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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
The Unshaming Way with David Bedrick: a compassionate guide to healing shame,mom guilt, and trauma
In this deeply insightful episode of the Motherhood Mentor Podcast, Becca sits down with author and mental health expert David Bedrick to explore the complex emotions of shame, guilt, boundaries, and dealing with your inner critic. Drawing on his extensive experience, David offers a compassionate approach to understanding these emotions and experiences—not as flaws to fix, but as meaningful messages and medicine that guide us toward healing.
David introduces the concept of the "Unshaming Way"—a paradigm shift that encourages us to embrace imperfections and release the self-criticism that often keeps us stuck. Together, they explore how shame isn’t just an emotion but an internalized witness that distorts our reality, creating barriers to self-acceptance and healing. David and Becca discuss some of the highlights of David's new book “The Unshaming Way”
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- Healing Shame and Guilt: How to break free from the cycle of mom guilt and self-blame, embracing a compassionate relationship with yourself.
- Perfectionism and Its Roots: How generational trauma and societal expectations fuel perfectionism in mothers, and how to release the pressure to be “perfect.”
- Managing Parental Anger: How anger in motherhood isn’t a sign of failure but a signal of unmet needs—and how to express it in healthy ways.
- Generational Healing: How to break the cycle of intergenerational trauma and create a new legacy of self-acceptance, authentic connection, and empowerment.
David emphasizes the importance of boundaries and self-compassion in healing, teaching us how to recognize the root of our anger and use it as a tool for reclaiming our voice and space. He shares powerful insights on how authentic relationships—not perfection—are the key to healing past wounds and cultivating resilience as a mother.
If you’ve ever struggled with the weight of perfectionism, the guilt of yelling at your kids, or the feeling that you're not enough, or the exhausting constant inner critic- this episode is a must-listen. Tune in to discover how to release shame, embrace your humanity, and step into a more empowered, compassionate version of yourself.
Meet David:
David Bedrick, JD, Dipl. PW, is a teacher, counselor, and attorney. He grew up in family marked by violence. While his father’s brutality was physical and verbal, his mother’s denial and gaslighting had its own covert power. This formative context introduced David early to the etiology of shame and instilled an urge to unshame.
Professionally, he was on the faculty for the University of Phoenix and the Process Work Institute in the U.S. and Poland and is the founder of the Santa Fe Institute for Shame-based Studies where he trains therapists, coaches and healers and offers workshops.
David writes for Psychology Today and is the author of three books: Talking Back to Dr. Phil: Alternatives to Mainstream Psychology and Revisioning Activism: Bringing Depth, Dialogue, and Diversity to Individual and Social Change. His new book is You Can’t Judge a Body by Its Cover: 17 Women’s Stories of Hunger, Body Shame and Redemption. His recent book, The Unshaming Way, published in November of 2024 by North Atlantic books.
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. I am really excited to have David Bedrick with me today. I met him first through Simone Soul. They did a shame clinic and his work with shame just taught me so much and has just been really healing and compassionate for myself but also really influenced my work with my clients and I just got his new book, the Unshaming Way, and I've been highlighting and underlining and I'm just so excited to talk about shame in a way that I've never heard it talked about before. So, david, I'm just really excited and honored to have you here today. Will you introduce yourself and a little bit about who you are today, will you?
Speaker 2:introduce yourself and a little bit about who you are today. Sure, thank you, rebecca, for having me. Whenever a person asks me to introduce myself, I always think of two paths. One is kind of a more formal path. I went to graduate school and studied psychology and then I did my clinical training at a place called the Process Work Institute, which is an offshoot of the Jung Institute in Zurich. I've just finished my fourth book and I teach therapists and coaches how to work in an unshaming way and teach individuals.
Speaker 2:I taught at a university for eight years and I have a strange blip in. At 40 years old I taught at a university for eight years. Then I have a strange blip. At 40 years old. I'm 69 now.
Speaker 2:At 40 years old, I decided to go to law school. Why? Okay, that's too long, we won't be able to get into that, but I am interested in justice. So I practiced as a lawyer for eight years. But my more important story is my personal story, which is I grew up in a home where my father was violent. He used fists and belts, I say, to express his rage, and I had a mother who is coped by being in denial. This is not happening. Why are you upset Things like that? Why are you upset and things like that? And so, like many wounded healers, if you can call them, then we take our knowledge and our intelligence and then we take our experience right and we cook it. We say what can I make out of this crap, this bowl of stuff, this pot? Can I cook something up that looks like a mixture of my gifts and my story and offer it to the world?
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you for sharing that. I really resonate with what you shared. When you talk about shame, you don't reference shame as an emotion. You don't reference shame as an emotion. You talk about shame as a witness. Can you define how you see or think about shame? And when I say define, it doesn't need to be like a firm definition. But what is shame? How do you define that for people? How do you understand it for yourself? And then how do you explain what shame is to others, what that experience is like?
Speaker 2:yeah, it's, it's really important. I'm thinking of a number of different threads, but let me first answer indirectly. Shame is an internalized witness that denies, dismisses or gaslights your experience. That's the definition of it. That's what literally happens. Now let me give you an example. Let's say a child is abused by a father. In my case, Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:And then let's say a mother says. Let's say a mother says why are you so upset? Nothing happened, okay. Now let's say I'm thinking of a woman that I work with who was violated by a clergy person and then she went to the upper levels of that clergy and they said you need to learn to be forgiving.
Speaker 2:Okay, now those two people me and that woman we go to therapy, let's say in our twenties or thirties. I don't go to therapy saying I had a violent father and a mother that was in denial. I go to therapy saying what's wrong with me? Am I making things up? I'm so confused and notice that the way I told my story was the way my mother witnessed it. She said nothing's happening. What's wrong with you? By the way, I'm not blaming mothers. She just happened to be that person. It could have been the police. It could have been the FBI. It could be my father. It could have been the police. It could have been the FBI. It could have been my father. It could have been a teacher. It could have been a culture that looks at the violence and says something like it didn't happen, it's not a big deal. You're making it up or you deserve it.
Speaker 2:Now the woman who's violated by the clergy person. She goes to therapy and does she tell the story of being violated by the clergy? No, does she tell the story of being violated by the clergy? No, she says help me become a more forgiving person. Isn't that fascinating. Where did the story go? Where did the violence go? Where did the impact of that violence go, which has a huge impact on that person as it does?
Speaker 2:Many Physical symptoms, emotional symptoms, relationship difficulties, body cramps and all kinds of things that are happening. And all of that goes away and she thinks I need to be forgiving. Where did she get the idea of I need to learn forgiving? Somebody witnessed the story witnessed. Later I tell somebody, she told somebody, and they say you need to be a forgiving person. So her interpretation of her experience comes from who she told or who saw or who didn't see. So that lives inside of her in that case. So she's not walking around saying I need to find other people who were abused by clergy, I need to understand my abuse experience. Maybe I need to go to therapy for help with my trauma. She doesn't do that. She goes for forgiveness and the whole story goes away. That idea that I need to be forgiving ends up shaming her experience. What's wrong with me that I can't forgive? She thinks, opposed to, hey, I have a painful story that's difficult.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I actually really appreciate what you said about this. Isn't to blame the mothers, because I work with mothers and this is one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on the podcast. So bad is there's this narrative all the time around mom guilt.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But when I sit with women and I hear what they're saying, I have a witness right, I'm witnessing it, and often my reaction to it is a healthy one. It is anger against abuse or deep grief with them about what they're grieving and it's like no, no, no, this isn't guilt, this isn't. You made a decision that doesn't align with your values and you want to change the way that you're showing up. This is something happened to you. You have a feeling or you have an experience.
Speaker 1:A great example is when they yell at their kids, right, but I ask about, well, what happened before? You're yelling at their kids and you find out that, like, their kid is being really mean or aggressive and it's and it's hurting them and they're having this painful response come up in their bodies and then they yell and then they feel ashamed that they yelled. And what I've seen happen and witness in motherhood, specifically with the women that I work with, is shame becomes this cycle of this. Woman internalizes and shames herself and then it's very hard for her Then, when her kid has that same experience, to not be a healthy witness for her kid is that? Are you following the path that I'm hearing of like?
Speaker 2:totally following this too. Maybe three things that I want to say about mother guilt.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:This is an apology as a person from the psychology field. As an apology as a person from the psychology field. Psychology has way too painfully focused on the mother as the perpetrator of the child's violence and later story. Mothers are imperfect, like fathers, like the culture, etc. Yes, you're imperfect, but it's so unfair, the focus on the mother. There's so much other.
Speaker 1:It's a lot of offense.
Speaker 2:Especially the larger cultures level of violence sometimes filtered through the family. Second, when a mother is guilty, that means literally that inside of that mother's head are voices saying to her you screwed up, you're bad, you're no good, you're a terrible parent, you've screwed up your kids forever, etc. Whatever the voice is, that voice goes undetected and then the person just feels bad. So if I'm a mother and it's something you screwed up, I can't believe you did that. Why did you yell at your kid? You lost it. You know the impact you're going to have. You're a terrible mother.
Speaker 2:If I have that going on inside and I don't notice it, I walk around feeling like crap as a mother. That's not going to make me a better mother, you know. Feeling like I'm a piece of whatever turd I want to curse today for some reason is not going to help me. So if I don't notice that barrage of criticism, it's an actual internal abuse scene in the moment. So the first second thing is then first thing was blaming the mothers is way too prevalent.
Speaker 2:The second thing is that voice needs to be heard and responded to. Do not take it. There may be a little truth, Maybe you could have done things differently, but you don't deserve to be beat up, and telling a mother she's a terrible mother, which a lot of mothers have in their head, is like one of the worst things. Like how much more of a violence can I do to a mother than say that you've screwed up your kid and you're a terrible mother? That is like awful. That is so violent so you have to make sure that you notice that's violence going inside of me. That's not a truth that I need. I don't deserve to be whipped, punished, to be beaten up, even if I've made a mistake and that's that shame, that's that internalized witness of.
Speaker 1:so it's. It's not necessarily just what she's feeling or thinking, it's the response to that, it's the response to her identity and her. I think of it as like it. You know, if, if you fell, whether someone pushed you or you tripped or you threw yourself on the ground in a fit, however you fell, when I think of an unshaming witness, I think of you know someone comes up and they're like hey, let's get up. Or ooh, that hurt, you're not ready to get up. And they come sit with me and they tend to my wounds. Or you know I have a mother part of me that knows how to be a witness to my kids. And sometimes you know if there's a violent perpetrator. You know violence and anger actually feel like a very healthy witness to something, if someone needs defended. But when it's going on internally and they're not necessarily hearing those words, maybe they're feeling it in their body or maybe there's just a sense. But how do you help people make that thing that's going on tangible? Yeah, I mean that thing that's going on tangible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean. One thing that's so useful when I work with mothers is I and they feel guilty, which is so common Ultra, not just because they make mistakes. Yeah, it's so helpful to say those voices out loud. So I would say it to a woman tell me what the voices are in your head, I'm not sure. Make it up, make up. Act as if you're the critic of your motherhood. I'm looking at you, mother, and say words, say them more out loud. It's very important to be out loud. Your own ears have to hear the words. If you say it out loud and then what I call amplify, do it again, do it more intensely, make the tone of it. It's not like you didn't do a good job.
Speaker 1:You didn't do a good job.
Speaker 2:Those are very good energies and then listen, just whoa, that's going on inside me on a regular basis, so that hearing it, if a person can think of responding to that like you're saying as a protector, that's really helpful.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Go to the third thing in your story the anger. Right, you're saying the mother yells at the child. Then the unshame, the yelling. How do we do that? We say your child's not here right now, so yelling is not going to hurt them, because they're not in this space, the Zoom space, in the therapy room, with you alone in the woods. Right, they're somewhere.
Speaker 2:Feel that energy of the yell and anger. Make a fist, make a sound, just make the sound. You're not with somebody, you're not hurting somebody. I'm not saying you should or shouldn't yell at your child, that's not the point. Make that sound, feel that energy, get to know it a little bit. Just for three, four minutes, not just one time. Okay, I did it.
Speaker 2:Three minutes is not a long time to spend with something that you feel really bad about. Make a movement, make a fist, make a growl. Make a movement, make a fist, make a growl. And then ask yourself where, with my child or elsewhere, do I need that energy? Not yelling per se, where I need a grrr, yeah, grrr.
Speaker 2:I'm so overworked and pushed down and undervalued and that yell scream belongs, is it? I have to be able to say no to my child and I have a hard time doing it. No, that's not a yell, but it's firm, the voice and tone. You'll know that difference of what's needed between a one-year-old and a seven-year-old and your child sensitivity, those energies in the yell not necessarily the L, the way it happened, but the energy of it is always 100% of the time needed in some form. So if I say I'm bad, now that goes away, but I don't know where this belongs.
Speaker 2:And it does belong. Maybe it's a protest song. If you're a single mother, it's a protest song about the amount of burden that's put on me. And then people tell me I'm doing a good or a bad job. Given the resources I have. I need to yell at the whole culture or have some friends we can scream about how terrible that is, or read a book or go online and say single moms and get a bunch of things where people feel the commiseration with you, so that yell becomes held by a. I get it. You need some of that. Let's be a little bit more conscious with your child of how to use that energy, but you still might need it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think what's really important here I mean it's a very common thing that women are mothers will ask how do I stop yelling at my kid? And it completely devalues and decenters the reality that you are a full human being, having your own human experience that is connected to your child's but is separate from your child's like. And I think what I've seen with a lot of women is that when they make contact with themselves, when they start having that connection to their own energy, they start realizing that like it was just their aliveness, saying like I need to exist, I need to take up more room, I need to be louder, I need to be more firm in what I want and what I need and how things impact me. But it can kind of come out sideways. But if we treat the yelling as a problem and we just eliminate it, it usually comes out somewhere else and then it and it never centers the woman as a valuable human being who deserves to have her experience cared for, whatever that might look like.
Speaker 2:That's brilliant. What you said centers the woman, centers the mother, values her experience. And then you said I can't remember the exact phrase Yell is an indicator that I exist. I'm here too. I'm not just a whatever, a bosom, a milky bosom Sorry, I don't know. I'm not just something to serve you and to serve others. That's part of my function and job. I get it, but I'm also a person with their own feelings.
Speaker 1:You could yell in my ear it could hurt.
Speaker 2:I remember working with a mother who didn't know what to do with her upset with this child and I asked her when it came up, like you say, and she said sometimes my child yells so loud and I said does it hurt your ears? She said I never thought of that. She said I guess. So I said then it hurts you. Then you have to have a human response Ouch, no, or cover your ears. Well, I'm going to walk away, whatever the natural thing that you would want to do might piss you off. Stop it Like it hurts. If it hurts you, that's a relationship. Like you said, you exist, you're a person, you have a relationship. You don't have to think about punishment or not punishment. You have to think about your relationship. I love the way you say I exist. That means I have a response. If you treat me lovely, I feel lovely. If I'm tired, I'm tired. If you hit me, it hurts. I don't want to let that happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't have to say you're bad, but I do have to say that hurts. I don't want to be hurt, it's not okay. I will do something back if you continue to hurt me. That's a human interaction.
Speaker 1:Well, and so I want to come back to. So. Shame comes up, and you see, shame as a witness.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And then there's something that comes up when you name it that or when you see shame as a witness and it kind of sounds like you're now I'm forgetting the word that you're creating a healthy separation. I can't think of the word I want to use. There's a delineation of. There's this shaming part I use, it does the language of parts? So there's this part of me that is shaming me. That is maybe in my own voice, Maybe it sounds like someone else, Maybe it feels like someone else. But now there's this shaming witness.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And what is my response to that shaming witness? So how do? How would you describe that? Am I understanding it in the way that you think of it?
Speaker 2:Yes, if you walk around thinking I'm bad, I deserve to be hurt. People don't think usually use that word, but but if you have guilt running around in your head and you never stop it, then something in you thinks I deserve this. I guess I deserve to feel bad If that's happening. If you think what's wrong with me that I fill in the blank Drink coffee how about this? Do that? Stay up too late.
Speaker 1:I should do something else, yeah.
Speaker 2:When you have those kinds of ideas, that means shame is present and whatever the thing that's being shamed. I'm staying up late at night and I'm tired in the morning, so I'm not available for my kids like the way I think I should be, right. So then, the thing that's shamed there is staying up late. Right, I stayed up so late and that's why I there is staying up late. Right, I stayed up so late and that's why I'm not alert for my child and making sure their shoes are on at the right time. The thing that's shamed there is staying up late. So then staying up late needs to be unshamed, meaning not that you should stay up late, but who stays up late? What's it like staying up late? What's so good about staying up late? It's the only free time I get. I know I'm tired, but watching a show for an hour or whatever, or reading a book or whatever I'm doing, or scrolling the internet. I want free time. So it's not the staying up late, but I need some free time. That's motivating that staying up. If we don't do that, then shame rules. When shame rules, you don't really find out what you're really about, why you do things, how to understand yourself in a compassionate way. You just try to fix yourself, and that doesn't work.
Speaker 2:So, whatever the behavior, whether it's yelling, staying up late, being tired, if a mother has chronic symptoms, many chronic symptoms directly or indirectly make a person feel tired. It could be because it's a fatigue-oriented inflammation, or it could be because if you suffer a lot of pain, it's tiring right. If your back hurts a lot, then your system gets tired because that focus is there. And then a person's like I should be there, I should be more awake. I'm not there as much as I should be, I'm not doing my job, I'm not there for my children enough. So all this barrage of guilt, self-hatred, is really what it is right Comes up, it lives in the culture. This, it is right, comes up, it lives in the culture. This is what a good mother is. She's productive as hell. She's there for her kids every single time. She never makes a mistake and if she can make sure she has enough money by working, if not enough money is in the system, she does all those things right. Tiredness is not part of the understanding of that right. Tiredness is like irrelevant right. Let's get rid of it. So tiredness for many mothers become shamed.
Speaker 2:So then you have to say what's it like to be tired? Oh, I'm not allowed to be tired, I can't. I know, I know we have 10 minutes. What's it like to be tired? Feel it in your body. The shoulders go down, the body sinks, the head drops. Go ahead, drop all the way. You can put your head back, you can lie on a pillow for three minutes, four minutes. What's that like? Oh sigh happens. It's so good to relax. What's it like when you're relaxed?
Speaker 2:It reminds me that I haven't read a book. It reminds me I love poetry. It reminds me that I haven't seen the ocean in a while. It reminds me of and now we're in a different world, not just a resting world, but a different world. Now you can say so. Now we haven't looked at tiredness as a bad thing. We look at it as a natural impulse that has beauty in it. Not just rest so that I can do better the next day, rest so that I can find deeper aspects of myself.
Speaker 2:And once you find this, we can say you missed the ocean. What would it be like if you were by the ocean mothering your child? What would it be like if you were more poetic because you drank. You talked about poetry, mothering your child. Oh yeah, then I would be this way, so we can still bring it back in. But first we have to go into the tiredness unshamed. That means you shouldn't be tired, drink more coffee, get more sleep, do more exercise, take a supplement. Those are shaming ideas. Right, do those things, but they're all about getting you over your tiredness, getting over your yelling, getting over your whatever you're doing. So chronic symptoms are a huge uh cause of shame. Tiredness in general around mothers, because this is a tiring task and when things shouldn't be this way well, and you know I've seen a lot in mothers that those chronic things become a deep like.
Speaker 1:It's like shame on top of shame because now there's something that they haven't been able to fix about themselves. Um, I the clients that I work with, um have done a lot of therapy. They've done a lot of coaching, their personal growth junkies, so they've learned really well how to fix themselves, how to heal, how to do everything and anything to be better. But it can kind of become this treadmill. It can become this treadmill of it doesn't matter how fast I run, it doesn't feel good enough either for me. Or there's often this mysterious like they like whether that is who they're trying to please or who they're trying to avoid, thinking they're a failure. I wonder if you can speak to that piece of like fixing yourself.
Speaker 2:The healing industry. I don't always like being critical of other people's work and I'm not going to focus on a particular person, but I want to talk about a general paradigm. That means the way almost all of us are taught and conditioned to think, and that is when I have a symptom. Why is it like that? How do I make it go away? If I have a bellyache, maybe I shouldn't have had whatever ice cream late last night. Or coffee is hard on my stomach that's true for me. Coffee is hard on my stomach, the acid is not so good for me, it makes pain, or any other physical symptom. Oh, I have a virus, I should rest, or I have a bacterial infection, I should take an antibiotic, et cetera. So I look for the cause and then healing means the relief of the symptom. My headache goes away, my virus goes away, my bacterial infection goes away, et cetera. Psychological healing is very rarely like that, only in very simple things, meaning how do I make something go away? And the healing industry has followed the allopathic medical model Make the symptom go away, Make the yelling go away, Make the tiredness go away, Make my sadness go away, Whatever. Make my frustration go away, Make my dysregulation go away, Make things go away, so that I'm even, and that's why we need a different paradigm and a different paradigm. I call that an unshaming paradigm. It says you are just as much a part of nature as the bees and flowers and worms and earth and how things weave and your feelings and your experiences are like that. They're woven into in an intelligent way, the life of you, the life of your children, the life of the world. So when you have something called a symptom, it's a disturbance, it disturbs my status quo and it has intelligence in it. And the medicine for these things means what is that intelligence? Like we're saying? What is the intelligence of that yell? Is it a power that I need somewhere? What is the intelligence of that tiredness? Is it the ocean that I need to have in my mind a little bit more? Or the poetry I'm forgotten?
Speaker 2:What is the medicine in the various, in the guilt? Is it being able to stand up against something and noticing my own story, Because in that guilt of voices I've heard my whole life? What do I learn by going deeper into things? A kind of profound self-acceptance as opposed to how do I get over something. And the beauty of that profound self-acceptance is then I start being me now, not when I get over this, over that, as I am imperfect, right, I have messes, I have a shadow. I have a wife of 20 years. She can tell you all the mistakes that I still make. In still ways I indirectly hurt her and she has to alert me that I did something, that I said something to her that was not so friendly. It's okay to be imperfect, even as a mother, even as a parent, totally okay.
Speaker 2:Children are incredibly resilient if the relationship is a good, bonded, loving one. You can undergo lots of difficult moments. If the child is like when I grew up, a lot of parents thought it's good that my children are afraid of me, right, Because then they'll obey me. I don't call that a good relationship. That means when I do get hurt, it's not going to be a relationship that holds that right. It's like a relationship is fearful. But if there's a relationship of repair some of the time, of a genuine connection, even awful moments people can do well with given the relationship holds.
Speaker 2:It is the relationship that's sacred. Nobody no therapist, not me, no, anybody knows about the sacred relationship between you and anybody but you and a child. So if a mother comes to me and says I have a thing with my child, what should I do? The first thing, I think, is I don't know. That's a sacred relationship. I have to find that about the two of you and how the two of you, your styles, your energies, your stories, your cultures, your race, your all kinds of things weave into that moment. So it's held as magnificent, and then we can start to see what would change in you if we got to know more about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's really powerful, though, to talk about culture, and especially, you know the healing. Whether you want to call it an industry or culture, I mean it is an industry, it's a money-making machine now for good, and you know the shadow side to all of that. But I really do think, especially when you look at social media or what is more popular, there's a lot of selling you an image that you won't be messy, you won't be human, you won't experience grief or shame or you won't massively mess it up in smaller big moments no matter how hard you're trying.
Speaker 1:There's like a here's a perfect prescriptive way to be a really good mom and of course the women want that they're like tell me how to be a good mother.
Speaker 1:I want my children to be healthy and happy and there was such a long season in my life where I wanted that and then I had this deep grief when I realized my kids are gonna have a human experience just like I'm having and it's not my job to protect them from that.
Speaker 1:I hope that I can steward my own human experience well so that I can teach them to steward it.
Speaker 1:But I've learned to be in this place with myself where it's like I don't put myself on this pedestal of I've arrived or there is some sort of arrival point that I won't be human anymore, that I can somehow out heal myself from this human experience and I think that that's how I relate to your unshaming work is, how do I meet the parts of myself that don't necessarily feel very shiny, that don't necessarily feel like parts of myself that I instantly am like oh, this feels magic.
Speaker 1:It's like I have to get to know it a little better. I have to understand the intelligence of it and I love that you brought this to it, because I'm in a place now where I'm so much more unshamed and now, when shame does come up, I have a way to be with it, to understand it, to witness it, and sometimes the way that I witness it is anger and boundaries, and I have to have a protective boundary with that shame, or sometimes it's nurturing, sometimes for me it's light sarcasm of like I think we're going to be okay. Thanks for your thanks for your support, but we didn't die. So but yeah.
Speaker 2:I love that you talk about that human experience. That's why I was mentioning the relationship. They're genuine you with her warts and whatever you know, so to speak. The genuine you meets the genuine child when the child is really young. They're relatively genuine because they're not too conditional. That starts the changeover. You know pretty quickly, but you got some years, certainly, and then later on still to some level. The genuine connecting between the two human experiences, as you say, that's the relationship that holds all the crap. That relationship, not the fixed person, the better person, the perfected person.
Speaker 2:It's good to read and you find something oh, that sounds really good. That could help me If it resonates with you. If it's not a self-criticism, I should do that because I'm a screwed up person. That's not going to be a good medicine. I don't care how good the idea is, because you'll eliminate yourself from the relationship and the child knows inside of them not in their heads necessarily that this is not a real person. I'm meeting a person who's doing a thing that they think they should do with me. That doesn't allow the bonding period and the bonding thing is what holds the difficulties.
Speaker 2:Children can go through hell, violence, a pretty bad abuse. I really mean that If that relationship exists, there's a real to real person, children can grow and develop and make something out of those difficulties, and that's not only trauma. It's really true. There are many stories like that. But if the relationship is not some level of there's a real me and a real person, then even small infractions get amplified because there's no world to hold it in. And that's the difficulty. You know the story of maya angelou's uh abuse as a child uh pieces of it okay.
Speaker 2:Well, that wasn't a test, by the way, I didn't mean to ask, but just some people know. Um, so maya angelou was a great african-amer writer, scholar, professor, and she wrote many books of poetry and many books, six volumes of autobiography. The first one is called I Know why, the Caged Bird Sings, where she tells her personal story. But she's told it many places in interviews and in the story. Not story, her literal, real story. It's not a made up story. She was. This is a little violent for people, some people like me to say trigger warning when I talk about abuse of a child. So if that's good for you, you can take a moment and take a breath. So she was raped as a young girl I think she was seven and sometimes I get that wrong not older than that and she thought should I tell somebody? Because she thought if I tell somebody my relatives could hurt this person and in her child's mind I don't want to cause that person pain yeah right.
Speaker 2:So not an adult mind, put your adult minds away. Well, it's okay to go. It's a child's mind we're trying to understand, right. So she does tell. And some days later a sheriff comes to her door and knocks and say they found the man kicked to death. Door and knocks and say they found the man kicked to death. Isn't that intense, makes me cry just hearing that, knowing what's happening in the story. And to her. And she concludes I did this, I killed this person, I caused this person's death.
Speaker 2:And she decides I'm going to be, I'm not going to use my voice, my voice is dangerous. Many people think that, and not quite as potently as that. Right, I better not say certain things. So she decides not to speak. She didn't speak for five and a half years and her parents didn't know what to do with her. Today we'd send her to therapy. We hope she gets a good therapist right. Therapy, we hope she gets a good therapist right. But they send her to the best healer around, which is grandma. Grandma lives in a different place. Maya called grandma, mama. They sent her to mama and mama says don't you worry, sweetheart, one day you're going to be a great teacher.
Speaker 2:She knows that something inside of Maya's silence is something very special happening. We don't have to get her to talk, we don't have to figure out everything. I have to build a relationship first that totally trusts this person, even in their silence. I'm not saying it's not part of a wound, it is part of a story. There's no doubt about it. Mama was very smart, but notice the beginning relationship, the genuine relationship. Mama says it's okay, you don't have to speak yet, you're doing something intelligent. I'm holding you where you are. And that relationship became so sacred for Maya.
Speaker 2:Years later, mama said Maya would read poetry, a lot of books. She memorized Shakespeare, plays, entire plays, sonnets, all kinds of poetry. And five and a half years. Mama says one day you'll never understand all those books you're reading unless you hear the words coming off your own lips. You're going to go to church today and you're going to do a poetry reading. So mama seems to know timing. Now, today people have kind of held back. That's too much so, but try not to judge that. Hold on to this idea of where you are. I'm going to meet you at first and somehow make a sacred space. That says you're doing something intelligent. And if people know Maya Angelou, you'll know her voice is amazing. And if you don't know her, google her and hear one or two of her poems and you'll hear a voice that'll be like where did she get that sound and that beauty and that intelligence? It cooked in the silence. Now she was no longer being abused, right, she was with mama, who would destroy anybody who hurt her. By the way, she was a no shit person.
Speaker 1:Thank you for sharing that. I've heard that story before, but I've never heard it told by David. So thank you for the way that you shared that. And it's just I'm almost at a loss for words of that relationship that was built to herself. And then the you know, the internal relationship of having someone witness something and not make it your fault or your problem to to be the solution.
Speaker 1:You know, um, I'm thinking of a lot of women that I've I've had the honor of being with and they, they both feel that they have to be the problem and the solution. They're often you know, you know the like the term generational healers. They're the ones who are. They're some of the first people in their lineage who are speaking out and saying ow, ow, or no, or ick, or I'm not going to be in relationship with you in this way, and there's such like a loneliness. But they feel this heavy, heavy weight of I don't even just have to fix me. What about all of these adults around me and all of these people are counting on me to make everything better and I just, the way that you know you shared about mama holding her, but even just I think of the compassion of just kind of leaving her alone, but not alone. Does that make sense of like not forcing her to fix it or make it better, but just relating to her and being to her?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, mama was an incredible, yeah witness. I'm thinking of other Maya, angelus stars I don't know if I should tell them again, but they're on my mind, because I love them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I wonder if we can.
Speaker 1:I have kind of two different paths, so tell me which one sounds. You know you want to go on. Of how boundaries and shame are connected is one kind of thread that is coming up for me of you know the way that boundaries and shame interact, both those inner boundaries and then also those inner, outer boundaries. And then also you know I'm I'm right at the point in your book where you're talking about the elders, how you acknowledge, how to acknowledge someone else's pain without taking it on. But also you know being able to hold space and you know kind of be a mama even if someone else's you know their words aren't sitting with you. So I know those are kind of two different which one feels alive for you.
Speaker 2:Let's start with the boundaries, and then maybe we'll get to the other.
Speaker 1:Yeah boundaries.
Speaker 2:The boundary impulse is organic and natural in every living thing. That's the first thing to know. So let's think in physical. If your hand were going to go towards my face at some point, I'd either put my hands up. If I were free, right, if I put my hands up, I would turn away, I would push you right, I'd yell at you, I'd walk away from you. I would do something to make a boundary right. That happens with the physical thing in that example. That could happen with a verbal thing if it was a verbal energy that assaulted me, or a request that's hard on me.
Speaker 2:Can't we meet at two hours earlier, david? Then a part of me that's not one where you're trying to hurt me, but my system would kind of go ugh, right, that's early for me. There are certain things I do in the morning, so a boundary-making impulse shows up. Everybody has one. No one needs to learn how to set boundaries. I want to say that, but here's what needs to happen Then.
Speaker 2:The question then is why don't we do it Then? How come, when somebody says something, I don't say no, or I don't block a person on Instagram, or I don't walk away, or I don't say I don't want to talk to this person anymore. I don't say no, thank you, I can't. Why don't I do that if it lives inside of me? Anyway, I don't because shame has entered and shame has forbid that. Well, you know Rebecca says this earlier I can put myself away, my needs aren't that important, I'm saying to myself that's going to make me not important. And then when I feel tired later on I'll think what's wrong with me? Why can't I be that way? Or it's not nice to push back, or I had an early story where someone hurt me and I was forbidden or too frozen to react. Someone assaulted me and I'm not allowed to say no or get the bleep out of here, or don't ever touch me again, or whatever I'm going to do right. So I'm not allowed to do that. So then my system gets frozen and then I walk around thinking why am I frozen? How come I can't move? That's shame. What's wrong with me? So shame wraps itself around the boundary impulse. That's natural. Flowers do it, animals do it right, everything does it right. So shame wraps around it. And then it doesn't allow it. So then the boundary impulse needs to be unshamed. You need to find it inside of yourself.
Speaker 2:Let's say a child is yelling at you. What happens for you? Well, it's not so bad, I can take it. If your body were free, what would happen? I'd flinch. I notice my belly get tightened. I notice my eyes are wincing. I notice my teeth grit. I notice my eyes are wincing. I notice my teeth grit. I notice I want to back away.
Speaker 2:The energy will be in you. And then you need to get to know that energy. It doesn't take years to do that. 10 minutes, feel it, get to know it. This tough, strong, rock-like belly lives in me. This pushback lives in me. This err lives in me. Learn about that. And then how do you use that energy?
Speaker 2:With a child, you want to unshame the energy so it's free. Otherwise you're trying to set boundaries the way you think you're supposed to, and that violates the relationship, because the child's like what's going on? If you made an err, because that's really in you, then they have an authentic relationship and they know they mess with somebody who's bigger and stronger and they should be worried about the growl, like in the animal world right, you don't hurt the child, but you let that happen. Or with an adult, so that boundary impulse lives in us and needs to be unshamed, unsuppressed, and then we have that energy available to us. If we don't do that, that energy will live inside. It's still inside of us, in the soma, in the body, and because it's in the soma, unmoved, unexpressed, it becomes frozen in there. It becomes physical symptoms.
Speaker 2:It becomes cramps, it becomes backaches, it becomes headaches, it becomes dizziness, it becomes tiredness. For some people it can even become things like tumors. I don't want to say all tumors come from that. That's absolutely not true, but it can happen and there's research about those things as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, I've also seen that that creates, like some of the psychological and even relational patterns, when we don't have access to that energy. It's not that we don't have it, it's that we're not feeling it and we don't know how to use it. I know that was unshaming. Anger in me was such a huge part of my healing and it was happening before I even had the language of somatics.
Speaker 1:But I was doing kickboxing in my basement and every time I kept doing it I kept crying and I realized that, like my body that learned to fawn and freeze was remembering that it also knew how to fight. It was remembering that it had access to an energy of a fist, of a no, of an aggression, of a fast pace, intensity, of a strength. And it was so interesting because it's like it never even occurred to my body, like I didn't even have. I didn't know that I had access to it, which was a perception, but I love that you talk about it in an energy that boundaries are, this energy of. You know that boundary might look different, it can be small and subtle or it can be big and aggressive, depending on the force coming at us, but it's something already innate. It's innate.
Speaker 2:This is what happens with the healing industry. Going back to your earlier question, if I don't, if my boundary impulse, the energy that lives in me to do that, is shamed, then I lose touch with it and then I look for somebody else in me to do. That is shamed, then I lose touch with it and then I look for somebody else. How do you do that? That's not bad, because maybe they do it in a way that resonates from my own impulse and I kind of go, oh, that, that looks good to me. It looks good, probably because it's because it's aligned somewhat. So it's not. It's good. Look for models to find them. But ultimately you have the answer inside and that person's way of setting boundaries might not be yours. Right, you have one.
Speaker 2:For some people it's going away. For some people it's running away. Isn't it bad to run away? No, it's perfectly fine. If that's what you want to do, run away, right. It's okay to do the things you do. It's okay to say I'm leaving, I'm walking out of this room for 10 minutes, right, running away. I'm walking out of this room for three minutes, I'm going to go to the bathroom for six minutes and whatever, whatever it is you're going to do it's longer, right. Or if it's a system, a family system, it's difficult. You can say this is how much I'm willing to spend time with you. So those kinds of things are natural to us. We need models because it reminds us it's okay, it unshames us, but then the impulse, yeah, lives inside of us.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I'm wondering, with those inner boundaries when shame's coming up, what does an inner boundary look like with shame?
Speaker 2:Yeah, if it goes back to what we were talking about with guilt, if there's something inside that puts you down, right or wrong, david, you should have said this. Maybe it's right, but if it's going to beat me up about it, then I need to know what's happening and I need to feel what it's like to be treated that way so that my impulse to say no, that's not okay. I love what you said before. Thank you very much. Uh, dear inner voice or that's a culture, a parent, whatever is that living inside of me, all those things something inside has to say no, that's not okay, or this is not the time, or something like that. Otherwise, inside, we're subject to, we're victim to, whatever goes on inside of us. We're subject to, we're victim to whatever goes on inside of us. Well, I'm gonna be taken here. I'm gonna be taken here, I'm gonna be. This is. This is how I'm gonna have to feel, especially with feeling, with so many of us having inner criticism, guilts and things like that living inside of us. Um, yeah, it's part of that violent culture.
Speaker 2:Women you're talking about are trying to get over. They're trying to heal generations, and one of the things they're trying to heal is the longer intergenerational traumas. What is a trauma? It's a violence, an abuse that's not been witnessed and healed. That's literally what a trauma is. So I'm trying to deal with an assault on me, on mothers, on women, on people of color, on Jews, on my family line. Maybe there was a poverty. I'm trying to, or come from a country that has some kind of fascistic government, so those energies live in an assaultive way and then they live inside in these traumas. Part of the way the trauma experiences, creates experience in our generation is through inner violence. Violence doesn't stop because that happened three generations ago. It's still going on inside.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's a really powerful way to put that. I'm curious what's coming up in me. There's a lot of women who their shame shows up as perfectionism, as this thing that is driving them and it feels terrible, but it also is highly rewarded and it looks really good. I wonder if you can speak to that of just whether shame is a motivation, or how women can keep that ambitious side of them while not being so exhausted by that like overthinking inner critic part.
Speaker 2:Yeah, difficult. I mean, we're focusing on that critic today for some reason. That's really important. The one is, if there's a perfectionism, there's a good chance that something inside is watching you and evaluating you, measuring you, testing you, scoring you, judging you those kinds of things like a test. This is how well you did.
Speaker 2:It's good to get to know that voice, even if it it's for a few minutes, saying it out loud you did this wrong. You did this wrong. You could have done this better. You could have done this better. And if you can locate where that comes from not just family, because it's almost also always culture, as you say, this is what a good mother does. She never yells at a kid in the store, right? You know she never. Whatever. You know what I mean. Oh my gosh, look at that mother doing that. I'm like you do the job. You know like that kind of a thing. You know, whatever she does, I never hits her kid when she's angry. Sometimes I do it. That's definitely repairable, by the way. All those things are repairable. So one thing is to get to know that voice.
Speaker 2:The next thing I would ask that mother is let's imagine you could achieve the perfection you're looking for. You could do all of it with no error. You would never yell, you would never be too tired. You would always focus when your child brings something to you and bless them and praise them. You would always make the best meals that are healthy and never put them in front of the TV and give them crap food. You would do all those things just the way you're supposed to. That's hard to imagine. Let yourself imagine that. What would be so good about that for you? What would it feel like if you achieved that? Would you relax? Would you be happy? Would you be proud? And whatever that feeling is, it belongs to you right now. You don't have to be perfect to get it. You ought to feel proud. You can feel proud and make mistakes. You ought to feel proud If you'd be happy, if you would think I'm a great parent. Walk around thinking you're a great parent. It won't hurt your kids to think you're a great parent.
Speaker 1:It'll only help.
Speaker 2:And if you feel relaxed, relax more into your parenting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I've heard women say, well, that's not realistic and it's like, well, no, but also the inner critic isn't being realistic either, like it's ignoring a lot of reality about, like, how good you are and how worthy you are, and you know it's kind of one-sided, it's this polarity and it's not accurate.
Speaker 2:Um, let me say something that's too strong, but I have to, let me say it this way in against perfectionism.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:If you're my child, you're not. I'm not going to try to infantilize you. If you're my child and I'm trying to be perfect, then I'm. Then what's in front of me is you and an evaluator telling me how well I'm doing. Think of it that way. I'm looking at you, but I'm also listening to something else. I'm listening to you and I'm also listening to my test score. To the extent that I'm relating to that test score, that teacher, that evaluator. Am I doing well? Am I not doing well? I'm a good parent, I'm a bad parent. Oh, I screwed that up. I didn't screw up. I should do this different.
Speaker 2:All of that energy is not about you. I'm not in my relationship with you. I'm in the relationship with a critic or an evaluator, and the child will feel the incongruence of that. And if that critic is strong, I'm screwing up, I'm screwing up, I'm screwing up. Then, whenever I see you as my child up, then whenever I see you as my child, you're a symbol of me screwing up as a parent. You're not a symbol of love. You're not a symbol of connection. You're not a symbol of my desire. You're not a symbol of my warmth or my angry or my boundaries. You're not a symbol of relationship. You're a symbol of something is not good about me. That's not a good relationship to build. You're not a symbol of my errors. You're not a representation of what's wrong with me. You are a living human being and I'm, as you said, the human experience, and the more that perfection comes in, the more the child experiences somebody who's.
Speaker 2:Whenever I get together with you, I feel lousy about myself. This is like a child not knowing what's going on. But it's like why do you always seem uptight? If the child, if a three-year-old could speak right, you always seem uptight, cold, rigid, trying really hard. I don't get it. You know where are you? Something like that. It's okay. Melt, fall apart, go yell somewhere. Don't hurt my ears. Do it in a good way. Try sometimes fall apart, whatever.
Speaker 1:Whatever you do, the way you just shared. That was so profound and I feel like that is something that mothers need to hear so deeply that they are not hearing from the people that are teaching them deeply. That they are not hearing from the people that are teaching them because so much of parenting advice is about the act of parenting and not the parent or not the child, that relationship of self and then outer yeah, the relationship.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the, that's the. That's what maya angelo's mother, grandmother, had with her. She made a relationship. In many different ways, there's great stories about her, but they made relationship. That's why she could hold maya's symptoms and difficulties in a way that made them, made them blossom, as opposed to become a life of of turmoil. Even that kind of violence black girl going up down south whenever she was born in 1940s or something like that raped, that's a pretty difficult one to deal with. And yet under that grandmother's environment that becomes a teacher, a poet, not pain-free, not pain-free, still talked about her violent story, but she flowers into herself even with the hell and the difficulties and the errors that occur in her life way that still tells the truth, a way that still says like, yeah, there might be some behaviors here that could change, but what if we change them through relationship?
Speaker 1:and you know, ooh ouch, you have a wounding. How about we tend to that wound, not just pretend? You don't not just teach you how to pretend not to have it. David, I'm so grateful for this conversation and for you coming on this podcast. I highly recommend your book, the Unshaming Way.
Speaker 1:I think you know when I got it, I was so excited to see like how did he get this in a book? Because it's felt somewhat intangible for me and I'm loving reading it because not only is it profound for me, but I also see that people who you know, I have like the coach's brain and I have trainings and stuff, but I think anyone could pick this up and just sense, it just feels. It just feels like a breath of fresh air, of permission. And coming back to something you said earlier, you said something of like if I were free, and I feel like this book is just speaking to that sovereignty and that freeness and that innate. You know, when you were doing the shame clinic with Simone, you talked about that flowering, that budding and you know, I hope that this work does that for a lot of people. Is there any? Is there anything else that you want to add or say that just feels like a loop that you want to close, or anything else you would share before we close?
Speaker 2:I'm not sure, but I think when you ask the question, a voice is in my head. It's saying remember the earth. And I'm thinking why? Why should I remember the earth? I'm talking to myself, I talk to myself a lot why should I remember the earth? And I'm thinking why? Why should I remember the earth? I'm talking to myself, I talk to myself a lot. Why should I remember the earth? Because the earth is also the mother and she knows wounding to her trees and her oxygen. She knows generativity, she knows storms and violence. She knows storms and violence and the body of the earth, like the body of humans and the body of a mother, has wounds and difficulties and generativity. It just makes me think of the preciousness of mother, literal mothers, people who do mothering, regardless of whether they've had literal children in the earth itself. It's such a sacred thing. It needs to not be treated as a. It needs to be treated as if it can be wounded, but not be treated as if it's an illness in and of itself, as if the earth can be imperfect, right.
Speaker 2:I don't think a mother can be imperfect in that way but can be hurt and express things and in in in her way. But the sacredness of the mothering task to me is, like the sacredness of the earth, about to something that holds us all and um has an enormous power and creative energy in it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that because you know there's so much beauty in the earth and you know it's winter here, so it's cold and it's not always a comfortable side of earth, that I don't necessarily love the weather right now, but here she is Like, here it is Like.
Speaker 1:This is what it is. And you know, I know a lot of women who are in like a winter season where there's grief or they want to slow down and there can be shame in that. There can be shame in I'm not feeling shiny and productive and the things that I think I should be doing, and you know I feel this impulse to slow down, or you know I'm sick of chasing this good mom thing and I just kind of want to leave myself alone, but I feel like I should and it's you know what if, what if? This is just a winter season for you and you are the earth and you know spring and summer may come again. But also, you know winter is really beautiful and you get to curl up by cozy fires and drink hot tea and yeah, so I I love the way that you shared it. That was, that was really beautiful.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much, david, for being on the podcast rebecca, it's such a pleasure to meet you and, and and maybe we met in in that shame clinic, I can't remember. There was a lot of people who came to that thing and, um, like 1600 people actually came to that clinic. So it's a pleasure to meet you and hear your brilliance I really mean that, your light about parenting and motherhood through your personal experience and your study and your learning and your heartfulness towards it and your focusing on existing in the human experience. I love the way you've framed those and woven your own intelligence and your own story into offering medicine to others.
Speaker 1:So appreciate you doing that that really means a lot. Thank you very much.
Speaker 2:You're welcome.
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 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.
