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The Motherhood Mentor
Welcome to The Motherhood Mentor Podcast your go-to resource for moms seeking holistic healing and transformation. Hosted by mind-body somatic healing practitioner and holistic life coach Becca Dollard.
Join us as we explore the transformative power of somatic healing, offering practical tools and strategies to help you navigate overwhelm, burnout, and stress. Through insightful conversations, empowering stories, and expert guidance, you'll discover how to cultivate resilience, reclaim balance, and thrive in every aspect of your life while still feeling permission to be a human. Are you a woman who is building a business while raising babies who refuses to burnout? These are conversations and support for you.
We believe in the power of vulnerability, connection, and self-discovery, and our goal is to create a space where you feel seen, heard, and valued.
Whether you're juggling career, family, or personal growth, this podcast is your sanctuary for holistic healing and growth all while normalizing the ups and downs, the messy and the magic, and the wild ride of this season of motherhood.
Your host:
Becca is a mom of two, married for 14years to her husband Jay living in Colorado. She is a certified somatic healing practitioner and holistic life coach to high functioning moms. She works with women who are navigating raising babies, building businesses, and prioritizing their own wellbeing and healing. She understands the unique challenges of navigating being fully present in motherhood while also wanting to be wildly creative and ambitious in her work. The Motherhood Mentor serves and supports moms through 1:1 coaching, in person community, and weekend retreats.
Follow on IG: @themotherhoodmentor , send me a dm and let me know you found me through the podcast!
Website: https://www.the-motherhood-mentor.com/
Want to join the email fam for free workshops and more support: https://themotherhoodmentor.myflodesk.com/ujaud8t4x9
The Motherhood Mentor
Showing up in grief, fertility, and silent struggles as an entrepreneur with Emily
When you are in the middle of complex grief, it's hard to keep things going. How do you keep life and yourself moving while you are in the middle of a season where it feels like everything stopped? Emily Sereno shares her vulnerable story of navigating fertility struggles and miscarriage while running her entrepreneur business. Just when she was about to be in a hustle season life happened, and Emily shares her tangible ways she moved through that season and kept herself and her business moving forward. If you have ever felt lonely and crazy in this wild journey, this one is for you. This podcast shares super tangible ways to shift in business and in your personal life when you find yourself navigating hard seasons.
Podcast Episode with Emily Sereno and Kacia Ghetmiri
About Emily:
Emily Sereno, the founder of The Servicepreneur Network, is a corporate marketing executive turned entrepreneur, business and branding consultant, fractional CMO, and podcast host.
She’s dedicated her career to helping executives find their voice, positioning them as credible experts in their field, while building brand and marketing strategies for Fortune 500 companies, startups, and more.
After more than 12 years, Emily is bringing her signature framework to service-based business owners to help navigate and overcome the challenges they face promoting their business, while connecting them with the resources, support, and platform to connect with their ideal clients.
Find Emily here.
Time stamps and chapters:
0:02
Navigating Grief and Fertility Journey
Nurturing Support Through Grief
Finding Control Amid Grief
Preserving Energy Through Grief
Sustainable Self-Trust and Progress
Building Resilience and Future Projection
Embracing Imperfection and Vulnerability
Embracing Authenticity in Business
Navigating Vulnerability and Authenticity
Navigating Grief
Join us next time as we continue to explore the multifaceted journey of motherhood.
Thank you for tuning in to The Motherhood Mentor. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review us.
Stay connected with us on social media and share your thoughts and experiences tagging @themotherhoodmentor
Welcome to the Motherhood Mentor Podcast. I'm Becca, a somatic healing practitioner and a holistic life coach for moms, and this podcast is for you. You can expect honest conversations and incredible guests that speak to health, healing and growth in every area of our lives. This isn't just strategy for what we do. It's support for who we are. I believe we can be wildly ambitious while still holding all of our soft and hard humanity as holy. I love combining deep inner healing with strategic systems and no-nonsense talk about what this season is really like. So grab whatever weird health beverage you're currently into and let's get into it.
Speaker 1:Welcome to today's episode of the Motherhood Mentor Podcast. Today, I have an incredible guest with me, emily Serino. Her and I have such a powerful conversation around grief and fertility and what it's like moving through very vulnerable but private loss. How you have to keep going when life has stopped and how, when life stops, you can keep going. How you move through grief without being fully consumed by it, while also navigating the emotional ups and downs of real humanity. This is such a great conversation. Whether you're an entrepreneur or you're going through fertility, or even you're just a human navigating the ups and downs of life. I really hope this conversation, it doesn't just bring language to our experience. What I love is there's some really powerful, tangible ways that you can support yourself through these seasons. So I really hope you enjoy it and let's get into it. Emily, thank you so much for being here today.
Speaker 1:I found Emily in a podcast community that Keisha Get Mary I never know how to say her last name has, and I had reached out to you and, funny enough, a couple of days later I was listening to her podcast and you were sharing about running your business and your fertility journey and just having it be this like really unknown thing, so like you were going through this big, huge life, grief and things happening and nobody knowing and still showing up, and then like, how do you talk about it? How do you not talk about it? And I just everything in me was just like, oh, this is like a conversation that I want to have so badly and so I'm just so grateful that you're here today. Will you introduce yourself?
Speaker 2:Yes, becca, I'm so excited. Thank you so much for having me on the podcast. So I am Emily Serino. I am the founder of the Servicepreneur Network, where I work with service-based business owners to build, grow, promote and brand their service-based business on a budget in my online community and then one-on-one with clients too, and I am just crossing over the one-year mark in my online community, and then one-on-one with clients too, and I am just crossing over the one year mark in my business. And I had a little bit of a roller coaster this year with some of the stuff happening in my personal life that I shared on that podcast and I'm excited to talk with you about today. That really threw my life and my business for a loop and I just think that it's a conversation that a lot of women have, or people have in general, around their fertility journey and the impact that that can have in other aspects of their life. So excited to chat with you today.
Speaker 1:So you're in your first year of business? Well, you're not in your first year of doing what you do, just in a different iteration, correct?
Speaker 2:Correct. Yeah, yeah. So I have spent 12 years in corporate marketing, working with Fortune 500 companies, with startups, and really helping to fine-tune their branding, their executive brands and their thought leadership strategies. And then I kind of got to the top of the corporate ladder and I looked around and I was like there's got to be something more for me than this and I really realized that my passion lies with helping entrepreneurs and people in that early stages of their business to really take all of my expertise and help them put the right strategies and foundations in place, even though they might not have the full budgets to do so yet or they're trying to be scrappy and do it themselves and they can't outsource it. So, yeah, you're absolutely right. It's kind of the culmination of all of my corporate experience that I have now since brought to you know the quote unquote, little guy.
Speaker 1:Well, so you're. You're in the process of your first year of business building and helping other people with these strategies. And I don't know about you, but I think the irony of like when we help other people with strategies and systems, I feel like that's a lot of times when we realize like strategies and systems are so, so great, but what happens when, like, our humanity interrupts those? So what? What was that like in your life? Was this an expected thing? Was this unexpected? Will you share a little bit more about your personal journey with that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. So. I joined a business mastermind for podcasters in the March of this year and I was ready to enter into my hustle season. We had just recently moved, I was kind of getting settled we were living in Florida at the time and I was really excited to just grind and really take this vision that I had and bring it to life. And so I remember joining this mastermind and having all of these ideas and then about a couple months into that, I found out I was pregnant and immediately had complications from the get-go in the hospital, weekly, getting tested and all these things.
Speaker 2:And we lost the pregnancy over the summer in my first trimester, and it was one of those things where I wanted so desperately to be focused on my business and I wanted to be like up early, working long hours, and I was preparing myself for this really kind of strong execution mode. And then when we started immediately having issues with the pregnancy, my brain was like I can't focus on anything else and I was just like I was immediately grieving because, even though we hadn't lost it yet, the doctors were like don't get excited, don't get your hopes up. There's a lot of things that are kind of a concern to us. And so it was one of those things where most people are like this is the happiest moment of their life and they're so excited to tell people.
Speaker 2:And I was silently struggling because I didn't want to, in my mind, burden my family or my friends with sharing this information, and so I was kind of caught in this really hard place of like wanting to move my business forward but not being able to, because I was waking up sad every day, and so I really had to find that place of like how do I manage status quo for my current clients while also giving me kind of the permission slip to, you know, not truly work as hard, which is hard for me when work ethic is something so important to me and in my my, my personality and everything that I do?
Speaker 2:And so it was a hard, hard couple of months for me to kind of grapple with what was happening but not really have anybody that I could talk to about it, or to find resources as a, as an entrepreneur, to like let alone nobody talks about it If you're going through a tough experience in your fertility journey, let alone when you're like, hey, we're trying to build a business at the same time, yeah, I mean it's messy and I think it's grief and I think most of us don't know how to do grief.
Speaker 1:We don't even know how to do it for ourselves. And then you look at the community, cultural aspect of it and it's something that, like, people don't always respond well or they don't know how to respond. What was it? Do you ever regret not bringing people into that with you? Was it part of like your process to like go through it privately? Is that just like what you needed? Because I think there's such a varied experience and I think so many people give different advice. What was that like for you?
Speaker 2:That's such a great question. I don't, I don't. I don't think I could do it differently. I think for me it was really hard to, like I said, share that burden with someone, because I knew that me sharing it, they couldn't control it and they couldn't console me, and anything that they said wasn't going to make me feel any better because I was waiting for the data or an answer from the doctor, and so I don't necessarily regret it. What I'm realizing now is there needs to be conversation about it, because I couldn't.
Speaker 2:In my experience, and on the other side of it now I'm like, oh man, I wish there was someone like me who is comfortable talking about it, that I could listen to a podcast or I could follow their journey and their story, and so I wouldn't change anything. But if there's somebody that's like particularly going through a hard time, I think the thing that I realized was that people would listen and they could hold space for me, even though I didn't think that they could. So in my mind I was like, well, this is negative news. They're going to continue to ask me questions. I would feel worse because I didn't have a positive answer for them. Right, I'm, I'm you know I hate this phrase but, like, I'm a people pleaser and so me sharing news with somebody that's negative and then them out of the kindness of their heart when you'd be like, how are you doing? I wasn't like going to be like, well, I'm doing well. Thank you for asking Like, because I knew that that wasn't. I thought it was going to be received as like, I'm letting them down and that was really hard for me. And you know, hindsight is 20, 20, where certainly that wouldn't have been the case and they would have been there to support me and pick me up when I was crumbling. But at that moment it was so hard for me to see that.
Speaker 2:And I think if there's somebody who's listening, who's like and it doesn't have to be a fertility journey, right, it could be anything that they're struggling with in their life, in their families, in whatever their business that there are people that care about you. And regardless if you're going through something hard and there's light at the end of the tunnel or you're still trying to figure out where that light is or what it might be, if you can find someone it makes the world of difference. When I was finally ready to talk about it, I had friends that had miscarriages themselves and they shared with me their experience and I had to have the procedure done after the fact and I had friends and people in my life that I could turn to to just get their opinion or to help me understand what's coming or what to expect or emotionally prepare myself, and that was super important. So I I'm a pretty like deal with it yourself kind of girl. Um, but in retrospect I wish I might have opened up a little bit more sooner.
Speaker 2:Um, because I struggled and I struggled a lot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, and so many of us, when we're going through things like that, especially a deep, messy grief, where you're not on the other side of it, there's no, you don't want a silver lining, like you don't want to feel better. Yet I was trying to explain this to there was like a grief that happened in, like our family, friends and my daughter was trying to like make me feel better, because I was like in this like big moment of grief and I was like try, how do you teach? Like a younger child, like I don't want to feel better right now, I want to just grieve because it doesn't feel good, it doesn't feel better, this isn't better. There's no shiny thing right now.
Speaker 1:And I think that's the thing with grief is how many of us have capacity to just be in that, to just be in the messy with no pretty bows to tie on it, not making someone feel better, to just like be in the messy with no pretty bows to tie on it, not making someone feel better. And I think empathy is such a powerful thing when we can sit with people who can empathize. But I think also when you are empathetic and a lot of people pleasers are empathetic we can try to prevent other people from feeling our feelings and the way that we would theirs right, like I don't know, but I sometimes find myself trying to protect other people from feeling my stuff too much and then I remind myself, like that's mine to feel, they're going to feel whatever is theirs to feel, and like trusting other people to hold what is theirs and not.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you said that so eloquently because you're so right Like I, I kept thinking if I was going to share what we were going through, like that that was going to ruin the person or it was going to make them so unbelievably sad and I'm like, well, you can't be sadder than me. So I should have been like all right, come here and come into my world. But you know, it's interesting, I I actually was a little bit opposite from you where I was like I just need to get through this and I was like counting down the days of like when my procedure was, when my follow-up dates were to make sure everything was okay, everything was happening, and like those dates on the calendar were like the only thing that I could focus on. And I know it's one of those. You always say like, oh, when I get to this point, everything will be better and then you realize it's life and it never is. But I was that one of the only ways that I could kind of help myself move through that grief period and not necessarily like stay down that rabbit hole and just like be a shell of a human and be lonely and be sad and be dark for so long was to just continue to focus on like what is that next appointment? When is that next date coming up? So that was really helpful for me. But then I realized that, like you know, I still grieve.
Speaker 2:You know this happened in the middle of the summer and, like you know, I saw Beetlejuice with my husband. We went to the movies and there's and I won't do any spoilers of somebody who hasn't seen the movie but there's a birth scene in there and I'm crying in Beetlejuice, for goodness sakes. And then something silly happened. I was like this is dumb. I'm like get it together. Or another example is one of my closest friends who was in my wedding is pregnant right now and she had her baby shower Two weekends ago. She had her baby shower and I was going to go to it and I was all ready and I was excited and I couldn't wait to celebrate in her joy.
Speaker 2:And then the day before I went to Target just to get like a couple additional little things that were still on her registry and I barely made it to my car before I just lost it and I burst into tears because I kept thinking like this should have been me, which is so hard, you know, and I'm so grateful that I could send her a text and be like I can't do it.
Speaker 2:I want to be there but I can't do it. And it was something where the response I got was I'm proud of you, which I feel like not a lot of people have that level of support from their friends or their family when they're going through it, or maybe they're not sharing it, so they haven't given an opportunity for somebody to tell them I'm here for you, I'm proud of you for working through this. You're like I will be there in your support system if you need me, and so I've been pretty lucky in that Becca where I have a lot of people that are letting me fall to pieces and there to pick me back up, and that piece, I think, is so important when you're grieving because you can't do it alone.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, and what you shared of like finding places to like kind of anchor and tether you outside of your grief, because I think grief, grief is one of the most all consuming experiences.
Speaker 1:Like it it's not just a feeling, it's a whole experience and it's communal and it's personal. Because even even when other people do know, there's still a very real loneliness in your grief because nobody is experiencing it quite like you are, and I think that's just a true nature of grief Like there's no, there's nothing to do with that information, but sometimes it's helpful to know that like grief feels lonely even when you're surrounded. I think that is a at least from what I, from my experience and from other women of just like there's something so lonely even if there's people around you. So how do you you mentioned like you found ways to like tether and anchor yourself outside of your grief, but also inside of your grief, of being able to find these things that like weren't so swirling and all consuming, and even just honoring those boundaries of capacity, of like grief doesn't just show up in the sad moments, it's like random happy moments or random anniversaries or like these other things where it just like hits you out of nowhere and it's just like what the hell.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I see it even in moments where I get to go home and see my nephews and be around like these bundles of joy and being so happy and then having just those like small reality bursts on your heart sort of thing, right, where you're like, oh, and you grieve for a moment and maybe it's something that you kind of have to like compartmentalize and say I'm going to have that later if you can in the moment, and so it really is something where it's going to come out of nowhere, like I was just having a conversation with somebody who shared that she had gone through it too. And uh, because ironically enough, I think the data is like one in four women will have a miscarriage, which is crazy to think about because it is such a lonely experience but so many women experience it and yet no one talks about it. And she had said you know, be careful wintertime. Because even though she had her miscarriage in the I think it was in the summer to fall timeframe she was like, once the weather changed and it got darker earlier I live in the Northeast that really hurt and she struggled a lot with kind of the it's dark all the time, it's cold all the time You're staying indoors.
Speaker 2:So to kind of go back to what you said about being lonely, like like I'm like, okay, I thought I was doing, okay, I can talk about it without crying. Now Like I'm comfortable saying the M word, which for a very long time I couldn't even say that word because it just hurt me so much. And now I'm like how do I make sure that I'm preparing for the future and putting the right things in place and making sure that, like my mindset is in a good place and that, you know, I can have those conversations with my husband when I'm struggling, and just different things that I like I always you hear a lot of people talk about what's happening in the moment, but what about the future? And how can you even plan for some of those things? I think for me was super helpful.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So like looking at where you're at and what's to come and thinking, what support can I already put up for myself? How can I make sure I'm gonna be okay even in those moments where I'm not okay?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And I think again for me, I'm a pretty type A person. So like I love Excel spreadsheets, I love structure, I love, I love checklists and so for me I like in front of in front of me in my office, I have a massive calendar and so I have everything and I designed it so that it was like literally as big as the wall in front of me and I have all the dates. So I've got important dates in my life or things that are exciting for me. I've got work functions and things on there and just all the things in my life.
Speaker 2:And so for me I really needed to control what I could, because I can't account for emotions, right, you can't account for something.
Speaker 2:Somebody says something like I'm at a conference and somebody asks if I have children yet, and I'm like I haven't been asked that question before. How the heck do I answer it? Like, uh, no, I, I, we don't try, and like when you try to, you know, pivot the conversation elsewhere and you can't control for those things. So I have just tried so hard to be like what are the things that I can control and how do I make sure that I'm just like setting myself up for success in the day to day of my life and the more that I can know how I'm moving through real time allows me to feel a little bit more grounded where my feet are. So when those unexpected questions get hit or something happens, or a commercial comes on TV, or I'm scrolling on social media and I see somebody announces their pregnancy, and all of those things that are difficult to handle, I've got a little bit more stability because I'm kind of really staying structured in this time right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, and it's so powerful because there's not, there's nothing I think I mean pregnancy, miscarriage and then any type of grief is just one of the most. You feel like you've lost so much control because there's so much outside of your control and there's nothing you can do to fix it. And especially when you're a type A person like you're very similar to me, it sounds like where I'm like I really like to, when I can fix things, when I can solve the problem and I think that for me was really really hard is feeling like how do I fix? There was nothing to do to fix it, to make it better, to make it go away. There was nothing to do to fix it, to make it better, to make it go away. And so I had to find what can I control? What can you put on the calendar or in your life that is within your power? To say like this is mine, this is still my life, I still have agency and I still have this power inside of me and not be to allow yourself to feel the emotions but to not be fully swallowed in it is such a powerful thing that I think so many women will avoid their grief and dissociate or numb from it or distract from it or overwork, and it sounds like you are powerfully making space for the emotion and the experience of grief, while also saying, like this is not all of who you are, this is not everything about you. This is just a part of you. This is just one part of you and yeah, it's a big part. Right now it's a soft, tender part, and I just have to say like I'm really, I'm really proud of you. Like even just sitting with you today, already being able to talk about it and share your story, I think is just really powerful for you, but also for so many women.
Speaker 1:I know I experienced a miscarriage as well, and when I was going through it, I hadn't told some people Sorry, and then I hadn't told anyone else, and so there was this weird like some people knew that, like my whole world just ended, and then, like some people had no idea and it was just like a Monday and one of the things you talked about was like in your business, having that privacy which so many of us really understand, especially when you're in a business, or if you think of, like people who are on social media a lot, there's a. It's hard to navigate what feels private and what's a boundary versus like what's being authentic, because vulnerability doesn't mean sharing everything, especially you know who are you sharing it, for when are you ready, but can you share like how you've navigated that piece of it and how that's felt for you that piece of it and how that's felt for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and I think you kind of mentioned this a little bit, but I really took this mindset of like this is happening to you but it doesn't define or change who you are. And I think, in the context of business, one of my favorite qualities of myself is like I have a strong work ethic, I'm very driven and I went from like constant execution to like flatline for a little while and for me, I had to just keep reminding myself that, like who you are in this exact moment is not truly who you are and you have the ability to get through this and you will get back to who you usually are and how you're showing up, whether that's in my business or if that's in the client work that I had. And so I've been pretty lucky that the clients that I had when I was like I can't meet and we need to move our meeting, they knew, because the level of professionalism and the way that I operated in that client work and that engagement that I had was very different than me coming in and saying I need to skip it, like we can't meet this week. That I had to do kind of going back to the structure side of things, like I was super tactical in the micro moments, like don't get me wrong, there were definitely moments where I was like I sat on my couch and I watched guys grocery games or like Hallmark Christmas movies, because those were like numbing to me and allowed my ability to just like veg out and like be with my feelings or not think about my feelings, because we all have to do that to cope.
Speaker 2:But when I was working in my business, you know I was very tactical in terms of what do I need to do? So it was truly mapping out like what is the work and what's expected of me and then what are the dates that those are due so I can work backwards. So, as an example, I have a podcast and I knew that one of the things that I needed to stay consistent with that I just it helped me move forward with my life while at the same time I'm at a standstill emotionally, and so I knew that I wanted to stay committed to my podcast. But I wasn't going to be like you're going to go aggressively, try to find people to be on your show and you're going to do all these other things to try and promote it or make it bigger. I was like you just have to just continue releasing episodes on Monday. And so what I did was I was like I'm a writer, that's my background, I'm going to script out my episodes.
Speaker 2:So on Mondays I would script out my new episode for the following week. Tuesdays I would record it without video because Lord knows, I was not ready to show my face. And then Wednesdays, I would edit it. Thursdays I would do the social media component of it or prepare all the graphics or whatever, and then I would just kind of iterate a little bit every single day. And so it was like I had a little bit of energy to give, and that's how I used it as productively as I could.
Speaker 2:Before I was ready to go back to the couch and just cry and be with my feelings and kind of grieve the way that I needed to. And I kind of took that same approach with my clients too. I knew what I had to do throughout the week. I would do those things and I would reserve all of my energy for those in-person conversations, because I still had to show up on camera, I was still doing Zoom calls, and so for me, I was just constantly leaving.
Speaker 2:Like Tuesday, I have this meeting. So Tuesday morning I'm not going to be on any sort of social media, I'm not going to look at my phone, I'm going to go outside, I'm going to get some sunshine, I'm going to drink some coffee, I'm going to try to put some makeup on my face so that I look presentable for that meeting and I channeled all of my energy into that. So if there is somebody who is going through something hard and they're like I have so many obligations, I have to show up for so many things, when I would say, pick your battles, and it's okay if you have to lessen that workload a little bit, because you just can't. What 100% looks like to you might be 20% and knowing that there's still 100%, you just have less to give.
Speaker 2:I think is such a great lesson and something that, like I realized I was doing, even though I had no freaking idea in the in, in the moment of that I was. That's what I was trying to do is preserve my energy, but that's how I had to look at it back. I really had to be like how can I continue to make a little bit of progress while still keeping those obligations in place that were 100% necessary. And the beauty of it was like it allowed me to kind of build a little bit of confidence and with every day that I was like, okay, I did another podcast, I got through another meeting, I slowly found myself again and it took time and I'm still going through that, but that was something that was really helpful for me and, honestly, it still is right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I mean, you're building self-confidence and I also hear you.
Speaker 1:You were building self-trust because you were saying this is something that matters to me and it's important to me and I'm going to show up for me, which looked like showing up for this business, and it sounds like, like you know, trust is built not just like on the really good days, it's built on the bad days of sometimes feeling your feelings means feeling your feelings and then going and doing shit.
Speaker 1:Anyways, I think a lot of people are so worried that if they feel their feelings, they have to let their feelings drive them, and I think something really powerful in what you just said and let me know if this doesn't resonate is feeling big, massive feelings in your body and then also being able to say, okay, and now I'm going to access and utilize these other parts of me and I'm going to go do the things that I said I would do because it still matters to me and it's important to me and I value this, and not out of this like hustle and drive, like I'm gonna ignore what I need and my emotions, but in this, like I'm going to trust myself, to show up to what matters, even when, like you probably didn't feel like it, like you probably weren't in the mood to do things and how like that's very dramatically true in grief, but like that's true on any day on like pick a day in entrepreneurship and like there's really good days where you're just like on fire and then there's days where you're like I don't want to and you have to like find it in yourself to trust and show up to like what you value, even when it doesn't necessarily feel like fluffy rainbows and clouds.
Speaker 2:Oh, for sure, For sure, and I think to like to be in tune with what you're capable of. So it might be something where, like I know, I need to post content on social media to continue to get in front of my audience and show up. Okay, great, it's not going to be a talking to camera reel or you might not hear me in a visual capacity, but can I do a carousel post on social media? Could I take a picture of something on my walk to kind of bring me and get me ready for that conversation or that meeting I have later in the afternoon and put a little post with it to get people to just kind of see oh, she's still putting out content, it's still relevant to her business. So I was kind of finding what adjustments can I make? Because I still have to show up in some capacity in my business, even though I'm struggling. But how can I change that to feel okay for me right now? And so that was something where I was kind of restructuring some of the things. If you go through, if you follow my channels, or if you're in my podcast or listen to my podcast or on my email list, you might see a difference in how I might have had to interact for a little while, but I was still showing up and making progress. But I was still showing up and making progress.
Speaker 2:And I think now, on the other side of it to me, I'm like how can I batch, create content, how can I batch come up with my strategy for the entire month in advance, so that I don't have to be on this constant real-time hamster wheel of what am I creating, what's the content I'm putting out, what am I doing to get in front of my community and my online membership? And so I am way more proactive now and have a much further outlook in my business and the things that I'm doing from a marketing standpoint, because I know that life's going to happen again. We're back on this journey, we're going to see the next phase of our fertility journey, and that's just one thing. Nobody knows what's going to happen tomorrow and not to go down a very doom and gloom path here.
Speaker 2:But I have now realized that there are things that I can do proactively to, one, make my day-to-day and my business easier, but to just have that little bit of a security blanket that, if something is to happen or if my calendar gets overloaded or if I have too many meetings or if I have to travel or all of these things I'm not necessarily beholden to. What am I going to do right now in my business? Because I plan for the future and it kind of falls in line with, like, I love strategy and structure and all the things, but it's something that I think I took for granted the ability to operate in the day to day a little bit and now being able to kind of put some of those protections in place for my business. So, um, you can't, I can't share that enough of like what are the things that you can do to get you out of the day to day, just to give yourself a little bit of a buffer?
Speaker 1:Well, and show. You just said so many important things. Showing up for your future self, I think, is something that a lot of women they they've learned how to show up for their daily self but they're not, they haven't really owned either in their personal life or in their business. That, like part of loving and trusting yourself is future projection. Like, not anxiety, not this like constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, but the reality that, like life has ups and downs, and so what does it look like to show up for yourself? I'm a huge advocate of like building a better, a better, bigger boat. Like when there isn't a storm and like, personally, I love that Is your relationship doing good? Okay, great.
Speaker 1:Now's the perfect time to work on conflict and intimacy, right. Like oh, you're not sick. Now's the perfect time to like optimize your health. Oh, you're not in a middle of like grief or turmoil or anger. Now's the perfect time to like optimize your health. Oh, you're not in a middle of like grief or turmoil or anger. Now's the perfect time to do some deeper healing work, because you have the capacity, you have this bandwidth to be able to like attune to yourself and your life and start setting yourself up even better for the future. It's like lifting a 10 pound weight right now so that later, like when life hands me a 20 pound weight, I've got some muscle on me. Like it's not going to be. And I think we can do that in many different iterations, but especially in business. I think this is something that a lot of entrepreneurs and women are doing is it's because we're we've just gotten so used to just just today, just today, just today.
Speaker 1:And there are seasons where that's all you can do. There are seasons where it is survival and you just have to break out of perfectionism and say done is better than none, right? Like anything is worth doing well, it's worth doing shit, right? Like it's worth saying like if I can't do this at a 10 today, can I do it at a three. Like if anything is worth doing, well, it's also done, doing half-assed so that it gets done. Like.
Speaker 1:I think so many of us are black and white, especially when we are more type A, when we're perfectionistic. We want things to be quality all the time. But that can really hold us back in those seasons where, like my quality on a really good day can look so different the next if I'm having, like an awful day or if you're in grief or you're going through something like that. You kind of have to understand like, okay, I still have these really high standards, but today my expectations have to be lower. I have to lower the bar until I can grab it Like that's what I tell women.
Speaker 1:I'm like if you can't reach your own bar, lower it until you can and then, once you've got a grasp on that bar, then you can start raising it again. You want a quality life. You want a quality life, no matter what area that's in. Start showing up consistently, and consistency might look crappy at first, it might not look how you want it to look, but that's just going to be life. Like welcome to the human existence, where how you're showing up isn't what you expected, because life is not what we expected, and that doesn't have to be paralyzing to be paralyzing.
Speaker 2:Yeah Gosh, you said so many great things there. The thing that hit home for me was the perfection comment that you made, because I have always been like it's got to be perfect. I have high standards for myself and what's really interesting is, through this experience for me, I have realized what matters and what doesn't matter quite as much. Right, and the things that once mattered to me about having like the perfect image or sounding polished on my podcast or making sure that everything just was like perfect and the look and feel was exactly how I wanted it to be, oftentimes me back from doing things, and then, the minute that I kind of had this, like you know, life experience, I realized how precious it actually is and I had shared this with you. Like I'm a pretty private person and I have started to share the most private part of my existence to date and talking about all of this and what I have found is that I enjoy it more and it allows me to like show up and be messy and you don't have to have all the answers and you don't have to be perfect, and there is so much more to the conversations I can have with women when you're willing to be vulnerable and open up, and it's actually been enjoyable for me and certainly it's helped me grieve, because I'm getting a lot of messages from people. You were one of them. It was like thank you so much for sharing your story. It meant so much to me.
Speaker 2:But I think that there's this need for women as entrepreneurs or just generally speaking honestly, that we have to have our shit together, we have to have all the answers. We put all this pressure on ourselves to do the right thing every single time, go above and beyond, and it's not reality and it's not life. And it's not reality and it's not life and it's not something that's sustainable. And for me, just the ability for me to be like this was a hard part in my life and to open up about it made me realize some things don't matter and, like you said, good is good enough when the alternative is something not getting done or people might relate to me more, because now I feel more human, because I'm opening up about my personal life, and I think that there's something really beautiful as a service-based business, which is what I focus on in my company, which is you are your business, your business is you. People are trading their money for your expertise or to help them get that result, and the relatability that comes with showing your entire personality and being unapologetic about who you are and authentic, there's just something that triggered in me and shifted in me of like, oh, this is what it means to focus on the things that truly matter and connect with people in a different way.
Speaker 2:And it's a little unfortunate that I had to go through something so devastating to kind of come to this realization. But I'm awfully lucky to have found it and I think, if there's somebody listening who's like, feels like they've got the weight on their shoulders and everything needs to be done, right and perfect and in place and executed to the best of their abilities times a billion, it doesn't have to. Life is not this serious and our work is not this serious and we will continue to make mistakes and you'll get back up and you'll try again and if you can kind of you know, learn that lesson in some way, shape or form like you're going to be a better business owner for it. You're going to be a better human for it, you're going to be a better mom for it, like the resilience and strength that you're going to build is just, it's just so beautiful, unfortunately, when you come out the other side, but, like you said, like that's life, you know.
Speaker 1:What you just said was so beautiful. I'm just like soaking it in for a minute. It's just such a relief, isn't it, when we stop after we erase our humanity and our messy, and I think especially in professionalism. I think this is such an interesting topic and one that, like, I love talking about, because people don't really talk about the pressure that women feel, and it's a very real pressure that we need to. People don't use the word perfect, right, like we have really high standards and we're very serious about what we want to do and we're very ambitious and we have these like ideas and we are women who can like see the gap right, like I used to always like wish I wouldn't see the gap or I wouldn't feel the gap, and it's like that is my gifting is that I can see where it is to, where it could be or where it should be or where I want it to be, but that for so long felt like this pedestalized pressure of like I have to be this thing, that I'm not all the time, and I think we love authenticity, authenticity and other people. Like we see other people being vulnerable and we're like, oh, I love her more, like I like her more, but then when it's us sharing it, we feel all of this shame and like vulnerability doesn't really feel cute. It feels like oh my gosh, what did I just say out loud? Or like I can't believe. I just let that person into this, like part of me that doesn't have this pretty bow tie on it.
Speaker 1:And I think this is something that like, especially as professionals, especially like as entrepreneurs, it can be so easy to be like pedestaled from other people. But even on ourselves of like I have to create this persona of me, like this version of me that like it's real, it's authentic. Like this persona of me is still real, but it's not all of me. That like it's real, it's authentic. Like this persona of me is still real, but it's not all of me, it's it's just parts of me and there's there's just a nature to that of like you know my clients or my social media or my professional side, like the I'm not bringing every single part of me to that, and part of that is like healthy boundaries and keeping things private. Like I'm a pretty private person actually, but I'm also really awkwardly like a non TMI person. Like let's just actually in real life, like social media a little less so. But in real life I'm like, oh, let's talk about it.
Speaker 1:But when we stop pedestalizing ourselves, other people get permission to do the same, and then we just we don't have to be personas, we just get to be people, um, in our professional lives and others. And if, if we're going to create our own businesses, should we be like these corporate whitewash, like no character, no humanity, like I don't know about you? But that's the whole reason I started a business. That's the whole reason why I went on my own is because I was like I want a business that doesn't have to be corporate, that doesn't have to have to cancel because they have a sick kid and couldn't give me 24 hours.
Speaker 1:Like, I don't want to do those things. And isn't it beautiful that I'm in a business where my humanity gets to play a role in it and it always feels like it's going to be problematic. And then I see the women across from me taking a big deep breath and being like, oh, I'm allowed to do that too. I'm allowed to just take up space and have messy days and be human and not have that mean that I'm not serious, right? Those parts like yes, I have these very messy human parts of me, but like also, like I'm very serious about what I do, I'm very professional about what I do, and those things seem like they're conflicting but they actually work really well together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love how you phrased that and it's so interesting because you know the oh it's. It's good enough for her to be vulnerable and share that, but I could never Right, and so it's it's. It is hard, especially if you're someone and I'm in that same category where I am a pretty private person, and it's one of those things where it took me being scared, because I'm currently in my do it scared season where, like I'm just trying different things and like if it's going to scare me, I'm going to do it anyway and we're going to figure it out as we go. And it all I kept saying to myself was, if I share this story and I could help one person, it has made the world of difference and it was worth it. It was worth me being comfortable being vulnerable and sharing my story If it helps somebody else who's going through the thick of it, who found my podcast at the perfect time and was like, oh my God, I needed this today. And now they're.
Speaker 2:You know, I I had said in in uh, the other podcast I was on like I knew I was going to be okay when I could paint my fingernails, because it was the littlest piece of self-care that I was like I painted my fingernails. It was a hot pink color and I was like I'm going to be okay. And it was that moment sitting in my bathroom that I was like I'm going to be okay and if me telling my story and being scared enough and vulnerable enough to share it with the world in a very public platform, it was worth it. And then what happened in me was like, well, that wasn't so hard, that wasn't so scary. And now I'm like, well, how can I continue to do that where I'm comfortable, finding that threshold of like how much I want to share and how much I want to be vulnerable? And I think that line's going to look different for every person. You don't need to stay on that social media thread for a second. You don't need to get on and share your entire life story and air your dirty laundry and all the things. There are people that are going to be gravitating towards you for the level in which you're comfortable sharing with them about yourself. And I think, if you can just kind of say, who can I help today, if you're a business owner and you're scared about sharing your story, but then you're thinking about the person who desperately needs your services but doesn't know you exist yet because you haven't been comfortable or scared enough to actually come through and share that with them.
Speaker 2:I always like to think that as service-based business owners, we number one get in business because we want to serve others, we want to help others, we want to help them live a better life, to build a better business, to insert whatever the result or transformation you can, you can offer it here, but that's the goal. And for us to kind of lean into that when it feels uncomfortable, I think is is a really interesting way to kind of like trick your brain a little bit to being more comfortable. But I also say, like so many people are, like you have to bring your whole self to your brand. No, you don't like do what makes sense for you. And and the thing that I always say are like you have to bring your whole self to your brand. No, you don't Do what makes sense for you.
Speaker 2:And the thing that I always say is, if you're excited about the work that you're doing, if you're genuinely happy and you're able to have an impact and you're enjoying how you're marketing yourself, don't put all of this unnecessary pressure to be somebody that you're not, because, at the end of the day, people are going to know they're going to see right through it and they're not going to feel as connected or gravitate towards you as much. And so I always like to remind people you don't have to be anybody other than you want to be, and if it feels too foreign to you, reflect on what you want your business to look like. Reflect on how you interact when you're one-on-one with your clients and channel that into your marketing, but don't feel like you need to be doing more than you currently are if you're not ready for it, because you might not be.
Speaker 1:Which is really good.
Speaker 1:Business and life advice, right, and what you were saying makes me think of that quote.
Speaker 1:I wish I could think of who it's by, but, like fear is a mile wide and an inch deep, and I think that applies at any level of vulnerability or authenticity, whether that is, you're going through something in your life and someone asks how you are, and you actually tell them, right, and I'm not saying like the grocery store clerk, right, like yep, yep, maybe there's a friend, and you just say, like, you know, it's a really hard day and I don't really want to talk about it, but yeah, it's, I'm actually having a hard day.
Speaker 1:Don't ask me about it, though, cause I don't want to stop right now, cause it's not the moment. Or how can you tell the truth to someone who loves you? Or even in your business, on a podcast, asking yourself what is it that I really want to say? What is it that I'd love to share? And when you were talking, I think something that came up in me that I just wanted to tell you when you were sharing, like if it just helps one person, and I just had this, like, well, even if that one person is you it was all worth it.
Speaker 1:I love that Because, at the end of the day, I don't know about you, but like there's a lot of times where I'm doing what I do and I'm like I'm not getting like the feedback I wanted or expected and it's taking too long, or there's something where, like I'm not getting the response I needed. And then I remind myself, like if I just did this, for me that would be enough. Like if I showed up to what I wanted to do and what I said I would do and what I like I have a vision and I have a heart for this and even if the only person who needed this today was me, I did it. I showed up, building your self-trust and confidence, which sounds like was a big piece and has been and will be a big piece of moving through. This grief, for you is just noticing that it's just a part of you, that there's so much more to you. Like this is a piece of your story, but it's not all of it, right, it's just a chapter in your book.
Speaker 1:Like I was, I'm a big reader and someone was talking about like our life stories versus books and I was like, yeah, like think of, like okay, harry Potter, right. How many chapters are you like, oh no, this is going terribly wrong for him. Everything has gone wrong. This is the end, this is the worst. And then, like a couple of chapters later, you're like oh, we're okay again. And I often think of that when I'm in a season or having a day. It's like this is just a chapter, this is just one story in a very long book. How do I want to write this out? How do I want to show up to this? How? How do I want to show up to this season? And it sounds like that's something that you've done really well, even if it wasn't really easy or pretty for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that analogy because, like and I'm going to probably butcher this quote, but it's like it's not the destination, it's the journey, and you have to fall in love with the journey because the destination is constantly going to move as you reach the destination and you set a new destination Right, and so I really love that because you know time will pass. I really love that because time will pass. You will work through it. You will come out, even if you don't come out stronger on the other side, you're going to come out smarter. You're going to come out with more experience. You're going to come out with the knowledge to help you get through it again. If this happens to me in the future, like, I know where I went wrong, I know where I could improve, I know to ask for help sooner. I know to not carry this burden and confide in my husband, maybe more than I did when I was struggling, or like the triggers, or you know the one thing that you had said of like don't ask me about it, it's been a bad day. I don't want to start sobbing. Like one of the things that I got really good at after I had shared, kind of, where I was at was. I didn't want people to ask me how I'm doing and I didn't want people to send me a text that was like just checking on you, because that those two things for me were just like they're worried about me. I'm not grieving fast enough. I'm too sad.
Speaker 2:I had all of this negative self-talk in my brain of a seemingly very supportive question, especially living. My family is in New York. We were in Florida at the time. I have made a lot of entrepreneur friends that live all across the country. My friends are in all different places. But I had to. I had to realize, because I kept getting this gut reaction every time I got it and it didn't feel good. And so I eventually got to a point where I was like you can't ask me those questions and like find a different way to you know, talk to me about it or be like hey, what's going on with your business? Or are you in you and John doing anything this weekend to get outside and get some fresh air and enjoy that Florida sunshine? Like there were different ways that I needed people to get creative.
Speaker 2:So if somebody is listening to this and they're like they're not going through it, but maybe somebody in their life is going through something hard.
Speaker 2:Kind of think about how you're asking questions and how they might be received, because I'm going to assume they're going to get received not the way that you want them to, depending on the person.
Speaker 2:And for me it was something that I had to be super vocal and kind of to your comment earlier about, like building that self-trust and that self-confidence in yourself, like I had to realize nobody knows anything until you're willing to tell them, and so they're going to keep doing the things and keep checking on me and doing all of it until I have to say like, hey, no, I don't, I don't, I can't have you ask me that way because it hurts me and it brings a lot of pain and sadness to me.
Speaker 2:But if you ask me other questions, great, and there's a similar thing of like, well, do you want advice or do you just want me to listen in terms of regular conversation? And so those things were super helpful for me too. That allowed me to just kind of be a little bit more self-aware and also realize that people don't know and sometimes it's hard, but you have to kind of lead them the direction that you want in those dark moments, because otherwise they don't have any. You know they don't have any other way of connecting with you or showing that they care sometimes, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, what you just said was so powerful, and I don't remember if I had shared this with you, but I'm going to, pretty soon here, be starting to record a couple specific episodes around grief of like, but also like when other people are walking through grief, because, you know, I there was a grief panel. I was at a birth conference and they they did a bereavement grief panel and one of the questions they asked is what's the worst thing? Someone said to you, and I think what's so interesting, what was the worst for some people was the best for other people, and what some people? Completely contradictory to my experience, and I think what's tricky is we don't know.
Speaker 1:Other people don't always know how to love us, and I think that's part of the loneliness, but it doesn't have to be loneliness, because when people really love you, they want to know how to love you.
Speaker 1:They want to know how, like when you have really loving people in your life, you can give them the keys of how to love you. And part of that is telling them like hey, I know what you're trying to say, like I know you're trying to help me right now, but that's not helping, and like please don't do this instead, or whatever you're doing, it's not working. Try something else and I'll keep telling you. And, like, having faith in community, like his community, is messy. Loving someone through grief is messy. Being someone in grief who other people love is messy. Like it's not all going to be pretty imperfect and I think giving ourselves permission that, like we don't always have the perfect thing to say Um, and giving other, ourselves the responsibility of telling other people like what we want and need from them because they love us and they want to know, yeah, and there's so much shame and guilt that comes when you're grieving, and I think that's really well said of like as soon as you can open communication.
Speaker 2:Because for me it took me a while. It took me many, many weeks and I was just like I needed answers before I was ready. Because for me I was like, well, if I told them and it turned around, well then I couldn't do like you know the fun, you know reveal of we were pregnant, or they might follow up and ask me how are things going? And I was just like I don't have information yet, I'm still in this limbo period, and so for me I went quiet and then, as soon as I was ready to communicate, I then kind of was like, let me advocate for myself because nobody else can right now. And I think that's a really important piece.
Speaker 2:If somebody's going through something hard of, just like when you're ready to start talking, or even in text messages, I told this is it's silly, but nobody tells you how to handle something like this.
Speaker 2:I told one of my bridesmaids in an Instagram chat message that we had lost the pregnancy because I couldn't verbalize it, I couldn't talk on the phone, I couldn't do a FaceTime or a Marco or something, and so I had to figure out what worked best for me.
Speaker 2:But when you're ready to start communicating, it's so important to just be more in touch with how your body is reacting, because if you can feel like I could, I would feel sick to my stomach when somebody asked me how I was feeling, and I was like that was, you know, a combination of the heaviness on my heart. But if I hadn't listened to that immediate response, I don't think I would have been able to be like I can't handle that question right now. And so if there's something where, like, you're going through all of these emotions, like if you can get a little bit more in tune with your body to help you facilitate what's working and what's not working from a communication standpoint, like that's a really a really good way to kind of bridge that gap. When you're like going through it and you don't know what the heck you're doing and you're just trying to, like keep your head above water.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's just showing up for yourself in many different ways, in different phases. It sounds like.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, oh. This conversation was so good and I just want it to keep going. Is there any part that feels like an open loop that you want to close or anything else you just want to name? After talking about this, I feel like we covered so many cool and hard and messy themes, but I think something I'm passionate about is like these things. There are ways to talk about these things and ways to share and show up that don't have to be terrible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, open loops. You know, I think it's and I said this earlier like I kept waiting for a date, right when I was like I'm going to hit this date and then I'm going to feel better and like certainly I'm in a much better place than I am, than I was months ago. But I think again, kind of going back to that pressure and like expectation you put on yourself, like you're always going to carry it with you. You know it's going to, it's, it will always be there. I'm sure you know, if we're fortunate enough to bring a child into this world, like I'm going to be thinking about it in the future and it's never truly going to be off my heart.
Speaker 2:So I think, like eliminate any sort of expectation of how you should be grieving or how long it should take you to grieve, or the thing that I kept telling myself I was like I should be feeling better by now and all of these should statements, like if those are coming up for you, like allow yourself to kind of be like that's just how this is going to go, like everybody, like you said, grieves differently. And those shoulds I should be better, I should be past this, I should be happier are the things that are going to tear you down the most. And I think if you can kind of recognize that and realize that, like your, your grieving journey is never over. It might look different in different seasons, but eliminate that expectation because, like we're all just trying to figure out this life and like we all have these challenges that we go through and like, carry them with you, don't let them define you but don't let them hold you back either.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, and those should, those should statements, they're almost always shame. Yeah, a hundred percent internalized shame.
Speaker 1:That is like what is wrong with you and a hundred percent have that I just think of, like, if I had a really close friend who was feeling this, would I ever look at her and be like you shouldn't be, you shouldn't be crying right now, like, never, never, like. And then there would be times where I might be like, oh yeah, I might tell her like it's time to go, like take a shower, but I would never do it out of shame, right Out of like harm or judgment. I might do it out of like, okay, let we need to change our approach to this, or there need to be some boundaries. Or like, hey, let's get out a calendar and put on right, like there might be some different behaviors, but it wouldn't be out of this shaming way. And yet we so easily accept that for ourselves, those like shoulds that come in shame. So that's man that's so powerful.
Speaker 1:And for I can think of so many reasons like grief is life, life is grief. Like the way that we handle grief really sets us up for how we move through our lives in a lot of ways and it's not like a silver lining thing, it's just like a. How do we learn how to be human? How do we live? How to? How do we learn how to live with our humanity, because it's not going anywhere. And that doesn't have to be like an ominous, terrible thing, it's just like here. It is, here I am. What am I going to do with it? What are the things that I control? What are the decisions I'm going to make? What matters to me? What are the things I still want to show up to on these rough days?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's really interesting to hear you say that, because I have constantly said to myself when I have those moments of light, when those best moments in my life happen, like they will be sweeter because I have experienced such sorrow, you know, and I think that, like you said, life is the highs and the lows and, like, unfortunately, this year for me was like the lowest of low and I'm excited for when those highs hit, because I know I'm going to be even more grateful, even more ready, even more excited and like experience life to the fullest because I've seen and felt the opposite and so you don't ever stay in a high or a low, and being able to kind of see that and understand that and know that like this is a chapter, your book and your story is not over, I think is a really important way to be thinking about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the whole the wide range of your health, right Like the story arc, is a very important part of life. Yeah, absolutely. This conversation was so beautiful. Emily, thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh. Thank you so much, Becca, for having me. This was great.
Speaker 1:Thanks for joining me on today's episode of the Motherhood Mentor Podcast. Make sure you have subscribed below so that you see all of the upcoming podcasts that are coming soon. I hope you take today's episode and you take one aha moment, one small, tangible piece of work that you can bring into your life, to get your hands a little dirty, to get your skin in the game. Don't forget to take up audacious space in your life. If this podcast moved you, if it inspired you, if it encouraged you, please do me a favor and leave a review, send an episode to a friend. This helps the show gain more traction. It helps us to support more moms, more women, and that's what we're doing here. So I hope you have an awesome day, take really good care of yourself and I'll see you next time.
