world to them, and that warms my heart to the core, as much as it does when I witness them getting along, tending to one another, or expressing their feelings openly when we have to do blended family things. It can feel like I’m working from a deficit because of my lack of traditional family connections, but my hope is that the generational trauma that’s made traditional family relationships difficult will come to a halt with me and my family. Even if we’re only swinging the pendulum a little, I want more for my babies. I want more for us.

Jen: Faith has played a significant role in your life for as long as I have known you. From my standpoint, your faith practice is like a boots-on-the-ground type of compassion. You bring non-judgment and openness to every interaction. I was honored to be included in a book club with you to process the novel How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi. In our reading we learned about how racism interweaves with class, culture, and geography to potentially alter the way we view and value ourselves. How has your faith influenced your role as a therapist, advocate, and Black woman in America?

Jennifer: My faith deeply influences every role I show up in. It informs who I am in every role I show up in. I am not hindered by the need to judge people because I have the freedom to love them. Being a therapist, being an advocate, and being a Black woman in America for sure create unique opportunities for me to fill certain spaces in ways only I can, and even that is confining. The things that make me different, the things that make me the same and everything in between—with every possible way that my existence may make someone else feel or affect how they see me—it’s all subject to who God says I am. Accordingly, my faith helps me to transcend labels and letters behind my name and simply allows and exhorts me to be salt and light (Matthew 5). In the words of Maya Angelou, “I am grateful to have been loved and to be loved now and to be able to love, because that liberates. Love liberates. It doesn't just hold—that's ego. Love liberates. It doesn't bind. Love says, 'I love you. I love you if you're in China. I love you if you're across town. I love you if you're in Harlem. I love you. I would like to be near you. I'd like to have your arms around me. I'd like to hear your voice in my ear. But that's not possible now, so I love you. Go.” That’s what faith does, it empowers me to go and love. Faith is a mysterious thing to behold, yet when practiced it actually simplifies things quite a bit.

Jen: A central part of your work is to help people identify, understand, and rewrite their stories in order to heal. So often we are unaware of the well-worn (and often negative) stories about ourselves that play on repeat in our minds. Can you share how you work with these stories and ways to identify how shame may be playing a role? 

Jennifer: Stories can hold the key to unlock healing and turn the volume down on shame, and stories can act as the lock to keep people out and turn the volume up on shame. And that’s because shame recycles old, negative stories to condition us to believe we’re alone and unworthy. So we close ourselves off to connection, and we believe we’re protecting ourselves from further harm. The thing is, that wall of stories keeps the love out, too. In my work as a therapist, the beauty of people sharing their stories with me is that it provides an opportunity to start breaking down that wall and allowing love to seep in. I try to get straight to it by getting curious about the story someone is sharing with me, where it is coming from, how it helped them survive in the past, and whether or not it’s serving them well in the present. Replaying old stories can give us a sense of safety and security when it’s all we know. Learning or writing another story can feel scary and out of control. I have found that clearly and gently exploring recycled stories with people helps them peel back the curtain just enough for them to see the real puppet master: shame. Shame can keep us from the very thing we’re wired for: connection and kinship.

Jen: Thank you for your time and for your words of wisdom. How can our readers connect with you?

Jennifer: Thank you for always giving me a safe space to share my heart—out on stage so-to-speak, and more importantly behind the scenes. You were one of the first people I ever shared my story with, at a time when it was a fresh wound, and you receiving me compassionately moved me along in my healing. I think our connection is a testament to everything I shared today. And every chance I get to share my story, I always think of my children and the legacy I’m building of strong faith and healing through transparency in safe spaces. Thank you for helping me answer my calling and build my legacy. 

I’d love to connect with your readers! Readers can find me on Instagram @shushyourshame, or on my website at www.shushyourshame.com. I can’t end without encouraging you all with this: Shush your shame. Don’t let your shame shush you.