Paging Dr. Mom
I was a medical student with two kids, trying to keep it all together. I constantly felt like I had to defend my decision to chase a meaningful career and raise a family at the same time. But professional women with children shouldn’t have to choose between ambition and motherhood.
Paging Dr. Mom is a podcast for the women doing it all and wondering if it’s ever enough. If you’ve ever felt the pressure to be everything to everyone, this space is for you. I’m Dr. Angelle Downey, a family physician, single mom, and host who believes we can thrive, not just survive, through the chaos.
With real talk, expert insights, honest stories, and a few good laughs, we’ll navigate the mental load, burnout, identity shifts, guilt, and joy that come with being a high-achieving woman in a messy, beautiful life. Together, we’ll cry, connect, and grow into the strong, wise women our kids are watching us become.
Let’s build a life we don’t need to apologize for and actually love living.
Paging Dr. Mom
7: Motherhood Without Sacrifice: How to Balance Career, Family, and Your Own Worth with Reesa Morala
Motherhood often comes with impossible expectations: sacrifice everything, excel at work, keep relationships perfect, and never show struggle. In this powerful conversation, licensed marriage and family therapist Reesa Morala shares how breaking generational patterns and practicing self-compassion can transform both moms and families. Drawing from her own journey, growing up in an emotionally immature home and parenting a medically complex child, Reesa blends professional expertise with lived experience to offer practical strategies for easing mom guilt, sharing the mental load, and modelling balance for your children. Tune in for an honest, empowering perspective on why taking care of yourself isn’t selfish.
You can continue the discussion with Reese by going to her website or Instagram. She is also sharing her free ER repair kit with you.
This episode includes a paid partnership with BetterHelp. Click the link, betterhelp.com/drdowney, to get 10% off your first month.
Click below to order a copy of my 365 day journal called Enough As I Grow
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🎵 Music: Upbeat Strings by Evan MacDonald
Motherhood today comes with a lot of unspoken rules To be the perfect mom, give everything to your kids, keep your career thriving and maintain a happy relationship, and somehow you still need to find time for yourself. No wonder so many of us feel stretched thin, guilty and like we're always falling short. But what if we stopped chasing perfection and started building families where emotional intelligence, compassion and balance were the real goals? In today's episode, we're going to talk about breaking generational patterns, letting go of the myth of the self-sacrificing good mom and learning how to give ourselves the same compassion that we so freely give to others. This is going to be an honest, empowering conversation that I think will hit home, for many of us felt like the only one trying to keep it together. You're not. We're going to laugh, cry, vent and thrive together. So here we go. Hello to all my busy mamas. I'm Dr Angela Downey and I'm so glad that you're hanging out with me on Paging, dr Mom.
Speaker 1:This podcast is for all of us who are just trying to keep it all together while juggling kids, careers and whatever else life throws our way. We're going to explore those moments that we definitely wouldn't be putting on our resumes Today. I'm so excited to welcome Risa Morella to the show. Risa is a licensed marriage and family therapist and best-selling author, tedx speaker and host of the Real Family Eats podcast. She's dedicated her career to helping couples and parents break generational patterns and build emotionally intelligent families. What makes her voice so powerful is that she's also walked the walk, balancing her own career with motherhood and even navigating the challenges of having a child with high medical needs in those early years. I know her insight on self-compassion, resilience and redefining what it means to be a good mom are going to resonate so deeply with all of us who are trying to juggle family, career and everything in between. Hi, reese, it's so great to have you on Paging Dr Mom, how are you doing today?
Speaker 2:I'm well. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:I'm really glad to have you as a guest on the show, so why don't we start by maybe having you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your journey to becoming a therapist?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. My name is Risa Morala and, as you mentioned, I am a marriage and family therapist. And then my journey to becoming a therapist gosh, it was a roundabout way. I actually went to my undergrad school for musical theater and then, at the end of my senior year, right before I was about to graduate, I got a medical diagnosis that took me out of the game, and so I just spent four years of university studying something that I was told I couldn't do in that way, and so I went back to the drawing board, and one of the things that I do remember very greatly is that during my time there, I had met a therapist who was life changing for me.
Speaker 2:Time there, I had met a therapist who was life-changing for me, and I thought well, you know, one of the things that I loved about theater was I loved that people would come up to me and say I was having a really bad day today and coming to the theater and seeing you, I was able to just forget about that for a couple of hours and enjoy my time, and so I thought well, you know, why not help them at a more bigger level on actually being able to deal with some of the stressors that come in life. And so I applied, having never taken a psychology course before. I applied to one of the most competitive programs in California and I got accepted, and that was history. That's where I've been for the last 10 plus years was history.
Speaker 1:That's where I've been for the last 10 plus years and at this point you've worked with so many families and you're also a mom, so can you share how your personal journey, especially those early challenges with your first child, how they shaped the way that you approach motherhood and your work as a therapist?
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. My, for a little bit of context, my oldest child. We started noticing some issues when he was three weeks old and I had gone to the doctor multiple times saying I think something is wrong. And most of them not most of them, all of them wrote me off as being a first time mother and said you don't know what you're talking about, you're just paranoid, this is normal. Out, you're just paranoid, this is normal.
Speaker 2:I was trained from a really young age, just based off of my household and some of those experiences, to kind of you don't question authority like that. And so instead I shut myself up and I kept going. And then, at three months of age, they finally started listening, because his weight had rapidly decreased, because he had stopped eating. He would not take breast bottle formula, it didn't matter, he would not eat. And at first they tried to write it off. You just don't know what you're doing here. Hand me the baby, I'll show you how to feed the baby. I handed that doctor, my child, and I said if it is a meat problem, please tell me how I can fix it, because I don't want my child to be suffering. And sure enough, they also couldn't get my child to eat, and so we began our journey. We spent first 18 months of life in and out of the hospital.
Speaker 2:I saw at that moment in time in my own motherhood journey just how little support and resources there were for the parents who were really struggling.
Speaker 2:You know, I was trying to care for this child that wouldn't eat and this is, you know, in my mind, a basic need that they needed to survive, and I couldn't even provide that.
Speaker 2:And so, having experienced that firsthand, originally, I started out my career working with adolescents directly and their families, thinking based on my own experience that you know, maybe I could help support the child and help them have a better life. And becoming a parent myself and then finding that there's just not enough support for the parents and making sure that they are taken care of and have a good foundation to be able to pour back into these children. I saw that firsthand and I made it my mission after that to how can I, how can I change this? And so I decided to become the change myself and I started focusing on working specifically with the parents and providing some of that support. And it really was all kind of stemmed from seeing the pain and experiencing the pain that I was having and that no one was there to really show up for me, especially on the professional support side of things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when babies are young, it's hard to know what's normal, what's not normal, but, being a first-time mom, it's easy for you to assume that you're the problem because you don't know what you're doing right. So there's a lot of insecurity there and that's unfortunate. That you felt really dismissed by the medical system and I hope that everything got sorted out and I'm glad that you're able to help families who are going through the same thing now.
Speaker 2:Yes, it did. My child is now in middle school and he's alive and well, and so I'm very grateful that I was able to find, through my own journey, the voice to be able to advocate for what he actually needed and getting him the support and that's what I love to do with parents today is really being in their corner and supporting them so that they can show up and support their children.
Speaker 1:Parents know their children best. Yeah, can you tell me a little bit about how you grew up and where you learned how to be a parent? Just by looking at your own parents?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I grew up the nice term that I like to use for it it's in an emotionally immature household, that's another way of saying. I grew up in an abusive home. So there was lots of physical abuse, emotional abuse that took place in my home environment. A lot of reasons why, and because of that, I didn't really have kind of the parent models. I was the parent, I was parentified from a very young age and so I didn't really have that model growing up.
Speaker 2:And some of the way that the abuse showed up is that we grew up very religious and so when my father, would you know, engage in the physical abuse, my mothers would not intervene. The Bible says he's the head of the households, he's the disciplinarian. We can't kind of show up in that way. So I didn't have even that protection, that mother kind of showing up to protect me, and so I had always had this war internally because, as a means of trying to protect myself, my protective move that I developed was being a perfectionist. How good could I be in order to protect myself, to not get some of this abuse that was coming my way? So I was having that trying to be perfect to please them while at the same time, experiencing very real feelings that this doesn't feel great in my body, it doesn't feel good, it doesn't feel right, and that was a big battle that I had been trying to piece through.
Speaker 2:And so, as I mentioned, when I went to undergrad school, I had met a therapist, and she was the first person who ever actually told me that was abuse, that was not okay.
Speaker 2:And all of a sudden it was just like oh really, that's what was happening internally, that it was bringing my attention to that, and I didn't know that at the time because my home environment was all I knew, and so I didn't know that there was something different. And so the minute that she kind of brought my attention to that, I started thinking, okay, how do I do this? I don't want to repeat this, I don't want this to be something that continues to happen, because I know what it feels like, and so I didn't really know what it was going to look like. I didn't have that model to look towards, and so a lot of it has become really figuring out what are my core values for me and what aligns for me, and how can I really show up in my parenting in alignment with that and even though, again, I don't know what it looks like. I didn't see it modeled, but all I did know going into parenthood was that I wanted that to end with me. I was going to be the last person that experienced it.
Speaker 1:And you were determined to parent differently than how you were raised.
Speaker 2:Yes, if there was anything at my core, it was that.
Speaker 1:So for anyone who's listening and trying to break free from any of these generational patterns, where's a good, realistic place to start any of these generational patterns?
Speaker 2:where's a good, realistic place to start? I think the best place to start is first we have to be aware and making the implicit like if that's similar as I was mentioning, if that's something behind and you're feeling that pit in your gut that's going, something's off here, that's a great place to start and really zoom out and go what is my body trying to bring my attention towards and really making that explicit. So those implicit feelings that you might be feeling behind the scenes, making it explicit what is happening, what is going on, what our body is trying to communicate to us, then we can actually start intervening because we know what we need to intervene against, versus if we're trying to kind of fumble around and it's really hard to get honest with yourself, to acknowledge and to say those things out loud. I can't tell you the number of parents that I've worked with that said. No, if I say that out loud, it's going to make it real and that feels really scary.
Speaker 1:And it is scary and, like you said, sometimes you don't even know what the problem is. Like you want it. You know that you know you're struggling now with the way that you grew up, but you don't know what it is that you're struggling with. And having somebody who's able to work through those things with you, I think, is really important.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and you can't know what you don't know. Just like I said, you know, when I went to the therapist and all of a sudden even though maybe on the outside everyone's looking in and going oh yeah, that's definitely like that's not okay, that your father's putting hands around your neck I didn't know that because that's all I knew, and so to kind of have that external person be able to show me and to shine a light on something that I wasn't even aware of was incredibly helpful for me, yeah.
Speaker 1:And also growing up. We're put in these situations sometimes where we feel uncomfortable whether it's you know that uncle at Christmas who kisses you on the lips and you feel uncomfortable with that and people tell you oh, he does it with everybody, it's fine, just do it and get over it. We're put in these situations where we feel uncomfortable and we're told to kind of stuff our feelings down and that just makes it easier for other people to take advantage of you and it is this generational pattern and we don't learn how to speak up for ourselves as a young child sometimes.
Speaker 2:I absolutely agree, and I think that's part of the difficulty, because it's now a recalibration as adults, of learning to tune back into that feeling, that emotion that, like you said many times, we get trained to ignore. And so then we get good at it because that's the expectation and I think so many children we want to please, and so they say the grownup says, oh, don't worry about it, that's not. You know, you're being dramatic, right. And so it's like, oh, okay, and so then we get good at turning it off. And now as adults it does take conscious effort to start giving space to that little child and the very real feelings that they were having.
Speaker 1:Another way that women are raised is we're taught that we should be selfless and sacrifice things, which often leads to this being the good mom, right? The perfect mom where your dreams, your career, your health, they all get affected. So why do you think the belief of the perfect mom or the good mom? It's still persistent?
Speaker 2:I think it's persistent because, first of all, there's the generation battle that we're talking about. It's been passed down. That idea of what you ought to be doing, what you should be doing, has been passed down for years and years. And now we've added social media. So now not only are we hearing it from our neighbor or from our mom or mother-in-law of what we should be doing, because that's what they did, that's what was expected of them, but now we're seeing it on social media, we're seeing it just pervasively, and so it makes it, I think, even more difficult to go against the grain.
Speaker 2:Because when we go against the grain, people start looking, people start commenting, not because it's necessarily you're doing anything wrong, but I think it's coming from a place of jealousy. Why do you get to take time for yourself? And I don't? You know, I'm still stuck in this idea that I have to sacrifice, and so, instead of acknowledging that within ourselves, we turn it on that person who's actually taking time and going no, you shouldn't do that. That makes you a bad mom.
Speaker 2:And really it's coming from that place where we're going hey, that's not fair. I want that too, but I'm told that I'm going to be a bad mom if I do it, and so I think because of that it just becomes this storm that is really hard to break and when you try to break it it feels lonely, it feels like you're going to get the finger pointed at you and get a little tsk, tsk and shame. So many of the parents that I've heard and worked with they will say that when they try to take it they're just filled with such shame and such guilt and really at the end of the day it's not necessarily coming from their body telling them that it's bad, but all of these external messages that are telling them it's not okay for you to do that.
Speaker 1:I went to medical school. I had two kids and it was quite busy and I had a teacher once tell me that you know I was putting myself, my needs, my career ahead of my kids and my family and it made me feel like such a horrible person and horrible mom and I carried that guilt with me for a really long time.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:So it's, it's I feel like it's society. We get these messages that we need to sacrifice everything just for our kids, right? We're not allowed to have dreams. We can't have the careers that we want.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and I think the unfortunate consequence is that we're getting moms that are burnt out, that are lonely and when their kids leave which is what we want we want them to launch we're left with these empty shells of a person who has forgotten who they are, what they like and how to take time for them, and it's incredibly sad and wholeheartedly believe it needs to be a societal shift that we really need to move away from the judgment and more into support of hey, I want you to take time for yourself. How can I, can I watch your children so that you can go have some recharge time? That's what we need.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I got comments like aren't you fulfilled by your children? Why do you need this? You're putting yourself ahead of your kids, you're being selfish, and these are like direct messages that I was being told. That was really tough and it made me feel bad for having dreams and it was okay for dad to go and have dreams and do what he wanted, but it was different messaging that I was getting.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And in fact, I think for men, what I've seen in the folks that I've worked with is it's almost this, this opposite message, that when they want to spend time at home, they get the guilt. It's like you should be out there, you should be, be the bread winner, and so it's this. It's absolutely. I think it's just all skewed in the way that we we talk and we judge parents. I think we're very quick to judge.
Speaker 1:What are other, healthier models that we can replace this good mom myth with?
Speaker 2:Well, as I mentioned, I think a big piece of it is we need neighbors, we need the people around us to step up and say let me support you, let me champion you and cheerlead you to be able to have a thriving family and a thriving you and I think it is one of the recalibrations that I do often in my work is when you are about to sacrifice something and deny yourself something, putting yourself fast forward, and your children are about to make that same decision and they come to you and they ask for would it be selfish for me to go take some decompression time and just go to the store by myself?
Speaker 2:And if the answer that you're going to give to those future children of yours that you love so much is no, of course that's not you to deserve that same compassion, that same grace and love that I think so many of us parents want for our children. And so it's a little bit easier to see it in their lens that that we wouldn't tell these same things to our children. And if you wouldn't tell your children that the little us inside of it doesn't deserve it either.
Speaker 1:Yeah, self-compassion is so important, but for busy moms with these endless to-do lists and self-compassion can feel almost impossible. So what are? Some simple ways, everyday ways that we can practice self-compassion.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one of the ones that I really love, and it takes some work, and so you kind of have to do it in stages to finally get it towards yourself, but it is maybe coming up with a mantra. So for me it's may you have peace, may you have kindness and love. And for me it took starting with somebody external, who was someone that I could readily say that to without even hesitation, and for me it was my children. I thought, oh yes, of course I would wish all these beautiful things to my children. So I would start there and every day I would just wish those things to my children.
Speaker 2:And then the next step I leveled up, once I got comfortable with that is extending it to someone who maybe I didn't want to say it towards. So the person who cut me off in traffic, you know, in my car, even though everything in me was like, oh, you just cut me off in traffic. I extended them, those same things, and pretty soon after I got comfortable with that, I walked it in towards myself and started saying it to myself on a daily basis May you have peace, may you have love and kindness. And so finding and again, that takes me two seconds out of my day. I'm like you said I have two children, I work full time in a practice and being able to just take those two seconds and offer myself that same love and compassion, just in reminding me that I deserve peace, I deserve kindness and I deserve love.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it takes practice, and you need to practice on things that you know you have to believe what you're saying. So if that means you need to say it to somebody else, to learn, to practice it and then to slowly turn that back to you, I love that. I think that's such a great idea. What do you say to moms who are feeling guilty for pursuing their goals?
Speaker 2:First I would say I feel you, yes, that makes a lot of sense because there's good reasons that those messages are out there. Those are real feelings. And then again, just really echoing it back to if these goals are something that you would look at your child and go, yes, I want that for you, that sounds beautiful, go get that, go get that again. Doing that practice and walking it back to yourself of, hey, I also deserve those beautiful things. And really, what's so wonderfully beautiful and why I love working with parents is it's a ripple effect that when our children see us taking that space and time to reach for those goals, man, they are empowered to know, hey, I want that too.
Speaker 2:Mom can do it, me too, like that's what I want to do, and I see that so much. And gosh, it's just like when you see it in their eyes and they're like yeah, you know, get that. Like my children, they're so wonderful. You know, when I have some of these accomplishments, they have gotten to the point where they celebrate. They're like, yeah, mom, like, oh, that's so cool, I want to do that too. And it's just, it's a wonderful external reminder of not only are we doing it for us, but it actually models and gives them space to do it for themselves.
Speaker 1:Absolutely no. That's a great lesson to teach your kids. Women often carry this huge mental load. Right, we're remembering Halloween's coming up, we need to get some Halloween costumes ready, who needs a dentist appointment? Who needs to go see the doctor? So we're carrying this big mental load and we're still busy with our practices and taking care of patients. So do you have any advice for women to help prevent burnout?
Speaker 2:as much as it's hard to do is, are there little things that we can delegate? And so maybe it is sitting down if you have a partner in your life and saying this is what I need, and speaking again making it explicit that these are the needs. And this would be so helpful if you could step up and, just if you see the dishes need to be done, jump in, do the dishes. That would, oh gosh, that would feel so great. It's one more thing, because, right, having to tell someone to do the dishes, that's just adding to our load. So sit down, make a game plan with your partner, sit down with your children, especially if they're at an age where they can start contributing to some of those things and make it natural to want to engage.
Speaker 2:Because this is our house, hey, let's all take care of it. Let's have a day where we can sit down. And what are the ways? Hey, little Jimmy, little Sally, what are some of the ways that you want to take care of our house today and lead from that place and yes, it may not be one of the things I had to kind of talk myself through when I started having my children help out is that their help may not look as great Like. They may not load the dishwasher in the exact way that I would like it loaded, which is hard. At the same time, it's okay to delegate some of that, to say want to give myself some of that space and time, and I also want to embolden you with the ability to step up and to show up. Here are my needs and give them a chance to meet your needs.
Speaker 1:One of the common. I had to laugh because one of the common arguments I guess you'll call it one of the disagreements that we have in my household is how do you pack up the dishwasher? What's the best way to do it right? I like the tines on the forks to be standing up, my partner likes them down, and sometimes I need to remind myself that there are multiple different ways to do the same task and although I feel like my way is the best way, ultimately, as long as the forks get washed and but it's it's hard to. You have to let go of some things and learn that other people can still get the job done and that it's okay to let them do it.
Speaker 2:I'm also not really good with asking for help, and that's something I really needed to get over yeah, asking for help is hard because, you know, going back to this idea of being a good mom there's this pressure to do it all. You should be able to do it all without asking for help, and so I think asking for help sometimes becomes synonymous with a weakness that I can't do at all, and gosh the fact that it is so hard to ask for help. Being able to ask for help, in my opinion, is the exact opposite of a weakness, because it takes a lot of courage, it takes so much vulnerability to say I need some help.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a big one, but once you start it gets easier and easier.
Speaker 2:Yes, and you start to feel the relief of that and it's like that actually feels good, that my partner can step up and take control of the dishes or step in and schedule the doctor's appointment. And it got done. Maybe it didn't get done on my exact timeline it got done.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I remember my kids would leave their toys on the ground and sometimes I found it easier to just go and pick it up myself. Otherwise I'd be showing them and that would take time show them how to pick it up and put it away, and then it'd be frustrating because they'd forget one toy or not. But you really need to take the time to teach other people what it is that you need, because if you keep doing everything yourself, you're not going to get anywhere and you're just going to feel overwhelmed and really burnt out.
Speaker 2:Not only burnt out and overwhelmed, but I think what I've seen is resentment starts to build because you're feeling like those needs aren't getting met. And then we get frustrated why can't you meet my needs? Why can't you just intuit that this would be helpful? And unfortunately, when we're trying to wish that our partner could read between the lines, it really becomes unfair to them and really, at the end of the day, it's unfair to us because we don't get our needs met. And so, like you said, when we sit down and we kind of give them a roadmap, it is work at the front end, but gosh, it relieves us of so much work in the long game because they know now what that expectation is. Everybody's on the same page.
Speaker 1:Your partner's not a mind reader and you know I used to take the approach of using passive, aggressive comments to get my partner to do things, but it really didn't go anywhere. So, learning to use good language and making sure that everything gets communicated with everybody, just to make sure that everything is getting done and you're getting what you need.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:So you help couples create emotionally intelligent family systems. What is that? What does that mean?
Speaker 2:intelligent family systems. What is that? What does that mean? Just as we were talking about, is learning to shift the language, to actually give airtime to what your needs are, knowing that it's okay to ask for your needs. How to ask for them.
Speaker 2:Like you said, I'm completely guilty of those passive, aggressive comments too, before I learned other ways to do it, because that was what was modeled, that okay, you know you should be reading between the lines and so instead really emboldening couples that I work with and parents to be able to know and to feel confident that it's okay for me to say my needs, there are definitely ways that we can package it so that it can be received. So, if we come charging at our partner, you always do this. You never do that. They're immediately going to shut down. It doesn't matter what we say. Their ears are turned off. So can we package it differently? Absolutely, here's how we do that. It also does mean that you can speak your needs. Your needs are important, they have validity and I want to make sure they get heard. This is the way that we get them heard that you can speak your needs. Your needs are important, they have validity and I want to make sure they get heard. This is the way that we get them heard and so being able to empower them to know that, making space for their own emotions. Again with that idea that we, I think, have perfected this idea of stuffing that discomfort down because we're told you need to just, you know, shut it down, move on, get over it. And so some of that reprogramming is tuning back in and saying, hey, what is this emotion coming up for me?
Speaker 2:I think, so many times because as a society there's not enough value on all emotions. We kind of label what are good emotions and bad emotions, and so we know some of the basics and I think we were a lot more in tune with, like joy and happiness and excitement and surprise, like those are the good emotions. But when I ask people to, okay, what are some of the ones that maybe don't feel great, I get anger and sadness and frustration and that's about it. They can't go further Because, again, we're not trained to look there. That's the scary place, we don't go in there, and so it's really helping them find the language to label it, making the implicit explicit and giving it airtime and giving and knowing that it has value.
Speaker 2:What is that value, what is it trying to communicate? And let's move from that place instead of, maybe, our protective move, because, unfortunately, I think, as as a response to like shoving it down, we get these protective moves, whether it be I'm the person that withdraws and shuts down, and like emotions what emotions? I'm purely like this robot, as a means to to cope with with that feeling. And or maybe you get the person who then gets a ton of anxiety and they need answers now, like I need it, and they're the person that's texting you you know a chapter in a text message because they're like I need this answer. This is the only way that I'm going to get soothed right now, and so it's really retraining some of that and finding other ways to achieve safety in the emotions.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Can you talk a little bit about you had a child who had some high medical needs in the early years. How did that affect your relationship?
Speaker 2:So for me, what ended up coming from that is it was an emotional toll on the both of us. For me it was an emotional toll because the only way that I found to be able to get food in my child at that point, without a feeding tube, was to do what I now know is kind of a version of dream feeds, which is I would rock him right to the point he was about to fall asleep and his instincts would kick in and I could get him to latch, and then I would have to hand express milk into him while he slept, and so I would try to keep him sleeping so that he would just naturally be swallowing, and I'd have to weigh him to make sure he was getting enough food in his body, but again trying to make sure that he didn't wake up, because if he woke up that was going to be the end of it, and so that whole idea of sleep. When baby sleeps, I couldn't do that. I had to feed him. That was the only time he would eat, so I was not sleeping. There were multiple times where I just felt delirious. I had mastitis several times because I'm having to hand express. There was no point in pumping, it was just going to be wasted because he wasn't drinking anything. That was the only way to get it into him, and so I think from that there were multiple times where I was almost kind of catatonic. I just had nothing left and it was leaving my partner feeling disconnected from me, me feeling disconnected from my partner.
Speaker 2:There was the stressors because for him, so part of his medical condition is he had what they've continued to title unexplained vomiting, and so, without any rhyme or reason, he would just start vomiting outside of the house. Because we were just concerned that if we went outside of the house I couldn't get him to sleep properly, to be able to get food to replace all of the vomiting. And not only that. Well, if he vomited, it would be he would go through 10 different clothing changes a day, if not more. Mom and dad are going through those same clothing changes.
Speaker 2:It was a feat to get us out the door and we did not live in an area that we had family, and so to try to ask that for someone else to take care of while we could just have a date, that felt really scary, and so we didn't. We didn't go out of the house, taking a trip to the grocery store. It was like, okay, you go, I'll stay with him. I'm already, you know, I've been up with him for 12 hours, I'm exhausted, but it's the only way we can get groceries today, and so we were just purely on survival mode and it didn't leave anything else for us to have a relationship. And I was also coming off of. I had a lot of scar tissue after my delivery, so then we also weren't being sexually intimate because I was in a ton of pain, and so there was just so much disconnect that it made it really difficult. We weren't necessarily fighting because we had no energy to fight.
Speaker 1:We just weren't connected. Sounds like you're both just in survival mode. Absolutely, that's a great way to describe it, yeah. So it sounds like the two of you were pretty isolated during this time, which made it hard to get any kind of support systems in Support systems are pretty important.
Speaker 2:Can you talk about that? Yeah, it was very difficult and I think that, again going back to why I specialize in what I do now is because it was really hard to find even just professionals therapists that understood what he was. He worked remotely, so he didn't have that natural, you know, go to the office and building friends that way, and so it was really difficult to find a support system, and I think that's one of the things that I wish we had more of. In the times that we did reach out. You know, going back to emotionally immature parents, I had tried to reach out to my mother and express I even professed it with hey, I'm just, can you please just be a mother for me right now? That's what I need. And I tried to express what was happening and I was dismissed and invalidated. And so it's those times where, when we would try to reach out, we kind of almost got like that's, you know, that's, that's a you problem, where you, you're just not a good mom. And so I think my, my bid and what I've tried to educate folks is that we need to to shift that and to to reach out, out especially to new parents, not to judge, but to say can I cook you a meal today? Can I clean your house? Oftentimes that was.
Speaker 2:The other thing I found is that when people wanted to come over, they just wanted to hold the baby. The baby was struggling, the baby's vomiting or needing to eat, and I'm the only person that can feed him, and so it would have been helpful Can you please do the dishes? Because that's something I don't want to do today. I'm exhausted, and so that's what I encourage folks now. Is that to be the support that I wish I had, because I think it would have made a world of difference to be able to have someone that felt like they were in my corner, not to judge me, not to tell me what I was doing wrong. My inner critic was doing enough of that work. I just needed someone to show up with kind of unconditional, positive regard and saying how can I best support you today?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I remember somebody my mother-in-law coming over and doing the dishes and I was like no, no, no, no, no, don't do that, Cause I think I needed to. It made me feel like I was less of a mom if I couldn't handle all those things by myself, and I really, really struggled with accepting help and asking for help.
Speaker 1:It's I don't know if it's shame that keeps us locked in this. You know inability to ask for help, but life is much, much easier when you do let someone else do your dishes or help you out, do some laundry, keep the kids or go shopping for you.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And, like you said, the shame, or if it's guilt, or if it's whatever these emotions are that are coming up, it is very difficult. You're so right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, If a listener is sitting here today thinking I'm exhausted and stretched right to the limits and I'm not sure how to do things differently, what's one small shift that could make this week a little lighter for her?
Speaker 2:One small shift that I usually tell my families is take the extra one minute to enjoy your coffee or to slow down that meal instead of scarfing it because, like you know two minutes, let me shove something in my mouth Just add an extra minute. If the kids are crying, I'm here to tell you they can cry for that one more extra minute. It'll be okay on their mental wellness. They will survive While you just take and you you slow down on that coffee, you slow down on that meal. That it's okay to do that and it's 30 seconds, an extra minute of your time. It does make a difference.
Speaker 1:So just to slow it down for just a little bit.
Speaker 2:Just a little bit, you're worth it.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, absolutely. We seem to find time to scroll numbly through social media for a while, so we do have a little bit of time. You do have that 30 seconds or that minute just to take for yourself and take a big, deep breath and appreciate where you are right in that moment.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Risa, I love quotes. Is there a particular quote that you love and would like to share with us?
Speaker 2:Yes, so in service to everything that I like to do, as I mentioned I think I've said it a couple of times now, just in this one interview of making the implicit explicit, maya Angelou has a quote that says there is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I think that's why. It's because we feel that dissonance, because there's a piece of you that we're not honoring, and how can we make space and time to bring it to light and to tell that story?
Speaker 1:I love Maya Angelou. She does such a great job. She's got some great quotes. Risa, how can listeners find you?
Speaker 2:best way to find me is through my website. It's embracerenewaltherapycom, my social media. It's all the same thing Embrace Renewal Therapy. Try to keep it consistent. You can find resources on there. You can find ways to connect with me. I do offer intensives weekend intensives, as well as many intensives here in California or you can come to my office, I can come to you. I also do virtual workshops that are available to anybody that has an internet connection across the world, and so those ones are parenting workshops, couples workshops, to be able to again just provide as much support for you and your journey as I possibly can.
Speaker 1:And you also have a free ER repair kit when you sign up for your newsletter.
Speaker 2:Is that correct? It is, and you can find that you just the minute you get on there it'll pop up. You can put in your email address and get that free ER kit. I often again, if you follow me on social media or through that newsletter, I also put out lots of freebies just to be able to support you in your journey.
Speaker 1:Apologize. My cat seems to be upset for some reason. Risa, thank you so much for being here with me today, and I know our listeners are going to walk away with so many valuable takeaways, especially around self-compassion and breaking those old patterns that don't serve us anymore. I really appreciate your honesty and the way that you blend both personal experience with professional wisdom. This has been such a meaningful conversation and I'm so grateful that you've shared your time with us, and thank you to all of you hanging out with us. On Paging Dr Mom. If you enjoyed today's episode, go ahead and hit that follow or subscribe button so you don't miss what's coming next, and if you want to keep the conversation going, you can find me over on Instagram at drangeladowney. I'd love to hear from you. That is it for today's episode of Paging Dr Mom. If it made you smile, nod along or feel just a little more seen, then go ahead and hit that follow button and share it with a friend who needs to hear it. Take care for now You're doing better than you think.