The Truth of Motherhood

Cat and Jayenna discuss becoming mothers and how the reality of motherhood compares to their childhood fantasies. From delivery to teenagers, nothing about raising children was what they'd thought it would be. They hope to provide support and community for other mothers facing the same difficulties. We're not alone. None of us are alone.

https://www.thefreewomanpodcast.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello! Hello! Welcome to our podcast. Welcome, free woman. We are here. Oh my god, we say this every week, but seriously, it is so so hard to show up.

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Yeah, I'm like, but every week I am kind of surprised and amazed.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Yeah. Well, this week we are recording a day later because your little guy has been sick and it's our schedule has been a little off because of it. And we didn't even know if we were gonna record today.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Yeah, yeah. And for those of you showing up for the visual portion, I apologize. We have a little there's like a scratch on my camera. I don't know. Yeah, I just don't have the energy for figuring this stuff out sometimes. So there's a little weird thing in the visual. I apologize. And I need to like say that so I can stop thinking about it.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Now that you put that out there, it's gonna be okay. We've had our confession. Now we can move forward. It just looks like you've had this like beam of light coming in at you. We'll see if it's a bit more.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Because I'm so angelic and divine. We'll say that. Yeah, that's what that is. Uh-huh. Um, but yeah, my my little guy, I have a three-year-old, and he has had a fever for like three days. We've been able to get it down with medicine, but it was as high as one 105, and he was he is. He is very unhappy.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

He's very unhappy. He has a little man cold.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

He's a little man cold. He's a little man sick.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Yeah, even when they're little, they act this way. My daughter is completely different from my son when they get sick. Like my daughter, she just powers through it, she'll ask me for a few things, sometimes not even ask for anything. But my son, it's like I have to wait on him hand and foot. And I'm like, oh my god. I know it starts at a yum.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

Well, let's see. My my 16-year-old had a sore bicep. Oh yeah. And had to tell me about it for like two days in a row, and he had to walk around with his arm like all weird. Yeah, he had to let me know too. I was just like, Are you gonna be okay?

SPEAKER_01 2:10

I think it's because he started lifting weights, right?

SPEAKER_00 2:12

He like, yeah, lifted a weight or something. Yeah, but it's true. Then, you know, my daughter gets um like period cramps that are so bad she's throwing up, and she just goes and lays on the couch and doesn't really say anything. Doesn't ask for anything.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

Different, yeah. You see it at a very young age, just how different boys and girls are.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

Yeah, so my little guy is just uh he is angry at the world, and we are in that world, and so we are enjoying that rage. He's very passionate right now. Yeah, he I had to put him in his room because he was throwing a temper tantrum, and I think he screamed in there for 30 minutes straight, just like just top of his lungs.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

Yeah, yeah. I was impressed. I was like, wow, I want to go do that. Can I go scream like that, please?

SPEAKER_00 3:09

I know I've got some things to scream about, which kind of led Kat and I to talking um about motherhood and what motherhood really is versus what we were taught it was growing up.

SPEAKER_01 3:24

Well, I think I well, I guess I had a little bit of a perception too from like the shows I used to watch and and like this idea of you're just gonna be making cookies and creating arts and craft together and creating these memories, and you do, but man, it is not yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

Free woman, have you had this? Have you had a fantasy of motherhood? Did you growing up have an image in your head of what that meant? Because I did. I don't know why. For me, the image was sitting in a rocking chair and reading like a Dr. Seuss book with my adorable little kid, and that was kind of ingrained in my head of what motherhood would be. I don't know if you had an image.

SPEAKER_01 4:11

I did kind of same thing. Uh I was really excited of I kind of said before like baking and making cookies and doing crafts. And then when I started doing those things with my kids, I was like, never mind, we are not, we are not making cookies together. This is madness and chaos. We're not gonna do crafts, or there's glue and glitter everywhere. And I started to realize a little bit of my I didn't think maybe I had OCD, but I think I do. Because just them making a mess like that was overwhelming. Yeah, I was like, okay, there may be a bigger issue with me here, but still, I was like, this is too much, it's not this fantasy of let's do something fun together and create, and we're gonna be laughing and having a good time.

SPEAKER_00 5:01

Kind of um sound of music as like I I thought I would sing songs with my kids and rock them, and they would just love me so much.

SPEAKER_01 5:13

And going out and singing together and skipping and just singing like you're in the sound of music.

SPEAKER_00 5:18

I'm like, you know, it's okay if you go through hard times, you'll just make clothes out of curtains.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

Yeah, not not realistic at all. I um I think I was uh quite overwhelmed when I realized how not true that.

SPEAKER_00 5:38

Well, in my first, it was like right from the get-go, because my first well yours did too, had health problems.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

Yeah, we both had something happening.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

I ended up with like I had this whole, we do this with labor too. I had this whole dream of what my labor would be like, and I was gonna like have this natural birth and it was gonna be so beautiful and peaceful. Um, but really what happened was at six months pregnant, I ended up life flighted to Salt Lake Primary Children's and had an emergency C-section and didn't even see my baby for I don't know, like 10 hours. Um, and he almost died. His heart, they kept having to restart his heart over and over again. He had little tiny, they have um those paddles, they have them for the NICU, and they're about the size of your thumb. Oh, so he had tiny thumb burn marks all over his chest because they kept having to jumpstart him.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

Oh, that's so just your first time.

SPEAKER_00 6:40

And then I couldn't hold him. I wasn't even able to hold him because he was in his little container um and was too fragile for a few days at least. I think I could put a hand on him, and then he couldn't nurse because he was too weak, and so we immediately had to start him on a bottle. And it was like all of the dream, all of the fantasy, just dead. Yeah, and then he ended up being super colicky, which is normal for babies that have um a lot of like premature babies, yeah, and um he also had to be on drugs to regulate his heartbeat to keep it from stopping again like that. Um and so he was on drugs that I had to give him one every six hours and like one every four hours, and I couldn't miss a dose, and it went straight through the night. And we had to do that for the first nine months of his life.

SPEAKER_01 7:36

You're exhausted because you just had a C-section, like a surgery to have this baby, and plus you're in shock because now here you are with this little tiny guy that and all he does is scream at me, and and he's just so angry and so uncomfortable all the time. Yeah, yeah, it's a lot. I kind of went through something. Where's my rocking chair? Yeah, where's my dream? I was supposed to have this. Yeah. Yeah, I ended up having my daughter, and two hours later, she started to have a seizure. And um, I did have a home birth, which is not something I ever fantasized ever. So that was kind of different for me. But as I was pregnant with my daughter and looking at things, I decided that's the route I wanted to go. And I'm actually really glad I did a natural birth because I think it helped keep her heart rate down. Um in my mind, I think it helped her because I think if she would have been stressed, there may have been more complications during labor. But I had her, and two hours later, she started to have uh a seizure, and so we were just like a mile from the hospital. That's another reason why I felt comfortable doing it. And so they took her in and we were in there for two weeks. But same thing, like I I couldn't hold her, I couldn't stimulate her. She had all these needles in her head because they're trying to figure out what's going on with her because she kept having seizures, and um, and she wasn't a pre-me or anything, so she was like a full-size newborn baby, strong, but it was very emotional, and then having to pump milk for her, um, and I was doing it through the night, and I actually remember the first so I stayed home after I had her, and my her father was at the hospital with her, and that night I was starting to wonder if I had a baby, like my mind started to go places, and but because I had went through the labor and had all the pain, I was like, oh no, I remember how painful that was. I something happened, so I asked my ex to send me a picture of her so I could remember I had a baby, and I just kept looking at it all night, and it was just so surprising to me the shock that I was going through, and then what kind of happens to your brain when you are in shock?

SPEAKER_00 10:08

Um yeah, I I had something similar because I had an emergency C-section and it was obviously premature, so I hadn't had any labor pains, and so I actually had a feeling it's very instinctual and hard to explain. Um but I remember kind of like coming out of the numbness and laying in the bed, and there's no baby anywhere, and I just feel empty inside, and it's this feeling of like your baby's dead. And it was just so uh instinctual, it was not obviously I knew like cognitively what had happened, but just like my body was telling me like we lost the baby, and so I assumed when I would finally be able to go see him that there'd be some kind of immediate magical mother-child connection, but there was not, like they could have told me any baby in that Nikki was the baby, and I would have been like, Okay, yeah, like like there wasn't, and that was so heartbreaking too to just realize that uh this all of these ideas that I had had about what it would mean to become a mother for the first time were just wrong. They just were not true, at least not for me, at least not for my situation.

SPEAKER_01 11:25

Yeah, I it was. I mean, I was having to make choice, like hard choices, and even discuss like there is a possibility that my daughter has like some brain damage from the seizures and yeah, I know that too. I have a brother that's um disabled and he has cerebral palsy, um, and he had a stroke when he was a baby. So all I kept imagining and seeing for my daughter was my brother, and I'm like, I was just in so much shock that I was like, I can't believe my baby might be handicapped, which is it's fine, you know. I would love her and still take care of her. And I was like, in a way, like, oh at least I know what it looks like because of my brother, but I was just in so much shock of what my new reality is, and I was like, I can't believe my daughter may be this way, um, and you just feel so helpless, and you're exhausted, exhausted from just having a child, and your body is going through so much, your mind is going through so much, and um there's very little help, at least in my case. Like I instead of really getting support, I just had a lot of people saying they're praying for me, or I had um a few women in the family coming in and all they were doing was like telling me their stories, and I was like, Okay, like I I love that I can relate to you now, but I'm so overwhelmed right now. Can anyone just let me have this space to be overwhelmed? And can anybody give me a little comfort? It was just a lot to go through that.

SPEAKER_00 13:07

Yeah, yeah. Everyone just kept telling me how like how they were just celebrating because it went from like your baby's not gonna survive to he survived. Um, and they were checking him from brain damage as well, too, uh, because of he was like basically having many heart attacks while inside me. And so they weren't sure how that affected him. But yeah, there was just this a celebratory attitude of like he survived, yay, everyone's fine, this is great. And I'm like, well, everyone's really discounting the fact that we both, him and I, both just went through something very traumatic and we don't know how to process it. And it's guess what? It's ongoing, it's not just like all better now that he's not dead. And uh, I feel like this is just such a good example. It's like why we're starting with these stories. It's such a good example of the lie of motherhood and how romanticized it is and how celebrated we are without actually being given any tangible support or true empathy for what it is that we are going through bringing these children into the world and raising them in this world.

SPEAKER_01 14:17

Yeah, I think one of the things that also surprised me is um when I had my daughter and I held her right afterwards. I had this feeling of oh no, this overall just like fear of what do I do now? Like I have this little child that I'm holding, and I I was, I was nervous and scared, but um, I've always handled those moments of well, we're gonna figure this out and do it. But I also another thing that surprised me because I didn't get to hold my daughter for a few days, is and this may sound really cold to someone that's not been through this, but I didn't love my child. I was like, where's the love that they told me about this overwhelming feeling of love coming in and excitement and it's common with traumatic births, it's also common with first births, first deliveries, and so when you combine the two, it's almost inevitable that there's a kind of almost detachedness or shock that happens.

SPEAKER_00 15:23

But I remember like my little guy was four pounds and he fit, he was like he like fit in my two hands, like this, and they sent me home with him, and I was 21 years old, and I just remember these like medical professionals handing me this baby in this very fragile, fra fragical, fragile medical condition, and I'm holding and I'm and they're like, you can take him home now. And I'm like, shouldn't you guys think about this? Like, this doesn't seem like a smart thing for you to be doing. Like the mother, the the I have no experience. I've have no children. I'm twenty barely turned 21 two months ago, and he's in a very fragile state. But sure, I'll figure it out. We'll learn on the go with this tiny human.

SPEAKER_01 16:17

Just because you were born with a vagina doesn't mean you automatically know how to take care of a little human.

SPEAKER_00 16:24

No, that's the other lie. It's this idea that all women have this mothering instinct, and in reality, a lot of us are just like, I don't know. So let's figure it out. Let's figure it out one day at a time. I love you and I want you to be okay.

SPEAKER_01 16:40

I do want you to survive. And it does.

SPEAKER_00 16:44

It like slowly like in tribes in traditional society before we've created this, women had that community of mothers to help raise their children because you don't just automatically know as soon as you pop a baby out everything that you need to do.

SPEAKER_01 17:03

Yeah, the other women that have had babies are there to help you and support you.

SPEAKER_00 17:08

And that was actually one thing maybe ones that are a little more instinctual.

SPEAKER_01 17:13

That was another lie. That was another thing that really annoyed me. Is like my mom always pushed me. The the religion I grew up always pushed me that I, as soon as you graduate high school, you should be getting married and having kids. I didn't, I was like 28 when I had my first, but I had this idea, this fantasy. I mean, I don't even think it was a fantasy. I just really thought that this was gonna happen, is that I was gonna have my mother there helping me and the other women there helping me.

SPEAKER_00 17:44

I I never had the fantasy. I I never, never did. My mother constantly said how she didn't like children to her own children. So I don't think any of us really expected that, but I can see why you did. I did.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

Well, I just I guess it's because of shows and movies I watched.

SPEAKER_00 18:05

Maybe it's because of other Well, traditionally, the grandmothers, the aunts, the mothers help the new mother. Yeah, like that makes sense. That gives the best outcome for the new baby, right? But that's not the way our society sets up anymore.

SPEAKER_01 18:22

Yeah, I was in the hospital, I think it was maybe day three after I had my daughter. My mom said she would make me soup and bring it in. Um, and I just had to keep messaging her and confirming, are you actually going to do this? Because I need to eat. And I think it's because I pushed her so much. She finally brought me food, but I just I thought there was gonna be more support. I'm like, I I appreciate people reaching out and say they're gonna pray for me. But right now, what I need is like maybe someone to hug me. Maybe some food, maybe someone help me to get some sleep. Like, I just could not believe the lack of help that I received.

SPEAKER_00 19:02

Well, I feel like the the lies too, even with delivery and the the lies that are given to mothers from both sides, from the medical side of delivery and from the holistic side of delivering, like the natural birth community, like both of them are portraying this fantasy or this fairy tale. Yeah. And the idea that everything will be able to go a certain way and be controlled 100% if you go through a doctor is a lie. And the idea that if you go holistic natural birth, that everything's gonna be like so gentle and peaceful and healthy is also a lie because I have done both. You've done both. I've had c-sections, I've had um I had an epidural with my c-section, I've also had natural deliveries in the hospital, I've had a home birth, I had almost a water birth in the hospital, and every single one of them went completely different than we thought they were gonna go, and every single birth was completely different from the one before. You know, like my second child, he came three weeks early all on his own. My water broke. My last child, two weeks overdue. Yeah. And like they say each birth is gonna get shorter. Well, my last birth was one of my longest births, my fourth baby. I know. I'm so sorry. That was like I'm lied to constantly by these quote professionals on what to expect.

SPEAKER_01 20:27

Well, I feel like, isn't that our world now though? Everything has to have a deadline, a date, a time.

SPEAKER_00 20:34

And if it doesn't go according to plan, the blame is put on the mother. Yeah of like, well, you're you must not be relaxing enough. You must not be doing your kegel exercises or taking your supplements or doing your whatever you're supposed to be doing. And are you too stressed? Have you been walking every day? It's just this like women are not given the room to breathe.

SPEAKER_01 20:53

Women just need to know that they have the power and they need to learn to listen to their bodies and trust that and get those doctors out of there that make you feel small and and like you can't do it. Or midwives, midwives, whatever it is. I just I hate how I remember when I told a doctor I was gonna do natural birth for my second, because I was like, Well, I already did it for my first one, why not do it again? Yeah, and they just like laughed at me, but then I'm like, Well, I did it with my first, and they were like, Oh, and now every time I like just for example, like I I was dating for a little while, I'd go on dates and I uh would talk to um a man. I don't know why. Sometimes I I'd have say, I, you know, have two kids, and somehow birth would come up and they'd be like, Oh, I bet you know the upper door was great. And I'm like, Well, I didn't do that. I yeah, I gave birth to my children naturally, and they all look so shocked.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

And I'm like, Well, it's this minimizing of women, women that happens, and I feel like that it's this funny thing, this contradiction that we do with women, where we put them on pedestals. We're like, wow, you guys are so amazing, so self-sacrificing, the glue of the family, the glue of society. But then, like, when it comes to the reality, we're talked down to, we're diminished, we're minimized, and what we want, we're we're we're told we don't know what we want. And you see that in labor too. Whether you want to go natural or you want the epidural, there's always someone telling you that you're wrong.

SPEAKER_01 22:23

Yeah, they're trying to make you feel crazy, they're trying to confuse you. It's just like people just stop talking, go way.

SPEAKER_00 22:28

Well, and I that's why I always it's funny because everything's I'm gonna be this huge like proponent of natural birth, because I had three of mine without without any pain medicine. And I just I'm like, actually, no, I'm not, because that was awful. And yeah, you know, one of them actually ended up being a really great experience, but the other two, it wouldn't have been such a bad thing. Well, like especially um my one, I had one my first natural labor was 44 hours or something. It was like two days long, it took forever because it was my first time, and there was just there's a whole story there, but I at the end of it felt really defeated. I felt just weak. I felt broken by the experience, I did not feel supported or loved or empowered, and I was barely, I could barely hold my baby. I was so weak from blood loss. And after that experience, I was just like, you know, I don't know if it's right to be pushing natural birth on women because some births are not within the realm of normal. Yeah, well, I sometimes things like forceps, there's all these different things that can become a part of that experience because it's unpredictable. It's every time it's a new experience, and we put so much pressure and shame on women, and I remember telling women I had gone natural and them being like, Oh wow, you must be so tough or you must be so strong. Like I was trying to prove something by doing it, like I was trying to prove I was better than other women, and I'm like, no, actually, I didn't feel that way about it, and that's not why I did it. And then they look even more shocked. I actually would, unless you're really passionate about it, I would recommend the epidural because it's really, really painful.

SPEAKER_01 24:23

It is, it's a very painful. Well, I wish that they would just why can't we just merge the two together?

SPEAKER_00 24:28

Like, I know women that did a lot of like the war between right midwife midwifery and doctors or medicine that's been going on since what the 1800s? No, no, since the witch hunts.

SPEAKER_01 24:41

Well, I I don't know. I would say that well, yeah, probably. I'd have to do a little bit more research.

SPEAKER_00 24:46

Yeah, no, they came after the midwives because it was a way that women were it was a way they had power.

SPEAKER_01 24:52

Right.

SPEAKER_00 24:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:53

Well, I do know that women started laying on their back to give birth because of a king that like started because a king wanted to see his child being brought to the world, and so that's when that started. But I think in the 1900s is when like the midwives were really eliminated from practice, being practice being the practice. Um, that's when they started to portray him as like witches, and then we started going to male doctors, and I'm like, what did they know? They've never pushed a baby out.

SPEAKER_00 25:24

Yeah, it's I think that maybe that's the whole problem with this illusion of motherhood is that we're not hearing about what motherhood actually is from women who are in the trenches. I think that has shifted in the past decade with social media. I think there's a lot of women out there who are trying to portray a more like healthy view of what this actually is and how hard it is and how stressful it is. Um, but it feels like there was this kind of fairy tale portrayed, not by the women who were actually going through it. And then there's this shame that women who are maybe having a less than stellar experience raising children felt because that was not their story. And I it's like birth is just one example of that, right?

SPEAKER_01 26:13

Yeah, I actually was just thinking about movies that I used to watch as a kid where the mom goes into the hospital and then she's holding this like almost like two-month-old looking baby in her arms, and she looks so beautiful. Her hair is like curled. Yeah, she looks great, and she's in the wheelchair, and everybody's just so happy, and you know, the men's are men are sharing cigars and I just remember I couldn't wait for that fantasy. And then, no, you do not fit back into your regular clothes afterwards. You look like you went through war.

SPEAKER_00 26:44

I looked like I had been ran over by a semi. I remember just laying there and they like hand me my baby, and I'm just like, can you just hose me down? Like, I wasn't sure I had the strength to even go stand in the shower. I'm like, can someone just get a hose and just spray me off?

SPEAKER_01 27:01

Yeah, there was this um article I found a few years back, and I can't remember which culture does this, but uh, when a woman has a baby, um, a community of women come together, like the family and the neighbors, and the first two weeks, she's not allowed to do anything. They massage her feet, they massage her body, they make her tease, they cook for her, they care for the baby so she can sleep and recover. And it was almost um there, it seems like there was like a training for because it seems like they're trying to build this new idea of community or bring it back community to help women to recover after they have the baby, so you don't go cuckoo, even being able to get maternity leave, right?

SPEAKER_00 27:44

Yeah, you're supposed to, and there's all this pressure of getting your body back too, and it's just so man, though, just the things we do to mothers. I know. I think I'm still recovering from my first child's. If you want a healthy outcome in children, then you have to take care of the mental health of mothers and fathers. Because how are we supposed to be there for the emotional needs of our children if we're going cuckoo in our own head? Oh, I know. This is like a there's a monkey playing cymbals in there. Well, good.

SPEAKER_01 28:17

I mean, your body goes through that huge shift of growing a child inside you, giving birth, and then you don't have that anymore inside you. Your hormones are changing so much. Your brain is like trying to adjust to all of this, and then yeah, of course you're gonna get shocked.

SPEAKER_00 28:34

Of course, you're gonna get postpartum depression or and then and then you're supposed to be back in your pre-pregnancy genes within two weeks. Yeah, well, that did not happen. No, it did not. It is so disheartening. It's just you feel like you're failing on multiple levels, and then you see all these portrayals of mothers and this like angelic depiction. I mean, you the whether it's like Christianity and the the holy mother, right? Like Mary with Jesus, or it's just like TV and these beautiful family systems that are portrayed with the mother doing it all, and somehow being super skinny, having a career, and feeding the children, and it's just managing the entire household, sitting down to have those heartfelt discussions with their children, and then in your life, it just looks like a hurricane came through, and there's you're stepping on toys, and you haven't showered in days, and you're wearing sweatpants because none of your clothes fit, yeah, and the baby is screaming.

SPEAKER_01 29:42

Yeah, I remembered I had a little carrier so I could carry my baby with me wherever I went, like a little rocking one. And then I'm like, I'm in the bathroom. I just, you know, I'm gotta go pee. And I'm like just rocking. I'm like, it's okay, give me a minute, I'll pick you up in a minute. Let me just do it.

SPEAKER_00 30:00

Let me just go to the bathroom and yeah, it's why it really was meant to be a community that's raising this child, but then we got sold on this lie, and it got all put on mothers, and then if there's anything you know wrong with the children, they're acting out or whatever, then that's put on the mothers too.

SPEAKER_01 30:20

Well, and then instead of really getting like the actual physical support I needed from the women in my family, I instead just started being told what I should be doing and not be doing to do to be raising these these children the right way. And I'm like, please shut up.

SPEAKER_00 30:38

You know, this is why Disney stops after they get married. They're like, we don't need to see Cinderella with a baby.

SPEAKER_01 30:47

Um no, well, let's not show her that that trauma's gonna come up. It's gonna she's gonna snap. She's not gonna be able to sing with the birds anymore.

SPEAKER_00 30:56

That's another big crying. The little mice are not gonna be cleaning babies' diapers.

SPEAKER_01 31:03

No, they're not well, and that's another thing too, is like you have these babies, and if you have like trauma inside of you, that is gonna come out too. Like you're patient.

SPEAKER_00 31:14

Well, and you do, you do, you win every big because they just tell you in our society we repress, repress, repress, repress. And growing up in our generation, 90s, early 2000s, there wasn't a lot of emotional intelligence being taught, and so then you pop out a baby, and guess what?

SPEAKER_01 31:30

Yeah, yeah. I actually realized you have a little bit of a mental breakdown, maybe. Yeah, I started to realize I had um some issues when I had my children, so I am grateful for that. Like I learned that because of my kids.

SPEAKER_00 31:45

I have done so much of my work because I had kids, and then I was like, I'm not doing to them what happened to me, but ideally, that becomes the motivation rather than you know repeating the trauma cycle, it's the motivation to do your work so that you can give your kids something better than what you had. Yeah, but then there's no support. No, and you know, because of our trauma, we both married abusive men. Yeah, well, and so then that gets factored into the situation of raising kids too.

SPEAKER_01 32:16

Yeah, and then you end up, you know, divorcing them, and then you have to co-parent them, and god, that lasts the rest of your week until they graduate.

SPEAKER_00 32:26

We are so lighter to file a complaint. That was not what we were told. I am so angry about this. Well, and before we be uh, you know, too hard on ourselves for marrying abusive men, uh, I feel like that a lot of women do this because for one, the abusive men don't tell you they are, they lie. They're just liars.

SPEAKER_01 32:50

They usually really they're liars and they're charming and they're gonna rob it. Yeah, I mean, I I mean I just started realizing this. Uh I mean, obviously, when I got divorced seven years ago, I was like, something's wrong. I can't stand him anymore, I'm not in love with him anymore, my body's reacting to him.

SPEAKER_00 33:08

Abuse does not always look like them punching you in the face. No, it can be just slowly devaluing you, it can be minimizing you, it can be treating you like you're a burden, like you're dumb, like you're not needed.

SPEAKER_01 33:24

And so it's well, they have to teach you to like codepend on them too. Like, that's something I've been watching all these narcissist videos lately because I'm still trying to put the puzzle pieces together from my marriage.

SPEAKER_00 33:38

Well, and our society normalizes so much of that that like traditional masculinity is seen as men with tempers, or they're seen as leaders, or they're seen as strong, but really what it is is it's like the man of the house, and he makes all the choices, and I really believe that because I was brought up in that.

SPEAKER_01 33:57

Like, I mean, my dad was the head of the house, even though he was an abuser.

SPEAKER_00 34:01

All of the things that were red flags I saw as traditional masculinity, and I felt like this is what I want. You know, I want someone who's gonna be a protector, I want someone who's gonna like stand up for us and have that like energy to him. Um, it's too bad that it actually was just red flags of abuse.

SPEAKER_01 34:19

Yeah, well, I what I realized is like I had this confidence in me when I was younger, and um, this like wildness and just this personality, and obviously my ex was drawn to that, and I don't even think that I was in love with him for a long time. I just thought I was because I was doing what I thought was correct. Like, this guy really likes me, he's telling me he loves me, and I was excited someone actually was interested in me, and so I was like, okay, I think I love him. So I fell for this guy who I thought was just amazing and charismatic and charming. But what I didn't realize is like what they do is they capture you, and then they slowly start, they get to really know you, they start to take your insecurities and using them against you belittle you, make you feel small, they gaslight you constantly, and then you're just always confused and um you doubt yourself all the time, and then it's almost, I mean, to me, I was just so involved in with him by this time, by by the time this all started happening, and I started to see the lies, the red flags. And because I thought I was told once you find the one, you have to stay with him forever. And I just kept telling myself, well, this is the choice we made. We made this choice, we're with him now.

SPEAKER_00 35:42

And yeah, there were there weren't other options presented, and I think that we see that with mothers in general, that we find ourselves in this position where we have children and realize our partner's not gonna show up. Whether that shows up as like traditional abuse where they're hitting you, or it's more covert, or maybe they just aren't mature and they presented themselves as being ready for this, but now that it's down to the wire and it's getting real real fast, they're not, they're they're not showing up.

SPEAKER_01 36:19

And society kind of excuses it.

SPEAKER_00 36:21

Well, this is just what men do, or they put it on the woman. Once again, it's our fault. We chose poorly, we should have been more discerning, we shouldn't have been such a skink, whatever it is, and so then it's put on us. So not only are we given this monumental task of raising this tiny human, we're doing it without the support of even a partner. Yeah, and we don't have the community support, he's not showing up, and suddenly, where's the fairy tale of sitting in my rocking chair with Dr. Seuss in one hand and my little beautiful child in my other hand? It's just obliterating.

SPEAKER_01 37:01

Instead, you're just crying, eating ice cream in a corner, trying to figure out how you're gonna feed and house your children.

SPEAKER_00 37:09

Yeah. And I think that we're not the only ones that feel massively betrayed by how motherhood was portrayed to us in the 90s and early 2000s, how we were led towards this, how we were told we would always regret not having children. Obviously, we love our children, we're glad they're here, but it is not what we were told it would be.

SPEAKER_01 37:33

Well, I going back to that, yeah, like hands down, love my children. I'm so grateful for them because becoming a mother is what showed me the power I have inside me. I I think that's actually what started to shift me with my ex-husband, is I started to realize how strong I was and how I could just handle hard stuff and figure things out. And I think my body just started to push back of all the years of betrayal of like from him and from myself, and I just couldn't do it anymore. I was like, I can't do this lie anymore. And because of basically raising my kids almost on my own, because my ex worked all the time and then would go play on the weekends. I I just was like, you know what? I've worked in the past, I know how to work. I'm raising these kids basically on my own already. We can do this. It's scary. I don't know how I'm gonna do it all the way.

SPEAKER_00 38:37

I think that's the part that was missing from the narrative of yes, motherhood so divine, right? This like portrayal of the gentle, submissive, constantly loving woman who will just endure any amount of injustice and just love her kids unconditionally. I think that that was one of the biggest wake-up calls for me is that no, like motherhood is actually like being a badass. And it's what we need more than anything with our children is is this strength, this showing up, and yes, we love them unconditionally, but that doesn't mean we put up with like toxic behavior. That doesn't mean we have no boundaries, that doesn't mean we self-sacrifice to the point of having nothing left for ourselves. And so learning to choose myself within even the relationship with my kids was such a huge, just mind-blowing moment. It was, it was, it felt like jumping off a cliff, but it also changed everything and helped my kids start to learn to respect women, but also how to have their own boundaries with other people, that their needs mattered. It's like if I don't act like my needs matter, how is my daughter ever going to learn that her needs matter? How is my son ever gonna learn that women matter that you separate from serving him?

SPEAKER_01 40:00

Not just a notch or like you, yeah, or just you're here to serve him. It's like, no, I need this right now, and you need to give me space. Yes. I didn't realize motherhood was gonna be saying no. Saying no. I it's the hardest thing I've ever done. Like the in a day of taking care of like toddlers or like even now like teenagers, the amount of inner strength and like calm strength, there's like a storm, and you have to stay calm. Yes, and it's it is exhausting because obviously I'm feeling a lot of things. I want to react a certain way, but I just know I need to stay calm, listen to my child or my teenager, and then react in a very um in a way that's not gonna make them feel like they're being attacked, but like let's actually communicate. We're teaching communication.

SPEAKER_00 40:54

It's kind of like you're in a battleground of emotions, of their emotions, of your emotions, of everyone's stuff, and you're needing to not only manage yourself, but to like teach them through example how to have boundaries, how to express health healthily, how to how to teach them emotional intelligence. And it's brutal because everybody is triggering everybody.

SPEAKER_01 41:22

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:22

Well, and the kids just think Your kids are gonna come with the perfect recipe to trigger all your shit. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:28

Well, and then like we were saying earlier, if you we all have trauma, and if we don't like acknowledge that or take care of our own emotional needs or things that happened to us when we were kids, your your patience is so much shorter, and you end up just exploding or not handling situations in a very mature, healthy way with your kids.

SPEAKER_00 41:50

Well, and I feel like that we were really modeled codependent mothering, um, and realizing that my children are separate from me, that they are their own people, that they are going to walk their own paths, have their own interests, that they're gonna make choices that I don't like, that I might really be upset by, but that is their prerogative. I don't get to make them mini me. I don't get to put little puppet strings on them and make them walk the way I want them to walk, you know? That was a huge realization for me as well.

SPEAKER_01 42:23

Yeah, I think that's why a lot of kids just end up rebelling, is because that's what parents do.

SPEAKER_00 42:28

Or having midlife crises because they've lived this formula that the parents told them they had to live to receive love.

SPEAKER_01 42:34

And they yeah, and then they don't even know who they are, and then one day they just, like you said, have like a midlife crisis, and they're just like, I don't even know what's going on with me. I mean, that's actually like what I went through um just before my divorce. It was like all my childhood trauma just all of a sudden came up, and I had to like figure out I have to figure this out now because I I don't know what's going on here. Um, and I, you know, I started like seeking help and I started working on myself, but it was because I never got what I needed as a kid, and then now as an adult, I have to teach myself how to take care of me in a way that I never was taking care of as a kid. And I'm trying to do that for my children too, and that's another thing is like as a parent, you're trying to like teach them these healthy patterns.

SPEAKER_00 43:25

It's a brutal process, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:26

We're trying to teach them healthy patterns, we're trying to break from I mean, at least I am, I'm trying to break the cycles that I came with.

SPEAKER_00 43:34

A lot of things that were never modeled for me that I'm just like learning on the fly, trying to model them in a healthy way for my kids.

SPEAKER_01 43:40

Yeah, and then every you know, the whole world around us is just gaslighting us, or like my family who you've if you've watched our episodes before, are extremely toxic.

SPEAKER_00 43:50

And they and our exes counterparenting us while we're trying to teach emotional maturity, they're teaching emotional immaturity.

unknown 43:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:59

They're like, you know, if you just play this game, right, you could not be responsible for any of the things that are your fault.

SPEAKER_01 44:06

And they're like, whoo, this is kind of tempting. Daddy does it and gets away with it, and everybody loves him.

SPEAKER_00 44:11

And meanwhile, mom's trying to teach personal accountability and you know take taking responsibility for the consequences of your choices. Yeah, so maybe they have an a chance and adulthood and but you know, they they are their own people and they get to make their own choices. They do. And uh if if I want to be a healthy mother, I have to respect those choices, even even if it means that I'm gonna play a certain character in their story, you know, that I think has been heartbreaking too. And I I think a lot of people have realized this if they've gone down the co-parenting route, is that um our children are going to have a different view of certain experiences, stories, things that have occurred than we will. And they are their own person and they get to navigate their own journey, and we don't get to like force our narrative on them.

SPEAKER_01 45:14

Well, I think another thing too, kind of like branching off with that the hard thing about being a mother is like the realization that you may have to set a hard boundary with your child and tell them no because they're making choices that are not healthy for the rest of the family or the children. And you might have to make the hard choice of that child maybe possibly not being in your home anymore. Like that was never taught to me. I mean, actually, I wish that would have happened because I had a very toxic brother that was extremely abusive, and the house did not feel safe.

SPEAKER_00 45:49

That you had been protected.

SPEAKER_01 45:50

I wish I had been protected, but because of that, I now know if that is gonna happen. I am gonna be the protector I never got. And that is like the hardest, most painful choices that you have to make as a mom. And that was never portrayed to me ever at any time. That motherhood is actually, like you said earlier, is like you have to like have boundaries, you have to say no. It's like being this like really strong person.

SPEAKER_00 46:20

Um yeah, it's this aspect of the feminine that is not very popular in our society, and that's this very strong warrior. And you know, we might not do it with a sword, but we do it by knowing our own worth and our own value and refusing to tolerate mistreatment and abuse towards ourselves, and it does. It feels like you're a badass warrior sometimes when you're doing that. Yeah. Xena warrior princess.

SPEAKER_01 46:54

I used to have that.

SPEAKER_00 46:57

I know. Zena. Yeah, and uh you don't think of Xena when you think of motherhood, but we should. We should.

SPEAKER_01 47:05

Let's start putting that in there. Um, you know, not only the mother holding and cradling the baby in the cinderella and snow white in the Xena warrior princess. Yes, yeah, you gotta be badass and strong like her. And you you know, you're raising these children and getting them ready and prepped for this world that we live in.

SPEAKER_00 47:25

We do not live in a soft world. We do not live in a gentle world. They have to understand.

SPEAKER_01 47:31

They have to know who the predators are and when people and they have to know how to value themselves and not fall for that shit. I know. Well, and that's another thing too, is like when you have a toxic person that you're co-parenting with, like, you know, your kids, like for me, my kids, I can just see the insecurities in them, I can see the negativity in them, and I'm like, I know where this is coming from because I have the same thing, and so I'm constantly trying to show them how important they are, how smart they are, and that they do matter, and like, let's let's try something that will excite you. I want you to feel excited about life, but you know, when you have a selfish co-parent and their world just evolves around them, it's well, and our kids are often drawn to chasing love from the parent that is toxic because they know that you're gonna be there no matter what, they instinctually know that, and so they'll chase the toxic one. Well, what was it that you said the other day? You said something about like kids need their parents, they need an adult. So even if they're being abused, they're still gonna go back to their abuser because they just depend on their own.

SPEAKER_00 48:36

There is something deeply, deeply wired in our psychology. We understand very instinctually that having our parents is going to keep us alive, is going to keep us safe, is going to keep us fed. And so, even if that parent is toxic, is abusive, is shaming, we will do anything to try to get safety, security, and love from that parent. And so it's uh unfortunately something that stays wired in our psychology pretty much forever. And so, even if you've gotten no contact, even if you've created distance with a toxic parent, that uh lack is always gonna be there, that longing is always going to be there.

SPEAKER_01 49:23

The grief is just there. I mean, I am going through it, I sometimes feel great, and sometimes I just yeah, another cry.

SPEAKER_00 49:34

You know, we I think feel betrayed is that traditional view of the mother who loves you unconditionally, who is always there, who's soft, who's gonna sing you that song while you're sick and rub your run their fingers through their your hair and just love on you and protect you and make you chicken noodle soup. Yeah, that's not there. It's not, yeah, it's not, and we have to learn to be strong and mother, even though we were never given that.

SPEAKER_01 50:03

No, yeah, and so now I have a choice, and my choice is to do it differently with my kids. My choice is to do my inner work, to find awareness in me every day and how I'm gonna react to my children. Um, my choice is to protect them, to teach them and educate them about the mind, their feelings or emotions. Yes, if you need to have a reaction, let's have a reaction.

SPEAKER_00 50:27

About toxic relationships and abusers. So hopefully they don't end up raising kids with a toxic person like we did.

SPEAKER_01 50:34

Yeah, because if you grow up with that, you tend to go right directly into the same way.

SPEAKER_00 50:41

Once again, they're their own people, they might make that choice. But our job as a mother is to do everything in our power to teach them so that they do have they actually have a choice.

SPEAKER_01 50:52

You have choices you can present another way. Yeah, I thought when I was younger, I thought I just had to accept any man that, or boy, because let's face it, I was 18, this boy giving me attention and making me, he was making me feel like I was worth something. So I fell into this very long toxic life with a partner that could have been avoided if I actually knew what I all I needed was what I had inside me, if I knew my worth, my value, and loved myself and had loving parents too to make me feel like I had a place to go back to. Um, and so it is, it's really hard grieving what maybe you didn't get and uh realizing the dream is a lie. But what I got is some pretty fucking good knowledge and wisdom that I'm passing down to my kids, and you know, they still have a choice, they're gonna make their choices, but I hope because of what I've been through and what I'm trying to teach them and show them, and maybe even them even watching me go through it, hopefully it gives them maybe another head start.

SPEAKER_00 52:09

I was gonna say they're coming at those um major life choices from a much better place than you were, and I think that's the dream of every mother is to just be able to give her kids just a little bit of a leg up compared to what she had.

SPEAKER_01 52:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:27

So free woman.

unknown 52:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:30

Do you feel lied to? Has this been part of your journey? Have have you encountered this? Have you chosen to not have children because of this? Or have you found yourself just being a Xena warrior princess and and feeling like it's never enough because it isn't because of how the world is set up? It's almost like they set women up to fail.

SPEAKER_01 52:56

It feels that way. I mean, you and I have both been through divorce and poverty and homelessness and they have set everything up for us to fail.

SPEAKER_00 53:09

Uh-huh. It's all it's been, it's it's it's in the cards, it's in the stars, it's how they aligned it. And then once you're in that place of struggling, they point the finger at you and say it's your fault.

SPEAKER_01 53:23

Do better. Maybe you should go get another job.

SPEAKER_00 53:27

Yeah, you should have figured that out. You should have chosen better, you should have been smarter.

SPEAKER_01 53:31

There's just all this shaming that comes around it and just such a lack of empathy and help. And it's how are you supposed to rise up out of something when you have nothing and no support, no love, no community, and you're still trying to raise children. Um, so for what it's worth, you have the community of us talking into this mic every Wednesday. That's what that is that is what we're here for. That's why we started it, and that's why we're gonna keep showing up.

SPEAKER_00 54:06

Nothing else. You know that other women have had these thoughts and have been through these things. And you're not wrong. You are not wrong, you are not crazy, and you know what? You are a badass Xena Warrior princess.