EverydaySpy Podcast - Spying Through a Mother's Eyes

Episode Date: May 11, 2021

The sacrifice and challenges of motherhood remains one of the best kept secrets in the world. There are stories, songs, and even holidays dedicated to the women we call 'mother,' but the truth of what they experience is hidden. In this episode, Andrew shares his own history with mothers and their impact on his life, as well as an interesting spy lesson you can learn by cracking the code that mothers around the world keep to themselves. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My name is Andrew Bustamante, and this is everyday espionage. So this past weekend in the United States, we celebrated a holiday known as Mother's Day. Now, I am a huge fan of mothers, and I'm going to go into some of the reason why I'm such a big supporter of all mothers, including, of course, my mothers and the mothers in my life. But I think it's important to highlight that there's a really interesting history behind Mother's Day that not everybody knows. And I would encourage you to visit Everydayspy.com to read my history on Mother's Day, or you can just Google Everyday Spy Mother's Day, and it'll take you right where you need to go, because the fascinating history of Mother's Day ties back to combat, it ties back to the American Civil War, it ties back to one specific family that has a really sad story about how they invented, supported, created Mother's Day only to have the big businesses and industry of the world. steal it away from them. And I love the story because it's such a powerful perspective on not just American capitalism and kind of the American mindset, but it's also a testament, I think, to exactly the experience

that is motherhood. Because motherhood is about sacrifice and motherhood is about bravery and motherhood is about leaving something behind even when you move on. And that's the story of Mother's Day. That's the story of motherhood. And that's certainly been my own experience with mothers. And that's why I want to take a moment to step out of my normal season, talking about tradecraft and tradecraft principles, and just put a spotlight for a moment on mothers and their importance to everything. So first, I want to kind of start with my own personal experience. I was very, raised by a single mom. I actually lost my father when I was very young, very young, meaning about one

year old. My father was murdered while he and my mom were going through kind of an unsavory divorce process, and my father lost his life to a violent act in California when my mom was living in Arizona. And as a result, my mother was stuck raising me and just me with no husband. She turned to her mother for help and my grandmother, who also ended up being twice divorced, became kind of my co-parents. So my mother and my grandmother, both very strong Latina Catholic women, became my foundation for what strength and courage is. And even though my mom went on to get married and I did have a stepdad and my stepdad adopted me and raised me, in many ways my mom became the head of household, but she especially became the focus of my understanding of what it meant to be,

the leader of a house, the responsible adult, a professional, a dedicated student. She was my inspiration and continues to be in a lot of ways. My mom wasn't the only woman in her family to be strong and courageous and brave that way. All of my aunts are strong, opinionated, courageous women, all independently successful on their own. My mom went on to have two daughters with my stepdad who went on, they are my half-sisters. And my half-sisters are also strong, independent, courageous women. So you're seeing right away the impact a mother can have, right? At least I see the impact that my mother had.

I see the impact that my mother's mother had, not just on my own mother, but on all the women in her family. The men in my mother's family went on to marry strong opinionated women. we see this culture of strong, courageous women, bonding, meeting, and favoring other strong, courageous women, and the whole group is lifted up together. The family is lifted up together as a result of these characteristics. My sisters, strong, my mother strong, my aunt's strong. And of course, it makes sense that when I went on to CIA, the woman I met and married, Ghi, was of the same ilk.

same vein, the same kind of strong, courageous, intelligent, brave woman. When I met Jihe, it was CIA orientation. And she and I tell different stories. And I'm very fortunate that I'm the one telling the story today. But essentially, we met within the first two weeks of starting at CIA. And as the actual story goes, which isn't the story my wife tells, but in the actual story, we were at a course learning some of the basics about intelligence, processing and how you write an intel, how you develop an Intel, how you develop an Intel source. And I was sitting next to two other women who were in my training course. And I was talking to them, flirting with them, doing whatever, you know, 27-year-olds do when they're

in mixed company. And my wife overheard a portion of the conversation and decided to butt herself into the conversation. And when she interrupted the chat that I was having, she was very direct and very brusk. and kind of writing off the other two girls and suggesting that she and I continue the topic of conversation over a cup of tea or a cup of coffee at the next break. Now, I'm not stupid. When a pretty girl tells me she wants to carry on a conversation over tea and coffee,

even though I don't drink tea or coffee, I still said yes. So from there, that became the first interaction I had with the woman who would become my wife. And as she continued on her CIA career, and I continued on my own CIA career, we had complementary professional skill sets that ultimately resulted in she and I becoming a tandem married couple. A tandem married couple is a married couple who are both covert CIA intelligence officers who go on to operate and serve together in the field. And when we deployed as this married couple, it was an awesome, fun experience. She was brave,

she was smart. I'd like to think I was as brave and as smart as she was, but we traveled the world doing just absolutely incredible things. And it was a fascinating, wonderful life. And then we got pregnant. Now, there's a problem with pregnancy. And the problem is that nobody really talks openly about what happens once a married couple is pregnant. And that's a little bit of what I want to kind disband today. I want to be honest, probably honest to a fault. I may upset people. I may make people mad, but that's what I do, right? Motherhood and parenthood doesn't start when a baby is born. It starts as soon as you know you're pregnant. Because that's when the woman's body is hijacked. Everybody talks about a woman's body changing. And that's the soft way that women talk to other women

about pregnancy. The body doesn't change. The body is hijacked. It's stolen by this little embryo, the zygote that starts to grow into a baby. My wife's hormones completely changed. Her body started to totally change. She started gaining weight in places that she had never gained weight before.

Things started to hurt that hadn't hurt before. Some muscles got tighter. Some muscles got more flexible. She had tendons that started to increase in flexibility. all these things that every woman experiences when they become pregnant. Because that day that they become pregnant is the day that their motherhood experience starts. So the beginning of motherhood is really defined by the stealing of this brave, courageous, intelligent woman's life. All of a sudden, her biology starts to work against her.

She starts to wake up to kicks in her belly in the middle of the night. She loses sleep. Her brain starts to think about things that she's never had to think about before. Like, what is the environment that this little child is going to come home to after it comes back from the hospital? She starts worrying about education. She starts worrying about socializing the child with other kids or with other adults. She starts thinking about how am I going to discipline the child? How am I going to show this child my love?

How am I going to keep this child safe? Fathers have a very similar experience, but without the fact that our bodies are being stolen from us. And that's really such a powerful and distinct difference that when I reflect on Mother's Day myself, it brings me just, it humbles me because I love my children and I love my wife and I love my wife for giving me these children. And when I stopped to think about how much she has had to give up to give me these two amazing children, yes, of course she had them for herself too. but she she had no idea what was going to happen going in because the books and the friends and

even the parents that raised you nobody wants to talk negatively about what happens to moms what happens to women when they become mothers so here my wonderful wife gives birth to my oldest my son cina and she is doing everything she can to make the child the child the child birthing process the whole time that my son is in utero. She's doing everything she can to give him every possible advantage. She watches her diet. She keeps exercising. And on the day that he's supposed to be delivered, she goes into labor and the labor does not progress. My wife decided to have a natural childbirth with no painkillers. So she has a non-progressive baby who is trying to get out and she has nothing to dull her pain. And in the end, after 36 hours, of labor, the doctors decide to put her into a non-emergency cesarean section. So for all of you young folks out there who don't know anything about babies, and even for some of you parents whose wives were successful in having a natural childbirth or a child birth through the vaginal opening, a non-emergency cesarean section means that my wife's

life was not at risk, my son's life was not at risk, but the baby had to be cut out from her stomach. The baby would not come out through the vagina. It would not naturally be born. So after another four, six hours waiting while all the emergency C-sections happened, my wife was taken into the emergency room and given a non-emergency cesarean section. So now she's, she is able to deliver our son, and he's beautiful, and he's healthy, and we're all very excited. But now she starts on this 90-day, this almost six-month recovery. process because her abdominal muscles have been cut open. All of a sudden, this life form that she's been carrying for so long is born. We take it home and all the struggles of parenthood are real,

but much more intense are the struggles of her specific mother experience. Because in addition to having an infant, in addition to being a parent, in addition to being a spouse married to a man who's never had a child, she has all of those challenges, but then she also has to heal. And she has to deal with how her body changes as it starts to produce milk as the hormones flow through her, through her brain and through her body to prepare her body for late nights, for little sleep, for healing, for feeding a child, all the required nutrients. It's just amazing to see how far she had to go from being a covert intelligence officer operating with me one-on-one in the field where she was in total control of everything to now be. being this mother of a young infant where she was essentially in control of nothing. That kind of incredible sacrifice is what I start to reflect on when I think about mothers on Mother's Day, when I think about what nobody thinks about what nobody realizes when we go out

and we buy mom flowers or chocolates, when we take her out to a Sunday brunch, when we remember that we have to call mom or we have to call our sisters or our aunts and wish them a happy Mother's Day, we see obligation. We see commitment and we see even frustration and guilt sometimes in how we have to handle Mother's Day because it has been commercialized. It has been pushed on us and pressed on us and forced on us. But every mother out there chose to have their child. And that choice, that sacrifice needs to be honored. It is something to respect. It is something to be humbled by.

Now, my wife has gone on to give me a second child, and my daughter is just as much of an amazing story as my son, in my opinion. Again, my wife did everything she could. Controlled her diet, controlled her fitness. It took us two years to get pregnant with our second baby, which took my wife on a complete emotional roller coaster as she was wondering and doubting whether or not she would ever be able to get pregnant again. And any woman out there who's been through the process of trying to have a second child or trying to have a child at all,

every month that comes and goes where you're not pregnant just becomes a month of sadness, a month of discouragement. And then you start wondering if you should keep trying because the depression and the anxiety and the frustration can grow so much. And if you've had a child already, you've got to deal with the realities of being a mother while trying to get pregnant again and failing to succeed. seed. And that's just a whole other level of challenge that I got to watch my wife go through in her own motherhood journey. And when our baby was born, all the same things happened again. A lie, my daughter, was not born via cesarean section. She was born via vaginal birth after cesarean, something known as a V-back, which is a high-risk, dangerous thing to do in some places. We had a hard time finding a doctor in a hospital in Florida that would be willing to do it. But my wife,

because of her commitment to her fitness and her diet and her exercise successfully had a V-back birth. My daughter was born, beautiful, healthy, just like my son. And now my poor wife, again, had to go through the process of healing and recovering this time from a vaginal birth instead of a cesarean birth and dealing with all of the hormones that take over her body to prepare her to be up late and give breast milk to a child and deal with a new infant, another infant. I am such a lucky guy because I have a beautiful wife, two beautiful healthy children, and nothing would have been possible without the mother who raised me, the mother who raised my mother and all her aunts.

And it wouldn't have been possible for me to respect and understand and appreciate how powerful and amazing a woman my wife is had I not had mothers in my life who taught me how important that kind of woman would be to my own future. And now my wife has given me two beautiful children. When I look at Mother's Day, yes, I see a commercialized holiday. Yes, I see a holiday that doesn't really exist in many countries around the world. But what I see is a genuine sacrifice. and genuine generosity that women around the world do when they give up everything to give birth to the next generation of human beings.

And men, this is something we'll never be able to experience for obvious reasons because we can't have children. But that sacrifice is what was the original intention of Mother's Day in the United States. Now, my wife and I spent a lot of time in Asia when we were working together with the agency. And there's a tradition in some parts of Asia where Mother's Day is not celebrated on a single day of the calendar,

but Mother's Day is instead celebrated on each individual person's birthday. Meaning if it's your birthday, you dedicate the day to your mother instead of to yourself. And when we first found this tradition, we thought it was just a beautiful, amazing, tradition. It was before we had had children ourselves, but we had a good friend, a local Asian friend, who on her birthday spent the entire day planning all of her mom's favorite things, bought her mom gifts, took her mom to nice restaurants, did everything she could to show her love and appreciation

to her own mother, recognizing that without her mother and without her mother's sacrifices, she would never have had the chance to live the life she was living. espionage and human intelligence specifically is all about understanding life through your target's point of view when i stop to think of my wife as the target of my affection the target of my commitment the target of my future and i start to witness her life through her own eyes i can't help but appreciate the experience that comes when motherhood happens. I can't help but be humbled and be appreciative and be thankful that she was brave enough and courageous enough to raise our children,

to have our children, to put her body on the line to create our children. And the whole time watching as I don't change, watching as I don't have the same physical or emotional or mental reactions that she has, Even worse, she had to sit there and watch as I didn't understand the changes she was going through. So when I look as a spy at the experience of every mother out there, I can't help but tell myself that there is something to be learned when we pause and look at life through the eyes of our mother. So if your mother is out there, if your mother is alive, if your mother has passed away, if you know of a mother in your life that you have not expressed your gratitude and your thanks,

and your humble awe too. It's a good chance now. Three days after all the Hubblebleau and all the marketing has ended, reach out to them and tell them that you realize how much they have had to give up, how they have had to sacrifice their best body. They've had to sacrifice their best years. They've had to sacrifice some women never gained control of their bladder again because the process of becoming a mother is so damaging to their.

body. Express your thanks and your appreciation and be amazed when they're not touched, when they're not moved by your appreciation because to them the sacrifice was worth it. They don't want your gratitude. They don't want your appreciation because they are that overjoyed to have had the opportunity to become mothers at all. Mothers out there, I thank you. I appreciate you. Women out there who plan to become mothers, I thank you and I appreciate you. And for everyone else, think through their eyes, appreciate their experience. And when you do, you are experiencing everyday espionage. Everyday espionage is dedicated to one thing, educating everyday people. I know that not everyone will listen, but those who listen will learn. If you learned something

new today, click subscribe, review, and share the podcast with a friend. Find me on social media at Everyday Spy or on my website, Everydayspy.com. If you are up for a special challenge, visit Everydayspy.com forward slash operations and join me for an authentic spy training mission. And above all else, remember that knowledge is freedom.