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The False Choice Between Ambition and Motherhood with Alexa Starks · Motherhood Uncut

0:00
SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the Motherhood Uncut podcast, where we talk honestly about the reality of motherhood.
0:05
SPEAKER_02: I'm your host, Kate Kripke.
0:07
SPEAKER_02: This is a space for mothers to feel seen, heard, and understood, especially those navigating the intersection of raising young kids while also maintaining passions, purpose, and work outside of motherhood.
0:20
SPEAKER_02: And it's called Uncut because we do not hold back here.
0:24
SPEAKER_02: Through expert conversations, personal stories, practical tools, and honest reflection, we explore what it means to care for ourselves, stay connected to our kids, and remember that we can feel hard things and still be okay.
0:37
SPEAKER_02: I'm so glad you're here.
0:42
SPEAKER_02: So, what happens to ambition when you become a mother?
0:47
SPEAKER_02: There is a pretty persistent story out there that women become less ambitious after having children, that our priorities change, our careers matter less, and somehow we're no longer as capable or committed as we were before.
1:01
SPEAKER_02: But what if that's not actually what's happening?
1:04
SPEAKER_02: My guest today is Alexa Starks, founder of Mothered Media and editor-in-chief of Mothered Magazine.
1:10
SPEAKER_02: Alexa is a researcher, advocate, entrepreneur, and mother of two whose work is focused on changing the way we understand and support working mothers.
1:20
SPEAKER_02: In this conversation, we talk about what Alexa's research is showing us about working motherhood, why so many workplaces still fail mothers during maternity leave and the return to work, and what happens to ambition and identity after we have children.
1:35
SPEAKER_02: But we also go deeper than workplace policy.
1:39
SPEAKER_02: We talk about the internal shift that happens when women who are used to planning and achieving and solving and knowing what comes next suddenly find themselves in motherhood, where so much is uncertain and outside of our control.
1:53
SPEAKER_02: And maybe most importantly, we talk about what becomes possible when we stop treating motherhood and ambition as competing forces and start recognizing that motherhood can actually expand who we are, strengthen how we lead, and give us even more to bring to our work, our families, and the world.
2:11
SPEAKER_02: Let's dive in.
2:30
SPEAKER_02: The women I work with are often deeply thoughtful, capable, ambitious mothers who care tremendously about their children and also about the work, passions, and purpose they hold outside of motherhood.
2:42
SPEAKER_02: But somewhere along the way, anxiety, guilt, overwhelm, and pressure begin pulling them out of the present moment and away from the experience they long to be having.
2:53
SPEAKER_02: The Calm Connection Accelerator is my 12-week experience designed to help mothers move from survival mode into greater calm, confidence, steadiness, and connection, both with themselves and with their children.
3:06
SPEAKER_02: If that resonates with you, I'd love to invite you to book a call with me.
3:09
SPEAKER_02: We'll talk through what's feeling hardest right now, what you most want for yourself and your family, and whether the Calm Connection Accelerator feels like the right next step for you.
3:18
SPEAKER_02: You can find more information and the link to book a call in the show notes.
4:05
SPEAKER_02: Tell us about your mama life, tell us about your work life.
4:07
SPEAKER_02: And if you could just tell us why you chose to dive into this work as a starting point, that would be awesome.
4:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
4:16
SPEAKER_01: So I first and foremost, I have two toddlers.
4:18
SPEAKER_01: I have a three-year-old son and a two-year-old daughter.
4:21
SPEAKER_01: So life is full toddler chaos all the time, every day.
4:26
SPEAKER_01: It's exhausting and wonderful.
4:29
SPEAKER_01: And we live in the Netherlands.
4:31
SPEAKER_01: So we moved here about a year ago from Dallas.
4:34
SPEAKER_01: And Dallas is where we had our two kids in the US.
4:38
SPEAKER_01: And I had spent my entire career in corporate America in advertising.
4:42
SPEAKER_01: I went back to school, got my master's in leadership.
4:45
SPEAKER_01: I was very like high ambition, you know, promotion, promotion, promotion.
4:51
SPEAKER_01: I had mapped everything out.
4:53
SPEAKER_01: And then I had my two kids pretty back to back and had no support coming back from maternity leave.
5:00
SPEAKER_01: I had to, no transition plan back to work.
5:04
SPEAKER_01: So it was just the expectation of I'd be at 100% on day one.
5:08
SPEAKER_01: And I had managers who didn't say anything.
5:10
SPEAKER_01: And then with my second baby, I had it was a very toxic work environment.
5:14
SPEAKER_01: And I started getting pushed out and I realized and I started talking with other moms that, well, this is very common that this happens, that either your manager is unsupportive or your workplace is unsupportive, or there's just a lack of overall support for working moms.
5:29
SPEAKER_01: And I kind of called bullshit on that.
5:32
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, I refuse to accept that this is acceptable just because we're all struggling silently.
5:38
SPEAKER_01: And everywhere I looked, I didn't see any examples of how another working mom dealt with it.
5:45
SPEAKER_01: Everyone was just silently kind of struggling.
5:48
SPEAKER_01: And so I started building my side business.
5:51
SPEAKER_01: At the time it was my side business, executive moms.
5:54
SPEAKER_01: And it originally started as maternity leave coaching because I wanted to help other moms with that transition and workplaces better navigate it.
6:02
SPEAKER_01: But I realized that I was plugging holes on like a sinking ship and just playing like whack-a-mole all the time, like problem fix, problem fix, problem fix.
6:11
SPEAKER_01: But it was never solving the broader problem of the systemic support and infrastructure for working mothers.
6:17
SPEAKER_01: And so last fall we pivoted and switched to a broader systemic redesign of working motherhood and overall more support.
6:26
SPEAKER_01: And so that meant switching my company instead of the one-on-one and the workshops.
6:31
SPEAKER_01: Now it is solely research and advocacy campaigns around working motherhood.
6:36
SPEAKER_01: So in January, we put out the Future of Working Motherhood report, which looked at how working mothers are supported or not in the workplace around maternity leave, return to work, overall working motherhood.
6:47
SPEAKER_01: Right now, uh at the end of May, we should put out our maternal strengths report, which quantifies how motherhood impacts your executive leadership skills.
6:56
SPEAKER_01: And then in September, we have our natural national working motherhood week, which is uh an amalgamation of a documentary calling out the systemic issues of working motherhood, expert interviews, panels, uh resource hub, which is a national like public library uh for working mothers with all these different resources from experts.
7:20
SPEAKER_01: And then I also started Mothered Magazine, which is my second business, because I thought if we're going to change how working moms are supported and how they are perceived and the data behind working motherhood, we also need to change how working moms are valued and perceived by society and show real examples of how strong working mothers are.
7:38
SPEAKER_01: Because working mothers still have that stereotype and stigma of, oh, you're less committed, you're less ambitious, and you don't want the promotion and you're not as capable anymore.
7:48
SPEAKER_01: And so I know and you know that that's not true.
7:53
SPEAKER_01: And so I everywhere I looked to see magazines or interviews with leaders, I didn't see anyone talking about how motherhood impacted their work, their career, their leadership.
8:02
SPEAKER_01: And I wanted to see that.
8:04
SPEAKER_01: So I created Motherhood magazine to spotlight working moms who are ambitious and driven and capable, whether they're entrepreneurs starting their own businesses or they're leaders in corporate or part-time fractional, and show these examples of real working moms who are ambitious and capable.
8:18
SPEAKER_01: So that's a full cycle of systemic support for working moms.
8:25
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
8:26
SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's so much in there.
8:28
SPEAKER_02: And I I I want to do two things today.
8:32
SPEAKER_02: And I wish we had like 27 hours because go, I want to make sure I'm asking as as poignant questions as I can because we have limited time here today.
8:42
SPEAKER_02: But I want to do two things.
8:43
SPEAKER_02: I I want to dive into the report you created and some of the things that you're finding, kind of the universal findings.
8:52
SPEAKER_02: I think it's really helpful for women to understand that what they're experiencing is not isolated in one place, that this is, you know, systemic, that there are many people experiencing the same thing.
9:04
SPEAKER_02: So I want to dive into that a little bit.
9:06
SPEAKER_02: Um, I want to, and then I want to talk to you about what I see on my end, because of course the work I do is less directly related to what's happening at work and more related to what's happening at home.
9:20
SPEAKER_02: You have um you talk about something that you're in your report called the ambition gap that you talk about that happens.
9:27
SPEAKER_02: And I'm especially interested in that because that is something that we talk about on this podcast, and I talk about in my coaching with moms all the time is this what is the definition of success and ambition and how does that shift after we become mothers?
9:42
SPEAKER_02: So all of that we're gonna do in what the next 40 minutes, you know, 35 minutes, but we'll see how far we get.
9:48
SPEAKER_02: Um, but what just just without having to go through the entire report, what do you think were the most important, fascinating, interesting, surprising findings for you during that?
10:00
SPEAKER_02: And we'll put in we'll put a link where they can download this report if people are interested, so they can actually go in there a little more.
10:07
SPEAKER_02: But or maybe like, what did you take away from this reporting?
10:11
SPEAKER_02: I guess is a better question to ask.
10:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think I my overall takeaway was that working mothers are in a survival mode all the time at work.
10:23
SPEAKER_01: They're just trying to survive in systems that aren't supporting them.
10:27
SPEAKER_01: So some of the most shocking statistics to me were that 97% of these mothers believe that they're better leaders because they are moms.
10:37
SPEAKER_01: Yet less than a third of them, I think it was like 24% or 25%, even had any sort of return to work transition plan.
10:48
SPEAKER_01: Only a third of them felt comfortable talking to their manager about their family problems or asking for support, which is shockingly low.
10:57
SPEAKER_01: Shockingly low, which has crazy ripple effects of you know, negative feedback loops of not being able to ask for support.
11:05
SPEAKER_01: And so you end up struggling more, and then you still can't ask for support and you don't feel comfortable.
11:09
SPEAKER_01: So that was also shocking.
11:12
SPEAKER_01: Uh, I think we found that almost half of the respondents experienced some sort of postpartum mental health issue, which is high.
11:20
SPEAKER_01: Um, and regardless of if that's diagnosed, undiagnosed, um, treated or untreated, that was some sort of uh mental health issue that they struggled with postpartum, that they also had to manage the return to work, which was unsupported.
11:35
SPEAKER_01: And we found that the single greatest impact on if a mom has a positive or negative experience in their return to work was their manager.
11:45
SPEAKER_01: One person has the single greatest impact if it's a positive or negative experience, that direct support is so crucial, so crucial.
11:56
SPEAKER_01: And then the number one factor, the number one thing that working moms would request that has the biggest impact on the sustainability of working motherhood, because working motherhood is bigger than just maternity leave and transition back to work.
12:07
SPEAKER_01: That's just a fraction of the time your working mom.
12:10
SPEAKER_01: But the overall biggest impact would be flexible work design.
12:14
SPEAKER_01: Because you know, we have everything that happens from toddlers and daycare sicknesses and school closures and everything that happens with kids that we need to be flexible and adaptable.
12:25
SPEAKER_01: And we can't be penalized for it either, because we will always be there for our children.
12:30
SPEAKER_01: We just don't want to be fired because our kid has the chicken pox and can't go to school, and we have to be home with them because they're five and can't stay home alone.
12:38
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
12:38
SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot in that report.
12:40
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's real I found it really fascinating.
12:43
SPEAKER_02: On one hand, it it all was sort of common sense, like of course the the having a direct support understand your situation and support you is imperative.
12:54
SPEAKER_02: And of course, flexible work hours when you have children whose needs are unpredictable and uncertain is important.
13:01
SPEAKER_02: So we understand that intellectually.
13:03
SPEAKER_02: I think one of the things I took away from your report was how unfrequently those things are being paid attention to.
13:13
SPEAKER_02: So even though we understand it intellectually, it's almost like the conditioning of the organizations, the sort of nervous systems of the organization, so to speak, haven't caught up yet.
13:23
SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, you you that that statistic, 50% having a maternal, having an early mental health challenge, like postpartum depression or anxiety being high.
13:31
SPEAKER_02: To me, that actually is spot on.
13:36
SPEAKER_02: So, you know, I've been doing the kind of back end, the more um clinical or supportive mom work um for a couple of decades.
13:44
SPEAKER_02: And I find, I've found throughout my career that the women who struggle most are those highly ambitious, success-driven women.
13:54
SPEAKER_02: Those are the women that tend to have, we tend to see higher rates of depression and anxiety, early maternal depression and anxiety for those women.
14:02
SPEAKER_02: And I have some theories and observations about that, which I want to dive into in a moment.
14:07
SPEAKER_02: But um, but it's interesting because if you're looking at these organizations, these sort of larger or maybe uh more um, I want to say purpose-driven.
14:18
SPEAKER_02: I don't even know if that's what I mean, but organizations like, you know, they're like their employees and their leadership is really important to them.
14:24
SPEAKER_02: They're going to attract those women, right?
14:28
SPEAKER_02: So, so of course we need some more support for those women because they're the ones that are going to struggle in early motherhood.
14:35
SPEAKER_02: Quite frankly, even regardless of whether or not they go back to work, they're likely to struggle.
14:40
SPEAKER_02: Um so so talk to me for a moment about this idea of the ambition gap.
14:49
SPEAKER_02: And and I'm wondering if you could define for us what that means as far as what's seen in the workplace, because I see that happen at home.
14:58
SPEAKER_02: And I'm just gonna be totally honest and say one of the, you know, while I know, I know that we have systemic problems for working moms, uh, not just here in the United States, but really all over the place, right?
15:10
SPEAKER_02: And in most Western world, you know, cultures and communities, we tend to have this sort of all or nothing thinking and not enough support.
15:17
SPEAKER_02: And I also think that, you know, one of the questions that I ask my clients all the time is what part might you be playing in the things that aren't working for you?
15:28
SPEAKER_02: So I really look at, okay, we know where there are these structures that need to change, but while things are the way they are, what part might you be playing in this increase in anxiety that you feel at this stage of life when you're a new mother?
15:42
SPEAKER_02: And and it's a tricky question because the question is not how am I to blame?
15:46
SPEAKER_02: Why is this my fault?
15:47
SPEAKER_02: That is not the question.
15:48
SPEAKER_02: But we do bring conditioning into motherhood with us.
15:51
SPEAKER_02: And that same conditioning that led us to be really successful in our careers can lead us to struggle in early motherhood.
15:59
SPEAKER_02: So, what how do you define the ambition gap in from your seat?
16:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, this is really good.
16:07
SPEAKER_01: So I think the ambition gap is this assumption that once you become a mother, you're automatically, almost always, less ambitious about your career.
16:18
SPEAKER_01: That you were maybe before you had a baby, you had all this ambition, you were going to overwork yourself, over exert yourself, work early, work late at night, but then suddenly you become a mom.
16:28
SPEAKER_01: No, you're less ambitious and you don't want to climb up the corporate ladder, you don't want to overwork, you don't want to prove yourself and get a promotion.
16:35
SPEAKER_01: And so you become less ambitious.
16:38
SPEAKER_01: And there's a lot of things that go or that are actually happening under the surface with that less ambitious.
16:43
SPEAKER_01: But in the report that we did, we actually found that moms are not less ambitious, they're actually more ambitious.
16:50
SPEAKER_01: That ambition is just focused elsewhere.
16:53
SPEAKER_01: And so very often we saw that, oh, moms don't they're not they're not as ambitious about the career they were in because they don't want to over-exert themselves and overwork and burn out, but they are still ambitious, it just looks different.
17:07
SPEAKER_01: So now maybe they want to start their own business because they're passionate about something else, or they want to make an impact and do something that's impactful in the world to build a legacy for their kid instead of doing, you know, sales for something else.
17:20
SPEAKER_01: So that ambition usually shifts.
17:24
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes it is less ambition about a career because now they you know they realize, oh, my kids are way more important than my career, and so they want to stay at home.
17:33
SPEAKER_01: So it's not an it's not a it's not an all or nothing.
17:36
SPEAKER_01: But the vast majority of the time in the report that we found was that women are still ambitious or more ambitious, it just looks different.
17:45
SPEAKER_01: And that is a it it fights against that assumption that corporate America has because they that helps I don't want to say it it helps them justify sometimes letting all of these pregnant women or women on maternity leave go because it's this assumption, ah you're not as ambitious anyway, so we're just gonna you know let you go anyways, and just liability.
18:12
SPEAKER_01: And so that we keep seeing that.
18:13
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, yeah.
18:15
SPEAKER_02: I mean that makes my skin crawl, right?
18:18
SPEAKER_02: Because because I uh I agree.
18:21
SPEAKER_02: I think uh ambition being being ambitious is usually uh part of one's nature, character.
18:33
SPEAKER_02: It doesn't just go away, right?
18:35
SPEAKER_02: It's not like we suddenly are less ambitious, and I think there is a sort of either-or assumption is someone gonna be a really successful professional or a really successful mom, whatever quotes around those two things, and and they are seen as contradictory, right?
18:54
SPEAKER_02: Um so um gosh, where do I want to go with this?
19:00
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna have like a million thoughts here.
19:03
SPEAKER_02: Um one of the things that I've seen in my work is that the that am let's talk about that ambit, that ambitious human woman, the woman who just likes doing things well and sets her mind to something and focuses on it and gets it done, right?
19:19
SPEAKER_02: Like that woman, let's say that she um returns to work and it's just too overwhelming and stressful so that she leaves.
19:26
SPEAKER_02: Or maybe she doesn't, when she's supposed to come back, she decides not to come back.
19:30
SPEAKER_02: That woman brings that ambitious self back to motherhood.
19:35
SPEAKER_02: And that doesn't always work so well.
19:38
SPEAKER_02: Meaning when we take that brain that leads us to being really organizers and managers and productive and problem solvers and fixers, that mentality brought home to mothering, which is relational, usually backfires, right?
19:56
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
19:57
SPEAKER_01: I don't know that it backfires as much as there's just a tension where you have a you want your ambition to go somewhere, but it doesn't fit going into your children as much because it just doesn't line up with the same output level.
20:13
SPEAKER_01: And so it is very hard.
20:15
SPEAKER_01: I mean, this was me.
20:17
SPEAKER_01: I, you know, I'm very ambitious, always have been very ambitious, and love doing my businesses, and it was very hard to be uh on maternity leave and not doing anything.
20:30
SPEAKER_01: And I mean, I mean, I wasn't not doing anything.
20:32
SPEAKER_01: I was exhausted and doing stuff all the time, but it wasn't the same level of like brain activity and stimulation directed into something.
20:41
SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, there is a tension that happens that um that can translate into this like lack of fulfillment almost, or can lead to postpartum mental health issues if you're unhappy.
20:53
SPEAKER_01: Um, so it definitely has repercussions.
20:58
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, that's what I see.
21:00
SPEAKER_02: What I see in my work is that one of the root causes of more, not just discontent, not just, you know, but like more chronic anxiety and overwhelm and guilt, that kind of feeling that really interferes with connection and being present and joy and all those things we want to feel in motherhood, that a lot of times that's because this ambition is being misplaced, right?
21:25
SPEAKER_02: There has to be somewhere to use it for many of these women.
21:29
SPEAKER_02: And when we try to use it in planning and problem solving with our kids all the time, we we're distracted.
21:36
SPEAKER_02: It just does not give us what we're wanting most.
21:38
SPEAKER_02: The reason I'm bringing this up now is because of the research you found about how the identity shifts that happen in motherhood actually lead to better leadership at work, right?
21:52
SPEAKER_02: That what you found, which of course is sort of common knowledge, common, we understand common sense, but then we actually look at it and we're like, wow, that's fascinating.
22:00
SPEAKER_02: That when we learn how to um highlight and utilize those parts of ourselves, the nurturing, the um deep listening, the being able to be present and sit with what's happening without having to fix things all the time.
22:19
SPEAKER_02: We all uncertain learning how to like navigate uncertainty and unpredictability, which we all get like a world-class education in as mothers.
22:28
SPEAKER_02: Those things can translate back to work and make work feel more fulfilling.
22:34
SPEAKER_02: Do you have can you talk to me about your thoughts on that?
22:37
SPEAKER_02: Because I do think there is this either-or thing that happens.
22:41
SPEAKER_02: And man, when we can integrate these things, life can feel so fulfilling.
22:46
SPEAKER_01: What are your thoughts?
22:47
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
22:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
22:48
SPEAKER_01: So in the report, in the future of working motherhood, we did find that identity is an evolutionary process, right?
22:55
SPEAKER_01: You go through some of it's an identity loss, and you're shedding parts of yourself, parts of yourself that don't aren't as important or you don't need anymore, and you're evolving into this new version of you.
23:06
SPEAKER_01: And in our new report that we're doing, which may be out by the time this airs, but the maternal strengths report, that I we're just sifting through the data right now.
23:16
SPEAKER_01: It shows exactly that that motherhood increases your resilience, your empathy, your adaptability, your crisis management, your communication, your trust building, your ability to navigate into personal relationships.
23:30
SPEAKER_01: Like these are key uh traits that we quantified that every single one motherhood increased.
23:40
SPEAKER_01: Every single one.
23:41
SPEAKER_01: Not like some of them, every single one motherhood increased globally as well.
23:48
SPEAKER_01: And so I'm not surprised.
23:50
SPEAKER_01: And you know, you and I are like, yeah, that makes sense.
23:52
SPEAKER_01: That makes perfect sense, common sense, right?
23:54
SPEAKER_01: But to men or to people who aren't parents, they may not make that connection that motherhood is a leadership development program, and that's how it should be treated.
24:08
SPEAKER_01: But you know, and this is mothers, this the report looked at working mothers, but you know, moms who are stay-at-home moms are also building these same skills of resilience, patience, and adaptability.
24:19
SPEAKER_01: So motherhood has such a huge impact on your skills and your strengths, and that's what needs to be recognized more in the workplace and in society.
24:30
SPEAKER_01: And that's that's why I love doing these reports, because it like calls out the data that we all know, but isn't, you know, maybe workplaces don't know or men don't know, because you know, men still make up 70% of the C-suite and executive teams.
24:44
SPEAKER_02: So let's dive in and riff for a minute about this.
24:47
SPEAKER_02: So, you know, I again, I think many of the women who I end up seeing, which is just a portion of the larger population, of course, are women who throughout their life have again developed these strengths in problem solving and planning and organizing and all these things that have led them to be really successful in the workplace.
25:10
SPEAKER_02: And yeah, 70% of the C-suite, you and I don't even have to use, you know, research numbers to know that this is a male-dominated world professionally in most professional tracks, right?
25:23
SPEAKER_02: And so often women have learned, well, I have to kind of be able to keep up or do better than these men who are doing these things already.
25:34
SPEAKER_02: I think if we back up and look at like the research on, again, generalizing to the nth degree, but research on, you know, the male versus female kind of skills and temperaments, we know that women tend to be nurturers, that tend to spend more time listening.
25:50
SPEAKER_02: But they've had many of us have really had to, you know, quote unquote, fight against that to be really successful at work.
25:59
SPEAKER_02: What I'm finding is that that part of our our brains can get so strengthened that when we then need to shift back to slowing down, to feeling, to listening, to nurturing, to be willing to not know the answer, to the uncertainty and unpredictability, that's where a lot of the angst in early motherhood can show up because those skills just aren't practiced.
26:23
SPEAKER_02: We haven't been using them.
26:25
SPEAKER_02: They're there, but we haven't been using them.
26:28
SPEAKER_02: One of the things that I've really been thinking about, I'm so curious to know your thoughts, is this sort of unconscious conditioning that we as women bring with us to the workforce.
26:41
SPEAKER_02: So, yes, we have stereotypes that come from outside, but then we have this conditioning that comes from inside, right?
26:49
SPEAKER_02: That like slowing down is lazy, right?
26:52
SPEAKER_02: That not knowing the answer is not okay, that in order for me to be good at this thing, I have to be perfect all the time.
26:59
SPEAKER_02: I mean, this conditioning that we bring in, that maybe we were showing up at work that way, and then we had kids, and we're like, oh dang, this is, I'm gonna explode if I keep functioning this way.
27:10
SPEAKER_02: So, what do you think about the external versus the internal pressure that as women we tend to put on ourselves around being working mothers?
27:22
SPEAKER_01: This is good because I love talking about societal conditioning.
27:26
SPEAKER_01: Um, I can always get really into it.
27:28
SPEAKER_01: I think there's so much external societal conditioning that has actually told us that it's our job to tell it to ourselves.
27:40
SPEAKER_01: Like that internal conditioning where we're telling ourselves we should do this, we should do that, we shouldn't do this, is still external conditioning that has conditioned us to be thinking that way in the first place.
27:51
SPEAKER_01: Um, and it's everywhere from movies to TV shows.
27:53
SPEAKER_01: I was just watching a clip of mad men and the women were like sniffing at each other, like you know, one of them was upset and was like, Don't do that here.
28:00
SPEAKER_01: You can't do that here, you can't show emotions here.
28:02
SPEAKER_01: Like, go home if you're gonna do that or something.
28:04
SPEAKER_01: And it is very hard, especially if it's your first baby, and I see this a lot.
28:11
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you'll know if it's like the difference of one versus like subsequent children, but that that first baby is very difficult to go from I would say almost like masculine energy type in the workplace to now slower paced in the moment, more emotional, um, more empathetic.
28:30
SPEAKER_01: And having to emotionally regulate is much harder and maybe be more on your quote unquote feminine side.
28:36
SPEAKER_01: I don't really do much with those like energy things, but it is hard and it is a big adjustment, especially if it's your first.
28:44
SPEAKER_01: And I found that for me it was hard with that adjustment of zero to one, was that I was struggling with who am I?
28:51
SPEAKER_01: And this goes into that identity shift of who am I?
28:54
SPEAKER_01: Because I'm not the same fast-paced, you know, hard-edged person now.
29:00
SPEAKER_01: I'm much softer.
29:01
SPEAKER_01: Is that who I am now?
29:02
SPEAKER_01: Am I soft?
29:03
SPEAKER_01: Am I more in touch with my emotions?
29:05
SPEAKER_01: And stepping into that of like, oh, that actually makes me better at XYZ.
29:11
SPEAKER_01: It actually makes me a better leader, it makes me a better person, I'm more in touch with my emotions, I can read other people's emotions better.
29:17
SPEAKER_01: And so it takes a lot of self-awareness work, and that's hard, especially if you're a postpartum.
29:24
SPEAKER_01: And if your hormones are all over the place, it is also very hard to do.
29:28
SPEAKER_01: But I would say once I had my second, it wasn't as jarring of a shift because I was already in that new energy, new softer mode, I would say.
29:40
SPEAKER_01: And so it can be jarring.
29:42
SPEAKER_01: It's just, I feel like that's part of the that matrescence, that evolution into motherhood that you kind of have to go through.
29:49
SPEAKER_01: And it has all those uncomfortable parts of shedding what doesn't fit anymore, that hard-edged, sharp parts of you into the softer parts and accepting that can be uncomfortable at first.
30:00
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's the acceptance that I think is really tricky because what I hear is I've lost myself.
30:06
SPEAKER_02: There's something wrong with me because I can't access that go, go, go part of myself that helped me succeed so much outside of motherhood.
30:15
SPEAKER_02: So you you're absolutely right.
30:17
SPEAKER_02: I think if we can, so my daughters are 19 and 17 now, it's been a long time since my kids were babies.
30:25
SPEAKER_02: And now, of course, I can look back and be like, oh, Kate, new mama Kate, it's all okay.
30:32
SPEAKER_02: Because at the time it all felt so terrifying and scary.
30:36
SPEAKER_02: And to your point, if we can shift the perspective and see how tapping into those parts of ourselves that are, you know, that what I just wrote down as we were talking is willing to be uncertain.
30:48
SPEAKER_02: I think many of us are terrified of uncertainty.
30:52
SPEAKER_02: Because we've learned, especially to you know, climb the ladder at work, that we have to know the answers to things.
31:00
SPEAKER_02: We have to be certain.
31:01
SPEAKER_02: And the idea of uncertainty feels terrifying.
31:04
SPEAKER_02: Motherhood is filled with uncertainty.
31:06
SPEAKER_02: So I think it can feel really scary to feel like we've lost a part of ourselves.
31:11
SPEAKER_02: What you're saying, Alexa, which of course is the ultimate goal, is to understand that motherhood uh, you know, taps us back into other important parts of ourselves that we maybe haven't been utilizing that inherently help us grow and evolve in a positive way.
31:30
SPEAKER_02: Don't take something away, but adds to something.
31:33
SPEAKER_02: That's a hard shift for many women.
31:36
SPEAKER_01: It is a very hard shift, yeah.
31:38
SPEAKER_01: And it's it's also not immediate.
31:40
SPEAKER_01: It's not like you're gonna wake up tomorrow and snap your finger and be like, I've figured it out, I've discovered myself, right?
31:46
SPEAKER_01: It takes a long time.
31:48
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I was not the same person at three months postpartum versus six months versus one year.
31:53
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, so it's this whole evolution, which can be very frustrating for someone who likes, you know, quick, fast action go control.
32:03
SPEAKER_01: And that's hard to be like, no, this takes time.
32:07
SPEAKER_01: This takes meditation, maybe.
32:09
SPEAKER_01: This takes some reflection and self-awareness to figure out.
32:14
SPEAKER_01: And that that is hard.
32:15
SPEAKER_01: That's hard to accept.
32:17
SPEAKER_02: Right.
32:17
SPEAKER_02: I mean, you're you're this, you are an advocate, a researcher, an entrepreneur, a professional.
32:24
SPEAKER_02: You're also a mom of two very young children.
32:28
SPEAKER_02: So you are walking the talk.
32:31
SPEAKER_02: I mean, you're in the midst of this thing that you're trying to understand more and really advocate change for on the on the sort of the organizational end.
32:40
SPEAKER_02: Can you talk just briefly about what changes you you advocate for?
32:44
SPEAKER_02: What you are you and your organization are trying to shift in larger businesses that would help mothers feel more supported?
32:52
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
32:53
SPEAKER_01: So, first and foremost, flexible work design is by far the most important because that impacts every mom of young kids to teenagers and beyond, right?
33:04
SPEAKER_01: Is that flexible work design, which honestly benefits every employee because everybody's going to go through some life experience or challenge that they need flexibility for and support or a compassionate manager who can say, Hey, I see you're going through something.
33:19
SPEAKER_01: Do you need to work from home or whatever it is?
33:21
SPEAKER_01: And so flexible work design by and large is the number one thing.
33:25
SPEAKER_01: And that goes against a lot of the return to office mandates that we're seeing kind of come back since COVID, which makes absolute no sense on paper at all.
33:33
SPEAKER_01: It's just this weird, I don't know, male ego bullshit.
33:37
unknown: Yeah.
33:37
SPEAKER_01: Want to fill office seats so they can get seen walking around in their suits or whatever.
33:42
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
33:43
SPEAKER_01: Totally.
33:44
SPEAKER_02: Anyway, anyways, it's that's that's our next that's our next podcast conversation we have.
33:49
SPEAKER_01: We'll put that one on hold.
33:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
33:52
SPEAKER_01: So so return to office mandates are the worst.
33:55
SPEAKER_01: Um, and they're really hard for parents because you have to be there for your kids and you there's so many things that go on.
34:02
SPEAKER_01: And if you're forced into an office, yeah, okay.
34:04
SPEAKER_01: So flexible work design is something we advocate for.
34:07
SPEAKER_01: And that also goes along with uh like the ability to track your work in an offline manner.
34:16
SPEAKER_01: And so a lot of companies use project management tools like Monday.com or ClickUp or some sort of project management software, a sauna.
34:25
SPEAKER_01: There's a million of them out there now, but some way to track offline that you are getting all of your work done so you're not missing work, you're not not working just because you're at home.
34:35
SPEAKER_01: And that may mean you know, you work from nine to three, go pick up your kids, maybe you're offline from 3:30 to 7, and then you pick back up work from seven to nine or whatever it is.
34:47
SPEAKER_01: I did that sometimes, and that's because I had to.
34:50
SPEAKER_01: And so, but being able to show that you can you still got all your work done reflects that you are able to work from home.
34:59
SPEAKER_01: The ambition isn't going away, right?
35:01
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
35:02
SPEAKER_01: And your capabilities aren't dropping either.
35:05
SPEAKER_01: And so that's another crucial one that we talk about.
35:08
SPEAKER_01: And there's so much about work um pumping and the ability to come, compassionate managers.
35:14
SPEAKER_01: I think every manager, everyone who's a manager or is getting promoted to manager should be required to take some sort of compassion or empathy course training.
35:26
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it absolutely like blows my mind that that doesn't exist.
35:30
SPEAKER_01: That's not a requirement, but it should be that if you are managing people, you need to either pass an exam that's where you can show that you are compassionate and understand what compassion means, or take a course about it.
35:42
SPEAKER_01: And I think that would help solve like 90% of the problems in the workplace, honestly.
35:49
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, those two things you talked about that you saw, that women, you know, pe women who felt like they were being, you're really talking about, I think, being seen, heard, and understood as a fully uh integrated, multidimensional human woman, you know, how how are we being seen and appreciated even for all of those parts within the workplace?
36:11
SPEAKER_02: And that, yeah, it makes a lot of sense.
36:13
SPEAKER_02: I also saw in your report that you know you advocate for um postpartum, uh sleep, lactation, postpartum mental health support for organizations to really offer that up to their employees and women.
36:27
SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, those are easy wins and sometimes benefits companies that can can cover some of that or all of that, or you know, some of it is employer, employee covered.
36:38
SPEAKER_01: And that would make a huge difference because a lot of times women don't know that postpartum um mental health therapy is even available.
36:48
SPEAKER_01: And so they don't get it, or they don't seek it out.
36:51
SPEAKER_01: You know, sleep.
36:52
SPEAKER_01: If you're being forced in back to go to work, you know, at eight weeks or 12 weeks, your baby's probably not sleeping through the night.
36:57
SPEAKER_01: So you're going back to work on broken sleep.
36:59
SPEAKER_01: So some sort of sleep training, sleep help would be amazing.
37:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
37:04
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, those are easy wins and also very low cost to organizations.
37:10
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, a lot less than the cost of losing uh leading your organization or any employee for that matter.
37:18
SPEAKER_02: There's such a financial cost to that.
37:20
SPEAKER_02: I'm sort of struck as you're talking about how really what we're talking about is that you know, we're not supposed to mother alone.
37:26
SPEAKER_02: We're not supposed to do this alone, right?
37:28
SPEAKER_02: And when we take a woman who's now also a mother and we take her and expect her to be an individual over here at work and to figure all of that out without community support, without organizational support, it's going to backfire.
37:42
SPEAKER_02: That just doesn't function well in isolation.
37:46
SPEAKER_02: So when you have the structures within the organization that support her needs, when you have the manager, when you have, you know, all the flexible time, it really, I mean, we know that from tons of social science and psychology.
37:57
SPEAKER_02: That promotes potential and growth.
37:59
SPEAKER_02: It doesn't hinder it, it promotes it.
38:01
SPEAKER_02: Um, which again, common sense to you and me.
38:04
SPEAKER_02: And sometimes I'm like, everyone's so dumb.
38:06
SPEAKER_02: Why can't people just understand this stuff?
38:09
SPEAKER_02: Have you found yourself speaking about that?
38:11
SPEAKER_02: Get feeling, do you feel anger?
38:13
SPEAKER_02: Do you get angry as you real as you do this research?
38:16
SPEAKER_02: What's your emotional experience like as you go through this?
38:21
SPEAKER_01: It's more, I'll see the data and be like, oh fuck yeah, that of course makes sense.
38:27
SPEAKER_01: So glad it I it turned out exactly how I thought it would be, you know.
38:31
SPEAKER_01: And then it's more disappointment that in like how society still has so far to go.
38:41
SPEAKER_01: And then I get it's not anger, I would say it's more I would say it's more disappointment than anger.
38:50
SPEAKER_01: Um, I mean, I can get angry about a lot of things, but I would not call this one anger.
38:54
SPEAKER_01: It's just disappointment.
38:56
SPEAKER_02: Is this part of why you moved?
39:00
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
39:01
SPEAKER_01: We are not fans of school shootings, and we're not fans of Trump and not fans of greedy healthcare, for-profit healthcare systems and um education systems that are being actively gutted to whitewash.
39:20
SPEAKER_01: Um, and we're like rank US is like ranked one of the lowest uh education systems in like the developed world.
39:28
SPEAKER_01: Uh and so we, you know, our kids were young and we're like, why not do it while we can?
39:32
SPEAKER_01: And my business was always set up to be remote, and it helped me to go global and expand anyway.
39:36
SPEAKER_01: So like, why not?
39:38
SPEAKER_01: You know, I don't wanna I am already like an anxious person.
39:41
SPEAKER_01: I could not, I could never send my kids to school with school shooting and active shooter drills.
39:45
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
39:46
SPEAKER_01: I don't know how I don't know how parents do it, honestly.
39:49
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean it's a little bit like what's that term, a frog in water, right?
39:52
SPEAKER_02: Is that as the water heats up, you just sit in there with it.
39:56
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I'm I am a hundred percent with you, and um it's it's it's terrifying how normalized things can begin to feel, right?
40:04
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
40:05
SPEAKER_01: The normalization of it, that is sort of what makes me angry because I'm like sitting here, like, do we not all see the same thing?
40:12
SPEAKER_01: Like, I see it, you see it, we see it.
40:15
SPEAKER_01: Why does no one else do anything about it?
40:17
SPEAKER_01: And then I get angry about the government, and yeah, that's where I get angry.
40:21
unknown: Yeah.
40:22
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I understand.
40:22
SPEAKER_02: And again, it kind of brings me back as we sort of come full circle here to this idea of how, you know, when we become mothers, we become mama bears.
40:32
SPEAKER_02: You know, we will we will do whatever we can for our child's health and well-being.
40:39
SPEAKER_02: Now, sometimes that's misinformed, right?
40:42
SPEAKER_02: We can say we're doing something for our child's health and well-being, and we may not be.
40:46
SPEAKER_02: And again, the the sort of simple example I can give now, which I'm gonna really again simplify and generalize here because it's different for every person.
40:55
SPEAKER_02: But sometimes I see women leave their professional track because they worry that it's that it's bad for their child to have them continue to work and they go want to decide to stay home because they think it's better for their child.
41:08
SPEAKER_02: I have a lot to say about that.
41:09
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it's we just saw, didn't we just see a study come out that daughters, especially who have moms who are working moms, end up being more uh ambitious and better like socialized or better professionals, anyways, too?
41:24
SPEAKER_01: Something like that?
41:25
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, our markers of success are are thank thankfully are really changing from sort of achievement-based success to more holistic success in fulfillment and relationships and connection.
41:37
SPEAKER_02: And and yes, the reality is that when we are uh giving ourselves our permission to live into our full potential outside of motherhood, we actually are able to provide more to our children than if we tell ourselves we have to sacrifice those things for our children.
41:55
SPEAKER_02: So again, the the mothers who might be choosing to do that, they're not, they're doing that because they believe it's what our their kids need.
42:02
SPEAKER_02: I think my point is that mama bear gets loud.
42:07
SPEAKER_02: And, you know, I think to me, that's where I really want to make sure that we've got all the accurate information out there, both for the organizations and for the families themselves, because there is absolutely a way for us to support women to be both successful at work and successful in mothering.
42:29
SPEAKER_02: We do not have to choose, and we have to continue to sort of stir up the myths around these things and the assumptions so that we can make room for the reality of integration in both and and the depth of context in human nature, right?
42:43
SPEAKER_02: It's like yeah, they're complex, you know.
42:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, this gets me.
42:48
SPEAKER_01: So I feel like maybe this is somewhere where my anger comes up because that's part of this big MAGA trad wife push on social media to influence an entire generation of young women and young mothers into thinking that they should just be a stay-at-home mom.
43:05
SPEAKER_01: That that's the only thing they should do with their entire life is be this dedicated home wife mother person.
43:13
SPEAKER_01: That's it.
43:13
SPEAKER_01: That's their sole purpose, and that's this huge push that is going on.
43:17
SPEAKER_01: And so if you're just scrolling social media and you're, you know, postpartum, so your brain's not maybe you're not thinking straight and your emotions are all over the place, and you're you're seeing that, and you're like, maybe I should just stay home with my kids.
43:30
SPEAKER_01: Maybe I should quit my job because my kids are supposed to be the most important, right?
43:35
SPEAKER_01: And so you start questioning yourself.
43:37
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, that is detrimental because I absolutely first of all, blanket statement, can't make blanket statements, so everyone's different.
43:44
SPEAKER_01: If you want to be quit your job and be a day, stay at home mom, go do you.
43:48
SPEAKER_01: If you don't, you don't, go do you.
43:49
SPEAKER_02: But that's the difference.
43:50
SPEAKER_01: It's a want versus a should.
43:53
SPEAKER_01: Totally different motivation, right?
43:55
SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
43:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
43:57
SPEAKER_01: And you know, I'm the type of person that when When I spend an entire day with my kids, I'm exhausted.
44:03
SPEAKER_01: There's moments of love, there's moments of snapping, there's moments where I'm overstimulated, there's moments where my kids are snapping and overstimulated, and we're all taking deep breaths trying to calm ourselves down.
44:14
SPEAKER_01: But when I work all day and they're at daycare and they're playing all day, and then come home, I get to be 150% loving, snuggling, amazing mother.
44:26
SPEAKER_01: And there's not a single moment of me being overstimulated or exhausted because I'm just there.
44:33
SPEAKER_01: This is the most important time.
44:34
SPEAKER_01: And so I feel like I'm almost a better mom in those short sprints because I know to cherish it.
44:40
SPEAKER_01: And everyone's so different.
44:42
SPEAKER_01: And but I just feel for me personally, I need this ambition.
44:48
SPEAKER_01: Like I love it.
44:49
SPEAKER_01: I love and part of this is I'm building a better world for my daughter and my son, right?
44:53
SPEAKER_01: Because I don't want my daughter to grow up in a world where she feels like she has to choose between work or motherhood.
44:58
SPEAKER_01: That's shitty.
44:59
SPEAKER_01: And I certainly don't want my son to grow up leaving all those for lack of a better word.
45:06
SPEAKER_01: Maybe I'll just choose a nicer word.
45:08
SPEAKER_01: Dipshit asshole magab.
45:11
SPEAKER_01: There you go, there you go.
45:12
SPEAKER_01: Let it rest.
45:12
SPEAKER_01: That's the nice version of that.
45:14
SPEAKER_01: Um, that he doesn't grow up thinking that that's okay, right?
45:18
SPEAKER_01: And all the violence towards women.
45:19
SPEAKER_01: And so it's important to me that my kids grow up in a better world.
45:22
SPEAKER_01: I think that is that is truly like an ambitious thing to go after, right?
45:28
SPEAKER_01: And so when your kids see you building something important, or when your kids can see you building something that matters to you, doing something you're passionate about, that leaves an impact on them.
45:40
SPEAKER_01: That makes a huge impact in a good way.
45:43
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, you are speaking my language, both professionally in my work, but also as a mother.
45:51
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I would have been a horrible stay-at-home mother.
45:57
SPEAKER_02: I uh I used to say back then, you know, I I love I love my kids too much to stay home with them full-time.
46:06
SPEAKER_02: Like I just wouldn't, I would not have done that well.
46:10
SPEAKER_02: You and I both know that's not because I don't love my children enough to want to be home with them.
46:15
SPEAKER_02: It's because I know myself enough to know that I, to your point, I have I have ambitions and goals and purposes outside of motherhood that if I were to put those aside and be home, a part of me would have died.
46:33
SPEAKER_02: Not helpful for my children.
46:36
SPEAKER_02: So I think it's a really, I mean, I think, you know, coming to this place in this conversation is really important because I do think there's a lot of, I see a lot of guilt.
46:45
SPEAKER_02: I see a lot of women who feel torn, that feel like they're being bad moms, quote unquote, because they're pursuing a career.
46:51
SPEAKER_02: And I think what you've just said, what your what your work says, what you have said, certainly what I kind of can really feel in my body as you're talking about this, is that when we pursue the things important to us that that that rev us up outside of motherhood, we have more to give inside motherhood.
47:13
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
47:14
SPEAKER_02: And that to me is, you know, I don't love the term good mom, good mothering, it's too good, bad focused.
47:22
SPEAKER_02: But that to me, to use this term, is what it looks like to be a good mother, is that we're saying I am a part of something.
47:29
SPEAKER_02: I don't want to have to give up that in order to be good here.
47:33
SPEAKER_02: So I'm gonna find a way to integrate the two.
47:36
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
47:36
SPEAKER_01: And that that mom guilt of it, oh, I should be more of this or should be less of this, is just us internalizing against society's expectations of us and society's conditioning of us that we should be one thing or another, and it's black or white, one or the other.
47:52
SPEAKER_01: And so we're internalizing that as our personal failings.
47:55
SPEAKER_01: And so whenever someone talks about mom guilt, I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, it's not you, you're not the problem.
48:01
SPEAKER_01: You are internalizing society's unrealistic and unfair expectations of you because you can do both.
48:08
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
48:09
SPEAKER_02: So, Alexa, you are doing both, you are being both.
48:14
SPEAKER_02: Um, and I guess I'm curious to know, you know, one of the things that we know we have to be able to do or be willing to do to do both is to take care of ourselves, right?
48:23
SPEAKER_02: We can't show up in either of those places from a depleted place, right?
48:27
SPEAKER_02: What do you do to fill up, fill yourself up?
48:30
SPEAKER_02: What's your sort of practice in making sure that you are healthy and grounded and resourced in order to do all these things that you're doing so beautifully?
48:39
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um, I I love to sing, sing all the time.
48:43
SPEAKER_01: So that's my kind of more creative side of my outlet.
48:47
SPEAKER_01: It's not, I'm not, I'm not a great singer, but I love to sing and it gets me in my like in my flow state.
48:55
SPEAKER_01: It gets me in my energy, and it's this playlist that I put together for it's a bunch of love songs.
49:02
SPEAKER_01: So it's ultimate love songs like Celine Dion, Whitney Houston, some Boys to Men.
49:09
SPEAKER_01: There's some Andre Day.
49:11
SPEAKER_01: Um, it's this epic love song playlist, and I listened to it throughout both of my pregnancies.
49:18
SPEAKER_01: It was my birth playlist with both of my children, and it's got it's got my wedding song with my husband.
49:25
SPEAKER_01: It has our first dance song, our song I walk down the aisle to, our song we kissed to.
49:29
SPEAKER_01: And so it has all these songs that get me in my feels.
49:32
SPEAKER_01: So I love to sing that gets me in my energy.
49:34
SPEAKER_01: And then the other thing I do is I work out really hard and lift really heavy weights, like really heavy weights.
49:40
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
49:41
SPEAKER_01: Um, so I was just like sitting here admiring your biceps because they're like my weights this morning.
49:48
SPEAKER_02: I was doing I'm in that, I'm 53.
49:51
SPEAKER_02: So I'm in that stage where where lifting weights is like imperative for our menopausal body.
49:56
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
49:57
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
49:57
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's imperative to start early.
50:00
SPEAKER_01: Yes, right?
50:01
SPEAKER_01: Start early on as as early as you can.
50:03
SPEAKER_01: Yes, because it's not cardio that's gonna do it.
50:05
SPEAKER_01: Lifting weights is gonna actually have much longer term benefits.
50:08
SPEAKER_01: But yes, I love that you're lifting weights.
50:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was just sitting here like, she's killing it.
50:12
SPEAKER_01: Wow, we need to figure out what she's doing because I love when I see another jacked woman.
50:18
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, yeah, strong moms.
50:21
SPEAKER_00: Thanks.
50:21
SPEAKER_01: We don't need to be skinny, we don't need to be like, yeah.
50:25
SPEAKER_02: I'm also just such a um, I think we have a lot to do on this planet.
50:30
SPEAKER_02: You and me, and many other women who are listening and who are out there.
50:34
SPEAKER_02: And if we are not taking care of our bodies and our minds and our spirits and our hearts and our relationships, we will not be able to do the things that we want and need to do.
50:44
SPEAKER_02: So little, a little um plug out there for whatever it is that makes anyone listening feel good in their bodies to make sure that there is time for that.
50:54
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
50:55
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's so important.
50:57
SPEAKER_02: So, Alexa, if people want to hear more about your work, to to, you know, again, to we'll put links in the show notes, but hear more about their your work or connect with you, where can they find you?
51:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so you can find me on LinkedIn.
51:11
SPEAKER_01: I'm all over LinkedIn usually, Alexa Starks, and my Instagram is just Alexa.starks.
51:17
SPEAKER_01: And you could check out executivemoms.co and we have our reports there, we have our research there, uh National Working Motherhood Week coming up in September, and then the magazine is mothered magazine.com.
51:30
SPEAKER_02: And is that uh that's a virtual magazine or are it's print, it's print and digital.
51:35
SPEAKER_02: Okay, gosh, yeah, you staying with it, man.
51:38
SPEAKER_00: I love magazines.
51:42
SPEAKER_00: How cool is it see your face in a magazine in real life?
51:45
SPEAKER_01: Like maybe that's just the you know, the older millennial brain that's just like analog.
51:51
SPEAKER_01: I it was cool right there with you.
51:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
51:56
SPEAKER_02: Well, again, Alexa, thank you for taking the time uh to chat with me today.
52:00
SPEAKER_02: I again am really inspired by what you're doing, and I will continue to follow.
52:05
SPEAKER_02: I look forward to that other report.
52:07
SPEAKER_02: Um, what was it called?
52:08
SPEAKER_02: The strengths the maternal strength report.
52:11
SPEAKER_02: Maternal strength report.
52:12
SPEAKER_02: Really interested to take a look at that in your documentary that's coming.
52:16
SPEAKER_02: We talk about that for just a moment.
52:17
SPEAKER_01: What is this documentary that you're creating?
52:19
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
52:20
SPEAKER_01: So the documentary is going to come out for National Working Motherhood Week, and that's uh sort of a two-parter of calling out the systemic issues that working mothers face and some of the work that's being done by other experts to improve these systems and that we're seeing every day.
52:36
SPEAKER_01: So things like postpartum mental health and you know, uh workplace transition, return to work programs, and you know, all the work that's being done in the workplace and direct support to mothers to sort of improve the system from the inside out and outside in.
52:52
SPEAKER_01: So the whole week is that's more meant to be the documentary is meant to be like an awareness top of funnel.
52:58
SPEAKER_01: Like here's the problems and here's some of the work being done.
53:01
SPEAKER_01: Then during the week we have expert interviews, one-on-ones, panels, and the resource hub.
53:06
SPEAKER_01: And it's meant to be that if workplaces, but especially governments and policies and laws won't in the time we need them to support moms.
53:18
SPEAKER_01: We will build the support ourselves.
53:21
SPEAKER_01: We will I'm bringing together, got like over 80 experts coming together to create this village of direct support for mothers that you can also use in the workplace so that we can build it for ourselves rather than waiting for it to happen.
53:35
SPEAKER_01: Hope you're in a state that it happens, hope that it kicks in, right?
53:39
SPEAKER_01: Because as great as it is, seeing all the paid leave policies pass, you know, at state levels, some of them don't kick in right now.
53:47
SPEAKER_01: Like they don't kick in until 2027 or 2028.
53:50
SPEAKER_01: And so it's like, well, what if I am pregnant now and needed to go on maternity leave, you know, in September or October, whatever?
53:56
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't affect you yet.
53:58
SPEAKER_01: And so it's more like we're trying, I'm trying to build the village of support directly for moms rather than waiting for it to happen and hoping that workplaces and policy and government catches up, which it may not, and it may, but who knows?
54:10
SPEAKER_01: So that's amazing.
54:12
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's amazing.
54:13
SPEAKER_02: And I love the idea of of building it before, you know, so often we wait till we're in crisis to do something about it.
54:21
SPEAKER_02: And I think that this is just conversation is reminding me of how how important it is to be thinking ahead about these things so that we don't have to wait till we can barely get ourselves out the door to work to say this work environment isn't working for me, right?
54:35
SPEAKER_02: That we can, or barely able to, you know, kind of have the motherhood experience we want because we're anxious or depressed, and and to say, okay, how can I support myself so I'm less likely to get to that place.
54:47
SPEAKER_02: So I I love that you are pulling that together.
54:50
SPEAKER_02: Thank you, thank you, thank you.
54:52
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
54:52
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for my spending time with you.
54:58
SPEAKER_02: Hey, so if you're listening to this podcast and finding yourself thinking, yes, this is exactly how I feel, I want you to know that you do not have to navigate the season alone.
55:10
SPEAKER_02: The women I work with are deeply thoughtful, capable, ambitious mothers who care tremendously about their children and also about the work, passions, relationships, and purpose they hold outside of motherhood.
55:23
SPEAKER_02: But motherhood has a way of asking things of us that many of us were never prepared for.
55:29
SPEAKER_02: The uncertainty, the lack of control, the intensity of loving someone this much.
55:35
SPEAKER_02: And somewhere along the way, anxiety, guilt, overwhelm, and the constant need to figure things out can start pulling us away from the life that's actually happening right in front of us.
55:45
SPEAKER_02: The connection experience is my 12-week program designed to help you change that.
55:51
SPEAKER_02: Together we work on building your capacity to stay present and connected even when things feel uncertain, uncomfortable, or different from what you expected.
55:59
SPEAKER_02: So you can respond to your kids, to your life and to yourself in ways that actually reflect the woman and mother you want to be.
56:07
SPEAKER_02: If you're hearing this and thinking, I want that, then I'd love to talk with you.
56:12
SPEAKER_02: You can book a call with me using the link in the show notes.
56:16
SPEAKER_02: We will talk about what's feeling hard for you right now.
56:18
SPEAKER_02: Right.
56:18
SPEAKER_02: What you want to be different and whether the calm connection experience might be the right next step for you.