The Romani don't do shame

Sharing burdens and embracing truth in Roma culture

Julieta blowing a kiss from a tree | Picture by Martina Petkova | February 2021

One time, Pepi’s niece Vela was standing by herself next to a busy boulevard in the neighborhood, waiting for her husband. A car stopped right in front of her and the driver, a much older man, waved Vela over. She assumed he’d ask for directions. Instead, he offered her money if she’d get in the car with him and go spend an hour somewhere “having fun.”

Vela cursed him out and he drove off. But the anger and insult were still pulsing through her veins.

Later that day, she was telling us about it.

“I swear. Uncle, hold this,” Vela said and handed Pepi her cigarette, to free up her hands so she could put them on her heart. “I swear on my husband and children, I was shaking so much and the only thing I wanted to do was tell somebody.”

Vela didn’t wait for her husband. She walked around for a couple of minutes scanning her surroundings for the inevitable sight of a relative. One of her cousins walked by, so she was the first to hear what happened. Then her husband showed up, and she told him too. Then she told us, and everyone else she saw that day.

She was angry and insulted. But she did not feel shame. The experience did not make her want to curl up and hide. It did not alienate her from the people around her. On the contrary. Her instinct implored her to say what happened. To not keep this poison in her heart. To release it.

“Shame is a soul-eating emotion.”

Carl Jung

One of the big modern-day revolutions was the #MeToo movement and the collective a-ha that women have kept quiet about a lot of (to put it mildly) unwanted sexual attention. Here in Bulgaria, our society is a few decades behind in understanding the nuances of consent when it comes to sexual violence against women. There is a lot of shame and a lot of shaming. But this is mainstream Bulgarian society. Not the Romani minority.

Vela did not consider, even for a single nanosecond, to keep this experience to herself. Like in many other areas, the Romani hold natural wisdom that mainstream culture needs psychotherapy to re-learn; namely: keeping a traumatic experience a secret is poisonous for the psyche and it will keep weighing on you and festering until you release it. Vela knew that by instinct.

When she told her tribe about it, she didn’t hear in response a single “What’s the big deal, nothing really happened” or “What were you wearing? How were you standing? You must have been doing something to make him think you’re a prostitute.” These sentences are not something you’d hear among the Romani.

Because they simply do not do shame. They don’t feel it and they don’t try to make other people feel it.