Your Motherhood is Only as Powerful as Your Personhood - Revisit

People will tell you: a baby changes everything. What no one tells you is how much you change — and how hard it is to love yourself when you don't quite recognize yourself anymore. In this conversation, Dr. Becky sits down with poet and author Cleo Wade (Remember Love) to talk about what it actually feels like to lose yourself in early parenthood — and what finding your way back looks like. They go deep on postpartum depression, the guilt that masquerades as gratitude, why the hard thoughts hit so much harder than the hard moments themselves, and the small, unglamorous practices — a walk, a shower, two words on a post-it note — that can become a real turning point. Cleo's line has stayed with so many parents who've heard it: your motherhood is only as powerful as your personhood. This episode is a reminder of why that's true — and a guide for how to actually live it.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  After my first baby was born, I treated my own recovery like a complete afterthought. If the baby needed something, I showed up immediately. If I needed something, well, it would wait. But research shows that when parents have the support they need, they're better able to care for their children. Taking care of yourself isn't separate from parenting. It's a huge part of parenting. That's why I love Frida's mission to prepare women for the realities of pregnancy, postpartum, recovery, and feeding. Frida creates solutions for the moments that often catch moms off guard. The Postpartum Essentials Kit and Breastfeeding Survival Kit help women feel more prepared for those early weeks of motherhood. Be motherhood prepared and shop Frida at Amazon, Target, and Walmart today.

• 0:43Speaker 01

  Hey, it's Brooke at Good Inside. A quick note before we get started. This week, we're bringing back one of the most beloved episodes in our catalog, Your Motherhood is Only as Powerful as Your Personhood, a conversation between Dr. Becky and poet and author Cleo Wade. And we're doing it right now for a reason. If you ever had a hard night with your baby and caught yourself thinking, I'm doing this wrong, or why does this feel so hard when everyone else seems fine? You already know that the problem isn't really the hard moment. It's the story that follows it. That quiet voice that turns a rough night into a verdict about who you are as a parent. So, we built a brand new podcast around that exact experience. It's called Rattled, because it's for those moments when new parenthood shakes you. Every

• 1:26Speaker 01

  episode, we go into the honest, disorienting, often beautiful mess of new parenthood, because sometimes you just need to hear someone else name the thing you're feeling. Alongside the podcast, we're opening up something much bigger, a whole new home for the baby years inside the Good Inside app. Sleep support, lactation expertise, workshops, tools, all of it designed around one core belief, that a parent who feels held can hold their baby. That when you feel sturdy, everything else gets easier. Which is why today's episode still hits the way it does, because Cleo Wade said it perfectly, "Your motherhood is only as powerful as your personhood." She and Dr. Becky go deep on what it actually feels like to lose yourself in the baby stage, and what the path back looks like. Subscribe

• 2:11Speaker 01

  to Rattled by Good Inside, link is in the show notes, and share it with new parents and parents-to-be in your life. And now, Dr. Becky and Cleo Wade.

• 2:22Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  In your recent book, Remember Love, which is so exciting, you really focus on recovery and you talk about really kind of reclaiming yourself. Let's start with that.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  Well, as I was writing this book, I kind of, in a way that was very different than any other kind of way I approached writing before, is I really felt like, okay, I kind of tried to place myself back to moments in my life where I felt that I was stumbling around in the dark, looking for a light and realized I had to turn it on within myself. And I tried to figure out how to follow those breadcrumbs and remember that no matter how faint that kind of light feels, it is still there. There's this one page that actually started out as a joke, really, where I write about how there's the old Motel 6 commercial that's like, "We'll leave the light on for you."

• 3:20Speaker 02

  But that actually, in some of my toughest moments, whether it was really contemplating repacing my life, you know, when I found that my life was moving at a pace where I couldn't find or access freedom and joy, even though I was attaining a lot of exterior goals. And so when I felt that I lost track of myself, or I felt that I couldn't feel like myself in moments of whether that was postpartum depression or high, high-key anxiety, I'd kind of hear that voice, "We'll leave the light on for you." And I really kind of would always think, how did I, you know, the light has been left on in there somewhere

• 4:03Speaker 02

  for me. And so much of this book is how I journeyed back and finding it, whether it was through hearing somebody say something like the two words, "Remember love," that I'd heard, and then using those as an anchor to kind of change my thinking around things. And as you know, because I think you teach this so well, is that all change starts with your inner dialogue. The first change you make is the new thought you take.

• 4:33Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  That's so powerful. I want to ask you more about that, but I don't want to zoom too far past something you said. And you said something, then you also said postpartum depression. You didn't say these things totally connected, so I just want to see if I got it right. You talked about the loss of freedom and joy while you were seemingly ticking off maybe various accomplishments. And the thing I was thinking about before you even said postpartum was so much of the experience of becoming a mom for the first time is like, it does feel like an accomplishment. Like, a lot of people, like, I did this. I had this baby. I'm supposed to, I'm supposed to do this. This is like a milestone in my life. This is a huge, you know, developmental leap for me, you know? I'm an adult in a

• 5:18Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  different way. And yet, having a baby in terms of like, freedom and joy in those early days, I mean, are not there.

• 5:30Speaker 02

  Well, Anne, here's the thing. Gratitude that comes from a place of guilt is not gratitude. So, you talk about this in a great way in your TED Talk, when you're saying, you're joking about your son, and you're saying like, and if you, if you could just be grateful for this, but like, when gratitude is attached to guilt, it's not gratitude, it's something else. And so, what happens in the postpartum depression is every time you're trying to get to gratitude, you're doing it from a place of guilt.

• 5:59Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Can you dive into that? Yeah.

• 6:01Speaker 02

  You say, I can't, I should be grateful. I mean, I have a baby. I have a this. I have a that. It's, maybe, the baby's healthy. I'm healthy. I'm, and so, you think that you're trying to get out of postpartum depression, but you're actually, because it's, you're reaching from gratitude from guilt, you're always at a deficit. You can never get above ground. And so, the thing is, is that gratitude is only ever attached to the actual present moment and no stories. And that's what makes it spiritual. That's what makes it magical, however you want to look at it. That's what makes it that thing that's very, very, very present. And that's why, you know, as you know, most shrinks like to say, if you're

• 6:46Speaker 02

  thinking about the past, you know, you're depressed. If you're worried about the future, you're anxious. But if you're in the moment, you're present, because in the present is where we access gratitude. It has no stories. It actually is just that, like, The sun still came up. The sun comes up. I'm okay. I can be okay. I believe okayness is possible. There's gratitude there.

• 7:11Speaker 02

  Where did the guilt come from postpartum? I think the guilt comes from you want it what you have. Why isn't that making you feel, you know, the way you feel is wrong, right? And that shame, that's guilt, and then they're kind of braided, I feel. You're so happy you have your baby. Why aren't you feeling like yourself? And I think also, you know, the hard part is that everyone tells you a baby changes everything. And I think we don't know how to kind of wrap our heads around how much motherhood changes you, and that change is just hard.

• 7:53Speaker 02

  And it's funny, I was just saying this to a friend. It's like, the act of change is easy. The feelings that accompany change are so difficult. So, you know, writing your signature is easy. The feelings that come with signing your divorce papers are impossible. You could even go so far as to say that the labor, the childbirth, which is not easy, but it's actually easier, that change of the baby coming into the world is easier than the feelings that accompany having a child. And so I think that there's a lot that, you know, the feelings that come with the change that happens when you go into parenthood, I think that's something where there's not

• 8:34Speaker 02

  quite enough space held for us to live in the contradictions and complications. We kind of think we should have a much narrower range of feelings. So we don't even have spaces for it, right? We don't even have a space to say, you know, we're kind of, that's opening up more and more. But, I mean, we barely have a space to say like, what we actually do when we're breastfeeding. You know, you and I have talked about that with our friends of like, I'd be like, you know what, everyone was like, yeah, I breastfed for 10 months, but nobody told me they were supplementing. And I kept being like, when I had no milk, I'd be like, how are they doing this? Like, some is coming out, but it is not enough to sustain this kid. And like, what the hell? Yes, we all deserve our privacy. Yes, we should all walk the line between privacy

• 9:19Speaker 02

  and secrecy and offering help to each other, I think.

• 9:24Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  But the stories we tell each other actually really impact the range of feelings we believe we should have.

• 9:31Speaker 02

  Big time. I mean, anytime someone says to me, "I'm struggling as a new mom. How were the early days for you?" The first thing I say is, "It's so damn hard, and so start there." Start with like the honesty, like start with like, a friend had texted me earlier today telling me something that was really hard she was going through. And, and she was like, "I'm crushed, but I'm okay." And I said, "Actually, just start with, 'I'm not okay. This is really hard and I'm so sad.'" Because the honest moment of "I'm not okay" is actually the only way to get to okayness. Like, you just can't skip the step. You, you just prolong the ability to land in okayness.

• 10:15Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  I, I'm thinking about my answer when, you know, people said, "What were the early days like?" I said, "Completely unenjoyable." That's what they were like for me, for me. And I think some people actually, you know, go back and forth between enjoyable and unenjoyable. But I definitely was kind of in the group of like, "The baby stage is, I don't know what I'd say. It's not for me. It's not my favorite. It's not where I thrive. I, I didn't love it. You know, I, I really, really didn't." And yeah, every time I tell someone that, and now I guess I'm telling everyone who listens, "Yeah, the baby stage was unenjoyable for me. I'm not even caving on it. Period. Done." Right? Um, hopefully that, you know, means at least one more person saying, "Oh, like, I guess this is an okay way to experience this stage." And it doesn't mean, "This is the type of parent I am. This is not

• 11:00Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  the way I'm gonna always feel about my child. This doesn't mean anything about me, or my kid, or our connection." It means, like you said, actually, "In this moment, this moment is unenjoyable." And there happens to be a lot of these moments for this stage.

• 11:13Speaker 02

  And between the sleep deprivation and the hormones and everything else, you don't feel like yourself. And there was real pain, there was for me, there was real pain in feeling like, "I wish my kid could get to know the real me." Like, and I, and I wrote in Remember Love, you know, it's, it's, um, "I thought I knew how to love myself, but I know, I knew how to love myself when I felt like myself." It's really hard to love a stranger, especially when change has turned you into the stranger. And so for me, I was using the tools to keep the person I knew how to love maintained. Like, that was the self-care toolkit I was using.

• 11:56Speaker 02

  And I didn't realize that I would have to radically change how I was supported, how I gave myself grace, the thought patterning I had around productivity, and so many things in order to actually give myself care when I didn't feel like myself.

• 12:11Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  You're so talented in using words to describe very, very complex, in some ways like nonverbal experiences that we have. So I know there's a lot of people listening who are experiencing, have experienced postpartum depression. Like, how would you describe what that felt like? Or what it was experienced like by you? Because I think your words, they do. They just have so much power to help people, like, you know, feel understood.

• 12:43Speaker 02

  Well, I think first and foremost, I'd say that no matter what my experience is like, yours is unique to you. And I think that really loving yourself in a way that allows for you to witness how you feel at any given moment without judging it is how you can understand what you're going through and ask for the right help for what you're going through. And so, you know, I hate to kind of generalize the feeling of postpartum. But I can say that I think postpartum depression is not so dissimilar than other types of depression or periods of depressive waves

• 13:27Speaker 02

  where you really do feel that how you are in relationship with yourself and those around you is just off. And you're wondering why.

• 13:45Speaker 02

  Things that usually either bring you joy or bring you ease do not. And you feel very disconnected from the things that make you feel like yourself and light you up. And I think we all have those kind of little sparkly things where we could be,

• 14:04Speaker 02

  you know, it's like the thing that makes you laugh out of nowhere, or the thing that kind of is that like, you know, triggers or whatever that built in happiness I do feel that we all have and have access to kind of lights up. I think it's just a lot harder for those things to light up. And it's really hard to hear anyone rationally tell you why you shouldn't feel that way. So I think that one of the ways I think we know we, it's a kind of a surefire sign. We could use a little support or help is if we feel a little triggered by somebody saying, this might help. And if we feel like the idea of help feels almost like an affront to what we're going through. That's to me, how I always know that I'm like, I need support.

• 14:47Speaker 02

  I need a shift because someone's offering me a tool and it's pissing me off. And, and, and like, that's just, why, why would that be something that's pissing me off?

• 14:58Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Mm hmm. There's such a powerful nuance there. I think that's a really important reflection because if it's from the right person, who you really feel like truly does love you and has your best interest. There's something about the lifting out of this kind of emotional state you're in that, yeah, that makes you angry, right? And I think, I think the nuance is we all need to hear from people and we need to say to ourselves, I'm allowed to feel this way. My feelings are real. My feelings are real. My feelings are valid. I'm not making this up. I believe myself. And, right, that's on one side, that like validation and. Yeah, it could be a good idea to get some tools and skills. Not because my feelings aren't real, but because this is not a great way to feel

• 15:42Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  on ending days.

• 15:44Speaker 02

  And also because the people in your life who love you, no matter how much they love you, they don't see the invisible churning inside of you. And I think that's what creates the anger. So I think you have this part of you that's churning to like, get out of this. And you're treading in water and you're like, I don't want to feel this way. It doesn't feel good. I don't feel good. I don't feel like myself. This isn't working. Nothing's working. When does it lift? How does it lift? How does this, like, how do I think again? When will I laugh really hard again? When will I identify with anything other than tired? Do you know? And so I think that there's, no one sees that in your head and in your heart all day long, those thoughts are on a loop and they just rumble inside of you.

• 16:24Speaker 02

  And it's a pretty, I feel like, kind of violent feeling because they're just churning and churning. So that's why I think we get triggered by someone saying, would you like to try this? Or maybe you should try talking to your therapist twice a week instead of once. You're like, because in your head, you're like, aren't I doing enough? You have no idea because they do. They have no idea. Because I do feel that our bodies do desperately want to get out of the funks we get in. I feel that spiritually, you know?

• 16:54Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  So how did you get out?

• 16:57Speaker 02

  So, you know, I had this real, why I called the book Remember Love is, I tell the story in the beginning of I'm in the bathtub. I'm at the height of my postpartum depression with Memphis, my first daughter. And I, I'm trying to do the things you do when you're sad, which are like, what would make me feel better? So I'm like, I'm going to get in the bathtub. The bathtub makes me feel better. I'm going to put on a podcast. I'm going to put on Tara Brock. Tara Brock makes me feel better. But I'm still kind of in this fog, right? And so I'm like, kind of going through the motions because what I at least know is you don't feel good, do the things that make you feel better.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  And I actually have even seen in my life that you can fake it till you make it a little bit with that. It doesn't heal, like you're not going to listen to one podcast or person and it heal everything. But if you do the things that help enough, you see results, I find. So I'm in the tub and I can't, I'm kind of listening, I'm kind of nod. And then I hear her say, remember love.

• 18:03Speaker 02

  And it was as if someone yanked me from the fog, not the depression, but from the fog and put me in almost this bubble of clarity where I could clearly like understand that like it was time for me to start figuring it out. And those words, remember love, it was two words and that's what I needed. Because what I wasn't doing was remembering love and how I spoke to myself every day. Because every day I only identified what I felt was wrong. And I would never do that to a friend. And I realized that for myself, it was always like, why can't you think? Why can't you move faster? Why, why couldn't you get that all done today? Why aren't you spending enough time with your kid?

• 18:46Speaker 02

  Why aren't you able to get it together to like, look cute at dinner? Like, why don't you want? And it was, it was really toxic. And so I got in a post-it note and I wrote the words, please remember love on it. Because even saying please was the first kind of step of kindness I needed. And once I could really identify that first and foremost, I like was not remembering love within. All of a sudden, I felt that I could access and really use the tools. I could slow down, I could ask for extra help. You know, I didn't end up having to, or choosing to have medication to help me. But I know so many people that that has helped.

• 19:31Speaker 02

  But I could just start actually giving self-care to this new person. And I wasn't trying to like, tell her she was wrong. I wasn't trying to shame her, I wasn't trying to. And I could actually say, okay, what do you need? How can I give it to you in a loving way?

• 19:56Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  I recently traveled to Switzerland for work and I have to say, the home I booked on Airbnb really shaped the whole trip. It overlooked the mountain tops and there was this sweet little porch where I could sit in the morning and drink my coffee. If you were following me during that time on Instagram, you saw me post from that exact location. Also, there was just this incredible coffee machine that somehow made my morning routine feel intact, even across the ocean. And I was also just able to get sunshine before a full day of conversations. All those quiet moments in the morning, they grounded me. Oh, and this touch I just loved was I got three bars of Swiss chocolate left by my host, and I can confirm they were all gone by the end of my three days stay. When I travel, I don't just want a place to sleep.

• 20:39Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  I want a place to land, a living room where I can decompress and a space where I can do bedtime over FaceTime and feel at home when I'm away from home. That's why I book homes on Airbnb. It helps me find places that feel grounding, not just convenient, because when where you stay feels good, everything else feels a little better, too. Here's a question parents ask me all the time. How can I help my kid take ownership of their routine? I love this question because owning a routine is such a good way for kids to build independence and confidence. It's why I'm excited to tell you about Yodo, the screen-free audio player for kids. In the mornings, your kid can wake up with Yodo's alarm clock. When your kid gets home from school, Yodo has focus tracks, audiobooks, music, and learning content.

• 21:23Dr. Becky Kennedy?

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• 22:07Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  To me, I always say this about mantras, and I love them for kids, too. It's like they take moments that are so big where your anxiety and thoughts, they just expand and expand and expand, and it gives you something so simple and small to like repeat. There's like a mastery to it, right? So it really puts like a boundary around these like really overwhelming feelings.

• 22:28Speaker 02

  And for no other reason, it's the, it's a go-to to redirect, and we need those. We should not think that our mind is always going to work in our benefit. I think that we are unbelievably absorbent beings, and anyone who lives with children sees that. You see that all of a sudden your daughter... Moves her shoulder in a way you do, or you know, and you never taught them to do that or ask them to do that. And so I think when you realize that we are absorbing in a world that we haven't even quite figured out how to like, create this world that, you know, allows us to love ourselves with ease. So as we are moving in a world and absorbing

• 23:13Speaker 02

  that, our minds are like seeing a billboard, seeing a this, seeing a person on social media, seeing this, and it is triggering things in our brain to kind of think and go and move in a certain way. And a mantra is an anchor. It will yank you from that. And you can actually have discipline around a mantra to, as we said in the beginning, like, make the first change by choosing the next thought. And so it's, I don't think there's anything that does that better than a mantra. I just don't.

• 23:43Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  I totally agree. No, you said this question, like, what do I need? Can I give myself what I need? I would love you to give some examples, because I know some people are like, I don't know what I need. Like, how am I supposed to know what I need? It can feel so big and pressuring, but like, how did you walk yourself through that?

• 24:00Speaker 02

  You can first start with the basics of what does anybody need?

• 24:03Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Hmm.

• 24:04Speaker 02

  What does blanket kindness look like? Like, what does like, you know, my kid is running and falls and scrapes her knee. What does she need? Like, she does not need someone to say, just get up and walk it off. Like, they do not need that. And you'd be surprised how often we're doing that to ourselves. And so I think to say, like, if you, if you're, if you can't, if you don't quite know what's the exact need, or what you think you should even be allowed to need, you know, one of the things I really talk about a lot in this book, and I think the part of the book that's called Worthy Rebellions, is there's like, there's a poem in it that says, you call yourself the glue, but while you hold it

• 24:47Speaker 02

  all together, who is holding you? And in that, so much of that is that we find pride in being needless. I need nothing. Wow, aren't I great? Aren't I lovable? And I think

• 25:04Speaker 02

  First, saying to yourself, everyone should be allowed to need something, especially me, because you're saying it to yourself. So you say, everyone should, what are mine, what would anyone need? And so, and any, any single person needs to, needs to be affirmed that their experience is worthy of tenderness, time and attention.

• 25:28Speaker 02

  Every single person needs it. I don't care what you're going through, whether you're, you know, trauma or hard time is a two or a 10, you need that.

• 25:39Speaker 02

  And so, start there.

• 25:41Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Also, I find a lot of people start a self-care routine through getting themselves water to drink in the morning. And again, I think there's something like, what do I need? I don't know. Everybody needs water, everybody needs hydration, right? And it seems kind of random or very simple, but, but it's actually really not, because you're just getting in a habit of treating yourself as if you need to give yourself things. Right? And if you can start that with water or a mantra, it actually doesn't really matter which you start, because you're just starting that practice.

• 26:13Speaker 02

  Rest, sunlight. There's a part of the book where I talk about how, you know, I just, like, I don't know, but I know enough to give myself cool water on my face, sunlight on my back for a minute, putting my feet in the earth. I, I think that there are these things and, and so much of, kind of what I felt that also really helped me during my postpartum was kind of just this remembering or reconnecting to, I think sometimes we just build so many things with our hands and we, they're, you know, making so many man-made things, that we really forget that our nature is so much more akin to the natural world than it is to like, any algorithm or computer or anything else.

• 26:55Speaker 02

  And so, I really do feel that we are built to break and repair and kind of bloom and then, and we are seasonal and the feelings that come through us are seasonal and we do have these icy winters and things do melt and it freaking rains and it rains and it rains and it rains and then something beautiful happens. It's the best sunset you've ever seen in your life, like, and that is the nature of our lives. And I really felt that one of the first things I really did during, while, while I was like, what do I need? And I was like, I need to go on a walk. And every day, no matter what, I went on a walk. And I didn't, you know, I kind of put music on, but put everything else on airplane

• 27:37Speaker 02

  mode. And I just noticed around me. I just said, like, I just need to, like, I want to notice why, what every tree is doing in my neighborhood. And that actually helped me so much because there'd be days where I'd go on a walk and I'd see a tree that was holding a brown leaf and a blossoming flower at the same time. And the leaf was about to fall and the flower was just coming in and they were both hanging there at the same time. And I, I just thought, this is us. Like, this is who we are. And I felt that so deeply. And that's why nature is such a heavy theme of this book, because the book is about repair and recovery.

• 28:17Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Yeah. You know, I was just brought back to my early days after having a baby and I had to go on a walk around like four, four thirty every afternoon, because if I didn't, like, that's, like, when it was, I had all my kids kind of in the fall. So like, it was always like getting dark around then. And if I was inside my house and then like the darkness literally was coming, it felt like this, like heaviness and this dread of the nighttime. Because that movement, just like, and I think that's something, I don't think I realized it exactly at the time, but that's something I needed. It wasn't so sophisticated. It was walking like three blocks outside of my apartment, going to

• 28:59Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  get something, walking back home, fresh air, seeing people, like, literally experiencing motion in my body. And so I, I just think for everyone listening, like, I think we hear, especially as women, like, what do I need? Ah, oh, my goodness. And like, we should have some, something really flowery or like, really, really complex, like,

• 29:17Speaker 02

  Or it's a spa day.

• 29:19Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Right. Or it's a spa day. It's actually interesting, both of us, like, you know, it's talking kindly to yourself, maybe it's water, but like, movement. And like, it wasn't, it was just a little bit of movement was huge for me, too.

• 29:30Speaker 02

  Movement or kind of building in these times.

• 29:34Speaker 02

  Where your personhood is at the center. And so I think that a lot of the time when you live in a family unit, the other roles are not at the center. And I remember one of my early mantras in motherhood was your motherhood is only as powerful as your personhood. And I think when you go on that walk or, you know, for me, it's so funny you say four thirty because my kids are still so small. And so still every day at four thirty, I have to take a shower because I have to have a minute to myself before the bedtime bath time marathon begins. Um, because they're both, you know, I have a three and a half and a two year old. So they're just both at that age where it takes fucking forever. And they torture you every step of the way.

• 30:16Speaker 02

  Like, you know, and, and that's just all they're into is just torturing you until they're down. And so it's for me, I'm like, I just need that moment. But because it's like, I'm in the shower and I take a long shower. And, and again, it's probably something to do like, you know, you're probably like, I just need fresh air. And I'm like, I just need some water like on my body. And like, I just, and I even bring like a bottle of water in the shower with me. I drink water, I have a shower, I just have that reset before I just go into like the meal and will you eat this and no, you won't eat this and like, will you do this? Okay. If you can wear this princess nightgown and like, and it's so torturous.

• 30:57Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Yeah. Well, I think by four, we're all like out of gas in our car. But like the journey is just beginning.

• 31:03Speaker 02

  Beginning.

• 31:05Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Right? And so, yes, like any, you have to fully refuel like, or you have to at least partially refuel. Right? Cause those moments when we don't, when our kid complains about dinner and then they don't take the bath or they splash water and it's no longer fun. You're just like, I'm going to have to clean up this whole thing. And then you explode. It's not because you're some horrible human who hates their child. That's, it's like, what does the human body do? When you literally have nothing else to give and you're in a position where you have to give and exude patience and all the things like the body implodes. That's just, it's just what happens.

• 31:42Speaker 02

  It breaks down. And that's okay.

• 31:46Speaker 02

  But I think also, we have to just figure out how to allow for our, I think it's maybe like, there's something around allowing for there to be breaks that help you avoid the breakdown. And they think that we just don't really live in, you know, this culture of giving ourselves kind of even these micro moments, like the five minutes actually to like, even if you are so stressed and you can't take the shower, you can't go on the walk, there's probably the five minutes where you can kind of lock yourself in your kind of pantry or in your, in the bathroom and just say like, I'm just gonna take five minutes to just have like,

• 32:31Speaker 02

  be kind to myself and sit down, have some water and not talk to anyone and just because I just, I'm going to give myself this reset. And I think you'd be surprised, like, most people are like, there's no way that could help. But like disrupting the like, kind of flow, when the flow starts to get a little too intense, I think always helps. How could it not?

• 32:56Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  A hundred percent. For me, it like, is sitting down on like, a couch when my kids are calling me. And this is one of my favorite lines, I'd say, I'm not available right now. I'm spending a few moments being still, and that's really important to me. And like, they've learned over time. And like, they used to protest. It was that, is that as good as all the other things? No, but sometimes it was two minutes of like, stillness on the couch and not moving and completing. It, it, it, it did shift what happened next.

• 33:22Speaker 02

  Well, and guess what, as these absorbent beings, I have to say that the only way that they will ever value stillness is by having seen a parent give space and place in the house to stillness. I remember being on tour once and someone saying to me, I never saw my mom sit down a day in her life. She said she worked all day and when she got home, she made our clothes and she cooked and she did. So she's like, the idea of self-care is like, makes me sad to think about, because it's so far from like, she's like, when people ask me to get there, I'm almost angry. I'm like, how would I know how to get to self-care? How could I ever put myself on my front burner? I've never, I always joke, I'm like, a woman has never heard those words.

• 34:03Speaker 02

  Like, I'm just on my front burner right now, like, no one has ever mentioned the burners unless they're on the back burner. And she was like, but I never saw it. And I said, You know, the greatest gift you could give to your own daughter now is to show her because your struggle in finding places to give yourself care, care being a moment of stillness, a moment to self, a moment of reflection in a world that doesn't try to give us any space to reflect or contemplate because we have constant distraction in the palm of our hands. The only way we can give that to our kids is to model it. It's the only way. We can never tell them, have stillness, have care, give yourself care, take time to yourself, if they never saw their parent do it. It just doesn't work. And I think it's

• 34:47Speaker 02

  hard because most parents struggle with like, how do I really distinguish claiming things for myself in a way so children understand the power of claiming things like time for yourself and rejecting your kids. A friend of mine said that to me once and I was like, you know, well, I think to me, I never let my kids, especially at this age, be the people who determine like what actually happened in the situation as far as an emotion like rejection goes or true, true sadness. So like when my kids are mad that I go away or upset when I leave for work, like I could be like, I've got to go, you know, do this thing for two hours for work. And if my three-year-old is like in hysterics, like, I know that's

• 35:31Speaker 02

  not the saddest she's ever been. I actually know that she can't regulate disappointment. And I also know that children, you know, can't be the people who determine that they were rejected. We have to like really help them and teach them what these words actually mean through a really long span of time. But I think we always want to tie a bow on it in the moment with kids where you're like, actually rejection is something you teach kids for like 20 years to truly understand rejection.

• 36:00Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Yeah. And I, you know, it's so interesting. I've never even thought about it as like rejection. Like, like when I hear it, like, how do you take care of yourself and cope with your kids feeling rejected? I, it's, I guess it's just not the framework I would use, I would say. And it goes back to, you know, you called out a part of your book that was one of my favorites about, you know, the glue and how, you know, if I think about a glue container, which is what so many of us are for our kids. There's no capacity to have a glue container without the container, right? Then it's just glue spilled all over. And so I guess when I think about taking care of myself and self-love and self-care and how my kids might feel about it, I'm teaching them that boundaries are a part

• 36:40Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  of every form of love. There's no relationship where love exists that boundaries between those two people aren't also, you know, an existence.

• 36:49Speaker 02

  Well, I'm surprised that you haven't had someone come to you around the rejection piece. And maybe that's a word that's not often used in it, but to me, the idea of mom guilt

• 36:59Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Yes.

• 36:59Speaker 02

  can only exist because you're trying to avoid rejection. Like, because somehow the rejection is just in there to you in some way, right? So it's like, everyone has that, like, I just left, I got on the plane, and I'm just feeling like the mom guilt of like not being there for bedtime or whatever. And to me, somehow, I think that the mom guilt is just somehow in relationship to you having this idea that you're somehow rejecting your kid.

• 37:29Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Yeah.

• 37:29Speaker 02

  You know, where your child is feeling rejected.

• 37:31Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Yes. And I guess the boundaries are always the solve for everything.

• 37:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 37:36Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Because those are my kids' feelings, right?

• 37:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:40Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Right? Everyone has feelings when you set a boundary.

• 37:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:43Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  Everyone does. Okay, I want to kind of end by asking you, for everyone who's listening here, who I think might be wondering, yeah, I don't, I don't have a practice of self-love. I don't have a practice of self-care. If that's true, probably also they're thinking, I haven't had that modeled for me. What's a first step that's small enough that I might think I can do that?

• 38:09Speaker 02

  Someone recently asked me what was the thing I noticed the most about, or changed for me in my writing since I had kids. And I told them that when you really live with kids, it's so clear that love is your birthright. My children really love who they are, and they don't believe that anything is wrong with them. And they certainly celebrate every part of who they are. And so when you see that from, you know, holding that person in their first breath, that is the clearest thing to me about having a child, is that, you know, loving yourself is like, is your first breath.

• 38:47Speaker 02

  And how do we return there? Because there's just a lot of junk that kind of gets in the way. So I think that first and foremost, I, my love belongs to me through it all at my most fragile, when I feel the most kind of in my power, it doesn't matter, like it belongs to me and I know that for sure. And then I think when you're feeling disconnected from it, you at least like that is when I joke about the Motel 6, I'll leave the light on for you. That is the light on that's for you, is that you know your love belongs to you. And then you can start trying to question, how do I get there? And self-care is really that practice of how do I get there?

• 39:28Speaker 02

  I once wrote this thing that said, if self-love says I love you, self-care says prove it. And it's kind of this way that we say like, well, if I was in a relationship with anybody else, how would I show them? What would I do to make it clear that I love them? I, you know, I attend to them, I really deeply consider them, I'd really see and notice who they were when they changed. And remember love, I wrote, you know, it's simple. Every time you change, get to know yourself again. That is an act of love. That is an act of care.

• 40:05Speaker 01

  The idea of this episode is that the hard moment isn't the problem. The story you tell yourself about it is. That's what we're building in our new podcast, Rattled. Not tips, not checklists, just honest conversations that help you feel less alone in it. New episodes drop every Thursday. Subscribe wherever you're listening or find the link in our show notes. And if you want more than a podcast, if you're looking for sleep support, lactation expertise, workshops, community, Good Inside Now has a whole new home inside the app, built just for the baby years. Because this stage deserves real support and so do you. Thanks for being here. We'll see you next time.

• 40:48Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  You know, parents carry a lot. In fact, data show that most parents spend every waking hour caring for someone else. So if you feel exhausted and stretched thin, you're not alone, and that makes sense. And look, I also know from experience what a relief it is to find caregiving support, finding a babysitter you trust and your kids will have fun with. That makes it so much easier to go back to work, or travel, or yeah, even go on one date with your partner. Care.com makes it easier to find trusted, background-checked caregivers with search and hiring tools you won't find on social media. Whether you need full-time help, or just part-time help with morning drop-off,

• 41:29Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  or after-school care, Care.com can help you find nannies, sitters, and daycares. And you can find the expertise that matters to you. Think homework help, CPR training, or experience with multiple kids. And if you're considering daycare, you can search, compare, and request tours, and could even get a discount on daycare tuition as a Care.com member. If you need more support, Care.com can help. For a limited time, you can use the code BECKY35 to save 35% on a Care.com membership. When it's not you, it's Care.com.

• 42:09Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  You know that feeling when your brain is at full capacity, right? I mean, you have a reminder from the dentist in your email, a birthday party invitation on the fridge, and your kid just texted you about a soccer game they forgot to mention until that moment, and you just cannot remember one more thing.

• 42:25Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  That's where Skylight Calendar comes in. It's an all-in-one digital smart calendar that syncs with Google, Apple, and Outlook to help your whole family see the days and weeks ahead. And I really love the Tasks feature, which is designed to help your kid build routines around things like homework and chores. And when your kid can do those things independently, it's a huge win for everyone in the family. Skylight Calendar is so much more than just a calendar. It's something you can add to your routine to help your family work together. And right now, Skylight is offering our listeners $30 off their 15-inch calendars by going to myskylight.com/becky.

• 43:05Dr. Becky Kennedy?

  That's M-Y-S-K-Y-L-I-G-H-T.com/Becky for $30 off your 15-inch calendar. myskylight.com/becky.