The Peaceful Home

Episode 26: The Messy Truth: Mom's Edition:The struggle with Identity in Motherhood

May 10, 2022 Pamela Godbois
The Peaceful Home
Episode 26: The Messy Truth: Mom's Edition:The struggle with Identity in Motherhood
Show Notes Transcript

When it comes to your identity as a Mom, it can be heavy, scary, and downright overwhelming.

It includes expectations, beliefs, pressure, guilt and shame. It is both a gift and a struggle for many of us.

Motherhood is hard enough all on it's own, never mind the added pressure of expectations, and the struggle of changing desires and directions.

This week Casey and I chat all about the ups and downs and all that identity touches in life (I'll give you a hint, it's EVERYTHING!)

So whether you identify as a
✨A stay-at-home mom.
✨A working mom.
✨A Mompreneur
✨A Pinterest mom.
✨A tired mom.
✨An overwhelmed mom
✨ Or a super mom

This episode has something for everyone!

The truth is, being a mom is messy, and I'm not just talking the jelly smear on your white couch, it's also emotional and spiritually messy! So let's lean in and be a big-ol mess together!


If this episode inspired you in some way, take a screenshot of you listening on your device and post it to your Instagram Stories and tag us, @pamgodboiscoaching and @societyofmessymoms


In this episode you’ll hear:

  • How societal pressure creates dysfunction as a mom. 
  • How to find your way back to human first, mom second.
  • Embracing the messy truth that we are all in this together. 
  • The impact we have on our kids, and our parents had on us. 
  • A sure-fired way to live a life you truly despise (and one you love as well!) 
  • How desire is a good thing and a reminder that you are worthy! 


LINKS: 
Facebook Group for Moms: 

Connect with me:  Instagram, Facebook, and Tiktok


If you’re like “I love listening to Pam chat with guests.” Then head over and write a review! We really appreciate your support and it helps us to keep growing!!  https://pamgodbois.com/ApplePodcast Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode. Be sure to tune in next week.

The best thing you can do for yourself and your kids is effectively regulate your nervous system. And a great place to start >> to wire the brain for gratitude. Research tells us that gratitude increases happiness and a peaceful mindset. Make the shift and watch how things in your life start to change. Sign up today! www.pamgodbois.com/gratitude

As a mom, have you ever thought to yourself? Who do I want to be when I grow up? Have you ever had the belief or the concern that maybe you're not the same person you were before you had kids? Chances are you're probably right. And today on the out of your mind podcast in the messy truth series, Casey and I are talking about exactly these concepts. Identity as a mom. So let's dive in.

Pam:

Hello. So we are back for another messy truth episode and, Casey and I are here again. Hey everyone. So today we want to dive in a little bit and talk about, we were just talking before we hit record about our role as moms and more than the role, but the identity of being a mom. But I feel like oftentimes there's no, like I have no bad blood about this, but mother's day was yesterday, at the time of this recording. And so there's a lot of people that are like, you're like, I'm a dog mom, and I'm an author. So therefore I'm a book mom, and I'm a book, whatever mom, and I'm a, this mom and I'm an aunt and I'm not, and all those things and all that's great. And yet there's a component of being a mom that is an identity piece for sure. And for many of us, a loss of that. Right. A hundred percent

Casey:

currently sitting in that space because that's become my, my whole identity is being a mom in, uh, in, in becoming a mother. I, left my career. I kind of just became all consumed with being a present parent. And in doing that, I adjust along the way, stopped doing things for myself. I, yeah, it's, it's kind of an interesting place to be where I'm coming into rediscovering, who I am, what I want. The things that I like and enjoy, because there've been times that my husband has given me the space to, Hey, take off, go do something for, whatever amount of time. And I'm like, who am I? I want to do.

Pam:

Uh, so that's,

Casey:

it's tough when it becomes, more, I don't want to say more of your identity than it should, but when you lose yourself along the way, it, it creates a host of its own

Pam:

problems. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And I think the, the thing that we're all coming from different perspectives, we're all coming from different experiences and, and I've had some moms that say to me I'm a stay at home mom and I need to, I need to figure out what I want to do the rest of my life. And my kids get older and are off in school. And I have some that are like, I'm a mom was working full-time and I've got my kids at home and I feel like I'm not there enough for them. And I feel like I'm, I'm a bad mom, quote unquote bad mom, because I'm not there when I should be. And, and it's so hard to split my attention. And I ha I work with I work with moms that have gone to school and gotten higher education, therapists and counselors and teachers and and whatnot that say, that have said to me, I'm not the same person I was when I went to school, I have kids now and I has changed everything. And so I think that the idea that we really want to kind of dive into is that how much being a mother changes us and. We have this opportunity, right? For it to change us for the better there's opportunity for it to be like something that we lean into and grow with. Or we can sit in their misery and feel like we're stuck and we don't have any options and, or I just have to do this. And it's, what's expected of me. This is what I was led to believe I had to do growing up. It's what my mom did or whatever, whatever the right, our stories are.

Casey:

Yeah. It's definitely, it's very interesting for myself, my mom, I know it wasn't seamless for her, but she made it look that way. So I think coupled with my own feelings throughout the journey of being a stay at home mother and leaving my career and just being all consumed and seeing what it looked like from. Me as a kid. What it looked like from my mom's perspective was that it was effortless. It was not exhausting. It was not sometimes mind numbing and crippling and all the things that are super, super challenging that can happen when you're parenting that has brought guilt into the picture because why, why is this hard for me? Why is it challenging? Why can't it? Why isn't it as easy as it looked, or it seemed in my own upbringing and you do for me, for sure. I have been, I've been stuck for a while and I feel like I'm finally in a place that enough, enough time, enough of the same conversations with my partner, enough things have happened in my life that. I feel like I'm kind of launching forward and I'm, I'm becoming unstuck, which feels great because I'm actually open to growth. I want to do better and be better, not obviously for my kids, but first and foremost for myself, because I have been on the back burner of my own life for a long time. And that has. A ripple effect. It affects all relationships. It has affected my marriage in different ways. Over the years, it's affected friendships relationships with my family, outside of my four walls in my house extended family, blah, blah, blah. So it's an interesting and exciting place to be. But it's also daunting because you really realize that you actually have to do shit and

Pam:

change things. No one else can correct as much as

Casey:

they may want to. And, uh, it's, it's all, it's me. It's what I have to figure out. It's what all moms have to figure out. It's where, what, what ultimately is going to make you happy. What do you need to do to get yourself there? And that might look different than it did. Two years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago, you may have set out for doing X, Y, or Z with your life and that shifts as you grow and throughout your journey. So, yeah, figuring out what I want to be when I grow up.

Pam:

And, what's really interesting about that as the, the law of attraction says that we are in perfect harmony with health and joy and connection. That's who you are. It's our vibrational, it's our natural vibrational frequency. We look at kids, right? Not much gets, gets them down truth, let's see the, the state that, which we exist from. And then we sit in the worry and the stress and the overwhelm. And you mentioned like extended family. And that brought up for me, all of these. Expectations around being a mom and also what it means to be a good mom. And I always joke that I'm a terrible mother all the time. It shows like I, and my 13 year old knows that it's like this running joke, but I'm, I've always been the mom. That's oh, you wanted a snack shit. Okay. Well, I guess we'll go to the store then, because there was never, I never, I'm not a let me, okay. Let me pack a drink and let me pack a snack. Let me get all these things and make sure they're all said. And I just, I'm not wired that way. I guess. It's not, hasn't been important enough to me. And I think part of that is a, that I'm like, there are. Like, we'll be fine. We'll all survive. Right. But I think another component of that is this, that has lended itself for me to oh yeah, I could never be a stay-at-home mom because I'm terrible at it. Right. Like I definitely, no, I definitely couldn't. Nope, Nope, Nope. And there is a belief, I feel like I have friends that are, that are not parents and that are like, I'm not a mom because of all these components, whether it's like here, I hear people say, I didn't want to perpetuate the, trauma and struggles that I had in my life. It's the life of a child, uh, which is, it is what it is. Right. And yet there are so many. Humans. There are so many women out there. They're like, oh, I love the opportunity to be a mom, but couldn't for one reason or another. And there's a, there's a huge component of this role of I am a mother and what that means. And that is definitely a story that comes. Like I grew up in a household. My mom stayed at home. There's four of us. She stayed at home until I was in maybe fifth or sixth grade. And then she went back to school and she went back to work. And at school, I remember going after school to my mom's work and like sitting at a little table in the corner, doing my homework while she was at work. And she was probably only there till three 30 or four o'clock right. It wasn't like, uh, I was there all night. But I remember that distinctly. And then by the time I was in middle school, she was working at the high school. That's where she stayed until she retired. And so she always worked like school hours. She dropped me off at school in the morning and she picked me up from school in the afternoon. And or I would go over, I actually would take the bus from the middle school to the high school and then go home with her, my mom too.

Casey:

She always only every job that she had. And she had a lot of long standing jobs throughout her career, but it was always mother's hours. She was always, I don't know how the hell she juggled it all, but it was like, I never felt like she wasn't there.

Pam:

Right. And I remember early on with Marley and we've had this conversation because these are the kinds of hours that you were working as a therapist. I don't really have the ability to work mothers hours. So instead I worked what started as two hours, two days a week, became three days a week. And I was just thinking this morning that when Marlene was in first grade, finally in school, full-time I, two days a week drove to a university and hour plus away and taught classes. And then came home. Remember those days, those were long days they were, because then from there I would go and see clients that had good amounts, I'd see clients. And so it became three days a week. And then I felt like I was missing everything. And, and then there was like this story in there that was like, you're a bad mother because you're not around for these things. And, and my husband would say things like, uh, I mean, he doesn't he's, he, he would be a stay at home. Dad if, uh, if the cards would align for him, he would be like, yeah, I'm in full-time. But he would take her to gymnastics or he would take her to dance or he would take her to whatever things after school. And he would be like the one dad there, it was all, it was all moms. And he would just say oh yeah, I'm like, did you, is there anybody that, you know, and he's oh, it's all moms. I don't talk to any of them. Right. I'm the one dad in the building. And I remember being like, oh, I should be there. And on the days that I didn't have clients, for whatever reason, I didn't work that day or whatever. And I would take her, Marlene would be so excited that I was taking her. And I was like, oh, I'm a bad mom, because I'm not doing this more often. Just the it's

Casey:

crazy. The guilt that no matter what, no matter what role you are in, whether you're working more or you're home, I think as mothers, it's just. Somehow innately in us that we, we feel guilty. We're not, we're not doing enough. We're not there enough. Or when we're home, we're not present enough or you're

Pam:

burnt out because you're not home and working all the time or

Casey:

you're burnt out. Cause you're with your kids all the time and you have no sense of identity outside of okay, I'm waking up, I'm getting dressed, I'm going to work. And I'm separated from my kids for X amount of time. It's no matter what way you slice it. I feel like it comes with its own host of just feeling like you're not doing it, right.

Pam:

Yes. Yeah. And I think we've talked about this a little bit, a lot. We've talked about this a lot, actually. This, this idea in our culture where it's we're supposed to just be like, okay, it doesn't matter if you work. Full time or you don't work at all. It doesn't matter. Like you don't work outside of the house. Uh, I don't want to say at all, because we all know that being mothers, a lot of ethic work as is maintaining a house, a husband, one of my biggest stressors, I need to hire somebody full-time to do that for me. But the idea that like, you're still supposed to show up at home and have dinner on the table and take care of all the things and help the kids with the homework and tuck them in at night. And, you're, you're supposed to do all the things. And I often used to say to Jeff, I'd be like, well, if those were all my job, well, the fuck's your job. What are you doing? Understand this? Right. Or even just, having, having it be that time of year it's may mother's day is. Where it is culturally normal for us to spend mother's day. Like the idea is that what we want more than anything as moms and spend mother's day with our kids. And next month on father's day rolls around, they'll all be out.

Casey:

Homeys are going to be out golfing,

Pam:

golfing, whatever, riding motorcycles, doing, whatever other things that they do. Right. Yeah. And we, we need to start making that shift. Yeah. I've

Casey:

seen a lot of, a lot of quality memes over the weekend or reels, whatever Tik, TOK videos, all that fun stuff, where moms in a satirical way are like the only thing that I want is to not be with my kids, get me out of here and just like a bunch of different, funny videos showcasing that. But it's. Become this thing that, we've wherever it started, but we all, most of us have it. I shouldn't say that I'll back up. A lot of us have it ingrained in us that, that, that makes you look kind of bad if you don't want to be with your kid on, on mother's day, since we're talking about mother's day the, you feel like you're doing something wrong when you want to take time away from your kids. You want to go be your own person. Well, that makes you selfish, right? No, actually it will ultimately make me a better person, a better mother, a better way, a better friend. When I get to have those moments to myself, when I get to recharge in that looks very different for everyone. I'm still figuring out myself what that looks like for me these days, because I just, my husband has joked around over the years and has used the term martyr because he will try and give me the opportunity to leave the house, go away, go do whether it's an hour or an entire day take off. And I'm like, sounds great in theory, but at what, w w w where do I go? What do I do? Who am I, what are my interests? What do I like to do? And that's sad because I've done. I have, I've done that to myself. I have stripped myself. Of being anything aside from a mother, obviously I am still all the other things and I'm still a decent, a decent wife, a good daughter and sister and all those things. But I've kind of pigeonholed myself into I'm just a mom now.

Pam:

I think part of that, and I absolutely hear you in that. I think part of that, what just came up for me, as you were saying, all that stuff is that we have this deep rooted belief. Right? Cause I was what I was thinking or initially was, it kind of makes sense when your kids are little, they need you to take care of them. They need you to do. Provide food for them, do all the things, right. All the things you have to do as parents um, wipe their noses, all the things. Right. And yet how much of that is really bullshit. Yeah. Because the real reason we do it and like, prove me wrong. If this is wrong. The real reason we do it is because we have this deep rooted belief that if we raise smart, capable, uh, kind attractive, whatever the thing is, it is of value to you, children. Then you've succeeded as a parent. One that's so fucking disempowering to our children. Completely. The only reason you're successful in life is because on your mother, bullshit, that's bullshit. They are their owners. There's their future therapies such as breads. So I'm not my own person.

Casey:

My mom thought she ran the show.

Pam:

Yeah. Sorry, kids. Yeah. I mean, there's such a huge component of that. And then there's all this story behind it, right? If your child struggles at all academically or behaviorally or whatever, other things, there's this component as a mom that we're like that we hang onto the shame and guilt. That is some are our issue. Like something that we did wrong, we're bad as a result. And we've got to learn how we've got to practice recognizing that that story is bullshit.

Casey:

I completely agree. And I think that there are so many stories like that within motherhood that we have been told, or we assume along the way, even if it wasn't directly told to us, but society says, my ancestry says my whatever, and I think we touched upon this in the last, in our last episode that there's.

Pam:

That we're the first kind of

Casey:

realm of, or generation of parents who are in therapy. And we're like undoing this stuff. And trying, not that our parents didn't try to do better than their parents did that, but that we're trying to, we're working through a lot of things that have been, you told me this, that we're undoing

Pam:

seven generations, seven generations,

Casey:

and we have the effect on seven generations ahead of us.

Pam:

So that's lofty,

Casey:

that's an insane thought that we're potentially working backwards seven, seven times out, and that what we, what we do and what we become aware of, the things that we undo. Put into place, instead of the stories, the unhealthy things that we've been told and taught that we can then have that, trickle up effect 10,

Pam:

seven, right. Which is

Casey:

scary and empowering at the same time, because holy shit, hold on to stuff in seven generations. But having the power to pave a more healthy and positive way forward, I think is

Pam:

that's huge. Yeah. Yeah. And one of the things we talked about last week in our, in our brainstorming session or brainstorming session, we like to do brainstorming sessions with a drink on the porch. Does that

Casey:

was, that was our Friday afternoon.

Pam:

Well, one of the things that we talked about was that whole realm around value, right? What's, what do we value? What are our values? And as moms, we, we tend to say I value my children. I value my family. And it's bullshit. It's bullshit. If you're walking around, out there, like my number one value is my family. Then I'm sorry to tell you that you're going to be fucking miserable forever as Casey waves to me you're going to be miserable forever. And the reason I say that is because you can't. Put anybody or any being before yourself in think that you're going to find the bliss that you're seeking, the joy that you're seeking, because that work is self work and it's your connection to your source, whatever you want to call it, God, the universe, whatever you want to call source energy. That the being that created us all right. I'll or whatever you want, I don't care. But that it's that connection and the connection with our true self and our self-love. That is the stuff that when you do that, everything. Just kinda falls into place. Yep. Those people that walk around the here, like they always seem to pull it off. I don't think just going to work for them. What the fuck, how can that happen? That mom over there, does it make it look hard at all? It's, it's likely because she's doing the work to have self-love and connection to source and, and making that a priority. And then the other stuff comes after and I'm not seeing your family is number seven on your list. I mean, they might be, but but in truth that if we can just, if we just start to shift our focus and recognize that saying things like my family is my number one, like my, the thing I value the most is a societal construct.

Casey:

Yeah. And you're perpetuating it by, by believing that I, yeah, that's an, that's an intense thought. And also in line with something, some musing that I had this morning, Where I don't know what made me think of it, but I was kind of fast forwarding in my mind as to, when my kids grow up and potentially find partners of their own become parents themselves, if they choose to do so. Thinking about if I don't take the time now, before my kids fly the nest,

Pam:

I'm

Casey:

thinking, think, I feel like a, somewhat of a shell right now because I'm completely invested in them thinking about them not being in my house anymore or not having a hand in what they're doing anymore. The hell am I going to do with myself. Right. So thinking about it from that side,

Pam:

I need to

Casey:

be. Good and solid. And I need to do the put in the time and effort and work now to be a solid, a more solid I'm making it seem like I'm out to lunch

Pam:

sometimes, maybe, but I'm not as aware.

Casey:

But just getting more steadfast in myself as an individual, because I'm, I'm gonna need a whole lot more to fill up my time and space and energy in, 10, 12 years, which seems like a ways off, but you know, you blink and it's here.**********So there's this definitely this impetus and the energy and all the things kind of pushing me in the your time is now stop putting off, working on you and getting yourself. Into a more, balanced space because it's imperative for so many aspects of life, really obviously full on happiness, but other relationships, career, all those things it's imperative to be, to feel sound yourself.

Pam:

Yeah. And we, and, and all of the things, whether it's our career or relationships with others, with our children, with friends, with spouses, we train people how to treat us based on how we treat ourselves. So I wish you had a camera to be able to see that PCO always has the best facial expressions. Yeah, a little mind blown, but that is the reality. Our, when we show up in the world, when we are the people that we are when we love ourselves enough. Right? So this whole, like unconditional love, which we talked about a little bit in last week's episode, but this idea of like unconditionally loving yourself. And if you stop and think about all the things that you say about yourself, there's not a whole lot of unconditional for most of us. It's I love myself when those jeans fit. I love myself when I can stick to the goal that I set. I've love myself. When I have time. I love myself when, right? Like all the, all the other components. And I'm talking about I'm not talking, I'm not even talking about expression of love, right? Expression of self love is self care. That's, that's what it is. That's you know, if you're like, self-care BS. I had somebody say to me recently oh, it's so curious BS. And I was like, yeah, it is when you don't love yourself for this. This is BS because it is an expression of self-love because you think about it. When you think about the things that you do for self care, any of us, right. It could be like, I go for a spot. I go out to lunch with a girlfriend. I take some time to myself. I go to a yoga class. I meditate, whatever the things are. There's a list, 30 miles long. If you were doing that for somebody else, you'd be doing it for people that you love or you've be doing for your meal plan. And you put food on the table for your family because you love them. Not because it's a requirement, but yet when we're like, I want to eat healthy. So I need a meal plan. And then it meal planning is hard. So then we don't do it because it's hard.

Casey:

You know what I mean? It's like one of those things, it's like thing.

Pam:

It makes someone else and you're like, oh my God, if I could just start thinking about recognizing this relationship with self is just an X is just a mirror of every, or the relationship where every other relationship is a mirror of my relationship with myself. Then things start to shift because you start going oh, well, if I say these things to myself, from having these thoughts in my head, because beliefs develop as a result of repetitive thoughts. So if I'm having repetitive thoughts that I don't like myself, for whatever reason, whether it's whether it's, uh, an action, the behavior, whether it's an old story, whatever it is, what you're doing is you're teaching your children one. Uh, not to trust that you're going to show up in a steady way for. Because when you don't love yourself and think about the inconsistencies and the, the ups and downs and the emotional, just the emotional ups and downs. And I ain't talking about anything else. And so then we start to create this like inconsistency and then the, your, your small little beings that are in each of our households as moms have to rely on themselves to figure the things out. And we're also teaching them how to, uh, like how to interact with us, but also how to interact with themselves. So when you say things simple things, like when they say mom, do you want some of my ice cream? And you're like, no, I can't because I'm on a diet that

Casey:

speaking from someone who's constantly, I have battled my weight, my feelings surrounding my weight for much of my life. That's one thing that I have tried to, I've been very conscious, not commenting on their bodies aside from. You're strong, you're grown, whatever, not oh, probably shouldn't eat that or whatever. We just, we talk about balanced diet and it's, it's a struggle for me because I'm still replaying a lot of the same negative things in my head. But yeah, a lot, a lot just surfaced for me as you were. So you were saying that because it, it really is crazy how, I'm 35 years old and thinking about how many times have I associated my worth with my appearance, with a number on the scale with, uh, goals? Yes. Are they important for sure? Do I. Potentially want forward movement in changing, just how I feel at this point, aside from my appearance, it's, it's hinged less on that these days than how I feel in my body. But it's well, this'll get better at this point. This, I'll look better if I do this. And then this is going to fall into place, as a result of that. And it's just woven into me and I hate it. I, that's also a part of this. I'm at this certainly at a. In a transitional time for myself, because I hate that story. I'm over it. I've been living it for most of my life and I don't want to anymore. I'm tired. And I

Pam:

want to enjoy it's.

Casey:

I feel like I'm missing out a lot of times on the present because I'm focused on, I can't fully enjoy this right now because I'm not like where I want to be.

Pam:

Yeah.

Casey:

It's time.

Pam:

And

Casey:

I know it's going to take a lot of hard work and it's not going to happen overnight. These thoughts and the, the inner dialogue that I have with myself are not going to switch overnight, but awareness in all of these things is paramount. And the first step in. Trying to change them.

Pam:

Yeah. And being able to shift. And I think you hit the nail on the head there. You've gotta be aware that it's happening. We're we get to understand that these stories exist within us and that these stories are related to our identity, our belief about who we are, like the story of who we are. Right. And they develop for many of us, our beliefs about who we are now at whatever age we are in 45. So at my beliefs about myself at 45 are not related to the stories of the things I experienced at 45. They're related to the stories of the things that I experienced when I was, I dunno, 12, right? I mean, that's, and that's just how we, how we function, how we operate until we make the conscious choice to make a shift and recognizing that. It kind of going back to I talk about law of attraction all the time. We talk about it constantly, but the understanding of the law of attraction is that what you focus on, you get more of, do you focus on more problems, more worries, more stress, more overwhelmed. You get better. You get more of the uterus will gladly handle. The thing that you're focusing on. And so when we focus on ease self-love connection, joy and any other positive experience we want to have, we get more of that. And that is in alignment with who we are, right. That is in alignment with our being and our story and our experience. And when we focus, like when you have negative emotions, it's because your, your connection to your higher self right. Or source energy, or is out of alignment. Right. I feel bad because this is out of alignment. And when I feel good, it's because it's in alignment. And so what do I, that's why we seek feeling good. Yep. So for most of us, it doesn't even mean having to rewrite an entire story and do all these things differently. It's recognizing that when I feel a negative emotion, it's attached to a thought or an experience that is not something I want to be experiencing. And so focusing on what you want to be experiencing,

Casey:

it can really be as simple. This, the stepping stones are really as simple as, as being aware and okay, this is why this is coming up for me. And now I need to shift that. And in time, then the repetition of that positivity, and instead of sitting in your negativity, right, attaching the way you're feeling with, I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to feel this way anymore. We'll launch you forward.

Pam:

Yeah. Yeah. 1000000%. And this is why a lot of the work that I do with women is I'm like make a list of all the things you're grateful for, make a list of all the emotions that you want to experience, make a list of all the qualities of a ideal partner, right? We have a tendency to be like, I don't even with your kids, make a list of the behaviors, the things you want to see in your children, and then reinforce those things by paying attention to them. Right. And we know this, we understand this as parents, when we give like positive reinforcement we say good job. Thank you. Thank you for taking care of this thing or whatever the case may be. We're likely to get more of it. And there's a psychological component to that, but there's also an energetic component to that. And I think that we have a tendency to not recognize that we're energetic beings. And so yes, there's the. There's the physical, uh, world we live in. And then there's the energetic being that we are. And those two things come together. And we were talking about this a little bit, like if you've ever had the experience of, you're I remember when Marley was little and I didn't know how to buffer my own energy. I didn't know how to like, contain my own energy and be like, this is my energy. That's your energy. And you keep yours, I'll keep mine. They didn't know how to send people's energy back to them. So I would as a therapist, right? Sit people's shit all day long every day. And then that would weigh heavy on me right there. I've walked around being like, I feel heavy because of this experience of the story that somebody told me it's because we're hanging onto it. Energetically. That's where the heaviness comes from. So when you're like, I remember my mother was probably like five or six years old and she would snuggle with me on the couch and it would get to a point where I would be like, can you just get off of me, but can you not touch me anymore? Yep. Okay. Done. And she didn't thankfully. We did a lot of work and talked about that a lot. So she didn't take it personally. Yeah. She didn't take it personally. She just kind of was like, okay. But now at 13, she still is once a snuggle with me on the couch and I no longer, that's no longer an issue for me because it's because I can contain my own energy. And that's one of the biggest shifts I've seen over the last decade for myself is going from a place of Ooh, your, your icky energy is sticking to me. Yeah. So. Oh, you can, everybody around me can be experiencing whatever they want to be experiencing. And I'm over here experiencing my alone and I'm on my own little island experiencing my own story or my own, my own beliefs, my own journey. And it's been freeing for totally, for. But it does take practice. And that's why from a therapeutic perspective, from a coaching perspective, we do a lot of like brainstorming, brainstorming what you want, more of brainstorming, what you want to manifest, brainstorm what you want in your life. Right. It's why people create vision boards. And there's, there's a, you could do like a vision box, which is kind of fun to you. Just like you can just take any old box. Like you take a shoe box, you get to get an Amazon box. It would all have 4 million of those hanging around. And you just start pulling out pictures from magazines and throwing it in. And when you throw it, put it into the box, you go, I'm so grateful. This thing, whatever the thing is, you're identifying on this piece of paper is showing up in my life and I'm able to like, it's mine now. And then when in your, what you'll notice is that when you don't have resistance about things, they'll show up really quickly and easily. And when you do it will take. But you'll start to see, and this is for all of us, we start to see where our resistance lies. Right. So if we're like, if you're like, I just want to be able to have family dinners and not have people screaming at each other, then you go oh, look it. I found this family picture of us on vacation and I threw it out in the box or like this random valley in good housekeeping. Right? Yeah. If you want to be able to travel with your family and, pulling out pictures of magazines of like trips to Paris and throwing that in the box, all of these things so that you can, the idea is really so that you come back to yo, what do I want in my life? Right. So going back to like my identity, part of what we struggle with as moms in particular is we don't think we should have Watts. Right. We only get the things

Casey:

that we do.

Pam:

Totally. And if, as so true, if we get the things we need, right? Yeah. But once is where it's really at, for as far as like abundance, manifestation goes, because being in the wants, like dreaming of a trip to Paris, that feels nice, right. Needing the money to pay for your car or your mortgage or your rent or your groceries, that feels icky. And so the feeling is telling you, one is aligned, what is not right. So moving from place of what do I want in my life? It allows us to figure out like, who do I want to be? Who is the person I actually want to be? Yeah. So then when your husband says, let's go take a couple hours to yourself. You're like, all right, I got something. I've got some good places to go places and go man, peace out trip to Paris. That's always, we've always got Paris on her vision board. Cause that's where Marley wants to be. Which is really kind of cool, but, and thinking about that for a moment, we think about like our identity and who we are and where we want to be. Like, how many of us live physically in a location that we fucking hate? And we tell ourselves, we'd like oh we live in new England and oh, the beautiful seasons and people come here and vacation. I grew up on Cape Cod and I remember being homesick watching like the prices. Right. And seeing in the showcase, showdown people winning trips to the Cape. right. Of course that was some of that is like the adolescent, like where you are is never good enough, but there's also a component of, and we're having a conversation with my husband a few years ago. If we were to relocate, just pick up and move, I think it was in the midst of like my dad being really sick. So you need to start to think about what would we do after, right. Cause there's like a component of, living life to the fullest. So I was living life to the fullest, where would I live? And and he asked me, well, where would you live? And I was like, I don't know. And I realized it was because I didn't, I didn't know what was important. And now I'm like, I'm going to have six houses. I'm going to travel between the mall because I know it's dig that. Right. But how often do we not think that we don't want to go there because then there's a likelihood what if you fail? Well, what if you do who cares? Right. I would rather live in a place of dreaming about the house that we're gonna build an Arizona on the house that we're going to build on the beach in North Carolina or whatever. Right. Then I'd rather be in that space than living in the misery of and telling

Casey:

yourself that you, that it won't happen or it couldn't happen. And just, this is, this is what our forever is rather than dreaming big and shooting for the stars.

Pam:

Yeah, yeah. A million percent. And if we just did more of that, how much happier would we be? Okay. Dream really big, like stupid, big, right? Like the question I asked, this, ask it in my group coaching program, ask it everywhere. If I just gifted you a million dollars right now, what would you be doing differently? No strings attached. You can do whatever you want with it. It's not money for you to, cause I can, from a lot of us, we say things like Pam, I'm going to pay off my debt. And then I'm going to I'm going to start college accounts for my nieces and nephews. And then I'm going to wear you certainly thinking about how you're gonna, how you're going to provide for other people.

Casey:

I amazingly did not go there. I know exactly. I'm surprised that I didn't go there because typically there's the realist side of me paying off debt would sure be nice.

Pam:

Yeah, but I think that the other thing is that we have a tendency to believe. We don't believe that. Like when I say, okay, so I'm gifting you. And I say this in group, Pam has gifted you a million dollars, no strings attached. You can do whatever you want now in your life, decide what it's going to be. We don't go to the place of I gotta have debt and I got to do this for this person. I can do that for that person. But if I said, if you want a million dollars in the lottery, it's a totally different story. We tend to go down a different path. And part of it's the frame, right? So just with that simple thing, it's the same. You ended up with the same money. You got the same money handed to you. But the frame, the framing of it is different. Well, everything's like that in life. When you frame it differently, when you're like, what do I want now? What do I want to be doing on? Who do I want to be spending my time. On the weekends or what do I want to be doing when my kids are at school or after work each day or whatever your, whatever your story is, whatever your schedule is figuring out and being able to do so consistently. This is the piece that we talked about this a little bit, that this idea of you have a conflict with your partner and you talk about the reason there's a conflict, and then you both pledged to do better and you do for a little while, and then things start to fall off again. And because our attention goes back to it's, cause we're not realigning our values where what's really important. The most important to me is my kids. I need to take care of my kids. Just slapping a bandaid on it rather than right.

Casey:

Fully fixing or as you've said, realigning. But when, when it is that, Kind of back and forth, hot and cold, whatever it it's just, uh, that's clearly just a quick bandaid fix.

Pam:

Yeah. Because we haven't done the inner work to shift. Right. Because that's what it's about. It's not about it's not about if you got on a date night, once a week, it's not about if you find a hobby that the two of you love doing together. All those are great. Those are great ways for you to be together and connect together and it sets you up to be able to do more together. But the truth is you have to shift your value set, right? You have to be like number one on my list is my own physical, emotional, spiritual health, and wellbeing. And then you can go, okay, so now I'm going to, what else? What's number two on the list is a relationship. So. And so then you go what do I need to do? And we kind of all, most of us know, what do I need to do to nurture this relationship? Most of us know we're not idiots. We're pretty, we're pretty bright human beings. Every we've made it this far. So we, we kinda know what we need to do to make relationships better. As far as like tasks, like we need to spend time together. We need to communicate. We need to put each other's needs, uh, make, meet each other's needs a priority. But what we do as moms is we go, oh, in order for that relationship to improve, I need to put that others' needs before my own. Then you get

Casey:

yourself in a real pickle.

Pam:

I know firsthand for sure. Because then that just creates. And you think about just take a moment and all, all of us everybody's listening AC and I hear think about a time in your relationship with a significant relationships, significant other, or whatever, where you're decided you're going to put their needs before your own. So then you put their needs before your own. It's not very, it's not very long before the resentments start arising because you're not asking of them. We tend to give, we, we do that. We do the, like my reader thing. I'm going to give to you so that you'll give to me in return. And that's, that's not giving freely, right? That's not giving from a place of unconditional love that's conditions. And so when we give from a place of unconditional love and we give freely of ourselves, not with the desire of getting something in return, But giving because giving for us helps to raise our vibration, which it does. As long as it's not followed by reason then, then you just start to feel at peace and it doesn't matter, you get back authentically because the other person is invested in the relationship if they are. And if they're not, those people tend to like kind of fall away in your life. Yeah. If you've ever had friends that you're like, you go through a season with, for sure. And they're super tight and then something shifts for you or for them. And you just kind of fall apart and it's not like a falling out nobody's upset with each other. You just kind of shifts. Yeah. Just shifts. And so when I have people that say to me, yeah, but all of my friends are really negative. I'm like, it's time for a shift. Right. We, we fear that and we don't know how to, we're not great at connecting like vulnerability and connection. And it's hard for us as a society. Even as moms, we tend to connect around our kids' behaviors or like we live in a small town. And so we, uh, we connect with other moms in the town by bitching about the school or the, whatever, the shitty lunch where everybody's got shitty lunch right now, everywhere. They're all awful. Everybody, every parent that I talked to everywhere all over the, uh, Northeast coast is oh yeah, my kid's school lunch sucks right now. So you connect around those things that you'd like, those are. And so you never get to the deeper and more meaningful stuff. And so they, you start to, you start to believe that that's where you are. Right. Who am I? I'm a, I'm a mom. How about when you meet the people that are like, they don't even tell you their name. They're like, I'm Timmy's mom and you're like, Timmy's mom, what's your name? Okay, great. Yeah. We can see it. And the more we're aware of our own shit, the more we start to see it, other people we start to go oh, that person's just disconnected with self they're not, they don't, they don't see what's happening, so, okay. We're gonna hold that against them,

Casey:

navigate them or that situation differently because of it. Yeah.

Pam:

But it comes down to the bottom line and all of this is you've gotta love self. You've gotta be like, I love me enough that I'm willing to want more. I'm willing to accept nothing less. And I'm going to start like carving out and designing because we're all responsible for our own stories. The beauty of this is that if you're struggling with identity, I'm just going to say this one more time. You write your own story. So you get to write yourself as the character that you want to be. That's very exciting, right? Like you, you get to just decide. You're like, oh, that's the character I want to be. And pull out a pen and paper and start writing who the hell am I? And when we, when you go, who the hell am I going? What are all my old stories? And what are the things about me that I don't like? Or what am I struggles are going? Who do I want to be? Love that? And then you can draft it. And then you, then this is the process you go, all right. So that story, I wrote about my future self, the self future, as in one second from now, uh, if I am that, Pam, what would she do in this situation to decide?

Casey:

That's really, it, it is exciting. It's exciting. Yeah. Like I don't, you don't have to sit in being the same

Pam:

tired version of yourself. Yeah. And how many of us are just exhausted all the time? Like I heard it in my 13 year old probably the beginning of the school year. She was still 12 and she came home from school and she was like, oh, I'm just so tired. Is that coming from? It's we wear it as a badge of honor. The more

Casey:

tired you are, the more you've done or,

Pam:

whatever thing that you're

Casey:

quote unquote better because here,

Pam:

yeah. Oh, you think you have a bad, cause you couldn't, you've woke up at 4:00 AM and you couldn't fall back asleep. Well, let me tell you, I didn't go to bed until whatever, right? Like how often do we sit in those stories? I mean, where are those badges? I can't, I mean, how many times when your kids were like, like still infants, not sleeping through the night ages that you were with other parents and what got talked about was not just the kids not sleeping, but like I got two hours of sleep last night. Yep. I hear my husband do it like, cause he's not a great sleeper. He'll be like, I only got an hour of sleep last night and I did all these things. Yeah, we have a gold sticker on your forehead. He's I'm not looking for a gold sticker. And I'm like, but I feel like maybe you can get a gold, gold star and then maybe that'll help. But we do it to justify. Right. I'm really what I'm trying to reel. It. I'm really trying to say is I'm tired and I'm going to bed even though it's eight o'clock I last night at eight o'clock mother's mother's day, I was like, I want to go lay in bed. Jeff had gotten like stuff for dessert. And I was like, I don't want dessert. I'm going to bed. And I went upstairs to lay the bed. Marley came up. We called my mom while I was laying in bed for mother's day. And I was like, I have no zero guilt about it. Like I'm not, I didn't need it. I don't need to justify it. I don't need to have any excuses to why I need to go to bed. But think of how many times in your life, since you've been a mom that you're like, I'm so tired and I need to go to sleep and you feel like you need to justify it to the world. Yep. A hundred percent. Like with the list of I haven't been feeling well, my allergies are bad. I think we're fighting a thing, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I didn't sleep last night. It's been a rough week for sleep around here. Like whatever, all the different things that we say when we say it as it, like, why can't we just be like, I want more sleep. I love sleep. Yeah. I will just be a 1000% honest. I love sleep. I've always loved to sleep. I apparently was a good sleeper as a little and like everything in life. If I had the choice between anything in sleep, I would choose sleep. It doesn't matter what it is. It's just, it's just, it's just who I am and that's, I embraced that hardcore. But when we can just be like, it's cool, I can, I can have whatever, whatever luxury I want to have. And if that means going to bed at, when you put your kids to bed, It doesn't make you less of a quality parent or whatever might make you a better parent. Yeah. Right. Going back to that, like asking yourself what you need and then doing the thing that you need. What do I need right now? And if you're looking to shift like mindset perspective, trying to figure out how to have more positive experiences, one way that you can do that is by when you lay in bed at night, thinking about, uh, like positive experiences that you've had, and it could be positive experiences you had that day. It could be like something that you're like, these are the things I'm grateful for. It could be positive experiences in relationships. It could be positive, uh, experiences with self. Like maybe you had a win in your own, uh, your own story. And so before you go to bed, focusing on picking one thing to focus. And feeling the, the joy, the celebration of that, and then going to sleep. And then when you wake up in the morning, come back to that experience. Come back to the, what was the thing I thought about last night, you review it, you celebrate it again emotionally. You don't have to if you're laying in bed, you don't have to get up and jump around, but you're like, it feels so good to just be in this space, whatever the space is, and then start to watch how that shifts at will everything. It shifts everything like, think about if you woke up feeling amazing, like joyful and, uh, in a space of celebration, how would that change your morning with your kids? How would it change your morning with yourself? How would it change your morning with your spouse? How to change your, the next thing after, getting the kids out of the house or whatever, how would it, how would, how would you show up for yourself differently if you were a very positive,

Casey:

trickle down?

Pam:

Yeah. And it doesn't take, it's not a lot of. Yeah, it doesn't take even rewriting your whole story. You can be like, uh, I had a suck Fest day, but here's one highlight, right? I'm going to focus on my highlight. We focused on the highlight. Then tomorrow you get more of those highlights. You have more of the things that you're wanting to experience. I had this conversation with Marley on, uh, I don't know, some day this weekend, we were talking about the law of attraction and she's she likes to hear about it. She likes to talk about it. And then she likes to roll her eyes about it when, when I call her out on things. But there is a component of if you teach your children, if your kid, if we all know from a really young age, which we do, and then we get a trained out of us. If we all know that if we focus on the. And we focus on what we want to experience more of, and I'm just using the language positive. It doesn't, you don't have to qualify it as positive or negative, but what do you want more of, if you focus on the things that you want more of, you're going to get more of the things that you want more of. And this is a, this is a tough one for us moms, because we don't feel deserving of anything extra. But like money, you are deserving of, uh, an extra 10 grand in your bank account and it's okay to want it and it's okay to celebrate it. And it's okay to be joyful about it before it gets there, because that aligns with the energy, what it would feel like to arrive. Okay. If that's your thing, right? So you're, if you're an entrepreneur, if you're starting, if you're worrying about money and you're like ask yourself the question, money is something that we worry about all the time. It's also, by the way, from a research perspective, money is the number one destroyer of relationships like with our intimate partners or that's what we fight the most about is what people get divorced for most often is financial shit. And so if you're like, I'm stressed about all these financial things, which is another component of running a household and being a mom and worrying about everything under the sun. Right. And what's interesting is that we worry about it, whether we have it or not, because if we don't have it, we were about not having it. If we have it, we were worried about losing it. If we have a lot of it, we worry about something else taking. It doesn't matter, right? Doesn't that give you a$5 or$5 million, right? Because you have$5. You're like, I gotta hang on to this tight. And if you have$5 million, you know what I mean? When we see this in our culture and the taxes, and don't take my money that when you stop and you go what is the vibrational feeling of wanting and receiving? If I want to be, uh, free of all external debt. Right. Which means I don't own my own house. I don't own cars or credit cards or any of that. Any of the things that we owe money on like what will that, what will it feel like? So here's the language. What will it feel like when that happens? Versus

Casey:

what would it feel like

Pam:

it, if it happened? Right. So then you just lean into the feeling as one example, right? There's millions of things. If you're like, I want to feel like, uh, my relationship with my significant other is loving and connected. What will that experience feel like? Well, how will, you know, it's loving and connected? What does all that look like? And then you just lean into that. And so if, for instance, if when we talked a little bit about love language before we got on I know that my husband feels, uh, positively if I physically touch him and it could literally be walking through a kitchen while I was doing dishes and just like running away in the wall back as if I would have rack of clothes it doesn't have to be anything, but I know that. And I'm like, okay. So if I were. Uh, in the place that I want to be connected and loving space, then I would be freely giving of that. And so what would that look like? Well, that means that when I walk through the kitchen and he's at the kitchen saying that I walked by and I like just touch him, touch his back. Or like he's sitting at the table and I go over to look at something. I put my hand on his shoulder instead of not, you know, those types of things, which are not big, but they can feel big when we have, when we feel like we have so much on us already. Totally. And so I'm not saying add all this shit onto yourself. I'm saying like, love you first decide what that feels like. And then how do you show up as that being provocative? Lack of better terms. Love it. Yeah. It's messy. It's all messy. There's not one answer. This is which is why we like say all these things, right? Cause there's not one answer. It's not the same answer for you. That is for me as it is for the next person or person down the street. But there's components that work and, and the truth is law of attraction works. I mean, believe it don't believe it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you believe it or not. But a recognition that like attracts like, so whatever you're putting out there into the world, you're gonna get more of back. So if you're swearing at people, as you're driving down the road, flipping them off and cutting people off, that's what you're gonna get. And we talk about this. We Marlene, I had a conversation about this recently. We have an old family friend that has, I don't know how many times have totaled cars and bed and accidents. And, and she's are they just really bad drivers? And I'm like, oh, they just expect the worst. And every situation. And if that's what you expect, let's hear it again because the universe is that's what you're thinking about. Here you go. Here's why, so you just expect that all situations are going to work out in your favor or whatever that is and they do. And that includes getting clarity on who you are, who you want to be. Absolutely. Yeah. So they are there we are today. I know a lot of identity of self as a hard one. Right. Identity is self is like, it's heavy because there's so much shit mixed in there. I think that the biggest, I think part

Casey:

of why it feels so intense is because everything else in life is attached

Pam:

to it.

Casey:

There's so many components that are an extension of that, of you.

Pam:

It's your whole life. It's your whole world. It's your immediate

Casey:

world. It's your day-to-day life. It's the people in it. It's the people that you have, or have the potential to be connected with in the

Pam:

future, your future career,

Casey:

whatever. But so much of it stems from us. It

Pam:

also, it all stems from us. It all stems from us. And we are the author of our own life. I don't care. Who's written your story up until this point. And if somebody else has written your story up until this point, it's because you handed them the pen, take it back. It's that simple and start writing the story there. Start writing the story of you. Can you just sit down today and you pull out a notebook and you say, and you title it, the story of me and you just start writing that out. What does that look like? And then it gets easier and easier to go out and do the things that you want to be doing, or to go crawl into bed. If that's what you want to be doing, it doesn't matter. You get to decide. And when you do all those things, then you get to show up better for the people in your life. Totally. Yeah. I know. Crazy stuff, crazy stuff. All right, guys, if you are feeling inspired of the things we're talking about today, let us know. We'd love to hear from you and as always let us know if there are things you want us to talk about because, uh, this is expanding. We'll be a Facebook group coming soon. So keep an eye out for that and, by all means express what you want and expect it in return. Take care. Bye.