BEING HER with Margarita Nazarenko - 166: How To Be A Mother Without Losing Yourself, Your Femininity, Or Your Ambition

Episode Date: May 24, 2026

Have you ever quietly wondered if motherhood means losing yourself?Your identity, ambition, femininity, relationship, peace, dreams.In this deeply honest episode, we're talking about motherhood, mum guilt, burnout, identity loss, feminine energy, ambition, relationships after kids, and how to raise children without completely abandoning yourself in the process.Because somewhere along the way, women were sold the idea that being a "good mother" means self-sacrifice, exhaustion, over-functioning, and quietly disappearing.I disagree.In this episode, I'm sharing my honest thoughts on:- how to be a present mother without losing your identity- mum guilt and why it can quietly run your life- balancing motherhood, business, ambition, and family- feminine energy after children- why burnout is not a badge of honour- over-functioning, resentment, and emotional exhaustion- relationships after children and why standards matter more, not less- asking for help, support systems, and why support is not failure- how to stay connected to yourself while raising young children- why your children benefit from a mother who is emotionally regulated, fulfilled, and aliveIf you've ever felt overwhelmed as a mother, guilty for wanting more, scared of losing yourself after kids, emotionally exhausted from doing everything, anxious about balancing motherhood and ambition, or like becoming a mother meant losing the woman you used to be.. this episode is for you.Motherhood should expand you. Not erase you.→ Leave a voice message to be featured on the next episode.→ Pre-order Margarita's new book.→ Join The Unbothered 3-Day Intensive→ FREE: The Unbothered Reset: 30 Days to Become Her. Every day for 30 days, you'll receive a short email. Start the 30-Day Reset. Being Her is your no-filter space for woman empowerment, relationship advice, confidence, feminine energy, and living life completely on your own terms.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hello, my beautiful, aspiring business women, aspiring mothers, current mothers and current business women alike. I was going back and forth on the title of this year episode because there are several options on what we could title it. It could be about how I built a brand whilst not losing myself to motherhood, how to not lose yourself to motherhood, full stop. There are many iterations of what this could be and I hopped off a call yesterday with my podcast network and we were talking about my podcast where it's going where we're growing my new audiences hello by the way don't love the word audiences but listeners who lend me their precious gorgeous ear they lend me that ear and they're growing with me we are not centering men as much anymore in fact we're decentering men let that doorknob

hit them with the good lord split them we do we do not need them around. As in I love men. I have a son. I've got a husband. Love them. We have done three years of getting unbothered, which we now fully have embraced, along with said book that has just come out. I have some copies here for you. I've got the gorgeous pink and the beautiful yellow. If you guys pre-order, you will be the first to get them. My publisher is trying to estimate how many people will want copies. And if you understand book publishing, as they print according to demand. So if you pre-order from the link in the bio below, wherever you're listening or watching, you will get your hot little hands, your hot little sexy little hands onto a copy first.

Because they just don't know. Pre-orders tell the publisher, hey, Amanda over here in Iowa wants one. Jenny over here wants one. Maria wants one. You know what I mean? So that's how you get your copy first. Anyway, also, vote. Do we like? the yellow that the European countries went for, or do we like the pink? And if you are listening, then just go on my Instagram and both of them are on there. It's very bizarre to see this book that you've written, all of these words, and hope that it lands in the right hands with the right person, and it changes someone's life because the art of letting go to find yourself is genuinely an art. And back to what I was talking about with my podcast network, they were telling me that

there is a lot more to what I have to share and there genuinely is in terms of the art of letting go to find yourself is not just about men it is also in motherhood before this book here was written about being unbothered in life and letting go to find yourself and stopping control and anxious thoughts and everything basically that I've talked about to do with detachment put into this book the next book was going to be about motherhood and running a bit and being a woman in the modern world because our paradigms, of course, I did not write it because I said, listen, publishers, I'm not ready, have not been a mama long enough. Like, it's a conversation I need to start with my audience and we need to have. And people keep asking. I feel I have somewhat

of a story to say because I've built a brand and a business that is multifigure business. And I have two multi-figure children, two children. And they are alive and the business is. And the business is, alive and I am not number one bombastic businesswoman but I am somebody who's got an opinion and if you want a life like mine and if you see my life and you think wow this looks like kind of tantalizing kind of delicious kind of nutritious I've got a few things that I want to share it comes from psychology it comes from reality and it comes from my trials and tribulations in said sphere of being a woman in the modern world if you never want children and if you never want to be a mom then take every time I say mum as any role in your life that you play that has to require your servitude in a way,

I suppose. Let's say you're looking after elderly parents or you're required to travel with your husband for his work. I don't need you to let me know that not all women want children. I know that not all women want children. I understand that not all women should have children, not everybody should have children or dogs or plants or a house or whatever. Everyone has their own life. So I fully understand that very cognitive being with an understanding of people's life choices. This is for the women who are like me, who are in the comments, who also might not be moms yet, but are fascinated. And I have come time and time again face to face with the fear that women have about expanding themselves as a woman in terms of motherhood and also being able to hold onto their own

identity and not just a career, but their own identity, how not to lose yourself. To lose yourself is such a concept that is so strikingly interesting because what is the self that you are holding on to that you are so afraid to lose? You do understand, even if you do not have children or even if you do not change, you will still lose yourself due to time and aging. I have lost my teenage self in my 20s, not because I had children, but because I was now 20 and not 18 or 15 or 10. Life is a progress. It is like a play or a movie.

The acts change. The scenes change. There is interest and curiosity in every period of a woman's life. But I want to talk about 10 points because I love a little point system. My son is in Virgo, apparently, or Leo. It's in Virgo according to the tropical. And it's in Leo according to the sidereal. So take that as you will.

Anyway, any who, anyhow. my podcast team said to me, listen, we've got a lot to share about motherhood. A lot of us are moms here. Like, let's talk about it. Let's talk about your business. Some of the principles of unbothered motherhood. I hesitate to call it unbothered motherhood because it's like I'm very bothered about my children. That's the one thing I'm very bothered about.

But unbothered in terms of letting go in order to find yourself. If we're going to find ourselves when it comes to being unbothered with men, we're not going to lose ourselves when it comes to then marrying that man and having his children. okay, I will not let that happen. And my story is interesting because my business was built on the back of motherhood. I don't know why it influenced me to do that, but it gave me superpowers, which I am hoping to through the power of osmosis give you. Oh, and before I forgets, before I forgets, girl, I want to tell you something that in the

link in the description today, I'm not only going to put some juicy masterclasses that you should definitely hop on, but I am going to. put a link, okay, because we're going to try a new thing for the Being Her podcast. What we're going to do with our little sexy selves is click on that link. And if you so desire, you can leave me a voice message in order to what extend the length of these podcasts. People want longer podcasts. People want to hear me talk about their real situations. And I often said no, because who would, I don't want to give my opinion and realize situations that I do not have intrinsic intimate relations to okay in terms of what like i don't know the ins and outs but for the sake of uh just

having an unbothered mindset finding ourselves never letting ourselves go being selfish little minkses that we are in developing our lives i'm going to put that link below you record a voice note on my next episode i'm going to play that voice note one or two or three depends on how much we're vibing and i'm going to answer your questions so the questions could be what's your favorite color to my uncle John said that I look funny at Christmas. What should I have replied to I've been married five years and he said this and I don't know what to do. Okay. If you do not want your name.

If you do not want your location, make it up or don't even put it in there. Anyway, thing number one. And by the way, for those who have skipped to this part within the, we're also going to start putting timers in the podcast. So you maybe would have skipped forward. love listening to people talk. So, hey, here we are. How to not lose yourself in motherhood and even perhaps build something more amazing is to not go gently into that good night. Number one, never let guilt eat you alive. Guilt, like many emotions, is almost like a person who has passed out, but you check that they have a pulse and they have a pulse that means they are living.

guilt means that you're a living, functioning, empathic, thinking, feeling, human being. We do not want to get rid of guilt because we are not a psychopath, but we want to mitigate the guilt from eating you alive. Mum guilt is genuinely one of the most manipulative things that can creep up on you. And the way that I mitigated mum guilt is understanding that no matter So what I do, if I work, if I don't work, if I take time for myself, if I go on a night out, if I stay in, if I say that I need space because I feel touched out. My big one was, I would say to my family, like, I need space. I feel, you know, too much.

And then they'd go do something fun and I'd be like, oh, my God, without me. And I know a lot of women don't relate to that. But, man, I've got major phomo when it comes to my children doing or experiencing fun things without me. I don't express it to them, but I always caught myself feeling guilty that I wasn't there participating with said thing. I'm probably, probably fingers crossed coming to America on a book tour. We're just aligning the stars at the moment and the moons and the planets. But my children are coming with me because they want to come and I'm getting help to come with me, aka my husband and maybe someone else in my staff to help me out. And I know that they're going to be going to Disneyland while

I'm doing meetings and I feel guilty and like I want to be there but you don't you don't let it eat you alive. You do not let it stop you like any enemy that faces us in this world. We look at them with strident defiance and we say not today Satan because mother is building a business. The girlies need to get unbothered and the kids will be fine at Disneyland without me. Okay. Or maybe I'll I got to Disneyland, let's be for real. I had to learn that caring deeply about my children is also caring about myself. And I had to learn that guilt can only be mitigated by strong structural approaches. I do a lot with my children.

So there needs to be a thing that you always do with your children, that you do not delegate, that you are, that's your thing, build magic. I read it once in a Swedish kind of traditions book that I found in a small Swedish. shop in Barnes in England and it was something like magic hour or something when kids come home and they lie on their mom put a blanket on the floor like every family does it differently but they eat cookies and milk or this magic time okay that you create for your children you can create magic for your children without being a helicopter parent who is constantly present me I'm very very present my children are very small but I've learned to embrace

fully being active in my work when I have help come over, I'm going and fully being present in my work. And when my children are here, I am putting my phone down. I am with my children. The thing that used to trip me up in the past is trying to multitask work with my children. But the thing that you must understand is I was flustered doing both. But women can do both. We are made to do both. The modern idea of women's work is men's work. When the Industrial Revolution happened, and men because of their hormonal cycle work from 9 to 5. Their testosterone peaks in the morning.

If you know what I mean, you know what I mean. They go to work. It wanes at about 6 o'clock. They come home, relax. They're flat out on the couch, aren't they? Yes, they are because that's when it drops. And they are living in that 9 to 5 cycle. We wanted to be like men and we're like, let me put me in coach, put me in coach.

I want to do the 9 to 5. That bounds us out because we don't have an everyday similar hormonal cycle 9 to 5. we have a 28-day cycle baby girl. I don't know if you knew this. Yes, yes, we do. On our ovulation phases, we are booming, ready to go. Then Luteal phase, we're feeling a bit yuck, then period, and then, you know, all of these things. We wane in a different way.

And you must understand that when we jumped in, put me in coach, into the 9 to 5, yes, we are capable to do it. We can do it. We can, in fact, do anything. But the full idea of women's work and women worked for a very, very long time before, this whole thing about like women deserve a job and rights, which we obviously do. But people used to live in households and everyone worked in the household. The woman worked.

Let's just say your husband was a shoemaker. The woman would work in the store where the shoes would be sold. If your husband was a butcher, the wife would, you know, do the, I don't know what but something, right, within that. And everyone would work in a communal space. children would be taken care of by the elderly. We don't have that anymore. This is a fantasy world, right? But understand your ancestral coding and your ancestral capacity to also work and do things and be active and productive even though you have children. I never had a block in my mind about being

sexy, vivacious, anything other than completely impactful after I had children because where I'm from, very northern town in Russia, all the women had been. children at 20. I did not know, by the way, I came to the UK when I was like six. So it wasn't very long that I understood the Western way of things, but still programmed in my mind from being a little child, all my mum's friends were gorgeous, hot, amazing 20 year olds with kids already. So for me, it was never like, oh my God, I'm going to have a kid and become this frumpy, dumpy troll. No, you don't buy that. We don't buy that over here on the Being Her podcast or on the Being Her universe. We do not buy that. Do not sell me.

That shit. Okay. You're still a vivacious woman. You're still beautiful. I think this is point number four. I'm already going on to it, right? But women quit things they love because of guilt. They stop asking for help because of guilt. They stop resting because of guilt. Not because they are genuinely driven to do the things that they want to do because of the love of it. They feel guilt. And if guilt is driving you, girl, it's going to drive you into hell. Okay. Guilt is not a parenting philosophy. It is a signal that you are alive and you want to be around your children. God or the universe or biology, whoever you believe in, gave you guilt so that you would not walk off from your young child and forget him in the bush. Okay? Understand and thank your guilt for reminding you that you've got a child. You're at a work event. You're writing your book. I wrote my books with my children all young and I was pregnant and all those things and I had to call. carve out time. In the beginning, I did not have money to hire help, and we will go into that in a minute. But I had to carve out those times. And when guilt would come up, like, oh, you should, I don't know, be lying on the floor playing with your child. I'd remember, I'd be like,

guilt, thank you very much for reminding me that I've procreated. I got this. I remember. I've got a baby. I'm good. You're good. And understand, too, that if you do not let, let guilt piss off, right? And get out of your face, you're going to be a half productive human. being, you're going to half-ass everything and it's going to annoy you more. And in the end, your children will not benefit from your self-abandonment. That's point number two. It's very controversial, but it is true that there is no burden greater than the life of an unlived parent. There is no person who grows up and says, I am so glad my parent completely sacrificed themselves into oblivion for me. And it is genuinely the truth that you are a model for your child.

of who they are going to be, the power that they're going to have in this world. You are literally a superhero, a mammoth, a giant, upon whose shoulders they want to stand. And if you're a sacrificial lamb, which has no representation of who you are in this world, they do not believe that they are from a tribe worth revering. Because that is literally what it is. People have sacrificed, fought mammoths, died in the ice and snow. that's probably my memory because I'm a very Nordic person. Yours might have fought off alligators. I'm not sure where you're from. But people really did a lot of labor in order for you to be here,

for your generations to be here. Your child needs to know that they're standing on the shoulders of giants, okay? Children do not benefit from mothers who disappear. They benefit from mothers who are like those memes of tigers standing in front of their cub. They benefit from a strong, feminine energy. Like a volcano, like a tornado, like a storm, feminine energy, chaotic, unpredictable, but powerful. And do not think that if you sacrifice your identity and who you are, your child will be grateful and loved. Your child will have a lack of powerful ancestors to look up to. A woman who is burnt out, who is resentful, emotionally tired, exhausted, quietly grieving her old self is not the kind of maternal blanket that a child needs. okay, this is martyrdom and it's actually a huge burden to put on your child.

Yes, you will not always feel your best. Yes, you will be burnt out after having children. My postpartum with my son, who is now turning six, I almost, like, I don't know what that was. He had colic, it was COVID. I don't know what on earth that was. That was tough, baby girl. But we made it through. And one of the other points that I'm going to make later on is I care more about how I perceived in the eyes of my children.

in terms of fitness, beauty, everything, then I care about what Bob over there thinks online. When I'm posting photos and people before they have kids, they want to look good because they, they want to look good for society and then they have children and they relax. What are you relaxing for? Your children are looking at you. You know, stand up straight. Stop walking like a prawn. How it manifests you start resenting your life if you sacrifice everything.

You become snappy. You lose your identity. You get rage. You get overstimulated. You feel trapped. All of these things are burdened for your children to carry. The goal is not self-sacrifice. The goal is motherhood in the natural, sustainable sense that you are their mother, but you are first an identity and somebody to behold in your wisdom and in your feminine power.

These are all things that can be, you know, expanded on for years. but you came to listen to a jovial podcast about how to, you know, dissent to men. And now you're here being an archetype for your children. If you're the type of person who love social media and shopping and likes to find unique things that you kind of didn't know you needed, but then you can't live without, that is kind of exactly what whatnot is. What Not is the number one live stream shopping app. You can jump on Swipe to Bid, chat with the seller, support small businesses,

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Anyway, number three, support is not cheating. The first thing I did when I got a bit of kibbles, a little bit of money, a little bit of shmoney, got a bag for my work. So the context of my life. People are sold, this bizarre idea that doing motherhood alone is like you're going to get some kind of tick, you're going to get some reward. I don't know where these rewards come from. I've never seen it. I've never seen it given to anybody who self-sacrifices. I've never seen anything like that.

Absolutely not. support is not cheating and by support i mean i know what you're going to say oh i don't have the money for support when i was a stay-at-home mom i was raising my son i didn't i could not work it was covid at the time 2020 i did a diploma in life coaching it wasn't an expensive one i did it online i coached people online i never realized it would be something but as i got more and more clients i had a little bit of money and the more little bits of money I had, the first thing I did was hired a babysitter for a few hours so I could do focused work. Actually, I'm lying. The first thing I did was get a cleaner once a week so that I could be with my child more so then my child got more time with me, right?

And my mom, who was an immigrant from Russia to the UK, got a cleaner when she had two jobs and one of them was working in a chicken shop, okay? She also could not work because she was an immigrant despite having an engineering degree and all these things. She was in her mid-20s and she just had to make ends meet as a single mother, but she's still got someone who helped her out so she could what, spend more time with me. So as I'm spending more time with my child, because I have a cleaner once a week, and I completely, you've got to detach, you've got to let go of perfectionism in the house. Maybe if you're watching this video, you can see some toys strewn around,

something there, something here, I do not care. I do not care. If you want perfect, you've come to the wrong place. You've got the wrong girl. support is not cheating. Having somebody support you does not mean that you are lazy or something is wrong with you. People never lived behind a white picket fence by themselves, a one woman fighting, you know, her household and her children. It is not a reality. You can, and this might be the next podcast we do, with your skills, make extra money. You can. And you must, as a woman,

make a side hustle of extra money. I don't care how much of a stay-at-home mom you are. Even in your essence of stay-at-home-edness, you can make an e-book and how you make it all work. Because God knows I've got a friend who cooks all these amazing meals for her children every day. And I could not think of five to put together. I've asked chat GPC. He's like, yeah, I don't know.

Chicken noodle. I don't know. I don't know. But when I see her, it inspires me. Every woman, you too, has a skill set and a way to communicate something that others do not have. and people want to buy into. It might not be a lot of money, but it will be some money. I can give you a whole blueprint on how to make money as a woman while you're a stay-at-home mom.

Boom-bash-bosh. Even if you're not a mom, you should be making money from home on your skills, okay? Stop buying into this like 9-5 male rhetoric of going to make money. You have a different cycle. You have a different idea of life. Even if you have a 9-to-5 make some side cash because it's not enough these days, is it? So how it looks. you should not be giving your child when they are six months.

I feel my heart breaks for Americans who have to give their children. At six weeks old, younger than dogs are taken away from, puppies are taken away from their mum dog. I think the age is eight weeks. In America, six weeks is maternity leave. God, Christ, Lord, help them. What is going on?

So, this is not to say, put your children in daycare. No, there's a lot of research to say, they should not be going to daycare until a certain age. Do that research. I'm not here to do it for you. We all have different opinions. That is to say you can give one hour of house cleaning to someone else and delegate it. Even if it's a student who's going to come and just help you mop the floors, whatever.

Maybe even if it's a swap, okay? You give your child to a neighbor, then you do a bit of work. You take her child and then she does a bit of work, okay? Outsourcing delegation. That grandparent, you like, oh, I don't like it, that she, you know, gives him mashed potato. when really I like world, stop. Stop this over-controlling, over-analyzing, monitoring of everything. You need to collapse a system that says that alone is the best. It is not the best. We're meant to raise children in a village and the only way that I got through it is, first I hired a cleaner for

an hour, then as I started to make more money and my TikTok went viral, I got someone to look after my newborn while my son went to a few days, a few hours of play school when he was like four. And then I was writing my second book and then I was doing podcasts. And then I've never missed one day of podcasts because I knew that in that hour that someone comes or two or three, the hours have increased as my workload has increased. I damn better be working, girl. I damn better be working. And that is how I've built my business.

My business grew on the backs of my children, not as in like they made the business happen, but because they are my motivating factor. If you use your feminine energy correctly, you will understand that now you are the leader, the matriarch of these people. Turn on your inner Chris Jenner. Turn her on and be like, what are we going to do?

What business am I going to give to my children? How can I be more powerful? Their little eyeballs are looking at me. Honestly, before I had them, I was like, I don't care. Like, what am I making money for? To buy a bracelet? Like, what for? Like, I'm not motivated by material.

things that much. To buy a home, okay, whoopty-do, like, I'm not that practical. So having children really turned it around for me, but that's a whole other podcast. Number four, your business has to fit your season. Stop trying to have some kind of business with 500 people and I'm going to be a billionaire. What are you going to be a billionaire for? What are you going to buy with billions? Like, that's nice. It's very ambitious, very nice. But there is statistics that a lot of women aren't CEOs because having a CEO job is a shitty job. Like it's really, really hard. Not for everyone, but from the majority of people, that level of sacrifice is not worth it. I saw a podcast with Bethany Frankel recently on the Emma Greed podcast, Aspire, and it was very interesting to see the two women

juxtaposing each other. I've read Emma Greed's content. I've not read her book yet. She is amazing. She's a Londoner like me. I love it. But when I watch her and she talks about how you've to be in the office, how you've got to do this, how she sees her children three hours a week. Good on you. Like, I, whoop, raise the roof. I love that for her. But when I was listening to it, I was thinking there is a certain demographic of women who this is really going to appeal to.

If you told me, I can make a million dollars, $3 million a year, but I have to see my children three hours a week. I would not take the job. Why? Not because I think it's bad, each to their own. I'm sure her children are way happier than all children ever existed. is just that you have to want it. Do you want it? And I can see in her eyeballs as she's talking that she wants it. Now back to the Emma agreed. Bethany Frankel interview. Bethany's sitting there saying I make 20 million a year and I work a couple of hours a week because I want to be with my daughter or want to be on a beach. I want this. I want this.

Two completely different life philosophies and systems. Each woman living in a way she wants to live. I'm Bethany Frankel. I'm a little bit on the go, high functioning, messy, you know, in terms of a power process, but I get it done, girl, because I want to live my life. I want to see my children in Disneyland. I'll be damned if I don't do what I want to do. If you infringe on my freedom, I will literally just get off me, you know? So that is the type of person I am. That is how I work. I did not build my business in order to take me away from things I love.

I built it in order to fund the things I love, okay? we are not 24-year-old men with unlimited time. We have so much more to do. You are not born on this earth if you do not want to be a worker to be a worker. Some people that really suits. Like I'm agreed, it suits. You can see she's on fire like her eyes are lit up by it. But if you have interrupted sleep, small children, you're doing a lot.

You want to bake them muffins. Create a business that will work for you. Have a Bethany Frankel mindset. You're going to be like, oh, but I'm not her. But yeah, you could be her. you could be her if you stop having a limiting mindset. You need to get rid of your limiting mindset. Women make a mistake and think that it's either ambition, lean in, Rachel Sandberg,

or I think that's her name, or I'm just going to be at home and all these things. That creates a loop of thinking that you cannot do something on your own time. Not everything requires the time that people have told you. It just requires dedication and full focus. Do you think that the women on my team are all like work-driven, childless women, no. Some of the most productive, and I kid you not,

women on my team are the ones who've got small children. It's just a fact, yeah? You don't need to hustle constantly, compare yourself, mimic male productivity, build unsustainably in order to have a career in children at the same time. You need to build around your capacity and not a fantasy of what you think a working woman looks like, okay? You can do it in your own method, in your own time.

Number five, I refuse an identity collapse. In fact, an identity has to be built after motherhood. What you're losing is your childhood maiden's self and what you're building is your woman's self. The woman's self is different to the maiden self. Yes, of course, it's nice to miss the maiden because she could run around and do whatever she wanted to do, but how much could she really do? Because an old maiden is a strange phenomenon. It's like having an old baby. We all are meant to age through the times that we have from child to maiden to mother by mother. I don't mean actually having children.

I mean like woman, you know, to then older, wise woman. We're meant to go through these ebbs and flows. Do you not think that when you're old lady, when you're in your 70s that you're going to miss like being a teenager? Of course you'll think back and you'll be, oh, that was fun when I did this. I miss being a school girl. Like as in like I remember meeting my friends in this. I used to go to school in inner city school in.

England, the UK, in London, and after school, we all used to meet up on this, like, stairwell and eat greggs and have, like, I can't remember, drinks and then go to Claire's accessories and buy clips. I missed that. What a vibe. How cool, how fun. Do I want to go buy Gregs and clips and sit on a stairwell? No, I don't. No, I don't. No, I don't. No, I don't. I don't. I don't. I want to drink a martini, okay? And write a book and be with my babies and do a book launch. Motherhood is a part of your identity as you grow with it, but it's not the entire thing. That is the thing you need to understand. I am a mother part of it, but I'm also a woman, a creator, a business owner, a wife, a thinker, a person, an unhinged psychopath. No, I'm joking,

I'm not, I'm not, I'm not. As she sips her tea from the Easter mug, I think some women collapse the roles because motherhood feels so overwhelmingly large, and so overwhelmingly time-consuming that they collapse the roles. But what makes me feel really, really sad about women who are moms don't work is that they feel embarrassed to say their moms and don't work. Who got it into your beautiful skull that you need to justify your existence on this earth by saying that you work for Joe McGee at the reception desk? For some man who does accounting, you work at his reception

and that justifies your life on this earth. Can you imagine the amount of propaganda, the amount of movies, things you had to read and see and induce in order to believe that BS, that absolute a BS, that you are only validated on this earth if you work for John McGee's reception desk? That is madness. That's a mad ting, right? That's mad. The fact that you're a mom and you can raise your kids and do fun things and maybe have hobbies and go to the beach, not on the beach, wherever you want to bloody go, pick mushrooms in the forest, but not the poisonous kind. that is who you are. Do not let mum consume you as an identity

because the modern world told you that that is a bracket that just encapsulates everything, right? You start to have no hobbies, no friends, no interests, no adult self. You as a mom need to be the leader of your pack. Where are you leading them? I remember talking of mushrooms. My mum used to, because she's Russian, like to go to the woods, pick mushrooms, then dry them, then all this stuff.

That's my mom's hobby. I used to just come along to it. it formed my childhood. Imagine a childhood where everything is so focused on the child. What should we play today, Billy? Oh, do, do, do, do tractors. Billy's not learning any life skills or his identity in the world. I learned very much by seeing my mom talking to other adults.

Now, my childhood was not airy-fairy. There was difficulties. I was an immigrant child, right, with a single parent, imagine, right? What scenarios could have been. But I got a strong sense of identity as a woman because my mom fiercely protected who she was and didn't play Barbies with me nonstop all the time. We would go to the park, I would feed squirrels,

and she would read a book. She would read a book, war and peace, something very, very chunky, or sometimes something a bit silly, like Russians like to read detective stories. But I was like, my mom's reading, that's who she is. I'm going to read. I would not have got that identity if my mom's identity was lost. Number six, beauty and self-care have to be a high important to you. The world receives you better. Your children receive you better. You receive yourself better when you put care into yourself. Put care into yourself. I don't care. Yeah? People love to say that

beauty is shallow. People love to say that selfishness and putting yourself first is bad for women. People love to say, oh, if you're vain, you're a bimbo, oh my God, you're so selfish. People love to say if you're difficult, like you just have your own opinion, you're difficult, you're mean. No, all of these words are actually something you should embrace. Be vain. Be pain. Self here has to come first. I'm sorry. I want my daughter and my son to see that that is important. And I am somebody who is bad at it. I'm bad at it because I often like to think and do things and walk around like a mud crab. Okay. Doing my hair, looking after my skin, getting dressed, moving the body. It reminds you, I am still here. I am still someone. These little minions that are looking at me. I want them to see beauty. And I mean beauty through any lens. All of you are beautiful. All of you are beautiful. The beautification of self is an art that is so long in history and forgotten and made to feel.

Do you know that warriors in ancient Greece used to beautify themselves once they became a man in order to symbolize their masculinity and their manhood? That when a boy, this was Vikings as well, was a boy, he was not allowed to brush his hair or trim himself until he went into a battle or became a man and then he could self adorn. and even in battles when they knew they would die, this is the Greeks, they would self-adorn to look absolutely godlike to go into the next world. There are so many things on vanity and beauty through our history, on reverence, on art, why beauty is important. You are important. You are important.

You are still here. This is not about pleasing men. Forget them. Descent to them. Who cares about them? This is about your children looking at you, or you looking at yourself in the mirror, And being like, damn, look at this. I revere this.

Even if you're a little old granny, you're 90 years old. I love those grannies with lots of necklaces and all of these things. They are dawning themselves. Women, if you let yourself disappear physically, because you feel selfish to do it, and then you don't like yourself, and then you don't show up for your things in life, you hide away. That is way worse than putting time in self-maintenance,

teach your children to maintain their beauty too, their hair, their teeth, everything. Point number seven is being needed can become addictive and you can't let it be your one thing that you kind of rely on. It's very deep, but being needed by someone is a beautiful thing. It's an overwhelming thing. It sometimes feels horribly suffocating. It gives you a purpose. It gives you importance. But it also feels like there's no one. else you can step in for you. That's what it feels like being a mother, okay. But if your worth comes entirely from being needed by your family and children and constantly feeding them putting them to bed, all this stuff, it's going to one day slap you in the face when they inevitably grow up,

and I mean 10, 12, 11, 13, whatever, and they want to hang out with their friends. Over-mothering, over-controlling, an inability to step back and let people make their own decisions, build over-time, resentment towards you, and a codependent relationship. Love does not require you to over function because at the end of the day, if you are not your own person, building your own thing for them to be inspired by and look at, they are going to feel engulfed by you, annoyed by you, and you are going to feel abandoned when they inevitably go and create their own life, as they very well should, okay, as they very well should. Number nine, overfunctioning kills feminine energy. Everything about you that is magnetic

and beautiful is feminine energy. When you become a manager, a planner, household CEO, stressed, emotionally regulating everyone, default parent, logistical planner, everything, it's hard to feel connected, earthy, powerful, chaotic, and all those beautiful, feminine energy things that we talk about. Yeah? And if you don't know what they are, my masterclasses are down below. If you're in operational, masculine mode 24-7, people don't get to connect with you by people, I mean, your children, or even your businesses. You're going to feel touched out. You're going to feel low desire. You're not going to feel like a sexual being in your relationship, resentment. stop doing everything.

If you as a mother have decided to put upon your back like a donkey, the task of everything and you're like, I've tried to tell John to do it. I've tried to tell my kids to do it. They don't do it. Stop doing it. Oh, but it's going to be messy. Let it be messy. You are more important and your truth and who you are and your self-expression is more

important than some clean area somewhere. I don't even know where. Stop doing everything. He will pick up the slack. And if he is a monster and completely lets everything go and picks up. no slack, then we need to reassess who we're dealing with, okay? That is a whole other point. Lastly, remember to wrap this up, your children, man or women, male or female, are watching

womanhood. They're watching it manifest in real time. This is the part that you need to understand. Your children are learning what womanhood means. They're learning what women like, what they don't like if they're a boy, and your daughters are watching you to see what they are going. going to be. Your son learns what women will tolerate and your daughter learns what the boundaries are. I've had to fight to even understand how much space I can take up in the world.

What it means, what it doesn't mean, what I can ask for, what I can not ask for. Your children are sponges and they mean so much and they're absorbing everything. Become the example you would want them to normalize because that is the baseline of what a mother is. Okay? To round it up, you can be you. You cannot lose yourself. You can write the book. You can do whatever you want. And you can still be someone's mum. A badass. You can be that. No problem. You can do it. It's harder. It's harder. But it's doable. In fact, it's not harder. You get more motivation. Let me know if you've got any mum questions before I chew your ear off on this long episode. I'd love you lots like jelly tots. And I'll see you on. The next one. Bye.