Mom Guilt
Ep. 162
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This week I want to talk to you about Mom Guilt. Fair warning that I’m not sure if I have my thoughts fully formed on this but I think this is an important topic to discuss. Also, while I talk a lot about moms, the same ideas apply to all of us dealing with a misogynistic, patriarchal society. Over the past seven years, I’ve been really observing how moms are constantly put in lose-lose situations. Whether at work or at home, we’re made to feel as though we’re always failing. And, unfortunately, we internalize those thoughts and use them against ourselves. While systemic change is absolutely needed, if we don’t liberate ourselves from our own thoughts that keep us in shame and guilt, we’ll never be able to go after the lives we deserve. One of the biggest blessings of thought work for me is that I no longer operate from a place of shame and I give myself incredible amounts of self-compassion. So for all the moms and the non-moms, I just want you to understand that you can lift that burden of the should’s and really check in with what you want to do. And the more we do that, the more we show the next generation and our peers that it’s okay to show up fully as yourself and still be a kick-ass mom. So let’s dive in.


Show Transcript
I have a lot of thoughts about leaving my children and my husband for five days by myself. I've never done something like that. And intellectually, I know all the reasons why it's totally fine. My husband goes on these Mastermind trips and retreats and business trips and never thinks anything of it. And neither do I.

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Welcome to another episode. I'm so excited you are here. I am so excited to do this episode. I've wanted to do an episode about this for a while and I'm going to be honest, I don't really know if I fully have my thoughts formed. It's just going to be kind of a rant which I'm pretty sure most of my episodes are but like I think sometimes I have it more together and I have like tips and, you know, steps that you can follow. I don't know if I have that, we'll see where this goes but I just think it's such an important topic. It comes up so much for my clients and it comes up so much for me. And so I wanted to talk about it. It's the topic of quote unquote mom guilt. Okay, now I'm going to give some disclaimers before we even jump into this. Okay, one, obviously this can apply to non-mothers, right? It can apply to women in general, I think a lot of this does. It can also apply to men who deal with these same insecurities but the patriarchy that we live under tends to, uh, really lay on the guilt on women, really program us to believe that we should always feel guilty. Um, and that tends, I think mothers tend to get the brunt of this as a woman. I obviously felt guilty for a lot of things most of my life but I can tell you that when I became a mom, I mean, it was just put on steroids and we'll talk a little bit about that throughout the episode. So again, I'm not saying it's only for moms, I think you should still listen because I think one, you can learn, um, if you are, if you don't identify it as a mother, you can learn what a lot of mothers go through. But two, I think it probably applies to a vast majority of people in other ways. And two, I think even the term mom guilt, I use it because that's what we use as a society. But I think even that's a problem like it really highlights the fact that there is this thing, right? Or it's like I have mom guilt and we, we sort of accept it, that you would never hear somebody talk about dad guilt, right? Like suffering for so much dad guilt because men are not taught to hang their self-worth and how they feel about themselves on whether their house is clean or food is made for dinner or whether their kids get enough attention from them. You know, whatever it is, I'm not saying that fathers don't think about these things but it's not as systematic of a problem for them where we've come up with a term that they just operate under, right. Like add guilt all the time because everybody's telling you that you're failing in every aspect. And so like the fact that there is a term that is used in, you know, colloquially, like, oh yeah, I have so much mom guilt and we just accept that is the problem. Okay. So that's why I want to do this episode. One of the biggest reasons I want to do it is because this is, was a really huge driving force in my life over the last seven years. It has really shaped my own journey. It shaped my decision to leave the law, shaped my decision to start the businesses that I have. Some in good ways and I'll talk about that as well and others in bad ways. And I still have it pop up all the time. So it's not something that I feel like I've mastered. I've definitely gotten better. I have in general, thought one of the biggest blessings of thought work has given me and really managing my mind is that I just don't ever operate from a place of shame. I operate really from a place of like unbelievable amounts of self-compassion. And so I refuse to get myself in certain aspects and yet and yet it pops up. Like, I think I'm doing so good. And then something comes up and I'm like, oh, there it is. There it is. And that's recently happened to me again. It happened with a trip that I'm going to take. Um, I actually, by the time this comes out, I'm on this trip. So I'm recording this a couple of weeks early. I am going to a Mastermind event from people that may not know what that means. It's just basically like a business conference. Um, it's more, it's like a group coaching program but also you're masterminding with other business owners, right. I joined a six month program for my business. I'm so excited about it. And it kicks off with a three-day event. So it's three full days. And then it requires two days of travel. Like the date you have to get there the day before. Cause it starts at like 7:00 AM on the first day. And then it doesn't end until the last dinner, which is at like 10:00 PM on the third day. And so you have to leave the next day. So all in all, I'm going to be traveling and gone for four nights, five days, okay? I have a lot of thoughts about leaving my children and my husband for five days by myself. I've never done something like that. And intellectually, I know all the reasons why it's totally fine, right? My husband goes on these Mastermind trips and retreats and business trips and never thinks anything of it. And neither do I, right? If I was counseling somebody else, I would think that of course, they should do the thing that they want to do for their business that is fulfilling to them. That is going to, you know, that's going to help them show up as their best self, which it makes them a better mother. Whatever. I know all the things. And yet we'll talk about this later. I can't tell but have all of the programming that I've been programmed with about mother shouldn't just leave their children to go gallivant or whatever my mind wants to think for a couple of days. And so I'll talk about that. So this is what's triggered this episode for me and just a lot of thought work over the last couple of months since I've signed up, I knew that this event was coming up. That's, what's triggered this episode. That's what I want to talk about it. Because as mothers, I think that there is such an unhealthy amount of pressure to be perfect in every instance and to always do the right thing, whatever that means. And everybody has a different definition of what that is. So let's talk about it. Okay. Let's talk about work first and then home life. Okay. We live in a patriarchal society, I don't think anybody questions that, and what's amazing for me like I had the first instance of dealing with this mom guilt when I was leaving the law. And I think that at the time, especially in 2014, like there was a lot more of the mind frame of like leaning in, right. The Sheryl Sandberg Lean In. And it was a lot of talk of like breaking glass ceilings, which is important, no doubt, right. And I remember from when I was going to law school and I mentioned this on other podcasts, like I had a panel of women at, when I was at Berkeley in law school. And it was, I don't remember what the panel is about, but the topic of women who left the law to be a stay-at-home moms came up. And I remember the panelists said if you're planning on leaving to be at home with your children, you don't deserve to be here. You are taking somebody else's seat at this law school and you don't deserve that, like whatever. And I remember at the time it feeling like a gut punch even though I never planned to quit the law and stay at home like I always thought I would work even as a mom. Like I never wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. And so I didn't think she was talking to me but I remember thinking like ugh and really wondering like I was confused and I was like, do I agree with her? Cause that seems, I think that's a little out of pocket. Um and now I know I wholeheartedly don't. But I remember those messages, right. And when I was in law there was a lot of talk about how to keep working moms in the profession and why so many women were leaving and now it's like so obvious, like yeah, there's a lot of things you can do to try to keep women in and they don't try to do it. And so it's not a surprise why a lot of women leave. But I remember a lot of the negativity towards moms or people that left once they had kids. And I felt an unbelievable amount of guilt when I was quitting to be a quote unquote stay at home mom. Right? Like I thought I failed, I had so much shame because I'd been given so many of those messages. And I want for anybody that feels that, because I know I've dealt with, I've talked to a lot of clients and customers and like students and on my free coaching calls who deal with this, who thinks this. I just want you to understand sort of what's happening, right. There is no morality between whether you work or whether you're at home like objectively as like facts in the world, we create our own morality, right? We decide what's better and what's worse. Like what's moral and what's not, it's all made up. There is nothing inherently more valuable or moral to stay at home with your children versus working. It's all neutral. It's all circumstances. It's just a fact. And what you decide to think about it is how you will feel about it, okay. Now what you decide to think about it obviously can be based on what other people have told you or what you’ve listened to. And I want you to know that you're allowed to reject that, you're allowed to rethink it. That was one of the first times I did that because while I thought I agreed with a lot of people and I felt a lot, I guess I kept thinking, I don't want to lean in. I don't want to lean into this kind of a culture, right? Leaning in requires us to stay in systems that weren't built for us. As we're seeing now, after the pandemic and how it's like, you know, the largest exodus was from mothers because they make it impossible. They've created basically like the old boys’ club and then just want us to fit into it, with no regard as to like the amount of labor that is put on women with children. And so it doesn't work. And then we're left to feel guilty as if like we couldn't cut it. And so if you want to break that glass ceiling, great. I say you do it. And we'll talk about like what you have to do on the home front. But what I want you to understand is it's, it gets to be your choice. You get to decide what working or staying home or any of that means to you. And if you find yourself feeling guilty about it, I want you to know it's a lie. Unless you have the thought I should, I should be working. I shouldn't be working. I should be more with my kids like that's where guilt comes from. And it's all made up. You should be doing the thing you want to do. I just want you to question whether that's the thing you want to do or whether it's the thing you think you should do because it somehow makes you more valuable or smarter, or you can prove it to people or whatever it is where you think you're worth is tied to that. I've talked a little about, about this before, but Glennon Doyle in her book, Untamed, the opening chapter is, is a very powerful story. And you should read the book, it's an amazing book. But she talks about like going to the zoo and seeing this cheetah exhibit with her children and the cheetah is like, you know, running around whatever, after this stuffed animal. And then when it's done gets like the steak and she's just watching the cheetah afterwards kind of pace back and forth along the perimeter. And the zookeeper is answering questions. And one child asks like, is she, isn't she sad that she's not in the wild? And the zookeeper says like, no, she was born here, she was raised here, she has a good life here. And Glennon Doyle is thinking about what the cheetah must be thinking. And she's thinking like if the cheetah could talk I would imagine that what the cheetah is saying is like my life was meant to be more than this. Like something just feels off. It doesn't feel right. I can't put my finger on it. I don't know what it's supposed to be but it's not supposed to be this. And I remember when I was reading it like how viscerally I connected with that because the thing is is that we've built these systems for ourselves that are unnatural, right? They're just made up, just made-up systems, made-up societies, jobs, whatever, all of it, our culture is completely made up. And then we feel guilty when we don't fit in that. Or we feel like I should just be as she was saying, the cheetah was saying like I should just be happier. I have a good life here. You know I have these zookeepers that care about me. I have food. Why am I not happy? But the animal knows deep down that something is wrong. And I think that about us like so much with respect to work. Where it's like we constantly berate ourselves for not being able to keep up or not being able to, you know, just be happy when we know that on like a primal level that what we're doing is not natural. It's not right. Like of course, sitting in a cubicle for 10 hours a day might create some mental health issues. And yet, instead of understanding that and maybe like figuring out how can I live within these confines and make it work, we beat ourselves up. And now mothers do it like extra, right? So we have these natural primal needs to be with our children. To you know what I mean, the things that you need to do as a mother. Like there's, there's the evolutionary basis in them. And we're trying to fit into these societies that we've created. And we're trying to prove that we're just as good as men because we, for so long have been, you know, treated as though we are not. And we believe that in order to prove that we are, we have to like now go and break these glass ceilings. And then we're left to feel guilty when we can't juggle it all. Or when it doesn't feel right or there's something that feels wrong. And I just want you to know, I mean, I think my, this is a love letter to moms, this episode to let you know that it's not you, you're not crazy. It's not that you just can't be happy. It's like you're parked in an untenable situation. And that was one of the things that I realized and I'm really so grateful to my past self for understanding this and leaving law. Because I felt so guilty but I kept thinking like, yes, I don't know if I really want to be a stay-at-home mom. I don't know if I'm cut out for that either. I don't know if that's something that's going to make me happy or not. I don't know, we'll see. But I know that I do want to be able to spend time with my children. I know that I don't want to work in a job that requires me to work nights and weekends all the time. I don't know why I feel guilty about saying that like I want to be able to see my children more than what I'm seeing when I'm working in this job. And I recognize that like, for me, I wanted some kind of a middle ground. I didn't want to be a stay-at-home mom but I also didn't want to work like a crazy person. And it was only in admitting that and being okay with that and saying like other people are going to judge me, other people are going to call me a sell-out, other people are gonna say I couldn't hack it, other people are going to say like, oh, here goes another lawyer mom, like as soon as she got pregnant she quit. I'm going to be okay with that. Because like at the end of the day, I know that this is the one life I get. And I know that all this other stuff is made up. And so what I want you to ask yourself is like what do you want for this life? And the thing is that every one of us is going to have a different answer to that. And even that's okay. Some of you might innately like literally the way that you are wired and the need for achievement and the need for that growth and the need for power and all of that is so within you that like, you want to climb that ladder. You want to become the boss. You want to be in these powerful organizations, more power to you. I think you absolutely should do it, right? Some of you want to be a stay at home mom, have no interest in working, don't want to, you know, none of that interests you totally fine. And then a lot of you are going to be in the middle of that, myself included. Like I remember when I quit, one of the reasons I felt very lost is I already knew I didn't want to be a stay at home mom. Like I just am not built for that. I have so much respect for them and the amount of work they do, I just know it wasn't for me. I was like I do not have the patience for it. I wanted something else. I just wanted it on my own terms. I wanted it in a different way than what was available to me as a lawyer. And I didn't know what that looked like and I didn't know how I would get it but I just knew I wanted something different. And I felt very lost because I didn't see a group of people saying that they wanted this, right. Like I knew there was a group of women that wanted to be stay at home moms and I knew there was a group of women that were really going for that lean in break the glass ceiling. And I felt like I'm in the middle of there and I don't know how to fit into this but I knew that like it doesn't matter if I don't know what it is, I don't want either one of those things so I'm not going to settle for them. I'm going to decide and figure out like what is it that I want? And it was only through checking my own guilt, understanding that like there's nothing for me to feel guilty about like this is the way my brain, like, of course our paths are going to be different. We are different human beings. And each one of us is going to be fulfilled and excited by different things. And so when I started realizing like, okay, what is it that I want? Even when I was building my first business, the photobooth business, as I mentioned before, I had a couple of opportunities to get investors. And I kept thinking like that's not what I want for my business, I want like a lifestyle business. I want something that I can do on the side. I want to be able to be with my kids. I don't want something where like I am beholden to investors. And it was really only through knowing like what is it that I want not what everybody else has that I should want or is exciting or would be cool to put on Instagram. Like what is it that I want for my date, like right now in this season, in my life, when my kids are young. And I really implore you to like figure out what that thing is and then figure out why you're feeling guilty, like what are the thoughts that are making you feel like you should be doing something else? But I realized very early on when I became a mom that like there was no winning for moms because there is this work aspect. And like, you, you know, we still have such and it's so funny like the negative stigma on for stay at home moms too. Where it's like, I dunno, like they're looked at as sort of, you know, not, not being feminists, but like going, you know, being way too traditional and like women should be. And I'm not saying that there are absolutely arguments to talk about like financial stability for women and how when you give up your career you're more at risk of like financial insecurity in the future if your marriage doesn't work out and all this. Those are all things that really need to be taken seriously. And I, and there's arguments for how to handle that, but it's been interesting to see like how we shame women for everything, right? If you're too ambitious and you're not with your kids as much, then you're a terrible mom. And if you're just decide that you want to be a stay at home mom, then you're not ambitious enough. And you know, you've settled or whatever the thing is. And I started realizing like very quickly, like I can't win this war. Like anything I do is wrong. And so why am I letting other people dictate how I should live my life? And I, again, I think like doing thought work has helped a lot with that, but I started also realizing that like the demands in my house were also so unreal, right? It's like we, there's all of these studies about like the third shift, the fact that women take on a disproportionate amount of the work at home. And that doesn't mean like, even if it's just the kids, it's being a house manager, right. Even if you have spouses that help, typically the mom, the wife, is the one that is the manager of it, right? She's the one that still has to like take up the mental energy of figuring out like when are the doctor's appointments, like when did the soap run out, we need to replace it. What are we having for the meals this week? All of this stuff, making all of those decisions tends to deplete your mental energy and force women to take on a entirely different workload. Like, you know, house managers make six years. You're taking on a completely different job. And then what I see with women it's like you not only have to fill all these buckets, but you have to do them perfectly, right. You have to work and be like breaking that glass ceiling and be a wonderful lawyer and partner or a teacher or a doctor, whatever it is you are. And you have to be the perfect wife and you have to be the perfect mom. And if you're not doing everything perfectly, then somehow you're a failure, right. Then it's like, oh, but did you bake the cupcakes for your kid’s school event? And are you on the PTA? And it's like, you know, what has happened over time, what I think is like really insane when you look back over history is like we have fought for certain rights but then instead of alleviating, let's say like, okay, women are going to be in the workforce that means men are going to take on more of labor. Now, men, are starting to catch up a little bit but still by no means is it equal. Women started doing that but then still taking on even more roles, you know, what's insane to me like looking back when we were children, it's like, none of our moms were worried that much about all the time that they didn't play with us. I don't even know if my mom, if, I mean, I honestly can't even remember if my parents like sat down to play with me. I was playing with my sister or my cousins and my parents were busy working and like making food and whatnot. All of the guilt about Instagram-worthy birthday parties and making organic meals and doing all of these things while also working a job or running a business it's unbearable. And so I really want you to understand, to my mother's out there, I mean, to everybody, this is a message for everybody that like of course you can't do everything perfectly. You're not a robot. So you have to start letting yourself lower that bar, like you have to start learning to drop some balls and be okay with it, right. Not just drop some balls, cause like a lot of us drop the balls and then feel guilty and beat ourselves up. But it's doing that and then being like, of course I'm not going to get it right all the time. Of course I don't need to put my kids in another activity because I don't have the time to drive them there. And that's okay. I think like, it's so funny like if you think about a man. Let's say you think about a single man or a single father, if their house is messy, you don't ever equate that to like their worth, right. You might be, and it's so funny because we're like, oh yeah, man, that's men for ya, we just like chalk it up to it. There was a meme once that was saying like if, um, a man brings his children to school with like a mismatched clothing, it's like, oh, how cute he's trying, what a cute dad. And if a woman does it, it's like she has an alcohol problem. And it's just the truth. It's just like the bar is set at a different level for us. And we have to be the ones that lower it, right. There's these tropes of like the hot mess mom and I think so many of us, myself included, would cling to that for awhile. And it would like really take on the bill thing of like, oh, I'm such a hot mess. And the reality is like, I, I'm not a hot mess. You're not a hot mess. You're trying really frickin hard. And the reason you take on that is because it helps alleviate the guilt, right? It's like I'm not even gonna try to be perfect anymore. So I'm going to go to the opposite extreme and just act like I'm this hot mess and be self-deprecating and talk about how I, you know, it's like, no, you really are trying, it's just that the standard is impossible. And this is why I think that work is so important, right, is because, you know, what's the, um, line from like all those horror movies. The call is coming from inside the house. This is how our biases work. We take these messages that have been given to us by society, right. That have been made up. And then we adopt them as our own. And we think that we're being objective. We think we're being factual. I think about body image is like a very easy one. I can tell you intellectually that like, you know, the beauty industry has fed you all these lies to get you buying their products, to get you, you know, going on all these diets, to get you like spending all this money. And you can understand that. And yet you have adopted these thoughts that like, ugh, my stomach is so disgusting or my thighs are like this or my wrinkles or whatever. And it doesn't just go away by you intellectually understanding it. And so even if we change laws right now, right? Like even if we fight for women's rights. We try to close down the wage gap, whatever, if we don't change our thoughts and we still have the guilt and shame that has been made up from previous generations that has been given to us ,now it changes slowly over time but it's just so slow unless you do the work yourself. Like obviously we, we, with every generation, we kind of progress and start realizing like if you look back how, you know, our views for what women were allowed to do are. But if you work on your thoughts, you can do that so much faster. You can start realizing like, no, thank you, I don't want to keep these thoughts that you have. And that takes work. I'm not saying that happens like all of a sudden you're like, you're right, I intellectually get this and so I'm never going to feel guilty again. You're not but that's what you work towards, right? I want you to first just notice the insane standard that you're holding yourself to, right? The fact that you only focus on what's going wrong, right? Like you don't look at how you're like juggling a million balls. You're looking at like the two things, the two balls that have fallen. I want you to just see what you're holding yourself up to and what you're allowing society hold you up to. And I want you to question everything. Why am I doing this? Is this because I want to do this or because I feel like I'll be a bad mom if I don't? Since when did I become responsible for how every single person in my family feels? Why am I taking that on, right? Again, doing this myself with the work that I'm doing right now. What you have to do after you question everything is put up boundaries, is to decide how can I show up as the best wife and mom? And the only way to do that is by meeting your own freaking needs. I want you to understand why so many of us and so many mothers and it's this trope about mothers being like resentful, right? Like we kind of blow up is because we don't ask for help, we take on everything that we think we're supposed to do and then when people don't show their appreciation or they don't realize how much we've done or they don't do anything to help, we blow up. And the way that we stopped that is by asking for help, is by expressing our needs, is by saying like, no, thank you, I'm not going to be responsible for making dinner every single night. That's not my job. Maybe I'll do it two nights like ask your partner to do it tonight or whatever, figure it out, whatever the things are that you need help with. Why is it become our responsibility to take care of every single aspect of our work and our life and our home and our children? And you have to be okay with not everybody understanding it. And that's the hardest part, right? Like there will be people in your life, maybe your mother or mother-in-law or friends, or, you know, school group or PTA or whatever who's not going to understand because they have accepted the rules from society of what women should do, what mothers should do. Here's the thing, if you want to make change in your life or in the world like you have to be willing to do it differently. And of course not everybody's going to understand. And your brain is going to keep wanting to go back and comparing yourself to those mothers and you have to keep redirecting like, I don't want that for my life anymore. And lastly, you have to be proud of yourself. It's not okay to just not feel guilty and the reason, the way that you get out of not feeling guilty, when I talked about like, when I give myself like so much self-compassion, is that what most of us do is we're constantly looking at where we're dropping the balls and you'll have to start shifting that focus. You have to start showing like every situation in which you're killin it. You're like, oh my god, look how much I take care of, look how good of a mom I am. I make sure everybody has their needs met. I make sure everybody's safe, right. I make sure everybody has whatever it is that they're going to need or want or whatever. That doesn't mean I have to sit down and play every time my children ask me to. That doesn't mean I have to feel guilty because I don't like playing Legos, maybe I'm not meant for that. That's fine. I see this all the time with my mom friends, like they're like the most incredible moms and then maybe there's one aspect of them, their parenting they don't like, like maybe they lose their temper or maybe they don't like playing with little kids all day or whatever it is, maybe they don't make dinner and it's like, that's all they focus on, they just ignore everything that they do all day long and they look at like the one time they yelled at their kids or they, and I'm not saying that you don't have to work, you don't have to, like, you don't get to work on things to become better in certain areas, you absolutely can. But it only happens through like having self-acceptance and self-compassion, like I am really trying my hardest. I'm doing amazing and yes, there's some areas where I need to work on. And so for me, this is the area where I will be working on. As I mentioned, I have this Mastermind that I really wanted to go do if I'm going to be honest, I love spending time really immersed in thinking about my business. And that only ever happens when I go to conferences. Before the pandemic, I'd gone to like one or two and I would only pick ones that were in California that would let me go for like one night, right. So I can be one night away and I would be back because I dealt with all of this guilt and then the pandemic happened and I didn't really have to deal with it for a year. And now we're here. And I was faced with here's an opportunity that I really want to go to but my thoughts that I've laid dormant and I haven't had to deal with are that women shouldn't leave their kids, right. I grew up in a family and a society where my mom never left us, like never, there was no such thing as like girls nights out back then. And so I have a lot of thoughts about women leaving and what that means. Now I understand that they're irrational. Again, like I said, like my husband has no problem with me leaving. I see the value in it. I see that I have no problem when my husband leaves. I know that my children will be fine. I don't think they even will notice that I'm gone, they won't care, um and yet it's like these remnants of this mom guilt keep creeping up. You're going to leave them for five days. God, how selfish. And so I'm working on it. And here's the last thing I want you to know is that you still have to act even though those thoughts are there, right. I've been working on these thoughts for the last couple of months, really redirecting my thoughts and really understanding that like, of course I'm going to go. Of course, I'm going to prioritize some of the things for myself because that's how I show up as a better mother. And I'm going to go, even though I still have those doubts, even though I still have those voices. Because one, it's great for my business but two, I want to show my daughter and my son that I'm allowed to follow my own fulfillment, that it's okay for me to love what I do enough to leave them for a couple of days. That their father is perfectly capable of taking care of them and that he's an equal partner in this relationship. That their father supports me and my visions and that they too need to go after their things that light them up. And just because they become parents doesn't mean that they have to give up their whole life. I mean, all of these things are what I want to be an example of for my kids and so I have to find the ability to push past the programming and the fear and the doubt and the voices and the judgment of other people who might say stuff on social media or in my family or whoever. And decide like, no, this is the right move for me and I'm going to move closer to the person that I want to be. And I'm going to stop martyring myself because that is what society has told me I need to do as a mother. And so for all my moms out there, I want you to do the same. I hope that it, maybe I can be an example for you. Maybe you don't deal with this type of mom guilt but you deal with it in a different way or whatever it is. I hope that this episode and this conversation has helped you maybe understand that you can lift that burden of the should’s and really check in with what you want to do. And do it not from a place of guilt and like pushing through, I see so many people do it but then feel guilty the whole time. But do it from a place of like you are allowed to be your full self, you are allowed to pour into yourself, you're allowed to put your needs first, you're allowed to ask for help, you're allowed to be happy. We're allowed all of those things and so much more. And the more we do that, the more we show the next generation and we show our peers that it's okay to show up and fully be yourself and still be a kick-ass mom. So enough with the mom guilt, I want you to go out there and do whatever it is that you want to do. Alright my friends, I hope you liked this episode. I will see you next week for another one.

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