In this repeat episode, Shelley Brown believed her worth was measured by physical, relational, and professional appearances until it all came to a head in her late 40s when everything had to change. She had a hysterectomy, spinal surgery after a collapsed vertebra, lost her job, and broke up with her drug-addicted boyfriend all within a few years. Find out how she transitioned through all this to discover who she truly is. Full Transcription at www.iamthisage.com
In this repeat episode, Shelley Brown believed her worth was measured by physical, relational, and professional appearances until it all came to a head in her late 40s when everything had to change. She had a hysterectomy, spinal surgery after a collapsed vertebra, lost her job, and broke up with her drug-addicted boyfriend, all within a few years. Find out how she transitioned through all of this to discover who she truly is.
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Full Transcription at www.iamthisage.com
What if you were forced, had absolutely no choice but to put your work down, set whatever, life drama aside and rest, what would that feel like? I'll tell you what that feels like. It feels scary and stressful and an incredible relief all at the same time, and it is precisely what I'm doing this week is I'm recovering from a cold and heading out of town.
So today's episode is an oldie, but such. A goodie. Shelly Brown teaches us all about our need to belong and how to embrace our weirdness because as the great Adam Grant once told me, we all want to fit in and stand out at the same time.
This episode is from a while ago when the format was quite different. So if you're newer here, know there's nothing wrong with your ears. That is me in the beginning telling a story about my teenaged boobs. As always, if you're enjoying these episodes, please share them with someone you know and love.
The more we grow, the more we can help you grow. We'll be back with a brand new episode in two weeks. Until then, please enjoy the episode.
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It was 1994, and I stood in my mom's closet trying on every shirt, blouse, and dress she owned while she and my dad were out to dinner. No, this wasn't just a fun game I played when they weren't home. I had a bat mitzvah to go to a fancy bat mitzvah, and I needed a fancy thing to wear to the fancy bat mitzvah.
I was 16 and my boobs were already many sizes larger than I had ever agreed to, and I couldn't fit them into anything from my closet or hers. I was humiliated alone in her closet, frantic and angry, and blaming my mom as a 16 year old does. This was her fault. She had the boobs I should have had and the pretty Lacey pastel colored bras too.
I had to wear a minimizer. A minimizer, for those of you who don't know, was a bra that flattened and lifted the boobs to appear smaller, but in reality, only made boobs look while flat and unnaturally high. I wore minimizers through college, so in my distress, I paged my mom on her beeper. Because this was the nineties and when she called me back, I wind to her for a breast reduction.
Nevermind just how bratty that sounds. This was the nineties, and if you weren't Kate Moss vet, if you didn't appear to survive off a pack of cigarettes a day, you may as well not even go to the bat mitzvah. How dare you eat more than one meal a day? What are you an animal? I of course ate many meals a day.
I loved food. Then as much as I love food now, I. To be clear, I've never been a particularly large person. I just had particularly large boobs, and on this day I couldn't seem to fit them into anything but a stodgy black stretchy tank dress, which I wore to the bat mitzvah at, which I had a great time. Oh, and I didn't get a breast reduction until I turned 40.
I know how apropo right. Welcome to I Am the Sage, a podcast proving it's never too late. You are never too old, so just go do that thing you're always talking about. I'm Molly Cider, your host. My guest today is Shelly Brown and her life journey like mine, like many revolved around appearances, physical, relational, professional.
Until it all came to a head in her late forties when everything had to change. She's a writer, a speaker, a mindfulness coach, and an artist. So without further delay, please enjoy Shelly Brown. I am downtown Shelly Brown. I got that nickname years ago. I'm 58, and I received that nickname from probably the only boss I ever liked in the corporate world.
So I'm downtown Shelly Brown. I live in downtown Chicago, so the name is fitting. So we're gonna just jump right in cuz we've got a lot to cover and I know that we have limited time. Um, so you sort of grew up as a lot of us did with like a focus on physical health appearances. Like I know I did. I know most people I did, especially those who grew up in the eighties and the nineties.
Um, your lifestyle through your thirties was that of boys cigarettes, sex, and you struggled with bulimia. And then you started running in your late thirties. You did ultra marathons in your forties. First of all, how many miles is an ultra marathon? Anything over 26.2 is considered an ultra. So I've done 50 Ks, a 50 mile.
Wow. Um, you also taught spin classes for 20 years. My first question is, what was the thing that made you stop the, um, like the cigarettes and the, and the bulimia and that stuff and start running and was there any sort of overlap? So I quit smoking. My father had been a marathon runner, and I quit smoking because I got a job that was based in Chicago for a company in Sausalito, California.
And in my mind I thought, nobody smokes in California, nobody. No one. So, and you're laughing because I think you lived in California and you know that that's not true. So I had to do the fast track, quit smoking, put a patch on an es a, a nicotine patch, almost said estrogen patch because one time a doctor wrote me a, a script for a.
Nicotine patch and I went to the drug store and it accidentally, he accidentally wrote it for the estrogen patch and I bought, I walked, I walked out with a carton of cigarettes. But anyway, so I put a patch on and I didn't, and a year and three days later, I was running my first marathon. There was some overlap with my eating disorder and marathoning, because essentially it was a replacement for.
The eating disorder that I hadn't really gotten recovery from fully, but it was a way to channel the emotions and a way to have that look at me, accomplishments, accolades, et cetera. Yeah. Daddy issue approval. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, Uhhuh. And so then what did you believe being an ultra marathoner meant about you?
Honestly, I lived most of my life from the outside in, so it was like, if it looked good, it, it was good. And so running was a way. To get those again, accomplishments and accolades and Wow, isn't she powerful? And wow, isn't she strong? And same with, you know, being thin enough and, and looking good from the outside.
It was getting that affirmation and getting my identity from something outside of myself. Yeah, yeah. So you wrote, you ran 26 marathons and six ultras. And then you found yourself in your late forties with a collapsed vertebrae. You had a boyfriend who turned into a drug addict and you received an unnecessary radical hysterectomy, which, um, correct me if I'm wrong, but that's the removal of the ute, the uterus, the cervix, and the ovaries.
Is that right? So I had uterus and, and ovaries. Okay. Got it. My god, that's a lot of stuff. Um, So at 47, I wanna sort of talk about each of these things individually, if that's okay before we start. Sure. To go into the, like, upswing of it. Um, so at 47 you find yourself being, I. For lack of a better word, finagled into this radical hysterectomy without much or any information about what that meant or what the side effects are, or even obviously if it was necessary.
When did you realize that maybe that wasn't necessary? It took a long time. I, I mean, I think it took a few years before I actually realized that it wasn't necessary. And you know, I, I'm saying that, I'm thinking it was, put it this way, and I'm sorry that I'm, that I'm thinking this through right now. But, but I think that I knew that it was a choice, but at the time it wasn't a choice because I needed the relief.
Hmm. I needed the relief. And so what I didn't realize is that the doctor was going to offer something to me. That, that, that there were alternatives to, and in my desperation, relief was the offer, but I didn't, what I didn't know is how many different things there could be to help me with what I was dealing with until a few years later.
Yeah, I imagine that must have been. I don't know. A, a difficult realization. Uh, how did you, like, what did you believe about yourself in the moment? I know, like if I feel like I know how I would react in that situation, which would probably be a lot of like self blame maybe. I don't know how, what, what did, how did you react?
No, no. I did not blame myself at all because until, until a series of events happened that helped me realize. All the reasons why she did what she did. I, I didn't blame myself at all, but I did. The only thing I did know is that I needed to share this message with people so that if they face those same circumstances, and we'll get into that later, but no.
Yeah, I, I didn't blame myself. Okay, good. And yeah, we're, we'll definitely talk about that in a minute. Um, alright, so then at 48 your vertebrae collapsed and you had to give up running. First of all, what does that even mean and how did you know that your vertebrae collapsed? Uh, so I had had back pain. And on one occasion it was so severe, it was like, oh my gosh, something's really bad is going on with my spine.
And I had a friend who was a physical therapist and she wor worked me through some exercises and I was okay again. And then I kept running and running, running. And then another, oh my gosh, something is terribly wrong. And then it got better again. Huh? And then one more time. And it wasn't getting better.
And when you have back pain and you're a runner and you make your identity out of running, you continue to run regardless of pain. And I had no idea that. Maybe it was a herniated disc that turned into a ruptured disc that turned into like O disco obliteration to the point where at one one night, the most excruciating pain I've ever felt in my life was happening.
That drove me to the emergency room and I ended up having a MRI and, um, They didn't immediately do back surgery. They don't do that. They try to go through all the conservative methods, but ultimately what happened was there was no more disc. It was just completely bone on bone. But they don't say to you, oh, you need to have surgery right away.
They still ha try to do this conservative stuff, which basically stole a year of my life. Because there was no way I was ever gonna grow back new disc and the conservative methods were never gonna work. Why do they do that? Like what's the purpose of, I mean, I, I guess I know a little bit like they have to protect themselves, but I don't.
I don't really, I don't really know. Yeah. I don't really know. I think, I think, you know, until you, there might be some telltale medical things that they're looking for before they do it. Like if they can't relieve your nerve, if they don't wanna do surgery. So if they can relieve the pain with the conservative methods like, Physical therapy or nerve root blocks and CT guided, you know, steroid shots and things.
They try those things first. Okay. That makes sense. And then when those don't work, and those are over a specified period of time and you can only get like four in steroid injections and then they do surgery. Right. And so when you were getting the injections and going through all the conservative like.
Ways. First, were you able to do anything? Were you able to walk or what? What was it like? It stole everything from me because I got thrown into fight or flight. I was terrified. I had lost the one thing that I thought made me, which was running. And the pain was terrifying. You think you're never gonna get out of that pain.
It ignites the cortisol and adrenaline surge that that puts you into that emergency response. And I was just non-functioning. I was dragging a leg behind me. I could go in the pool with some weight felts around me and paddle my arms. Till eventually I literally was having what they called drop foot where I could not literally walk.
Wow. Wow. And so eventually you did have surgery? I did. And what was the recovery like or how long was it the recovery? After the surgery, I immediately knew that the nerve pain was gone. And the first thing that you're allowed to do is you start walking. So three months after the surgery, cuz here I am thinking I'm still gonna be able to run, maybe not marathons, but I'll be able to run half marathons again.
So three months later I'm walking nine miles. Oh my God. And then I was able to swim and I was able to start doing weights and then eventually start running again. Run walking again. But, and do you run now? So I have some other complications. I have si joint dysfunction, so I do run walk, but I don't need to be a runner anymore.
I never was a runner. I was somebody who could run. Um, you also talked about how you. Somewhere around this time, or maybe right before this time, you had found your quote unquote Ken Doll boyfriend. Yep. Who you believed would be your savior relationship. Yep. What did you mean by savior relationship? I was always, I was brought up by uh, mother who really felt that a relationship with the right man would.
Be my would be everything cuz she didn't, I don't know that she necessarily saw all the things about me that are my gifts now that I know of. So it always, my success in life really depended on somebody else taking care of me. And so, because I believed the messages that. I really didn't, couldn't make it.
I mean, look, I was somebody who had an eating disorder. I was somebody who was anxious all my life. I had a billion different jobs. So in order for me to survive in life, it meant that another person had to come down, swoop save, and rescue me. So I found this gorgeous, good looking, wealthy guy with so much swagger who wanted me because I was, it was always about like my desirability, so, My desirability to the opposite sex meant my worthiness, my body shape and size meant my worthiness.
So here was this gorgeous, successful swaggery guy swooping in to save and rescue me, and I thought that he was. The perfect Kendell boyfriend and we were gonna live happily ever after. And Jet said around the world and uh, he fell in love with drugs in front of my eyes. So I was losing who I thought I was.
And he was losing who he thought he was all at the same time,
man. That is so much. And did you, did you notice any of, like any red flags in the beginning like that you may have ignored? Do you remember? Oh, a hundred percent. But I was in such, I had so much anxiety already in my own life. That and I had just at the beginning of our relationship, had that hysterectomy and I thought that whatever fears I was dealing with, whatever red flags I was dealing with were hormone changes or, or whatever they were, but I didn't, I didn't attribute them to the warning signs about him.
Also, I mean, I would imagine that was such a vulnerable state you were in and at this, and I was gonna actually talk about this a little bit later, but your, I mean, hysterectomy, like you, your, your womanhood is changing. Yeah. And so be in a relationship with somebody, like I imagine that probably also has something to do with.
The ignoring of the red flags. Am am I right on here on this? I wasn't, it wasn't, I wasn't seeing that part yet. I wasn't experiencing that part yet. I just wasn't present for that. And so here was this guy who thought I, I was sexy and I was still a runner and I was still, you know, desirable and I was still feeling that sense of command.
Because physically, even though I had had that procedure, I was still like physically strong and, and my identity of being this runner and this athlete and this sexy woman, I still had that. Yeah. So when did you decide to end it? It took almost two years and li and it really, really stole, it really my life bucket because he took care of me.
Even though he was getting into drugs, he was still taking care of me through my back surgery, through my back injury. And the disbelief that somebody that you love is. Morphing into this unrecognizable sort of body snatched way of being and you just can't believe it. So I was the typical I. Person with a drug addict, begging, pleading, and it became about how he was showing up for me, not about his own journey.
And not about my journey, but it was like, how is it that this person is, is not able to be who they were for me? Mm-hmm. Yeah. And, and yet I was losing who I was. When we first met too, and it was just this collision, this tsunami where we were both drowning and I, I couldn't drown anymore. It was, I lost the ability to sleep.
I was shaking all the time. I had lost running, I had lost sleeping. I had lost everything. The way that I knew life before and I was a shell, I was shattered. I was, I disappeared just as he had and I didn't wanna, I didn't wanna die. And I knew that if I stayed with him, I would literally die because the fear was choking and, and I was gonna take my own life if I had to stay in that any longer.
Wow. It was literally survival. Mm-hmm. So also around this time you lost your job, right? That was around the same time before my back surgery. Okay. Yeah. And what did you do professionally? I was a director of national sales for a company in the events industry. Wow. So you started to just talk about it, but um, I wanna get a little bit more into it, cuz I've been talking about identity a lot lately.
And so here you are. All of these things happen. You couldn't run anymore. You didn't have the pretty boyfriend. You um, just had this hysterectomy, which puts you into menopause. You, um, you didn't have an income, you had lost your sense. Of who you were, it sounds like I never had a sense of who I was, so.
How did you, what did you do next? Like how did you come out of that? How did you eventually, where was your mindset at and how did you sort of regain or rediscover your true identity? Well, it's a, it, it was definitely process. I started writing and writing through the pain, writing through the pain writing, just these gut wrenching, just trauma writing and.
I ended up getting a lot of help, a lot of therapy, a lot of counseling, um, and I decided to move back to Chicago. I was in North Carolina at the time and I came back to Chicago and I was trying to make things look like they had looked before and didn't realize that I really was in this fight or flight.
Um, even though my spine was better, I was, my, my wiring got messed up, so I was amygdala hijacked completely. So I tried to get a job and I would just like get into so much fear and I couldn't figure out why, why I couldn't do what I'd done before. I flew across the country meeting with C level people, and I couldn't even pick up the phone without being.
Without being like, incredibly afraid. And at the same time though, my creativity was amping up. So I had started doing this, like terrorized writing. That turned into funny writing about everyday experiences like the, the extraordinary of the ordinary. But at the same time as, as my creativity was, was growing, I was still in this fear.
I was still in this fear and I got fired from a job I had. I had taken on a bunch of jobs. I quit because I was it. They were too stressful and I didn't, didn't understand that I was amygdala hijacked. So I had one job and they put me on probation because I was having these emotional meltdowns at work.
And then I had got another job that was going to an office after 20 years of being virtual because I thought, oh, I'll have an office family, it'll be great. So I got this job working in an office and I. My need for connection and collaboration was seen as being extra. Mm-hmm. And I was considered disruptive and they put me in a corner.
Oh. And it literally triggered this 12 year old in me. I'm already fearful, imm already anxious, and they put me in a corner. So every day I go to work and I'm terrified, and one day I misinterpreted an email. I took my headset, I threw it to the ground, and in front of hearing distance of probably 20 people, I said, at this place I effing hate it.
And I had this outer body, like serious nervous breakdown, and I got fired. Actually, I got put on probation because that's what you do when people have anxiety. You punished them. And then I ended up getting fired and I found a mindfulness-based stress reduction program, and it had been suggested to me, and it was finally the only thing left that I hadn't done because I'd been on the ABCs of antidepressants, anti anxieties, had gone to multiple therapists and, and shrinks and mindfulness changed my life.
I mean, I thought it was for tea drinking yogis, and I was like, no, not, this is not gonna be for me. But I went to see this therapist that told me, you know, that, that my stress response wires were crossed and that we could set them to default. And that it wasn't, it wasn't in my head, it was an embodied, embodied response.
You know, from a neuroscience perspective, my zero to Crisis was an embedded physiological response. And when he told me that for the first time in my life, it felt like somebody was finally saying, nothing's wrong with you. We can reset you. And I'm like, oh my God. Holy shit. What? And I did this program and it changed my life.
It changed my life. Everything you just said is like, just feels so important to address. Especially cuz like you Yeah, like you just went through like years of physical trauma. Of course that's going to affect and change your, your mind and how your brain functions and works. But like, yeah, there's, as you're saying this, I'm like, yeah, why don't we talk about this?
Like, why don't we address this? It's so obvious. And also, no, and when you look back at, when I look back at my whole life from the time I was really young and, and when you think about like an eating disorder, that is the stress. That's the stress response. That is that, I mean, my whole life was sort of looking at the world like it was my identity clothing store.
And when you're not allowed to be who you are or when you're told something's wrong with that, immediately you're gonna have that stress response. So this flight or flight was decades long and, and culminated in the, in my spinal, you know, injury and, and, and the hysterectomy and everything. Finally. And so I have to say, when people say they suffer from anxiety, my first reaction to that is wanting to say, invite them to the practice of mindfulness, because Im not a doctor and I'm sure that there is some biochemistry going on with people, but I also think that it is the wiring that gets so messed up.
That the neural pathways start winding around and twisting, and if there is the possibility of that reset, it can change people's lives. And I said, I've got to be able to share this practice with people. And I became a mindfulness educator. Yeah. Yeah. Um. It really what you're saying to me just sounds like, yeah, it's sort of like any other muscle.
Like we, you know, like we're overcompensating with this one muscle that creates anxiety and um, that's literally just like muscling through or pushing through and pushing all of like our emotions and in our, and, um, mindfulness thoughtfulness, like aside. And if we actually focus on the other thing, like, okay, why am I feeling this way?
Also, I. It's not me. It's just a feeling like you sort of strengthen that other muscle is sort of what the, the first, the first part is creating the space. Yeah. Between stimulus and response. Right. Because we always think that what we think is the truth, we always, we tend to think that, that things are gonna never.
Go, like whatever we're feeling right now is never gonna end, or it's always gonna be this way or the real extreme thinking. Or we have looping thoughts that go on and on and on, or ruminating thoughts and we don't realize that we have a choice. But in order to realize that we, we have a choice to become the driver of our awareness.
We have to reset our physiological, uh, Wiring first because the cortisol and the adrenaline take over and we don't have the ability to let the prefrontal cortex that makes sense of things make decisions. Yeah. Because we're in this automatic response. And so I think if more people can experience that reset, that's when you can do that mental muscle bicep curl to constantly work your noticing muscles.
So that you can see how your mind is making meaning. Yeah. And then, and then from there, for me, that tremendous amount of space that was freed up became like epically creative. How did you, or how, how do you still show yourself compassion and support? Well, I do a lot of things to keep myself sort of at a consistent.
Level emotionally. I mean, I do do actual meditation in the morning, not for long periods, but I do, and my art is definitely my place where I get to, which I think is really mindfulness and action, because I'm super, super focused and, and I get to create these. Little art gems and really those are the things I just am very deliberate.
And I also obviously, you know, do still do physical things like getting certified to teach Pilates and, and I write, I. And I wrote a book that is a compilation of stories between, from meltdowns to finding mindfulness where Sex in the City meets Glennon Doyle. It's like this compilation of like wacky, crazy stories that are, that journey bearing witness to the journey of, of where I'm now.
So I've, I've, um, I've listened to actually a few of those stories from the book. It's called Weird Girl Adventures, Uhhuh. Um, so you wrote that book, you often, um, said you speak about belonging in addition to mindfulness, right? Yeah. Can you describe the differences? Um, Between times in your life when you like wanted to belong and, and say you did the things you thought you needed to do in order to belong versus a time when you genuinely did belong.
Is that too crazy question? No. I mean, like my whole, I don't think I belonged. I don't think I felt like I belonged to my whole entire life. And a lot of people feel the same way. And what I realized, and this is through mindfulness, is. That so much of our own belongingness, it does start with us because when we can explore the narratives and the stories and the judgments and the biases that we have towards our own self, and we can get curious about them and either expand our awareness out out of that story.
Then we can remove that roadblock that connects us. But if I'm walking around feeling like something's wrong with me, something is constitutionally wrong with me, how am I gonna experience a feeling of belonging? Because again, we can't make our identity from the outside in Who we are is from the inside out.
And so, It's the same with belonging. Yes. There are legit ways where we can exclude people and make them feel like crap. Right. But a lot of our sense of belonging starts with our state of mind, because if we walk into situations, I belong. Versus some campaign or strategy. This says, you belong here. And I'm like, I do.
You know what I mean? But it, but it's also to amplify the experience for others. Being able to explore the biases, judgments, stories that we're telling ourselves about others, when we can get curious about those. We can remove that roadblock to amplify the experience for other people. So it really does start with what's going on with our own state of mind.
Yes, and I love that you talked about the staying curious piece because that's like a, that's a north star for me, where I'm always like, just stay curious. Or when I'm starting to feel anxious or I'm nervous about, you know, interviewing somebody, I'm, I'm always just like, I. Just stay curious. You are capable of just being curious.
Yeah, I love that. Well, and my book is called Weird Girl Adventures, but I took the acronym W E I R D and, and put it into a framework of real simple framework of how we can amplify the experience for ourselves, but also. Using that same framework of how we can amplify it for others. And do you mind if I share real quick?
Please. Okay. So the W is welcoming. And again, it's, it's when it comes to ourselves, it's welcoming the thoughts and the feelings and instead of resisting, because if we're in resistance, we're not allowing, yeah. And so we're in a fight, but it's also when it comes to other people, How are we welcoming them and, and how are we not putting up a roadblock or are we welcoming them?
And, and then something happens. We're like, Nope, not welcoming them anymore. You know, in the context of work, which we're not really talking about here, it's, it's, we roll out that welcome mat. You know, everybody's so celebrated, yay. Orientation. You feel like you feel like it's a big party, and then as soon as you're oriented.
In quote, the welcome that is rolled up, and we do that to people. And then so the, that's the W is welcoming and the E is engaging as in terms of our own belongingness. It's, am I engaging with my full presence? What is going on with my mind right now? What's the story I'm telling myself and is it preventing me from being fully present?
Or can I take that story narrative and, and expand again, expand out of that and see what else is there. And then when it comes to other people, what's the biggest gift we can give somebody? It's our, the gift of our presence. It's giving attention. I love this. Thanks. And then I as integrating, when we are disintegrated, when we're showing up one way with a certain group of people, and of course this has context, we're not gonna be, you know, everything in all.
In all situations, but how can I be an integrated person in all of my interactions with people? And am I allowing other people, their humanity, they're fully integrated human being, or am I relegating them to only being this when I'm with them? Yeah, so I mean, in the context of work, it's rampant, right? We make people KPIs, we make people data.
We make people a cog in our wheel to perform for us. Yeah, so that's the integration piece. And then ours is risk taking. When I was a runner, I wasn't willing to let go of the ego that told me. To not keep on running, because if I lost that, what was the risk to my ego if I were no longer a runner? So I'm just gonna keep on running through pain, and it's the same, you know, you can think about it in terms of vulnerability.
What's the risk if I'm not being vulnerable here and sharing my experience of having gone through an unnecessary hysterectomy? What is the risk of not sharing that? What if other people are facing the same thing and that one person hears that story that maybe they have a choice. So I'm gonna take the risk.
Hell yeah. Me too. Yeah. Yeah. And then the D is, is dynamic. We all, we all wanna be dynamic. We all wanna be fluid and, and be able to flow with changes, but we all wanna be dynamic and, and draw people to us. So that's sort of a high level of, of weird as an acronym for amplifying the experience of belonging for ourselves and others.
So on the note you, so you wrote this book, weird Girl Adventures, were you. You talk about things pretty candidly, um, which it's great. It's like, it's awesome. It's awesome. Everyone should go listen to these stories. You mean the last story that's called Vagina? Yeah. Um, you also. As we talked a little bit about before you wrote a talk to help educate women about how our bodies change as we age, and also specifically what happened to you after you had your hysterectomy and the after effects.
Talk a little bit about why this was so important to you. It was so important to me. I, I ended up writing a talk called Filling the Void with our Voice because you don't hear a lot about hysterectomy. I mean, like if I think back 20 years ago, it was like, that's something for grandmothers and you don't.
You just, it's kind of like, okay, it, it's not something that's out in the open because there's, there's still a little taboo around it because it, it just seems like an older person's kind of a thing. But I realized when I started experiencing some of the side effects of having had a hysterectomy and I wasn't told about those things.
I got, I actually got curious about how many women have hysterectomies, how many of them are not necessary. And I felt like I had to give voice to it, not to bash medicine because I don't wanna, you know, go to Congress and advocate that everybody who, who is, who suggested to have one. You know, although I would like to.
That it, that it'd be absolutely necessary that somebody gets counseling. If it's not medically necessary, then I feel like people should be required to, to get counseling before, because it's, it's enormous. Yeah, it's enormous. Especially when your ovaries are taken. But I felt that I needed to give voice to, to educate people that one in five hysterectomies are medically unnecessary.
And I wanted to find out why. And it is for medical re insurance reimbursement policies, the fact that doctors are not necessarily trained on the alternatives. And it's also for, um, Expense reimbursement and that there's a disproportionate amount of African-Americans who have hysterectomies because they have a higher incidence of fibroids.
Oh, wow. And that by the time women in this country are age 60, the statistics are about one in three women will end their journey with their uterus. And that 30% of those are not medically necessary. Wow. Yeah. Wow. So I, I wanted to give voice because I think that. Even women don't know these things. Even women don't know what happens when your ute, when your ovaries are removed, let alone just your uterus.
That's a big deal because there's bladder incontinence, there's bowel incontinence, there's an increased risk of breast cancer, and when your ovaries are removed, there's an increased risk of heart disease. There is, uh, There's rapid aging, there is an increased risk of bone loss, bone density issues, and sexual side effects.
So there's a lot of women who are like high five, no more periods. Well, there's a lot more than that. There is that sense that you're no longer a woman. There's a grief. Because even though most, even though all women will go through menopause, your ovaries will still produce hormones, not the sex hormones, but they'll still produce hormones through your eighties.
The, the, the hormones that really are important for testosterone, which means muscles which support your bone health. So, yeah, I wanted, I, I mean, besides the medical issues, I wanted women to, I wanted both men and women to have more sensitivity around this, and I also wanted to reduce the shame, the stigma, and the taboos around it.
Yeah, I thank you for first of all just explaining all of that, cuz I don't know all of it either. Um, I'm 43 and it's something that like, I know is like not that far away and also I don't wanna think about it either. Um, so, you know, even listening to your story, Vagina. Like, if I'm being honest, it was, I was just like, ah, I don't know.
This is a lot to listen to. And also at the same time was like so grateful to be listening to it and I was like, fuck yeah. Like I, why are we talking about this? I wanna know more. We need. You know, why isn't there a bigger focus on this? So I'm really, really grateful that you are doing this and, and you are writing about it and speaking about it.
So fucking important. Well, thanks. And you know, the bottom line is I don't believe in shame because we, all of our experiences, we only have a certain range of emotions and you know, we all have human experiences and so I. I don't have shame in my experiences. I don't because they've all been part of my journey.
And if I can be self transcendent and bear witness to them in a way that's helpful to other people, that's what I care about. I'm not interested in ripping open the curtains and being full on like, oh my God, this happened. It's not the story of what happened. It's how can I reach my hands out to somebody who may need to grab them?
Yes. So since the turn of events in your late forties, as you said, you became an artist, you are a writer, you're a speaker, you're a mindfulness educator. You launched a greeting card line. You were in a long-term relationship and you're studying to become a Pilates instructor. Did I miss anything? No, I mean, the big thank you.
The big, yeah, it's like a lot. Like I get to reconnect with the essence of who I, who was. I am a mature 12 year old because at 12 I loved at 12, I still loved. Everything creative. I still loved color. I still loved my pink bedroom with matching hot pink carpet. Hot pink ceiling. I still believed in love and possibilities until the first fracture.
We have these pivotal moments where we get judged and all of a sudden we don't belong in. Something is wrong with us. And then, and then for some of us, it dims our light. And then we're like, oh my God, I have to go be everything but who I am. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Especially, uh, probably everybody. But I, I feel like especially those of us who are like extra sensitive, which yeah, we are.
I definitely am. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. But now I get to be everything that I always was before I ran away from all of it. So what would you say your identity is now? It's not anything other than who I am. It's my value alignment, it's my point of view, my perspective, and my personality, and it has nothing to do with anything outside of me.
Yeah. If you were to meet your 20 year old self, what advice would you give her? The advice I would give is, is to learn about. To learn that, that everything is a choice, and learn how to lean into that and believe in it, whatever it is. Cuz just by telling somebody everything's a choice, I would basically at 20 say, fuck you.
No, it's not. You know, I'm, I'm a victim of my circumstances and there's no way in hell that's true. So whether it's mindfulness or whatever it is. To realize, to learn that we are always in choice. Where can people find you and your book? Thanks. So my uh, website is Shelly Brown Official and there is a link to my book there, or they can go on amazon@shellybrownofficial.com.
Um, weird Girl Ventures is the book. You can get it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, target. Walmart. Awesome. Yeah. Shelly, it was so great to meet you, and I'm so glad that we have created this friendship. I am so honored, and your curiosity is so beautiful, and I really appreciate it.
Thank you to Dan Davin for my music. David Harper for the Artwork. And David Ben Perot for Sound Engineer. I'm Molly Cider, the producer and host. This is I Am This Age. See ya all next time.