Jamie Letourneau, author of A Kids Book About Shame, talks about not needing to experience difficult emotions alone.
Jamie Letourneau, author of A Kids Book About Shame, talks about not needing to experience difficult emotions alone.
A Kids Book About Shame (view book)
Full Book Description:
This is a book about shame. Yep, that messy thing we all carry but we all like to hide. But shame is such an important topic to talk about, especially with kids. Because guess what? They feel it all the time. And they just don’t know how to talk about it. Because even grownups don’t know how to talk about it. Shame doesn’t make us anything less than enough. It just makes us human.
About the Author:
Jamie Letourneau makes illustrations as an extension of herself to help humans navigate and share ideas and emotions. She can also be found slinging sentimental paper goods under her company Meander Ink, biking around Portland, Oregon, and unashamedly waving at all of the dogs.
*If you want to be on a future episode of A Kids Book About: The Podcast or if you have a question you’d like us to consider, have a grownup email us at listen@akidspodcastabout.com and we’ll send you the details.
A Kids Book About: The Podcast
S1 E14, Jamie Talks About Shame
[INTRODUCTION]
Matthew: What is shame?
Connor: Shame is when you try to make someone else feel bad based on their actions. Or at least that’s what it is to me.
Preston: Shame is when you don’t like yourself. You’re, like, mad at yourself. You’re just insulting yourself.
Noelle: I think shame is sort of like regret. And what regret is is like you wish you hadn’t done something because usually it’s bad or it affected another person in a negative way.
Ashton: Shame is when you like feel really like bad about yourself or something you did or something that’s happening. And it just makes you feel crappy.
Jamie: Shame is one of those trickier emotions that we have. It kind of feels like feeling icky or feeling bad. But it's also something that we all have. That's not actually a bad emotion. It's just something that I think that we need to have a little help navigating and figuring out sometimes.
Matthew: Welcome to A Kids Book About: The Podcast! I’m Matthew. I’m a teacher, a librarian, and I’m your host. The voices you heard at the top of our show were from Connor, Preston, Noelle, Ashton, and Jamie.
Each week we talk about the big things going on in your world with a different author from our A Kids Book About series.
[MEET OUR GUEST]
Jamie: Hi. My name is Jamie Latourneau and I am a woman and I'm also a writer and a graphic designer and a narrative illustrator. So I tell stories with the pictures that I make. I'm also an advocate for humans and animals.
Matthew: An advocate is someone who fights for the rights and protection of others.
Jamie: I am the author of A Kids Book About Shame.
Matthew: True story? This is one of the first A Kids Book About titles I ever read. Why? Because I struggle with feelings of shame a lot. Ever since I was a kid. And up through now as an adult. Have you felt shame before? Does everyone feel shame?
Jamie: They do. Some people feel it differently than others. So I think that some people have shame about things and they can talk about it easily or they can move through it more easily, But some people, it affects them more and it kind of sticks with them for longer periods of time.
Matthew: People feel shame in different ways and for different reasons.
Jamie: I think lots of things can cause us to feel shame. Um, sometimes it's other people that do something that make us feel like we did something wrong, even if that's not true. So other people can kind of cause those feelings to come up in us.
We can also do things or try to do things or not do things at all that can make us feel shame if we feel like we did something not so great or wrong, so it can come from a lot of different situations.
Matthew: Before we go too much further, I want to clarify something. Feeling guilty about doing something is different from feeling shame.
Jamie: Yeah, and I think it gets confusing too, because it sometimes is dependent on someone's belief system. But if someone disagrees with someone else, they can cause someone to feel shame that they did something wrong. But I think that gets confusing throughout your life if you change your mind about what you believe is the right thing to do or the wrong thing.
Matthew: Yeah. I mean in that way it’s almost like guilt feels like a failure of someone else and shame feels like a failure of yourself.
Matthew: Let me give a real world example to help give a better idea of the difference between guilt and shame.
When I was 10 or 11 years old, I spent a week at my grandparent’s house and worked at their hardware store to earn some extra money over the summer. My grandmother had a change jar in the laundry room where she collected all of the change she found in people’s pockets as she was washing the clothes. When I saw that change jar I immediately thought about the comics I could buy with it.
And so, when I didn’t think anyone else would notice, I took out all of the quarters from the jar so I could buy some comics when I got back home. I felt guilt because I knew I was doing something I wasn’t supposed to do, but the temptation was too much for me in that moment. And the next day, my grandmother questioned me about why her change jar was suddenly much lower than before. I felt guilt as I told her what I had done and I put the money back.
And do you know what she told me? She said that all I needed to do was ask her and she would have given me the money to buy the comics. She was so kind and that was a really forgiving way to talk to me. That was also a moment where I felt shame because I let myself down. I felt shame because I felt like this moment revealed that I wasn’t an honest person. That my grandmother couldn’t trust me. That I really disappointed her, even though she responded to me with love.
I’m sharing this with you, though, because being able to talk about it and understand myself through it has helped me let go of the shame associated with it.
And knowing how to free yourself from shame you may be carrying, I think, is a really, really useful tool.
Jamie: I don't think there's a magic button to get rid of shame. And I think that we can always experience shame throughout our lives, but I do think that it can help us a lot to move through shame instead of around it, by talking to other people about it.
And especially talking to people that you feel safe with. And something really cool can happen when you talk to other people about your shame: it gives them space to talk about theirs, too.
I don't think we can magically make it go away, but we can sure make it feel like it's less scary and less of a big deal that we have to live with it. We can talk to other people about it and kind of work through it and figure out how to make it not overtake our life.
Matthew: We’ll be back in a minute with Jamie - and a question from a listener - right after this quick break.
[BREAK]
Matthew: Welcome back to A Kids Book About: The Podcast. On today’s episode we’re talking about shame with Jamie Latourneau.
We’re also talking about how shame or how thinking about shame makes us feel.
Connor: Sad. A little bit. It’s not really a big thing to me.
Preston: Thinking about shame? It makes me feel horrid.
Ashton: I don’t like shame. It’s kind of bad. I don’t like thinking about it.
Noelle: I guess kind of bad because it’s thinking about something I wish I hadn’t done. And something I probably shouldn’t have done.
Jamie: It makes me feel sad and I think shame can feel icky and that it’s kind of like the heavy-weighted feeling over you that follows you around.
When I know that other people are feeling shame about something, I might try to help them feel less shy about sharing it and just remind them that they don't have to experience that by themselves.
Matthew: You write, “Sometimes shame feels like playing hide-and-seek but not wanting to be found. Shame feels like you’re dirty and broken on the inside and outside. Shame feels like climbing over a giant pile of stinky garbage that never, ever gets smaller. Shame feels like an unwanted shadow that follows you around. Shame feels like being around a bunch of people and still being alone. Shame feels like not knowing how to make everyone happy or whose version of right and wrong you should follow.”
I love, as you continue through the book, that where you land is that you’re not alone. And that these feelings are normal. And that, as you said earlier, talking about them will help as well and we should never be afraid to talk about them.
Jamie: I definitely experienced shame as a kid and that's a big reason why this was such a heavy topic on my heart that I wanted to share with kids. And I do have vivid memories of feeling it heavily as a kid. And one memory sticks out in particular, which is what influenced the page, “Shame feels like playing hide and seek, but not wanting to be found.”
We had like a ceramic toilet paper holder that was attached to the wall. And it like fell off and ripped off, and then paint came off the wall. And I was probably only, like, six or seven. But it came off the wall. And I was so afraid that I did it, that I did something wrong, that I broke it, and that I was going to get in trouble.
And so I ran into my room and I hid in between my bed and the wall. There was like this tiny little space and I just turned into a sardine, slipped in there. And I could hear my family calling for me eventually and looking for me. And I just kept hiding.
And I thought, you know, if I hide, they won't find me and I won't get in trouble and I, they won't get mad at me.
And then finally, my mom found me and asked me what was going on. And I started crying and I told her what happened. And she kind of laughed and smiled and gave me a hug and told me it wasn't my fault. And she said it was just an accident. You know, it's just old. It just broke off the wall. It's not your fault.
But I did that a lot where I would hide and I’d think that something was my fault. And yeah, for some reason, I really felt bad when things like that happened, even though I didn't, you know, I didn't do anything wrong. But my brother on the other hand, didn't feel like that when things happened and my mom notices that: that we were really different.
Matthew: If you’ve listened to more than one episode of this podcast, you know that our A Kids Book About authors come to write books with us in lots and lots of different ways. Jamie’s story, which really makes me smile, is all about a dream since childhood to make books.
Jamie: So I was actually extremely lucky to be approached by Jelani. I had got an email just out of the blue and honestly in perfect timing because I had just come out of a very not-so-great job because it was making me feel a lot of shame. And I was sent an email by Jelani and he sent a very pretty simple email explaining that he had a kids book company and was interested in talking to me about working on a kid's book.
And I actually thought that he just meant illustrating because at the time I wasn't known as a writer, but I have always wanted to write a book and illustrate ever since I was probably eight or nine. And so I went into the meeting, trying not to get my hopes up.
And I was just floored because it was everything I've ever wanted to do with my artwork, which was to make impactful things that change people's lives. Like I wanted to make art that really served a purpose. And like I said, I really wanted to make kids books.
Matthew: There are monsters in Jamie’s book. Not big or scary or threatening monsters. But maybe more like companion monsters.
Jamie: I was drawing a series of monsters and writing little stories for each of them.
And then that idea of the monsters like grew into like this idea that they were representative of emotions. And then I was constantly kind of thinking of my own shame as these little monsters that follow me around and not like big, scary beasts, but actually these cuddly little fluffy, almost like stuffed animals, but they're still monsters because they're a little bit scary. Like, I don't want to really approach them, but they also are kind of gentle. And so they're like more like these, quiet creatures that, that follow us around. And so that was kind of an inspiration for what the visuals would be for the book.
[LISTENER QUESTION]
Matthew: Our question today comes from Ashton in Idaho.
Ashton: How do you stop shame? How do you bring it to a close?
Jamie: Thank you for the question, Ashton. Awesome. Also, I'm not sure if you can completely stop shame, but it also depends on what situation it is. Sometimes I think you can, but it's not just a magic button to push to make it stop. You have to think about it even though it's hard. And I think that it helps to talk about it with someone else and really unravel why it's making you feel bad. I think that that is helpful to make it stop.
Even if we don't feel like we can completely make shame, go away, we can definitely do things to make it feel better so that it doesn't feel like such a heavy, dark little cloud over us. We can make it feel like something we can actually navigate and it doesn't interrupt our days so much.
Matthew: Listener, there’s no deadline to move beyond shame. It’s okay to take whatever time you need whenever the need comes up. Take it from me. And take it from Jamie.
Jamie: So it took me a long time to figure out more of what I believed in and what other people were telling me wasn't necessarily what I agreed with.
So, yeah, it took a long time and I really hope that with this book that kids can figure out that it's okay to talk about their emotions much earlier in life that maybe they're not hiding in between the bed and the wall when something happens.
[CLOSING]
Matthew: Thank you to Jamie Latourneau, author of A Kids Book About Shame, for joining us today. And thanks to our very special kid voices for helping make this episode what it is.
Preston: Hi. My name is Preston. I am 7 years old. I live in Idaho. My favorite thing is my bike.
Ashton: My name is Ashton. I am 10 years old. And I live in Idaho. My favorite thing is playing video games.
Connor: My name is Connor. I am 14 years old and I live in Idaho. My favorite thing is swimming.
Noelle: My name is Noelle. I am 10 years old and live in Maryland. And one thing I love to do is learn about space and space exploration.
Matthew: Thank you, Preston, Ashton, Connor, and Noelle! If you want to be on a future episode of A Kids Book About: The Podcast or if you have a question you’d like us to consider, have a grownup email us at listen@akidspodcastabout.com and we’ll send you the details.
A Kids Book About: the Podcast is written, edited, and produced by me, Matthew Winner, with help from Chad Michael Snavely and the team at Sound On Studios. Our executive producer is Jelani Memory. And this show was brought to you by A Kids Podcast About.
Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and wherever podcasts are found, and if you liked this episode, consider sharing it with a friend, teacher, or grownup.
Join us next week for a conversation about God with A Kids Book About author Paul J. Pastor.