Headspace Conversations - Releasing Internalized Shame

(gentle music playing) Hi, I'm Robin. Today I am here to talk about shame and representation in the LGBTQ community as far as being a parent. I knew the second that my wife and I were talking about having kids, that it was critical. I don't want to hand down some of the abusive things that my parents handed to me that I didn't wanna hand down my shame to my kids. I just wanna be another voice that shows that little girl in Iowa that she can have a career or to be the person that says to maybe someone who's a little bit in the closet, "You don't have to listen to those voices. You can be an incredible parent." You can be an intentional parent, and it starts with making the decision to show up and be who you are. All right guys, let's continue. Robin, what did you wanna share with us today? As we're talking about pride in parenting, just kind of about the journey of shame in parenting. I knew I was gay probably from a very young age. I'm even already hedging my bets and saying probably, no, I was pretty gay. I knew it, and I remember thinking like I can't be gay like that. Just, and I don't even, I'm not even sure where it came from but it was just like, that's just that's not gonna be a thing that I'm gonna let happen. I had so much internalized shame that, I mean, like everybody knew like, I'm a horrible liar. Like, like over the years I had to really work on coming out and I had to just keep coming out over and over and over again. Like in the workplace. I was very, very concerned with is this going to wreck my future? There weren't a lot of role models, there wasn't anything for me to live into, and I couldn't see a future and I worked at like an entertainment company. There was no reason for me to be like in the closet making up boyfriends that did not exist. Over time, I had to like just process that. Then when I met my wife, I was very much like, I'm gonna have kids, and she was just like, mm. And I was like, no, we're having kids. Is this something that you communicated with your partner as y'all navigated parenting? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. We talk about it all the time. We have to present our lives in a way that's not filled with shame. I did not wanna hand my shame down to my kids. Kids are watching all the time. They know what's happening. So it was just very important to me to begin talking about it and processing it. But having kids forced me to deal with my shame I had to tell the story of how they were created. I thought like, oh, when they were like 18 or when they're in...