Like Brooke Shields, I dissociated from my body after my sexual assault — so much so that I didn't even feel the birth of my 2 children

• When I heard about the Brooke Shields documentary, I thought it would be hard to watch.
• I also dissociated from my body after being sexually assaulted, which I didn't remember for years.

On the surface, I'm nothing like Brooke Shields. I didn't grow up beautiful. My freckled face and curly red hair did not land me in commercials or movies. I've never been famous. But she and I have two things in common: We are both mothers, and we're both survivors of sexual assault.

I'd seen the documentary about her life advertised on Hulu recently, but I couldn't bring myself to watch it. I thought her story of being raped would be too hard to hear.

I was sexually assaulted at 25 while I was a graduate student. I was not raped, but I was violated all the same, and I have suffered lasting trauma from the attack. My mind buried the memory, but my body still remembered; the trauma bored into my bones and being, even if the memories weren't accessible to me.

The disconnect between body and mind affected me for years but was never more pronounced than during childbirth. I was so out of my body that the pain I'd expected when I had my first child in 2012 never came.

I didn't feel present in my body while I gave birth to my son

My water had broken the night before, and because I hadn't dilated or started contractions, I was given potassium to kick-start labor. I asked for the epidural as early as I could. I felt a momentary sting from the needle, but then my body was on autopilot. There was pressure, but no real pain. I breathed when my nurse told me to breathe. I pushed when she said to.

For once, my usually disconnected mind and body were in concert, both numb at the same time. I appeared calm and cool to everyone in the room. I surprised everyone and welcomed our son after just a few hours of labor. No one could believe how relaxed I'd seemed during the entire process.

But they — and I — didn't know that what appeared to be relaxation was much more sinister: It was dissociation, a direct effect of my trauma a decade earlier.

I wondered why I was so relaxed, why the pain never came — but as a new mother, I had other things to worry about.

Though it didn't always feel natural to hold my newborn, in the middle of the night I'd rock him long after he fell back asleep. I wanted to counteract what I believed to be inadequacy with effort and love. I couldn't explain why offering nurturing touch was challenging for me, but I knew I needed to work hard to overcome my hesitancy.

Three years later, when my second child came, I still had no recollection of my sexual assault.

The 2nd time I gave birth, I didn't even realize I was in labor

Because I was more skilled at dissociation than I was at being present in my body, I had no idea I was in active labor. I was uncertain whether the discomfort I was feeling that morning was real contractions or only Braxton Hicks.

When I asked my husband what he thought we should do, he said, "Well, you are the only one to know your body." He was answering the way any good partner would, and yet his words didn't ring true. My body felt like a stranger, someone I might be standing next to on the subway. I decided to call the OB-GYN's office.

On the phone, the nurse heard the calm in my voice and put more stock in it than she should've. "It doesn't sound like you're in labor, but to be safe, go and get checked out," she said.

I thought I'd be sent home but packed my suitcase just in case. My husband was in the kitchen making my son's lunch. It didn't seem we needed to put our "go" plan in place yet, so I told him I'd call if I needed him. Then I drove myself to the hospital.

I was checked in and brought to a small room where a nurse put a belt around my waist to monitor my contractions. "I'm not sure if these are real or just Braxton Hicks," I said apologetically. I felt some pressure and cramps and grunted.

We looked at the screen. The graph line shot up. Her eyes went wide. "You are very much in active labor," she said.

"I am?"

The nurse didn't get a chance to respond. My water broke and gushed everywhere, and I became known on the maternity floor as the woman who drove herself to the hospital during labor.

A few years later, memories of my assault surfaced

Again I lacked the time — or perhaps the desire — to truly interrogate why I hadn't connected with my body during birth, and a few more years passed.

Then my assault memories began to surface in 2019, when my oldest child was 7, and my youngest was just a few months shy of 5. As it came rushing back to me, I started to see a therapist trained in eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing, or EMDR, which aims to help release trauma stored in the body. After a year of intense EMDR treatment, I was finally able to start becoming present in my body again.

My therapist and I examined the times in my life when the disconnection I felt from my physical self had fueled my depression and anxiety. It was after an EMDR session that I understood why breastfeeding had been such an incredible, healing experience for me. Despite all the anxieties that came with being a mother, especially a mother with trauma buried in her past, all my worries seemed to slip away when I was nursing my boys.

I nursed each son for 16 months. I'd never felt more at peace or whole. What I understand now is that it was a rare time in my life when my body and my mind were completely connected. I also understand why after the early years of nursing were over I fell back into despair. The lonely divide between mind and body deepened once again.

I'm learning what it means to be in my body

Over the past four years I've worked hard in therapy. I'm working to be present in my body and to no longer be robbed of life's joys, including childbirth and motherhood. Nurturing touch is no longer difficult for me; I hug, kiss, and tickle my boys all the time. I'm still on this journey of healing, but I'm no longer a stranger to myself.

I finally sat down to watch the documentary "Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields" because I realized that maybe I'm a lot more like Shields than I thought. The ways our trauma seem to have affected us transcend our backgrounds and the ways we grew up. After all, in the documentary she says she froze during her assault and dissociated — for her, like for so many of us, it was the only way to survive emotionally.

Brooke discusses her postpartum depression in great (and important) detail but only briefly mentions her childbirth experience: a C-section after a 24-hour labor. I wonder if she disconnected from her body the way I did. Even if our birth experiences were different, knowing what she's been through, knowing that she understands what it's like to dissociate — and that she's come out the other side — makes me feel empowered and hopeful.

There's power in connecting over our similarities and what we've been through when we've spent so much time being disconnected from ourselves.