Normalize It: From Miscarriage to Midlife—Owning Our Stories Without Shame with Jessica Zucker
On Health
Aviva Romm
4.8 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 23 April 2025
⏱️ 63 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
There are the stories we tell out loud, and then there are the ones we keep tucked away—the ones that ache the most, because we’ve carried them in silence.
On this episode of On Health, we’re breaking the silence—and the stigma—around some of the most vulnerable, hidden experiences women carry: miscarriage, illness, identity loss, perfectionism, aging, and the loneliness so many of us feel but rarely name.
I’m joined by the phenomenal Dr. Jessica Zucker, clinical psychologist and author of the groundbreaking memoir I Had a Miscarriage, and her latest book, Normalize It, which is just what we need: an invitation to stop apologizing for what we’re going through—and start talking about it.
Together, we explore:
- How grief grows in silence—and thrives in stigma
- What it means when you don’t feel like yourself
- Why midlife isn’t a decline—it’s a reckoning
- What being a “good girl” has cost us
- Why loneliness is a serious health issue
- Why we are more than what we do
- How perfectionism is stealing our joy
This one’s for all the women tired of pretending they’re fine.
Who are aching to be seen.
Who are ready to stop carrying the weight alone.
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Looking for supplements for yourself and your family, including some of those I talk about in episodes? You can find those - and your 15% discount on every order here: avivaromm.com/supplements
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From the stuff your mother never told you to the stuff your doctor never learn, |
| 0:09.0 | on health is what happens when a midwife plus a Yale trained MD shares about all things |
| 0:14.3 | women's health. |
| 0:15.4 | From periods to menopause, sex to reproductive health politics, motherhood to mental health, |
| 0:23.1 | join me for taboo-busting conversations that demystify and destigmatize our bodies, all while bridging the gap between conventional |
| 0:28.4 | medicine and wellness. Along the way, we'll be exploring the science and wisdom of how our bodies |
| 0:33.5 | work, what makes us well, what gets in the way, and how we can live our best lives on our |
| 0:39.2 | terms. When it comes to women's health and well-being, there's nothing we won't talk about. |
| 0:44.0 | The new medicine for women is here. I'm Dr. Avivaram. Welcome to the podcast. |
| 0:58.9 | There are stories we tell and stories we don't. |
| 1:02.3 | There are things we say out loud and things we keep to ourselves. |
| 1:05.8 | And often it's the things that we don't say that weigh the most. |
| 1:12.5 | The body struggles, the silent grief, the exhaustion of trying to be everything to everyone. So often these aren't just personal, though. They're cultural, too. From the moment we're born, we're taught |
| 1:17.7 | how to be good girls. We absorb silent lessons about what our bodies should look like, how we |
| 1:23.0 | should behave, and what we should want. These expectations run deep, so deep that we often don't even realize we've internalized |
| 1:30.4 | them, and yet they shape everything, our sense of self, our worth, our relationships, |
| 1:36.1 | even the way we process loss, illness, and trauma. |
| 1:39.8 | We're taught to silence ourselves. |
| 1:42.2 | So what happens when we stop hiding? |
| 1:45.6 | What happens when we say, |
| 1:51.6 | here's what I've carried? Here's what I still carry. What happens when we finally speak? What happens when we refuse to let stigma dictate our shared experiences? Welcome back to On Health. Today, I'm |
| 1:58.3 | joined by Jessica Zucker, Ph.D. Jessica is a Los Angeles-based psychologist, |
... |
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