All moms struggle with believing lies about their motherhood: who they should and shouldn’t be, what they should or shouldn’t feel or do. In this episode, Amy, Carrie and Sara dive into some of the lies special needs moms believe, ways to recognize them, and how to replace them with the truth.
March 22, 2022; Ep. 78
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If you enjoyed our podcast, please...
All moms struggle with believing lies about their motherhood: who they should and shouldn’t be, what they should or shouldn’t feel or do. In this episode, Amy, Carrie and Sara dive into some of the lies special needs moms believe, ways to recognize them, and how to replace them with the truth.
March 22, 2022; Ep. 78
Timestamps & Key Topics:
Episode Links & Resources:
If you enjoyed our podcast, please...
Amy J. Brown 0:00
Hey friends and welcome to another episode of Take Heart. Before we get started today, I wanted to remind you that you can find free resources, show notes, and ways to connect with us at our website www.takeheartspecialmoms.com. You can also sign up for our newsletter where we share great resources with you each month.
Amy J. Brown 1:23
Hi, this is Amy Brown, and I am with Carrie and Sara. This week we're talking about the lies we believe as moms. There is a lot of pressure on this motherhood gig. We want to do it well, and we have all kinds of voices telling us how we should do it. Advertising tells us that, "Choosy moms choose Jiff", and social media makes us feel like we're not measuring up. I have to say that I am really thankful that I was not a young mom in the age of Pinterest. Much of this leads to guilt. If you want to hear more about mom guilt, you can check out our episodes 38 to 41 on our website. We have this idea that we have to know it all, do it all, and enjoy it all every single day. We have an idea of what a perfect mom would look like. If I say to you right now, who is a perfect mom? I guarantee you have somebody that comes to mind. I'd like to tell you a little story as we get started about my perfect mom ideal. When I was a younger mom, there was a woman at my church. Her name was Linda, and she was a perfect mom. She was put together. Her kids never looked like they didn't have their hair combed at church. She always had it together. Not only that she was really, really holy. She had been a single missionary for years, and then she came home, got married, had children, and went back to the mission field. So there was one Sunday in our church that was around Advent time. Of course, the Brown family was late because there were so many of us, and we have a kid with behavioral issues. We get into the church. We're late and of course, the only empty pew is next to perfect Linda. I'm saying perfect Linda in the most loving way because I think it was my idea of her. Anyway, I scooch next to her. It was advent in our church, I decided to say during Advent, "He is here." Well, I missed the memo on that whole thing because when I got scooted in next to Linda with my hooligan family, she leans over and very sweetly says, "He is here." I said, "Who?" Then she says it again, "He is here, " and I said, "who?" Then she says the third time, "He is here, "and I go, "I don't know what you're talking about, who's here?" She said, "Jesus is here." So first of all, this is not the end of the story. I scooch down. I feel like a complete dork. Obviously, I can't get to church on time. My kids haven't combed their hair, and I don't even know the Christ child's here, but to make matters worse the lady behind me tapped me on the shoulder and whispered into my ear that my dress was on inside out. I basically was a big dork in front of perfect, Linda. That's not the end of the story with Linda. A couple of weeks later, Linda was speaking, of course, she was at our women's ministry. She was talking about motherhood and being a missionary. She said every day I would write in my journal. In my mind, I just assumed Linda was writing inspiring Instagram-worthy quotes and Bible verses. Do you know what she was writing? I'll never forget this. She said every day for weeks, I wrote two words, and those two words were: barely coping. I will never forget that moment because in that moment, I realized, wait a minute, she's just like me. She's not perfect. I had this idea that I had put on her. She's this perfect, perfect mom. I think that's common for special needs moms and moms in general. We have this idea of motherhood that is unrealistic and untrue. When we follow these lies and let them inform us how we live our lives, then we struggle and we feel like we can't be honest with our struggles. I am so glad that Linda was honest and vulnerable at that moment. That changed the way I looked at her and also changed the way I look at other moms. I think the lies we believe are especially important as we think about those with special needs moms because we are Olympic-level parents. We do Olympic-level parenting; we have a lot of responsibilities and expectations. So today, we're going to talk about the lies we believe as special needs moms, especially around the idea of what a good mom should do, or would never do. These false assumptions that we have about motherhood. They end up being the soundtrack that runs in our heads. So we're going to start and I'm just going to ask Sara and Carrie, first words off the top, a good mom... You can answer however you want. A good mom would never...
Sara Clime 5:54
A good mom would never get tired of being the caregiver.
Carrie M Holt 5:59
I would say a good mom would never grieve her child that is still alive.
Amy J. Brown 6:05
I would say for me, a good mom never would lose it, lose your temper. Those are all assumptions we have that we know in our experience as moms, that we do. We have all those emotions. Carrie, I'd like to talk a little bit more about what you had to say about grief.
Carrie M Holt 6:27
I feel like sometimes whether it's from comparison with other people, or whatever it is, we just feel like we cannot feel these feelings of sadness and grief because we would say, Oh, well, that mom over there did lose her child, but my child is still alive. I think what we cannot discount...and I was talking to my friend Jen, who has a special needs child, just yesterday, and we were talking about how it's not a competition about whose child is worse, or whose situation is worse. We have to allow ourselves to feel the way we feel, and also to take those emotions to God, and not feel like we have to get ourselves all cleaned up and make ourselves feel pretty and say, Well, God, I was feeling really sad the other day, but now I'm okay. No, God doesn't want that. He wants us to come with all of our anger and grief to him.
Amy J. Brown 7:36
I think it's interesting, that we have a lot of taboos on emotions, as Christians. If you read the Psalms, oh, my goodness, there's every emotion under the sun. I just find it interesting that we feel like what you said we have to pretty it up. For me if a situation is bad, and I'm struggling, I'll go but at least it's not this bad. As you said, or at least this thing hasn't happened. In some ways, I think that's comparative, you're trying to compare, and that's not healthy. You could go the other way. You could be really jealous of somebody who doesn't maybe have the significant struggles that you have. So you just say well, what are they struggling about? They don't have this.I think that's really a good point. Sara, you said, wouldn't get tired. Repeat what you said. Tired?
Sara Clime 8:28
Yeah, wouldn't get tired of this caregiver stuff. There are days when I think I'm not cut out for this. This stinks. Carrie, what you said about grieving your child that still living. It took me a long time to realize that that's what I was doing. I think it took me a long time for me to realize it's okay to not want to do this all the time. It's like, just because I get upset with my husband, and I think, man, I really just want to break. I would love to go on a vacation by myself for two days, which does not mean that I don't love my husband. It doesn't mean that I don't love going on vacation with my husband. It just means that we need to reset. We need to rest. It's okay to not love this. Yet, as you said, this parenting gig that we have. It's Olympic-level parenting. I love it when you said that because even Olympians need rest. They need fuel, they need to reset, they need that time to themselves. That's what we need too, so it's okay to feel what we feel,
Amy J. Brown 9:44
Right. For me with anger, I'm not a person that normally gets angry, but I think I was taught very young it's not okay to be angry. When you have kids that have behavioral issues, man they know how to push your buttons. No, I don't want to be in an angry stance, that's not helpful for anyone, but there are times when I have really beat myself up for the times that I've just really gotten upset. I forget that I'm human, I guess. I mean, I know that I'm human. I think that as moms, we think, oh, we're not supposed to be these things. I even find it with I have adult kids that sometimes I have to say, Well, I'm not going to be available to them right now because I can't. Even then there's guilt around that as a mom because a good mom should always be available. I think those are port important emotions to recognize and realize that it's not true, that we're not allowed to feel these things. Like I said, if you look in the Psalms, and you look at other people around us, we all have those emotions. They are part of the inhuman, and we take them to God, but it's okay to feel them. What about lies around connection? I know, we've talked about connection before on the podcast, but I think there are a lot of lies around how other people see us or what other people are doing that we can't do. So what kind of lies do you think there are around connection?
Sara Clime 11:03
So I would say on that one is a good mom would prioritize the child's activities above their own. Because I guarantee to you, I don't get to do much with friends. It's very few and far between. Whenever I do, you can guarantee things are unraveling. My son's sick or the meds aren't coming in, and I have to spend hours on the phone. Something always takes that place. Especially when you have children who don't have a lot of friends, because a lot of special needs children or children with disabilities, don't have those friendships. You're constantly putting their social, what they do have, above your own. I think, as far as connection is just putting him above me. Even now, just saying it out loud, that sounds so bad. I feel like I should put a disclaimer where I'm like, I really love him. think we're just so hard on ourselves where that's concerned. It's okay to occasionally say, no, I'm going for a walk. I want 30 minutes, people. That's okay.
Amy J. Brown 12:16
I agree. I totally agree. What about you, Carrie?
Carrie M Holt 12:21
I would say, a good mom would never think about leaving her special needs child in the care of someone else, so she can get a break. I don't think that that is valid. Now I want to be sympathetic to the situations because I do know that there are families out there that they have no one they can trust to leave their children with. That makes me sad because I know how much they need a break. I can remember when Toby was very little Bruce and I went on a short trip because there were really cheap $50 flights to Florida. While we were gone, our power went out. Our son is on a ventilator. We had a gas-powered generator that had no gas in the garage. There were some issues. There were no flashlights in the house. We had no emergency plan. From the outside, you could say oh, that was just extremely irresponsible. I can tell you that I definitely wrestled with that a lot. I felt like a horrible parent. The truth is, we needed to get away, first of all. We needed to prioritize our marriage, secondly. Above all of those is that God was still caring for our son and our family. They had to call the squad. The ambulance went and got gas. My mom told them we just need power. Everything was okay. We could have easily just said no, we can't do this. We can't ever leave him because he has all these medical things going on. That's probably one that I have struggled with, or that I've heard others struggle with too.
Amy J. Brown 14:22
I would say and this is very close to home right now. I think God is showing me my biggest lie around connection is I don't need other people. I will circle my wagons when the going gets tough, and I shared we've had some pretty tough last six months was one of our children. It's not that I think I can do it on my own. I think it's twofold. I just kind of hunker down, circle my wagons, and don't let anyone in. Also, I'm tired of being too much. I'm tired of saying once again, put me on the prayer chain. I think there's this whole idea that I'll just keep it to myself because that's just how I have to do it. We're not meant to do it alone enough, I've said it once, I probably said it 100 times on this podcast, we're not meant to do it alone. I have been really convicted of that, and I've been doing this a really long time. I think we still have certain muscle memory behaviors we go to, and that's mine. That's mine. Actually, today, we're having a little bit of a rough situation. I called two of my closest friends, and I almost didn't, I almost thought no, what are they going to do? But no, just letting them hear me, and they know me. That was so helpful. But it was hard to do. It's not because they're going to judge me. It's just so weird. That is such an entrenched lie with me, that I really feel like God is working in my heart as I continue on this journey. I think that's a connection lie. We kind of talked about this a little bit, Sara you said, I just want to go for a walk. There are so many lies around self-care. What kind of lies do you think, come up, in that regard, self-care is a tricky subject because we have a really hard time doing it. We're not the experts, people.
Carrie M Holt 16:06
If I could chime in on this one, I had a mentor ask me a couple of months ago, in her office, and I'm gonna get a little teary saying this. She looked at me and she said, "Who cares for you?" I will tell you that completely opened the floodgates. What came out of that is that a good mom, either don't need it or believes that she's not worth it. I believe that I'm not worth being seen and heard and cared for. That's, that's a big one.
Sara Clime 16:52
I think mine is that I wouldn't spend money when our money's tight, because there's always something financially that comes up with a child who's medically fragile. Who am I to go and spend $50 on a massage, or a pedicure or whatever. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I think again, we get into this black and white thinking where it has to be a full day spa treatment. I'm going to rat myself out here. I have my own business out of my house, completely unrelated to this one. Whenever I first did this, I trained my children, who were little littler at the time, to train them and my husband. I put signs on my door, and it said, "Proceed with caution." It was red, yellow, and green, it was like a stoplight. The red was "stop." Do not come in unless there are copious amounts of blood, like copious amounts of blood, and I'm the only one who can bandage it. Toto is flying by the window, we're not talking about if it's a tornado watch, but a warning. Things are flying by the house. I would sometimes go in and be like, I gotta work. I was just sitting there. That's okay. I mean, that is a form of self-care. I got to work on billing clients, I wasn't billing anything. I was setting in my office, and most of the time, I was just staring at the wall, but it's okay. I don't think we should get into this. I think self-care is politically correct. It's such a hot topic right now. You see these people walking through the mountains and meditating on the side of a cliff or whatever. I just want to be able to walk to the mailbox without the house falling apart. I know that sounds like a martyr's statement, but sometimes that's what it feels like.
Amy J. Brown 18:54
Right. I can relate to that. I want to go back to what you said. I said this before, and I'll say it again, it's small moment living. I think it has to be this big thing because everybody else gets to do these big things. But really, I noticed that just outside helps. One thing I've been doing for myself is, I go for a walk every day. Once again, part of circling my wagon is not only not including people, it is not doing anything for myself. I go for a walk every day. It may be 15 minutes. My goal is to go every day, no matter the weather, and that's saying a lot for Michigan, and I take a picture every day. It started to become this thing. I'm a big exerciser, so to me and walking for 15 minutes doesn't seem like that ought to cut it, but it's not for the exercise. It's for figuring out what I'm going to take a picture of. It has been so life-giving, and it's just a little thing. I think we have this idea it's got to be a big thing. If it's a red stop sign, which I may actually copy. Do you have a copy of that, Sara? Can we offer that to our listeners?
Sara Clime 19:53
I had one of those command hooks on the door, and I would change them out as stressed
out as I was. I would close the door. You could almost see the toes coming at the door and then turning around and walking off.
Amy J. Brown 20:06
It's red. It's red. Now they know, though, and they listen. You just ruined it.
Sara Clime 20:11
Maybe we need to make some downloads for our listeners. Copious amount of blood signs.
Amy J. Brown 20:17
Right. Okay,
Carrie M Holt 20:21
Just going back to that, like I was thinking about/ I think one of the reasons why I feel like I'm not worth it is because I grew up with the belief that you do all your work first before you play. I had a friend say to me that laughter, play, and rest is a form of spiritual warfare because it displays faith, hope, and love. It is true because we are so wired to, we don't deserve play, we don't deserve rest, we don't deserve self-care until we've gotten all of our work done. Just recently, our son got a service dog, and he is an 85-pound golden doodle, who has a lot of energy. We're home, because we're homeschooling, and so I'm having to take him out and walk almost every day in any kind of weather, which I don't necessarily love. It has made me go, no, it's okay. Stop what you're doing and go outside. It's been helpful because it's okay to breathe at the moment, to take a rest in the middle of work, to put the play and the laughter before work and everything you have to get done.
Amy J. Brown 21:49
I love that, Carrie because I think sometimes we think self-care needs to serve two purposes. If I'm going to do self-care, then I need to run six miles because that's also helping my heart, health, or whatever. Self-care can be something we delight in, and it made me think when you said, "Who takes care of you?" A spiritual director asked me the question, "what do you do for fun?" I literally, I was just blank-faced. Then, I was like, I must not be fun, I'm not fun. I kept saying, "I'm not fun, am I?" to my husband, and he was like, calm down. I think everything has to be so purposeful, because of the kind of Olympic-level parenting or homeschooling or whatever, that we do. I really love that quote. That's great. Thanks for sharing that. That kind of goes along with lies around self-sufficiency. I think that plays right into that. We have this idea that we have to do it all. You mentioned having somebody care for your child. One of the ladies that we interviewed last year, Laura Hernandez said she hired somebody to take her kids to therapy. I thought, why had I never thought of that because it was therapy she doesn't need to be at. I also know that not everybody can afford that. Think about the times that you've needed help, but you have this lie in your head that a good mom should be able to keep all these plates spinning. I don't know if you guys have a specific anything specific about that. But I think that's a big one.
Sara Clime 23:08
Well, I have a friend of mine, that who said that she would get out her Bible and sometimes it was to pretend to read scripture, so her family would leave her alone. I got to thinking about that, and I thought, How often do we make the stop signs? We tell them copious amounts of blood. I'm reading scripture, it's my devotion time, I'm exercising, whatever. What if we just said, this is my personal time. We show them that it's okay to have that personal time. We're teaching them, I don't need an excuse to have some downtime and to take care of myself. I just often think about that. Maybe I just need to stop making excuses of why I need to take care of myself. As you said, it doesn't have to be anything big. You don't have to hire somebody. That's awesome. I would love to do that. That might not work for us, but just something.
Carrie M Holt 24:13
I think for me, a common lie around self-sufficiency is you feel like you're going to wear people out because you are too needy. It kind of goes back to the connection. I think that's what makes us feel like we have to be self-sufficient. I think sometimes what people don't realize is they think, "Well, are they better yet?" No, they're not better. This is an ongoing thing. The grieving cycle is ongoing. That quote has been floating around social media in the last year: "Just because she carries it well doesn't mean it's not heavy." I think that really speaks to all of us and to our listeners. I think that's well and good, but also we don't have to pretend that it's not heavy either. We can not carry it well also sometimes. I remember when we moved in how to change churches, every time I walked into the door of a new church, I just thought every person in this lobby is looking at our family thinking, "Oh, no, here they come, what are they going to need?" I was putting my own thoughts and feelings on them. There still is just that measure of feeling like: you're too much. Your family's too much. I think sometimes people think if you are a friend to a family with special needs, that it's gonna catch. It's contagious. Don't you feel that way, sometimes? I know, the Lord has a plan, and I do think that he, you know, puts special needs families together to empathize and bear one another's burdens. Just because you have special needs families around you doesn't mean that God's gonna call you to that also.
Sara Clime 26:17
If you could find other special needs families, even if you need to join a group online or put something on Facebook. I live in whatever state, in this county, anybody else looking to maybe do some sitting with each other's children for a while. I have a friend of mine that did that. She kind of vetted them, she made sure. She met with them several times beforehand. What they do is once a week, for an hour, she sits with their child and her own, and then the other person will set with both of the children and it just gives her an hour just to go and do something. You know, that's always an option. I know you have to be extremely careful, especially when it comes to strangers. A lot of times when you're talking to another special needs mom, especially one with a similar diagnosis that if they're both on machines, or if they're both on ports, whatever it is. They're going to get you, and you're going to know real quick if they don't know what they're talking about.
Amy J. Brown 27:25
That's good advice. I also want to speak to the mom of kids with behavioral issues. I know for me, I would always think as friends would offer: I'll take her for half a day or a half-hour, I'd always think yeah, half a day. Try that one on. But no, they would offer to take them, but I'd be so worried that she would behave in a negative way. Most of the time, she didn't, or they could handle it for a couple of hours. I transposed what my life looked like, onto what the burden would be like on them, I guess. If you have a child like that, and someone asked to take them, the worst thing is they never ask again, really, honestly, they never offer again. I think that you need to take people up on that. We would all tell each other. I would say to you, Carrie, of course, you need to be doing this. Of course, you need to take care of yourself, but we just have a hard time. I think that's probably the biggest lie that we think we don't deserve it. We think the other special needs moms in our life deserve it, but we think we don't deserve it.
Amy J. Brown 28:26
We have identified a lot of lies, we could probably talk for three more hours about lies because there are so many, but I do want to shift, I want to shift to how we recognize the lies and how we learn to retrain our thinking about them. Before we start talking about that, I want to read a quote, and this quote is from a book called The Great Dance. It's by Baxter Kruger, and he says this, "When we believe lies to be true, and even though it will forever be a lie, by believing it to be true. We give that lie a foothold in our reality. When we believe I am not, to be the truth, we give it a place in time and space, a place in our lives and in the lives of others. Without necessarily knowing what we are doing, we give the lie a place in our thinking. We open ourselves to its influence, and our understanding is darkened, and a break is formed, a fatal incongruence in who we are in Christ, which is accepted, loved, and included in who we believe that we are." I would add my own words here I would say when we believe we are not enough that colors how we look at everything, and it affects how we live our life. It gets us to the point where we can't see the truth. It's kind of like when you're riding in a car, and you're lost and nothing looks familiar. The truth doesn't look familiar anymore because we're so used to believing the lie. We talked about this before, how do you recognize the lies and that is honestly it's not like oh, here's a lie. I'm just gonna pluck it out and I'm done. No, we know that's not how it works. I would love to hear what you ladies have to say about that.
Carrie M Holt 30:01
I know, I talked about this a little bit in my individual podcasts, and some of this comes from Adam Young's Podcast The Place We Find Ourselves. He talks about how to notice patterns of behavior, and hen also to notice, what are the reoccurring things that are in your mind? Say you get into an argument with your spouse, or one of your children, or even another family member because maybe you're a single parent. What are those repeated things that keep coming up over and over? I know one of my big ones is just l I'm not worth it. I'm not enough. I have to do all the work before play because I have to be achieving all the time in order to have worth and value. I think that's just one of the ways that you can recognize the lies is when you see these reoccurring thoughts or the words that are coming out of your mouth that you're hearing over and over again.
Amy J. Brown 31:05
I would say too for is other people walking alongside me. Number one is therapy, I think therapy is important. My therapist, my husband calls her adult supervision inside my head, and that is exactly what she is. She'll say, "Don't you see how you're..." She can point things out to me. I also have a spiritual director, and that's been helpful. Like today, I said, I called two of my friends who have known me forever, and they spoke truth to me, and they point out to me. I've given them permission to go, Amy, what you're thinking isn't really true. I know, that's hard. It's hard if you don't have somebody like that, but just pray that God would bring those people into your life and be brave, and say, "I want you to walk this journey with me." They don't have to be special needs moms, neither one of my friends are special needs mothers, but they kind of are the plumb line for me sometimes. I'll be on a tangent about something, and they'll go but wait a minute, you're believing the lie that you have to be good at everything, and you have to know everything. That's mine, I have to be good at it. I have to know it. If I find out there's a therapy, I haven't heard of, I think why don't I know about this. I'm kind of really hard on myself. That's one thing I would say is other people who can speak into your life that are trustworthy. That would be one way I think that we would recognize lies and replace them with the truth.
Sara Clime 32:30
I would say with mine and I talked about this in my podcast, too, is that whenever I start saying they should do this, or any kind of "should: statement like they should do this, or I should be this way, or my husband should unload the dishwasher more, or whatever that might look like. I'm a very analytical and systems-driven person. That's just the nature of my business, and then the way that I was brought up. Whenever I start saying I should have more time, I don't have enough time. If it's a should statement, or absolute. If it should, shouldn't, always, or never. I have to tell myself to step back. What I did, and this might seem very cumbersome for some. It was about a month or two ago, actually, I just felt like I didn't have enough time to do anything. I was really stressed out all the time, and so I carried a notebook with me all day, for a week. I wrote down what I was doing. If I sat down to watch TV, I wrote it, and I did the times. If I said I want to go to the grocery store by myself and I couldn't I just really made it a point, no matter how trivial it might seem, is just to record it. It took time. It took effort. At the end of it, I went back and looked through it, and I thought, okay, I'm spending a lot of time watching The Office reruns like something. I mean because you just don't think about it. It's kind of like when you think I just, I'm not losing any weight, and you write down what you eat all day long, you realize, oh, there were 800 extra calories there. That's why. It's just being really aware and cognizant of what's happening. That would be my suggestion is whenever I recognize the lies is whenever I do those should, shouldn'ts, or the absolute statements.
Amy J. Brown 34:23
Thanks for that, Sara. We've talked a lot about lies, and we haven't spent a lot of time on recognizing the truth, except for the few things we've said here, but I want to say to you that God is truth. For me, sitting down and saying, God, show me what you want me to know about this. Show me what I need to recognize. He's faithful to do that. He truly is. That doesn't mean the next day you're going to all of a sudden know all the lies that you believed, but he is such a gentle loving God that just shows us gently whether that's through scripture or through a sermon, or through a loving friend, or just through our own conviction of the Holy Spirit. He is a gentle, loving parent that will show us the direction he wants us to walk. I am so comforted by that because I kind of thing I need to solve it all right now. That's my encouragement to you.
Amy J. Brown 35:18
I'm going to end with a prayer. It is a psalm, Psalm 25, and I'm just going to read two verses, verses four and five. But this is our prayer for you listeners as we walk this journey in recognizing the lies we believe, and how can we can replace them with the truth. "Dear Lord, make your ways known to me. Teach me your paths. Guide me in your truth and teach me for you are the God of my salvation."
Amy J. Brown 35:57
Thanks for joining us this week on Take Heart. Our prayer each week is for your heart to be encouraged. We are grateful you are walking this journey with us and thanks for listening. Join us next week as we talk about the crazy weird and well-intentioned comments people say to special needs moms.