Why Motherhood Feels Hard: It’s Not You, It’s the Missing Village

Introduction and Welcome

Opening & Introduction

Britta: Hello folks, and welcome to transformed by birth, a podcast about the rite of passage of pregnancy, birth and new parenthood. I'm your host. Britta Bushnell, author, mythologist, childbirth educator and all around deep diver with a side of goofball. I'm so glad you're here. Today's episode tackles some of what's hard about motherhood. So grab your comfy beverage of choice. I've got a matcha latte in my mug today, or take us along for a walk as we navigate into the waters of motherhood overwhelm with the amazing Beth Berry. Before we begin, we start the way we always do by lighting a candle. If you want to join me, please do so or take a breath as I light mine. Today's candle is for all the moms wondering why motherhood feels so damn hard.

The Weight of Motherhood

Britta: So is motherhood bringing you to your knees? Do you love it? Some days yet want to curl under the blankets. On other days feeling utterly defeated. You love your baby, your kids, your family, but are somehow also desperate for another version of your life. Buckle up, folks. We're going to look right into the eye of that tiger today, rather than just wave our hands in the air saying what Tiger parenthood can take an often outsized toll on moms. In particular, we live in a society that lavishes love and attention to mothers on Mother's Day and strips us of systemic supports every other day. But don't worry. Says the messaging of the over culture build your village that will support you, but where the F is the Village. Today, I'm excited to welcome Beth Berry, a fellow coach, teacher and author of one of my go to recommended books, motherwound. Although Beth and I have never met in person, we've worked together in different forms over the years, and I have profound respect for her work. You might know her through her popular blog, revolution from home, or the many online courses, small groups and retreats she offers to help mothers deconstruct disempowering narratives and live more meaningful and liberated lives, while Beth is a powerhouse coach of other mothers, she's also gained a ton of wisdom in this arena through her own journey as the mother of four now grown daughters. Beth, Beth. Beth, my friend. Can I call you a friend if we've never met in person?

Beth: Absolutely, in this day and age, we better, better claim friendship. Yeah, right.

The Missing Village

Britta: I mean, and I think that actually kind of speaks to where we can even dive in today, because you and I have never met, and yet I feel, and I just was saying to you before, like, there's, there's a sisterhood here with you, and I feel that you are part of my quote, unquote village, even though you're on one side of the continent and I'm on the other. So let's, let's dive right into this. You know, proverbial village like talk about that, because motherhood feels so overwhelming, hard, lonely sometimes, and yet we're told, Oh, just find your village, or lean on the village. Talk, talk to us about this.

Beth: Yeah, definitely. So I don't even know how long ago now, maybe 10 years ago, I wrote a blog post. My most popular ever blog post was in the absence of the village mothers, mother struggle most, and it just stirred up this conversation that led to then groups about it, and one on one conversations about it, and weaving it into my book. Because I really do think that this is at the heart of almost all of our struggles as mothers in this day and age, and yet it's the kind of challenge and set of problems that does not have a clear and easy set of solutions, and so it ends up sometimes Feeling like one more thing we're failing at, right? Because been able to figure this one out either. I've had clients who say to me,

Britta: well, well, I know I need my village. I know I need to find my people, but I suck at that too, like I'm having a hard time with this. And I'm having a hard time with that, the sleep, the feeding, the the sense of self, and now you're telling me I also need to be the one to find a village like, yeah, no wonder we're overwhelmed

The Systemic Nature of the Problem

Beth: totally. And there's some real injustice in that, because it's never supposed to be that way to begin with. That was there was never supposed to be the the the job of the already overwhelmed and vulnerable mother of a young child, or young children to then have to also create her support network and community that's supposed to be in place for us. And that's part of the reason it feels so impossible is because it's actually, it's out of order, and it's it's sort of put upon us because there aren't better solutions. But I don't believe that we're the best people to be doing that culture building work during those most vulnerable times, because we're already doing so much caregiving work in our homes, and like you said, sleep deprived, our identity is completely shaken. So much has changed for us in that stage of life. So I think it's actually interestingly, largely the work of those of us who are in the phase that you and I are in, where we're a bit older, our kids are grown, and now we can be more effective as culture builders, right? But that's like the idealism. That's the idealistic version that that we would then be able to help create culture for younger mothers, which is what you and I are helping to do. And there's not enough people in those roles to be able to solve the problem for all the mothers out there, right?

Britta: Because, because so much of it is actually a systems issue, not and yet, the over culture kind of tells us that if, if we're not thriving, it's an it's an individual problem, right? And that kind of perpetuates a cycle of difficulty and struggle for so many

Beth: totally. I think it's like the one of the core stories, I think that that my work is trying to deconstruct and rewrite is this feels so hard because I am personally inadequate. Actually, this feels so hard because the systems, the structures, the norms, the narratives, are not set up for our thriving. They're not set up for the thriving of children, of families. They're not set up for the wellness of humans or other creatures. That's actually not what these systems have been set up for. So it's no wonder that it is so hard to thrive within these systems. And building a village is is sort of like one massive undertaking on top of all the other massive undertakings that come from Parenthood in the modern era, in this late stage capitalism society.

Car Culture and the Pace of Life

Britta: Yeah, yeah. Now it's, it's interesting to hear you talk about that, and that feeling of individual, you know, suffering, or individual pointing the finger at self as as sort of that problem. And I'm, I'm reflecting back. I mean, my kids are, you know, out and grown like yours, and you know, off into the world of their making. And I can still really pretty easily catapult my memory bank back to those early days. And I lived in a small town that was not walkable. It was hikable. I had hiking trails all over the place, which was great, but it wasn't walkable for community purposes, so it meant a car for anything outside of hiking. And I was, I was starved for this proverbial village that in some ways, I had moved to this community based town to find and went hunting for other people. And it, it, I've heard you talk about this, but it, it was hard, because I really I wanted to be around other mothers with their babies, and I also wanted them to be my best friends, right? I also wanted them to be spiritual seekers, and I wanted them to, you know, eat like I did and like there's, there's a lot that I also put in place that that made it also hard for me, not just the system working against me,

Beth: yes, and I think that most of that is coming from. Uh, Number One idealism, because some, many of us, have this vision of a better world. And of course, of any time in our lives, we're going to put resources and time and energy toward trying to create some of that, or our little, tiny, innocent babies. You know, that's the time where you're like, Oh yeah, I will. I will sacrifice a whole lot of my resources and even my sense of self to create a better world for them. So this is a time where idealism gets kicked up and the volume on it gets turned up, but then also you're speaking to the sheer number of unmet needs that we have in this stage of life. So without, in the absence of the village. Again, we're not just missing out on, you know, playmates for our kids. We're missing out on mentorship. We're missing out on even just the friendly hellos and waves and chit chat, walking our kids to wherever they're going to go, or us on our way to the market, or whatever it might have been back in the day. They're so we don't even, most people don't even realize what all is missing when we aren't living in close proximity, and we are in cars instead of on foot like that, even just that, if we just had walkable culture, it would truly solve so many problems that we, specifically as mothers, are facing. Yeah,

Britta: right, that there's, there's something about, I mean, I haven't thought about this before, but the car culture as as sort of a metaphor for the pace of living. Yep,

Beth: that's right, and it's highly incompatible with raising young children. Young children come into the world expecting a certain pace. Their nervous systems are not wired for car culture. As every parent who's trying to wrangle them into car seats knows, it's, it feels unnatural for us to make them be strapped in because it's it is unnatural, the whole thing, it is not, not what we're evolved for. So that pace where it's not only that we have to be traveling at 70 miles an hour in a vehicle, but it's also the hustle that we have to this, this urgency culture and this, this sense that there's always, we're always in a hurry to get to the next thing. All, all of that is also systemic. But again, we're taught that the remedy is better day planners and organizers and apps on your phone to keep you, yeah, yeah, on track,

Unmet Needs vs. Self-Care

Britta: yeah, as I would say, in that very Apollonian way, right? Because I talk archetypally. I know you speak archetypes too. It's kind of another language right to speak archetypally and and that very artemision element of of new parenthood kind of clashes with that Apollonian structure, order, put it together when our babies and our own bodies are kind of going I don't know what I want to do today, and I don't know how I want to be And what I want to how I want to respond, and I think that kind of what makes me want to come circle back to what you spoke about around unmet needs. And I think this is a part of your work that I think is really powerful, is talking with mothers about unmet needs, identifying and what like, like, there's, there's this whole what, self care, statement, messaging, self care, self care, self care that seems on the surface like it's talking about unmet needs, but I'm, I'm not sure it is. It's, it's kind of band aid. So can you talk a little bit more about what you mean when you talk about unmet needs, what you see and how you help mothers work with that.

Beth: Yeah, yeah. So, and as a part of my mother worthy groups, which are year long cohorts, where women are, we're deep in deep diving into all of this stuff we talk a lot about, I combine needs work with values work. So we're first looking at what are my core values, and figuring that piece out. A lot of people have done that in different you know, some a lot of people have done this work through their corporate job. For instance, values type work, but, but we, we kind of take it in different directions and break down a lot of the, I don't know, misconception. Around what's possible in these assessment tools, they

Britta: can I love that in part, because if folks are are doing that values work within their corporate there's a need to redo it.

Beth: Yes, yeah, as a mother, because you get to have different values out to work world, and especially we sometimes don't realize that. I don't, I don't see it so much as our values change all that much of over a lifetime. What I see is that things like parenthood draw out different values that perhaps were buried beneath, shoulds or hyper responsibility or a sense of self that was, you know, more structured around our ego or whatever it is, all the shit that motherhood strips away. Suddenly we're laid, you know, where we're face to face with a more real and raw version of ourselves, and often a pretty hungry version of ourselves. And then that in that, you know, vulnerability we get to in, in that artemision time, we get to start to take stock in a new way. So what are the values truly and like the values beneath the values kind of work, you know, really getting deep in there and then connecting these with our unmet needs. Because the way I see it is that there's this direct correlation between our needs and our values, that when we have a lot of unmet needs, it makes it really hard to live our life from our values. And that's often the setup in early motherhood, if you are I mean, it's the easiest way to look at this is if you're sleep deprived, it's really hard to be patient, it's hard to access creativity, it's hard to feel like you want to connect with your partner or whoever it may be. Those could all be core, the most core values that you hold and that you want to live your life from and they don't feel very accessible when you're sleep deprived. There's a ton of those needs and values relationships that we can look at and start to better understand and get some context for why is it so important to figure out what our true needs are, our values are, our needs are so that we can better meet, meet our needs, that then allows us to live from our values with more effectiveness and ease.

Britta: So to help so in your program, you help ident, help folks identify their values and connect to do, and do the work of identifying the unmet needs as well.

Beth: Yep, that's, that's the it becomes like we do the values work, and then the emphasis is usually on the unmet needs, because then that's the actionable stuff.

Britta: Okay, so do you go into the actionable like, like, how to do things to meet one's needs,

Beth: yep, and what, what needs to be then deconstructed. So that's one month, and then the very next month, we get into story deconstruction, and what stories actually need to go and be reworked and retold so that we can better meet our needs.

Story Deconstruction and the Sacrifice Narrative

Britta: So what do you mean by stories in this instance? Because stories means a lot of things. So what stories are you deconstructing? Like, what do you

Beth: Yeah, so, gosh, there's just so many of them. But so let's say that I have a story that I hold, and this was one that I certainly did hold when my kids were little, that it was my job to make sure that my kids were safe protected, that their environment was as wholesome and nourishing as possible, so that their innocence would be protected for as long as possible. And they're in that, I don't that's not a narrative I necessarily disagree with, but it was so rigid that it felt like no matter what I was going to orient towards those things, even if it meant that I was losing my mind. You know, so the story the one of the biggest story shifts that I had in my early parenting journey. Maybe Maybe I was 10 years in by this point, and I had four kids. Did I have four kids by then? Maybe I was 13 years in, and then I had four kids by then. And this, this story was like, it is my job. The story, I kind of found this story within myself when I was digging around in there, trying to figure out why I was just such a mess, and so felt like I was losing, losing my mind is what I felt. And I realized that I was holding on to this belief that that the mark of the evidence of a spiritually, the. Out to person and a deeply loving, compassionate person is to sacrifice everything for those you love and to you know, make up the difference that I felt this, this calling to make up the difference between what the society was not giving my kids and what I thought they deserved.

Britta: Okay, I feel like we need to take a breath here, because I don't think you're alone in that. There's, there's a I feel really tender as I hear you speak to that, because I'm thinking about all the the new moms who are also feeling like that weight is on their shoulders, especially right now, where things are shifting and changing and feeling so hard, and there's this, this story in the way you're talking about it, of mothers as the creators of the bubble, bubble protection from all of that. Yeah, that with sort of a capital T, you know that? And it's, it's really, it's painful and, and you're so you were doing some of your own deconstructing, not necessarily of the entire story for yourself, but the rigidity,

Beth: yes, the rigidity and the idealism that was actually not it just wasn't working. Like I couldn't find enough hours in the day, enough energy within myself, and so then I just it was like a setup. It was a story that was a setup for failure and or a felt sense of failure within myself because I had set these standards that weren't actually humanly possible and then criticized myself for not meeting these impossible standards, right?

Britta: Okay, so that cycle, oh, my god, I'm so familiar with that cycle. I mean, I feel that in it to this day in parts of my life, yeah, where I set a standard up, up where it's it comes from, really good place, yeah, I'm setting that standard from a place of hope and an aspiration. And when I'm talking about my kids, it's coming from a place of feeling how important. Yes, so there's it's it's, it's, it does feel a bit like a setup to then use it against myself when I don't measure up, almost because of how important it feels.

The Five Whole Women Vision

Beth: Yes, completely. So we the like you said, these standards come from a really good place, I would say that they come from beautiful yet often not yet matured intentions. They're just not seasoned yet. You know, like we've these, this idealism is I ism is it is such a tricky one, because until we mature, so I that's another part of the work that I do, is we look at our strengths and our superpowers. I'm an idealist, through and through like this. It definitely drives so much of what I do. I have these visions of a more beautiful, anything really and and that in beauty is one of my core values. And so I I put a lot of energy into trying to create beautiful things, beautiful experiences, revering beautiful people, like little humans, you know. But what ends up happening when we're living our lives from these ideals is that we're essentially saying it ends up being leading to unless we start to include ourselves in this picture of a more a Beautiful, more beautiful world, it ends up resulting in like self abandonment, in self harm, unintentional self harm, that we are creating the conditions where our thriving is not actually possible, but We're trying to make it possible for someone else, and that that doesn't actually work that well, because at some point, then they start watching us and noticing, well, she's not doing so well, you know? And that was the turning point for me. That's where this narrative shifted, when I realized, Oh, hold on. Because, because I had so many kids, because I had. Four daughters, and they were spread out, so I had like a newborn and a 13 year old and two in between. The 13 year old is noticing a lot, and I'm in the throes of it with these little kids still. So I'm managing the needs of so many different people in life stages. And what came to me was actually my and I turned into a new mantra. And the mantra was, five whole women, is the goal at the end of this parenting journey? Not for it couldn't just be them that I was, that I was working toward building a sense of wholeness and thriving around had to include me, and if it didn't, then what was going to happen when they became mothers? Then they were going to just have this template that I handed them that, oh, I want you to be whole woman until you become a mother, and then you should drain yourself completely to the point where you're scraping from the marrow of your bones and trying to figure out how to enjoy your life at all, even though you love your kids like no, that's not what I wanted to pass along. So I had to do some real deep dive self examination about my own beliefs, about my worthiness, and that's the name of my program. Is mother worthy, because it's really work rooted in worthiness, that if we're saying that our kids are worthy of these beautiful lives, we have to include ourselves in that picture, that that we need to look back and say we because we came into this world with just as much innocence and beauty, we are just as deserving of beautiful, rich, vibrant lives, and they need us to model that for them best we can. So we're not going to get perfect and and there's going to be so many decisions to be made along the way about whose needs get centered in this set of circumstances, right? But we've got to be in that calculation in order for them to ultimately have an outcome that we feel proud of, that includes their wellness long term.

Britta: Yeah, I love that the five whole women to be raising four daughters and see that mirroring as you're going must have been incredibly powerful. I mean, I can kind of feel it in my body as I as I hear you and

Beth: and can I say something else about that that's coming up? I hadn't quite thought of this before, because I haven't had this particular a conversation around that stage of my life in a little while. But So tomorrow I drive my youngest daughter off to college, you know, so we're I'm right there at this like transition tomorrow, tomorrow. Wow, to to first year of college, first year of college. My last one,

Britta: last one. So you are actually on the threshold

The Lighthouse Metaphor and Letting Go

Beth: on it right now. You have right now, like my, my office has boxes of all the dorm stuff. It's we're packing it up in the morning and driving her, driving her away. And, you know, so it's a really interesting time of life. And what I'm looking at now that I hadn't quite seen before this moment, is that in this goal of five whole women, and this might be a little tough, because I know that a lot of your audience is younger has younger kids and babies, but I think it's still an important seed to plant. And that is that I can tell you that what has happened in this journey of having that goal, I feel now that my wholeness is something that that because we can only really control our, you know, our own set of circumstances, when our reactions and our interpretations of life. But what I can say is that I am more whole than any of my kids right now. My kids are all in their 20s, and one of them is 30, and they are figuring shit out. So you're not going to see wholeness. That is not going to be evident for a while, you might have to actually see them and witness painfully them going through an adolescence where their wholeness feels like very far away, or they're actually less authentic than they ever were. The life has got a hold of them. You know, the over culture is coming in and really, you know, changing the game completely. But I feel so grateful that I had that sense back then, because I now I feel truly like a lighthouse, you know, like they're going to be out to sea doing whatever they do, which is totally age appropriate. You. And because I decided that that was important, I was important and worthy enough of a thriving, you know, of a life that I felt proud of too, not just for them. Now, they have a lighthouse as they're out there exploring the world that they can, they can see the shoreline, even though they're going to struggle to try to figure out this wholeness piece, because that's what you do once you're like adolescent and in your 20s. It's not just a given, you know. So it's just strikes me that even if we go through seasons where we're like shit, I don't even, I don't know, is this working? I think there's a trust that that this is a long game. You know, my 30 year old is so impressive to me. She's coming back, you know, she went full circle. She went way out to sea, and that was scary shit in her adolescence. And she's coming back, she's, she's like, totally on the shoreline with me a lot of the time, you know, and my 25 year old as well, there once that prefrontal cortex gets fully formed. Man, hallelujah. It is just a glorious thing.

Britta: Yeah, and I love this because it's speaking to I think that that illusion that we sometimes hold that it's our responsibility to make them whole, which also loads so much on our our shoulders that is actually not ours to hold.

Beth: Yeah, nope. It's not that this,

Britta: this image, this metaphor of the lighthouse. It's like they're they will benefit if we have bedrock under our feet, if we are shining our light of what matters to us and engaging in that, they can get messy. They can explore their own creation, because their lives are not ours to craft, but to help release into the world to and and to be that, that anchor point. I mean, what's that? That? That poem about, you know, we are the we are not. Oh, now I'm gonna mess it up, but it's, you know, we are the bows from from which we launch our children, not, not the one. We're not the arrow itself. We're not that. That's them, yeah, and so your your girls going out on, you know, out on the pervert on the on the metaphorical sea, but you're the lighthouse. Yeah,

Village and Attachment

Beth: yeah, absolutely, this actually ties back into this village piece or something coming up around this for me, because something I've been thinking a lot about, given that I'm at this stage where they're all, you know, flying the coop, is that part one of the consequences of this villagelessness is that we, and especially those of us who have this natural inclination to really bond deeply with our babies, like, that's, that's the orientation. It's not as much, not every mother has as much of that feeling they need. I need to be the one they're like living on my body for years, you know, like, that was me, for sure. So we bond really deeply and in a beautiful way, but and if they're only bonding with us in that way and with sort of this intensity that I actually believe they're meant to be bonded with multiple adults, and feel a sense of safety and community among multiple adults, as would be the case if we lived in healthy villages. One of the consequences that I'm now noticing is that this stage where I'm releasing them into the world. It actually feels. It doesn't just feel heartbreaking. It feels like, almost like an attachment wound, like a reverse attachment, like I feel like, actually, I feel some anger that's been coming up around this lately, of like, okay, so as a society, the in order for me to have, like, helpful kids with healthy attachment, I had to be the one to attach. This is the story, one of the stories I had, I had to be the one attaching to them. And providing for their needs, just 24/7, right? So I did that, and I did it well. Did it as well as I think I possibly could've, and a lot of self sacrifice in those early years. So we bond super deeply, and I think more deeply, in some ways, than is actually healthy, given that we're going to have to let them go, because then when it comes time to release them into the world, it's it's still hitting me, like, What do you mean? Yeah, what are you talking about? These are the people I've been bonding with this entire time, and now you're saying I'm just supposed to trust enough to let them into the world. So I think looking back, what would have been really beautiful, and again, some of this is rooted in ideal.

Britta: Okay, Beth, you're you're breaking up. So we're gonna back it up just a little bit, and you're going to have to kind of jump back into the conversation, because you're totally frozen. I don't know if I'm going to get you back. Hope so. Hope you come back, Chris, we'll just cut this part. So, so you're muted. So, so, okay, here it goes. This is what happens. Happens. Here we are. There we are. This is welcome to Apollonian systems rebelling against the Artemis artimation.

Beth: Maybe I can pick kind of back up. I might repeat myself a little bit, but Chris can help kind of track that down. All right, okay, so are you recording? We good. Let's see. So I think even though I don't have the answers or the template for this, and some of this is coming from my like, my idealism, if I had, if my kids had bonded in a healthy way with more adults when they were young, and I could my nervous system was able to relax into that knowing, I think this stage would feel less painful, because given How deeply bonded I am with my daughters, sending them out into a world where I don't know who's there to hold them. It feels wrong, actually, in my body, it feels like I'm doing a dangerous thing or an irresponsible thing, that. Like I it's hard to trust that the world will will hold them if, though they had more healthy adults who they were bonded with, and I think that this is possible through the years, lots of different people can can help hold our kids. Takes time to build that and to build the trust in these individuals. But I think that it would feel, feel a little better if they had more of those, those folks that they'd been bonding with from the time that they were young?

Britta: Yeah, I'm, that's a curious hypothesis, and I know that for me. I mean, my youngest just graduated from college, so I'm, I've been an empty nester for four years, and I remember crossing the threshold of that sending him off. I remember looking at my husband as we got in the car, and were driving away after dropping him off and being like, oh, fuck, what now. But also, I also felt this like bubbling, gurgling, I don't know how to describe it, fizzy, feeling in my belly that felt like excitement, okay, also felt that. And as I hear you share this hypothesis, I wonder if that's some of where that came from, because I definitely did have other adults who I leaned on. I mean, I met a mom in a baby group when our babies who happened to have the same name, by the way, but when our babies were just, I don't know, I think they were like, six months old, five months old. And that baby grip became my my lifeline, and in 1000 different ways, I wasn't super connected to any of them in terms of like they were on the same kind of intellectual spiritual like we weren't all aligned in all the ways, yeah, and sometimes the conversations drove me crazy. Like, like, actually made me want to pull my hair out. Like, why are we talking about this? There's so much juicy, you know, because I like, like, you, I like to go deep. It's like, I want to, I want to go into that and talking about diapers and and baby food was just asinine to me, and I can tear up right now thinking about how powerful that group was for me, yeah, and the fact that I could call on any one of those moms for a rescue and have a feeling of my baby, my child will be okay. They won't eat the same way that they do at our house. They won't, you know, fill in the blank on a gazillion other different things, but, but I could call on them for rescue and and that did hold me through those early years. And then as they aged, also pulling in. I mean, we did some, really, you know, maybe some people might think really wackadoodle kind of things in our community, because I lived in an alternative kind of town, and we did something that one of the dads of that baby group put together called Night circles, and it was groups of men coming together. I raised boys. You raised daughters. And these, these men would come together to teach the squires, so to speak, the young men, how to step into their lives as men, in the messiness and I mean, and this was when they were tweens, right? Like, like young, but coming into, what does it mean to grow older? And that that feeling of others may have helped in some ways, because I did have sadness and and loss in letting my kids go off into the lives that they were creating for themselves, and I mostly felt excitement. Mm.

Beth: Yeah, yeah, I think there's something to that. And while I did manage to weave some of that in for my kids, healthy attachment to other adults, some rites of passage, you know, marking and ceremony and such. We also moved a ton while they were young. So it they we started over with that bonding process a lot. And that just, which is tough, which is tough, and it made it, made it more challenging to to have a thread through all the way and and then. And then I got divorced nine years ago, and that shifted things again in a pretty seismic way. And then I kind of formed my community and there they were already old enough, or they were like, in their own friend community. Yeah, so there's, it's just interesting to think back about to the things that it feels like were really significant in shaping our family system. And I do think that that is a big one that somehow fostering healthy attachment with other quote, unquote, village members, whatever the modern village can look like, I think, is not just beneficial beneficial when they're little, but then becomes beneficial to us and to them as they get older and continue to need mentorship and of some kind, and not just from us.

Individual Identity Beyond Motherhood

Britta: Yeah, it also, I think, connecting back to some of the other stuff that we've been talking about in this conversation as well, which is, if we also are in connection with our own needs, wants, values, purpose, beyond motherhood, that also can really help definitely in this phase of life that you and I are in, where I 'm not I mean, I went through a phase of my life where mom was the name that I heard almost all the time for myself, now it's pretty infrequent. It's only when I'm purposefully talking to my kids, right? It doesn't, I don't just bump into myself as mom, right? If that makes sense. And I do think that there's, there's something about being and yet I don't I'm catching myself because I don't want this to be yet another should. Oh, you need to have a life of your own too. Like, add that to the pile on your wheelbarrow of shoulds. Like, there's so many shoulds on the wheelbarrow already. And when I'm paying attention to my own needs, my own needs point me in the direction of myself as an individual beyond mother, yes, that then tills that soil so that parts of my life grow and flourish, such that when tending the seeds of my children is not the primary focus of my life, I'm still gardening.

Beth: Yes, beautiful, yep, and, and you've got, you've built the skills, and you've already got a garden going. So it's not like you're left going, you know, I don't even know who I am or what my identity is, or who I am outside of this motherhood gig, you've you've been invested in that. It doesn't mean it has to happen the first two years of life, but as we start to see that there's opportunities, and also as we start to feel our own depletion, ideally before that, but that we take that depletion seriously, that we take the overwhelm seriously, that we that we listen to that as intuition, just as we are so beautifully intuitively connected to our kids, that we develop that same beautiful, intuitive connection with ourselves, to know, oh, this is not a good sign. I got to shift some things around. I need I need some space. I need some time.

The Power of Regular Time for Yourself

I think one of the things that I did that was most valuable to me when they were little, and I was, you know, once I'd hit that point where I realized that needed to be five whole women, and I started to see the needs for some change. I took one night a week, and that was my night, and it was, I was religious about it, and it changed everything, really. And it was because, the way I look at it now, it's, you know, you can see how someone goes away for I'll hear this a lot, like I went away for half a day, and I, you know, I went and got coffee, and I went to the bookstore and and I just, I'm coming home feeling like, angry, like, even, like, worse, almost, for having gotten just a little bit. And it's because when you're in starvation and you taste food. And you're you realize it's not okay to just eat once a month. You know, we need regular nourishment in our lives in order to feel like whole, vibrant people. So the having a once a week night evening away, and it was first I joined a knitting group, and so I was getting multiple needs met. I was, it was handwork, it was connection with women of multiple generations. So I was honing a craft, and I was getting it was empathy, storytelling. And then I decided to tack on to that. The same night, there was a rowing club on our local the river that passed through the town, and so I joined the rowing club, and then I was getting embodiment, and I was getting teamwork. I didn't even tell anybody on that rowing team that I was a mother, even though that was like my primary identity, and I had four, four kids, we didn't talk about that kind of thing. I was in it to develop a, you know, these parts of myself outside of motherhood, and that was so vital, like there was probably three or four years before we moved from that place to Mexico, actually, that that I held that and it really it, it gave the signal also to my nervous system that there's always another break coming, because it's a standing date every Tuesday night. It's not like, I get a break and I have no idea when I'm going to get another break, so I just would, I'll be holding on by, you know, Saturday, I'm, like, just going to make it to Tuesday and I can get some breathing room again. And that was really vital. And it didn't have to be a whole I didn't need to, like, build a whole career outside of what I was doing, or take tons of time away. But like, four hours a week. It really saved it really saved me.

Britta: Yeah, I love that, and I'm reflecting on I actually think in many ways, I went to grad school to get that yeah, like I went to grad school because I needed to connect and be stimulated in ways that were different than motherhood and were an island away from the shore that I lived on day to day. Yes, and I know this, it's it's a privilege to be able to do that, and to the way you did it is you carved out four hours of that regularity, and it still made it a huge difference,

Beth: yeah, and it's specifically made a difference. And it might have been more like six hours, I don't even know, but it specifically made a difference because it was meeting so many needs at once, so exercise, nature, connection, connection with other women, craft, building, skills, all of that was, it was feeding me. It was fueling my soul fire. If it had just been like, I'm going out for a movie

Britta: by myself, exactly that wouldn't have met me. I mean, it might make meet somebody else's needs, right? But it wouldn't have met your needs, per se. And

Beth: this is, this is part of the reason that it's, I think it's so important to look at the needs of the individual based on the values, and then move from there to figure out the best ways to meet those those needs.

The Role of Anger in Motherhood

Britta: Yeah, one of the things that you mentioned a couple of minutes ago, that that I would love to unpack with you a little bit in our remaining time is anger, because I don't know that it's talked about as much as I think it, you know needs to be. And there's, there's actually what I think is a role of anger in awakening? Yes, so how? I don't know if, if this is a straight up question, or what, what's your connection with the role of rage and anger in motherhood and the work that you do with mothers,

Beth: yeah, it's, it's a pretty huge topic that comes up, yeah? I mean, it's giant, right? And fiery, yeah. And really important, is that really important? Glad you brought it up, because it seems to come up inevitably for almost everyone on their own personal growth and healing journey, especially once they become a mother. Because what we're actually we're, we're reacting to or responding to all these broken systems, and we're, we're, it's injustice that we're railing against often, even if it doesn't feel like it in the moment, even if. It feels like I'm angry at my partner for not, you know, helping with the housework or whatever it is. There's a bigger picture of the the social systems, the norms, the narratives, again, that are condoning these things that put extra pressure. Workload, unpaid on, you know, invisible eyes labor, emotional labor on the mother. And then, like you said in the beginning of the podcast, we were, once a year, we're celebrated and revered, and then the rest of the time we're expected to be doing. We're expected to hyper function and be super mothers while being treated, actually, as sub human and not not at all, tending to our needs well and not being compensated. Forget reciprocity. It's just extractive. I think modern motherhood is largely extractive, and so the anger comes up when we start to value, either when we start to value ourselves more, or when we see actually how important the role of motherhood is in the culture for our children, or when we recognize how imbalanced things are if we're in, you know, partners with partnerships with men. So the anger is coming up as an ally to say, Oh no, that's That's not cool. It's a protector part. And if we can really start to see it and trust it as that, and build allyship with it, then I think we're starting to move in the direction of anger as a really essential support member of our, of that team of inner support that we can start to build,

Britta: that that that sounds I mean, I'm I'm A little flustered because I'm like, that sounds great to have anger in that that role, and I'm also having a moment where I'm remembering the role of anger in regard to my children, and that I'm trying to run what you're saying as anger as an ally through the place when I would lose it with my kids where, I mean, I have a memory of a time when I was trying to get two toddlers basically dressed, and they were not Having it. They were just having one of those mornings where they were upset, and one was whining, the other was crying, and I was losing my mind, right? Yeah, just like, Are you kidding me? I cannot. I'm not resourced. I can't do this. And I actually got upset with them, yeah, in their dysregulated state, which they couldn't do any better, sure. And I left the room. They were in a safe space. I left the room, and they followed me. They chased me. And I, I mean, initially they just followed me, but then it felt like they were chasing me, and I started to run away from them, right, like, get me out of here and and I now, I'm able to laugh at it and hold that moment and others tenderly. But at the time, I felt like I had really lost it, yeah, with them, with my anger at them and my need to flee,

Beth: yep, and what I hear in that is unmet needs, right? You know, you had a whole a set of unmet needs. Either for bodily autonomy, is a big one for mothers like, I'm touched out, don't touch me. We can't really say that, not not with and feel good about it to our toddlers, you know, because they actually need the touch. But if we had some alternatives, like, go cuddle with this neighbor, or go pester these people, you know, like, I need a break and I need one more regularly. And so that's what I hear, that coming from. When we have deeply unmet needs over time and we either don't understand our needs or we're denying our needs, it will come out sideways. They they will make themselves known like our our unmet needs are often actually running the show subconsciously, until we figure out what they are and we take them seriously.

Beth's Programs and Where to Find Her

Britta: Yeah, boy, there's, there's so much. Wisdom in that, and I'm at that spot where I know we have to wrap up and I just want to keep going, which doesn't surprise me with you, because every time I'm I'm with you, I feel that you and I are aligned enough that we want to just keep talking, and we'll leave it on that place of of anger as as a language of our unmet needs, of a voice of of our unmet needs, and maybe often yeah about getting our attention, like when we're angry, it's trying To get our attention about something. I love that So Beth, I know you have some wonderful programs. Will you share with folks what you have coming up and where they can learn more about you and your work?

Beth: Absolutely so my main program, or my the program I've been running the longest, I should say, is called Mother worthy, and that's a year long cohort, and those start every October, so we're enrolling in September. So that's that's a thing that I feel very excited about and passionate about. Another one is a program called Wild and wise, and that is for women who are in in if we're looking at Clarissa Pinkola estas and her work around the wild woman archetype, she talks about how a lot of people think about the maiden the mother and the Crone. Well there's actually this other archetype in here that you and I are in where it actually is more like maiden mother, wild and wise woman, and then Chrome. And so we circle with more mature women, and women who are a little further in the journey, mothers who are further in the journey to be able to really recognize and honor this stage of life and all the many challenges that are specific and the power that is specific to this stage of life. And then one other program that I'll mention is mother woven, which is teaching people who have it on their hearts to lead other women and hold space for for mothers in their own personal growth journey. So I'm basically teaching people mentoring people around starting their own mother worthy groups in their local communities. So those are a few things, and then I've always got one on one coaching available as well, and retreats in the summers. So plenty, plenty.

Closing Question and Wisdom

Britta: Thank you so much. And I like to close with one question, which is, what's one thing that you feel passionately about, that you want new or expectant parents, mothers, to see, hear, feel or know during this profound transition time in their lives.

Beth: Yeah, I think it comes back to this artemisian Artem, this Apollonian versus artemisian energy, which I don't know how much you've laid the framework for foundation for it'll be in the first episode. Yeah, well, that there's these unique windows of time, and in the postpartum period is one of them, where you get to be in the artemisian energy that it's, it's, it's offered to you in a an extra special way, but the culture doesn't really support it very well, obviously. So I think setting ourselves up to be able to be accessing those, these, this artemisian energy, by having the support of more community members, allows for, I think, a more fluid and natural and more embodied supported transition to just be able to be in that wildness of the artemisian periods when they do present themselves, because then you get into another phase and it's harder to access it again. So I really cherish those times where I was able to be closer to Artemis and in that archetype for more of the time, because sometimes it's just like all Apollo all the time.

Britta: Yeah, yeah. I really, I love that that, and that's different than than I've heard on any of the other closings. So that's that's wonderful. Thank you so much, Beth for joining me and sharing your wisdom with my audience. I deeply value you.

Beth: Thank you, Britta. I deeply value you too, and I'm so happy to have, yeah, another sister, even if it's across across the continent in this wild and wise phase, it's a it's an exciting and interesting one, isn't it?

Closing

Britta: It is indeed thank you and thank you listeners for sharing this time with us. If something shared today impacted supported or moved you, please share this episode with a friend. I produce this podcast myself, and your support makes it possible to show a little love for. Podcast and these conversations, please follow, rate and review. If you'd like to continue the conversation, please join us on Instagram at transformed by birth. I look forward to being with you again on the next episode of transformed by birth. And now we close the way we always do, which is to blow out the candle by first taking a breath and just breathing in all that you want to gather and retain from this conversation, whatever richness touched you, moved you brought you in, breathe that in on an inhale and blow out the candle on an exhale. Until next time, friends, bye, bye, you.