Episode 5: Who the h*ll am I?

In this first solo episode, I open up about my own journey of becoming a mother and returning to work. The disorientation, the guilt, the tears and the transformation that followed. 

If you’ve ever asked yourself, “Who the h*ll am I now?” after becoming a mother, this one's for you.

I share how discovering matrescence — the transformation of a woman to a mother — changed everything for me. From feeling lost, anxious and unseen, to finding clarity, purpose and confidence. And a lot of letting go of the things that no longer served me.

GET GROUNDED

Learning to connect to myself was one of the most important parts of discovering who I was and what I really wanted when I became a mother - and it still is. We grew up giving away our power - looking for answers externally when we had them inside all along. Realising this was profound for me. But it took practice - over and over.

Getting still.

Listening.

Connecting.

Acting on the whispers and nudges, building trust with ourselves. I’ve created a free 5 minute audio for you, called Get Grounded, to download so you can start today.

It’s available to download here:

https://www.mothershood.co.uk/get-grounded

Come and find me here:

Instagram: @mothers.hood
Facebook: @mothershoodtribe

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samantha-murrell-03966132/

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to my very first solo episode on the Motherhood Podcast. I thought I would give you a bit of background about my story and why I came to do the work I do as a back to work coach for mothers. So I thought we'd start at the beginning. Does anyone else get that?

When they have a word and it makes 'em think of a song? I've had that song from the Sound of Music, it's called Dore Me. Let's start at the very beginning, going round and round my head. But anyway, no more singing. We'll carry on. So I want to rewind back to. Me on maternity leave. I had almost 13 months off with my daughter on maternity leave.

So I understand my privilege there because I appreciate that some women have very little time off with their babies. I  spent a lot of that time. Really feeling lost. I had very severe postnatal anxiety after I had my daughter. I

 felt very overwhelmed a lot of the time. I felt confused. I felt quite isolated and alone. There were obviously moments and time of joy and love and feeling so grateful of her. It wasn't a wholly terrible bad experience, but I would say a lot of it I felt really disorientated and as I said before, really lost and alone and isolated and nobody really understood me.

I think I had quite a longing for my old life where I felt so sure about myself and who I was. I really was questioning who am I? There was a constant nagging thought going around my head who am I? Who the hell am I Now? I don't know who I'm supposed to be, what I'm supposed to be, what is my.

Place here. What is my purpose? Really constant nagging around and around. I just kept thinking, right when I get to three months, I'll feel better. Then six months, then nine, 12 months. And when I got to each of those milestones and I didn't feel better in inverted commas, it added to my isolation and.

Just feeling like I was failing because I hadn't reached this point where I felt okay about myself and everything and who I was, and I had this overwhelming sense of failure and that I was the worst mother. I felt like I was failing myself and I felt like I was failing my daughter. I wasn't loving every moment I, it wasn't a rose tinted.

A hundred percent joyful field experience. And I thought, did this mean that I didn't love my child? And that sounds like a really strange thing to say. And looking back as I feel now, I know that wasn't true. But I kept getting this feeling of if I'm not a hundred percent loving this, and does that mean I don't love my daughter?

Does that mean that I don't love being a mom? Does it mean that I'm not supposed to be a mom? It just wasn't the rosy bubble I thought it would be. We all get those comments from, well-meaning people, especially the older generation of love, every moment. Because when they look back and I sometimes do it now, you look back and you look at the pictures and you have the nostalgia, but you do forget a lot of the hard parts of it.

It was actually quite excruciating for me, and there was a lot of blame and a lot of silencing myself. I didn't really tell people how I felt. Not properly. I would be looking around at other mothers, perhaps at the baby groups or somewhere else and thinking, oh maybe she no.

She looks like she's got it all together. I. So I just stuffed it down inside and just cracked on with it and was like, yeah, like I'll be fine. I remember so vividly walking up. We live on the top of a hill.. I remember pushing my daughter up and down this hill trying to get her to sleep for one of the mini naps that babies have. I walk up and down that hill every day now to take my daughter to school. And it brings back such memories of me walking up and down the hill trying to get head to sleep on the verge of tears a lot of the time, questioning myself ruminating.

I. It was, yeah, it was really hard. I have family and friends that I'm very grateful for and lucky to have. And I felt supported by them, but I did also feel alone, isolated. 'cause I didn't really felt like anybody understood what I was going through. And I felt like if I actually said then it would mean that I admitted that I was failing.

I did actually have some therapy around six months. I had some CBT therapy that did help with some of the anxiety and it did help lessen that, that side of it. But however, I was still left with a nagging feeling of disorientation overwhelm again, not knowing who I was. This carried on throughout my maternity leave.

I was preparing to go back to work and I thought if I just make sure that I'm organized, we've got the childcare sorted. We found an amazing child minder who we are friends with to this day, and I felt so lucky to have her. I was also really lucky to get flexible working. I was allowed to work three days a week and one of those from home.

I was only the second person. In my company, in my team, definitely within the last 25 years that had been on maternity leave and my boss before me had her three days. Agreed. So she was a trailblazer for me, which made it a lot easier. And again, I appreciate that I had the privilege to financially and logistically to be able to do that.

I thought I'll get back to work and probably just be a bit of time of settling in. And, it'll be fine. I remember going shopping I was actually in John Lewis it was the day before I was going back to work and my daughter was in her first full day of childcare.

I. I thought I need to get something 'cause go back to work. My body didn't feel like mine. It felt squishy and I just really did feel my, myself, I felt really frumpy and just exhausted. That was partly because of, we had a baby and also really because I spent so much mental energy on, ruminating on who I was not understanding.

I remember looking in the mirror and putting some clothes on and just being like okay, yeah, that's fine. They'll do just something that fitted me. I also remember crying, seeing other people there with their kids in, in, and I just felt so guilty because I wasn't with my daughter. I felt guilty for wanting to go back to work.

I wanted to return to some, sense of familiarity. Work was a place where I knew who I was. I had a sense of knowing it was part of my identity. I knew what I was doing. I'd had success at work. People came to me to ask me for things. And I was an expert in my field. I worked in corporate real estate at the time.

And yeah, I thought I'll get back to work and I'll have that sense of familiarity. And I also wanted some time to myself. I really wasn't very good at taking time for myself or giving myself permission to have time. So when I went back to work, I really hadn't spent a lot of time away from my daughter at all.

I felt guilty for leaving her with somebody else. I felt like I should be the one looking after her. And just a whole lot of guilt in there. So I returned to work. I returned to the same building, same desk. I took the same journey, but nothing felt the same. I felt completely different, and that then threw me because I just thought what now?

I pretty much cried straight away to my office manager. I remember crying in the toilets. I missed my baby. I missed my old self, and I just didn't know what to do. I did just continue on bumbled along, feeling like I half there, but actually I was really all over the place , I felt invisible again from P like, I didn't matter.

I. People thought I was uninterested or didn't want to be there because that was the messaging that I'd got earlier on in my career when women had come back to work. And actually, not that I'd seen many women come back to work because the the industry that I worked in, corporate real estate, I. Was very male dominated.

I didn't have many role models above me. As I said, I had an amazing line manager and she was one of the very few people that I knew at my level or above that had kids, and I didn't see, as I said, I didn't see many people doing that, so I just really felt like I didn't know what I was doing.

So continued on like this, and then after about six months, my sister sent me a podcast and it changed everything for me. It was a podcast with Amy Taylor Cab, and I listened to it in Floods of Tears. I. Felt seen and heard for the first time, someone was putting into words exactly how I was feeling and how I'd felt.

Over the past 18 months, a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. She was talking about Tres essence, and I'd never heard this word before and I was like, what? Why has nobody told me about this? All these people around me having babies. Like why? Why did nobody tell me? And I realized later on down the line, it's because nobody else knew about it.

We don't talk about it in our society because it's not. Fully understood. All those years ago when women used to gather together in communities and villages, we had mother mentors along with mentors for other life experiences. They would show us the way they would support us and guide us through our journey.

Of becoming a woman to a mother, we would be surrounded by other mothers. We would be held and heard by them. We would share their wisdom and obviously that in amongst being physically supported by them. But as we know, women were vilified, burnt at the stake for being witches. Women were split up because they were seen as dangerous by congregating together, and we lost this wisdom.

So going back to Mires essence. Mires essence is the transformation of a woman to a mother. And this term was first coined by Donna Raphael back in the seventies. And you may be aware of her or aware of her work because she was the one that brought doulas into our consciousness. And we understand a lot more about doulas now, but Tres essence is something that had been buried over the years.

Metres essence is like adolescence. Now we know that children don't jump straight from being a child to an adult. It happens as they progress through puberty, through their teenage years. We give them space. We allow them to have their feelings and we support them. But that's not happening with mothers.

Mothers are left just to get on with it and figure it out. Muzzled through that were the messages that I was getting and that was the message that I was seeing from mothers around me. And something else that really hit home for me was that Matress essence takes time.

It doesn't just happen overnight. It doesn't happen when the baby's three months, six months. Orly Ahan, who is a psychology professor at the University of Columbia, who has studied Trence, and she's the one that brought Donna Raphael's work into modern consciousness.

She says that Mitre essence arguably takes a lifetime. Because as our children age and grow and as we age and grow, they, and we go through different stages. We have to learn how to parent a teenager as our children leave home, as we become a grandmother. So really it goes on and on and it affects everything.

We question. Everything I.

 It makes us take stock of what's important, what's working and what's not working for us. And it should, in theory, give us space to reevaluate what's important to us. And there's often a kind of opening point at what I say, an entrance to tres essence where we feel this acutely. And it could affect one part of our life or may affect different parts of our life.

It affects us emotionally, spiritually, socially, economically, hormonally. It affects every single part of our lives, and often it will be one part of this where we realize everything's changed and then actually we realize that everything's changed.

It's a time when how we see the world and how the world sees us completely changes. And we often question, what am I here for? What's my purpose? And when we are supported through Mires essence, when we understand what's going on, it's an opportunity to write our own story. It's an opportunity to get clear on what's right for us.

And to connect to ourselves. And for me, actually becoming a mother was the first time that I connected to myself properly to realize that I have the answers within me. Before that I'd outsource to everybody else. Oh, I, if I just Google the right answer, if I go and find the right expert, if I read about it, if I, if somebody else would tell me the answer.

And this is what I defaulted to when I became a mother, and when I kept searching around me and I felt nobody has the answer. So what happens now? Who's going to tell me what's happening to me? And then when I found the support. That helped me understand what I was going through with Tres essence. I also learned how to connect with myself.

And when I connected with myself, I realized, ah, okay, yeah, only I know the right answers for me. And that takes practice and that takes time. And it's something that, again, we don't practice in modern day society. So if we are supported and guided through this time by somebody else who understands it all, it can be so powerful.

And it can actually be an awakening, a spiritual awakening. And again, that was something that I felt a bit icky, a spiritual awakening. That sounds a bit dramatic. When I first heard that and I thought I need to sit with this. Why is it bringing that up? And when I delved into it more. It was a pushback from me of, I was very  theoretical in my life in terms of education and learning knowledge through that.

But actually when I sat with that, this side of me that, again, connecting with myself is something that I hadn't really experienced or practiced. And as I practiced that more and more I realized. Strengthened that connection to myself. , And I realized that this was an awakening, but when we don't understand what we're going through, we are not prepared or supported.

It can be so painful and isolating. We blame ourselves. We think we're failing. We feel guilty because we're not loving it all. Because we dunno what we're doing and we try harder and harder to be good and be the best mom and make it work. And I just didn't say how I was feeling because I was ashamed. So we stuff it down, plaster a smile on, and get on with it.

So as you can tell. Hearing about Tres essence, understanding, it changed everything for me. I was able to examine what worked in my life and what didn't. I then went on to study with Amy. I studied the theory and knowledge of trence and motherhood, how to be a coach, and a guide, and how to support mothers.

And I sat with myself time and time again. I examined what was going on for me. Over and over. I kept going over it, and even today, different things come up for me and I'm still examining what's right for me. Now, what's not right for me now? I feel passionate. I feel fulfilled. I'm clear on who I am and what I want and what success looks like for me now.

And it's something again that I question over and over. I realized that I was a people pleaser. I lacked so many boundaries and always tried to be the good girl. Understanding mares essence, being supported through it. Having the space and time to think about who  📍 I am now, what I want now to listen to myself.

What do I want now? What does success look like for me? What does it look like for me to be a good mother, to be a successful woman? And all of the other roles that I play in my life and how they intersect together, it's been the making of me and I feel like I'm just getting started.