Latest / Motherhood Uncut / Uncertainty, Fear, and Ultimate Empowerment in Motherhood. A Riff with Kate & Deb | Motherhood Uncut Podcast | Season 2 Episode 16 | SEASON FINALE

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Uncertainty, Fear, and Ultimate Empowerment in Motherhood. A Riff with Kate & Deb | Motherhood Uncut Podcast | Season 2 Episode 16 | SEASON FINALE · Motherhood Uncut

0:00
SPEAKER_03: Welcome back to Motherhood Uncut.
0:02
SPEAKER_03: We are so glad you're here.
0:04
SPEAKER_03: In this podcast, Deb Rubin and I talk about all things motherhood related, the things that people don't usually want to bring to the table.
0:10
SPEAKER_03: The messy, the hilarious, the ugly, the challenging, the amazing, the beautiful, the really effed up, all that stuff.
0:19
SPEAKER_03: We've got it here for you.
0:21
SPEAKER_03: We bring to you our own personal experience as moms, as well as some research and data that might help you along the way.
0:27
SPEAKER_03: Thanks for being here.
0:28
SPEAKER_03: Bring your friends.
0:29
SPEAKER_03: Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review.
0:31
SPEAKER_03: We've got you.
0:32
SPEAKER_03: Come mother with us.
0:39
SPEAKER_00: Hey everyone, this is Deb.
0:41
SPEAKER_00: So this week, Kate and I finish off the season.
0:44
SPEAKER_00: We just hang out with each other and we riff about a lot of different things, things that are up for us as mothers, things that we're tuning into and paying attention to, and we just kind of go in all sorts of places.
0:57
SPEAKER_00: So I hope you enjoy it.
0:59
SPEAKER_00: And I just want to personally thank you from both of us that this has been a really incredible season.
1:05
SPEAKER_00: Um, you listeners have been so much fun.
1:08
SPEAKER_00: Your responses, your input, just knowing that you're part of our village has been really powerful.
1:15
SPEAKER_00: Um, no one should be mothering alone, and we love mothering together.
1:19
SPEAKER_00: We love mothering with all of you.
1:21
SPEAKER_00: So thank you, and we look forward to meeting up in our next season in the virtual world of podcasts.
1:28
SPEAKER_03: Bye.
1:29
SPEAKER_03: Deb and I love jewelry, and we also feel really inspired to be shopping at locally owned intentional businesses.
1:37
SPEAKER_03: Leela Inspired has an ethos that guides their design, their culture, and their personal and shared lives.
1:44
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1:51
SPEAKER_03: Their jewelry is beautiful and it stands for something super important.
1:54
SPEAKER_03: Go check them out, Leelainspired.com.
1:57
SPEAKER_03: We have a discount code in our show notes, and you'll both feel beautiful inside and feel like you're doing something good on the outside.
2:05
SPEAKER_03: Hey, friends, I am about to launch my six-month mastermind for mothers who are really committed to practices in self-care, mindfulness, personal growth, and who are ready to invest time and resources into their health and wellness on behalf of their kids.
2:25
SPEAKER_03: This might be you.
2:26
SPEAKER_03: This program called Thrive is, as I said, a six-month mastermind.
2:30
SPEAKER_03: We are going to be meeting virtually online.
2:33
SPEAKER_03: Um, I have only 10 spots available.
2:36
SPEAKER_03: And it really is an incredible opportunity for any of you who are just really committed to living a healthy, well, conscious, and intentional life in service of your kids.
2:51
SPEAKER_03: If you're interested in learning more, I want you to email me kate at katekripke.com.
2:56
SPEAKER_03: We'll have a link in the show notes.
2:58
SPEAKER_03: I'm about to launch this.
2:59
SPEAKER_03: I want to give you guys the first option to sign up.
3:01
SPEAKER_03: So be in touch.
3:02
SPEAKER_03: It's going to be great.
3:04
SPEAKER_00: Hey, hey, this is Deb.
3:06
SPEAKER_00: I would like to share with you about a workshop I'm doing on May 18th from 6 to 8 p.m.
3:12
SPEAKER_00: in Boulder, Colorado.
3:13
SPEAKER_00: This workshop is for dads of adolescent girls and those who identify as girls.
3:19
SPEAKER_00: And this is really for dads that are feeling maybe a little frozen, heartbroken, or just plain confused right now while parenting your daughter.
3:27
SPEAKER_00: It is a really turbulent time.
3:30
SPEAKER_00: And dads, I got you.
3:31
SPEAKER_00: I want to help you create strategies and learn how to parent this phase of life with confidence.
3:37
SPEAKER_00: You can go to my website on motherdaughterjourney.co or debrubin.com to register.
3:42
SPEAKER_00: It's from 6 to 8 p.m.
3:44
SPEAKER_00: on May 18th.
3:45
SPEAKER_00: I look forward to seeing you.
3:47
SPEAKER_00: Hi, Deb.
3:48
SPEAKER_00: Hi, Kate.
3:50
SPEAKER_03: Happy Podcast Day.
3:52
SPEAKER_03: Happy Podcast Day.
3:53
SPEAKER_03: We're zooming today.
3:55
SPEAKER_03: We're zooming today because we have had some microphone stormy chaos in our life as podcasts.
4:03
SPEAKER_03: You know, we do some things really well.
4:06
SPEAKER_03: What we don't do really well is technology.
4:09
SPEAKER_00: No, we really kind of suck at it.
4:11
SPEAKER_00: Although we're getting there.
4:12
SPEAKER_00: We're learning.
4:13
SPEAKER_03: We're learning.
4:14
SPEAKER_03: We can do it when we're when we're in separate screens and not trying to use a little podcast machine.
4:18
SPEAKER_03: So anyway, here we are.
4:20
SPEAKER_03: It's really beautiful to look at you on a computer screen.
4:27
SPEAKER_03: We are closing up our season with this conversation today.
4:31
SPEAKER_03: Yes, it's our last episode of season two.
4:34
SPEAKER_03: What a ride.
4:36
SPEAKER_03: What a ride.
4:37
SPEAKER_03: And we, I think we decided to just riff today on all things current time related for us in our mothering journey.
4:49
SPEAKER_00: Let's riff, caters.
4:52
SPEAKER_00: Let's riff.
4:54
SPEAKER_00: Well, actually, I have a question for you.
4:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
4:57
SPEAKER_00: Will you tell me and our listeners how are you today?
5:01
SPEAKER_00: Oh God.
5:03
SPEAKER_03: I am exhausted.
5:06
SPEAKER_03: I'm exhausted because I had a big weekend of parenting a teenager.
5:14
SPEAKER_03: And it rocked my world a little bit.
5:18
SPEAKER_03: It actually brings up one of the things that came up that I know you and I wanted to talk about today because it's such an important topic, but also something you and I are both dealing with is this reality of uncertainty in parenting.
5:34
SPEAKER_03: And I had today is what day isn't today's blind day.
5:40
SPEAKER_03: And I had an experience over the weekend of parenting a teenager who made some really, really poor decisions, like all teenagers do.
5:52
SPEAKER_03: But it was really the first time in my mothering of a teenager where I had my world rocked a little bit.
6:00
SPEAKER_03: And a big part of what rocked my world was all the uncertainty, unfamiliarity and uncertainty that came with this event over the weekend.
6:10
SPEAKER_03: We can think we know our kids really well.
6:13
SPEAKER_03: We can think we can predict their decisions.
6:15
SPEAKER_03: We can think we know what something is going to look like.
6:19
SPEAKER_03: And then all of a sudden it doesn't, and we don't.
6:23
SPEAKER_03: Holy crap, that's a trip.
6:26
SPEAKER_00: That is a trip.
6:27
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think you're naming the ultimate challenge of parenting, and that is that we'd have very little control.
6:37
SPEAKER_00: And it sounds so obvious, but I think when they get older and we realize that we have, you know, kind of set these values and try to really instill good choice making and thoughtfulness and respect and responsibility and all the things, right?
6:57
SPEAKER_00: That we know they can't really fully embrace until they have fully developed brains.
7:03
SPEAKER_00: But and now we send them off into the world where they're having quite a bit of independence and they we have very, very little control, which leads to in uncertainty, which is incredibly uncomfortable.
7:18
SPEAKER_03: I was thinking about this in the days following it, and and was writing about it a bit today about how I really think there are three major things that are inevitable in motherhood that we struggle that most of us struggle with, if not all the time, from time to time, right?
7:38
SPEAKER_03: One is the reality of uncertainty.
7:41
SPEAKER_03: That's what we're talking about.
7:43
SPEAKER_03: Like it's in the air we breathe.
7:46
SPEAKER_03: The metaphor I've used before, you know, is that you know, you're sitting by a window and all of a sudden through the light of the window, you see all the dust particles in the air.
7:55
SPEAKER_03: And because you see them, because they're so obvious for that moment, you're like, am I breathing that shit in all the time?
8:01
SPEAKER_03: And of course the answer is yes.
8:03
SPEAKER_03: Similarly, in parenthood, right?
8:05
SPEAKER_03: When we're faced with a moment of uncertainty that sort of wakes us up, that feels unusual, but really there's uncertainty around us all the time, right?
8:13
SPEAKER_03: So uncertainty is one of the major, major things that I think we struggle with in motherhood: imperfection, mistake making, right?
8:23
SPEAKER_03: And emotional discomfort.
8:25
SPEAKER_03: And there's no motherhood without those three things.
8:28
SPEAKER_03: And I think that the times for me, if I think back to right postpartum when I had postpartum anxiety, all the way up now to like having a teenager, it's those three things that when they show up for me, those three realities, uncertainty, imperfection, and emotional discomfort, when they show up for me, if I'm not well resourced, forget about it.
8:52
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
8:55
unknown: Yeah.
8:56
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think that that is like been the theme of our whole two seasons is how do you stay resourced?
9:03
SPEAKER_00: How do you stay regulated?
9:06
SPEAKER_00: How do you I like to use Lisa Damore's language of untangle from their storyline?
9:14
SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, there we're we're we're often talking about the uncertainty of safety, right?
9:20
SPEAKER_00: And and then there's the uncertainty of their emotional well-being, which is also in the safety realm, but like that's something I'm sitting with right now, actually.
9:29
SPEAKER_00: If one of mine is going through some tricky moments with friendships and I can feel her heart, and I am really watching myself like I have to actively give myself space from her story so that I can be a container to hold her through it.
9:49
SPEAKER_00: Because if I'm too close and I'm all tangled up, then I am unresourced and then I'm not what she needs me to be, which is kind of that person that can hold her hand through it.
10:01
SPEAKER_00: And this goes back to like when your daughter made some shitty choices.
10:05
SPEAKER_00: Like I actually really want to speak to that because you did stay incredibly regulated through the process, which I want to give you mad, mad, mad props for.
10:15
SPEAKER_00: And I know it's based on how much work you do on a regular basis.
10:20
SPEAKER_00: And because I was like talking to you through the whole process.
10:23
SPEAKER_00: Um but I think it's also it to your point of imperfection, it's such this it actually kind of is liberating when we know that all the kids are gonna do to do bad things at some point, you know, and that that is not the sign of good or bad parenting.
10:45
SPEAKER_00: Where we can kind of come back to ourselves is how do we literally hold their hand through it?
10:52
SPEAKER_03: Right.
10:53
SPEAKER_03: It's so interesting.
10:54
SPEAKER_03: Um, some one of one of my daughter's friends said to her when they were sort of debriefing this, she said, Your mom was so calm the whole time.
11:07
SPEAKER_03: How is your mom so calm?
11:10
SPEAKER_03: And I thought about this as we were talking about it, I thought about this like I actually really did feel calm.
11:18
SPEAKER_03: But to your point, I think what was happening for me was less, what did I do wrong as a mother that that created an opportunity for her to make these shitty choices?
11:31
SPEAKER_03: Right.
11:32
SPEAKER_03: It didn't go there.
11:34
SPEAKER_03: Where I went was, what does it look like for me as a mother to be really present and do a quote unquote good job right now?
11:42
SPEAKER_03: Do you know what I mean?
11:43
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
11:44
SPEAKER_03: Like I could have spiraled into, I can't believe I said yes to the event.
11:51
SPEAKER_03: I can't right.
11:52
SPEAKER_03: I could have I could have spiraled, right?
11:54
SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.
11:55
SPEAKER_03: And by the way, we're talking about drinking.
11:57
SPEAKER_03: Let's call a spade a spade.
11:58
SPEAKER_03: It's obvious at this point, right?
12:00
SPEAKER_03: But I think there's a there's a place where the only option I had was to make room for the uncertainty and not knowing.
12:10
SPEAKER_03: I don't know why she made those choices.
12:12
SPEAKER_03: I'm not gonna know for a little while until we get through this night, right?
12:16
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
12:17
SPEAKER_03: And not knowing even how.
12:21
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I guess I did.
12:23
SPEAKER_03: Let's be clear, I knew at a certain point I knew that there was no, she wasn't gonna die, right?
12:28
SPEAKER_03: I think there's an uncertainty when our kids make bad decisions, yes, that we get scared for rightful reason.
12:34
SPEAKER_03: We need to be scared enough to take action.
12:36
SPEAKER_03: As soon as I knew that the kid wasn't gonna die, I was able to sort of lean into unpredictability and uncertainty so that I could stay present in the moment with her where I needed to.
12:48
SPEAKER_03: And and to your point, if I weren't allowing for those things, emotional discomfort, imperfection, and uncertainty, if I was resisting all of those things, I wouldn't have been able to just sit there and hold her hand, right?
13:04
SPEAKER_00: Totally.
13:05
SPEAKER_00: I I love when you have like your lists, you always keep us on track with your like three things.
13:12
SPEAKER_00: The way my brain works.
13:13
SPEAKER_00: I love it.
13:15
SPEAKER_00: I love it because it actually is making me think, you know, if we let's break it down.
13:18
SPEAKER_00: Like if we talk about uncertainty, I put that in the same kind of realm as fear, right?
13:26
SPEAKER_00: And an imperfection goes with fear.
13:33
SPEAKER_00: And wait, what was the third?
13:35
SPEAKER_00: Um research mistake making.
13:37
SPEAKER_00: Oh, um, emotional discomfort.
13:39
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, like like emotion fear, yeah, fear, embarrassment, worry, anxiety, regret, right?
13:46
SPEAKER_03: All of those feelings.
13:47
SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.
13:49
SPEAKER_00: And I think it's interesting to break down this idea that all like I said at the beginning, all of this is out of our control.
13:59
SPEAKER_00: And when it's out of our control, what do we do with that?
14:03
SPEAKER_00: Right?
14:04
SPEAKER_00: Like we we're talking about these obvious themes of staying resourced, but like really, how do we stay resourced?
14:11
SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna just share a little thing I do regularly, and I may have shown before.
14:17
SPEAKER_00: But you know, along with breathing and feeling my feet on the ground and the things that we all kind of know about how to ground us, I'm pretty obsessed with the serenity prayer, which is from AA.
14:32
SPEAKER_00: And I'll just say it because I think it it's so helpful for me.
14:37
SPEAKER_00: And so I say it like this um great mother, because that's kind of how I look at the the earth is great mother.
14:47
SPEAKER_00: Great mother, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, and then I literally go through my brain of all the things I cannot change, and it's so helpful, and there are so many.
15:00
SPEAKER_00: That list is endless, and it's just so calming for me to identify what I cannot change, and then the courage to change the things I can, and that list is quite short, and then I can actually put my energy into that list, you know, how I speak, how I move my body, how I breathe, how I show up, and the wisdom to know the difference.
15:23
SPEAKER_00: And I have been saying that prayer for the majority of my life.
15:27
SPEAKER_00: I actually, my mom taught it to me right before my bat mitzvah.
15:31
SPEAKER_00: Wow, and I said it in my bat mitzvah speech, and it really landed for me.
15:36
SPEAKER_00: And since I've been a parent, um, and I've been a parent for 15 years today.
15:41
SPEAKER_00: Happy birthing day, mama.
15:44
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
15:44
SPEAKER_00: I have been I say that prayer most days, and I taught my kids that prayer, and I think it is really, really helpful, and and then it makes things a little more spacious for me.
15:56
SPEAKER_03: It's also literally the definition of mental health, right?
16:01
SPEAKER_03: Totally like to really recognize that putting our energy in trying to change the things that are outside of our control is mentally, emotionally, psychologically depleting.
16:17
SPEAKER_03: Yes, right.
16:19
SPEAKER_03: When we refocus on the things that we do have control over, that's where we build agency, which is choice, right?
16:29
SPEAKER_03: And where we build a sense, yeah, a sense of empowerment, control, and choice.
16:34
SPEAKER_03: And it's like really it's a little clinical, but any therapist out there knows that what we're really doing in our space, our therapy spaces with our clients is helping our clients to build agency, helping them to recognize that they get to participate in their own lives, right?
16:53
SPEAKER_03: They have control over what their lives look like, but that control comes from our responses to things, like what's happening inside, not from how we're controlling outside.
17:03
SPEAKER_03: You think about, I remember growing up, and I can think of like two or three friends in particular, whose parents were, these were not my parents didn't do this, but certainly we know many of them, whose parents were really trying to control their behavior all the time.
17:18
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
17:20
SPEAKER_03: You are not permitted to drink alcohol.
17:22
SPEAKER_03: You're not permitted to hang out with that friend, right?
17:25
SPEAKER_03: You you may not wear that, whatever, like really, really intensely controlling, right?
17:30
SPEAKER_03: And what did those friends of mine do?
17:33
SPEAKER_03: The opposite, because they needed agency.
17:36
SPEAKER_03: They needed to have a sense of self, right?
17:38
SPEAKER_03: And so, gosh, it's just so liberating to your point to think about what happens if we just acknowledge the difference between the things we can't control and we can.
17:49
SPEAKER_03: There's something so relieving about giving ourselves permission to just stay present with what we're able to do in the moment.
17:59
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
18:00
SPEAKER_00: Yes, beautiful.
18:03
SPEAKER_00: You know, the other thing I love about leaning into uncertainty is um for me, it's about uh being less attached to an outcome.
18:15
SPEAKER_00: And this is something you and I both learned about in a class a long time ago around um, it's a Buddhist term of unconditional confidence.
18:25
SPEAKER_00: And I love the Buddhist perspective of this because it says, How am I committed to show up for myself regardless of an outcome?
18:34
SPEAKER_00: I show up over and over regardless of an outcome.
18:37
SPEAKER_00: And I actually like to tweak this to think of us as moms.
18:41
SPEAKER_00: Like, how can we find confidence in our mothering and not be attached to how it's gonna look, right?
18:50
SPEAKER_00: So this is sort of transitioning to this perfection idea, which is the second thing on your list.
18:55
SPEAKER_00: Yes, you want to say.
18:56
SPEAKER_03: Well, I want to ask you a question, just so that we can be like really practical with our listeners today, right?
19:03
SPEAKER_03: So you may have just named a couple of these things, but when you think about your mothering, what are the things that you find yourself if you're not paying attention, if you're not doing your own work, trying to control that are outside of your control with your kids?
19:26
SPEAKER_00: Oh, so many.
19:27
SPEAKER_00: Um I can get really caught up in how they're responding to their relationships um with other people, like with friends or boyfriends or whatever.
19:38
SPEAKER_03: Uh-huh.
19:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like I my greatest work every day that I have to do is listen before I give advice and to truly listen and to really help them pull out their inner wisdom, because my instincts are to share all this amazing advice that I have around how to communicate effectively and how to pause and how to speak up for yourself and how to be uh, you know, upstander and all these things that I like have all this attachment to, because I think I have this internal attachment to being really good and being really kind.
20:20
SPEAKER_00: Like, I think I got a lot of validation for being kind, and I now have this idea.
20:24
SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm I have an agenda about kindness, which is really not very helpful because if my agenda is bigger than anyone else's agenda, particularly my kids, I will be met with counter and with the counter will.
20:39
SPEAKER_00: And so I just feel like when I'm trying to control, I'm trying to control how they show up in the world.
20:46
SPEAKER_00: And that is like it makes me want to laugh because I have no no control over that.
20:52
SPEAKER_00: So that's daily what I have to work on.
20:56
SPEAKER_00: I've let go of a lot of other things, I've let go of how they eat in the world, I've let go of like their bedtime a lot of times.
21:06
SPEAKER_00: What about you?
21:08
SPEAKER_03: Well, I asked because I'm imagining that there's a lot of universe, there's a lot of universitality.
21:14
SPEAKER_03: I made up that word, but you know what I mean.
21:16
SPEAKER_03: That that many of us who are mothers would like to have control over the same things, right?
21:23
SPEAKER_03: That we sort of have there, you know, there's probably some similarity for all of us.
21:27
SPEAKER_03: One of the things that happened for me this weekend was that I had this moment where I wanted to control my daughter's process of moving through and understanding this event that happened, right?
21:49
SPEAKER_03: Am I saying that the right way?
21:51
SPEAKER_03: Like I'm tracking, yeah.
21:53
SPEAKER_03: Like she was so upset, and I think she scared herself and she was.
22:00
SPEAKER_03: Upset by so much.
22:02
SPEAKER_03: She had so much regret.
22:05
SPEAKER_03: And my what I had to stop trying to control was her pain around those things.
22:13
SPEAKER_03: Like I really needed to sit back and let her move through that experience in whatever way she needed to in order to be able to move through it in a healthy way.
22:24
SPEAKER_03: Meaning, part of me wanted to like be like, yeah, no shit, you feel bad about that.
22:30
SPEAKER_03: You should feel bad for race.
22:32
SPEAKER_03: Part of me wanted to like put kerosene on the fire.
22:35
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
22:35
SPEAKER_03: Right.
22:36
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
22:36
SPEAKER_03: And part of me also wanted to console her and to be like, it's okay.
22:42
SPEAKER_03: Right.
22:43
SPEAKER_03: And of course, all I could do in that moment was let her sit.
22:49
SPEAKER_03: If we're going to go back to my three things because I'm like so organized in my thinking.
22:53
SPEAKER_03: I needed to let her sit in her own uncertainty, her own emotional discomfort and her own mistake making, lack of perfection.
23:01
SPEAKER_03: Right.
23:02
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
23:02
SPEAKER_03: And so I was sort of like this double parallel experience where I was going through my own shitstorm around that.
23:09
SPEAKER_02: Totally.
23:10
SPEAKER_03: And she was going through her own shitstorm around that.
23:13
SPEAKER_03: And part of me wanted to control the process so we could just move through it and get it done with.
23:18
SPEAKER_03: Right.
23:19
SPEAKER_03: So sometimes I think for us as moms, certainly for me, part of what I try to control is the learning or the pace or the experience that my kids are having.
23:33
SPEAKER_03: Right.
23:33
SPEAKER_03: If that makes sense.
23:34
SPEAKER_00: That makes so much sense.
23:35
SPEAKER_00: I was just thinking the pace.
23:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
23:38
SPEAKER_00: And actually, that is such a theme for you and I when we talk about take a beat, slow it down.
23:46
SPEAKER_00: Like really slow it down.
23:48
SPEAKER_00: This kind of goes in line with the spaciousness that I'm working with to give my kids space to figure things out.
23:57
SPEAKER_00: I mean, even as the words come out of my mouth, it sounds so obvious, but it's so very hard.
24:03
SPEAKER_00: We just we, I think our instincts are to step in, whatever, whatever the content is.
24:10
SPEAKER_00: And one thing I'll add is that I I think it's really powerful that where you're not going in your example, you're not going to a place of taking her pain away and like coddling, you know, overly consoling was the word used.
24:25
SPEAKER_00: Um, and you're not going to a place of shaming, making her feel like a terrible human, even though you sort of wanted to, which I totally get.
24:34
SPEAKER_00: But I think it's really important about how to have proximity, how to keep proximity, meaning physical closeness when they're in their pain.
24:46
SPEAKER_00: And that doesn't mean touch.
24:48
SPEAKER_00: Like that means like I think it's really powerful to be in their space on some level while they're in pain.
24:56
SPEAKER_00: So they actually, in really big painful moments, they don't have to feel it in an isolated way, which means you don't have to say anything.
25:06
SPEAKER_00: It's just your presence alone.
25:08
SPEAKER_03: And that's really where I landed.
25:10
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I was holding her hand.
25:12
SPEAKER_03: That did feel appropriate.
25:13
SPEAKER_03: There was a really beautiful this week um uh reel that went around Instagram.
25:21
SPEAKER_03: Can't remember some one of those good news reel places that I can get so sucked into, where there was a kid you couldn't really see, but she looked like a teenager having a panic attack in the rain.
25:33
SPEAKER_03: And she was lying on her back in the driveway in the rain, and she had called her mom.
25:38
SPEAKER_03: And you see her mom pull up in the car, jump out of the car, leaves the door open, it's raining, and she just makes me feel teary.
25:46
SPEAKER_03: She just laid down on the ground with her in the rain and held her hand.
25:50
SPEAKER_03: That's that's all she did.
25:52
SPEAKER_03: Like there was nothing else to do.
25:54
SPEAKER_03: And I think we want to fix things for our kids so much, and it takes so much tolerance of discomfort on our end to be able to sit with our kids' pain or discomfort and not rush them through it.
26:10
SPEAKER_03: Yes, right.
26:11
SPEAKER_03: Talk about uncertainty.
26:14
SPEAKER_03: Because there is that moment of when's this gonna end?
26:16
SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
26:17
SPEAKER_03: I want some certainty of when it's gonna end.
26:19
SPEAKER_03: One of the things you and I talked about last time we talked about uncertainty that I think is just valuable to say right now, because it I think we forget this is that uncertainty is neutral.
26:28
SPEAKER_03: Yes, right.
26:30
SPEAKER_03: Not knowing is blank spaced.
26:32
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
26:33
SPEAKER_03: And because our brains are wired to the negative, we fill that blank space with often worst-case scenario.
26:39
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
26:40
SPEAKER_03: So we say it's the uncertainty that scares us, but it's actually the thoughts or the ideas or the the sort of whatever it is we fill in that blank space that's scary that scares us, right?
26:52
SPEAKER_03: But uncertainty itself is just neutral, it's just open-ended.
26:56
SPEAKER_03: It's neither good nor bad, right?
26:58
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
26:59
SPEAKER_00: It's like the not knowing, I think is so liberating.
27:03
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
27:04
SPEAKER_00: So much freedom in that.
27:05
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
27:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
27:07
SPEAKER_03: And to and to sort of allow, teach our brains that the uncertainty is not a problem.
27:13
SPEAKER_03: Not knowing is not a problem.
27:15
SPEAKER_03: We can sit in that blank space and be okay, which is sort of what I was doing with my daughter that that night, holding her hand, and what this Instagram reel was doing with that mom who just lay down in the rain with her daughter and held her hand.
27:30
SPEAKER_03: There's nothing to do, there's a whole period of uncertainty except the connection, the togetherness, which is liberating for everybody involved, right?
27:40
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
27:40
SPEAKER_00: It actually makes me think about teens and preteens and anxiety.
27:46
SPEAKER_00: And when they are having a physical reaction to an external stress and it becomes internalized and anxious, they are they are looking at the adults in their life to see if this is something to be anxious about.
28:02
SPEAKER_00: And I think when we can really practice not knowing and really understand that feeling in our body of not knowing, it actually becomes the reflection for them to not know.
28:16
SPEAKER_00: And then they, and it I think that would have a huge impact on helping reduce anxiety because they're really they're screening us to see is this something to be anxious about.
28:27
SPEAKER_00: And something you and I say a lot is like, what if this wasn't a problem?
28:32
SPEAKER_00: Right.
28:33
SPEAKER_00: You know, and it's not like minimizing when there's real, real serious problems, but so often to your point before, we make we make these stories up.
28:42
SPEAKER_00: We kind of have this whole narrative about where it's gonna go, future thinking, all this the sitting with the unknown, all these things that we're very uncomfortable with.
28:51
SPEAKER_00: And to again, to re remind our listeners, neutrality in the unknowing allows us to pause.
29:03
SPEAKER_03: I think it's also interesting to think about the percentage of times that what we're perceiving as a problem is actually a real problem.
29:17
SPEAKER_03: Sometimes it is, right?
29:18
SPEAKER_03: But even this example, right?
29:21
SPEAKER_03: I don't think I think that it would be normal for any parent to say a teenage kid drinking so much that she needs help, right?
29:44
SPEAKER_01: It would be easy to say that's a problem, right?
29:48
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but at the same time, I have come out of this experience like thank God that happened.
29:55
SPEAKER_03: It's the opposite of it being a problem, right?
29:59
SPEAKER_03: Yes, because the opportunity to you first of all, everyone was okay.
30:05
SPEAKER_03: Not nothing, you know, it there there were it was scary, but there was nothing dangerous that happened.
30:12
SPEAKER_03: Ultimately, everyone was okay, right?
30:13
SPEAKER_03: So I can say that because no one was hurt, right?
30:16
SPEAKER_03: Nobody died.
30:18
SPEAKER_03: Nobody died and nobody was hurt.
30:19
SPEAKER_03: There was no literally, like, you know what I mean?
30:21
SPEAKER_03: It's like there's no, there's no ongoing impact.
30:24
SPEAKER_03: Let me say that, right?
30:25
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
30:26
SPEAKER_03: So so then I can look at this and be like, wow, I'm so glad that happened.
30:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
30:33
SPEAKER_03: Because now there are all these conversations we're having.
30:36
SPEAKER_03: There's all these, you know, she's learning about herself.
30:39
SPEAKER_03: There's all, I mean, it's really a wake-up call to being a young adult, right?
30:43
SPEAKER_03: It's like, and by the way, shit happens all the time.
30:46
SPEAKER_03: But I think about like how different my approach would be with her if I took this uncertainty and saw it as really problematic.
30:56
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
30:57
SPEAKER_03: Do you know what I mean?
30:58
SPEAKER_03: My approach with her, my next steps, what we do about it would be very different than how it looks right now.
31:05
SPEAKER_03: So I feel like I sort of just went off in a major tangent.
31:08
SPEAKER_00: No, you didn't.
31:09
SPEAKER_00: No, I think what you you're speaking to is to find gratitude in trauma.
31:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
31:15
SPEAKER_00: Right?
31:16
SPEAKER_00: That it's almost always there.
31:18
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
31:19
SPEAKER_00: And that growth comes from it almost always.
31:22
SPEAKER_00: It's such a good reminder.
31:24
SPEAKER_00: And you know, you're also giving me a visual of in moving forward, the visual I went is you could either cling on and get really tight and small, or give space, yeah.
31:39
SPEAKER_00: I think that's that's my mind goes into like body sensations all the time when I'm listening, because whenever I'm in contraction or like we were talking about before, trying to hold on, trying to control, it's there's no movement there.
31:53
SPEAKER_00: There's there's no like capacity, there's no capacity for their strength.
31:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, yeah.
32:00
SPEAKER_00: And I think so often, and this is just another little sidebar, but when I'm starting to get really fixated on a fear, I'm doing this practice right now of owning owning the fear, feeling it, seeing it, tasting it, you know, leaning in, but then actually really seeing my kids with capacity and strength and bringing trust forward because they need to feel that in us.
32:28
SPEAKER_00: And so that's also this opposite of holding on tightly, and it's changing the way we think about things so that they feel what we know to be true about them because they don't always know it.
32:42
SPEAKER_03: You know, I think this practice, the one you're talking about right now, the leaning into uncertainty, it really starts postpartum.
32:51
SPEAKER_03: You know?
32:51
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
32:52
SPEAKER_03: Like you and I, it's really easy when when we have babies or toddlers or elementary aid school kids to be like, oh my God, I don't look forward to that stage, right?
33:03
SPEAKER_03: Right.
33:04
SPEAKER_03: Right.
33:05
SPEAKER_03: But really, what enables someone, you and I being two of those people, lots of other people too, to be able to stay steady when this kind of uncertainty or unpredictability happens with our kids, what enables us to do that is all the practice we did with this when our kids were little and we've been in training.
33:25
SPEAKER_03: In training.
33:26
SPEAKER_03: You know, when we have babies, everything is unpredictable and uncertain because they can't tell us anything.
33:32
SPEAKER_03: And if we filled all those moments of uncertainty with worst case scenario, which many, many new moms do, yes, we would be suffering from postpartum anxiety, which a lot of people do.
33:44
SPEAKER_03: But the balance to that to take your exercise is to be able to say, what are where are all the places that I have confidence, that I have trust, that I have faith, right?
33:55
SPEAKER_03: And we start that when they're little, so that when they're big and having, you know, little kids, little problems, big kids, big problems, right?
34:02
SPEAKER_03: When they're bigger and bigger kids and there are bigger things happening, we already know how to do that.
34:07
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
34:08
SPEAKER_03: I'm just thinking about our listeners who may not have teenagers yet.
34:11
SPEAKER_03: And it's just such a reminder to everyone to just, it's baby steps and it's the tiny moments that we're presented with these opportunities to practice these things of uncertainty and emotional discomfort and messiness and imperfection that lead us to be able to stay steady when our kids are teens.
34:32
SPEAKER_00: Yes, and it's it's yes, so beautiful.
34:34
SPEAKER_00: It's making me think of a mom I'm working with right now who has a four-year-old.
34:39
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, four is not fun.
34:42
SPEAKER_00: I mean, yes, there's fun that comes with it, but four is such a drastic difference from like one and two.
34:48
SPEAKER_00: I mean, three and four.
34:49
SPEAKER_00: It's like suddenly the kid, like, you know, they they are not the center of the world anymore.
34:56
SPEAKER_00: Like they, and they, you know, they're there's suddenly a little bit more, slightly more accountability in the home and they're being held responsible a little bit more.
35:05
SPEAKER_00: And the pushback is so profound.
35:07
SPEAKER_00: And I just am having such a memory sitting with this mom knowing how how out of control that feels when just getting shoes on is like the hardest thing in the whole wide world.
35:19
SPEAKER_00: It is so painful.
35:21
SPEAKER_00: Feel like you're the worst mom in the world, and it's like, and it's just like it's so intense.
35:27
SPEAKER_00: So I'm just gonna remind all our listeners with youngsters that that is feeling very much like you have no control.
35:34
SPEAKER_00: And that's another place to just like take a beat.
35:38
SPEAKER_03: Well, it's actually the same exact thing.
35:40
SPEAKER_03: What if you're a four-year-old who's not putting on their shoes and quote unquote making bad decisions because everybody's late, or you have a teenager who's drinking or doing drugs or whatever typical things happen in teenagers, right?
35:52
SPEAKER_03: It's easy to your point to be like, I'm such a bad, why can't I get my kid to put on his or her shoes?
35:58
SPEAKER_03: What am I doing wrong?
35:59
SPEAKER_03: I'm such a bad mom, right?
36:00
SPEAKER_03: Why can't I get my kid to make good decisions?
36:03
SPEAKER_03: What's wrong with me?
36:04
SPEAKER_03: I'm such a bad.
36:05
SPEAKER_03: So we can go that direction, or yeah, to your point, we can get steady and say, in this moment, right here, right now, what can I do to stay present and connected?
36:17
SPEAKER_03: Because the moment we stay present and connected is the moment that things turn around.
36:22
SPEAKER_03: That fight, right?
36:24
SPEAKER_03: That fight for control turns around.
36:27
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
36:27
SPEAKER_00: Oh, you're making me think, I want to can I read something?
36:30
SPEAKER_00: Yes, please.
36:32
SPEAKER_00: It is a mom shared this with me a while ago.
36:36
SPEAKER_00: And I just love it so much.
36:37
SPEAKER_00: It's a little long, so I'll try and read fast.
36:40
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
36:40
SPEAKER_00: Go for it.
36:41
SPEAKER_00: There was a time.
36:42
SPEAKER_00: There was a time I tried hard, exceptionally hard, to be a good mom.
36:46
SPEAKER_00: I signed my kids up for all the right things and baked cookies and dressed them up in cute clothes.
36:52
SPEAKER_00: I taught them to read and put on all the right and put on all the right teams and had play dates, oh, and put them on all the right teams and had playdates with all the people.
37:00
SPEAKER_00: And I cooked nutritious meals and limited screen time and helped out in their classrooms.
37:05
SPEAKER_00: And while all those things were worth doing, it's not what made me a good mom.
37:09
SPEAKER_00: It certainly didn't stop my kids from experiencing challenges or making bad choices.
37:14
SPEAKER_00: As I move into the teen years, I'm not even sure what a good mom looks like.
37:18
SPEAKER_00: Is it holding your teenager's hand when she deals with crushing anxiety?
37:22
SPEAKER_00: Is it keeping your temper in check when they look right into your eyes and lie?
37:26
SPEAKER_00: Is it pushing them to meet their potential or letting them fall flat on their face?
37:30
SPEAKER_00: Is it letting them get behind the wheel again and driving after they just had an accident that was their fault?
37:36
SPEAKER_00: Can a good mom have a kid who gets bad grades, vapes, or sneaks out of the house?
37:41
SPEAKER_00: Does a good mom let her kid on social media or do they monitor every move?
37:46
SPEAKER_00: Did a good mom ever have a child who cheated or stole or broke the law?
37:51
SPEAKER_00: There was a time when I strive to be a good mom.
37:54
SPEAKER_00: There was a time I probably tried too hard.
37:56
SPEAKER_00: But what I realize about these teenage years is that we can only do what we think is right when we're raising our kids.
38:03
SPEAKER_00: And then the rest is up to luck and your child's choices.
38:07
SPEAKER_00: Will an impulsive young teen join his friends who are throwing eggs at a parked car in a driveway?
38:12
SPEAKER_00: Will an insecure girl decide to get in an automobile of someone who's been drinking?
38:16
SPEAKER_00: Will a shy adolescent say no to someone who's pushing them sexually to drink or do drugs when they're drinking and do drugs?
38:24
SPEAKER_00: Will an impressionable 16-year-old remember proto safety protocols when someone tempts her online?
38:30
SPEAKER_00: These are just a few of the tough choices our kids face, the ones raised by parents to just doing their best.
38:36
SPEAKER_00: Good moms, good dads.
38:38
SPEAKER_00: So I stop trying to be a good parent.
38:41
SPEAKER_00: I just try to be their parent, the one they need me to be at any given moment in their turbulent lives.
38:47
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I'm the parent who has strict rules and boundaries.
38:50
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I'm the one who picks up their room.
38:53
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I'm the one who may snoop on their phone.
38:56
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I'm the one who stays up late helping them finish a school project.
39:00
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I'm the one who won't drop them off their homework that they forgot.
39:04
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes, almost always, I'm still the one who bakes cookies.
39:08
SPEAKER_00: What I've learned from parenting teenagers is that there are no good parents and there are no good kids.
39:14
SPEAKER_00: We're all just doing the best we can with the hand we got dealt.
39:17
SPEAKER_00: And while we try to play the odds and be smart, and guess what might be coming next?
39:23
SPEAKER_00: A lot of it comes down to luck to see how our teens will play their cards.
39:27
SPEAKER_00: We do our best to prepare them for the world in front of them, but their successes do not mean we are all good, and their failures do not mean we are all bad.
39:36
SPEAKER_00: We will make the best decisions we can for the kid who is in front of us, and we hope for the best.
39:41
SPEAKER_00: I no longer want to be a good parent, whatever that means.
39:44
SPEAKER_00: I want to be the parent my kid needs.
39:47
SPEAKER_00: And however that looks on any given day, I'm okay with that.
39:51
SPEAKER_01: Oh my god, I'm like crying.
39:57
SPEAKER_03: I think that that is a great ending to our riff.
40:03
SPEAKER_03: What an amazing poem.
40:06
SPEAKER_03: We'll put that in the show notes.
40:08
SPEAKER_03: I literally am choked up because how often we try so hard to be that good parent.
40:16
SPEAKER_03: And the expectations and the roadmap is outside of us.
40:22
SPEAKER_03: And Whitney in her poem is saying, just come home, just be your kids' parent, be right here right now.
40:29
SPEAKER_03: That's all we can do.
40:30
SPEAKER_03: Oh, it's so powerful, isn't it?
40:33
SPEAKER_00: So thank you to all of our incredible listeners.
40:37
SPEAKER_00: Cheers to all of us parents that are just showing up, that are doing the best we can, that are showing up for our kids as they are.
40:46
SPEAKER_00: And thanks for another amazing season.
40:48
SPEAKER_00: We are all in this together.
40:50
SPEAKER_00: Nobody should be parenting alone.
40:52
SPEAKER_03: Nobody should be parenting alone.
40:54
SPEAKER_03: I love you, Dad.
40:55
SPEAKER_03: Thanks for the rest.
40:57
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
40:58
SPEAKER_03: I'll see you next season or later tonight.
41:02
SPEAKER_03: Bye.
41:03
SPEAKER_03: Bye.
41:04
SPEAKER_03: Hey, you guys, it's Kate.
41:06
SPEAKER_03: We really hope you enjoyed this week's episode.
41:09
SPEAKER_03: And if you did, go ahead and share it with a friend.
41:11
SPEAKER_03: It also would mean the world to me and Deb if you would take a minute and write a review.
41:16
SPEAKER_03: If this podcast makes you laugh, makes you cry in the best of ways, helps you feel less alone, gives you information that's useful to you in your mothering journey.
41:25
SPEAKER_03: If you write a review, it will make this more accessible to other mothers like you.
41:29
SPEAKER_03: So take a minute.
41:31
SPEAKER_03: We'd be so grateful.
41:32
SPEAKER_03: Thanks for being here.