The Shame I Carried for Over Three Decades

When we were told our children could be vaccinated at twelve under Gillick competence, I had a reaction so strong it surprised me. At the time I didn't understand why. I just knew it had touched something old and painful.

If something could be done to my child without my consent, what else could happen without my consent?

My body was furious. And then the shame I had carried for decades, the shame I'd tucked away, played down and kept quiet about, came flooding back. I could feel it moving through me from my root to my crown. Instead of pushing it away, I let myself feel it. And slowly, it began to clear.

What happened next became the beginning of the rest of my life.

I felt an immediate and profound sense of divine protection. When that clearing was complete, I went onto my old school's Facebook group and spoke publicly about what had happened to me. What started as one small act of telling the truth grew into something like a mini #MeToo movement. Eventually I made a statement to the police. Months of therapy followed, and a former headteacher was arrested and now faces court proceedings.

For the first time in more than thirty years, I began to let go of the guilt and shame I'd been holding. So much of that guilt came from believing I should have spoken up sooner to protect other girls.

Why survivors don't speak sooner

I understand now that there are so many reasons women stay silent. We minimise what happened. We fear how our families will react, or what the community will say. We fear being judged, or not being believed. And sometimes we simply aren't ready to face the story ourselves.

Many of those fears came true for me. My family found it hard, and some still do. One of my closest friends couldn't understand why I'd suddenly made this such a big part of my life. Some other survivors, who weren't ready to look at their own stories, reacted towards me in ways that hurt.

These last six years have been the hardest of my life. They've also been the most rewarding, because through my own experience I found my purpose.

Since then I've supported hundreds of women through 1:1 work, circles and retreats, helping them find their voices, reconnect with their bodies and begin releasing the shame they've carried. Three years ago I qualified as a trauma-informed coach, and I've had the honour of walking alongside women working through shame around their bodies and their sexuality, religious shaming of the feminine, rape, incest, drug-facilitated sexual assault, and the many quieter ways trauma keeps shaping our bodies, our relationships and how we see ourselves.

What my work actually looks like

My approach is integrative and led by the body. I don't believe one tool works for every woman.

Sometimes the story needs to be told. Sometimes it needs to be witnessed. Sometimes a woman just needs someone sitting beside her while she finally says the words nobody has ever really heard.

Talking therapy can be hugely valuable for that. But many of the women who come to me have already done years of therapy. They understand their story. They know exactly what happened and where their patterns come from.

And yet the pattern is still there.

That's because understanding something in your head doesn't mean your body feels safe. This is where my work is different: we bring the mind and body back into conversation.

Through somatic mapping, we start to notice what's happening in the body. Where does the tension sit? Where is the numbness? Where does anger show up, or fear, or shame, or that sense of pulling inward? What happens in your body when you say yes but mean no? When you talk about intimacy, boundaries, being seen, being loved, being rejected?

Over the years I've learned to read the body through posture, movement, expression and, above all, congruence. Are the words saying one thing while the body says another? Does your chest tighten when you say "I'm fine"? Does your breath change when a certain relationship comes up? Does your nervous system lean towards connection, or towards protection? The body often knows things the conscious mind hasn't caught up with yet.

Trauma can involve dissociation, where we become cut off from our thoughts, feelings, memories or sensations as a way of staying safe. The body learns how to protect us. But long after the danger has passed, we can keep repeating the same patterns, because familiar can feel safer than unknown.

You might recognise this in people pleasing, fawning, self-sabotage or fierce independence. In finding it hard to receive, to trust, or to hold a boundary. In being drawn to relationships that feel strangely familiar. Not because we want those experiences, but because our systems get used to what they know.

Where the body comes into healing

Alongside talking where it's helpful, I work with somatic awareness, movement, breathwork, Reiki and energy healing, sound healing, parts work and chakra-based practices.

First we identify the pattern. Then we notice where it lives in the body. We build enough safety to feel it without being overwhelmed, and then we use whichever practices fit to work with the sensations, emotions and energy that come up.

For me, healing isn't about forcing anything out. It's about growing the capacity to feel what's there, understand what it's telling you, and have the tools to move through it. Recognising the pattern is the key, because once you can see it, you can start to work with it.

Bessel van der Kolk's The Body Keeps the Score explores how trauma can stay held in the body and nervous system even when we understand exactly what happened. That's the gap my work sits in. There's the woman who understands her story, and the woman whose body has been carrying it. My job is to help bring them back together. Through the chakras, we can also explore how these patterns show up across the whole body, from grounding, safety and sexuality, through power, heart and voice, to our sense of meaning and connection.

The next step

You don't need to retell your story to deserve support. But if your story needs to be told so it can finally be seen and heard, there's room for that too.

There's no single right way to heal. There's only the next step that feels safe enough to take. Sometimes that first step is simply saying, "I don't want to carry this anymore."

If you're ready for that step and you're looking for a safe, trauma-informed space to explore what comes next, I'd love to hear from you. Your story doesn't have to define the rest of your life. There can be a next chapter.

With love,
Claudia Chapman