Latest / Motherhood Uncut / The Path to Positive Role Modeling for Our Kids | Motherhood Uncut Podcast | Season 5 Episode 7

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The Path to Positive Role Modeling for Our Kids | Motherhood Uncut Podcast | Season 5 Episode 7 · Motherhood Uncut

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, it's Kate Kripke and welcome to the Motherhood Uncut podcast.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Here we are committed to making sure that nobody ever needs to mother alone.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: We bring to you wherever you are the conversations that we need to have to survive and thrive in motherhood, but so often keep silent about the things that make us laugh, cry, celebrate, rage about, and reflect on.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: The things that bring tears of sorrow and tears of joy, confusion and wonder, fear and gratitude.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: We want you to feel good about your mothering and to feel supported along the often clunky adventure of life as a mom.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: In Motherhood Uncut, you can expect eye-opening conversations with experts in parenting, mental health, and women's health, as well as moving and inspiring conversations with moms who are out there paving the way for their children.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: You'll likely agree with some of what you hear and also disagree with some of what you hear.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: All we ask is this that you come with an open mind and boatloads of compassion for yourself and mothers everywhere.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Pull up a chair, pour yourself a glass of wine or a cup of tea, put on your walking or running shoes, turn up the volume in your car during your commute or the pickup line at school.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: Just show up and mother with us.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: We have got you.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: I am right now in the midst of a six-day walking trek in the south of Japan.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: This time will be made into an episode in and of itself as I share my thoughts and my experiences with you along the way.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: But um, for today, this is just a 20-minute conversation.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Can we even call it a conversation when I'm sort of talking to myself?
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: I am talking to you about what it means to role model, to be a role model for our kids.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: And the biggest takeaway for you, I hope, is just that gentle reminder that our kids don't learn from what we say.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: And they don't always learn simply by what we do.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, of course, our actions speak louder than our words, but if we're acting in ways that are misaligned with how we're really feeling internally, that can be mixed messaging for our kids as well.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: So today's episode is just asking you to reconsider what it means to be a role model for your child and ways that you can celebrate yourself and what you're doing now, and ways that you might want to get yourself back on track.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: So it's short, it's sweet, and I hope you enjoy.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Hey listeners, there is literally nothing that I feel more inspired by than working with women who are ready and motivated to take control of their mental health and well-being in service of their kids.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because here's the thing: in my work, I get the opportunity to both watch the women who I work with feel better, and I also get to watch how their kids thrive along with them.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: If these conversations motivate you and if you're ready to shift out of the anxiety, guilt, and overwhelm that you feel and move back into confidence, calm, and connection, my 12-week program might be for you.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to learn more and talk with me about if it's a fit, go ahead and book a free clarity call with me.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: The link is in the show notes.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Motherhood Uncut Podcast is sponsored by the One Clock.
• 3:34
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• 3:41
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• 3:44
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• 3:48
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• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: You can learn more at oneclock.co.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Hey listeners.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, okay, I have something sort of unique and special and short this week.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: I am uh just finished my first day of a six-day walking, solo walking pilgrimage that I'm on in the south of Japan.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: Shinto is a religion in Japan.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually the first religion in Japan.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Shintoism and Buddhism have often been seen as one of the same and the same.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: They're a little different.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there was certainly overlap between the two for quite a while, and I won't spend time going into the history of Shinto here, but for you to know, Shinto is um the celebration and worship of nature, nature as divine, to the earth and all the natural parts of the earth.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: And um, this pilgrimage I'm on is where the earliest Shinto shrines were built.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm by myself, and I will have an episode coming up in a few weeks that is a summary, a little kind of taking uh making audios each day, and I'm gonna put them all together and tell you about what I'm thinking about and learning about on this trip.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, that will come soon, but tonight I'm just gonna prepare for you a very short episode.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things I was thinking about today on my walk was this idea of being a role model for our kids.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I wanted to talk a little bit about what the heck it means to be a role model for our children.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I've never met a mother that doesn't want to be a good role model for her kids, whether she's got daughters or sons, this idea of like role modeling, you know, like being the kind of parent that we being the human that we hope that our children will be.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: We all know this idea of teaching by example.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't need to remind you, I'm sure you've all heard this a million times.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Kids do not learn from watching, they don't learn from what we do or say, they learn from who we are, right?
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: And uh that's a blessing and a curse.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we can feel a whole lot of shame about that if we're showing up in ways in our lives that we are not so proud of.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but there can also be something really wacky that happens when we feel like we have to pretend, right?
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: We feel like we have to perform in order to be a good role model.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things I was thinking about in my walk today was this idea like, what does it actually mean?
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: What does it actually mean to be a role model to my daughters?
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: For us to be role models for our children.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things that I think a lot about is this question about like, what does it mean to parent well?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, we can have like a million, we can read a million books, we can listen to a million speakers around quote-unquote good parenting.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: But really for me in my own life and with my two teenage daughters, and certainly what I talk to my clients about is what would what would it be like to just see good mothering as good humaning?
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what does it mean to be a good human?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now, hold the phone because there are probably a lot of shoulds that you could come up with, but one of the things that I'm really focused on these days is this idea of value-based parenting or value-based mothering.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, there's a really fascinating study out there that really looked at the success of children.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: And to make a long study short, what this study found was that children who are raised in families where there were rules, like you must sit down at the table while you're eating, or you must say please and thank you, or you have to be in bed by nine o'clock, or you know, rules.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: Be polite.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Those kids actually did less well over time.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, that's measured by things like uh reports on happiness or social emotional skills or uh purpose, you know, reports of work that feels fulfilling.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Those kids who are raised in families with rules did less better or do less better than kids who are raised in families where the values are clear, like respect or kindness, community, uh hard work, whatever those values are.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that's because we're we look at something like the word agency, right?
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: When when kids are doing things because they should, because they don't want to get in trouble, that's a very different motivation than to have kids doing things because they feel good.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: Doing them feels good, and what we know is that when we understand what our values are, and we move forward in life from a place of those values we feel good.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: I've done a lot of work myself around this, and my values tend to be I keep coming back to these three love, growth, and connection.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, there's no right or wrong when it comes to values, but when I teach my coaching programs and we do a whole unit on values, one of the things I talk about is that the values, when you when you think about the value that you know it's the right value for you if you feel good somatically, if you feel good in your body.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: If you think about that value and you feel tense, it's not the right value for you.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, it may have been a value that was forced on you or pressured, right?
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: So, for instance, many of us high achievers, we have the value of hard work, right?
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: Or perseverance.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: When I think of those words or when I look at those words and a list of words, my body feels tense.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's I don't know, something.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that hard work and perseverance aren't really important like character traits or things to, you know, I don't know, pursue or but but as a value, I don't know.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: When I think about that, I just feel tense and tired and like burnt out already before I've even done anything.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: But when I think about the values of love or connection or growth, like I feel a little effervescent.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: I feel a little flutter in my heart.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, I bring that up because I think when we think, when we kind of consider this idea of being a mentor or sorry, a role model for our children.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: I guess maybe in many ways it's one and the same thing.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: But if we think about what it means to be a good role model, really what I'd love for you to consider is this idea of practicing or modeling a set of values that you believe in and that you hope to instill in your children.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: So, right, if I value kindness and I'm hopeful that my children are kind, I need to model that.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: What does modeling kindness actually look like?
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's gotta start by me being kind to me, right?
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm wanting to instill kindness in my children and they hear me calling myself stupid or being self-critical, I'm not so sure I'm being a good role model for kindness.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: Or do they experience me gossiping about other people or treating other people poorly?
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because if I'm doing those things, I'm not really being a role model for kindness.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: Love is one of mine, right?
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: So great.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, don't we all want our children to feel and receive love?
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, when I think of my my two daughters, like there actually is nothing else I'd rather for them.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: I hope that my two daughters have endless love in their lives, that they know what that feels like, that they know what it feels like to be loved and to love.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: So if I want to instill that value in my daughters, I kind of have to live by that value.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, man, if you've been listening to this podcast, it will not surprise you to hear me say that to me, self-care is the ultimate act of self-love, right?
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: If I want my daughters to love themselves, to appreciate themselves, to respect themselves, I have got to model that.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: I have got to show them what it looks like to be a woman who is utterly committed to loving myself well.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this funny thought comes to mind as I'm saying that, where I remember, I remember in like, I mean, I was young, dang it, I think I may have been like first or second grade.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember this idea, you know, with my little posse of girlfriends back then in Brooklyn, New York.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, sometime on one of these podcasts, I will tell you about the left out club that we started.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: The freaking left out club.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: We started, okay, I'm gonna tell you now.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: We started in first grade.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: Emily, if you are listening to this, I know you will remember this, but by the way, Emily Ash was my best friend growing up.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: And okay, I'm going on a tangent, but I'm gonna keep going with it for a minute.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: Emily and I were convinced we were twins, and Emily was small, small, like little.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: She's still little.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you're still little.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: She was little and dark hair, and I was like freaking almost six feet tall as a small child and blonde hair, and we were convinced we looked like twins.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, Emily and I were the captains of the left out club, and we had five friends, and we decided that five was a hard number.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so instead of like making it feel clunky, we were just gonna rotate.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: And each day someone knew was gonna be left out.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: Jeez.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: And if it was your turn to be left out, you just had to know that you were gonna be treated like shit that day.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I mean, we were not messing around.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: We were going to leave you out.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the worst part: if you ever quit the left out club, you'd be left out for life.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you guys, I'm like so I'm a freaking social worker.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I when I think back to the way I treated other people when I was a young child, I seriously am like, I have to do some deep breathing.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like at this left out club.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, I guess my point is love.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: What does it mean to love ourselves well and to model love?
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: It certainly does not mean leaving people out, it means including ourselves.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, and this is what I was gonna say: loving ourselves.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I remember back in the days of the Left Out Club that we would sit around and recess and we'd be like, oh my gosh, she just loves herself so much.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: As if that was a bad thing.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: Do you remember that?
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: Do any of you remember those days when you would like roll your eyes at the girl who quote unquote loved herself as if it was like this cocky, narcissistic, horrible thing?
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how dare you love yourself?
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, I guess by age 51, I've learned that loving myself is like the best thing I could ever do.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: But I want to model loving myself to my teenage daughter.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: So what does that mean?
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: What does that look like?
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that means that I certainly don't talk critically about myself.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: I talk compassionately with myself and about myself.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I own my mistakes.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna be uh I'm not gonna be blind to the places that I have some work to do, but loving myself means that I'm talking with compassion and I'm, you know, I'm I don't know.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: Being my own friend.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: It means that I am putting healthy food into my body.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: It means that I'm getting to bed early.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: It means that I am giving myself permission to make mistakes.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: It means that I am acting really frickin' weird sometimes because it just feels right or fun or wacky to act weird and not doing a whole lot of shuds within myself, but having some humor towards myself and and also holding myself accountable for a purpose-driven, intentional life because I want that for myself.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: So love.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: Love is a value I cherish.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I certainly am willing to make mistakes, but I'm gonna repair with myself and others when I make those mistakes.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: So role model, role modeling love.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: Role modeling growth.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, this is a big one for me.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, I don't know, maybe it's because I'm 50 and I I do think those of you listeners who are not yet middle-aged, I do want to say, I think that there is a way in which we expect ourselves to have all the answers when we're young, and it's like embarrassing or shameful to not know the answers.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: And now that I'm in my 50s, I like pride myself in this statement.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: Growth, that value of growth means that I don't know, but I want to learn curiosity, wonder, asking questions of myself and other people.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, just getting curious about the world.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: I want to model that.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: I want to model that for my girls because I want them to be curious about the world.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: I want them to ask questions and not feel like they always need to have the answers.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: And how will they know it's okay to do that?
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they'll know it's okay to do that based on whether or not I do that.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: If I don't let myself do that, then I am unintentionally sending a message to them that they shouldn't do that.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: Love, growth, connection, connection.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, if you know me at all at this point, you know that I am very committed to making sure that you all know, and that I explain to the world in the best that I can that you and I are no different.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: We are connected.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: This is where my spiritual beliefs and faith come in, and this idea of interconnectedness, this idea of gosh, we are all part of one thing.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: We are all the same, we all have the same emotions.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: We saw all know what love and grief feel like.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: We all made of the same stuff.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: And um, that idea of connection and modeling that means that I'm doing my best to not judge other people.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm doing my best to see myself in others, I'm doing my best to um reach out and connect with people who are similar to me and different from me.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I hope that for my daughters.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: So if I want my daughters to have that, then I better darn well do that myself.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: How else do I want to be a role model?
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: Adventure.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: Adventure.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: I want I want my girls to be willing to be uncomfortable.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: And this is really the whole reason we went to Japan.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: Jamie and I had been talking about wanting to live abroad with our girls for a long, long time.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: And we decided that, you know, we're a white, privileged family, and we live in Boulder, Colorado, which is beautiful, but it's a flippin' bubble.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: And we really, really wanted our girls to see the world and to get out of their comfort zone.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so we came to Japan so we would all be uncomfortable.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like the whole goal of being here for these six months is to be uncomfortable.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost like in our meet in our family conversations, our family meetings, moving up to Japan, it was like, okay, so we've got six months here.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna work towards being as uncomfortable as we can for six months, knowing that dis uncomfortableness that's not a word, discomfort leads to growth.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: Discomfort leads to growth.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, discomfort Growth, learning, adventure, challenge.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, how can I role model to my girls so that I can both feel hard things and be okay at the same time?
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: I can both struggle and trust that I'm okay at the same time.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if I want them to believe that about themselves, I better darn well practice that myself.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: So being a role model to our kids, and by the way, there's no, there's no the the the I the the list of ways to be a role model is endless.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: Here are just my examples, but I mean role modeling, perseverance, and yeah, hard work and compassion and a willingness to ask for help, uh, you know, creativity, uh, sportsmanship.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: You come up with your own qualities or values or words, but here's what I want you to remember today in this very short episode.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: Your kids are watching you, and they really are watching you.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's a blessing and a curse.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: Does it mean you need to be perfect?
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: Heck no.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna tell you right now, I am not perfect, but it does mean that when you're imperfect, by the way, you're always gonna be imperfect.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: So let's move that word away.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: But when you're making mistakes, that you model repair and ownership, personal responsibility, right?
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you if you here's one thing you could do after listening to this podcast, you can make a list about all the qualities that you hope your children have when they're grown, and to just check in with yourself.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: Am I role modeling these qualities?
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: And this isn't a shame or blame game, this is just an opportunity to pause and pivot.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: What different choices can you make?
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: Small baby, baby steps.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need to change who you are, but what small baby step choices can you make where you're modeling those qualities that you hope your kids have?
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: Do you hope that they're courageous?
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, remember, there's no courage without fear.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, what does it look like for you to role model courage through fear?
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: Trying hard things, being willing to be uncomfortable, right?
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: All those things, grit, courage, resilience, all those things we want our kids to have.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: We don't get those things without feeling real uncomfortable first.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: So, are there places that you can role model a little bit differently?
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: When I think about secure attachment for with our kids, which is really the undercurrent of all the work I do, all the maternal mental health work I do.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: When I think about secure attachment, really as a securely attached mother, what we're doing is providing that secure base, we're providing that set place of stability for our children to keep coming back to.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: So, what does it look like to role model stability?
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, vulnerability and stability can coexist.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the people I admire most in my life are those women who are willing to be messy, who are willing to be unsure of themselves, but their willingness to be messy and unsure of themselves comes with such a strength, such a stability.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's like that both and you can do that for your kids, whether they're boys or girls, or they're for that matter, right?
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: You could do that, you can model, you can be the woman that you hope, you can be the human that you hope your children are.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: So being a good mom means being good human.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: And how are you choosing to role model today?
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, as we wrap this up, I'm gonna tell you right now, again, I'm getting real brave points this week because I'm on a six-day journey all by myself in rural Japan.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: I don't speak the language, I've never been here before.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm following a map.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, dang it.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm feeling a little better today, but when I woke up this morning, when I was in Kyoto, Japan, and I woke up to start my day, and I was feeling pretty darn anxious.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: But uh again, with a little meditating, some deep breathing, some humor, I could remind myself that uh I can both be okay, feel anxious, and be okay at the same time.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, that's a wrap for me.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: Short podcast.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'll see you soon with a full summary of this uh walk I'm on.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: And until then, three cheers for you for being that human that you hope your kids can be.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: Sending love.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, if you loved this episode and enjoy this podcast, please just take a moment to subscribe, rate, and review, and send it to one mom out there who you think might benefit.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: When you do that, you help to make sure that no woman out there ever feels like they have to mother alone.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.