Enough! Time to Normalize Sharing Taboo Topics with Dr. Jessica Zucker
Show Snapshot:
Midlife pushes us to question everything—especially what we've been taught to whisper about. Dr. Jessica Zucker, Los Angeles-based psychologist and award-winning author of Normalize It, explores how silence around menstruation, menopause, body image, and grief, trauma and loss shapes women's lives. After her own traumatic 16-week pregnancy loss, she champions storytelling as a tool for connection and liberation. We dive into big questions: How does revisiting hidden stories from midlife's vantage point heal you? How can vulnerability boost mental health and intimacy? Why to do so many women believe they must suffer in silence? Time to get loud and claim every experience that shapes you, beauties.
Show Links:
Follow Dr. Zucker:
Dr. Zucker’s Book:
Normalize It: Upending the Silence, Stigma, and Shame That Shape Women's Lives
Quotable:
“My focus is really for people to not just know that they're not alone, but to actually feel that they're not alone.”
Transcript:
Katie Fogarty 0:03
Welcome to A Certain Age, a show for women who are unafraid to age out loud. I'm your host, Katie Fogarty. Beauties, getting to midlife means we start to question a lot of things. For example, what if the very things we've been taught to whisper about are the exact conversations that could set us free? Today, I'm talking with Dr. Jessica Zucker, a Los Angeles-based psychologist and award-winning author. She is on a mission to shatter the silence around women's most stigmatized experiences. You may know Jessica from her groundbreaking first book, I Had a Miscarriage, where she explored the pain, the silence, often the shame that surrounds pregnancy loss. You may have also seen her ultra-viral social campaign. It had the hashtag #IHadAMiscarriage, where hundreds of thousands of women gave voice to their own loss and experience. Now in her latest book, Normalize It, Jessica expands her lens to the full spectrum of challenges women face, from body image and reproductive choice to sexual trauma, menopause and more. We are big believers at A Certain Age Pod that midlife is exactly the right time to get loud, share our stories, and claim all the myriad experiences that shape us. I am beyond excited to explore all of this with her today. Welcome to A Certain Age, Jessica.
Dr. Jessica Zucker 1:45
I am so honored to be here with you. Thank you so much for having me.
Katie Fogarty 1:50
This is going to be a fantastic conversation. I really raced through your book. I'd seen it on social media. I couldn't wait to get my hands on it, and when my former guest introduced us and we connected, I was a very fast yes when I realized that you were available to be on the show. Your book, Normalize It, has a subheadline: Upending the Silence, Stigma and Shame That Shape Women's Lives. You've dedicated your career to women's mental health. What was the moment you realized that shame and silence were the real epidemics you needed to address?
Dr. Jessica Zucker 2:05
Oh, wow. How many hours do you have?
Katie Fogarty 2:10
We have as long as you want, Jessica. Talk for months.
Dr. Jessica Zucker 2:15
All right. Well, going back, I guess, to the beginning of my career. So I'm a Los Angeles-based psychologist. I specialize in women's reproductive and maternal mental health, and have done so for over 15 years at this point. I come to the field with a background in public health and worked internationally in women's rights and women's reproductive health. And so when I decided to pursue my PhD, my vision was to sort of marry my background in public health with the clinical work. At the time, I was just so riveted and also very sort of confounded by the research on women's health, how we're left out of the research, and the problems that women face when it comes to reproduction and the way they feel about it. Up until that point, I had not experienced anything firsthand that informed my interests in this field, until it did. So I was 16 weeks into my second pregnancy when I had a miscarriage while I was home by myself, and I was then instructed by phone, by my OB-GYN, how to cut the umbilical cord, and promptly began to hemorrhage. So suffice it to say, this was by far the most dramatic, traumatic experience of my life. All the while, I had been sitting across from women and families in my practice, hearing about the alienation, the isolation, the silence that surrounds this very topic. But until I went through it myself, it was all sort of theoretical. It wasn't a corporeal firsthand experience. And so I turned to the research. It shows that a majority of women feel a sense of self-blame and shame and even body hatred in the aftermath of pregnancy and infant loss. And I was outraged. Again, I had been hearing about these things in my office, but seeing it in black and white in the research, seeing that a majority of people actually feel this way, made me feel that I needed to actually do something to humbly try to make a dent in the cultural conversation and lack thereof. So I decided to launch the I Had a Miscarriage campaign with my first New York Times piece, and this was my sort of hope. The aim here was to start a global conversation and to puncture once and for all this kind of strident trifecta: the silence, the stigma, and the shame.
Katie Fogarty 5:00
What a powerful, immersive experience where you got to move from this sort of theoretical of hearing the stories of women to undergoing it yourself. I'm so moved that you're willing to share this, that you launched this campaign, that you wrote this book. Tell us a little bit more about what you learned about why women are silent around this, and what lifting the veil of silence and secrecy did for you in your own life?
Dr. Jessica Zucker 5:35
Wow, that's a powerful question. I think that the silence, which, as I said, is incredibly problematic, and I get deeply into this in both of my books—actually, but in Normalize It, I'm looking at the silence that starts in girlhood, so with menstruation, and goes all the way through menopause and everything in between. The silence that surrounds pregnancy loss, in my opinion, is born of the stigma, which comes from our cultural discomfort talking about grief in general, right? So we lean into these platitudes that often alienate people because we are so unprepared as a culture to actually take things on as they are. Why is that? There is just this enormous uncomfortability when it comes to death, loss, diagnoses, whatever the case may be. What people seem to want to do when people disclose something so major, so monumental, so poignant, is to sprinkle in what I would call—I'm putting in quotes—'the silver linings,' or trying to help people focus on the quote-unquote 'bright side' when there really might not be one, and even if there is, perhaps the griever can be the one to lead that conversation. Because we're making assumptions in grief that people want to feel better and that people want to be or even can be, quote-unquote, fixed. Most people, whether they know it consciously or not, want to experience their pain, albeit incredibly excruciating at times. We want to feel. We have access to it. We want to connect potentially with our loss through that pain. And so when we're met with platitudes, when people say things that don't resonate, that's where the silence often sprouts. That is when you see grievers running for the hills, feeling completely misunderstood.
Katie Fogarty 8:00
So how do we have the better conversations? Your book is one of the tools. You are exploring this idea of storytelling to combat grief, to combat—you know, how we interact with challenging circumstances. You talked about the onset of silence when we go through menstruation and girlhood that can be, I don't want to say it's a traumatic experience, but it can be dislocating because it's the first time you go through it. But you touch on a lot of very difficult topics throughout the book. There's sexual trauma, there are the ends of relationships, there is pregnancy loss. Not all of them are as traumatic. Some of them are very natural that can be optimistic, like menopause. You know, where we might go through that transition and feel positive around it. But when we want to incorporate storytelling, remove the veil of secrecy that exists across all of these different moments in a woman's arc of her life, how do we begin to normalize it, to use your word? Let's start by saying, what is normalizing, Jessica? Define that for us.
Dr. Jessica Zucker 9:15
Sure. Well, what I mean by it is, let's normalize talking about the tough stuff. Let's normalize talking about the very things that make up our lives, because the research shows that when we sequester our pain and our important experiences that shape who we are, we end up then finding ourselves in potentially a sea of mental health distress or mental health diagnoses. And so the whole point of this book, really, is to try to upend that, turn that over once and for all. Can we gain the skills and also find the chutzpah—I should, I'm using Yiddish here, sorry. That was the only word I could think of, sorry.
Katie Fogarty 10:15
Chutzpah. Oh, I'm a New Yorker. Chutzpah!
Dr. Jessica Zucker 10:20
Find the chutzpah to actually have the conversations without feeling like they might be too much or that we're burdening people or that we're going to be met with these platitudes that I was talking about or worse, rejection, judgment, and even shame from potentially the people we're closest to? So the book is a guide for doing this, and also sort of permission to take ownership over our lives and our experiences so that the world around us sees us more fully, more authentically, and that is where connection actually can be born. It's scary. It's terrifying, actually, when we think about, if we do open up, will we be met with connection or rejection? And the stakes feel incredibly high, understandably so, but staying silent is also a risk.
Katie Fogarty 11:30
So you opened up. You wrote your first book. It was super specific. It was about pregnancy loss. You started this hashtag campaign, I Had a Miscarriage, which went everywhere, all over the internet. Hundreds of thousands of people participated in that. In the book, you write that you had a sense of feeling not fully seen. That the world saw you in one specific way. You talked about your pregnancy loss, but in terms of the holistic Jessica, you had other things going on. Other parts of yourself that you wanted to share with the world. That's what then led to the second book, Normalize It, which as you said, covers the arc of women's lives from girlhood all the way through menopause. What was that like shifting gears to the expansiveness of this next book?
Dr. Jessica Zucker 12:20
It was really complicated, actually. It was very fun to write the book in the sense that I felt really expanded and I felt really seen on the page in a way that I don't think I did with my first book. Now, I'm incredibly grateful, and my identity, again, is very much wrapped up in pregnancy and infant loss and supporting that community and advancing that conversation, and I'm proud of that work and I continue to do that work. But I am a person who has had many other experiences, just like anybody, and I wanted to also bring those to light and talk about the research behind them as well. So I bring in my personal experiences as a survivor of sexual assault, going through a divorce. I talk about my breast cancer diagnosis and how that was sort of the catalyst for actually writing this book because I realized that I needed a tool, a guide to help me figure out my own risk calculus around sharing my diagnosis and also creating language, because I hadn't yet figured out what I wanted to say, how I wanted to talk about it. And so, much like my first book was in some ways a love letter to people going through similar things and knowing that it would resonate, with this one, it was complicated because I was like, how do I talk about breast cancer? How do I talk about divorce? How do I talk about sexual assault when my expertise is specifically in women's reproductive and maternal mental health? How do I actually have a right to do this? And what I came up with was, well, I'm human and I have experienced many of the things that women experience over the course of their lives, and I want to be able to actually use the platform that I've built to support people in all the ways that I can. So that felt really good. But it's been complicated on a book tour because people still very much see me as just that pregnancy loss person, when I've really been trying to expand what I do and who I am and how I show up in the world.
Katie Fogarty 15:00
The book is divided into these incredibly compelling sections: The Body, Big Life Events, Fertility, Parenting, and Mental Health. I want to drill down into some of them that I think are going to be relevant to my audience. Let's talk about the body. There are a few sections in here about menstruation, about body image, about aging. So, for example, I was a Gen Xer who didn't talk about my period. I don't think I ever had a conversation with my mother about it. Maybe once. I don't think I ever had a conversation in health class that was substantive about it. Times have changed. I have two Gen Z daughters. We are talking about it openly. Everybody knows when I'm bleeding and cramping in my house. Everybody is involved in the support process. When it comes to an early sort of inflection point in your life, when you first menstruate, what are the conversations that women need to be having and that mothers need to be having with daughters to move us away from secrecy, stigma, and shame?
Dr. Jessica Zucker 16:15
It's so interesting that you say that because what I hear from parents who have girls, daughters who are menstruating now, is that they are very open about it. There's this sense of normalizing it in a way that we didn't experience. And I think that's phenomenal. I think it's actually a sea change that's happening with this generation. I think also we're seeing it with Gen Alpha, where they're just like, 'Why would we not talk about our bodies? Why is this shameful?' And I think that's amazing. Now, of course, there are pockets of our country and pockets of the world where this is still very much taboo, and it shouldn't be. So in the book, I talk about the research showing that when girls and women are taught to hide their menstruation, to feel ashamed about it, to whisper about it, they are more likely to have negative feelings about their bodies, more likely to experience mental health issues. And so the whole point of the chapter is to really encourage parents and caregivers to have these conversations openly, to normalize the fact that menstruation is a natural bodily function that happens to roughly half the population. And it's not disgusting. It's not dirty. It's not something to be ashamed of. It's actually, if you think about it, pretty miraculous that our bodies can do this every month. So let's talk about it in a way that celebrates it rather than shames it.
Katie Fogarty 18:00
I love that. Celebrating it rather than shaming it. Let's talk about the other end of the spectrum, which is menopause. This podcast really launched when I was moving into menopause. I was 51. I started it when I was 52. I was moving through perimenopause, and one of the reasons I started talking about my age on the internet and being loud about aging is because I felt like there was so much silence around what was happening to me. I didn't understand it. I was confused. I was disoriented. And I thought, if I'm experiencing this, so many other women are too. And if we can just start talking about it, we can help each other through it. So in your book, you have a chapter about menopause. What do you want women to know about menopause? And how can we normalize it in the same way we're now normalizing menstruation?
Dr. Jessica Zucker 19:00
I think it's so interesting that you started your podcast around that time because you're absolutely right. There is so much silence around menopause, and it's wildly problematic. Women are experiencing these massive changes in their bodies—hot flashes, night sweats, mood changes, cognitive changes—and they're not talking about it. They're suffering in silence. They're thinking that something is wrong with them, that they're broken, that they're going crazy. And it's completely natural. It's a normal part of aging. But because we don't talk about it, women don't know what to expect. They don't know what's normal. They don't know when to seek help. And so in the book, I really encourage women to talk about menopause openly, to share their experiences, to ask questions, to seek support. I also encourage younger women to start learning about menopause now, even if they're not experiencing it yet, because knowledge is power. The more we know about what's coming, the better prepared we can be. And I think normalizing menopause also means acknowledging that it's not all terrible. Yes, there are symptoms that can be really challenging, but menopause can also be a time of liberation, of freedom, of self-discovery. It can be a time when women finally feel like they can be themselves without worrying about pregnancy or periods. So let's celebrate that aspect of it as well.
Katie Fogarty 21:00
Absolutely. I completely agree with you. It can be liberating. I'm on the other side of menopause now, and I feel fantastic. But getting through it was hard because I didn't have a roadmap. So I really appreciate that you're putting that in the book. Let's talk about another section of the book that I found really powerful, which is about sexual trauma and assault. This is something that affects so many women, and yet there's so much silence and shame around it. You share your own story in the book. What do you want women to know about navigating sexual trauma and assault, and how can sharing our stories help?
Dr. Jessica Zucker 21:45
This is such an important topic, and it's one that I was really nervous about including in the book because it's so personal and so painful. But I felt like I had to include it because the research shows that one in three women will experience sexual violence in their lifetime. One in three. That's staggering. And yet we don't talk about it. We don't talk about the trauma. We don't talk about the shame. We don't talk about the long-term effects on mental health. And I think that silence is killing us. So in the book, I share my own story of being sexually assaulted when I was younger, and I talk about how I kept it secret for years because I was ashamed. I blamed myself. I thought it was my fault. And it wasn't until I started talking about it, first in therapy and then with trusted friends, that I began to heal. And I realized that the shame wasn't mine to carry. It belonged to the person who assaulted me. And I think that's so important for survivors to hear. The shame is not yours. The guilt is not yours. None of it was your fault. And the more we share our stories, the more we can lift that burden of shame off of each other's shoulders. We can create a community of support and understanding. And that's incredibly powerful.
Katie Fogarty 23:30
Thank you for sharing that. I know it's not easy to talk about, and I really appreciate your vulnerability. Let's shift gears a little bit and talk about another section of the book, which is about divorce. You write about your own divorce in the book, and you talk about how divorce is often seen as a failure, as something to be ashamed of. But you reframe it as something that can be empowering and liberating. Can you talk about that?
Dr. Jessica Zucker 24:00
Yes. So I went through a divorce a few years ago, and it was one of the most painful experiences of my life. But it was also one of the most liberating. And I think that's something we don't talk about enough. We talk about divorce as this terrible thing, as a failure, as something to be ashamed of. But sometimes divorce is the healthiest choice you can make for yourself and for your family. Sometimes staying in a marriage that's not working is actually more harmful than leaving. And so in the book, I talk about how I made the decision to get divorced, how I navigated it with my kids, how I dealt with the grief and the guilt and the shame. And I also talk about how, on the other side of it, I feel more myself than I ever have. I feel more authentic. I feel more free. And I think that's something we need to celebrate. We need to stop seeing divorce as a failure and start seeing it as sometimes a necessary step toward a healthier, happier life.
Katie Fogarty 25:30
I love that reframing. I think it's so important to hear that message, especially for women who are contemplating divorce or who are going through it and feeling like they've failed. Let's talk about another big topic in the book, which is fertility and pregnancy loss. This is obviously your area of expertise. You've written extensively about it. In Normalize It, you expand on what you wrote in your first book. What new insights do you offer in this book about fertility and pregnancy loss?
Dr. Jessica Zucker 26:00
In this book, I really wanted to expand the conversation beyond just pregnancy loss to include all aspects of fertility. So I talk about infertility, IVF, egg freezing, abortion, pregnancy complications, stillbirth. I talk about the mental health toll of fertility struggles, the grief, the anxiety, the depression. And I also talk about how to support people who are going through these experiences. Because one of the biggest problems is that people don't know what to say. They say the wrong things. They say hurtful things without meaning to. So I provide guidance on how to support someone who's going through a miscarriage, how to support someone who's struggling with infertility, how to be present without trying to fix things. And I think that's so important because support can make all the difference in someone's healing journey.
Katie Fogarty 27:15
That's such an important point about knowing how to support people. Because so often we do say the wrong things, not out of malice, but out of ignorance or discomfort. So having that guidance is really valuable. Let's talk about another section of the book that I think is really important, which is about parenting. You write about the pressure on mothers to be perfect, the guilt, the judgment. Can you talk about that?
Dr. Jessica Zucker 27:50
Oh, the pressure on mothers is immense. It's crushing, actually. There's this expectation that mothers should be perfect, that they should love every moment of motherhood, that they should sacrifice everything for their children. And if you don't feel that way, if you're struggling, if you're resentful sometimes, if you're exhausted, then you feel like a bad mother. And that guilt is so toxic. It's so harmful. And so in the book, I really try to normalize the full range of emotions that come with motherhood. It's okay to love your kids and also find motherhood really hard. It's okay to need breaks. It's okay to want time for yourself. It's okay to sometimes regret your decision to have kids. These are all normal human emotions, and we need to stop pretending that motherhood is all sunshine and rainbows. It's messy. It's complicated. It's full of contradictions. And that's okay.
Katie Fogarty 29:00
I love that you're normalizing the full range of emotions because I think so many mothers feel like they have to present this perfect image, and it's exhausting. Let's talk about mental health more broadly. You dedicate a whole section to mental health in the book. What do you want women to know about mental health, and how can we destigmatize mental health struggles?
Dr. Jessica Zucker 29:30
I think the most important thing is to recognize that mental health is health. It's not separate from physical health. It's not less important than physical health. It's just health. And just like we would go to a doctor if we had a physical ailment, we should seek help if we're struggling mentally or emotionally. But there's still so much stigma around mental health. People are afraid to admit they're struggling. They're afraid to seek help. They're afraid of being judged or seen as weak. And that stigma is so dangerous because it prevents people from getting the help they need. So in the book, I talk about my own experiences with therapy, with medication, with mental health struggles. And I encourage people to prioritize their mental health, to seek help when they need it, to not be ashamed of taking medication if that's what helps them. And I also encourage people to talk about their mental health openly, because the more we talk about it, the more we normalize it, the easier it becomes for others to seek help.
Katie Fogarty 31:00
Absolutely. I think normalizing mental health struggles and mental health treatment is so important. Let's talk about something else that comes up in the book, which is abortion. You write about abortion in the context of reproductive choice, and you talk about how abortion is often stigmatized and how women who have abortions are often shamed. Can you talk about that?
Dr. Jessica Zucker 31:30
Abortion is one of those topics that's so loaded, so politicized, so stigmatized. And I think that's really problematic because abortion is healthcare. It's a medical procedure that people need access to. And yet there's so much shame around it. Women who have abortions are often made to feel like they've done something wrong, like they're bad people. And that's not true. Abortion is a deeply personal decision, and it's not for anyone else to judge. In the book, I talk about the importance of destigmatizing abortion, of recognizing that people have abortions for all kinds of reasons, and all of those reasons are valid. I also talk about the mental health impact of not being able to access abortion care, of being forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy. The research shows that people who are denied abortions have worse mental health outcomes, worse economic outcomes, worse health outcomes overall. So access to abortion is a public health issue. It's a mental health issue. And we need to stop treating it as anything other than healthcare.
Katie Fogarty 33:00
Thank you for addressing that so directly. It's such an important issue, especially right now with everything that's happening politically. Let's talk about another topic that I think is really relevant to my audience, which is aging. You write about aging in the book, about ageism, about how women are often made to feel invisible or irrelevant as they age. Can you talk about that?
Dr. Jessica Zucker 33:30
Ageism is such a huge problem, especially for women. We live in a culture that values youth, that worships youth, and as women age, they're often made to feel like they're past their prime, like they're no longer relevant or valuable. And that's so damaging. It's so harmful. Because aging is a privilege. Not everyone gets to age. And as we age, we gain wisdom, we gain experience, we gain perspective. We become more ourselves. And yet we're told to hide our age, to fight aging, to try to look younger. And I think that's really problematic. In the book, I encourage women to embrace aging, to be proud of their age, to celebrate it. I love that your podcast is called A Certain Age and that you're loud about your age. I think that's so important because the more we do that, the more we normalize aging, the easier it becomes for other women to do the same.
Katie Fogarty 35:00
I love that. Aging as a privilege. That's such a powerful reframe. Throughout the book, you talk about the importance of storytelling, of sharing our experiences. You've shared so much of your own story. How do you decide what to share and what to keep private? How do you set boundaries around storytelling?
Dr. Jessica Zucker 35:30
That's such a good question. I think it's really important to set boundaries, and those boundaries are different for everyone. For me, I ask myself a few questions before I share something. First, have I processed this enough that I can talk about it without being retraumatized? Second, will sharing this be helpful to others? And third, am I sharing this for the right reasons? Am I sharing it to help people, or am I sharing it because I'm seeking validation or attention? And I think those are important distinctions to make. I also think it's important to recognize that you don't have to share everything. You can share parts of your story without sharing all of it. You can share the lessons you've learned without sharing all the details. And you can always change your mind. You can share something and then decide later that you want to keep it more private. There's no rule that says once you've shared something, you have to keep sharing it forever.
Katie Fogarty 37:00
That's really helpful guidance. I think a lot of people struggle with knowing what to share and how much to share. Let's talk about resilience. You've been through a lot in your life. You've experienced pregnancy loss, sexual assault, divorce, breast cancer. How have you cultivated resilience? What advice do you have for women who are going through really hard things?
Dr. Jessica Zucker 37:30
I think resilience is really misunderstood. I think people often think of resilience as bouncing back, as getting over something, as moving on. But I don't think that's what resilience is at all. I think resilience is about integration. It's about integrating the hard things into who you are. It's about carrying them with you, not trying to get over them or forget about them, but learning how to live with them. And I think that requires a lot of self-compassion, a lot of patience with yourself, a lot of grace. It requires allowing yourself to feel your feelings, even when they're really painful. It requires reaching out for support, whether that's therapy or friends or community. And it requires giving yourself time. Healing doesn't happen on a timeline. There's no deadline for grief. There's no expiration date on trauma. You heal at your own pace, and that's okay.
Katie Fogarty 39:00
That's beautiful. Resilience as integration rather than bouncing back. I really love that. Let's talk about your writing process. You've written two books now. You write a lot on social media. You write articles. What is your writing process like? How do you approach writing about such difficult, personal topics?
Dr. Jessica Zucker 39:30
My writing process is pretty organic. I usually start with something that's on my mind, something I'm grappling with, something I'm feeling. And I just start writing. I don't outline. I don't plan. I just write. And then I go back and edit and refine. For the books, the process is obviously more structured. I have to create an outline. I have to organize chapters. But even then, I try to keep it pretty organic and let the writing flow naturally. And I think writing about difficult topics is cathartic for me. It helps me process what I'm going through. It helps me make sense of it. And it also feels purposeful because I know that by sharing my experiences, I'm helping others feel less alone.
Katie Fogarty 40:30
I love that. Writing as catharsis and as purpose. That's a beautiful combination. Let's talk about the research that you include in the book. You're a psychologist. You have a background in public health. You include a lot of research throughout the book. How do you balance the research with the personal storytelling? How do you make sure the book doesn't feel too academic but also has that scientific grounding?
Dr. Jessica Zucker 41:00
I think the key is to weave the research in naturally, to use it to support the points I'm making rather than making the research the focus. So I'll share a personal story and then I'll say, 'And this is what the research shows,' or 'And this is backed up by research.' I try to make it conversational, to explain the research in a way that's accessible and relatable. I also try to choose research that's really compelling, that tells a story in itself. Like when I talk about how a majority of women feel self-blame and shame after pregnancy loss. That's a powerful statistic. It tells a story. It shows how widespread this problem is. So I try to use research that enhances the narrative rather than interrupting it.
Katie Fogarty 42:00
That makes sense. The research as supporting evidence rather than the main focus. Let's talk about community. You've built a huge community online around these topics. How has that community supported you, and how do you see community as part of the healing process?
Dr. Jessica Zucker 42:30
The community has been everything. I mean, truly, I wouldn't be where I am today without the community that's supported me and that I've been able to support in return. When I started the I Had a Miscarriage campaign, I had no idea it would take off the way it did. I had no idea how many people were struggling in silence, how many people were desperate to share their stories, to feel seen, to feel heard. And when the campaign went viral and hundreds of thousands of people shared their stories, it was this incredible moment of collective healing. People were finally able to say, 'This happened to me,' and have other people say, 'Me too.' And that's so powerful. That's transformative. Because when we share our stories and we're met with recognition and validation, it breaks the isolation. It breaks the shame. It shows us that we're not alone. And I think that's the most important thing we can give each other.
Katie Fogarty 44:00
The power of 'me too.' That's so important. Let's talk about how you balance all of these different roles. You're a psychologist. You're an author. You're a speaker. You're a mother. You're navigating your own health journey. How do you balance all of that? How do you take care of yourself while doing all of this work?
Dr. Jessica Zucker 44:30
I don't always balance it well, to be honest. There are times when I'm overwhelmed, when I'm exhausted, when I need to step back. And I try to listen to my body and my mind when they're telling me I need a break. I try to set boundaries. I try to say no to things that don't feel aligned with my values or my energy. I also have a really good therapist, which helps immensely. And I have friends and family who support me and who understand when I need to disappear for a while to recharge. I think self-care is really important, but I also think we need to recognize that self-care isn't always bubble baths and face masks. Sometimes self-care is saying no. Sometimes it's setting a boundary. Sometimes it's asking for help. Sometimes it's just surviving the day.
Katie Fogarty 46:00
I love that reframing of self-care. It's not just the Instagram version. It's the real, messy, sometimes difficult version of taking care of yourself. Let's talk about your breast cancer diagnosis. You write about it in the book. You mentioned earlier that it was sort of the catalyst for writing this book. Can you talk about that experience and how it changed you?
Dr. Jessica Zucker 46:30
Being diagnosed with breast cancer was probably the most terrifying thing that's ever happened to me. And I've been through a lot, as we've discussed. But there's something about being faced with your own mortality, about thinking you might die, about thinking your kids might grow up without you, that just shifts everything. It makes you reevaluate everything. It makes you question everything. What do I really want? What really matters? How do I want to spend the time I have left? And I think in some ways, the cancer diagnosis gave me permission to write this book, to expand beyond just pregnancy loss and talk about all the other things I'd been through, all the other things I wanted to say. Because I realized that life is short and I don't have time to stay in a box that other people have put me in. I need to be fully myself. And so the book is really a reflection of that. It's me saying, 'This is all of who I am. This is everything I've experienced. And I'm not going to hide any of it anymore.'
Katie Fogarty 48:04
In my situation, I was diagnosed with breast cancer a few weeks after my first book came out in 2021. And as much as I still had a lot to say about pregnancy loss and life after and remain committed to the topic and the community that I've built, for me, being diagnosed with a life-threatening illness sort of catapulted my life into that being the singular focus. And I guess it trumped all that I had been talking about before. It didn't in any way diminish the intensity of my 16-week loss, but I think I had processed that for so long. I had written a book. I had written endless articles. I had started this campaign. And so when I was faced with something that seemed like life or death—not 'like' life or death, it was life or death—and being faced then with the questions of, 'Will my children be motherless?' it really sort of threw me into an entirely new orbit of grief, of complexity, of fear, of anxiety. So in answer to your question, though, I don't think we have to sort of have resolved, quote-unquote, one thing in order to then move on to another. I think that if we live long enough, we will probably experience a number of traumas over the course of our lives, whether they are little T or big T traumas. And the resilience, I think, comes through attempting to navigate them with honesty, with self-inflicted grace, and really trying hard to not blame ourselves, but instead meet ourselves with compassion and taking the time that we need to process the intensity of it all.
Katie Fogarty 50:00
Jessica, you've gone through some very intense personal experiences. You are in a therapist's office every week. You've codified these experiences, your learnings, into books. Part of being an author is having to promote the book, share your stories. You're revisiting it again and again. I know the focus of your book is that storytelling can liberate us, but how do you protect your peace, your mental energy when you are revisiting this over and over again with somebody like me today?
Dr. Jessica Zucker 50:48
Oh, wow. Yeah, I haven't been asked this at all, and I haven't even thought about it, but it's a good question. I've taken breaks along the way in the promotion of the book. I feel at this point like I have done enough of my own therapy and sort of integrating my experiences and really trying to kind of cry them out, scream them out, write them out, that I don't feel triggered in moments when I'm on podcasts and interviews and talking about these things. But I do try to take reprieve. I try to take breaks for my own mental health, for self-care, to make sure—just to really check in with myself that it's not too much or taking me to the point of burnout. I guess we can all take breaks throughout whatever it is that we're grappling with.
Katie Fogarty 51:45
I think that's great advice for whatever it is you're going through—a yoga class, a walk in the park with friends, just putting your brain into a low gear so you can re-energize and refocus again on what you need to handle is really smart advice. So my final question, Jessica: You have written two books at this stage. I know you do a lot of talking. You've been doing a lot of writing on this topic. What do you hope the legacy of Normalize It would be? What would success look like? Not for the book per se, just in terms of racing up lists, but for the movement, the culture shift, the zeitgeist change that needs to happen in terms of really giving women the excitement about how sharing our stories can truly drive differences for ourselves and our mental health and as a collective good.
Dr. Jessica Zucker 52:32
Yeah. I mean, my ultimate hope is that people begin to share in ways about the deepest parts of themselves, just like we share about what we're going to make for dinner that night, right? So that it's integrated and it's comfortable, and that we feel that vulnerability is not so scary, but instead a connector and a way to be more intimate in our relationships. My focus is really for people to not just know that they're not alone, but to actually feel that they're not alone. I think that people can take baby steps as well.
Katie Fogarty 53:11
The tagline of this podcast is 'age out loud.' I started shouting my age all over the internet five years ago. I'm now 56, and sometimes it feels uncomfortable to say something, but when we do it, we start to become more comfortable. We start to open ourselves up. We start to find community. That's absolutely been my experience with sort of aging and menopausing out loud through the podcast. It's connected me to wonderful people, and it's helped me navigate some of my own stuff. I so love what you're bringing out into the world. I love that you are normalizing these conversations about the natural, the hard things that women go through, and it's going to make us all just sort of better and more interconnected. So I appreciate your time today. Thank you for being with me.
Dr. Jessica Zucker 54:10
Thank you so much for having me.
Katie Fogarty 54:15
This wraps A Certain Age, a show for women who are aging without apology. Thank you for hanging around, participating in what was really a special, moving, thoughtful conversation. Jessica is surfacing the conversations that we need to be having, that we should have had in the past, that we may want to grapple with now that we are in midlife with all of our lived wisdom and experience to explore, open, and recover these conversations. I enjoyed this show so much. It was another fabulous, open, vulnerable, hearted conversation. If you enjoyed it as well, I would love to hear about it in an Apple Podcast or Spotify review, because reviews help other women find the show. Thanks for being a part of the conversation every week. And special thanks to Michael Mancini, who composed and produced our theme music. See you next time and until then, age boldly and loudly, beauties.