The Life of a Prune

I made this cartoon called the Life of a Prune to bring these very real feelings of shame I have had in my life — to life. Shame plays such a major role in our lives, it’s a feeling that leads us down a dangerous path of self abandonment and betrayal, and sometimes we need to realize we are simply a prune, worthy of feeling pain.

The Alchemy of Hurt

We have pain around something. We feel rejected, less than, hurt, betrayed, or unaccepted. To me, the initial pain feels like an ache in my chest, a sharpness in my heart, a well of tears in my eyes.

When we feel this pain, we have two choices.

One is to sit with the pain—to feel it, voice it, and be there for it. And when I say “pain,” I really mean ourselves. Because who is the one feeling that pain?

The second choice is to walk away. By walking away, I mean leaving a part of ourselves alone in the pain because we don’t think we are worthy of comfort. In Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, they call this hurting part “the exile.” When we say, “I want to get rid of this pain,” we are effectively saying, “I want to get rid of the part of me that feels this.” You cannot reject the pain without rejecting the person you are who is holding it.

The Shift

The first sign that I notice myself walking away is a physical shift. It moves from that ache in my heart and the tears in my eyes to a heart that is racing—thoughts that spin and shift into anger.

It’s ironic, because we really think we are doing ourselves a service by being “above it,” “stronger,” or “unaffected.” We protect ourselves by saying we don’t care, or by spiraling into thoughts that make us feel powerful again. We genuinely believe that if we stop “acting” hurt, we aren’t hurt, mistaking numbness and abandonment for strength.

We turn to “power moves” to feel like we are winning again:

• Someone calls you fat? I’ll starve myself and prove them wrong.

• Jealous of your boyfriend? I don’t care; I’ll go talk to other guys.

• Someone made you feel incapable? I’ll make so much money they’ll feel incapable.

• We feel ugly? Let’s go show off our body and get attention so we can feel better.

The Implosion

In these moments, our minds are on fire. We feel like we need to do something NOW to make ourselves feel better, or else we will implode.

We jump toward quick relief—or relief that isn’t so quick. Talking to another guy instead of voicing your pain to your partner takes a second. But what about altering your entire identity to escape shame? What about spending your life chasing money in a job you hate simply to prove others wrong? These “fixes” can last a second, but they often last a lifetime

But relief doesn’t always look like action. Sometimes, it looks like a calculated, telling yourself you aren’t hurt. You stay still and act unaffected, thinking you’ve won because you didn’t react. But in that stillness, you are creating a severed relationship with yourself and with those around you. You’ve achieved “peace” only by abandoning the part of you that is actually hurting. You aren’t being strong; you’re just becoming a stranger to yourself.

We have so much shame around having pain that we refuse to even be vulnerable with ourselves about it. And if we manage to be honest with ourselves, it takes another layer of strength to be vulnerable with those around us, fearing we will appear weak, needy, or embarrassed.

Vulnerability

So, what does it actually look like to stay?

Vulnerability. Admitting the truth before the “protector” can turn it into anger or power. It looks like actually admitting to yourself that you feel like a prune right now, you feel small, abandoned, gross, hurting, unworthy etc. it starts with first voicing it to yourself and deeming yourself worthy of feeling it. It doesn’t come from being weak, it comes from being a human being. Then, instead of going out to find attention to “fix” your self-esteem, it’s actually being vulnerable to others and voicing your true feelings and struggles.

The Cost of Disconnecting

Pain is the original hurt. Shame is the judgment about the hurt —the belief that needing, caring, or reacting makes you “too much.” This judgment is what drives self-abandonment. People don’t disconnect just because they’re in pain; they disconnect because they feel ashamed of being in pain.

In order to dodge the sting, you have to disconnect from yourself. You decide to get up and walk away, distracting yourself with other people, other thoughts, and other actions. But you have just left yourself behind—crying, ignored, and alone. You have fragmented yourself.

This happens in our relationships, too. When we are hurt by someone and pretend we don’t care, we disconnect from them and from ourselves. We search for ways to gain power to soothe the sting, but those behaviors only distance us further.

Where It Leads

I’ll tell you where this disconnection led me. It led me to an eating disorder, to forming an identity in contrast to who I truly was, to seeking validation from others, and to pursuing a career just to prove myself. It led to taking medication I absolutely hated and to allowing myself to be abused.

But your body knows. It eventually catches up to you. It led me to panic attacks, to dissociation, to hypomania—mental health symptoms that are really just your body screaming for you to wake up and come back.

The Strength of Staying

If we don’t disconnect, the pain eventually dissipates. And you get to be the one who sat there with yourself the whole way through.

We think that by actually getting hurt, by actually caring, we appear to be some pathetic, weak loser. It is actually the exact opposite. It shows incredible strength to be vulnerable. It is the smartest and bravest thing you can possibly do.

We trade vulnerability (which feels like losing) for power (which feels like winning). But you’re winning a game in a life you’ve built just to hide a wound—and it’s not even you that’s winning. The real you was left behind long ago.

Living as your true self allows for peace and presence. Otherwise, you’ll be stuck living from your ego, driven by pain, with thoughts looping and a heart in a constant state of panic.

We cant always be vulnerable, we cant always let in pain, sometimes life is too hectic and things are too much, but when we finally are safe enough to do so, we MUST

I want to end this post with a poem I wrote on Shame, called

Shrinking out existence

Shame
Shame has to be one of the hardest feelings to sit with.

And for that reason, we fight it, hard.
But the more we fight it,
the more defensive it gets.

Because it feels like it’s being attacked,

I get this wave that comes over me.
It feels like an actual wave,
with a strong undertow.
And I feel myself submitting,
being sucked under.

And part of me wants to submit,
instead of fighting to stay strong,
to stay grounded,
to stay alive.

I collapse into it,
so it can wash me away from the entire world.

You get this urge to erase the parts of yourself you believe are causing the pain.
The parts you’re disgusted by

I know this feeling all too well.
That desire to shrink myself out of existence,
like my mere being is an embarrassment.

And shriveling, giving up,
it feels horrible,
So often
it jolts you into action.
You want to fight back,
erase it immediately.

But that kind of reaction
is often loud, harsh, and overcompensating.

And then,
when the dust settles,
you sometimes look back and feel shame
about how you tried to erase the original shame.

So while being sucked under the wave,
becoming a prune,
may not keep us safe forever,
it can still be useful for the moment.

When we jump to fight it,
to prove who we actually want to be seen as,
we might feel relief,
but relief can trick us.

You think people think you’re weird,
so you take back what you said and totally shift how you act.
Or you look in the mirror and hear, “You’re a fat loser,”
so you decide to starve yourself,
and suddenly, it feels like control.

They feel like relief in the moment,
but they can really mess with you.

Because maybe you don’t actually want to give up on your dreams.
Maybe you do want to be seen.

And maybe sometimes you act out of alignment.
You cheat, you snap, you do something that wasn’t really you,
and then the shame floods in.
And you think the only way to deal is to shut it all down.

That shame is part of you.
It’s not the enemy.

It might actually be trying to point you toward something that matters to you,

So instead of immediately scrambling for relief,
What if you asked it what it wanted?
What if you just sat with it for a sec

Shame can make you feel so dehydrated,
like the only way out is to chug water
as fast as you can.

But when you do that,
out of panic,
out of disgust,
out of a desperate need to be a plum again,
you don’t just plump back up.
You explode.

Real healing doesn’t look like force-feeding.
It looks like sitting there, wrinkled and raw,
To stop pretending it didn’t hurt.
To just feel it.

To let yourself prune in peace

You don’t need to be a perfect plum again.
You just need to become someone
who doesn’t abandon herself
the second she starts to wrinkle.