SHAME, EASE, AND LEARNING TO EXHALE

I’m in the middle of Bonnie Wan’s The Life Brief virtual retreat, and I’m honestly having the time of my life.

I was already a fan. I’d read the book, listened to the podcasts, watched the clips. I knew her method was simple and sharp in the best way. It cuts through the noise. It gets you out of abstraction and into what actually matters, and then pushes you to do something about it. Her method has been honed through years as a top-tier creative strategist. Her ability to distill truth is unparalleled.

 

What I didn’t expect wasn’t Bonnie. It was the people.

The retreat is small and intimate, and we’re connecting through an app called Marco Polo, trading short video clips. Little slices of real life. What’s coming up in journaling. What’s tender. What’s funny. What’s unresolved. And what struck me almost immediately was how little hesitation there was. People weren’t waiting to see what others would say first. No one seemed to be posturing or polishing. They were just… there.

For someone raised and professionally shaped in Japan, this landed deeply. In my work, it often takes months, sometimes years, to help people feel safe enough to be that honest with themselves. To trust that nothing bad will happen if they tell the truth, even privately. So being in a space where that safety was assumed rather than negotiated felt like a long, full exhale.

There was one moment that was especially meaningful for me. One woman was recording a Marco Polo while holding her pet bird. The bird had pooped on her shirt, I think before she even hit record. But she didn’t notice right away. When she did, she nonchalantly said, "Oh, sorry you guys had to see that," and moved on.

It was funny and sweet. And very telling for me. Because, what really caught me was her ease about it. There was no scrambling. No embarrassment spiral. No sudden self-consciousness. Just a sense of, “Oops. That’s nature.”

That tiny moment sent me down a much bigger line of inquiry.

Years ago, I had a similar fascination that came up in conversation with close friends. The question was simple and oddly revealing: do you fart in front of your partner?

Some said yes, of course. Some said absolutely not. One woman told me she’d been married for six years and still wouldn’t dream of it. It would, in her words, "kill the dream." Others described a timeline. Not while dating. Maybe after living together. Definitely after kids.

Which made me wonder: Who decides? And who decides when it becomes okay?

Because, obviously, it’s not actually your partner, is it?

It’s you.

You decide when something natural becomes shameful or neutral. You decide what counts as “unsexy,” inappropriate, or off-limits. You decide the narrative you participate in and quietly reinforce. And once that line is drawn, it can feel surprisingly hard to cross back over, even if it no longer makes sense.

Clearly, this isn’t really about bodily functions. It’s about the invisible definitions we carry. The small, everyday ways we edit ourselves long after the original reason for doing so has expired.

Watching how easy she was about her bird-shit cameo was nothing short of a display of real-woman-elegance. The kind that doesn't collapse under biology. And a reminder of how expansive it feels to live outside those inherited rules. How much energy is freed up when shame isn’t the default setting? This, I am eager to discover for myself.

So the real question isn’t: When is it okay to exhale? 

It’s: When will you choose that freedom for yourself?