The Good Enough Mother

This episode is about injecting passion, energy, and power into you as listeners and as mothers. I open up difficult and controversial conversations around the lack of evidence-based information and practice that underpin many of our mainstream understandings of parenting and child-rearing. I talk about the paradoxical ways that in being ‘good enough’ mothers we can both strive to grow while also being content with where we are. We not only let go of the ideal of perfect motherhood when we embrace being good enough as we are, but this is also an act of resistance. And through this resistance of external standards of ‘perfection’ we are modelling for our children how to be authentic, flawed, resilient, whole human beings. In this episode I discuss all of this and more, and hope to communicate the ways that we can both critique socioeconomic structures that make our lives as mothers harder, while also encouraging you to reclaim your maternal power even as we live within these structures.

The move into a new decade is a great opportunity to harness this time and energy to be intentional about what you want for the year ahead and who you want to be. In this episode I share with you the intentions I set for 2019 – which ones worked and why, and which ones failed, and why! I think an important part of moving forward consciously is to look back at where we have been. Not with judgement, but with curiosity to see what we can learn to support our growth moving forward. In this episode I share 5 strategies for setting and living out your intentions, goals, or ambitions for the year ahead. Accompanying this episode a free goal guide that you can download here https://linktr.ee/thegoodenoughmother

This time of year and the festive season can bring pressure, expectation, sadness, a bubbling of grief, intense gratitude and joy, and so much more. Often, the emotional and physical load of organizing communities and families in this season falls on mothers’ shoulders. I encourage you to think of yourself as a ‘rebellious mother’ this festive season, offer some tips on how to embrace this idea, and recount research around what makes for a ‘happy’ holiday season. I talk about the importance of co-regulation and what to do when your children (and you) become dysregulated in social settings. In cultivating self-awareness around our triggers, we can come to see how we can flip our understanding of dysfunction to be purposeful for our own growth, self-development, and practice of gratitude and perspective.

Note: Trigger warning that there is discussion of my Dad’s death and some of the acute challenges that came with his illness. If you’re a listener with MND/ALS or support a loved one, please be mindful of this and know that you can reach out for support. There is a power in story-telling that goes far beyond what we recognize and acknowledge. It is the thread that ties us together as human beings and I believe narratives have the power to transform and inspire. In this episode I share a personal story from my family. It includes the story of how my parents came to be together: the greatest love story I’ve ever known. I talk about how my Dad went from the depths of depression to finding hope and a renewed sense of love and life through my Mum, and how together, they took on the biggest fight of their lives. Dad’s terminal diagnosis of Motor Neurone Disease gave him 3-5 years to live. Together they fought against the ravishes of the deteriorating disease, stripping my Dad of all independence, but he continued to live a thriving and rewarding existence: for 20 years. Their story demonstrates the importance of perspective. The power of love. The lifeline of hope. The realities of grief as a part of life. And the ultimate importance of never giving up. I hope from this you draw inspiration, strength, and resilience that you can enact in your own life.

Feeling guilt as a mother is almost part of an initiation process into modern day, intensified motherhood. There can be guilt from the moment of conception right through to being the mother to an adult child and a grandparent. Mothering more than one child is laden with feelings of guilt at the obvious impossibility of meeting every child’s needs right when they arise. This episode unveils what I think Mum-guilt is really about. I encourage greater self-awareness about what your feelings of guilt actually mean, and warn against the dangerous aspects of guilt that perpetuate a cycle of self-censoring judgement, and keeps the myth of idealized, perfect motherhood going. I offer 3 strategies for how to flip the narrative of your guilt to see it as purposeful, and come up with your own version of ‘good enough’ mothering. Reframing our understanding of maternal guilt can be fuel for transformation, remind us of our inherent power and agency as women, and encourage acceptance of our feelings of ambivalence that are an normal part of mothering.

You acquire certain skills when you mother children, and ‘maternal thinking’ is one of them. I describe this concept to you as a way of re-valuing the work of motherhood, and relate it to the weight of responsibility mothers carry in caring for children and running a household. This weight can be talked about in terms of ‘emotional labour’ and the ‘mental load’, and also relates to ingrained and ongoing sexism. I draw on research to explain the critical yet invisible burden of these responsibilities that is largely carried by mothers. In doing so I delve into a discussion of ‘maternal gatekeeping’, why it may keep you feeling stuck and alone, and how it relates to the pressures of ‘perfect motherhood’. I finish by speaking about the gendered division of care and domestic labour and the fraught nature of ‘choice’.

Big emotions from our little humans can make this season of motherhood so challenging, and parenting from a place of respect and self-awareness can often feel like an uphill battle. In this episode I dispel some of the myths of toddlerhood to give you insight into neurologically typical, ‘normal’ developmental capacity for young children to regulate their emotions. I reveal why ‘tantrums’ are purposeful and why you might like to actually encourage them! I critique some of the ‘peaceful solutions’ sold to mothers that buy directly into the ‘good mother’ myth, while giving personal insight into my greatest ‘discipline’ challenge as a mother. This episode is designed to alleviate guilt, lessen feelings of stress and anxiousness around disciplining, and give you some step by step tools you can try out to ground you on a path of connection with both your child, and yourself.

This episode uses the motif of contraction and expansion to show how all of our lives mirror this process and cycle of challenge and growth. I connect the threads of birth, new life, childhood, major life transitions, old age, death, and grief. In doing so, we delve deeper into the role that contraction has to play in our lives – including through emotions such as anxiety and stress – and I offer you an exercise to demonstrate this relationship. This process invites greater introspection and self-awareness about how challenge can be a catalyst for transformation. As an example, I point to the transition to motherhood and the question mothers wrestle with about ‘going back to work’ and how they see themselves and their identities as tied to their occupations. I look at the process of ageing and how the ways we treat our elderly highlight the discomfort we actually have with transformational growth. I also share a personal story of my own state of grief to give you insight into the lessons our bodies have for us if we tune in.

This episode is a follow on from episode 8, which spoke about birth as a feminist issue, the cascading nature of interventions, and the latest in Australian birth research. In this episode I give insight into some harrowing accounts of birth demonstrative of the widespread issue of psychological and physical birth trauma. I talk about why the #metooinbirth movement needs to gain momentum and publicity, as well as the significance of the place of birth and care provider chosen or allocated.

This episode is the first in a series of 2 that has been released following the release of a major research study, drawn from data that spanned 13 years and followed over 1 million births in Australia. I unpack some of the results from this study, critique the problem with ‘choice’ framing in the birthing context, and talk about the cascading nature of interventions in the birth system. Based on Milli Hill's "give birth like a feminist" book, I answer what giving birth like a feminist really looks like, and why birth is a feminist issue.