Latest / Dots and Dreams / Episode 6: I Love My Kids But Miss My Old Life. And How to Stop Feeling Guilty About It

Transcript

Episode 6: I Love My Kids But Miss My Old Life. And How to Stop Feeling Guilty About It · Dots and Dreams

0:00
SPEAKER_00: I had my first child in October 2020,
0:03
SPEAKER_00: and I felt like all the things that make me me were completely wiped away.
0:09
SPEAKER_00: As a first-time mom who moved to a new environment and city shortly
0:13
SPEAKER_00: before giving birth, I often found myself walking with Lena inside the stroller.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: Think COVID time, small town, no friends, my husband was working, what was I supposed to do?
0:26
SPEAKER_00: So naturally I went on five walks a day.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: We'd walk along the most beautiful beach view you can imagine and
0:34
SPEAKER_00: yet my mind was constantly swimming in panic How is it possible
0:39
SPEAKER_00: to feel two very different things at once?
0:43
SPEAKER_00: Love for who's inside the stroller and sheer terror for
0:48
SPEAKER_00: the person pushing it Lena's face and her little tongue sticking out was
0:53
SPEAKER_00: the cutest thing At the same time, the second my mind would go from her
0:59
SPEAKER_00: The second my eyes would lift from her face,
1:03
SPEAKER_00: I'd feel sheer panic and terror for myself and an immediate guilt
1:09
SPEAKER_00: for feeling those things.
1:11
SPEAKER_00: What was I going to become now that I was a mother?
1:15
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Dots and Dreams,
1:17
SPEAKER_00: a podcast about the real vulnerable and my sometimes in the moment stories
1:22
SPEAKER_00: of life transitions.
1:25
SPEAKER_00: I'm Jenny Sidorova and I've been an immigrant, marketer, mother, and a serial reinventor.
1:32
SPEAKER_00: Today, I want to talk about the guilt we feel for missing our old lives when we become a parent.
1:42
SPEAKER_00: It's December 2020.
1:44
SPEAKER_00: Lena is going to be three months at the end of the month,
1:48
SPEAKER_00: and we did what we usually do on a gray December day at that time,
1:53
SPEAKER_00: which is go for a walk along the Biarritz coast.
1:57
SPEAKER_00: I passed a mom with a stroller and looked at her like a lifeboat.
2:03
SPEAKER_00: Please talk to me.
2:06
SPEAKER_00: Please meet me, is what was going through my mind.
2:10
SPEAKER_00: And granted, I
2:11
SPEAKER_00: December in Biarritz is very, very empty, especially when it's gray out.
2:20
SPEAKER_00: So she might be one of five people Lana and I pass on this walk.
2:26
SPEAKER_00: I checked my phone, had no messages.
2:29
SPEAKER_00: I checked my email.
2:30
SPEAKER_00: I
2:31
SPEAKER_00: I had nothing worth reading the woman with the other stroller was now too far
2:38
SPEAKER_00: to even attempt to say hello and I just had this thought
2:43
SPEAKER_00: of is this it is this how it's going to be now
2:48
SPEAKER_00: Going back to that moment and all those beautiful walks along that coast,
2:52
SPEAKER_00: those walks were my moments to make time pass,
2:56
SPEAKER_00: to let my mind wander,
2:58
SPEAKER_00: to try to distract myself from what was my reality and living in a new small town
3:05
SPEAKER_00: and feeling very alone.
3:07
SPEAKER_00: But those walks were also unexpectedly the moments I would feel as if I was naked
3:13
SPEAKER_00: in front of a mirror,
3:15
SPEAKER_00: forced to be aware of all the dark thoughts that went through my mind.
3:20
SPEAKER_00: It was this parallel of emotion that constantly came into mind
3:25
SPEAKER_00: that was very difficult to manage.
3:28
SPEAKER_00: This idea of feeling two things at once.
3:32
SPEAKER_00: I was aware of what I gained by becoming a mom.
3:36
SPEAKER_00: Some of it I knew that it would happen, and other feelings were an incredible surprise.
3:46
SPEAKER_00: Lena's face in the gray elf suit.
3:48
SPEAKER_00: Who could have imagined the cuteness?
3:51
SPEAKER_00: She had this spiky black hair that looked like she was a little porcupine.
3:56
SPEAKER_00: The love that comes slowly and then all at once The abundance
4:02
SPEAKER_00: of feeling you can feel for such a tiny little human The extension of my love
4:09
SPEAKER_00: with Max was something I very much expected
4:13
SPEAKER_00: But the amplitude with which it would come is just not something you can even think
4:19
SPEAKER_00: to imagine until you're in it and living it Having a friend for life,
4:25
SPEAKER_00: because that is really how it felt Every time I'd look down into that stroller,
4:30
SPEAKER_00: I would almost feel like I have a guaranteed best friend forever
4:34
SPEAKER_00: and ever I wanted this
4:38
SPEAKER_00: It was not an accident.
4:39
SPEAKER_00: Lena was very planned.
4:41
SPEAKER_00: I spent a lot of my life worried if it was ever going to happen.
4:45
SPEAKER_00: Would I ever meet someone and fall in love and have a family
4:49
SPEAKER_00: because it didn't happen as early as I would have maybe liked.
4:54
SPEAKER_00: I was 36 when I had Lena.
4:56
SPEAKER_00: That's not late,
4:57
SPEAKER_00: but in the context of how I was raised and for how long I had been worried
5:02
SPEAKER_00: about it happening, that was not early.
5:05
SPEAKER_00: So there were a lot of things that I gained, and I was aware of them.
5:10
SPEAKER_00: But I was also painfully aware of what I lost.
5:15
SPEAKER_00: Spontanuity.
5:17
SPEAKER_00: There's a certain spontanuity that is just taken away even from the least spontaneous person.
5:23
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I am not someone who is overly spontaneous.
5:28
SPEAKER_00: I love to plan.
5:29
SPEAKER_00: But suddenly, I would yearn
5:32
SPEAKER_00: For the freedom that I had when I lived by myself in San Francisco in my early 30s,
5:39
SPEAKER_00: I kept thinking back to this trip when I went to Colombia with two friends
5:44
SPEAKER_00: from Paris and the spontaneity of it.
5:47
SPEAKER_00: because they gave me two weeks notice and i said you know what let me talk
5:51
SPEAKER_00: with my boss walked into her office asked if i can take a week off
5:56
SPEAKER_00: in two weeks she said yes next thing i know i had booked my flights that is just
6:02
SPEAKER_00: the type of thing you cannot and will not do when you have kids and especially
6:07
SPEAKER_00: when they are newborns there's no way you're going to leave a newborn
6:11
SPEAKER_00: with two weeks notice to go meet
6:13
SPEAKER_00: two friends in south america
6:17
SPEAKER_00: I knew before Lena was born that I wanted to make a career pivot.
6:21
SPEAKER_00: I was ready for it.
6:23
SPEAKER_00: I had worked in big corporate companies.
6:25
SPEAKER_00: I accepted the job that brought me back to France in 2017 with L'Oreal, very much in a
6:34
SPEAKER_00: I want to go back to France and they're going to make this possible
6:37
SPEAKER_00: for me mindset I did not want to be in that type of big corporate culture anymore so
6:44
SPEAKER_00: when I was moving to my small town and going to become a mother I already knew
6:49
SPEAKER_00: that I would not be coming back to L'Oreal after maternity leave
6:53
SPEAKER_00: But what I didn't expect was that when she would be there,
6:57
SPEAKER_00: the reality of thinking about my career pivot,
7:01
SPEAKER_00: how I was going to do it,
7:02
SPEAKER_00: suddenly it was very clear that I had zero space to focus on that
7:07
SPEAKER_00: the way someone should be focusing on it
7:10
SPEAKER_00: I was really aware of the lost time that I suddenly didn't have to deal
7:17
SPEAKER_00: with my career pivot and that was really scary because working has always been
7:22
SPEAKER_00: a part of my identity and a part of my life I also missed the stage while I wanted
7:30
SPEAKER_00: to change the way I worked and the environments I worked in
7:34
SPEAKER_00: I also knew that pivoting to a different type of company to
7:39
SPEAKER_00: a remote first environment a smaller organization would likely mean that what I used
7:46
SPEAKER_00: to consider moments of success and glory was going to change I knew
7:52
SPEAKER_00: that I would miss the stage
7:54
SPEAKER_00: because I love giving presentations I love inspiring people and I kind of was aware
8:00
SPEAKER_00: that that's not something I was probably going to get to do
8:05
SPEAKER_00: So this parallelism of everything I was gaining
8:11
SPEAKER_00: and everything I was losing just felt really confusing because I didn't expect it
8:18
SPEAKER_00: and because I felt really guilty about it.
8:22
SPEAKER_00: I also felt really surprised and blindsided by the irony of longing for a life
8:28
SPEAKER_00: that I actually didn't appreciate.
8:31
SPEAKER_00: to the fullest extent while I was living it.
8:34
SPEAKER_00: So when that moment came of actually having what I was
8:38
SPEAKER_00: so scared I would never obtain,
8:41
SPEAKER_00: I felt so guilty and ashamed for not just being happy for the sea view,
8:47
SPEAKER_00: for the baby in the stroller.
8:49
SPEAKER_00: Why couldn't I just be happy about it?
8:53
SPEAKER_00: I can pretty much pinpoint the guilt to a few reasons.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: So first of all, society really only makes room
9:01
SPEAKER_00: for one of these feelings, and it's not the panic one.
9:04
SPEAKER_00: If we look to all of the external triggers we have around us,
9:09
SPEAKER_00: it's not the panic that people talk about.
9:12
SPEAKER_00: Society really doesn't tell us you're going to have a baby and you're going
9:16
SPEAKER_00: to feel gain and loss, love and fear.
9:20
SPEAKER_00: No,
9:20
SPEAKER_00: they just paint this picture that becoming a mother is the most beautiful thing in
9:25
SPEAKER_00: the world.
9:27
SPEAKER_00: I also think that a lot of the
9:29
SPEAKER_00: the reason i was feeling this guilt was coming
9:32
SPEAKER_00: from social media people around me friends and family
9:36
SPEAKER_00: a lot of friends aren't going to tell you that when you are in the early stages of being
9:43
SPEAKER_00: a new mother you're going to feel depressed you're growing to have a lot
9:47
SPEAKER_00: hormones you're trying to have rush of emotions even your gynecologist doesn't
9:51
SPEAKER_00: tell you this even the preparation for the baby that you do with
9:56
SPEAKER_00: the midwife that i had six sessions with because france is generous and makes that all free
10:02
SPEAKER_00: and available no one talks about that i don't even think we talked enough about how difficult
10:36
SPEAKER_00: you don't immediately feel connected to them.
10:38
SPEAKER_00: Quite the contrary.
10:39
SPEAKER_00: Connection takes months.
10:41
SPEAKER_00: You have to get to know each other.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: You have to get to know this human.
10:44
SPEAKER_00: They have to get to know you.
10:46
SPEAKER_00: You kind of tell your brain first, I'm a mother, I love this baby, and you do.
10:51
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, you feel love, but you don't actually get the joy of
10:57
SPEAKER_00: and the endorphins from that love until you feel more connected.
11:03
SPEAKER_00: And I imagine it's different for every woman,
11:05
SPEAKER_00: but for me,
11:08
SPEAKER_00: it was really about survival in the early months of both of my postpartums.
11:15
SPEAKER_00: It was more like, how do I keep this human alive even though I have no idea what I'm doing?
11:20
SPEAKER_00: Well, especially with Lena, who was my first.
11:24
SPEAKER_00: and it is not expected, but it's also not expected that you don't feel that from day one.
11:30
SPEAKER_00: In addition to everything we get from society,
11:35
SPEAKER_00: social media, of course, there's also me and my personality.
11:40
SPEAKER_00: I am a really hyperactive, productive,
11:45
SPEAKER_00: I'm a person who needs to have structure to feel confident.
11:48
SPEAKER_00: If I'm confident, then I'm living life with stride.
11:53
SPEAKER_00: And if I'm not confident, I'm often panicking on the inside.
11:57
SPEAKER_00: Everyone has different ways of how they deal with imposter syndrome,
12:01
SPEAKER_00: feeling not confident, worrying about the future.
12:04
SPEAKER_00: My way of dealing with that is low key panic attacks on the inside
12:09
SPEAKER_00: and sometimes crying fests on the outside.
12:13
SPEAKER_00: So that type of personality that's like very type A,
12:17
SPEAKER_00: planning oriented,
12:19
SPEAKER_00: needs structure and visible accomplishment to feel confident,
12:24
SPEAKER_00: that personality didn't go very well with the newborn phase
12:28
SPEAKER_00: because newborns are very much about total surrender of your body, mind and soul.
12:35
SPEAKER_00: Newborns have no patterns.
12:37
SPEAKER_00: You have to be on their schedule and
12:40
SPEAKER_00: There's no real routine for the first few months and for my personality that is very hard.
12:47
SPEAKER_00: I definitely also have a bit of a nostalgic and melancholy side to myself
12:52
SPEAKER_00: and maybe it's my Eastern European background or maybe it's just me but that paired
12:57
SPEAKER_00: with postpartum is a recipe for FOMO.
13:00
SPEAKER_00: I can think of two concrete
13:03
SPEAKER_00: FOMOs that I've had during both of my kids' postpartums,
13:08
SPEAKER_00: and one of them I still feel a little bit of today, which is the sunset.
13:13
SPEAKER_00: I live in a beautiful part of France near the ocean, but the sun sets very late in the summer.
13:20
SPEAKER_00: And living here during the newborn phases and having small kids,
13:25
SPEAKER_00: I feel like I have not seen as many sunsets as I would like.
13:29
SPEAKER_00: And I know some of you might be listening and thinking, well,
13:33
SPEAKER_00: Couldn't you just let your kids go to sleep late one night or go for a walk with
13:37
SPEAKER_00: the stroller and they could sleep in the stroller?
13:39
SPEAKER_00: But the reality is, is that is just not how it was.
13:44
SPEAKER_00: By 10 p.m. when the sun is setting in the summertime, I'm exhausted.
13:49
SPEAKER_00: And even if the baby's not asleep yet, I'm not going to get dressed and go for a walk at sunset.
13:54
SPEAKER_00: It was just not something that was ever going to happen.
13:58
SPEAKER_00: the other thing that I remember specifically was around the Olympics in 2024
14:06
SPEAKER_00: during my postpartum with Victor he was born at the end of April and during
14:12
SPEAKER_00: the Olympics he was not even three months so this is like my walking along
14:16
SPEAKER_00: the Biarritz coast moment with Lena only with Victor we were at home watching
14:22
SPEAKER_00: the opening Olympic ceremony filmed in Paris
14:27
SPEAKER_00: and I didn't expect this but I started to watch the opening ceremony which
14:31
SPEAKER_00: of course took me three days to get through because it was two and
14:35
SPEAKER_00: a half hours I believe and there's no way Victor was going to let me watch something
14:41
SPEAKER_00: for two and a half hours in one sitting and
14:44
SPEAKER_00: But we spent three days watching it and I was completely unprepared
14:49
SPEAKER_00: for how incredible it was and how much it encapsulated everything I love
14:55
SPEAKER_00: about France and just what an amazing party vibe it was
14:59
SPEAKER_00: it reminded me so much of Paris in my early 20s it gave me this feeling
15:04
SPEAKER_00: that I haven't had for quite some time with France where you almost re-feel the love
15:11
SPEAKER_00: and the excitement of discovering France for the first time in your early 20s
15:17
SPEAKER_00: that is what I felt and I was texting with my friend who lives in Madrid
15:21
SPEAKER_00: and I know she was up watching the ceremony and we were texting about
15:26
SPEAKER_00: My God, we were so lucky to live in Paris in our early 20s.
15:30
SPEAKER_00: What an incredible city.
15:32
SPEAKER_00: What an incredible culture and country.
15:35
SPEAKER_00: We all just felt this insane appreciation for Paris and France just because
15:41
SPEAKER_00: The Opening Ceremony Was That Good And Just Missing That 21 Year Old Who First Fell
15:48
SPEAKER_00: In Love With France Person That I Once Was During My Postpartum
15:54
SPEAKER_00: That Moment Specifically I Had Such A Crying Fest I Went
15:59
SPEAKER_00: And Pulled Out My Old Albums I Looked At Them Full On Sobbing On The Couch
16:05
SPEAKER_00: but now when I think about it it actually brings me joy to remember that moment but
16:10
SPEAKER_00: while I was living it I was really in a low point.
16:15
SPEAKER_00: As I think back on both of my postpartum experiences,
16:19
SPEAKER_00: I was not thinking about it as I was living it, obviously.
16:23
SPEAKER_00: I was just spiraling, lost, feeling like I had absolutely no place in the world.
16:29
SPEAKER_00: Like I said,
16:31
SPEAKER_00: I felt like my identity and who I was was just sucked out of me,
16:35
SPEAKER_00: and I constantly felt so bad about it.
16:39
SPEAKER_00: But when I think back...
16:41
SPEAKER_00: I know there are a few things that would pull me out of the panic.
16:45
SPEAKER_00: They would pull me out of the spiral and I want to share them because if you
16:50
SPEAKER_00: or anyone you know is going to be having a baby and starting to go
16:56
SPEAKER_00: through postpartum, maybe you want to know that some of this might happen to you.
17:03
SPEAKER_00: I'm someone who would have liked to maybe know a little bit more about this and
17:09
SPEAKER_00: I didn't read a lot of books,
17:10
SPEAKER_00: I will say,
17:11
SPEAKER_00: but that's also because absorbing information made me spiral even more
17:16
SPEAKER_00: and it made me feel like I was doing everything wrong.
17:19
SPEAKER_00: There are four things that I want to share that I did during both of my postpartums
17:24
SPEAKER_00: that really helped me.
17:25
SPEAKER_00: The first one was just realizing and accepting that I don't have to choose.
17:32
SPEAKER_00: In hindsight, the first six months with Lena were postpartum, amplifying everything.
17:39
SPEAKER_00: So you can feel both gain and loss.
17:43
SPEAKER_00: You can feel those things in one moment.
17:46
SPEAKER_00: In fact, that is probably how I would describe postpartum.
17:50
SPEAKER_00: A constant
17:52
SPEAKER_00: parallel of mixed emotions.
17:56
SPEAKER_00: I had just moved, changed environments from a big city to a small city.
18:02
SPEAKER_00: I knew I was going to quit my job and do a career pivot.
18:06
SPEAKER_00: I didn't know how.
18:07
SPEAKER_00: I had no friends.
18:09
SPEAKER_00: My husband was going back to work when Lena was born.
18:13
SPEAKER_00: So even without having a baby, it would have still been a lot.
18:18
SPEAKER_00: So you can feel grief for your old life even when the new one is exactly what you wanted.
18:24
SPEAKER_00: Getting married,
18:25
SPEAKER_00: having kids,
18:27
SPEAKER_00: I wanted those things,
18:28
SPEAKER_00: but I didn't expect the grief that would come with it from my old life.
18:34
SPEAKER_00: I didn't realize how amazing my old life was so maybe it's more about pausing
18:40
SPEAKER_00: to rejoice for the different seasons of life and accepting that sometimes we need
18:45
SPEAKER_00: to be sad before we can be fully happy this one was hard for my partner to accept
18:51
SPEAKER_00: and understand because every time Max and I would
18:55
SPEAKER_00: talk about it or when he would see me really sad, he just wouldn't understand.
19:00
SPEAKER_00: It'd be like, but we live near the beach and we have a beautiful daughter and we're so lucky.
19:05
SPEAKER_00: And those comments actually would make it worse.
19:09
SPEAKER_00: I eventually got to a point where I would tell him, I need you not to do that.
19:14
SPEAKER_00: Both things are allowed to be true, the love and the loss.
19:18
SPEAKER_00: And accepting that really helped me move on from it.
19:24
SPEAKER_00: the second thing was identifying triggers so that I knew exactly why I was spiraling
19:31
SPEAKER_00: and letting myself cry it out instead
19:33
SPEAKER_00: of asking why am I like this shouldn't I be happy right now shouldn't I this
19:38
SPEAKER_00: shouldn't I that we love a good old should but the longing also wasn't constant
19:44
SPEAKER_00: when I look back I wasn't
19:47
SPEAKER_00: Spiraling Every Single Day
20:12
SPEAKER_00: I would think about how I used to give presentations to rooms of over
20:17
SPEAKER_00: a hundred people completely unrelated but it was like the extreme opposite of
20:22
SPEAKER_00: that moment that I was in if I had a fight with my husband I would think back
20:26
SPEAKER_00: to my time in San Francisco
20:27
SPEAKER_00: go and living near my closest friends so therefore i was able to be spontaneous
20:32
SPEAKER_00: and meet up with her when i was feeling down i would reach for these things that were no longer
20:38
SPEAKER_00: accessible during moments where they would comfort me identifying those triggers helped
20:44
SPEAKER_00: me make sense of my feelings
20:46
SPEAKER_00: The third thing was getting off of social media.
20:50
SPEAKER_00: This is actually a big one because I did this with both of my kids.
20:54
SPEAKER_00: Within the first few days of getting back from the hospital,
20:57
SPEAKER_00: the second you're on social media, you immediately feel like a failure.
21:01
SPEAKER_00: You're immediately being targeted with content about how to make your baby sleep,
21:06
SPEAKER_00: which of course none of what they're saying works for anyone
21:09
SPEAKER_00: because everyone has different kids and everyone is a different parent.
21:14
SPEAKER_00: So getting off of social media just really helped me kind of live in the present
21:21
SPEAKER_00: and spiral with my own thoughts, not inspired by others.
21:26
SPEAKER_00: And then the fourth thing that is relevant to not being on social media was
21:31
SPEAKER_00: the voice memos that my friend and I would leave each other.
21:35
SPEAKER_00: One of my really close friends that lives
21:37
SPEAKER_00: in Grass Valley in California, she and I would leave each other these really long voice memos.
21:43
SPEAKER_00: Her son is six months older than Lena,
21:45
SPEAKER_00: so just hearing her say things like,
21:47
SPEAKER_00: I feel that way too, would immediately make the guilt fade away.
21:52
SPEAKER_00: So those four things were really important for me during that time.
21:57
SPEAKER_00: And of course,
21:57
SPEAKER_00: I can look back now and see those four things,
22:01
SPEAKER_00: but when I was living in the moments, I would say that
22:05
SPEAKER_00: These moments of spiral were some of the most intense moments of my life.
22:10
SPEAKER_00: During postpartum,
22:11
SPEAKER_00: the spiral was more intense because your hormones are going all over the place
22:16
SPEAKER_00: and everything just felt a lot less controllable.
22:21
SPEAKER_00: And speaking of control...
22:23
SPEAKER_00: That brings me to where I am today because this is something I'm still working on.
22:31
SPEAKER_00: Letting go of control is going to be a lifelong work in progress for me.
22:37
SPEAKER_00: I probably could have enjoyed those maternity moments a little bit more
22:42
SPEAKER_00: if I had just relaxed myself.
22:47
SPEAKER_00: a little bit more and let go of control a little bit more.
22:50
SPEAKER_00: But it's also easy to say that in retrospect,
22:53
SPEAKER_00: and it wasn't something that was so front and center in my awareness mechanism
23:01
SPEAKER_00: when I was living it.
23:03
SPEAKER_00: Now that Victor is two, Lana is five and a half, I'm still me.
23:07
SPEAKER_00: I've climbed mountains.
23:08
SPEAKER_00: I've built a life.
23:09
SPEAKER_00: I've learned languages.
23:10
SPEAKER_00: I will continue to do
23:13
SPEAKER_00: That person never disappeared.
23:16
SPEAKER_00: I was always around, but I was a lot more quieter.
23:22
SPEAKER_00: That part of me was quieter and I was focused on other things.
23:26
SPEAKER_00: And to be honest, I still am.
23:28
SPEAKER_00: I'm still prioritizing other things than my career and I may never go back to
23:34
SPEAKER_00: a moment where I prioritize my career as much as I once did and thank God
23:39
SPEAKER_00: because they certainly don't put our resume on our tombstones I think becoming
23:44
SPEAKER_00: a mother very much made me aware of that too which I'm very grateful for
23:50
SPEAKER_00: but I also can appreciate that it's a process and I'm still in the process of
23:57
SPEAKER_00: And all of these reflections, passages, changes are allowed.
24:03
SPEAKER_00: The fact that I felt so guilty about it is something
24:07
SPEAKER_00: that I wish we could just remove from all women going through postpartum and
24:14
SPEAKER_00: So if you're going through big change,
24:17
SPEAKER_00: whether it's motherhood or something else,
24:19
SPEAKER_00: just accept that you are allowed to go through change.
24:22
SPEAKER_00: You are allowed to spiral.
24:25
SPEAKER_00: if you're going through big change whether it's motherhood or something else just accept that
24:31
SPEAKER_00: you are allowed to go through change you are
24:34
SPEAKER_00: allowed to spiral you are
24:36
SPEAKER_00: allowed to
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SPEAKER_00: go through these
24:37
SPEAKER_00: big moments the way
24:40
SPEAKER_00: that you need
24:43
SPEAKER_00: If you want to see photos from the different periods of my life that I talk
24:47
SPEAKER_00: about make sure you're subscribed to the Dots and Dreams Substack I share them in
24:52
SPEAKER_00: the newsletter that goes out with each episode You can even hit reply
24:56
SPEAKER_00: and tell me what's the version of your old life you miss most You're not alone
25:01
SPEAKER_00: in missing it and I'd love to hear about it
25:04
SPEAKER_00: New episodes drop every other Tuesday If you enjoyed listening to me and could rate
25:09
SPEAKER_00: and review this episode wherever you're listening that will help others like you
25:14
SPEAKER_00: and I find this show