“It’s made me more morbid. My husband will come home and I’ll be crying and he’s like “what happened?” and I’m like “you know I’m gonna die some day and he’s gonna be left all alone” and he’s like “omg you can’t think like that”. I had a really hard hard time with intrusive thoughts. Postpartum anxiety. I had to go to therapy for it and one of the things I learned [to help] intrusive thoughts was it’s an actual moving meditation to say “I’m not going to make meaning of that thought”. It’s easy to meditate when you have quiet and no kid but taking that practice, that’s what it’s about right, moving it into real life even if it’s really hard – it kind of takes it to the next level.”
“Monumentally. To make that decision took a lot for me, number one. It really was a decision that I felt was the best for the whole family and that was pretty radical to be able to make that decision and know that I was doing it as a service to each and every one of us to be able to have a more healthy relationship. When you are divorced you’re sharing children and so there was a point where I got to have that time alone and that time I would really devote to my self growth, to my self exploration, to having fun myself, to really kind of discovering myself more as an individual and then in that time that I had with them really, really focusing on them and making the time more about them. It also taught me to look at challenging aspects as my greatest teachers” xo
“Motherhood doesn’t come with a manual, it really doesn’t and if we could really dedicate the time to doing the work on ourselves, like making sure that “I AM the Lighthouse” that Mother is the Lighthouse of the whole family. If she’s showing up stressed and in fear and with unresolved traumas it’s going to radiate to the whole family so the foundation of the work I do is mothering from the inside out. Is making those practices in your life that bring you back to yourself. Not this physical self with the way it looks outside but to my mental wellbeing to distressing myself to having time to close out the noise of how I “should” be doing things. Or what’s right or what’s wrong or what I should or shouldn’t what’s good or bad. To be able to really close out that noise on a daily basis and come back to something that’s more expansive is the greatest gift I think you can give yourself as a mother because when you do that it’s going to be changing continuously because you’ll be able to show up with greater relevance to what’s happening at this moment. Instead of what I’m “supposed to” be doing. “Well everyone says I’m supposed to be raising my child this way.” or “everyone says my child should be doing this at this age” or “I shouldn’t have my kids in bed with me, they should have their own room” or whatever it is that we’ve been indoctrinated to believe, ultimately you’re the only one who knows what’s right and wrong. It’s not anyone else’s job to decide but your job so therefore if we can take the time to actually get to know what your GPS is from your heart and not your head so much then I think you can show up with greatest relevance and adaptability and really looking at like “okay, these are my kids. No kid is my kid. This is my unique experience with these humans so I’m going to show up differently than another mother would.” And so I think that that’s why I started off with there is no manual, there’s only yours depending on your life, your kids and on how you want to raise them and what you think is important in raising your children and essentially them raising you.”
“Between when Chloe was born I had 8 surgeries. Before she was born in 2015 was my first big surgery when my appendix ruptured and then 2 weeks later my gallbladder ruptured which we now all believe has to do with Lyme and the Endometriosis. So that’s kind of when my journey started. Adenomyosis, that’s the other condition I have, that’s the actual uterus condition. For me that was the most painful. I’ll never forget the night I got my hysterectomy, the pain was equal to labor or worse I would say on a daily basis. I would wake up – I remember my mom had to live with us for a while because I would wake up, have the pills next to my bed to even get out of bed, take them and then I’d crawl to the bathroom, get her out of bed. I mean, it’s just a horrible disease that so many women suffer from. 1 out of 10 have endometriosis.”
“Something that is super important in our family is an openness to talk about things that need to be honored and celebrated – all the positive things. But also talking about all the hard stuff and difficult conversations and problems and failures and we do that pretty openly now but I have a 4 year old and a 2 year old. And so I want that to continue and I just feel like that gets harder as you get older and there’s more – there’s like a sense of independence and privacy but I also want there to be an openness and I want my kids to come to me with all their stuff and so I worry about what that looks like. I don’t want that wall to go up.”
“When I was pregnant with Meyer we got bad news when it was the 20w scan. They found a little bump on his spine and kind of fast forward, everything’s okay now but he has this type of spina bifida that we were not expecting. You know, as a mother you just want the best and the best chances for your child especially when they’re babies. You want to give them the best chances that you can and to like, process it myself, taking my own struggles or my own fears or worries out of it for him to show him that it’s going to be okay.” (Watch the full video for more)
“I didn’t have too many preconceived notions, I thought I would just be myself during this big transition in my life but I think once I got pregnant I changed. From the moment I knew I was going to become a mother I became a different person in that process and I think a lot of it was knowing that it’s not just about me anymore, it was about somebody else. As most people are, I was a people pleaser. I wanted everybody to like me you know, if that’s work or professional or person, whatever it was and I think the moment I was pregnant I realized I had to start sticking up for myself because if I didn’t do it for myself I couldn’t do that for her. That was the biggest game changer for me in becoming a mother. That I learned to trust my instincts more, stand up for what I believe in, open my mouth if I need to which was something I probably struggled with prior to Motherhood.”
“A lot, unfortunately. People I thought would have been in my life more strongly now seem to not be there as much and I’ve been finding new relationships. For me it was a very hard time becoming a parent two months before a pandemic hit and I know there are plenty of other mamas out there who understand what that feels like but it was extremely isolating and upsetting. There were lots of things that my postpartum body needed to be taken care of and I didn’t necessarily have resources. Thankfully for me it was a little more on the physical end than the mental end but there were a lot of friends and family that I wished had reached out and had been closer that weren’t. And that’s okay. I think everyone is dealing with things in their own way and I’d say the positive for me has been finding new relationships and maybe that’s just, ya know, your life.”