Latest / Motherhood Uncut / From Broken to Beautiful with Allison Mathis Jones | Motherhood Uncut Podcast | Season 6 Episode 7

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From Broken to Beautiful with Allison Mathis Jones | Motherhood Uncut Podcast | Season 6 Episode 7 · Motherhood Uncut

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Hi, I'm Kate Kripke and welcome to the Motherhood Uncut Podcast.
0:04
SPEAKER_00: This podcast brings the reality of motherhood to the table for real, honest conversations.
0:10
SPEAKER_00: Here we laugh, we cry, we learn, we grow, we are awestruck, amazed, humbled, and validated.
0:17
SPEAKER_00: But most importantly, together we begin to live in a new way that allows us to recognize the immense role that our own health and well-being plays in the health and well-being of our kids.
0:29
SPEAKER_00: Together we recognize that everything we do to take care of our physical, psychological, social, and spiritual health is in service of our children.
0:38
SPEAKER_00: This season, we're diving deep into the role that the shoulds and shouldn'ts and rules and expectations play in our motherhood journey.
0:45
SPEAKER_00: Together, this season, we will learn to break those boundaries that hold us back from our greatest potential.
0:51
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna be hearing from the moms who have taken this risk, from experts who help in this journey, and from family members who, Lord help me, have important insight to share.
1:02
SPEAKER_00: So pull up a chair, my friend, make a cup of tea, pour a glass of wine, put on your walking shoes, turn up the volume in your car.
1:09
SPEAKER_00: Let's do this together because nobody should mother alone.
1:21
SPEAKER_00: Today I get to share with you a deeply inspiring conversation that I had with Alison Mathis Jones.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: Alison's story takes us from an unexpected brain tumor to a deep reverence for beauty, and her story is both vulnerable and brave.
1:36
SPEAKER_00: While speaking truthfully about her continued challenges with OCD and anxiety, she also shows us what it looks like to do the work, to move through those moments of uncertainty and unpredictability that so often frees us up.
1:49
SPEAKER_00: Allison describes herself as a believer, wife, mama, part-time expat, relationship expert, self-care advocate, content creator, and self-published author.
2:00
SPEAKER_00: And she's here today to tell you what her life looks like and feels like day to day.
2:05
SPEAKER_00: Let's dive in.
2:08
SPEAKER_00: Hey, if you're a mom balancing a demanding career or other passions in life with the joys and challenges of raising young kids, I want you to know that I see you.
2:19
SPEAKER_00: I understand the pressure to be perfect at work and at home and the constant feeling that you might be falling short in both.
2:25
SPEAKER_00: You're not alone, and there is a way to feel more in control and connected.
2:29
SPEAKER_00: It's pretty universal, right?
2:31
SPEAKER_00: When we become moms, we jump into action mode.
2:34
SPEAKER_00: We focus all of our attention on our kiddos, and we fall farther and farther away from allowing ourselves to tend to what we need to also feel okay.
2:43
SPEAKER_00: With all the to-dos, any resources spent on ourselves feel unnecessary, wasted, and maybe even selfish.
2:50
SPEAKER_00: But of course, whether we acknowledge it or not, we all learn very quickly that we simply can't be our best in anything when we're depleted.
2:58
SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing I also want you to understand today.
3:02
SPEAKER_00: When moms like you and me are stressed, anxious, or overwhelmed, it doesn't just affect us.
3:08
SPEAKER_00: It can have long-lasting effects on our kids' mental health and development.
3:12
SPEAKER_00: The pressure you're feeling could be shaping your child's future in ways you never imagined.
3:17
SPEAKER_00: When we are overwhelmed, it's easy to fall into the trap of perfectionism, trying to meet impossible standards in both our careers and motherhood.
3:26
SPEAKER_00: But that pressure doesn't just hurt us, it impacts our kids too because we become more anxious.
3:32
SPEAKER_00: We take more things personally, and we have very little tolerance for any discomfort that our children feel.
3:38
SPEAKER_00: Kids who grow up without a secure attachment are more likely to struggle with anxiety, insecurity, and difficulties forming healthy relationships.
3:47
SPEAKER_00: They absorb our stress and it can lead to challenges that affect their entire lives.
3:52
SPEAKER_00: But it doesn't have to be this way.
3:55
SPEAKER_00: That's why I created the Calm Connection System, a transformative science-based program specifically designed to help turn your guilt, anxiety, and overwhelm into clarity, confidence, and calm.
4:06
SPEAKER_00: With the Calm Connection System, you can break free of the pressures that hold you back.
4:11
SPEAKER_00: You can nurture a secure attachment with your kiddo, and you can still thrive in your career or other passions outside of motherhood.
4:20
SPEAKER_00: I've spent 20 years as a maternal and child mental health specialist helping more than 6,000 women just like you transform their lives with strategies that are practical, science-backed, and deeply empathetic.
4:31
SPEAKER_00: As a mom of two teenage daughters, I've walked this path myself, balancing the demands of motherhood with a career that I am passionate about.
4:40
SPEAKER_00: I know what it takes to find that balance, and I'm here to guide you every step of the way.
4:44
SPEAKER_00: But the Calm Connection System isn't just about managing your stress, it's about creating a life where you can pursue your ambitions and be the mom that you want to be.
4:53
SPEAKER_00: A life where you and your children feel secure, connected, and capable of facing the world with confidence.
5:00
SPEAKER_00: If you're ready to take the first step towards a more balanced, fulfilling life for you and your family, I invite you to book a free call with me in the next few days.
5:10
SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about how the Calm Connection System can help you create the life for you and your children that you ball deserve while continuing to share your incredible gifts with the world.
5:20
SPEAKER_00: Book your call now so we can discuss whether or not this program is a fit for you.
5:24
SPEAKER_00: And regardless, you're going to walk away from our call with new clarity about what's causing your anxiety and things that you can do to access now more now, access more confidence and calm both at home and at work.
5:36
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to make sure that you have a few easy things that will help you right away, whether we work together or not.
5:42
SPEAKER_00: As a reminder, decades of research has confirmed that untreated anxiety in moms causes anxiety in kids.
5:48
SPEAKER_00: And the fastest and most effective way to make sure that your kiddo is healthy is to do what you need to do to make sure that you are healthy.
5:57
SPEAKER_00: You absolutely can excel both outside of motherhood and inside of motherhood, giving your child everything that they need to live a long, healthy, and happy life.
6:08
SPEAKER_00: This call is where you start, and the link is in the show notes.
6:11
SPEAKER_00: I look forward to seeing you there.
6:14
SPEAKER_00: Hey listeners, I want to tell you about the one clock.
6:17
SPEAKER_00: The one clock is a clock that is designed to help you wake up in the way that your nervous system most needs to move through the day with calm and clarity.
6:30
SPEAKER_00: You know those clocks that wake you up in the morning with that loud beep that jars you out of sleep, you know, with your heart racing?
6:37
SPEAKER_00: This is not the one clock.
6:39
SPEAKER_00: The one clock is designed with Grammy Award-winning musicians that have taken the science behind waking up and turned that into the most amazing music that you have ever woken up to.
6:54
SPEAKER_00: It's going to help you start your day with ease and clarity.
6:57
SPEAKER_00: And not only that, but the clock itself, it's like a piece of art.
7:01
SPEAKER_00: It is beautiful.
7:02
SPEAKER_00: So if you're looking for something to help you manage your nervous system and start your day that's going to set you up for success, I invite you to check out the one clock.
7:11
SPEAKER_00: Information is in the show notes.
7:14
SPEAKER_00: Okay, Allison Jones, welcome to the Motherhood Uncut Podcast.
7:19
SPEAKER_00: I'm so happy to see you.
7:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you and I talked when I was but still in Japan.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: And now we get to reconnect and dive into this important conversation.
7:31
SPEAKER_00: Before we dive in, I'm just going to share with our listeners a little bit about you so that they have a general sense of what you are bringing to our incredible podcast table here.
7:42
SPEAKER_00: For our listeners, Allison Jones is a believer, wife, mama, part-time expat, relationship expert, self-care advocate, content creator, and self-published author.
7:55
SPEAKER_00: Because of her husband's basketball career, she has lived in six different countries and currently splits her time between Dubai and her hometown, Atlanta, Georgia.
8:03
SPEAKER_00: And I think, Allison, we are going to get a chance to talk about what it's like to raise children while you are moving around so much.
8:10
SPEAKER_00: It's been a wild ride.
8:11
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
8:12
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
8:13
SPEAKER_00: So she and her husband, Daquan, as Daquan, am I saying that right?
8:18
SPEAKER_00: Yes, you're right.
8:19
SPEAKER_00: We all call him DJ, though.
8:20
SPEAKER_00: So that's fine too.
8:21
SPEAKER_00: DJ, our college sweethearts, which I love.
8:24
SPEAKER_00: They welcomed their first child child, Harper, in July 2019.
8:28
SPEAKER_00: And being a mom has been her favorite adventure yet.
8:31
SPEAKER_00: Their son Jackson joined their the party in February 2022.
8:35
SPEAKER_00: So, really, what we're going to be diving into here is this really incredible part of your story.
8:41
SPEAKER_00: So, not long after spending a few months in Japan, which you know is near and dear to my heart, Allison was diagnosed with a benign brain tumor and had brain surgery just days later.
8:52
SPEAKER_00: Allison struggled during her recovery and was reminded of the Japanese art and mindset of Kinsuki, which we're going to talk quite a bit here today about the time-honored Japanese art of repairing broken pottery using lacquer mixed with gold to highlight the beauty of imperfection.
9:08
SPEAKER_00: She fully embraced this mindset and imagery through her recovery and wanted to share the message that broken is beautiful with the world.
9:15
SPEAKER_00: So she created a brand devoted to doing just that, a candle company, children's book, a podcast were all formed from this brand.
9:23
SPEAKER_00: Alison, you are a big believer that so-called imperfections are what make each and every one of us special.
9:30
SPEAKER_00: And what I love is that we all have a little gold-filled crack of our own, shimmering traces that tell a unique story of resilience and renewal.
9:39
SPEAKER_00: So, Allison, welcome to the conversation.
9:42
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
9:42
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
9:43
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
9:43
SPEAKER_01: It's so funny hearing other people talk about you because you're like, huh, I did do all those things.
9:48
SPEAKER_01: I have lived all that life.
9:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's great.
9:51
SPEAKER_00: A couple things that stand out to me about you, which I think we can kind of weave in and out of our conversation, is that you are a mom.
9:58
SPEAKER_00: You are a busy mom.
10:00
SPEAKER_00: That is, you know, so much of what many of us think we need in order to feel steady and stable is a steady and stable environment.
10:08
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that I think you have really had to work at doing is finding that stability within the unpredictability and uncertainty, and let me call it chaos of moving around quite a bit since you became off.
10:22
SPEAKER_00: But we can talk about that.
10:24
SPEAKER_00: Also, your incredible story about your having a brain tumor and um surgery and recovering from that, and really, I think making meaning of that uh scary, I'm sure, life-changing uh medical diagnosis, uh, which I think is really important for us to hear from you about.
10:46
SPEAKER_00: What does it look like to come from something that's so hard and so scary and make meaning of it?
10:51
SPEAKER_00: One of the things I love is that you have a podcast with your mom that's dedicated to making sense of all of the what do we what do we do when we're making mistakes and we feel broken?
11:01
SPEAKER_00: And how do we shift that to really understanding the beauty of that?
11:04
SPEAKER_00: And also there's some patterns of generational trauma and moving that aside and doing things new in the present moment.
11:12
SPEAKER_00: Of course, your mom parenting you and you parenting your kids.
11:15
SPEAKER_00: So there's so much here.
11:17
SPEAKER_00: There's many layers, so many layers.
11:20
SPEAKER_00: Can you just start by, in your own words, sort of summarizing your motherhood journey for us, really letting us into your heart, your mind, your story of becoming and being a mom?
11:36
SPEAKER_00: And we can take as long or as little as we need to with that.
11:39
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
11:40
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, it's funny because in my in my bio, and you know, you kind of telling the audience about me, you kind of talked about the motherhood piece before the brain tumor, but it's actually switched, which I have to point out because I only found out really, I think, that I had the brain tumor because me and my husband decided we wanted to try for babies.
12:01
SPEAKER_01: So this was gosh, 2018 in February.
12:06
SPEAKER_01: And my husband and I have been married for about five years.
12:09
SPEAKER_01: We were definitely one of those couples.
12:11
SPEAKER_01: We got married young.
12:12
SPEAKER_01: We were 24 when we got married, but we were kind of like, we want to enjoy each other, we want to take our time, even though we're married.
12:18
SPEAKER_01: We don't want to like jump into you know parenthood and having a family yet.
12:23
SPEAKER_01: We wanted to really spend some time just the two of us, especially because of his career.
12:27
SPEAKER_01: We were traveling a ton.
12:28
SPEAKER_01: And so we were married about five years before one morning.
12:30
SPEAKER_01: I woke up and I was just kind of like, it would be kind of nice if a baby was here with us.
12:36
SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, he was on the same page as me, and we decided to start trying.
12:42
SPEAKER_01: And because of that, I got off of birth control.
12:46
SPEAKER_01: And you know, we can have we can open a whole nother can of worms talking about, you know, the hormones and things that we as women put in our bodies and all of that.
12:54
SPEAKER_01: But basically, long story short, when I came off of birth controls, it allowed the hormones in my body to do things that they had not been doing prior because, you know, my hormones were being, for lack of a better word, controlled by my contraceptive.
13:09
SPEAKER_01: And that is when I started having what I now know was brain tumor symptoms.
13:15
SPEAKER_01: At the time, I just thought that these were headaches, but they were brain tumor symptoms.
13:20
SPEAKER_01: And so I like to mention that because I'm kind of like, wow, like my journey to motherhood actually started with this brain tumor and you know, with this experience.
13:30
SPEAKER_01: And so, as you said, you know, I got my brain tumor diagnosis literally kind of on a whim.
13:36
SPEAKER_01: I went to the doctor and was kind of like, hey, I'm having these terrible headaches.
13:39
SPEAKER_01: Can you just give me something so that I don't have these headaches anymore?
13:42
SPEAKER_01: And she absolutely thought they were headaches because my mom also has migraines.
13:47
SPEAKER_01: And so this is genetic.
13:49
SPEAKER_01: This is a generational thing that is handed down to you.
13:52
SPEAKER_01: They're definitely migraines.
13:53
SPEAKER_01: You know, we'll get you some help for them.
13:56
SPEAKER_01: However, before I prescribe you anything, let's just have an MRI to be safe.
14:00
SPEAKER_01: But she was totally nonchalant because it wasn't that she was a bad doctor, she just really thought that they were migraines as well.
14:07
SPEAKER_01: So I was not really in a rush to have this MRI.
14:10
SPEAKER_01: I went on a whole vacation, like, I'll just get it when I get back, type of thing.
14:14
SPEAKER_01: But I did eventually go and get it.
14:17
SPEAKER_01: And literally after the first scan, the MRI technician, I will never forget, she um was like, I'm gonna call your husband back here.
14:28
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, okay, you know, a little bit of a red flag, like, all right.
14:34
SPEAKER_01: And she called us both into like the back office, which they are absolutely not supposed to do.
14:39
SPEAKER_01: An MRI technician is not really supposed to let you see any of your scans.
14:42
SPEAKER_01: She's supposed to have the doctor do that.
14:44
SPEAKER_01: But she was like, you know, you're young, you guys are a beautiful couple.
14:47
SPEAKER_01: She's like, I just cannot let you leave without showing you this because I want you to understand, you know, how big of a deal this is and for you to like take your health seriously and do what you need to do.
14:57
SPEAKER_01: So she was like, You see, right there.
14:59
SPEAKER_01: And she pointed, you know, to my brain, and she was like, That's abnormal, you know.
15:04
SPEAKER_01: She's like, I can't say what it is because I'm not a doctor and I don't know, but like there's definitely something there that I want you to, you know, get taken care of.
15:15
SPEAKER_01: So I am a very um realistic and logical person.
15:21
SPEAKER_01: I'm a Virgo.
15:22
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you know a lot about horoscopes.
15:24
SPEAKER_01: So we're definitely very type A, like very just factual.
15:28
SPEAKER_01: Give us the answers and let us find a solution.
15:30
SPEAKER_01: And so I was immediately like, huh, well, let me call my doctor.
15:34
SPEAKER_01: Let me see when she can get me in so we can figure out what's next.
15:37
SPEAKER_01: My husband, on the other hand, is like shaking, like visibly getting upset.
15:42
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, kind of like, well, calm down, like let's just figure out.
15:47
SPEAKER_00: Is this typical of you to be a doer, a fixer, a problem solver, intellectual analog?
15:54
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
15:54
SPEAKER_01: That is who I am with my family, with my friends.
15:57
SPEAKER_01: I am the problem solver, the planner, you know.
16:00
SPEAKER_01: And that is actually kind of an important part of my story because we can talk about this a bit in a second when I get to my recovery, but I feel like also pre-brain tumor, I took on a lot of people's problems, but we can talk about that momentarily.
16:15
SPEAKER_01: So basically, you know, um, I call my doctor's office.
16:18
SPEAKER_01: She's of course at lunch because your doctor's always at lunch when you really, really need to talk to them.
16:23
SPEAKER_01: And so they're like, Yeah, you know, we'll have her call you back, you know, whatever.
16:27
SPEAKER_01: So the doctor calls back later that day.
16:29
SPEAKER_01: By this point, she's gotten the scans and she is like, it sounds like she's in tears, like her voice is shaking.
16:36
SPEAKER_01: And she's like, I am so sorry that I basically missed this.
16:41
SPEAKER_01: I think that she felt really bad and really scared.
16:45
SPEAKER_01: Um, because I don't think that she knew she's not a brain, a brain doctor, she's just like a general practitioner.
16:52
SPEAKER_01: So being that I was what, 27, 28, I think that she was like really scared that she had basically painted this picture to me like I was fine when I wasn't and what the implications were for that.
17:04
SPEAKER_01: So she was like, I have already called a neurologist.
17:07
SPEAKER_01: Like, you have an appointment for tomorrow.
17:10
SPEAKER_01: Like, I didn't even want you to have to go through a referral process and try to make your appointment.
17:14
SPEAKER_01: She was like, if you want the appointment, like you have an appointment tomorrow.
17:18
SPEAKER_01: Like, so she was very, very proactive in helping me to figure out what was going on.
17:23
SPEAKER_01: Quite literally the next day I went to the neurologist.
17:26
SPEAKER_01: The neurologist was like, You have a benign meningioma, which thankfully is a brain tumor that really sits on the outside of your brain as opposed to the inside.
17:35
SPEAKER_01: And I say thankfully because I can't help but to think that my story would probably be a little different if it was a different type of tumor.
17:42
SPEAKER_01: And benign, obviously, a lot of us know that means non-cancerous.
17:46
SPEAKER_01: Um the doctor was like, we don't we can't say a hundred percent that it's benign until we take it out and you know tested biopsy and all of that.
17:53
SPEAKER_01: But these types of tumors are about 90% benign.
17:57
SPEAKER_01: And so we have we're not gonna even think cancer.
18:00
SPEAKER_01: Like it's probably not that.
18:03
SPEAKER_01: And so I I want to think this was on a Tuesday or Wednesday, and the neurologist was like, I have an opening on Friday morning, I can do your craniotomy and remove it.
18:14
SPEAKER_01: And me being the problem solver, I'm like, yes, like get this out of my head right now.
18:18
SPEAKER_01: My mom is like, Do you want a second opinion?
18:21
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, nope, I don't want it out of my brain.
18:25
SPEAKER_01: So had surgery, you know, a few days later, and the rest is kind of history.
18:31
SPEAKER_01: We can talk more about my recovery process, of course.
18:35
SPEAKER_01: But as it relates to motherhood, I remember, you know, I still am wanting to get pregnant because there's something about I think us as women, when we decide we're ready, like we're ready today.
18:46
SPEAKER_01: Like I want a baby now.
18:47
SPEAKER_01: And so I remember, you know, I I think I went to see my OBGYN like two months post-surgery, and I'm like, can I get pregnant now?
18:57
SPEAKER_01: And she's like, why don't you give your body like a little a little time to heal?
19:01
SPEAKER_01: Like you're a mover and a shaker, girl.
19:04
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, no, like I wanted a baby before this brain tumor.
19:07
SPEAKER_01: So like I want my I want a baby today, like, you know.
19:11
SPEAKER_01: And so I had my brain surgery in April.
19:14
SPEAKER_01: In November, we got pregnant with Harper.
19:16
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, it was the sweetest.
19:20
SPEAKER_01: I won't say she like came from the brain tumor, but the brain tumor, you know, feels like a small price to pay, you know, if you finally get to live your lifelong dream of becoming a mom.
19:32
SPEAKER_01: Because I definitely have always been one of those people that when I was growing up, and people are like, what do you want to be when you grow up?
19:38
SPEAKER_01: I was the kid that was like a mommy, you know.
19:41
SPEAKER_01: And so that was kind of the icing on the cake was getting pregnant, you know, what was it, six months, seven months post-brain tumor.
19:48
SPEAKER_00: Allison, there are a few things I just want to note here before we move on.
19:53
SPEAKER_00: One is that, you know, I I think it's probably fair to say that anyone who gets a diagnosis like that is faced with the reality of life for death, right?
20:07
SPEAKER_00: You you know, it's like meaning it's like, oh, there's a brain tumor.
20:12
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna have brain surgery.
20:13
SPEAKER_00: No one told you you were gonna die, thankfully, but you're going in for brain surgery.
20:18
SPEAKER_00: So I imagine that at some point in there there is a refocusing of life.
20:25
SPEAKER_00: Once you come out, the tumor is no longer in your brain, you've been given a clear bill of health.
20:30
SPEAKER_00: Is that was that part of your experience you came out of this?
20:33
SPEAKER_01: Like, it absolutely was.
20:35
SPEAKER_01: And I will say going into my surgery in that, you know, three two, three days that I had, I don't think that I was really afraid then.
20:45
SPEAKER_01: And I think I didn't have time to be.
20:48
SPEAKER_01: You know what I'm saying?
20:49
SPEAKER_01: I think that it didn't really, I didn't really have time to process, which some may say that's a bad thing.
20:54
SPEAKER_01: I think for me it was probably a good thing because I probably would have been terrified had I had time to really process or Google like what is the surgery gonna be like, you know, all of that stuff.
21:05
SPEAKER_01: However, after the fact, I think honestly, probably the moment I woke up, it occurred to me like they were like in my my head.
21:17
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's when it occurred to me, like, wow, like I could have, I could have died, you know, and even my mom, of course, I didn't find this story out until after the fact.
21:28
SPEAKER_01: My mom, she's not like me, but she is, in that she held it all together really well throughout this whole process.
21:36
SPEAKER_01: My husband is like in shambles, and me and my mom are like, everything's gonna be fine.
21:41
SPEAKER_01: But um, I know that I was told after the fact that the when the doctor came out, the surgeon came out to tell them that I was in recovery, my mom lost it.
21:52
SPEAKER_02: Like lost it.
21:53
SPEAKER_01: And it was like that moment that okay, everything's okay, but it could have gone differently.
21:57
SPEAKER_01: And I think that I had a similar experience.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: Know waking up in the hospital, you're connected to all these things, and you're like, wow, this was a really big deal.
22:06
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
22:07
SPEAKER_00: It was a big deal, and it was surrounded with so much uncertainty and unpredictability, right?
22:15
SPEAKER_00: I think that's part of what I'm just you didn't know you had this brain tumor, you went in for headaches, all of a sudden you were given this other piece of information.
22:23
SPEAKER_00: There was no, you know, you went into surgery, you came out, you were okay.
22:27
SPEAKER_00: There's so much that you can't untangible stuff in there, which of course also exists in motherhood, right?
22:37
SPEAKER_00: The other thing that I wanted to just um just kind of recognize here is that we miss things.
22:43
SPEAKER_00: And I wanna, I wanna like pause for a moment and recognize that there are probably a number of our listeners who struggle with anxiety.
22:52
SPEAKER_00: Hearing your story makes them feel anxious about their own health, right?
23:00
SPEAKER_00: Because here's this healthy, energetic, adventurous woman who's going into the doctor and ends up with this big uh diagnosis.
23:08
SPEAKER_00: And so I just want to sort of hold space in our conversation and for those listeners with the reality of here we are again, uncertainty, unpredictability.
23:17
SPEAKER_00: And it's also something that causes so much anxiety in life, but anxiety and motherhood.
23:22
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, you're doing just fine.
23:24
SPEAKER_00: You're probably stronger for it, right?
23:26
SPEAKER_00: So this has a very happy ending, but um, but that's a it's a big deal to recognize that we can't always know, right?
23:34
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
23:36
SPEAKER_01: I have struggled with anxiety, I mean, even way pre-brain tumor and still today, you know, but this was one of those things that is 100% just out of your control.
23:49
SPEAKER_01: And there's nothing that you can, you can't plan it.
23:52
SPEAKER_01: You can't, you know, even I remember after the fact, me trying to plan the rest of my life.
23:57
SPEAKER_01: Initially, I couldn't really even do that.
23:59
SPEAKER_01: I'm on all this medication.
24:00
SPEAKER_01: They're talking about like, well, if you have seizures after your surgery, and I'm like, seizures?
24:05
SPEAKER_01: Like, what?
24:06
SPEAKER_01: Like, what is this gonna look like?
24:08
SPEAKER_01: And you know, it definitely was a season for me of having to A, like lean on my village, right?
24:14
SPEAKER_01: And let people take care of me, which can be hard for me, and B, just recognize that there is so much that we don't know and that we have to just kind of be okay with, which is hard.
24:27
SPEAKER_01: It's hard, period, and it's especially hard, you know, even in motherhood for me now.
24:32
SPEAKER_00: So well, maybe we can just take a side side of path to the side here for a moment about this, because you did struggle with some postpartum challenges, mental health challenges, after you had your first baby, I think, or your second, I can't remember, first, second, both when you became oh sure.
24:49
SPEAKER_00: You're you are someone who has struggled with anxiety in the past, and you're really talking about needing to develop a different relationship with all of this uncertainty, unpredictability, not knowing, right?
25:06
SPEAKER_00: Talk to us a bit about what that was like for you, how you navigated the, you know, the the rec the diagnosis, of course, we've kind of talked about that in the surgery, but the recovery, the moving into motherhood with this history of anxiety, and of course, this way of moving through the life, which so many of our listeners can relate to, of high achieving, problem-solving fixer, doer, get things done.
25:38
SPEAKER_00: How have you navigated all of this uncertainty and unpredictability coming from that place?
25:43
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, it's been it's been difficult, especially because we haven't talked a ton about my husband's basketball career, but that has been something that has been interesting for me as someone who likes to control and plan.
26:00
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we're talking right now as we speak.
26:03
SPEAKER_01: It is, you know, getting towards the end of summer, and we're talking right now where like he could get a call at the end of this week and be gone the next week for a conversation.
26:12
SPEAKER_01: He's a professional basketball player, just for basketball player, yes.
26:16
SPEAKER_01: And it has been like this throughout our entire marriage.
26:19
SPEAKER_01: It was like that, even with my brain tumor.
26:22
SPEAKER_01: He had to leave about two weeks after my surgery to fly to China.
26:26
SPEAKER_01: And actually, after we left the MRI appointment that day, we went to get our visas to go to China because I was supposed to go to China too.
26:34
SPEAKER_01: And me being me, I was still, even when I found that I was having surgery, was like, well, I can just join you in China in like four weeks, you know, totally not knowing what I had ahead of me in terms of my recovery.
26:46
SPEAKER_01: But, you know, I still struggle a ton with just managing uncertainty and things I can't control.
26:57
SPEAKER_01: Fairly recently, I was diagnosed with OCD, and my therapist walked me through kind of why anxiety wasn't necessarily an appropriate diagnosis for me, and that my anxiety stems from my OCD, more so than, you know, it just being anxiety on its own.
27:18
SPEAKER_01: And I have a background in mental health.
27:20
SPEAKER_01: I have a master's degree in marriage and family therapy, and that totally like it totally went over my head until someone literally took out the DSM and like, you know, walked me through what OCD looked like and how OCD can look like anxiety for a lot of people and lead to anxious symptoms, but sometimes be a lot more, not more difficult.
27:40
SPEAKER_01: They're both difficult, but different to handle than anxiety.
27:45
SPEAKER_01: You know, I wish that I had answers like for the listeners about like, oh, this has really helped me to handle this, but this is still something that I deal with every single day.
27:56
SPEAKER_01: Like, I mean, literally last week my husband and I went out for a date night, or we were going out for a date night.
28:01
SPEAKER_01: And my daughter, both of my kids are really great sleepers.
28:05
SPEAKER_01: I've been very blessed with good sleepers.
28:07
SPEAKER_01: I know not everyone has that.
28:09
SPEAKER_01: On this particular night, my daughter just would not go to sleep.
28:12
SPEAKER_01: She's she's five and she was just crying, coming out of her room, always wanting us to come into her room.
28:18
SPEAKER_01: And in my brain, I said, maybe we shouldn't go on our date because maybe the reason that she's crying is because we're gonna die.
28:25
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, that's what that means.
28:27
SPEAKER_01: And like, we shouldn't go on our date because, like, what if we don't ever come back?
28:31
SPEAKER_01: And what if her outburst tonight like means something?
28:35
SPEAKER_01: And thankfully, my husband knows that my brain can kind of play tricks on me.
28:38
SPEAKER_01: So he's like, think about all the times that we have gone out on a date and we've come back, and the kids have been fine.
28:44
SPEAKER_01: Like, you gotta face this fear, you gotta, you gotta go anyway.
28:47
SPEAKER_01: Because if you don't go, then you're you're giving the OCD power over your life.
28:51
SPEAKER_01: And so we went anyway, and everything's fine.
28:54
SPEAKER_01: But that's just an example of how I still mentally struggle with this uncertainty and thinking that things mean something.
29:01
SPEAKER_01: And I will say that after my brain surgery and that whole experience, I did my symptoms did for a while improve.
29:12
SPEAKER_01: And I think that, like you said, it was kind of like an awakening to the fact that I went through this period of uncertainty and things were okay.
29:21
SPEAKER_01: And it kind of reassured me that it's okay to not know the outcome.
29:26
SPEAKER_01: But as soon as we get through one, you know, battle and we think, all right, that's behind me, then you have kids and it's a whole nother can of worms.
29:35
SPEAKER_01: It's a whole nother, you know, a whole nother two people to worry about and you know, the saga continues.
29:41
SPEAKER_00: So, Allison, just to press pause for a moment, um, I think you're talking about a really common and a really challenging experience for many, many, many women.
29:55
SPEAKER_00: In my, you know, two decades of being a clinician in maternal mental health, I would say that more times than not, if not, I mean, almost always, women who struggle with OCD and OCD-like symptoms are high-achieving women who really have a sense of needing to be in control to feel okay.
30:20
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
30:20
SPEAKER_00: Right.
30:21
SPEAKER_00: And this way in which, to use your words and your husband's words, your brain can play tricks on you, right?
30:27
SPEAKER_00: Really, what we're talking about here is what happens when you're sitting in a situation where the only real answer is I don't know.
30:39
SPEAKER_00: And for many women who oftentimes are doers and achievers and high functioning and all those things, I don't know is not an okay answer.
30:47
SPEAKER_00: Right.
30:48
SPEAKER_00: And so the OCD symptoms, whether that be symptoms that are thought-based or behavior-based, kick in to try to get away from that feeling, that discomfort that comes with not knowing.
31:00
SPEAKER_00: This is very, very common, actually.
31:04
SPEAKER_00: And I sort of love this, you know, we're we're kind of morphing into this whole conversation today about what does it mean to actually not know and be okay with not knowing?
31:16
SPEAKER_00: And be okay is sort of a awarding, you know, a term and quotes I'd written down when you were talking earlier.
31:22
SPEAKER_00: You know, this really interesting thing that I think you probably came out of your brain tumor and mothering and even your anxiety treatment and recovery is can you be okay even when you don't feel okay?
31:37
SPEAKER_00: And that's what we're talking about, right?
31:39
SPEAKER_00: Those brains that want to be fixers and problem solvers are like, I am only okay if I feel okay.
31:45
SPEAKER_00: And the question is, can you be okay even if you don't feel okay?
31:51
SPEAKER_00: How do you respond to that question or that statement?
31:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, it's something that I've had to learn and deal with because if I, at this point in my life, I'm almost 34, if I thought or let feeling okay dictate if I'm okay, then I'd probably spend the most of my days not okay.
32:12
SPEAKER_01: And I can't really do that in this season of life with a five-year-old and a two-year-old that need me to more days than not be okay.
32:20
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we all have our days where we're just not, no matter how we feel, we're just not okay.
32:26
SPEAKER_01: But, you know, I think that I have had to learn that feelings, especially as it relates to uncertainty, are just that.
32:37
SPEAKER_01: And as cliche as it may sound, I can't waste the present by like living in the future so much because that's what I like to do so much, is try to plan, plan, plan, plan, plan.
32:49
SPEAKER_01: And it takes me away from the here and now.
32:52
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, wow, I'm feeling not okay because I'm trying to plan next week.
32:56
SPEAKER_01: But in this exact moment, whatever is going to come next week, whether it's good or bad, is not here yet.
33:03
SPEAKER_01: So let's just stay here where in this given moment, everything's good.
33:08
SPEAKER_01: Everything's fine.
33:09
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's it's sort of a low bar, but actually a really helpful bar to recognize that as long as we're breathing, we're actually okay.
33:18
SPEAKER_00: Right.
33:19
SPEAKER_00: I can feel deep fear, deep pain, deep anxiety, deep grief, deep anger, deep sadness, and still be okay, meaning I'm still surviving this deep pain and discomfort.
33:32
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of times from a mental health perspective, that's so intolerable.
33:37
SPEAKER_00: We don't believe that we're okay.
33:38
SPEAKER_00: We don't believe we're going to be okay, right?
33:41
SPEAKER_00: And so it sounds like you are really working.
33:44
SPEAKER_00: Again, you've had these experiences sort of force this upon you, but really working in your life to figure out, okay, with ironically, as someone who's a high achiever and likes to be in control and likes to have all the answers, you certainly have a life where you've got a lot of unpredictability and uncertainty.
33:59
SPEAKER_00: Your husband's basketball career, two children.
34:03
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we could go on and on, and you're doing it.
34:06
SPEAKER_00: You're moving through with, you know, I find you to be through a screen, incredibly uh uplifting, joyful, easy to be with, inspiring.
34:21
SPEAKER_00: And I don't believe, actually, Allison, that everybody who fears uncertainty and unpredictability shares that dare I say a cliche cliche word vibe, energy.
34:36
SPEAKER_00: So I don't know how you're going to answer this question, but what do you think allows you to move through life with this with the sense of joy and hopefulness and excitement and gratitude that you and creativity that you obviously do, even when you have such a tendency to fear uncertainty and to end up with symptoms of OCD and anxiety.
35:07
SPEAKER_00: I mean, those are two things that we have a major both and here.
35:10
SPEAKER_00: They're both true for you.
35:12
SPEAKER_00: For many women, they can't access the lightness that you clearly feel.
35:18
SPEAKER_01: Well, I'll give two answers that are really the same answer, but can be taken and perceived different ways depending on your beliefs.
35:28
SPEAKER_01: For me, I would say the first answer would be my faith.
35:32
SPEAKER_01: And the second answer for those that might have different beliefs than me would be leaning on what I know is true, which is also faith, but we can take those to mean different things depending on our beliefs.
35:44
SPEAKER_01: You know, I remember a time when this time of year, which is contract season is what we call it in the basketball world.
35:51
SPEAKER_01: It used to be like debilitating for me where I would try to, before I had kids, I would try to basically sleep through it.
35:56
SPEAKER_01: Like I would try to take like naps because I was so anxious and so wound up.
36:00
SPEAKER_01: And that was to me like the only way to do to deal with it.
36:03
SPEAKER_01: Like I'm just gonna sleep because this is too much for me, not knowing where we're gonna sign and for how much money and what's gonna come was just too much.
36:11
SPEAKER_01: And now I really am just kind of I I look for evidence in the past for all the times in my life, brain tumor included, that it's been a period of unknown and everything has been okay, you know?
36:25
SPEAKER_01: And that's that's the short answer is that, you know, when I feel myself getting all worked up and like overwhelmed with it, I do look for that evidence.
36:38
SPEAKER_01: I look for what I know to be true.
36:40
SPEAKER_01: I look for what the past has shown me and what my life experiences have shown me.
36:46
SPEAKER_01: And I just like grab hold to that and hold on to it as tight as I can until the moment passes.
36:53
SPEAKER_01: The moments used to take a lot longer to pass than they do now, thankfully.
36:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
36:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
37:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
37:00
SPEAKER_00: So you're relying on your faith, you're relying on this belief that you're being held in some way through these challenges, you're relying on the evidence.
37:10
SPEAKER_00: I love that word, that in all the other hard times where you've been scared, you've gotten through and been okay.
37:16
SPEAKER_00: I think that's a really important mindset and reminder for those listeners who haven't figured out how to practice that yet, or who are beginning the process of shifting their thinking towards rather than future catastrophic, you know, thinking to shifting towards really relying on the truth and what they know to be true.
37:38
SPEAKER_00: If we get out all the what if thinking out of the way.
37:41
SPEAKER_00: And I think it's lovely to be able to hear you describe your process and of course your honesty about still being in it.
37:47
SPEAKER_00: I mean, aren't we all?
37:48
SPEAKER_01: I'm still in it.
37:49
SPEAKER_01: I mean, every single day I have a moment where I'm like, okay, when something like this has happened before, what was the outcome?
37:56
SPEAKER_01: You know, and I have to go back to it.
37:58
SPEAKER_01: I mean, especially in motherhood.
38:00
SPEAKER_01: I mean, to be honest, like even, you know, dropping my kids off at school still, I love dropping them off at school, but it brings me anxiety.
38:09
SPEAKER_01: Like, I am giving the two most precious things to me to someone else.
38:14
SPEAKER_01: I'm trusting them, you know, to take care of them.
38:17
SPEAKER_01: Like it is a lot for me as someone who likes to control things and, you know, feels like I am somehow all powerful to keep them safe, which is not at all true.
38:28
SPEAKER_01: Um, but I have to think about what about yesterday?
38:30
SPEAKER_01: How did that go?
38:31
SPEAKER_01: What about last week?
38:32
SPEAKER_01: How did that go?
38:33
SPEAKER_01: You know, what about that day when maybe Jackson, my son, did scrape his knee and everything was actually okay.
38:40
SPEAKER_01: You know, I have to just go back to it and lean on it and take a deep breath.
38:47
SPEAKER_00: So we know that the only way to build resilience is through pain, right?
38:54
SPEAKER_00: Or through challenge.
38:56
SPEAKER_00: And it's interesting how I can't I've never met a mom that doesn't say she wants her child to be a resilient human, right?
39:01
SPEAKER_00: And of course, we don't want our kids to go through anything hard, desire to keep them in a bubble and expect them to be resilient.
39:08
SPEAKER_00: And it's no, it's the knee scrapes and sometimes it's the brain tumor that helps people to become resilient.
39:14
SPEAKER_00: And so um, yeah, I love your examples.
39:17
SPEAKER_00: I want to shift for a minute to your podcast with your mom, uh, which we'll link in the show notes, and to the title of your podcast with your mom and to this idea of Kinsugi.
39:30
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, for folks that don't know, um, well, why don't you explain to folks what that is?
39:35
SPEAKER_01: Since you're so I've I've had to explain Kinsugi and you know break down the pronunciation of it a time or two since I kind of attached it to my brand and my persona.
39:47
SPEAKER_01: Basically, in Japan, you know, it's kind of an ancient practice of a ceramic, let's say it breaks, let's say it falls on the floor.
39:56
SPEAKER_01: In our culture, American culture, nine times out of ten, we're gonna just throw that in the trash and say, that's done.
40:01
SPEAKER_01: It's broken, we have no yeast for it anymore.
40:04
SPEAKER_01: Instead of doing that, what they do in the practice of Kitsugi is they pick up all those little cracked pieces and they put them back together using gold glue.
40:15
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's a it's a shimmery gold, you know, for lack of a better word, glue that makes the item whole again.
40:21
SPEAKER_01: And the whole premise is that the item is more beautiful than it was before it fell and shattered in the first place.
40:29
SPEAKER_01: And I just specifically as I was covering from my recovering from my brain tumor, I just like really felt like that whole practice spoke to what I had been through and spoke to like, wow, I had this really kind of terrible thing, you know, that happened to me.
40:48
SPEAKER_01: But because of it, like I am a new person and I am a better person.
40:53
SPEAKER_01: And as it relates to our podcast, well, even before the podcast, I um wrote a children's book about the practice of Kentsugi called Kentsugi Conversations.
41:03
SPEAKER_01: And what sparked the children's book is actually when my daughter was one, she fell in my bathroom floor.
41:10
SPEAKER_01: She was trying to like grab my leg while I was trying to walk.
41:15
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if that's ever happened to other moms.
41:17
SPEAKER_01: Like, you're trying to move, your kid's trying to come.
41:19
SPEAKER_01: And yes, I was still trying to get to where I was going, and she didn't get that.
41:23
SPEAKER_01: Long story short, she fell in my bathroom floor and she chipped her tooth.
41:28
SPEAKER_01: And as a new mom, I just felt like this was the worst thing that was ever going to happen to her.
41:33
SPEAKER_01: Like, how is she going to go through life with this chipped baby tooth that is going to fall out one day?
41:38
SPEAKER_01: But at the time, this is my first and only kid.
41:41
SPEAKER_01: Like, I was hysterical.
41:43
SPEAKER_01: However, after you know, months of realizing that this chipped really meant nothing, the dentist told us it was fine, you know, all of those things.
41:52
SPEAKER_01: I thought, huh?
41:53
SPEAKER_01: How would I want my daughter to feel about this chip tooth?
41:58
SPEAKER_01: Should it stay?
42:00
SPEAKER_01: Like, would I want her to feel like ashamed of this chipped?
42:03
SPEAKER_01: Like, how would I want her to like react to it?
42:06
SPEAKER_01: Like, what part of her story should this chip tooth be?
42:09
SPEAKER_01: And it took me back to Kintsugi again.
42:11
SPEAKER_01: And I kind of thought to myself, wow, like this chip tooth, like it kind of gives her like glare.
42:17
SPEAKER_01: It makes her unique.
42:18
SPEAKER_01: It's something different.
42:18
SPEAKER_01: It's a part of her little story, you know?
42:21
SPEAKER_01: And so I wrote the Kinsugi Kid kind of to teach children about the Japanese art of Kintsugi in a way that was digestible to a child and kind of teach them that we all have these things that are gonna happen to us throughout life and they're gonna make us better, you know, instead of making us worse in the long run.
42:42
SPEAKER_01: And then came Kinsugi Conversations, which is the podcast that my mom and I do together.
42:48
SPEAKER_01: My mom had a not ideal upbringing.
42:52
SPEAKER_01: I mean, she did not have a good relationship with her mom or any of her either of her parents.
42:58
SPEAKER_01: And a lot of people, you know, we we hear a lot that someone maybe is not a good parent because they didn't have a good parent and they don't know how to do it.
43:08
SPEAKER_01: And instead of letting her childhood break her and define her and make her mean and cruel and cold towards me, she said, you know what?
43:19
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna use every single bad experience that I had growing up to be a better mom.
43:26
SPEAKER_01: And so we just thought that, you know, as we have these conversations on our podcast about truly any and everything under the sun, we just thought we, or I thought that I wanted to acknowledge the fact that she made something beautiful, our relationship, out of something broken, her own childhood.
43:47
SPEAKER_00: You are, you know, speaking about something that is incredibly important for all mothers, in my opinion, to reflect on, right?
43:58
SPEAKER_00: We have control.
44:00
SPEAKER_00: Actually, you know, we don't have control about what happened in the past, and we certainly don't have control over our environment, but we do have control over our choices and our actions and our thoughts, right?
44:10
SPEAKER_00: And that, you know, when we're able to reflect on our history of being raised as we become mothers and have the opportunity to raise other humans, we get to decide what to do that's similar to how we are raised and what to do that's different.
44:28
SPEAKER_00: We get to choose.
44:29
SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, there is this this, you know, we've talked about this a number of different times already in this conversation, but turning tragedy and trauma into strength and beauty.
44:38
SPEAKER_00: That's what we're talking about.
44:40
SPEAKER_00: That's what your mom chose to do when she, you know, and you know, trauma, big T or little T, right?
44:46
SPEAKER_00: But that's what your mom chose to do when she had you and raised you.
44:50
SPEAKER_00: That's what you chose to do after your brain tumor, and in all of these sort of bumps along the road in motherhood.
44:56
SPEAKER_00: And it's what Kinsuki does as a creative practice and also as a visual art.
45:05
SPEAKER_00: So I was in Japan, as you know, and I sat with a friend, a friend of mine who was born and raised in Japan who taught me how to do Kinsuki when I was there.
45:15
SPEAKER_00: And I have a funny story to tell, which is that I took a plate, which, you know, I wasn't broken, but I had it with me to break, to do, and I dropped it thinking it would crack in one, you know, the perfect crack.
45:27
SPEAKER_00: And of course, it broke in like eight different pieces, which you know, as someone who's done kitsugi, is not easy when you're needing to put balance these things together.
45:38
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I think so many of our listeners are sort of perfectionists or again, high achievers, and we like to do things really well.
45:46
SPEAKER_00: And I wanted to do this really well.
45:50
SPEAKER_00: And I learned within moments of dropping that platter or that plate that it wasn't gonna turn out the way I wanted it to.
45:59
SPEAKER_00: And it took me this moment of like, I could feel myself resisting and should I try again with a different bowl?
46:06
SPEAKER_00: And I like was doing all those things we do in our head when we want to redo, we want to go back and do it again, or if only I and then I just let go and I was like, let's just see what happens.
46:16
SPEAKER_01: Let's let's lean into what this is really about instead of letting our nature take over here.
46:22
SPEAKER_00: And not only was it beautiful in the end, but it was really fun.
46:29
SPEAKER_01: Can you please if you have a picture of this plate, you have to put it in the show notes because I want to see it, and I'm sure everyone else does too.
46:36
SPEAKER_00: I will put it in the show notes.
46:38
SPEAKER_00: But I think what I want to say as a metaphor is life can feel so hard, right?
46:46
SPEAKER_00: Motherhood can feel so hard when we're trying to not make mistakes, not fall down, not get sick, not bump our head, not do all those things.
46:58
SPEAKER_00: We work so hard to try to micromanage and control.
47:01
SPEAKER_00: And if we can let go of that and so beautifully accept that these bumps in the road are gonna happen, that putting them back together and making meaning can actually be fun.
47:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
47:13
SPEAKER_01: I know one of the most beautiful parts of my motherhood journey that has only it's only happened within like the last year.
47:21
SPEAKER_01: And it was just kind of like it was an accident, but it was such a such a breath of fresh air.
47:26
SPEAKER_01: Because I can't even remember what was happening, but I was very anxious and wound up about something, and I broke down crying in front of both of my kids.
47:36
SPEAKER_01: And I remember initially feeling like, oh my gosh, what did I just do?
47:41
SPEAKER_01: Like they're seeing me cry.
47:43
SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, as they reacted to me the way that sweet kids do, and they're like, Mommy, like, are you crying?
47:50
SPEAKER_01: Are you okay?
47:51
SPEAKER_01: Like, what can we do?
47:53
SPEAKER_01: I realized that like there's so much power in letting them see me be imperfect so that they know that it's okay to have a bad day, to feel anxious, to feel sad, to feel scared, all of those things.
48:06
SPEAKER_01: And even now, I mean, I don't purposely cry in front of them, but if I have to cry and they're right there, I'm like, well, I'm about to cry, and this is gonna be a teaching moment for them, you know, to see that even mommy, because our kids do see us as superheroes, even superheroes have hard moments, and that's okay.
48:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and not only is it okay, but we're now we're back to sort of where we started, right?
48:34
SPEAKER_00: Can you be okay even when you don't feel okay?
48:40
SPEAKER_00: So that need or that need that many of us have, and you know, to show up as being and feeling okay all the time to really be able to reflect, ah, I can feel something deep, yeah, and still stand with my two feet planted firmly on the ground.
48:57
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
48:58
SPEAKER_00: Which is certainly what you did when you came out of this diagnosis and recovery.
49:03
SPEAKER_00: And it sounds like what you continue to do as you live this life of uncertainty and unpredictability.
49:10
SPEAKER_00: I have, I guess, one more personal final question for you that has to do with that, which is that so often I'm talking with my clients about what it means to stay steady, even when the world around you is unsteady.
49:33
SPEAKER_00: Right.
49:34
SPEAKER_00: We're back to that thing that you said so beautifully in the beginning, which is there's very little we can actually control in our environment.
49:40
SPEAKER_00: You, for instance, just said it, you can't control where your husband's gonna be recruited or when that's gonna be, or what that will look financially for your family, or whether your child will fall and scrape his knee when he's at school, or you know, there's so much that we can't control.
49:55
SPEAKER_00: And yet, if we're not, if we're gonna do something, let me say this differently, unless we do something, we're gonna be sent in a spiral with all that chaos.
50:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
50:09
SPEAKER_00: So any words of experience or wisdom or insight for our listeners about how you make meaning of that?
50:21
SPEAKER_01: I think that even with all of the uncertainty and all of the unknown things that we all face from day to day, I think that for most people, if not all people, there is a constant in your life, whether that have to do with your faith and your beliefs, whether that be a person or I don't know, a there there is something that is constant.
50:51
SPEAKER_01: And I think that finding that thing for you is going to be the best thing that you can do.
51:00
SPEAKER_01: And really, I mean, what it comes down to is finding what grounds you.
51:05
SPEAKER_01: You know, for some people like me, that could be spending some time in prayer.
51:10
SPEAKER_01: For other people, that could be taking off your shoes and going to stand in the grass because there's grass everywhere.
51:15
SPEAKER_01: It's a constant, I mean, for most of us, even in New York City, we can find some grass somewhere.
51:20
SPEAKER_01: Finding something that grounds you and that is not going anywhere, and you know deeply is not going anywhere, and holding on to that because literally everything else except for whatever you feel like for you is that constant can and might change.
51:42
SPEAKER_01: Right.
51:43
SPEAKER_01: For me, it's been finding finding that one thing that I know is true and isn't changing.
51:52
SPEAKER_00: That's so beautiful.
51:54
SPEAKER_00: What's your definition of mental health?
51:59
SPEAKER_00: I don't mean I don't mean textbook definition.
52:01
SPEAKER_00: I mean for you, Allison Jones.
52:03
SPEAKER_00: What's your definition of mental health?
52:05
SPEAKER_01: I think my definition of mental health would be how you how you face what is thrown at you and your reactions to those things.
52:25
SPEAKER_01: Because I don't I don't think that like mental health is always like your mental health can be really good, which means that you face all of those things maybe in there's not a better way to face them, but in a certain way.
52:39
SPEAKER_01: Your mental health can be, I guess would better would be a better word, maybe strong on one day and weaker on another day.
52:46
SPEAKER_01: But I don't think that so often I feel like when we say mental health, like it gets just a negative connotation, like, oh my mental health.
52:53
SPEAKER_01: But like your mental health, like, I'm having a pretty good mental health day today.
52:56
SPEAKER_01: I'm facing what's thrown at me pretty well today.
52:59
SPEAKER_01: So I think it's how how you face all those things that life brings to you, which sounds an awful lot like resilience as well, to be honest.
53:08
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's what I'm hearing.
53:10
SPEAKER_00: I'm hearing you describe a capacity to be resilient when hard things get thrown your way.
53:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
53:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
53:22
SPEAKER_01: And I think that, you know, so many different things, you know, can impact this mental health.
53:31
SPEAKER_01: And that's where we can get, you know, certain diagnoses or not get certain diagnoses, but there are certain things that are internal and external that can have an impact, you know.
53:42
SPEAKER_00: I want to just say, uh, Allison, that I think the way you talk so honestly about your inner landscape, which so many women can relate to, about your commitment to tending to your own mental health and well-being.
54:00
SPEAKER_00: And you and I talked about this on our first phone call, but your commitment to that in service of your kids, right?
54:06
SPEAKER_00: You you you you know what kind of mom you want to be to those kids.
54:10
SPEAKER_00: You know you want to enjoy mothering them, and you know that you got to get some support and got to take care of yourself around a history of anxiety to be able to show up the way you want to, and you're doing it and you're talking about it.
54:23
SPEAKER_00: And I wish more people would do that because we look at you, our listeners can't see you.
54:29
SPEAKER_00: Those watching this can see you, and of course, we'll have your beautiful photo in the show notes, but you are you show up in such a steady, confident, easy way while you're also honest about the moments of challenge that you have.
54:48
SPEAKER_00: They don't have to be mutually exclusive, right?
54:51
SPEAKER_00: And um, I just want to thank you for showing up here in this conversation with such honesty because more women need to see women like you.
55:01
SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you.
55:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
55:02
SPEAKER_00: Doing it.
55:03
SPEAKER_00: You're doing you're living.
55:05
SPEAKER_00: You are living, right?
55:07
SPEAKER_00: And you're also a human.
55:10
SPEAKER_01: I appreciate that.
55:11
SPEAKER_01: You know, when I first started showing up on the internet, I just wanted to be authentic and I wanted to be real.
55:18
SPEAKER_01: And I think no matter what, that's what I try to give.
55:23
SPEAKER_01: And it looks different on different days, you know.
55:26
SPEAKER_01: But I think that there is so much power for all of us in being authentic and like owning our stories, owning the parts of us that make us us.
55:37
SPEAKER_01: Back when I had the candle brand, which I didn't even talk about because I don't actually have it anymore.
55:42
SPEAKER_01: But that was like part of the slogan was like, own your story.
55:47
SPEAKER_01: Like all of those things that have come together to make you you, instead of trying to like hide these, like let's just let's just be real about them because they can help and touch someone somewhere.
55:58
SPEAKER_01: And that's always honestly been my goal is if what I have been through can positively impact someone, then okay, you know?
56:11
SPEAKER_01: Amazing.
56:13
SPEAKER_00: Before we jump into where people can find you, Allison, anything we didn't talk about today or any thoughts on your mind that you want to share or leave our listeners with?
56:24
SPEAKER_00: And you've already said so much.
56:25
SPEAKER_00: So if you feel complete, no problem.
56:27
SPEAKER_00: But anything that's lingering that you want to make sure you say or share?
56:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, this is just kind of piggybacking on what I just said about owning your story.
56:39
SPEAKER_01: I just will say, like, if you have something that is in you that you keep feeling like you need to share, just put it out there.
56:48
SPEAKER_01: You know, and as a content creator, of course, you know, what rings out in my head is like, make the video, post the post.
56:55
SPEAKER_01: But it doesn't even have to be that.
56:56
SPEAKER_01: It could be writing a book or not even a book.
56:59
SPEAKER_01: It could just be an essay, it could be, I don't know, shouting it from the rooftops.
57:04
SPEAKER_01: However, you want to do it.
57:05
SPEAKER_01: If you have something to say, say it.
57:07
SPEAKER_01: And don't ever feel like no one wants to hear this or this isn't gonna matter to anybody, or so many other people are already saying the same thing because like you are uniquely you for a reason.
57:19
SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
57:20
SPEAKER_00: Beautiful.
57:20
SPEAKER_00: And everyone has a story, right?
57:22
SPEAKER_00: Everyone has a story.
57:25
SPEAKER_00: I'm really grateful to spend some time with you today, Allison.
57:28
SPEAKER_00: Where can our listeners find you?
57:31
SPEAKER_01: So I am pretty much on every platform.
57:35
unknown: Yeah.
57:36
SPEAKER_01: I am at Allison Mathis Jones on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.
57:43
SPEAKER_01: And I also have a YouTube channel.
57:46
SPEAKER_01: It is also at Allison Mathis Jones.
57:48
SPEAKER_01: You can find me there.
57:49
SPEAKER_01: And then you can also find um my podcast that I do with my mom.
57:53
SPEAKER_01: We are at Kitsugi Conversations on those same platforms.
57:57
SPEAKER_00: I love it.
57:58
SPEAKER_00: We will um make sure all of that is in our show notes, are in our show notes.
58:02
SPEAKER_00: And um I have said it's been very fun to follow you on Instagram since you and I first passed each other.
58:07
SPEAKER_00: So thank you for continuing to put yourself out there and your story out there.
58:11
SPEAKER_00: And I'm really grateful that I got a chance to meet you.
58:14
SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much for having me.
58:18
SPEAKER_00: Hey listeners, if you enjoyed this episode, I would love to request that you share it with one mom out there who you know might benefit.
58:28
SPEAKER_00: You know, there are a lot of women who feel like they're mothering alone, and it takes all of our help to make sure that everyone feels like they have what they need to both feel successful and also feel supported.
58:40
SPEAKER_00: So please take a moment and just share it with one person.
58:44
SPEAKER_00: And if you feel inclined, go ahead and rate and review this podcast because the reality is that the more reviews we have and the higher ratings we have, the more this podcast is shared with other moms out there, which makes it more easy for them to find us.
59:00
SPEAKER_00: So thanks again for your help with this.
59:02
SPEAKER_00: And I'm assuming you do find this podcast helpful because you're still here at the end listening to this memo.
59:11
SPEAKER_00: So thanks for being here and share away.
59:13
SPEAKER_00: Sending love.