Why Motherhood Feels Different for Gifted Women (It's Not Your Imagination)

Have you ever wondered why motherhood feels so much more intense for you than it seems to for other women?

In this episode, I explore four patterns I've consistently observed in gifted mothers throughout my years as a psychologist—and why understanding these patterns can help you parent with greater self-compassion while continuing to flourish yourself.

In this episode, we'll explore:

•  Why motherhood often feels different for gifted women
•  The gifts—and burdens—of noticing more 
•  When parenting responsibility quietly becomes over-responsibility 
•  The importance of continuing to grow as a person while raising your children 

Reflection Questions

•  Which of these patterns resonates most with me in this season of motherhood? 
•  Where has my giftedness been one of my greatest gifts as a mother? 
•  What part of me also needs to be nurtured this season? 

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ADDITIONAL RESOURCES & LINKS

• Take the quiz: Are You a Gifted Woman in Hiding?
• Follow me on Instagram: @dr.andrealein
• Learn more: andrealein.com

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Transcript

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Have you ever looked around at other mothers and wondered why does this feel so much more intense for me? Why do I replay conversations with the teachers? Or why do I notice subtle changes in my child's mood? Why do I spend hours researching the right decision? Why do I love motherhood deeply and yet sometimes feel like there's a part of me that's longing for something more? If you have ever wondered any one of those things, today's episode is for you. Welcome to the Power to Flourish podcast, where science meets the art of a beautiful life. I'm Dr. Andrea Lyon, positive psychologist, giftedness expert and coach, and modern-day spiritual godmother to brilliant, deep-feeling women. This isn't just another self-help podcast. It's a sanctuary, a sacred space to come back to yourself. Each week we'll explore the emotional experience of gifted, sensitive women and what it means to live a life that feels as beautiful as it may look. Because flourishing isn't a luxury. It's your birthday, and your life is waiting. This is the Power to Flourish Podcast. Can you believe we are already in the month of August and it is back to school season? It happens so fast. I don't have young children anymore, but I have friends who do. And it's like we get into the summer, we anticipate the summer, and then we blink our eyes before we know it. The summer is wrapping up and we're getting ready. If we're mothers specifically, then we are preparing our families to transition into the new fall mode. So as families do that, I decided I wanted to dedicate this month to a topic I have not explored much on the podcast yet, which is interesting because for most of my career, I have been helping parents. So this month, I'm gonna do a little mini-series specifically on parenting, especially for all of you gifted women out there. And we're gonna spend the next four weeks talking about gifted children, school, advocacy, helping your gifted child flourish. But before we talk about our children, I want to begin with someone who often gets overlooked in these conversations. And that is, you guessed it, the gifted mother. You've probably never even heard that phrase before, but I'm gonna use it to dive into what I want to talk about today. So I have had the pleasure of working with probably hundreds of parents at this point over the course of nearly two decades. And most of those families and parents I have worked with have had gifted children, twice exceptional children. If you're wondering what that is, I have recorded other podcasts on that topic. You can go check those out after this one. But in all of my experience, I have had the pleasure of working with so many women, so many incredible moms, who honestly, it's just it's truly been one of my favorite parts of the work that I've done, which is hard to say because I love working with the kids, I love working with teenagers, I love working with young adults. But there's something about working with moms, probably because I have been a mom. I'm still a mom, even though I'm in a totally different stage of my parenthood journey at the moment. But moms have a lot on their plate, right? We have so much on our plate. And so I want to share kind of like a composite of all of these mothers that I have worked with, that I still work with to this day, even though I don't talk about that too much on this podcast. But I do. So tell me if any of this rings true for you. I worked with a mother who, and actually many, who constantly second-guessed herself. And particularly by the time a mom gets to a place where she's working with me, that usually means that there have been a lot of challenges to the point where someone has reached out to get extra support, right? So by that point, she has sort of lost trust in her own ability or her own uh sense of like wisdom and judgment when it comes to parenting for lots of different reasons. I've worked with mothers who have researched every educational decision because she wanted to get it right, quote unquote. I have worked with moms who have felt like they were too much compared with other moms. And I've worked with plenty of moms who at some point realized that their intensity wasn't a flaw per se, but they realized it was part of their own giftedness. Now, I myself have struggled with all of these things at different points in my parenting journey. And so I want to normalize this for you and tell you that over the years and years and years of working with moms, I've noticed there are just certain themes that come up again and again in conversations with moms. I'm referring to you here in this episode as gifted mothers. It has a nice ring to it. So I first want to just explicitly say, and I have said this in other episodes, but if this is your first one today, I want you to hear this. Giftedness doesn't just automatically disappear once you turn 18. It's not just a childhood thing. Many people think giftedness is simply about, you know, IQ or academic achievement or educational support. All those things are part of the giftedness equation and conversation. But when we are talking about adulthood, giftedness is still present and often looks like deep curiosity in incredible pattern recognition, emotional intensity, moral sensitivity, creativity like out the wazoo, complexity, this insatiable like drive to understand everything, and a very rich inner life, just to name a few things. And those traits do not disappear when we become mothers, right? If we were that way as children and we grow up, usually they're still parts of who we are, and we just kind of get used to them and we're doing life, and then boom, we become moms. And if you're anything like the moms that I've worked with or like myself, a lot of those things become amplified. So here are four ways that giftedness often shows up in motherhood. These are the things that I've seen time and time again, and I want you to just reflect on your own experience and see what resonates with you. The first one, you notice more. You notice little things that other people might not notice, like the mood shifts in the home, specifics around friendships and dynamics and these like subtle emotional cues. You might be more attuned to these developmental differences, either amongst your children or with your child compared to other children, and definitely like classroom or any kind of social dynamic that you pick up with your kid amongst other children. And this, my friend, is one of your greatest gifts. So don't feel bad that you notice more. But it totally can become emotionally exhausting because your sweet gifted brain rarely stops processing. Seeing more often means caring more unless we learn healthy ways to put some of it down. The second thing that I've often seen in gifted moms is you feel a deep responsibility. Now, hear me out. I know every mom, gifted or not, they love their kids. They they feel deeply. And many gifted moms don't simply love deeply, but they feel deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply responsible. I know that's like a funny thing to say because again, there are plenty of women, and I don't mean to make this out into a just a gifted thing, but hear me out. Gifted women, because of their capability in their younger years, often develop patterns, not always, but often develop patterns in their families of origin and then outside in the world in school and later in the workplace, where they are extremely responsible because they are capable for things like decisions. So with your kids, it may be educational decisions, right? Emotional well-being, different opportunities, friendships, future outcomes. Like when it comes to our kids, the responsibility of parenthood can quietly become over responsibility again because of the patterns that we have developed in our childhood into adulthood if we're not careful as we come into motherhood. Like if we haven't done that work to really be aware and do things differently, this very much can carry into our parenting. And with a lot of the moms that I have worked with, this has very much been the case. And yes, I'm raising my hand. This was definitely for me. So as a reminder, sometimes, oftentimes, our greatest strengths become our greatest burdens down the road. Number three, you think deeply. Okay, again, this is a very typical characteristic for gifted individuals in general. And gifted women rarely settle for surface level explanations, in my experience. You are constantly asking things like, why? Why? What's underneath this? How is this impacting this? How does this connect? What am I missing? Right. I need to know all the information to make decisions, to see the patterns. Like we're just like thinking in these very complex ways. And that depth can help your child feel deeply understood. You might feel like you have a really good grasp on your children, and it can be a real benefit. And it's one of the reasons why so many gifted mothers often become such extraordinary advocates. But also, as you can imagine, that deep thinking can sometimes tire you out. And the fourth common pattern that I see is you still need to grow. Now, many gifted women love motherhood. Absolutely love motherhood. I mean, I would say most of the parents that I've ever worked with have loved being a parent. And some of these incredibly bright, amazing, ambitious women choose intentionally to stay home because it aligns with their values and it brings them deep joy to be home with their kiddos. And it's also true that many of these women discover at some point that there's another part of them that's still hungry. They have this, you know, hunger to learn and to learn more and to continue to grow and to maybe write or create in some other way to solve problems, to build things, whatever their particular talent and skill set is. Maybe it's research, maybe it's having, you know, like really deep, meaningful conversations that when you're home every day with a one or two or three-year-old, you know, maybe that's not happening as much as it used to be. They have this hunger, and it's completely understandable to use their intellect in challenging ways. And I think sometimes, especially today, uh, even though I think the the conversation around motherhood and what women decide to do, there's there's a lot more grace and area for differences. I want to speak specifically to the gifted woman right now who happens to be struggling with this. These desires of yours are not evidence that something is wrong with you. It doesn't mean that you don't love your children as much as another mom. They are part of who you have always been. And this is what I want you to hear. When you grow up from being a gifted little girl into now being a gifted woman and now being a mom who happens to be gifted, this part of you doesn't just poof disappear, right? So loving motherhood and enjoying it and savoring it, you know, the good times, the bad times, all the ugly, messy things in between, doesn't eliminate this very natural, very like wired in you need to keep growing as a person. And I would argue all people have that, like that need inside of them to grow. It's just like, you know, we're created to keep growing and and developing through adulthood. But I think the gifted woman can feel it quite intensely because especially in motherhood and especially during certain phases of motherhood, uh, it can be really challenging to figure out how to create the space and the time to do that. A lot of the women that I've worked with through the years carry unnecessary guilt around this part of them that knows they're they're not being fulfilled in the same way. It doesn't mean that they don't feel fulfillment in raising their children. It's just that there's another side of them or parts of them that aren't being fulfilled in the child rearing itself, if that makes sense, right? Both of these things can be true. And that's what I want you to hear. And it's very normal. You can be completely head over heels with your kids and love being, for example, a stay-at-home mom for however much time you get to do that, or maybe, you know, maybe you have a part-time job and still recognize there's this part of you that, you know, feels like, oh, I I don't know, I feel like I gotta do something. I gotta do something more. That's not a bad thing. It's not a bad thing. It's just actually really important for you to have that awareness so you can ask yourself, okay, what do I do with that? Or maybe when do I do something with that? So as always, I want to close with a few questions. And yes, in these back to school episodes, I am again trying to keep these a little bit more on the shorter side because I know we are busy, busy, busy. So we're gonna keep this nice, sweet, and short. And I want you to ask yourself, which of these four experiences resonated most with me? So again, the first one was noticing everything. You're you're like picking up all the subtle details. The second one is you feel deeply and you feel this like intense responsibility that often can cross the line into over-responsibility. The third is you think deeply. So you rarely you you're rarely satisfied with the surface level explanation of things. And the fourth one is you can feel this intense, like insatiable hunger to grow even when you are doing so many other things as a mom in the day-to-day. Which of those feel like they resonate most with you in this season? And the other thing I want you to ask yourself is where has my giftedness been one of my greatest gifts as a mother? Because these things, even though they can send us in a certain direction that sometimes is unhelpful, all of these things actually benefit and can certainly can benefit our child and the quality of our own life and our experience as mothers when we see them, we're aware of them, and we very intentionally weave them into our parenting journey. And lastly, where has my giftedness or how has my giftedness quietly become a burden, particularly in the parenting journey that you're on? So as your children head back to school this month and as you get things prepared and as you're doing all the things for everyone else, I want to encourage you that you don't just ask, what do my children need this fall? I want you to be a little selfish and ask, what part of me needs to be nurtured this season? What part of me? It can sometimes be a really small part. Sometimes we just overlook it. And I think it's important for us not to overlook it because when we attend to those parts, whether big or small, we will flourish. And that is the whole thing here, love. When you're flourishing, when you're a flourishing woman and a flourishing mother, you are whole and that ripples out to everyone around you, most importantly, your family. So for you, maybe that nurturing this fall will be something like reading a thought-provoking book that you've been wanting to read that's just like not part of like what you normally think about, right? Maybe it's taking a class. I know that takes up a lot of time, but maybe you've been really wanting to take a class and learn something. Maybe it's pottery, or maybe it's a more, you know, intellectually like academic type class. Maybe it's foreign language that you can, you know, do on an app, but you want to learn something. Maybe it's writing again and creating a little time, even just like a 15-minute block in your day where you can start writing or maybe painting or making music or some kind of creative project. The goal, of course, is not to become busier, even though that might sound like what I just suggested is adding more to your plate. But the goal really is to remain fully alive as a gifted woman who happens to also be a mother, which is so, so important to show your child what it looks like to flourish. And the last thing I want to leave you with today is this your giftedness isn't something you need to overcome in order to become a wonderful mother. In many ways, I think it's one of the greatest gifts you bring to your family. It's who you are, it's how you're wired. And so the invitation is to learn to carry those gifts with wisdom, self-compassion, and enough space that you too continue to flourish. So I hope this month lights something beautiful for you as you get all your kids ready for a new school year. I love this time of year because it kind of feels like this new fresh energy coming in the fall. I really can't believe it's already August. But this is a great time to be reflecting on the kind of woman and the kind of mom you want to be as we head into a new school year. So, with that, I hope you have a wonderful day and I will see you right back here next week on the Power to Flourish. Until then, keep flourishing. Thank you for listening to the Power to Flourish podcast. I hope today's conversation left you feeling more seen, more supported, and more deeply connected to yourself. And if this episode resonated, would you take a moment to subscribe, leave a review, or share it with a friend? It's one of the best ways to help this work reach the women who need it most. You'll find show notes, links, and resources from today's episode at powertoflourish.com. And now just a quick reminder: this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. Not therapy, medical advice, or substitute for professional support. Listening doesn't make me your therapist or doctor. If you're looking for a coach, you know where to find me. All right, now you're not going to be able to do it.