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62. The Silent Weight We Carry: Understanding Mental Load in Motherhood · A Heart That Beats for Home

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Hey friends, I'm Nikki Smith, your host here at A Heart that Beats for Home, the podcast where we're ditching filters and diving headfirst into the raw beauty of all things home.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Now, I am no expert when it comes to this whole parenting and marriage dance.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: I'm simply a gal who's been riding the mom roller coaster for 22 years and a wife still untangling the mystery of it all 25 years after saying I do.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: My goal is to bring you unapologetically messy and boldly genuine conversations about cultivating strong families.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: We're gonna laugh, possibly cry, and straight talk about the joy and chaos that comes within the four walls that we call home.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: No judgment and certainly no perfection, just real talk from my heart, a heart that beats for home.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Let's dive in.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: Hello friends, happy Thursday, happy spring.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: I am coming to you with windows open, full blue skies, flowers blooming, birds chirping and hopefully not too many dogs barking or lawnmowers.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: Cardinal rule is you never have open windows by where you're recording, but it's too beautiful today to not have them open, so you might hear some nature and neighbor sounds outside, and I am totally okay with that, because it is too beautiful to close up these windows.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: So spring is here and no more freezing temperatures that I can see in the 10-day forecast, so I have started to plant my flowers and fully embrace that summer is just around the corner.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Today I want to just chat with you guys a little bit about something that I have heard, actually quite a bit about and have been intrigued by, but just listened to a book that came out written on this topic.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: I did the audible in the last two days, have listened to the whole book and just blown away by so much that is in this book and so much that it brought to light for me in my own life Some things that made me feel really seen and validated, some things that made me feel guilty about how maybe I have managed some of this topic in my marriage and just in my family in general.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: But honestly, the whole time I was reading this book it's called A Better Share by Dr Morgan Cutlip, and I stumbled upon Dr Cutlip on the internet, on Instagram.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: I had seen a couple of her reels that really kind of caught my eye and some things that she was talking about in regards to mental load and the mental load that moms carry specifically, and listening to this book.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: She had done a lot of promo stuff about the book and you were able to go in and add it to your Audible cart before it had even released.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: And so I had stumbled into my Audible yesterday looking for some specific books on some different topics that I wanted to listen to, and had a notification that this book, a Better Share, was available for purchase now that it had just been released and I could get it.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: And I listened to the little preview of it and I was like, oh, I'm going to skip the other books that I was looking for for right now and I'm going to dive into this, because this is definitely where I want to be spending some time and doing some digging in and soul searching, and so I was just super grateful to see that that was there and then to spend the last two days listening to it.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: And as I was listening to it, it felt very much like if you've ever been at church and you feel like, did the pastor read my journal?
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: Did somebody call him and tell him what I'm struggling with or what I need to hear?
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: Because it feels like they're speaking directly to me and jokes on me, because growing up, my pastor was my dad for the most part, so maybe my mom was sending him some little notes on what he should be talking about, so his kids felt convicted.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: But anyhow, listening to this book really just felt so many times like oh my gosh, she's in my head or oh my gosh.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: I think that is probably exactly what my husband is thinking or feeling and have really listening to the whole thing.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: I absolutely want to go back.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: There's an amazing PDF that came with the book when you got it on Audible, so I printed that out.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: It's a 19-page great document, some more resources on her website to continue to dig into this and do some of the work on it, but really really feel like it's one that I'm going to ask my husband to listen to with me.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: So if you know my husband and you hear this, don't tell him because I haven't broke it to him yet that there's a seven-hour book that I really would like him to listen to.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: I was able to listen to this on 1.7 speed so it didn't take me nearly that long, but just so much goodness in this book was written for both men and women last year, november of 24, if you haven't listened to those, there's two episodes by our pastor's wife, betsy Dirks just so amazing and one thing that she had said.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: That really has stuck with me.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: I was asking her some marriage questions and she said to me you know, nikki, I'm happy to speak on that from a female perspective, but she's like I also have to just say I don't understand.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: I will never know the pressures that my husband John feels in his role of provider and needing to financially support.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: Biblically he's called to support the family and to be the head of the household.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: And she's like, as a female, I will never understand those pressures that he carries.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: And so I like, as a female, I will never understand those pressures that he carries.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: And so I just want to even preface this episode by saying nothing in this episode is male hating or man bashing.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: Women do everything.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: Men don't see us.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: That is not at all what this is about.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: But in this book the research so clearly shows that the majority of women carry a totally different mental load for the home than the men do, and it's proven.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: There's research.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Obviously, there's always going to be exceptions to every dynamic.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: No two marriages are going to be the same.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: No two humans are going to be the same.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: How we communicate is different.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: How we show up in our marriages is different, how we manage communicate is different, how we show up in our marriages is different, how we manage stress is different.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: And so obviously these are as she calls them in the book.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: They're broad brushstrokes but very, very backed by research, and so I will never understand, like Betsy said, the pressures that my husband is under to the extent that he is, and he will never probably fully understand the mental load which, again, we'll go into great detail here on what that looks like and how that impacts my ability to function.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: And in listening to this I have been a lot in the last couple of months specifically saying man, I think menopause is really getting the best of my brain.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: I feel like my capacity has maybe changed a little bit.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: I feel like cognitively I struggle just a little bit more to put things together as I'm working with this BHRT, trying to get hormones balanced and just taking care of myself this last year, really blaming all of it really on this must be menopause, but then really digging into this mental load conversation and how just different seasons of life do carry different loads and different stressors.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: Looking at the stage of life that I'm in, I realized in the last 48 hours, man, a lot of what you're feeling the overwhelm, the inability to get as much done, the tears absolutely some of it's connected, I think, to the menopause piece.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: That's also scientifically backed, but I think a lot of it is the mental load, the emotional part of this, three parts of mental load.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: One of them is emotional load and having this doctor explain how that works and how it weighs on moms in particular.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: And then looking at my life right now of what I'm trying to balance and the different people that I'm trying to you know, quote unquote manage and support in their life, it has just felt a little harder, a little heavier.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: Lots and lots of big life changes new colleges for one daughter living with college kids at home as wonderful it is, there's a huge adjustment in that and learning to respectfully navigate through a lot of different feelings and thoughts and stresses that they're walking through and then, because of their stresses, trying to carry a lot of that for them or carry extra so that they're more freed up to just really focus on their studies.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: With a daughter that's graduating from college and helping her walk through the emotions of that season of a sport and a four-year academic experience and friends and RA and walking away from that and what she's known for so long and integrating into a big kid job and benefits and what's the next couple years look like for her, and navigating that.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: Having a high school son who's now driving and just got his permit and is in high school and is navigating friendships and emotions and wanting to continue to always be getting better and there's just a lot of emotions that come with high school boys as well and trying to figure all that out.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: And then a husband who works a very, very full, busy, busy job in his career and is away from the home a lot and carries a lot of stress and puts in a lot of hours.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: And then myself, you know being in this stage where I am going through a lot of changes as well emotionally, physically, mentally, just different stages of parenting, letting go, learning how to navigate relationship with kids as adults and trying to find my own passions, having the podcast, having a career, all while doing a lot of other things.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: And I thought, man, there's a lot of mental load right now that maybe you know, we have this assumption that as our kids get older, maybe the mental load and the physical load really goes away.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: And I think there is a stage where it probably really does start to do that.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: When people aren't living in your home, I think the physical part of the load probably for sure lessens, even though it's filled with grandkids and lots of other things.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: But I was just recently last week talking to a dear friend who is in a stage of life right now where she just said I have so much time on my hands.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: She's like how can I be available to you?
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: She's like I'm at a place where God has given me so much extra in my time and my resources at this stage of my life, and so I know that that's coming.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: But this stage feels super, super full.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: I know I've told you in past weeks that I'm trying to use that word full instead of busy, because it's all beautiful stuff.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: And it feels again, because of how we are as women, it feels really bad or I feel guilty to complain about the busyness of life when all of the things that we're busy with are beautiful, good things.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: There are things that I want to be involved in and so really choosing to see it as the fullness of life instead of the busyness of life because it's all just really good stuff.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: And so I was laying in bed last night, knowing that this was the podcast that we were going to chat about today after just getting so much information on it, and was laying in bed and was thinking about a blog post back in the day when blogging was the thing that we did.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: We didn't really have social media yet and I remembered writing a blog post years and years ago when I only had two children.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: I was running a mom's ministry at our church called Mops Mothers of Preschoolers.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: I was pregnant with our third child and I thought I remember writing a blog about why didn't I get anything done today and I had just listed out and I thought, man, I couldn't even remember what the name of the blog was.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: This is, like you know, almost 15, 20 years ago, and I happened to find a picture today that had a screenshot of something I had taken off the blog and I could see the web address and I actually had started the blog when our oldest daughter, madison, had major medical issues and we ended up at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, seven hours from home, for the better part of back and forth for a year, inpatient for close to a month, and I had started this blog as a way to be able to communicate updates with so many.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: I felt like it was hundreds of people that were following Maddie's story, and so I was using this, like we would now use Facebook or Instagram, to do updates, and so just kind of kept doing it.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: It was an outlet for me.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: Writing has always been something that I really enjoy, and so I was using that blog for a period of time about three years just as an outlet for me to write and to share about motherhood and parenting and just all the things that we were walking through, and so I was able to pull up this blog post today and I thought, oh my gosh, this is so funny.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: I'm actually just going to read it to you, because I think it is such a good intro and a definition of what us moms go through before we jump into the meat of this mental load conversation.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: So this was dated Wednesday, october 28th 2009, and it's titled I Didn't Get a Thing Done Today, and here's what I wrote I am totally having one of those days where, at the end of the night, you are exhausted but you feel like you got absolutely nothing done.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: I was in the shower at 5 pm, discouraged about just that getting nothing done.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: I started trying to run down the list of what I did all day so that I could figure out why I never got things Crossed off my list.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: There are piles everywhere, there are dishes in the sink, but here's what my day looked like.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: I got up at 7 after not sleeping again even with the sleeping pills.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: I got two kids up, I got them both dressed, I fed them both, I peed.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: I packed two backpacks, packed one lunch, found four shoes, found a frog costume since Olivia was sick and missed Noah's Ark day last week took pictures of that said frog outside, drove both girls to school, made breakfast, peed, did two loads of laundry, did dinner dishes from last night, checked emails, cleaned the living room enough so that I could sit on the couch and eat cold breakfast that I had made half an hour earlier.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: I watched 10 minutes of TV, paid bills, got to school to do room mom duties at pickup time, went to the courthouse with a crying child to make sure my husband does not get arrested on November 16th for the subpoena that was issued yesterday.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: That's a whole, nother blog entry.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: Got all the way to the courthouse door and was told I could not bring my cell phone in, so walked all the way back to the car to throw my phone in the front seat, went back to the courthouse, gave proof of immunization for our dog to the lady so that my husband doesn't get arrested, explained to the still crying child why we were not asking the guy at the desk for a sucker, because I was so mad that he made me walk back to the car with the phone and the crying child.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: I went back to the car with the phone and the crying child.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: I went back to the vet to get money back that they had overcharged on the immunizations.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: I sneezed and I peed my pants.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: I went to the post office.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: I returned carpet samples.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: I got groceries.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: I kept my cool while Olivia hid in every available location at the grocery store, went to the bank, unloaded the car, started wash as I only have one pair of maternity jeans and now they have been peed in.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: It's not funny.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: I made lunch for me and my child helped olivia with crafts.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: I got homework ready and sorted.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: I called a loan officer to see where we were at with the refinance.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: I paid a speeding ticket online.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: It was totally self-induced.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: You don't have to feel bad about this one.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: I started a load of dark socks so my husband's shoes do not crawl off tomorrow.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: I called a client.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: I mailed a check to the same client I peed.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: I cleaned buckets for an Arbonne party tonight.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: I loaded my car for the party.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: I picked up Madison from school.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: I was informed by her that she had a pee infection, called the doctor, wondered if maybe I have a pee infection, remembered I was 30 weeks pregnant because I had literally forgotten all day.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: I started homework.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: I had to explain why all the homework was going to be done again because it was so messy.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: I ordered school pictures online.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: I picked up a laminate and tiles for a design job.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: I called to find a place to hold mom's night out for mops.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: I'm currently thinking the best bet might be a bar.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: I saw my husband arrive.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: My husband was sideswiped by stories of pee infections and nasty food.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: I took a shower.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: I helped Olivia memorize her Awana's verse while I was in the shower.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: I signed the Awana book with the eyeliner.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: I started dinner, tried to update husband on all the activities for the night while stirring food and holding up a way too small towel around my huge belly.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: I worried about cars driving by that could see me in the front window, stressed and barely covered, decided, if they did see me, that they would never look in my windows again when they drove by.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: I finished getting ready, I swallowed dinner, I took Tums.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: I went to my Arbonne party.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: I realized I forgot to put mascara on when getting ready.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: About died when I remember talking to the woman about how great the mascara is and wondered why she bought the mascara when my eyelashes are not even visible tonight.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: I packed lunches for the kids for tomorrow, remembered that no one was going to school tomorrow.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: I ran through tomorrow with my hubby as he brushed his teeth.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: I called the room mom back about Halloween party.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: I went and kissed kids in bed and then I blogged about not understanding why I can't get anything done.
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: If you can figure out how I am not managing my time, well, please let me know.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: I'm going to have to cut out peeing and eating and I laughed so hard at this because that was a lot of years ago.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: I was in a totally different state of parenting and I feel like most of us moms could write something somewhat similar to that on a daily basis, of the never-ending things that go into caring for, loving on other people and managing a home, just the nitty-gritty of what goes into that, and so everything that's listed there.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: We didn't have a term for it back in 2009.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: And so this book, specifically, is about how do we, as a married partnership, learn to share this mental load a little bit better?
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: And, if I'm being totally transparent with you, this is something that I really struggle with and I think a lot of women struggle with, because there is a little bit of element of these are the things that I should just be able to manage.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: I kind of run the household and again, I know that every situation is different.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: You're going to have some women who are full-time working outside of the home and yet a lot of the home management stuff still falls on them.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: And the book talks a lot about how we got here, why that's the expectation that the male in the home is going to go to the job.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: He's going to give everything he has to the job he's financially providing and that's really his main responsibility.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: And then everything else that comes to managing the home is the female's responsibility and just how that can get really overwhelming.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: It can create a lot of resentment and for me, it creates a lot of guilt when I even feel like I have to have a conversation around.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: I can't do this all because everything in me says I'm a doer, I can increase my capacity.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: These are things that I should be able to get done.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: But in this book she mentioned that when they surveyed a bunch of women and had them tracking their hours, that the average mom clocks in about 96 hours a week.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: For some that's going to be she's working and she's taking care of household and children after those hours.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: For others it's she's not outside of the home working, she's in the home all day and these are the hours she's working.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: And then for some of us, like myself, I'm working from home and managing all of these things.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: And again, nothing in this is to hate on our spouses.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: I have zero expectation nor desire personally in my marriage for this to be a 50-50.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: I do not want to take the household tasks and say the fair thing is, we're going to divide this down the middle.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: You're going to take 50%, I'm going to take 50%.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: I do feel like I have the capacity to carry a heavier load of what it takes to manage our home, to care for our kids, but there can be a slow fade or a simple neglect, where we if I'm speaking of myself sometimes get myself into this predicament fully self-induced, because I do have some control issues and I want things done a certain way.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: And for those of you who maybe have a spouse, like I do, that works outside of the not just outside of the home but travels away from home extensively for his work, there becomes a point I mean, we've been doing this since 2006 is when my husband started in his career where he was traveling a lot, a lot of years, upwards of 100 to 120 nights a year.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: He would be gone.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: Now it's not quite that extreme, but he is still gone quite a bit, and often Monday through Friday.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: And so that structure still gone quite a bit, and often Monday through Friday.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: And so that structure either I was going to completely melt and not be able to handle it, or I was going to have to just take on a lot of roles that if I had a husband that was coming home every night he would naturally take on.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: And then I get into a habit of I do it this way, I like it this way, and then maybe being critical when it's not done the way I want it done, which then shuts people down, specifically my husband, who's like well, if you want to do it a certain way, you can just do it, and then not talking about how the mental load works.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about number one.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: What is the mental load?
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: I want us to be able to talk about what it is, understand how it affects us emotionally and relationally, ways that we can involve our families into helping this, how to manage it better in our marriage, and then why.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: I think every single married couple should listen to this book, whether you listen with your spouse or you just listen alone.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: Again, it brought a lot of validity to my feelings, but also a lot of compassion towards how I haven't done a great job at communicating and also just the load that my husband is also carrying.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: So what is mental load?
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: It's the invisible, constant to-do list.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: Also in there, I think, is decision fatigue.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: You get to the point where you have made so many decisions for so many people that you, physically, your brain, is just done.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: But mental load is the invisible, constant to-do list.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: It involves anticipating needs, planning, deciding, monitoring, delegating and following up.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: When I was listening to the book, I was just kind of looking at my to-do list even, and writing down a running list of the little things that I do all day, every day, that I don't even, maybe even consciously, go like.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: That was something that I checked off a list.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: It's just going through the motions ordering contacts and glasses for my kids.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: When there's medical things Landon needed to get braces not long ago and so it was going to three different places and getting costs for those and comparing what was the best for us.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: Maintaining family relationships, for extended family.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: What birthday parties are we going to?
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: What anniversaries are there?
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: Who do we need to check in with?
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: There's carrying the emotional weight of all the different things that our kids are going through arranging friends and their get-togethers, taking out the trash, organizing the trash, teacher's gifts, holiday plans, birthday gifts, shopping for clothes and shoes and supplies for both the kids, myself and the home.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: Christmas clothes and shoes and supplies for both the kids, myself and the home.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: Christmas shopping and wrapping.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: Helping kids manage their finances.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: Managing our finances, setting up our giving, organizing extracurricular things, researching the different golf communities, driving the kids to activities, taking the kids to school, packing a lunch every day, making breakfast every day before school.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: Who's scheduling the haircuts and the shopping, the groceries, the meal planning, filing taxes, securing insurance, setting up bank accounts, managing children's medical, dentist eyes, having parent-teacher meetings, going on a field trip, making school decisions right the list is never ending.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: And it's these things that are just part of operating a home and a house and children, and most of that falls on women.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: And so there's three different categories that mental load weighs on us.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: So number one is you have cognitive, you have the mental tasks.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: Those are going to be things, and she said that 75% of men's mental load that they carry in their life, 75% of it is going to be in this cognitive.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: And it's going to be if they're working, like in an office.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: Obviously, if you have somebody who's in construction or working in a more manual job, that would not be the case.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: But for more of a structured office job, that men's 75% of their mental load is in this cognitive mental task.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: Emails, appointments, it's a to-do list that you can kind of cross off and it's done.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: That's the first kind of mental load.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: The second is physical and it's things that need to get done, like housework and errands.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: They're visible but somebody has to mentally handle them all.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: They need to schedule the cleaning, they need to schedule the laundry and the dishes and all the things that are a little bit more visible.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: But somebody is managing, and then there is the emotional and this is managing the feelings, conflicts and needs of the family, and it's constant and often unseen.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: This is the kind of stuff that I think mom specifically and again she said and she shows all the science in the book of why it is just in most cases that women carry almost all of the emotional mental load for their families.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: Obviously there are dads that are deep feelers and they definitely, I'm sure, have weight over some things, but I don't think very often it probably is something that comes up five, six, seven times during the day if one of the kids is having some friend issues or is feeling maybe depressed or anxious or is really stressed about a test where a mom typically will all day, every day, be.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: I know for me, if I know that a kid is in a situation, it's this constant heaviness and a burden to be praying for and thinking of and sending encouraging notes and just holding a lot of that emotional burden for our children, our spouse and the family's wellbeing.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: And that is the part that she said is the part that really weighs us down because, again, it's constant and it's often unseen.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: And when you put those three together, which mothers usually have the emotional, the physical and the cognitive happening all at the same time?
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: It's that trifecta, the triple threat that comes at us when we're constantly managing all three of those.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: And so why does mental load feel so heavy?
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: Number one it's endless, it's unpaid and often goes unnoticed, and women bear the brunt at home, while men often carry more of a mental load, like I mentioned at work.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: And a question that often comes with some of this mental load, I actually, not even making the connection a couple hours ago posted a song.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: It was Jelly Roll singing his popular song that has the words I am not okay, I'm barely hanging on.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: And the caption was like when did I sign up to have to figure out a new creative thing to make for dinner every night of my life until I die?
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: And it's funny, but it's true.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: And often we find ourselves in these situations where we're asking ourselves like wait, how did this become my responsibility?
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: And why does this feel so unfair?
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: And it's again just carrying all of these decisions and things that have to happen.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: And so when we're carrying the triple threat of them.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: Moms are juggling the cognitive, the physical and the emotional all at once.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: It leads to exhaustion, it leads to disconnection, it leads to resentment.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: And mental load is about caring for others and it's not just tasks being completed, so there's no real ending to it.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: Sure, of course, seasons that might feel harder.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: If a kid's dealing with something, you come out of that season, but if you have multiple kids, if you're married, there is always something emotionally heavy.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: I feel like there are very few times in life where it's like everybody's life is just running smooth, there's no stresses, there's no drama, there's no heartache, there's no you know difficulty that we're walking through with one of us and so it's just constant.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: And I know for me that I get in this triple threat of those three where, if it's leading to exhaustion and disconnection and resentment, that starts to show up in so much of what we've talked about over the last two years on the podcast about joy and how this mental load, when not managed well, it steals our joy if our joy isn't rooted in the right things and we start to build up walls with even our children sometimes.
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: I so many times have said why does nobody else see this?
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: Why does nobody else understand?
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: Why does nobody else feel like getting up and helping mom?
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: Why is this mine?
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: And then I have to self-reflect again as I'm learning more about this in this book and just in listening more about it, the responsibility that I have to have conversations around like, hey, I know that this kind of falls under an umbrella of you know, quote unquote mom, but this is not evenly balanced.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: This is not good, this is not healthy.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: We need to come up with some things that are going to help us manage this better as a family and we're going to talk a little bit at the end of this maybe even this will turn into a two-parter but how we can get our kids involved as well with helping with the mental load.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: Not just our spouses, not just the parents managing the mental load.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: So if that's what the mental load is, that's the triple threat, why it can feel overwhelming.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: There's two other things I want to go, and again, the book is, I think, 24 chapters.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: There is so much in it I don't even know that I can do it any justice of trying to even recap it, but I'm just gonna share a couple of things that really stood out to me, things that I wanna go back on really stood out to me, things that I want to go back on, things that were like yes, like out loud I was saying yes, totally.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: I see that I feel that and when I'm looking at this and I'm being honest, I will say that their most conflict in my home, most conflict in my marriage, most frustration with my children, comes from feeling totally out out of balance, feeling unnoticed, unappreciated, invisible, like all of the things that I feel like nobody's seeing that I'm doing and building up that resentment and just going man, I have got to figure out a way to better communicate that.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: And there is so much I mean just chapter after chapter where she's speaking to both men and women together and individually.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: And one thing that really stood out for me and I believe this to be true to the core because my husband has said it to me you know, nikki, I want you to know that, like my dream, like if I could write the perfect life in our home, it's just that I would come in and you would just be happy, you would be content, you would be smiling and bubbly, and of course your first thought is like well, of course, wouldn't everybody want that Like life just to be, like all you know, snickers and roses.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: But the reality is she validated him saying that because she broke down and it's so easy to remember, because she broke it down as par, like par in golf.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: Par at a golf course is this is the perfect score and you can do better than that, or you can do far worse than that.
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: But par is like perfect score and you can do better than that or you can do far worse than that.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: But PAR is like man, that's a really good place to be and most people aim to be at PAR.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: And so this is an acronym that she broke down for the top three needs of men and the top three needs of women.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: And I thought it was so interesting.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: Top three needs of women.
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: If we look at it in PAR and again, again, like asterisk, this is not going to be 100% for everybody, but I bet if you dug into the root of this, women would go yep and men would go yep.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: I just felt like it was so dead on.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: So par for a woman is number one.
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: Top needs is I need to be pursued.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: I want to be pursued.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: The A is for appreciated.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: I want to be appreciated, to be pursued.
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: The A is for appreciated.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: I want to be appreciated, I want to be seen in what I'm doing and I want my partner to be reliable.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: And so when those three things happen for PAR P-A-R you pursue me, you appreciate me and you're reliable those three things for me create a feeling of being known, loved and secure, and that, for me, literally sums up how I want to feel.
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: For me, the thing that I struggle so much with mental load and in therapy sessions before I've talked to my therapist about I don't even necessarily want my spouse to take things off of my plate because I do feel like his schedule is crazy.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: I want to be able to love and serve my family well.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: I want to be able to provide a home that functions really well and that has things that we need, and I want to do the grocery shopping and the meal planning and the taking care of the kids and all of the school things.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: I'm not angry that I'm doing those.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: I'm often exhausted from doing them, but I want to be appreciated.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: I want to be appreciated.
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: I want to be validated Again.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: I am a person that thrives on words of affirmation.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: If I was in a workplace, I would work for all of the accolades, I would work for the trophies and the banners, because our old president used to say women will work harder for praises than raises.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: And when you're not getting raises or praises at home because it's just you have slipped into.
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: And I don't think ever a husband does it intentionally that he just stops praising his wife for the little details, like we read in that.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: What did I get done today?
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: All those things that are getting done that are helping them be able to go and do what they do.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: And my husband is always so great at saying we make a great team, we make a great team and we do, but so much of what I do on the day to day just goes unnoticed.
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: And so just to be able to be pursued, to be appreciated and to have a partner that's super reliable is the top three needs of women, and then men the top three needs, right, it would be really convenient if we just had the same needs.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: We would never have to tell each other what we need because we would just know.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: But for men, par is, they want peace, they want an environment that is peaceful, which is exactly basically what my husband said I want to come home and I want you to be happy.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: And so many of us are guilty of greeting our husbands at the end of the day and it's like, oh my gosh, these kids have been so awful.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: You have no idea what you know like downloading all of these things which, again, we have the right to be able to process through that stuff.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: But that's not an environment of peace and learning to navigate that.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: But P is for peace, a is for affection.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: None of us are surprised by that right.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: Like they want you to touch them, they want you to love on them.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: Again, that one goes so into the five love languages that we had another podcast on and I would guess that a lot of men, one of their top love languages is going to be physical touch.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: So number two is affection, and then number three for R, for par, peace, affection, and then R is respect.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: They want to be respected and so often it's this you're right the crazy cycle.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: If I'm not feeling pursued and appreciated and like I have a reliable partner, then I'm certainly not going to be providing a place of peace.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: I am absolutely not going to be drawn towards affection, because we all know that as well, that how different that can be and how we approach intimacy.
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: And for some of us we need to feel relationally, we need to feel emotionally safe to pursue affection where others pursue affection because it makes them feel emotionally close, and typically women and men are going to see that differently.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: And so if I'm not feeling these three top needs, then I'm not going to be in a place of peace, I'm not going to be offering affection and a lot of times I am not being super respectful and that's not okay.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: When I'm not having my three top needs met, I'm not going to create a space of peace, affection and respect.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: Not that that's justified to not create those things, but natural reaction is to put up those defenses, to put up the walls and for it to be a really difficult place to operate in a marriage.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: And so I thought that was so good.
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: She actually said I wrote down a guy's dream is a woman who is happy, she's light, she's airy, she's pleased and she's overall pleasant that I can totally see my husband being like yes, that is my dream girl, and so I know that I need to definitely work on that.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: But man, so much information in this book about how to go about then having conversations around these needs, needing to have conversations around the weight that we carry, that we sometimes need help with how to divide up some of the tasks that maybe, by default, we have taken on or we've never had a conversation.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: My encouragement to you if you are newly married, if you're young married, if you have young kids, oh my goodness, start to figure this stuff out right now.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: So much also of how we take on roles is how we were brought up, it's how we've seen things done, it's society has told us a certain thing, and so there just doesn't tend to be a lot of conversations around what we need to do to support each other and how.
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: Yes, we both carry mental load 100%.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: Men and women both carry mental load, but in different capacities.
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: And you having mental load doesn't mean that me needing help with mine isn't valid, and just really learning how to have those conversations, learning how not to feel guilty when we do need more from our spouses, right, the reality of I would love that if, at 6.30 when Jed came home, and the nights that he's in town, that I could just 100% be okay with being like you just sit there and you eat that dinner and you just take a rest, put your feet up, because I know you had a hard day.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: But that's not the reality.
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: When I'm still three, four hours left in my day of running kids and filling out field trip things and school paperwork and following up with homework, there is just mental load that continues from sunup to sundown and a lot of times carries with women into bed and we lay awake thinking about so much stuff.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: I don't know if for you have you ever been talking about really heavy stuff, whether it's about your marriage or your family, and you crawl into bed and your husband, a lot of times for me, is able to go right to bed Like we had the conversation.
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: It's compartmentalized.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: We'll worry, you know we'll continue on that tomorrow or we'll make the plans and for women, most often, at least for me, I will lay in bed for hours, still processing through the different emotions.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: How is it going to affect different people If we make that decision, this thing or that's going to impact that person and it just is different and we have to be able to learn how to communicate so that we don't have that resentment, the exhaustion and the disconnect that can be a major, major contributor when you track back different arguments that you're having.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: So many of them are going to go back to this.
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: Ok, so there is still quite a bit here I want to go over, and so I think the way that I'm going to handle this is that I am going to kind of wrap this up for today.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: I just going to handle this is that I am going to kind of wrap this up for today.
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: I just want to tell you, you know, mama, if you are feeling the weight of mental load and I feel like right now, satan is getting so much distraction into our lives and is adding so much additional emotional weight to this by just all the different influences that we have.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: We have the social media, we have podcasts, we have YouTube, we have books.
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: We have an influencer on every one of these things that's constantly telling us how we should be doing it, or we should be doing it better, or these are the correct opinions, and it can just get very overwhelming.
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: It can physically just life at home.
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: I know a lot of women that are listening to this are stay-at-home moms, and what you do is something that is one of the most selfless jobs on the planet.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: There is so much service for other people, and often at the expense of taking care of ourselves.
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: By nature, we are caregivers.
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: We want to love on people.
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: Our family is our world, and we feel like we hold so much of that responsibility of creating that environment for our children in all aspects and for our spouses at home.
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: And so I just want you to know that I see you, I hear you, what you are doing although in the world's eyes and maybe even in your home, often goes very unnoticed that it matters, and you will look back in 15, 20, 30 years and your kids' lives will be so impacted by the things that you did, from the changing of diapers, getting up throughout the middle of the night, the teaching how to walk and how to read and how to communicate and how to navigate friendships, and cooking the dinners and taking to the practices and sitting in the stands, the buying of the shoes and the clothes and the household supplies like all of that is creating an environment for our kids and we are teaching them what it looks like to sacrificially love people.
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: And so what I really want to do is to continue to work on how I need to manage the mental load, how I need to have honest conversations with my spouse and with my children about helping, and obviously the older your kids get, the more they can do this.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: But there is so much and we'll talk about that in the second part of this about how to get kids involved in this mental load but also just some really practical tips on how to start navigating and talking through what this looks like.
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: You know, I was just thinking back through even just this last week of some different back through even just this last week of some different examples that I think we don't even really cognitively put context to that.
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: These are things that we're carrying in just the day-to-day.
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: My daughter was home from college and, like I said, she's navigating through what it's going to look like for her in this next season and there was a period of time where she was home alone and I was out with Landon, where she was home alone and I was out with Landon getting his driver's permit.
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: I thought it was going to take an hour, took three and a half.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: She was home alone and as moms we just process through all of this stuff like, oh, I hate that she's home alone and I want her to feel loved and we care so much about her because she's home visiting and she's going through this kind of emotional time of she's only got a week and a half left of school and yet she's sitting at home alone and something else with another daughter and just all these examples of having to make a decision to not take our son to dinner because he had a conflict that was going to interfere with the other four of us being able to go out to dinner and just the emotional of like, ah, but I want to make everything work for everybody and I want everybody to be able to participate in everything and I want everybody like my husband wants me to be happy.
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: I want everybody in my family to be happy and to feel seen and to be understood.
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: And it's just constant and needing to figure out ways that we can have conversation around that.
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: So we're going to talk next week about just how to manage that together eight tips for managing mental load as a team in marriage and then also just a handful of ways that we can get our kids involved and some questions to ask ourselves that are age appropriate as our children grow up.
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: So that was kind of just laying down the base work of what is mental load?
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: How does it operate?
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: How is it different for men and women?
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: I hope that you can make sense of some of that.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: Again, I'm gonna to link this book.
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: I so strongly encourage you to get it and to listen to it and to get, if at all possible, your spouse to listen to it with you.
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: I just can see how this book will help eliminate so many hardships and disagreements and conflicts that come into every single household on the planet, and I'm really hoping that maybe we can get Dr Morgan Cutlip on the podcast here when we come back after the summer season, because, man, would this be a good conversation to have with an expert.
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: So I think we're going to end it there.
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: We're going to come back next week and talk about some practical tips on how to manage the mental load as a team and also to get our kids involved.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: So thanks for being here, guys.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: I hope this wasn't too all over the place.
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: It feels a little scatterbrained.
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: I guess that's appropriate for what we're talking about, but excited to come back next week and talk a little bit more about some tips that we can implement just to lighten that mental load at home.
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: We appreciate you being here, and if you're a mama, that can relate to all of the many things that we do in a day and often ask ourselves oh my gosh, what did I get done?
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: Today, send this to a friend that you know feels the same, so that they can be encouraged, just knowing that they're not alone, and get some of these resources that are available to help them navigate through this.
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: So share this episode with a friend, whether through text or through social media sharing.
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: It is so appreciated when you do that.
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: So until next week, friends, take care.