S1: Ep 6: How motherhood can kill spirituality!

Another chatty one today as I feel into what this podcast will be about...

I am slightly joking when I suggest that motherhood can kill spirituality - but only slightly LOL! What I mean here is that when we are entrenched in responsibility and work we can lose our connection. Do you relate?!

I really hope you enjoy, relate - or that it provokes some food for thought?! Please leave me a review as it makes a big difference! Thanks so much. 

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Hey! I'm Rachel! I am a qualified Holistic Life Coach and Mind Body Practitioner, Embodiment Coach, Yoga 500hrs (plus lots more extra yoga quals). I'm also an award winning content creator and have 20 years' experience in digital. I'm a mum of 3 kids and I live in the Peak District - oh and I have ADHD and I am sober. My passion is helping midlife women turn meltdown into magic!

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Transcript

0:39

Hi. Welcome to what I think will be episode six. if you know me, you'll know that dates, numbers, anything like that, I make mistakes with them frequently. I think it's a bit of my ADHD, but, please bear with if it's not Episode six, whatever. Not important. Yeah, so I'm actually in the car and I'm making my way to a yoga class. I'm trying to practice more yoga in real old school studios. You only really get those types of things in cities. So I drive half an hour to Sheffield to go to a awesome studio, give them a shout out actually Soulfire Studios in Sheffield. And actually I'd really like to interview a few of the guys from there for this podcast. Talking about interviews, I actually have started to make reach outs, to people to come on and I've got some good ones, all women. I think the direction this podcast is taking is that I want to speak to women, about their spiritual life story and how they stay conscious but grounded. It's definitely women for me right now, because I think it's all about, Exploring how we spiritual collective, help move the needle forward in the world and leave it a better place than it was when we got here in this incarnation. I've got some good interviews lined up. In terms of housekeeping, Please follow me on Instagram if you don't already. That's where I hang out mostly. I also just started a Facebook group. I was hesitant to do this. Because I've done a couple before and they fell by the wayside and I'm trying to learn the lessons of taking too much on. However, from having conversations with other soul led entrepreneurs, healers, coaches, therapists, mediums, artists, those types of things that are the people that I'm speaking to in this podcast as well. A lot of us have strengths and weaknesses in business and marketing. Sometimes we need other people in the space to network with and collaborate with. There's a lot of recurring themes that come up I've got a lot of the marketing hard skills, from my background I'm quite techie So I want to support other women. So if you were a female sole led entrepreneur, that's what I called the group. I was very straight up. I was very grounded, female sole led entrepreneurs. I'll leave. link to it below. Please join if you want to be in this space as an entrepreneur or if you already are. We can network with each other. We can share our offerings. Often I've found in these spaces that, you go there to collaborate or find out more about social media You end up actually connecting with other people and they use your services and you use theirs, so it's really nice. I have two retreats coming up. The Wild Connection Retreat is in Edale and that is June 2nd to June 5th. that one is all about the wilderness, nature, wild dips and waterfalls, hiking and yoga. the next one after that is in November. I've got November 9th to November 15th. it's called the Embodied Queen Retreat and that's down in Cornwall and that is all about luxury, wood fired hot tub, beautiful, stunning mansion. We are also going to be hiking and wild dipping and it's about massages and both have a private chef attending. Very different types of private chefs there. The one at the Edale Retreat is plant based, really whole foodie and the one at the Cornwall one is more kind of decadent, indulgent. If you're interested, go to my website, rachaelbradyyoga. com. let's dive into the subject today that's been on my heart and mind this morning. As I struggle to get everyone out of the house on time so that I can actually attend this yoga class and do something for me, that was what was on my mind, was how hard this is. My youngest has been diagnosed with autism, and it wasn't a massive surprise. I know a lot about neurodiversity because I'm neurodivergent. I have ADHD and I often wonder if I'm, autistic. I know the term high functioning is not liked by many in the autistic community, so sorry about that, but I think I am, in that area. I also think ADHD and autism are two sides of the same coin. However, I've also got an elder child who is diagnosed ADHD and my middle child, I will not be surprised if she has ADHD. So we're that type of family. why that's relevant is it adds an extra layer of crazy, an extra layer of emotional dysregulation, an extra layer of disorganization. One of the things I wanted to talk about today and what I'm going to call this podcast is how motherhood can kill your spirituality. I didn't mean for that to be funny, but it just made me laugh. There's this thing that I often think and I go to my yoga trainings and I go to my yoga retreats and I'm like, wait, I'm the only midlife mom on this retreat. They're either older and their kids have grown up or they're younger. I haven't had kids yet, or they're like my age and haven't got kids. It's really rare that I go on a retreat or a training and meet someone with kids the same age. Particularly not the six year old. I don't go on many spiritual events, trainings, retreats, and meet people who are in the thick of it as much as I am. And that made me think about that. I was like, why is that? And I think it's because they're too stressed, they are not in touch with their inner landscape because they're living by the seat of their pants, all those, cliches, their feet never touch the ground, they're swept up 100 percent by motherhood I don't say that in a judgy way, it's nigh on impossible to have anything else in your life, apart from, people, work, This is my work, so I work too, I made a podcast before this, I haven't published it yet because I'm a bit scared around my historic alcohol use disorder, my struggle with alcohol, that's also something that can kill your spirituality, I feel like there's a theme here in these episodes that I'm doing now, but the other thing is motherhood, I think motherhood can and not necessarily in a good way. You lose yourself in motherhood. It's that parasitic nature. And this sounds awful, doesn't it? I must be putting people off having kids who are listening to this, but it's true. It really is like the biggest sacrifice. Don't get me wrong on the gift in return that God gave us, that the universe gave us is this incredible love, not romantic love, motherly, motherly love. And it's Number one love, in my opinion. Apart from the love that you have for yourself, it's different though. And you would, yeah, you'd do anything for that child. Anything. And even though sometimes you literally want to throw them out the back door and then lock the door. you can dislike your child intently, but then you love them so much also. And we're having struggles. It's very challenging. It's all consuming. I'm processing this out loud, which is what I do when I record these, in the act of processing, which is how I work best rather than making notes and, planning it all. I think what I've done is swap out alcohol. That was my release system. my escape. now it's spirituality and I've really come home to myself in that sense. instead of looking outside of myself for an escape. I'm going to show you guys a little bit of what it's like to be on a hot yoga mat. I'm going to show you guys a little bit of what it's like to be on a hot yoga mat. the gorgeous teacher is doing this gorgeous class and I'm just like, Oh God, this was so worth it. But yeah, it really did stress me out getting everything together this morning. my six year old will not get dressed on his own. He cannot do it yet. He sees it as a demand. He's demand avoidant. We have this tussle every day. this morning I dealt with it but if I didn't and I lost it last night with him really bad because I was on the computer to Apple trying to get my teenager's iCloud password so that he can use his homework app properly the other kid was just doing his nut because something happened on Minecraft, he had a complete meltdown and was attacking me, physically attacking me like I explained after it had all calmed down and I apologise for losing my temper a little bit, I said to my eldest, you know I have this bucket and it's full of motherly love and I'm sorry. And I use it and it's there and I've been an amazing mom all day and then it's empty. And the thing is, this business also empties that bucket. The domestic chores of a mother and a wife also empty the bucket. I spoke to a parenting coach recently and I spilled my guts out. She's great I'm going to link to her in the show notes. She's very affordable, accessible, pragmatic, hilariously funny, sweary. super open minded and says things you don't expect to hear. it was very refreshing working with her for a session. I'll link to her in the show notes for you other mothers out there. And she goes to me, yeah, I've read all the notes. I've looked at everything and you haven't got many spoons. And I was like, what does that mean? And she's everybody's got a certain amount of spoons. At every point in their life. And she was like, so if you have a cleaner and you have cleaning help, you've got an extra spoon. And I was like, yeah, I have actually got a cleaner at the meant going to message her and saying, no, we don't need you. Cause it's like literally all the money in my business just goes to pay the cleaner who I adore, and she's brilliant, but I feel guilty. So if you have family near you that regularly help you, you've got a spoon. If you have enough money coming in to have disposable income, You've got a spoon. if you were handed the gift of a solid, secure upbringing, you've got a spoon. if you're housed in a nice house and it's warm and a healthy home, you've got a spoon. If you've only got one kid, you've got a spoon If your marriage is good, you've got a spoon. if you've got a supported network of friends and so on and so on, if you haven't got those things, if you've got neurotypical kids. And she was saying to me, you've not got many spoons at the minute. it was one of the things that made me get a cleaner. Because I was like, shit, man, she's right. I haven't got many spoons. I'm doing everything. I know I'm privileged, I know I've had a good upbringing, I know I've got a nice home. I know I've got a supportive husband and we've got money. We've got a lot of spoons. God, a lot of mothers have not got many spoons. But with what I want to do with my life, which is have more spoons so that I can have capacity to run a business, be a fucking nice mom and not lose my shit, then I needed more spoons. so I needed to use the resources we do have to invest in more help and more support. And that's what I did. self care, you can give yourself back some spoons by giving yourself self care, by putting boundaries around the things that you do, by saying no to things like, no, I can't help with that this weekend, I'm going to have a day to myself, or no, I can't look after your kid every single week on this day because me and my kid are going to the park, So it's all about the spoons and the capacity. If you've got a load of spoons, you're doing great. You might look at other mums and be like, why is she finding this so hard? you've got one or two neurotypical children. You've got your mum and daddy live nearby and an auntie and a sister. Maybe you've got a balanced work life balance. Maybe your husband's supportive and does loads of housework. You got a few spoons and I'm not mad about it. Like I'm happy for you, but not everybody has that. Some of it's privilege and some of it is just situational. It can really affect how you show up in the world. You only have so much executive function. You only have so much space in your brain for something else. And I think so many moms turn to wine because of this. The mommy wine culture, like I don't really talk much about it, but some people in the sober circles that I'm in really focus on it. On that in their work. It really is insidious. It's like wine mummy drinks and things like that, like the book Wine Mummy Drinks. I don't wanna have a go at the author. I know she was just being funny, but it's not really funny. It's funny if it's like you have the odd glass of wine here and there, but so many moms are going home and piling back, half a bottle or a bottle a night more even sometimes. So I wasn't a daily wine drinker, but I definitely used wine to cook. With the madness of the kids, and the boredom of motherhood sometimes. The lack of company, lack of creativity, lack of brain use. You give up a lot to be a mom. I gave up a job that I love. Don't get me wrong, I also love being a mom, and I love being a stay at home mom. A lot of people were like, I could not do what you do. I literally would hate it. I'm like, no, I like it. I like cooking. I like being at home. I'm a bit of a home bird. I'm chatty, but I'm actually an introvert. I can be an extrovert at times, in the right setting. socializing exhausts me, and being alone fuels me. So I would say I'm mainly an introvert. spirituality is something you need to give time to. you can absolutely explore spirituality and have a spiritual practice, and be innately spiritual, because I feel like it is innate. you can talk to God, and you can have a sense of knowing, one person I'm going to be speaking to, on the podcast is a mum. I can't wait to speak to her because not many of the people I'm lining up for interviews are at the thick of it stage like I am. not many people on trainings and retreats are because they are so in the thick of it. They simply haven't got time to give and commit and practice. In our yoga sutra studies recently, we did the yoga sutra. 1. 7 or 1. 8 it's Varegya and Abhyasa, what they are is basically letting go and practice. spirituality is a practice, yoga is a practice, meditation is a practice, praying is a practice, going to church is a practice. I'm more on the kind of yogic spirituality. It's a practice to show up in a spiritual way every day and do the practices that the Yoga Sutras tell us about. The Yoga Sutras is like a mental health guide. It's all about how to use yoga, and by yoga means full spectrum yoga, so the Yamas and Niyamas, which are a bit like the Ten Commandments, how you should act with yourself and other people, then there's three about mindfulness. One about meditation, one about breath work, one of the eight limbs is about the movement. And it's all taking you to this bliss state, whereby you are stilling the fluctuations of the mind. And so the yoga sutras go into detail about the eight limbs, and they basically say if you do all of this, you're going to have amazing mental health and you're going to reach this bliss state. So it's telling you how to be a spiritual person. Now, it takes time to study that I'm doing it because it's my business, because it's my calling, it's my purpose, and I'm going to hopefully meet other mums on the path that I'll speak to in this podcast. But for most day to day householder mums, you just don't have time to. And so your spiritual practice might be a weekly yoga class where your head touches the mat in child's pose and you have a moment and go inwards and breathe and that's your spiritual practice. there's no measurement. It's not you did five minutes this week. You are spiritual, you aren't spiritual, but what I'm finding and really diving into is that it's okay to acknowledge that at the motherhood time in our lives we might not be that active in our practice of spirituality. So ways that we could access our own spirituality and motherhood are like go to yoga classes when you can. Try and have that daily sadhana, but Don't be so rigid and fixed about it always being in the morning because it's really hard to do that when you've got kids jumping all over you and kids that wake up early and so on. I've got a very flexible Sadhana. it's great when it happens in the morning. that's the time that I share on Instagram when it's going perfectly. It's not always going perfectly. a lot of the time, I don't have space, time, whatever, to practice it, in the morning. The beautiful thing about a five minute meditation practice. is you don't need anything, you don't have to have a twice daily, 20 minute practice, which is what I'm trying to cultivate. you can do it at work, on the tube, in the car. You can just breathe and bring your mind back to stillness, Those thoughts in the car park in your mind, just taking them to one side that you'll deal with later. I'm gonna round it up because I'm nearing where my yoga class is, I'm going to reflect on how motherhood can kill your spirituality, please take comfort in the fact that, this isn't forever, enjoy it. seeing the practice of motherhood as the ultimate spiritual assignment, it really is. no other thing will test you like motherhood will. Nothing will test your rage, your capability for equanimity, which is the opposite of rage. That's my ultimate spiritual assignment in this lifetime. I'm a good person, right? And I've come to accept that. Whereas for a long time, I was like, Oh my God, I don't think I'm a good person because I have this innate rage and struggle with it. maybe we'll get into that in further episodes. it's been a journey for me to learn how to, in the moment, find my peace. especially when I'm being triggered by. The kids. I sound like such an awful mom. I adore my kids and they're amazing I feel like my third child who I adore is my ultimate spiritual assignment and he has really showed me my shadow self and I feel like I was meant to be his mom. He was absolutely signed up for this assignment and so was I and we were meant to face off in this way and to come together in this way. I adore this kid, like me and him are going On holiday on our own next week. we are besties. We have a club. We call it bestie club. We have our own handshake. He's my bestie, but he's also really challenging. And so that's the universe's way this kid's gonna challenge you and make you heal the stuff you need to heal. What do you think is motherhood the ultimate spirituality killer? leave a comment, and please review. Please give me feedback. Honestly, I really want feedback. Give me some subjects to talk about, and if you are a spiritual person, I would love to hear your spiritual life journey. You don't have to have a spiritual business, necessarily, although most people I think do that are coming on. I really want to hear women's spiritual life journeys, their life stories, and how they stay grounded. Okay, love you so much, that is all for now, bye bye.