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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 Dynamic Dance of Motherhood and Ambition: Negotiating Your Identity with Sasha Fedunchak
Self care isn't selfish and the other narratives we hear so often about mom guilt and how they keep us inspired but fundamentally stuck.
In this podcast Sasha and I dive deep into conversations around
-navigating shame and amibition and the pressures we face as moms and business owners.
-Reclaiming and re-thinking what "selfish" is
-Negotiating the identity challenges and shifts that come in seasons of motherhood
-Defining success and productivity on your terms
-the powerful role of self identity
This podcast episode is a MUST listen.
Sasha Fedunchak—an immigrant, ex-corporate global marketing director, IPEC Certified Professional Coach, speaker, mom to two girls and a serial founder who has scaled numerous businesses to multi-six figures while raising babies and redefining what it means to influence and lead.
She spent years mastering influence psychology, energy alignment, and business growth strategies that drive brands to boom and customers to say “yes.”
Now, Sasha works with visionary leaders who aim to challenge cultural norms, shake up their industries and create impact on their own terms. Her mission is to equip disruptive founders with the tools to lead with clarity, focus, and influence—both within themselves and in the world.
Where to find Sasha:
https://www.sashafedunchak.com/
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-beauty-of-influence/id1713536229
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. Welcome to today's episode of the Motherhood Mentor Podcast. Today, I have a really fun guest, sasha. We connected on Instagram over a post that I did of self-care being selfish, not really making sense to me, and we just connected in the DMs and wanted to do some podcasts, and I'm just so excited to learn more about you, so will you introduce yourself?
Speaker 2:Of course. Yes, thank you so much for having me. Yeah, so my name is Sasha Fedunchak. Everyone always struggles with my last name. It's a strong Russian last name and, fun fact, I never changed it after getting married because I am the only Fedunchak in this entire country. So I was like there's no way I'm yeah, there's no way I'm letting go of that last name.
Speaker 2:So I am a mom of two, I've got a four-year-old and an 11-month-old, and I am a lifelong marketer and communications person. So I had actually lived in Fort Collins for a while. That's where I got my master's in communications at Colorado State and I was in the corporate world doing corporate communications and marketing for a little over a decade. And now I run a business growth and marketing agency called Daring House and a media studio called Powerhouse Media. We do photography and media for women-owned brands and I've got a couple of other things brewing that are centered around motherhood. So when I saw your post, especially the word selfish, that was really interesting for me to kind of unpack that, and I had to reach out and get to know you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm so curious, as someone who had an established work life and even like a work identity what was it like going into motherhood and bringing that like? What was that transition like for you, bringing babies into your life, that role of motherhood? How did that change business life? How did that impact you as a person?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great question. With my first, I actually had owned a spray tan salon for a couple of years in Philadelphia and it was right around the time that the world shut down. It was literally the day before the world shut down I had like a near-death experience. I had a miscarriage, my first miscarriage, and ended up in the ER, tons of blood loss, had to get an emergency DNC. And so a few months later, when the world was starting to open back up, I got pregnant with my now four-year-old and that was the first time that I had this really thriving, really successful business and I also was carrying a baby and I was like there was part of me that wanted to do everything to keep the momentum going of the business. I mean, it was like a six-figure business. In six months I had a whole storefront. It was wildly successful.
Speaker 2:I wasn't really into spray tanning but it was my first journey into entrepreneurship and where I leveraged my branding and marketing background to make it successful. And it was the first time I really kind of felt that pull of like what do I want to protect more? Because I had to make the choice I felt. You know it was a really scary time Could I just welcome strangers in and, you know, wear the mask, but, like you know, do the spray tanning while I'm pregnant what if something happens again? And so I chose my baby, which actually looked like me, closing the business entirely, and we actually moved out of Philadelphia to a smaller Pennsylvania town and that, you know, felt very, very difficult. There were a lot of tears. It was something I poured a lot of years into and from there my business evolved into a branding and marketing agency. It was called Darren Creative at the time and it was literally, you know, my baby was born.
Speaker 2:I kind of took some time off between closing my spray tan business and opening the agency. It was about four or five months she was born and I just felt this kind of ambition surge back into me like, okay, now she's here, I have to protect her, continue to protect her, but like that means I have to make money, that means I have to, you know, do the work that I'm so passionate about doing. And I literally built that business while, you know, wearing her and the baby wearer bouncing around, you know, getting clients doing branding, web projects, that kind of thing. And it was a really surreal experience to become a mother and also continue to become a business owner, because those were two identities that I wasn't really familiar with.
Speaker 2:I feel like it would have been really different for me if I just had the babies while I was in corporate world, if that makes sense, just because there was a lot more longevity there. So I feel like, in a way, I was kind of, you know, rebirthed, like I became two other people plus the old me, and so there was like this constant negotiation between like who am I today? And I don't feel like that's ever really stopped in the last four years. If that makes sense, if anything, it's, you know, kind of welcomed a fourth or fifth version of me with my second, and that was really, really unexpected.
Speaker 1:I love that word like negotiating, like there was this negotiation between these two new parts of you and then, like the old things, what felt different Like? Is that even like a tangible experience for you of like what felt so different and in motherhood and especially after miscarriage, I mean that's such like a big grief and like a medical, I mean just it's a lot. It's a lot on your body, emotion, relationships. What was that like once you got into motherhood and you have this new baby and you have this new business? Like that's a lot of new identity. What did that feel like? Was it overwhelming? Did it feel expansive? Was it? Did you have like that fog of new motherhood for you?
Speaker 2:I did, yeah, I would say with my first. I think the really interesting thing too that well I know we had talked about this in the DMs was how different you become as you have different children too. And with my first, I feel I actually I think I still do carry quite a bit of shame around this, as I feel I blacked out for two years. I had so much of that cortisol and so much of that stress and so much of that pressure I put on myself, not even to be a perfect mom but just to figure motherhood out. And then you know to do this business successfully and it was massively successful, that branding and web agency and you know working that part time and just you know killing it.
Speaker 2:But there came a point where I literally went to a heart doctor and had a heart monitor strapped on me for three days, because every time I would simply stand up, I would pass out, and I had no idea what was going on.
Speaker 2:They, of course, never figured it out and they just said well, it could be you know long COVID, or this or that or whatever.
Speaker 2:But I think ultimately it was just that my body just never could rest. So the second I you know long, covid or this or that or whatever, but I think ultimately it was just that my body just never could rest. So the second I, you know, would literally to be sitting down at my desk, stand up, or sitting down with my child, and stand up. I would just fall right over. So my experience with my first was, um, I the only way and I know you will probably understand this being, you know, in the somatic world is like it just felt like constant flutters, right, like just constant movement of every cell in your body. And to this day it's like a question I have you know, did I put that on myself, you know? Did I really have a choice in that? Or was that something that was just kind of like learned for me, or more of like a trauma response, or a response to so much new?
Speaker 1:Yeah, is that different now? Is that something that's gone? I'm curious like where that, like how that changed, cause you're you're talking in like past tense about that. Yeah, did that change eventually? Did you? Do you feel like you came out of that season Like in all of those states of like you felt differently?
Speaker 2:You know what's so crazy? Are you into human design by?
Speaker 1:chance. I'm just now starting to learn about it. I, like, barely know the surface.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I'm no human design expert but I find it interesting, and I find it, you know, again just like interesting to kind of understand the world. So I, my human design, is a projector, so we are supposed to do a lot of resting. We're the ones that can kind of like see a bigger picture and things. You know, we're often told like we have to wait for the invitation before we can, you know, kind of like share what we're picking up on, if you will. And my first daughter is a generator. So she is like the energizer bunny right, like she's just like go, go, go, go, go, go, go go. Even when she was, you know, in my stomach, I would just constantly feel her move.
Speaker 2:And what's really interesting I've heard this before many times is, you know, they say when you are pregnant, when you have a child, your mitochondrial DNA literally changes. And so with my first, you know, she had that constant energy and I feel like it kind of took me over, even when she had left my body. Now again in the best way, like I love hanging out with her, like she literally like projectors. They kind of like will sometimes call us energy vampires because we have none of our own energy. We kind of just pick up what other people have. So with my second she's also a projector, she literally would hardly move in my stomach Like I have one of those heartbeat things. I would use it every other day because I'd be like are you in there? Like what is going on?
Speaker 2:You know she was born and she's like a sloth baby. She slept for like two months straight. You know she just doesn't have a ton of energy, she's just really, really chill. So when she was born I had a completely different experience to where I felt like my ambition entirely abandoned me and I remember, you know, walking, you know with a stroller, and just feeling like who am I? Why do I not want to go back to work? Like, why am I completely disinterested? Why do I just want to garden? I was like what happened to me? Someone who has been a type A you know, 4.0, high achiever my entire life of 30, you know, six years before she was born, all of a sudden felt like an identity I wanted nothing to do with and so I have no explanation for it. I only bring up the human design thing because I'm like it's really interesting to think about how they have kind of changed my identity and my approach to motherhood and also my ambition.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so when your ambition, it felt like it left you and it sounds like it wasn't just like capacity, cause I think a lot of times, you know when, when I'm talking to women about ambition and their work-life balance, it's like we have these two different kinds of categories of like your desire, of like what you want, and then this capacity of what you need. And for some women they have all of this ambition but like all of a sudden they don't have the capacity on some level or multiple levels. But I'm hearing you say, like you didn't have the desire, like you didn't want it as much anymore. So how did you shift your business, your businesses that you had built, these like because that was like what, two years and I'm like not great at math, but like a couple years in between this, like I'm going to build this new business, it's going really well. What did that look like, now that you don't have like this huge big desire anymore?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So it was actually when I was pregnant with my second that I made the decision of kind of switching daring creative branding and web agency. We were easily doing like 50, 60 K months with very little marketing effort, like it was a. It was on track to be a seven figure business by its third year and I completely said we're stopping it because I need to do business differently. I didn't want to have this huge team. You know I didn't want to have 20 projects a month. I didn't.
Speaker 2:I feel like I could kind of foresee that, the ambition or the way that I was showing up. You know I could foresee the surrender needing to happen a little bit. And so that's when I made the shift to Daring House, where now we still do branding and web, but we actually brought in my husband which is like a whole other podcast episode and like that whole thing over the last year has been fucking insane but anyway brought him in and we now have a much smaller roster of clients and we go much deeper. So it really was kind of a reflection of the transformation that was happening with me is like I don't want to keep spreading myself so thin and just hitting the surface with these other businesses. I want to go much deeper and it has been an extremely difficult transition. We're not doing 60K months yet, you know, and it's been well over a year.
Speaker 2:So it's not like I just changed the name and it was the same business. I mean, it's a completely different business model. You know, bringing my husband in, trying to figure out how to do all of this on very little sleep, even a year later, with, like I said, that surrender being okay, with that ambition kind of ebbing in and out To your point. Yes, there are some capacity issues right, you've got the two kids now to worry about but also, I think it's just like that personal transformation and I think this is something that I made okay for me after working with so many women because we work primarily with women-owned brands in my businesses seeing the pressure that they put on themselves like they cannot evolve their businesses, they cannot evolve what they're doing. You know they've got to continue to ride the momentum and I just thought, like that can't be true for me, like the businesses have to reflect what is going on for me in my life, Otherwise it's just not going to be sustainable.
Speaker 1:I love that you share that, because I think so many women become entrepreneurs because they want that quote unquote work life balance. They want to be able to do things their way. And then I think what's crazy is they're like, oh, I want to be like my own boss to myself and then like, like they end up being really shitty bosses to themselves. They end up like repeating the same patterns, those same patterns of like not trusting themselves, just constantly being in hustle mode. And I think what's crazy is, like so many women who are in that hustle mode, it's not even always that they're accomplishing more and it's like they forget that like ambition doesn't always like it can have that hustle, but you don't always have to be in that like flight and fight mode, like just constantly in panic.
Speaker 1:I'm I'm really curious how your business feels now, now that you like you've switched things and you're pivoting. Does it feel like home? Does it feel, do you have that Like what did I do? How is like this transition period for you been? Yeah, I think. Does it feel? Do you have that like what did I do? How has like this transition period for you been?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's definitely natural anytime you go through a transition, and I've had this thought many times and threatened my husband many times that.
Speaker 2:I'd be kicking him out of the business. Because there is that feeling of like what did I do, you know, can I go back? Because there is that feeling of like, what did I do, you know, can I go back? But I think that you know, you've got to learn to trust yourself. You've got to learn to follow your intuition, even if it feels like, even if it feels like in the moment you don't quite know where it's going to lead.
Speaker 2:Right, like when I had that kind of feeling with my second, like okay, this has got to change. I didn't know exactly what it was going to look like or what my content would look like or what my monthly revenue would look like. But I knew that if I didn't listen to myself, I would absolutely regret it. And I even you know, I even did that with my first when I had the decision around do I close my business to kind of keep my baby safe, or do I figure out how to make it work? And so I would say, like it's a continuously you know uncomfortable feeling.
Speaker 2:But you know what's the alternative? The alternative is just as uncomfortable, right, like or if not worse, this constant hustle, like last week everyone had flu A in my house. So what could I do? I could work super late at night or get up in the morning and sacrifice sleep and hustle and grind, and for what? So I think there is really that awareness that I've gotten at least around, like we talked about before negotiation right, and like not looking at it as a sacrifice but as an exchange. You know, what are you really willing to exchange in this moment? Like, what do you really want? Do you want that sleep and that rest and that healing, or do you just want to? You know, post something on Instagram, because that's what the gurus tell you you need to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like this difference between doing something to do it, doing something for the sake of the external, immediate, like satisfaction or production, versus this understanding that, like, your wellbeing is one of the most vital parts of you, both in motherhood and in business. And I think when so many women are trying to you know, quote unquote balance motherhood and business, I think there's so much guilt because they don't understand that there's always going to be that tension. There's always going to be this tension of wanting more than one thing and not just wanting it. The women I work with, and even myself it's not that I just want to have motherhood and business, I want to show up really fucking well to both, and also marriage and my health, and like I want to be a really whole well person. Like that's a lot of different things, that's a lot of different things in the day.
Speaker 1:And there is this negotiation of like what matters, what needs and wants in the moment matters that like I have needs, I have wants, and then so does my business. It's this own little entity, and so do my kids and my family, and there's these different seasons and days. But I hear you saying like I love that word of negotiating and feeling that tension. I'm curious for you. I feel like I hear so many women talk about mom guilt when they're building businesses, and that's. I think I want new language for it, but I'm I'm curious, like what your experience is, if you've ever experienced that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have to say something, and this, like I feel like this is like I don't know if it's spicy, but I feel like this is like important to say is I grew up with a really strong Russian mom and also a lot of trauma from my mom. Let's just, let's call it what it is a single mom. Okay, I've seen a lot of shit in my life. I did not have anywhere near, you know, a nice white picket quote, unquote normal childhood, like nothing like that, and I won't get into all of that. But what that has given me is, for me, my perspective. I don't know if everyone will agree with this or if you'll even agree with this, but like I think people are looking to make shit like so easy and happy and so like wonderful and balanced all the time and like that's just not fucking life, like that's just not life. And I think that my experiences, and the more like the women that I work with too, you know, everybody's like a little gritty, everyone's a little rough around the edges, which I love, because I think that there's a realism that's missing when it comes to the modern conversation of motherhood, and working is like it's just hard. It's just hard, and I think the negotiation is the hard part, right, and becoming a better negotiator is the best thing that you can do.
Speaker 2:How do you have that negotiation? Have it quickly and then just like, sit with it instead of constantly going back and forth? Right, because that's where the quote unquote imposter syndrome comes in. That's where the quote unquote mom guilt comes in, and the more that we bring up these freaking terms, the more that they're swirling around in our head, slowing us down and making us feel terrible.
Speaker 2:Like for me. I'm like, okay, I don't want to be on my phone in front of my children, but if I have a really important thing to do in this moment, I'm just going to do it for five minutes and then I'm going to go play with them. And why would I waste more time thinking about how bad quote unquote I felt being on my phone for five minutes? Right, like I make that negotiation and I move on. And so I think you know I just put out a post about this around imposter syndrome and eradicating this phrase and I feel the same way about mom guilt, because the more we talk about certain things like for me, yes, you can have those feelings, but if you're constantly talking about it, I feel like you're further embedding it into your DNA instead of just feeling it and letting it go. I don't know how you feel about that, but that's my feelings when it comes to all that stuff.
Speaker 1:I love it. I'm sitting here like oh my gosh. Yes, because here's the thing what so many women when they describe like their quote unquote mom guilt, I'm like one. That's not guilt. Guilt is when you are out of alignment with a behavior and we should have mom guilt. I need to have that inner sense of this. Feels bad because I'm doing something outside of my values or I'm not showing up out in my values. I need that little ping of this. Doesn't feel good because I'm out of my values and then I need to just change my behavior and take action. Like that's the purpose of mom guilt and it's a really healthy thing. We need to have that.
Speaker 1:But I think people use it as this generalized. I think there's so much people pleasing and fawning going on with women that like we don't even understand how deeply rooted this comparison and perfectionism is. I think perfectionism has taken on that word balance. Every woman who wants to work with me uses that word and most of us end up it's like this deep rooted perfectionistic shame and it's like we can't just feel good and happy all the time. That's actually not healthy, that's actually not well-being. Like oh my gosh. One of my pedestals right now is like if I see one more fucking reel about teaching moms how to be calm and how to breathe, and it's like what if we teach moms how to feel their anger and how to utilize it and how to not like be overcome with it or externalize it all of the time on their kids? Like that's a whole different conversation. It's like women are still trying to be this good girl, we're still trying to fit ourselves in this box and it's like it's all made up. It's all made up. And when you realize that, it's like you need to bring all of your energy from like out there on, like what she's doing and what so-and-so told you to do, and what your family wants you to do or your church or whatever that is. And it's like bring it back into your own body and take accountability for your life, like, take accountability for your motherhood.
Speaker 1:And I think a lot of women are out of alignment with their personal responsibility. I think there's a lot of women who are taking under responsibility. And then there's a lot of us, us high functioners. We're taking over responsibility because we've bought into this personal growth that we could just be happy all the time if we just follow the right steps I see it in motherhood, I see it in business. You even see it in the personal health world. Steps I see it in motherhood, I see it in business. You even see it in the personal health world.
Speaker 1:If you just have this perfect five-step morning routine, the perfect shed, and it's so fucked up because all of us women are looking to these things, going, oh, that will fix it. That will fix it Versus, like, get back into your life, get back into your body, get back into your daily. What needs me right now and what do I need? What is mine, what is mine to do and what is not mine. If you can come back to that place, to this self-responsibility and accountability, you'll know how to feel bad and not have it be a big thing and not suffer with it.
Speaker 1:I think you know, for a long time I was very victim-y and I wanted people to really cater to it. It specifically like my husband and he never did bless it and I hated that for so long. But now that I'm mature and healthy, I realized that like I wanted things to be easy instead of recognizing that like I was fully capable of doing hard shit and that was such a big part of my healing journey is like realizing that, like, even if I heal, it doesn't matter how much healing work I do, I'm still going to be human. I don't need to outrun it, outgrow it, outheal it. So I love when you say we need to stop talking about it, and I think this is the language we need to start bringing is this negotiation? It's like balancing motherhood and business is not pretty and it's not cute, because it's a daily negotiation of what needs you. There's no perfect system or schedule, because once you have that, your kids come and get the flu or something else happens right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, no, exactly, I mean, I'm just like literally clapping under my desk at everything that you're saying and I think you know, I really you know. I know that there's power in putting words to how we're feeling, but I also see, you know, just to echo what you're saying is like, you know, when you're like none of this exists, it's like a fucking box. You know, when it comes to business and motherhood is something that you know I talked about with this imposter syndrome is like women really bond over lack and moms really bond over lack, and this is even something I'm learning in marriage therapy is like women love to come together and complain about you know all of the things and like, in a way, you know, it's how we feel safe, especially because we don't have these great fucking villages that we used to have, and so how do we bond? I mean, I've read research on this that you know, if there's a group of 10 women and eight of them are being like particularly negative or, you know, talking smack on someone, those two have to kind of fit in, otherwise they're going to be expelled from the group, and so it is almost a comfort blanket to say I have mom guilt. Look, I'm a mom, I'm a girl boss and I have mom guilt. It's like a comfort blanket to be able to identify as someone who's struggling, and I think what's actually so much more empowering is not that we have to like hide the struggle, but just accept it. You know, accept that no matter. You know where your life is. Like you should not that, like you should just be grateful, but like it could always be worse. You know what I mean. Like for me. I'm thinking what a fucking gift that my kids have the flu. I don't have to go and ask anyone for a time off, you know sure. Did anything get done from the business? No. Did content get posted? No. Did I make any sales last week? No, but wow, we could be living in a war torn area, like we could. You know, this flu A could be 50,000 other things that are deadly Like.
Speaker 2:I think there's these constant little moments of joy or gratitude that we can find, and not from like a toxic positivity, but just from like, wow, accept the good, so that when the bad comes, you know there's also good coming right, versus just constantly harping on the bad. I think that's really helped me since my second like, as we were talking about before, for me to just like kind of recognize like this is gonna be a shit show, but like what's the alternative, that I go back to the corporate world and then I'm like negotiating with someone else. I'd rather negotiate with myself. You want to know the most fucking empowering thing being a mom, being a business owner the only person I'm negotiating with is myself and for me. I'm so grateful for that and that's what makes the hard days, the zero sale days, the flu weeks, like it makes it just okay. We're rolling with the punches right. It makes me just continuously be able to get back up.
Speaker 2:And yeah, I in a way kind of learned that from my mom, despite all of the trauma she probably ensued onto me. But you know, being like that Russian background, you know she doesn't like to talk about feelings, she doesn't like to wax on about you know how much anxiety you have or fear or depression or whatever she's just like you get up, you do the thing and in a way that can you know that's led to a lot of that high achievement in me. But it's also given me some good tools in the sense of like you know what's the alternative here. You know what I mean, why sit around and, you know, just talk about, you know the mom guilt or talk about the imposter syndrome, like, at the end of the day, does that really help my kids? Does that really help me? And for me it doesn't.
Speaker 1:I mean, you just said so many good things. I'm like having such a hard time where I start Like one. I think there's this powerful thing that you're naming which is like presence, like you're fully present where you are with what you're doing, like I think so many women they live in this like past state where they're like just constantly talking about and feeling the past or they're constantly like preemptively looking into the future and like that's making them miss this moment, like when moms are like I don't want to miss this and it's like well then, stop looking out into the future and panicking about what's going to happen and come back to like right where you are, what you're doing in this moment. And I think what's crazy? Our culture, people talk so much about toxic masculinity and that's a conversation. I like to call it unhealed masculine, because masculine has really healthy, wonderful qualities. But I think for a lot of women there's like this toxic, unhealed feminine energy that we also don't talk about, where it's like there's these extremes and these polarities and I don't think people have ever been able, people haven't been taught how to be with their own internal polarities, so they can't feel when they're going one side to the other.
Speaker 1:One of the biggest reasons I started this business is I felt like I saw two different camps of moms. There was the moms who hated their lives. There was the like everything's messy, my husband's an ass, my kids are overwhelming and I hate my life and I hate my kids, and obviously they weren't saying it exactly like that, but it just felt like all we could bond on was complaining and hating our bodies and like just miserable. They seemed miserable with their lives or it seemed like it was either that or it was this like everything's perfect, everything's wonderful. We're never going to talk about how hard things are actually. And I found myself in this weird middle ground where I was like I want to talk about the hard things, but I want to talk about them in a way that is productive and changes things and takes accountability and has grace and compassion, but also grit. Like I had come out of this place where I was just like always just spiraling in my emotions and like that wasn't healthy for me, so like I had to learn this between this area of like this toxic positivity, where I was like trying to pretend like everything was perfect and you know, I call it like I was sweeping all of the hardship under this rug of good and grateful, because, like everything was so good and I was so grateful and yet there was these parts of it that were messy and hard, and then I realized, like I'm allowed to just be this person, this whole human who has all of it.
Speaker 1:And I think so many women, they're craving that space, they want that space. And I think when you find those women, when you find those women who they like life, but they also can talk about the hard stuff, but in a different perspective, without victim mindset, with this empower, like empowerment, not in the like pink wash, rah, rah, we're all amazing and we can have it all, but in this, like you are owning your authority, you're owning your own power to negotiate, like that's what empowers women and moms, that's what empowers business owners is when they realize, like this is your life, what are you going to do with it, what do you like? You mentioned so many things like that brought back perspective and I think a lot of us have lost, perfected like perspective, like I was listening to a podcast the other day and they were like we live like kings, like, if you look back not that long ago, like we never have to be uncomfortable with so many things and the slightest discomfort, like we've lost a lot of that grit.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I love that you said the word productive. If I'm being completely honest with you, I was a little bit hesitant to use it myself because I don't want to. You know, I feel like to be completely vulnerable here as a woman who, you know, is a business owner and is a mother to you know, hustle, hustle, hustle, like be productive, be productive. But I think you said it in such a beautiful way as, like recognizing humanity and still choosing to move forward, like I think that's the point and that's the magic that a lot of us have lost, because, especially if you're a business owner, you're spending a lot of time on social media, like motherhood and entrepreneurship can be really performative.
Speaker 2:And you know, I see the same kind of things over and over again. You know people tapping their fingers and talking about how overwhelmed they are as mothers and I'm so overstimulated and blah, blah, blah. And this is what my child did and it's like okay, that can be true for you. How can you find a place of calm? Or, like, what do you need? How can we start to talk about things that move us forward instead of keep us swirling around in this stuckness? And that's where I was the first time around as a mom, I was just go go, go, go go, shake, shake, shake, shake shake. Everything had to be perfect. My house had to be perfect in order for me to have this perfect career, in order for everything to be perfect with my daughter, and my husband could do nothing and everything he did was wrong and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 2:And with the second one I'm just like some days look good, some days look bad, and you just kind of like surrender to the mess of life and it is so much more beautiful and I'm not even going to say like, oh, I'm so much happier, but I'm definitely a lot more present, I'm definitely a lot more aware, I definitely feel like a fullness, like I feel rest.
Speaker 2:You know I make different choices and like I wish more mothers would have that conversation around, like you said, instead of trying to be everything is perfect or everything is a fucking mess, is like how can we just get comfortable in the middle, get comfortable in the unpredictability of it all? You know like that is humanity and I really, like that would be my one wish for mothers is like get comfortable in the humanity of being a woman, of the balance of the masculine and feminine of the mess, because that's really what life is about. Like the second, we're trying to put on a mask and like really fit ourselves into a box anywhere else, like we've lost the plot, yeah, like we've lost the plot.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, and that word of production versus performance. When I think of performance, I used to love the show, like so you think you can dance, like I love watching people dance, and there would be people who would do all of the right steps and they'd get done, and they would say like you weren't in it, like there wasn't emotion. And I think what's interesting I think so many women have learned how to perform, they've learned how to do all of the right things, but there's this like high functioning disassociation, almost where you've become this brain and your body and your soul and your heart are just like your brain is just like pulling these strings moving you along. You're going through the motions, you feel like a ship in the night, you're in this fog and you know how often do we hear moms say like I don't feel like myself and it's like because we've we become focused so much on what we're performing versus production and producing, which is creation. Like if you can feel and notice in your own body and then even in your motherhood or your business, like what am I creating, what am I building? Because that's the movement of energy that is our aliveness, like that is your innate human ability, like there's no other animals. We are animals, right, we are mammals, and yet we are out here doing like, making podcasts, making art, making music, like creating these big, beautiful, crazy, wonderful, amazing lives. Like our aliveness needs to be able to move. We need to be able to receive from others, receive from the earth, receive from like energy, receive from the women around us. But we also, if we have a bunch of energy coming in and no energy is going out creatively, we don't feel like what we're producing makes us more alive. We become stagnant, right Like a pool that just sits there, that doesn't have moving water, it gets gross and it smells bad and it doesn't have as much life in it versus if there's movement in and out.
Speaker 1:And I think, especially for women like us, who are, like, highly ambitious and we want to create things, it's like paying attention to the balance of like input, like where am I receiving, where am I gathering, where am I getting and where am I giving, what am I producing and how am I making that creative life force, versus this performance of like trying to pretend our way through life. I really think it's like an act. It's this like we lose context and like connection to that self, energy, that like aliveness of yeah I would say I'm happier than I used to be, but there's also times where I'm a lot sadder too. But I have capacity for it because I have my whole self online. I feel my whole self being in it and I'm present with it and I don't have to run away from it because it's not happy and shiny.
Speaker 1:It's like, well, those parts of me are powerful too, these parts of me that I don't, like that feel a little cringy, those actually are pretty powerful and that's my aliveness, that's energy that wants to do something, like you even mentioned. Like not all of those parts from your mom are pretty, but like they do serve a purpose. They worked, they worked for a certain thing in a certain time and it's like we can't cut ourselves off from those things. And that's good news for women who are like I'm. I'm so ambitious but like I'm burning out all the time. It's like that part of you can learn how to drive your ambition without driving you up the wall.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, I love that you said that. I mean this. You've really kind of helped connect some dots, even in my own head, because the other day I saw this post about like the patriarchy versus the matriarchy and one of the words there was I don't think it was production, but it was around like producing. I think like production is inherently feminine and something my husband will say to me is like you don't have to be so productive all the time and I'm like, but I do, like that actually feels so good to me, but it's in the volume. And I'm like, but I do, that actually feels so good to me, but it's in the volume. And I think the intention which differentiates production in the way that you're talking about it, in this gorgeously integrated feminine way of being and even running our businesses, running our households, raising our children, and the performative pressure of nonstop production or production without intention. Right, I don't do as much in my business, but guess what? We pay all the bills, we have food in our fridge, I'm very happy with the clients that we work with and I'm still producing. I'm just doing it with a lot more intention. That feels more aligned to me and I think this is the power of women in business and entrepreneurship and like modern you know the modern women like kind of doing it all is like, yes, we can do it all, we actually can do it all. It all is like, yes, we can do it all, we actually can do it all. But doing it all doesn't have to look like 50,000 things. Doing it all can be three things. Right, it's like you get to decide what your all looks like, and that all is not going to be perfect day to day, but when you have that intention which I think to your point and to your work you've really got to get into your body and you've got to be able to like have those conversations with yourself so you're not trying to keep up with the Joneses or the internets or whatever, but really like what works for you and your body and your family and your business.
Speaker 2:And I think that that's just such an interesting, such an interesting nuance that enough people don't talk about is like ambitious women. We can be ambitious, we can be productive, we can do it all. But what does that all really look like? Right, because when we hear you know, oh, I'm doing all the things, I'm burnt out because I'm doing all the things.
Speaker 2:Well, what does that list really look like? You know, what are all those things that are really actually important to moving the needle forward in your business or your life, and what are you putting on your plate? Just so it looks like you're busy, because I think that's a whole other thing with this, like performative femininity and performative entrepreneurship, and motherhood is like we think we need to be doing 50,000 things. So I think there's a really important distinction in quality versus quantity when it comes to production, when it comes to, you know, balancing ambition or integrating ambition with motherhood. I think that is an interesting conversation, you know, for women to unpack themselves and I certainly have which again allows you to be more peaceful in that messy middle, versus feeling like you've really got to put yourself into one box versus the other.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and even like when there's that, there's the comparison outside yourself. But I think also, too, a lot of women will compare themselves to like pre-baby or pre-two kids, or hey, this felt good last year, but right now it doesn't feel good. So it's like I'm consistently talking to women of like okay, things look good, but how do they feel? How do they feel in motherhood, how do they feel in business? How does the like sum total of it feel? And so paying attention to what used to work isn't working anymore.
Speaker 1:I think so many women have bought into the like very hyper masculine way of entrepreneurship and building business and even honestly like motherhood and running a household. It's very like, once I find this consistent routine, I'll just stick to that day in and day out. And it's like for most women and even just all human beings, not just women we are cyclical beings. Like we are more tired in winter, like our literal mammal bodies are telling us to like stop doing more, Like go in a cave and watch the fire, go to sleep early, sleep in late. And yet we keep trying to show up the same in every season, and I don't just mean like the seasons of weather, like it's also like seasons of life, like if you're going through a grief, if you're going through massive healing or even expansion, like right, I've watched women go through expansive transformation and it can look and feel very similar to like those hard winter seasons where it's just they lose some capacity, they're meeting these edges of themselves, they don't have as much drive or energy and there's this low level burnout, and it's like if we can honor that without spiraling in it, if we can figure out what does consistency and health look like in those low days and those low seasons. It gives us permission of that power of negotiation, which I love.
Speaker 1:That oh, that saying is so good, I'm going to that. Like oh, that saying so good, I'm going to use it forever, sasha. Like it's so good, I love that. It brings you back into this. Stop trying to do it, even how you did it last year, because you're a different person than last year. Your kids are different kids than last year. Like your needs are going to change and you have to have the leadership to lead your life and witness like this isn't working anymore and we have to shift and we have to pivot. But if you're just constantly trying to meet some impossible, invisible marker, you're never going to feel that presence because you're constantly going to be chasing something that doesn't exist right now.
Speaker 2:You know, what that's just making me think of is like, why do we forget that we are continuously evolving? Like we see our kids oh, you're a baby, Now you're a toddler, Now you're a preteen, Now you're a teen. You've got all these different phases and we've got this understanding that our children are continuously evolving. They're going to have different needs, they're going to have different reactions to things, but for some reason, we think that once we are what 18 or 30 or 40, that like this is just who we are. I think we forget that, just like our children, we literally continuously evolve, year over year, season over season, even like cycle to cycle. You know what I mean. Like I've heard so many times that we are four different people in just the you know one cycle If you're, you know whatever menstruating woman, I guess. And so why do we put this pressure on ourselves? Like we cannot change, we cannot evolve Again?
Speaker 2:I think there's this beauty of humanity that people have just forgotten, right Like, and whether it's with social media or with just like modern times of thinking that we have to be a certain way or that we have to really. Just, you know, like, once we hit this particular milestone, we've got to like keep it forever. I personally have never experienced that Like I I don't compare myself to pre baby Sasha, I don't even remember her. I mean like I do, like I honor her, like whatever. But I'm like that would be like me comparing myself today to me when I was 18 years old, Like it doesn't make sense. It's a different chapter, right? So I personally don't relate to that.
Speaker 2:I've always just kind of had that awareness and I think it's because, like I've moved so much in my life, I've lived in so many different places, I've, you know, just experienced a lot. I feel like I grew up really young and so I always just kind of like anticipate changes happening and I think that's part of you know, if you're feeling burnt out, if you're feeling like you're having a hard time, kind of staying present, I think giving yourself that permission just to know like transformation will continue to happen and like that's just okay, Right, I think it's if no one else has given you that permission, and it really is like permission to be present, ability to negotiate your skills and negotiating with yourself and like finding ways to be, you know, okay with the messy middle of humanity. Like if you can do that, everything else will fall into place, I promise you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's one of the one of the things that I love about being a coach is like I get to hear I don't know how, like I get to hear the depths of people's lives and from a fairly wide not giant right, like they're all moms, so like there's a lot of commonalities of them. But one of the trends that I've seen in many clients and not all of them, but some is they're having a hard time realizing that they're still growing up so much because their parents never did. I work with a lot of women who their parents have stayed stuck, like they're getting older in age, but they haven't grown emotionally, they haven't grown in relational skills, they haven't grown in like who they are, what they believe, how they think like their parents. They've outgrown their parents emotionally. They've outgrown their parents spiritually or mentally in this like they have kept maturing, at like for some of them, like at a very fast rate.
Speaker 1:For some of them, just like they, their parents just stopped their parents, like never. They got to this certain adulthood and then everything just stayed, and so I think there has been I've seen this theme in our generation of there's a lot of people who didn't ever see parents growing up as adults and I I've I've said this a couple times, but one of the greatest gifts in my life is I watched my parents grow up as adults and I watched them like even you know, before I had kids and even after like, I've watched them change their minds. I've watched them want or like different things, live at a different pace. They've they've shifted and they've grown in maturity and they, you know, they're different people than who raised me and I think that's been such a gift for me because it's given me this permission of like I get to keep changing, I get to keep growing and changing and like shifting and moving and and I don't know if a lot of people have had that, though I'm curious I'm curious if that resonates with you at all.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm, you know, I'm thinking, you know, of my mom and definitely how she raised me is very different than who she is today. Yeah, impact us quite a bit right Like there's. No, I'm not going to pretend to be a therapist or say like that they don't, but I think that I have taken a lot upon myself and I'm personally like a very curious person and it has just always been really important for me to like grow, you know. So I don't really I can't say like oh, I look at my mom and I see how much she's changed and that like inspires me or motivates me or, you know, gives me some sort of like hope or permission in any way. Like I feel like I really have taken it upon myself.
Speaker 2:And you know, again, a lot of that, I think, has been because I had certain, you know, struggles or because I had certain things that I wanted to let go of and I was like, how can I change this? Or, you know, back 10 years ago, right, how can I fix this within myself? But I think that you know, I think that that evolution or kind of you know, getting to what we're talking about, really is possible for anyone. I think you do just have to kind of be curious about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and.
Speaker 1:I think it's, I think it's accessible to anyone because we have to realize like we are adults now. That's such a wild thing. I know it seems so simple but, like I know, for me it took me a while to realize like I can't keep blaming what happened, I can't keep putting all. And here's the thing. I had legitimate trauma, I had been a legitimate victim, but as long as I clung to that and didn't say like, okay, I now have options, I now have choice, I now have agency and you know, a lot of that was my healing journey of like figuring out how to feel, what is my agency in this moment, coming back to the present moment and not living in the past.
Speaker 1:But there's so many women who they constantly get in this and it's not logical. They'd often don't recognize it because you know, I work with very high functioning, very ambitious, very successful women and it's like we'll sometimes be talking and I'm like, do you remember how old you are today? Can you feel how old you are? Can you feel how much access you have, how much resource, how much capacity? Because emotionally, sometimes those little parts of us like you know our posts we were talking about of like the self-care isn't selfish. I think so many women their energy has been. I need someone else to tell me what to do. I don't trust myself with my own being bringing them back into this. Like you are a grown ass adult, you get to make your own choices now, Like your parents had their choices. You're the other people in the world. They have your choices.
Speaker 1:So if you can bring yourself back into this place of choice and agency and one of my favorite little tricks is like I constantly remind myself of something absolutely wild that I probably wouldn't go do and it'd be like I could use my free will to go do this right now. I probably won't, but I could like. When women are like, oh, I have to do this, I'm like do you, do you have to do the dishes? No, you don't. Do you have to pick up your husband's clothes on the floor? No, you don't.
Speaker 1:Like. Come back into your agency and power. Like you are giving your authority out to way too many people, like your mother-in-law, your sister, like everyone. And it's like bring yourself back into. What am I doing? What am I doing in this moment and what am I doing the next? And one of my favorite little ones is like I could go to the store, buy a cake and eat the whole thing.
Speaker 1:Right now I'm not going to, because that wouldn't actually feel good, but I love to just like remind myself of like I can make choices, which sounds so like as I'm saying it, it sounds so silly and yet like that's really hard for a lot of women. I mean, you look at our generation and our culture and it's like how many billions of dollars are being spent on women saying I don't trust myself on what to eat, how full I am, how hungry I am and I'm saying that as someone like who's had to invest quite a bit of support and like I don't even know how to feed myself, like we don't even trust ourselves for eating yet alone business or raising our kids. So that like kind of coming back to that self-trust and your intuition. I'm curious if you feel like you always had that online or if it's something you had to develop.
Speaker 2:No, it no. It's definitely something I've had to develop. And it's so funny that you said this whole adult thing, because I remember when my husband and I were dating, I think it was also like cupcakes or cake or I don't know. It was some sort of something that, like we wanted to have or eat and I was like, well, I don't know like if we can get it like this late. I don't remember the details, but I remember him literally saying like we're adults, we can do whatever we want, and I was like you know, I was like 29 years old and I was like what?
Speaker 2:And so this has definitely been something that's been evolving for me over the last couple of years. Especially is that trust in myself, like the switch between daring, creative and daring house. You know the pulling back on what I'm doing. You know my house being messier than it's ever been and I walk myself up in my office and just do the things that like bring me joy, which is working and podcasting and all of those things. All of that intuition and like trusting myself has been something I've had to learn and that's why I loved your post so much about. You know, self-care and the whole like is this selfish thing. I mean so many industries are selling to us, exactly like you said, and also because we work with a lot of beauty, health and wellness brands I hear them saying this all the time and it drives me nuts that, like taking care of ourselves, we're trying to say it's not selfish, but by saying that we're actually selling that it is.
Speaker 1:You're literally you know what I mean Directly to that underlying belief that this is selfish.
Speaker 1:Exactly I mean on a mental level, but also, like you know my whole post and maybe I'll link it in the in the notes but like it's not that women are cognitively, mentally going oh, this is selfish for me to do. It's that women have this embodiment of focusing on what everyone wants and needs from them versus what do I want and need. And I think what's wild is like I love. I love the beauty industry. I'm a licensed cosmetologist. That was like the first thing I did out of school.
Speaker 1:But I think there's so much selling of self-care isn't selfish when it's like that's not. Even women aren't logically thinking. This is selfish. It's that I feel bad, which we already talked about. That a little bit right Of like well, why do you feel bad? Do you know? Like what's the unconscious bad feeling in you? Like, because that can be a myriad of different things, but I don't think. I think our culture is much less emotionally intelligent than we realize. People don't have language for their emotions and their experiences. So we've slapped this label on self-care isn't selfish. But I think for most women, I'm like has anyone ever seen that? And then like, done something different? Has that changed something? So I'm curious, like, what's your take on this Because, like you, I've seen a couple posts of yours of like the selfish mom and I love. I love it because I think it's almost like reclaiming that word. I'm curious like, what do you think with the self-care isn't selfish? I wanna hear your thoughts.
Speaker 2:Well, I personally hate that phrase. Just in general, self-care isn't selfish for all the reasons that you mentioned, but I do very strongly believe in reclaiming the word selfish because I think that when we become mothers, especially, we learn how to take care of these other tiny beings, and whether or not we ever had learned how to take care of ourselves, we definitely deprioritize that. And so I think prioritizing being selfish and you know, even like I will go and say like one of the things I'm working on is kind of bringing this to life. And so, yes, I'm doing these like selfish mom flogs, but really, even reclaiming, I'm a bad mom with good habits, like this idea of like, yes, maybe I don't have the emotional intelligence to like go on and on and on, but like being okay with, like we talked about before, sometimes I feel like a bad mom but I have good habits. You know, I know how to find joy for myself. I know how to take a shower, because that's going to calm me down. I know that I can go for a walk. I know I know what I need as a human being who also has value, because, I will say, one of the most fucked up things of motherhood is when you're pregnant and you're glowing and everyone is caring about you and everyone is, you know, fawning over you, and then the second you have the baby.
Speaker 2:You don't even go to a fucking doctor for six weeks. Meanwhile, you take your baby every couple of days and you have literal wound the size of a dinner plate in your stomach and no one cares for six weeks what could be going on with you as you're losing gobs and gobs of blood. Okay, that was my experience and it's so fucking crazy. And so, for me, this idea of, like, I'm selfish, whatever bad mom looks like, I'm just gonna own it that I could be a bad mom today, but I at least have good habits, because I, for me, like again, I'm not gonna go down the path of saying I'm a therapist and what are your children gonna think? Blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 2:But if you can show your kids like I have two girls, I want to show them good habits. Are there gonna be days that I lose my shit on my kids? Absolutely. But are we still? We still going to do affirmations every night and so you can tell yourself what incredible like, what an incredible human you are, and blah, blah, blah, absolutely Like. That is going to be the stuff that I believe is going to have a greater impact on them, and thus the world, than just how good of a mom I am, how good of a girl I am. So for me, there's just yeah I'm extremely passionate about those words and and that kind of perspective on motherhood is like we have to mother ourselves, we have to take care of ourselves. The system is not going to. Motherhood is not the enemy, the system is the fucking enemy. The society. You know what I mean, like these rules that we've made it up. That's the enemy, and so the only thing that we have against that is how we treat ourselves, and we have to prioritize that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, every time you were saying bad mom, I had this like that sounds like such a good mom Like I, and I realized like it's, like I think you're being tongue in cheek of like people consider that Like I feel like a bad mom, is that what you mean? Is is like you sometimes feel like you're being a bad mom when you do it exactly yeah, because I feel like.
Speaker 1:I feel like I'm a bad mom because my shower was five extra minutes, you know, and my husband had to babysit the kids while I shaved my legs, like shit, like that like that mindset is just it, like it blows my mind now, now, but like I can think I'm like trying to picture myself years and years and years ago Because, like what I hear you saying is redefining motherhood to be a season where we absolutely are dedicated and devoted to our children, but we remember to center ourselves as well and I think that is one of the most powerful things we can give our kids. Again, I get this powerful perspective when I'm working with mothers of how often they're healing from having a codependent martyr mom who mothered really well but didn't exist in herself and that was damaging, that was traumatic for women to grow up with a mom who didn't exist, who didn't who her whole emotional, and I could go on all day about this. I'm going to try to like keep it. I have a whole podcast with Louise on women who we get so absorbed into this season that we stop existing and I think for a time, especially when our kids are babies, that biologically makes sense, right. Like it is all consuming and I don't think we need to guilt ourselves, but like there has to be some leaning back into self. There has to be at least this pendulation of I'm paying attention to the baby. But then I pull my energy and my focus back on like, okay, what does my body need? What does my being, my emotional, my spiritual, my environment, like, what do I need in this moment? Because if the mother is well taken care of, if a mother is centered in herself and she is healthy and well, that can only benefit her kids.
Speaker 1:Like we're not, like a selfish mother would be, a mother who's like literally not even paying attention to her kids because she's so self-absorbed into herself. But I can say I actually became extraordinarily selfish, like legitimately selfish, because I was so burnt out and I was starving and desperate, because I was neglecting myself so much that like I don't know if it impacted my kids, because this was like when they were really little. But I especially look at my marriage and I'm like I couldn't hold anything for him because I was so caught up in my own shit, because I hadn't taken care of it for so long I couldn't help him, I couldn't support him, I couldn't hear him out because I had become self-centered, because I was so off balance. And so bringing our energy and attention back into ourselves, into our own wellbeing, is pivotal for health and really to be a good mom.
Speaker 1:I think parenting comes from the parent and when you focus on the parent, the parenting follows. And same for business. If you were an entrepreneur, or even if you aren't if you're looking at like I want the health of my work to be really good, okay, focus on you, because it'll trickle down for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think, yeah, I mean yes, yes to everything that you're saying. And I again, I just I can't not not harp on this importance of honoring ourselves. You know, and I've, I've seen this in my own mother exactly what you're talking about the invisible mother. Also, many friends you know women my age or even a little older, a little younger, who who even have older kids. They're out of that stage. They've got kids who are teens or kids in their late teens or even recently, empty nesters, and they still are like who am I? And they've disappeared.
Speaker 2:And I think this is one of the most tragic things that has happened to women, I'd say, over the last hundred years or so, is that we disappear. And we're disappearing in many other ways lately, politically and just with crazy stuff happening in the world, and so I think if you can honor yourself, if you can see yourself, if you can value yourself, make time for yourself, you won't disappear. And, exactly like you said, it will be poured into your children, it will be poured into your, your partner and your business and all of the things that you do. But it starts with you. Like I say this to our business owners, our clients all the time. No one's going to care about your business as much as you do, and the same is true for you, Like, no one will care about you as much as you do.
Speaker 1:It's just a hard, it's just a fact you know, yeah, and what a gift for our kids too, of like they can't be the center of our happiness that's too much to put on a kid or our health, like they need mothers who are taking care of their own. So, oh my gosh, this was so good. Is there anything else we missed? Anything else that, like you just want to name or like come back to as we end? No, I feel like we talked about so much.
Speaker 2:I'm really yeah, like 50 different topics. I think we can go deeper on, but it was such an honor to talk to you, rebecca. Thank you so much for having me on.
Speaker 1:Oh, same to you. I just I loved this conversation and if you are listening to this, we would love to hear from you. So share it to your stories, tag us, send us a question or an aha moment, leave a review. Thank you so much for being here. I hope you guys enjoy this episode. 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.
Speaker 1: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.
