LadyGang - The Truth About Mom Rage, Burnout & Losing Yourself After Kids

Episode Date: May 13, 2026

Becca Tobin gets real with therapist and perinatal mental health expert Sonni Williams about postpartum anxiety, mom rage, identity loss, burnout, cycle breaking, and the invisible load of motherhood in this special BabyGang episode presented by BetterHelp. Sonni opens up about her own struggles after becoming a mom during the pandemic, while Becca shares the emotional highs and lows of pregnancy, loss, and raising independent kids. They talk therapy, boundaries, relationships, mom guilt, why “super mom” is overrated, and the hard truths nobody tells you about motherhood. Plus, Sonni explains how women can stop surviving and start actually supporting themselves again.This episode is presented and sponsored by BetterHelp. Sign up and get 10% off at https://BetterHelp.com/BABYGANG.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Based on Natural Resources Canada fuel consumption ratings, conditions apply. Visit HyundaiCanada.com or your local dealer for details. hello hello hello and welcome to the baby gang i am your host becca tobin and thank you so much to our presenting sponsor better help we have a very exciting episode today but before we get into it you know i like to give little updates on my life i took ford to get some shots he's four years old so he had to go for his four-year checkup and then he had to get his two vaccines and I was really anxious about it

because he hadn't had anything since he was two. And when he was two, he wasn't very aware. You know, I think we like, honestly, I think she just jabbed him in the thigh and he didn't feel it and he was distracted and we didn't really have to have a conversation about it. But this was different. I didn't want to do that to him.

My gut was telling me, and my gut was wrong this time. My gut was telling me, don't tell him the night before. Don't tell him leading up to it because then he's going to have anxiety leading up to it. Just on the day of, tell him you're going and then maybe spring him on him in the moment so that he doesn't have time to like think about it and get too worked up about it. But I did a little research with my friends on the internet and it turns out that's not the best thing to do. And I listened to the experts for once and maybe that

was my gut. Maybe my gut was saying, you think this is it, but your gut is telling you to look further, dig deeper. I think there was something on Dr. Becky's Good Inside app that I absolutely love. You like search a topic and it usually comes up with something. And it was a resounding prepare him for what's coming. So I remembered when we were about to start school and my friend Jamie told me there is this really wonderful Daniel Tiger episode about grownups come back. And, you know, they make up a song for every episode. It's all about Daniel Tiger. He's getting a babysitter and his parents are telling him, you know, don't worry, grownups come back. So I did that for school. It worked like a charm. And then I thought, I bet you they have something for seeing the doctor and getting a shot. Sure enough, they have it. Daniel Tiger, genius. If there's anything that you're thinking in this world, in this realm, that you're needing some help with, this is the thing to do.

I remember also Ford had to get some eye drops and not that Daniel Tiger gets eye drops, but I looked on YouTube and I looked up a four year old boy getting eye drops in his eye. And for whatever reason, my son and probably a lot of kids really like to see what's coming. And they like to see other kids doing the thing that they're about to do. so I showed him the Daniel Tiger episode he was enthralled right and I said you know we're going to go see your doctor tomorrow and we're going to weigh you and measure you and you know just check on and make sure you're you're doing great like just show the doctor how great you're doing and we are going to get shots and watch Daniel Tiger and you're going to do it just like Daniel Tiger he was good and then we went to bed I woke up in the morning and I said to him I'm going to pick you up early from school today remember we're going to go see your doctor and he was like well I don't really want to get, I don't want to get shots. He was like really kind of nervous about

it. And I said, it's okay. Remember Daniel Tiger, he got his shots and he did such a good job and you're going to do such a good job and you can be scared. And you know, I was really like leaning into my Dr. Becky at this moment. And then my son goes, but Daniel Tiger is a tiger. He's not a boy, which I thought was very funny. My kid is very literal. I'm sure you, some of you guys have the same thing going on. However, it did help because we get to the doctor. I am more anxious than he is we get there, you know, we do the thing, we're talking and we save the vaccine for the end. And I say to Ford at the end, you know, we're going to, the nurse is coming in and he's going to give you a shot. Do you want to hold this iPad and watch something or play a game? He takes the iPad

and they give him the option. Do you want to do it in your leg or your arm? He says he wants to do his arm because that's what Daniel Tiger did. And the nurse goes and he gives him the shot in his left arm. Nothing. Doesn't flinch. Nothing. And then me and the nurse and then the assistant are kind of all looking at each other like, what, was that a fluke? And then he quickly moves over to the other arm and he does the other shot. Again, my son does not even look up. My son literally goes, well, that didn't hurt. It didn't even hurt. That was my win this week. It was amazing. I highly recommend preparing your kid the day before something hard. And I see if Daniel Tiger's done it because he's pretty much done it all. And even though he's a tiger and not a boy, it still did

the trick. Without further ado, I want to bring on the wonderful Sunny Williams. Our guest today is Sunny Williams. She is a licensed professional counselor and perinatal mental health certified clinician with expertise in narrative therapy and bibliotherapy. We're going to get into what that is. She's passionate about helping individuals make sense of their stories and step into the lives they truly want. Her work focuses on life transitions, relationship dynamics, boundary setting, and healing from anxiety, emotional trauma, and women's mental health. She's basically a wizard. Sunny joined BetterHelp in 2021 and currently serves as Senior Clinical Operations Manager. She is deeply committed to reducing

stigma around therapy and advocating for accessible, culturally responsive mental health care, particularly within BIPOC communities. Welcome to the lady gang, to the baby gang. I was going to say the baby gang. I'm so good. I was like, maybe I am a wizard. You are a wizard. Okay. So what is bibliotherapy? First of all, I read that and I was like, well, I need to go back to school. You don't. So just break it down. Biblio book. So essentially I use books in my practice, whether it's fiction, nonfiction, self-help, if it matches what we're working on, we can use it. Oh, I love this. I do this with my son and I think to myself, I actually did have a therapist once give me a children's book to help me work through something.

And it actually was, it was a miracle worker. I ordered it and now my son reads it. It's this beautiful cyclical thing of learning hard lessons or figuring out how to process emotions. It's really awesome. It's the best tool. I fell in love with it in grad school and I was always a lover of books anyway. I was like, oh, this is my jam. This is where I'm going to live. Yeah. It's so great. Okay. So first of all, I want to talk to you about your voyage through motherhood. I'm taking the word journey out because it's a voyage. We're still in passage. Yes, we are. So obviously you do this for a living, but I'm sure you're human. Did you have any struggles becoming a mother later in motherhood? What came easy to you?

I guess just humanizing the experience, even for professionals. It's nice to hear you have experience with so much of it. Thank you. So really quick, I am human. And my voyage into motherhood is what prompted me to go back to get my certification for perinatal mental health. It was not what I started out doing. It was the narrative and the bibliotherapy.

And I had my first in 2020, a pandemic baby. and I went into the hospital the weekend that the world shut down. I was in the hospital March 20th giving birth on a very quiet labor and delivery floor. It was very eerie. It was just I don't even know how to explain it but when I brought baby home it was very different as you can imagine. There were no visitors. There was no stopping by. There was no how are you guys doing. There was none of that. It was me and my husband, a baby and a dog staring at each other, trying to figure it out. So I had postpartum anxiety, but I didn't know it because I was just like, this is the world. I'm afraid of everything. And so the world got back to as normal as it could be after that,

what we all kind of experienced. And when I got pregnant with my second, again, I thought things were as normal as they could have been for me in that time. And I got hit with postpartum anxiety and depression. And I was like, wait a minute, it's not the pandemic now. So this is something totally different. And all the skills that I had as a therapist did not prepare me. I was not able to reframe. I was not able to change my thoughts and my patterns. I was very much in a hole. And so then I started to reach out. I knew of some colleagues that did perinatal mental health, And I had no idea that that was even a thing. I didn't know it was an option for me. And I immediately reached out and I was like, hey, I need a therapist that gets it, that speaks the language of what I'm experiencing. And that was life changing for me. And then from that point, I was like, oh, I need to do this for others. I need to do what was given to me. And then I spent the next two years in trainings, doing all the things, taking the tests so that I could walk alongside mothers in their journey. So they, if even one didn't have to go through what I went through, then, you know, job well done for me, I think.

Isn't it wild that I didn't know either until I got pregnant for the first time. No, my second pregnancy and I was just so depressed and I had been through so much fertility and so much loss and I still didn't have a baby earth side at that point. And I remember I was so excited after the first loss that I was like, yes, we're going to get pregnant again. And we got pregnant again. And quickly I fell into this crazy, dark slump. And I thought, well, I'm supposed to be the most excited I've ever been right now. And the glowing pregnant woman, you know, the whole thing. And that was the first time I had heard about any kind of reproductive therapy, psychiatry, perinatal, all these words. We heard about postpartum a lot, I think, because it was kind of sensationalized by some famous stories of true crime, which is just so sad. But it's such a disservice. I'm so happy there are so many people that are now starting to go into this field because for so long, we just sort of like pulled up our bootstraps and made it through, barely. Like, you know, so many have done it before me, so I guess I can do it too. And kudos to you for seeking it out. And I feel like, I hope eventually you gave yourself some grace because yes, I'm sure you were excited about being pregnant again, but you still had the trauma of the loss.

You still were living with that grief. And a lot of times when moms have miscarriages, they have disenfranchised grief because people don't know what to say to you. And if they do say anything, sometimes it's the wrong thing. Like, well, you can try again. Right. Well, Alicia, and that to me, I'm just like, yeah, please just don't say anything. It really is. It's such it's and that's actually I'm so grateful my therapist at the time said this is this is grief coming in from what you already experienced.

It's not like a clean slate and we get to try over. It's not like you baked a cake, you messed it up, you threw it away and you bake a new one. Like it's we're grieving the loss of that other thing. And so it's just it's hard. And I know for myself, I became a mom a little bit later. I was in my late 30s. And I know you work a lot with women and their identities. And it's such a thing. It's like you have this baby, you become this new title, this new identity. And I think it's for everybody across the board. But especially, I think, because I had lived so much of my life as being just me, myself and I, that marrying the two identities of who I was before and who I was becoming as this mother, that's where I really struggled a lot. And I felt like when I was being a mom, I was kind of fraudulent because there was so much of myself that was like kind of way back there in the wings. Do you see this a lot? And how do you how do you work with with mothers dealing with this? So I am all about preparation with the moms that I work with, because that makes the biggest difference. Having honest conversations leading up to, hey, this is what it's going to be like, not what to expect when you're expecting. Hey, when we're in the thick of it, what maybe is here? What does that look like?

And so I'm very honest in saying what two to three things do you want to hold on to this person that you are today? What are two to three things that you just love about yourself that you do not want motherhood to change? Tell me those things so we can make a plan to protect that. Because at the end of the day, you are going to change. You are going to be given this new title. And even if you try to hold on tooth and nail with everything that you have, people are going to see you differently. You are going to be different. And you have to grieve those pieces of you, too. You can't hold on to everything that you were because motherhood, it changes you. It just does. But I do believe that you can hold on to core pieces, core values of who you are. I was always a nap queen.

Good for you. I can't do it. I'm so jealous. Listen, I need it. So when people said nap when the baby nap, I was like, let me figure this out. That laundry can wait. Those dishes can wait. Let me get this nap in.

So that was something that I protected for myself. And whether it's I want to be a mom that continues to work out, I want to be a mom that protects my girls' nights. Whatever it is, you don't have to limit it. But I do feel like you have to have a very clear understanding of everything can't come with you into motherhood. Wow. I love that. I've never heard that before. And that's what my brain went to.

It's like, is it shallow to say that I would have wanted to stay active? Work out? No, it's my sanity. I mean, and yeah, and sometimes you get into it. Like if I had done this exercise leading up to it, it would have been so helpful because it's also a way of honoring yourself still. You know, it's like I made this promise to myself that this is something that I enjoy and I love about myself, like gives you permission to do it instead of feeling guilty for walking out that door and going to yoga or whatever it is. Exactly. And a plan, right? Because motherhood is a job, a beautiful job, sometimes a thankless job. It is very much this 24-7 thing. And you would not take a job sight unseen without knowing the job description of, hey, what comes with it? So when you go into it with a plan, I think it makes you all the better off. Now, plans can go awry, but at least you have it. At least you have a blueprint of, okay, I'm at least going to do this. I'm going to at least hold on to this. It makes a difference. That is really a helpful thing to know. I'm going to tell all my friends. Yep. Spread the word. Okay. So women are often socialized to find worth in being useful. And when a mother's identity is entirely consumed by her utility within her family, what are the first psychological markers of burnout you observe? Mom rage, irritability, everything

makes you upset the smallest of things yeah you know the the dishes that didn't get started the wet laundry the child that just wants a hug but you've given 20 hugs and you're a little you know you're a little touched out or you know if you have the the toddlers all of the questions and the why and then you answer why but they don't understand your answer so it's another one all of the things you have a very short fuse to work with that's what you start to see where you just have zero patience for anything yeah that's one of the first signs okay and then you see the signs and then in that moment obviously there's stuff to be worked out you know long term but I mean I've been there in that moment what do you do what do you what do you tell your your

patients to do take a time out put put yourself on time out and you really need to separate yourself And when I say that, I'm not meaning to leave the house. I mean, if you're, if your partner or if you have a family member that can watch the child and you are able to get away for an hour or two, do that. But if not, find you a safe space in your home. I don't care where it is. It can be your closet. I don't, I don't care. And be very honest. Mommy needs a moment. I need a minute and take that time for yourself to kind of reset but it it's not a cure-all it's just kind of a reprieve of what you're experiencing in the moment you do need to take steps beyond that but that's the first thing that I would tell you to do when you are feeling that heightened level of just uh what what is happening take two to five minutes to yourself deep breathing exercise ground yourself touch some you know you can't always touch but what's around me do I have a soft blanket do I have something of comfort that I can have for just a minute for myself to reset

and then go back and face the day it's really amazing like this thing of us getting so much accolades from ourselves from our communities from our husbands that being useful and getting it all done it's like you're super mom you're super mom and it's just that does lead you to those moments of being like i've got to get out of my house like just so it it is such a good reminder that it's just not it's not that deep the dishes can wait the laundry can wait if you are not at your best and feeling your best and calm and patient and enjoying those moments like it's just what is it why why do all that work to be super mom if your job of mom is killing you at the moment like it's tough yeah and i'm always like do you want to be super mom right your

balance mom same i wouldn't be you know my look mom has it together she's even like i don't need to be above and above and no i call myself the type a type b mom because i have this is what's been helping me and i'm probably sure you do something like this in your practice but you know there's so many emails that come in from school and there's so many things and activities and swim lessons and blah blah blah i'm like i have a category of what what do i need to be a type a mom for what are the what are the things that are an absolute i need to get that deposit in on time to get my kid into the swim lesson do i need to go online and order rash guards like new ones for you know the summer when we have one dingy one that's going to be okay yes we're going

to like i put it in type a bucket and the type b bucket and i really do become very type b and it feels great because it doesn't matter and it's the things it's just such a it took me four years to get here. It's crazy. This is Teacher Appreciation Week. And do we love our teachers? We appreciate them so much. But do I need to do something every day of the week to honor that? Can I just do one big thing? They have these days of the week. They're Monday's flowers, test snacks, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm sitting there and I'm thinking, you know what these teachers would probably appreciate so much more? One giant Amazon gift card. They don't need Sour Patch kids today same i i too was like i'm just gonna do you know what they want the gift cards right

and the sweet message and i love how you break it into categories of type a type b because i was very type a before kids and so now i'm reformed i call myself a flexible type a you know do i still make my plan yes do i still color code the things yes but do i lose my you know what if things go left. Nope. I'm like, well, next time. It's so true. It's so true. Okay. So why is there a cultural tendency for women to wait until they're in this state of emergency, like their breakdown in the closet or their rage in the car? How do you frame therapy as a tool for sustaining rather than admitting weakness? For one, there is still a little bit of stigma around seeking out help. And I feel like people in general still view therapy. I don't understand it. And just

this thing of this crisis response, this trauma response. And I, my soapbox, I'm trying to get people to understand just how you go to the gym, just how you have a trainer, just how you have your people, right? The girl that does your hair, the person you go to for nails, you'll be with those people for years. But people don't seem to think, oh, I need to add a therapist into, you know, my group of people, into my team of making sure that I'm my best self. But if you do that, you realize, okay, my therapist can walk alongside me in multiple seasons of life because life is ever changing. And I feel like you always need that level of support, that safe space that's just for you. And that's what therapy is. And so I feel like we need to talk more about, hey,

it doesn't just have to be when things have just all fell down. You can be prepared. You can be proactive with your mental health, even. And that's what I wish more people would take away from that. I know. I feel like I've never heard anybody say they regret going to therapy or having therapy. I mean, there's days where you're like, oh, I don't want to talk about myself. But then you get out of it and you're like, well, that was helpful. There was nothing about it that was a waste of my time. And you can't say that for a lot of things that we do. Sometimes that Pilates class was a waste of our time. I agree. And also the therapy part, if it's like a hard day in therapy because therapy is working. You might be like, oh, I don't want to do the work today,

but you're all the better for it on the other side. And you're constantly being able to get tools to just get through the day or get through whatever that hard thing is. But you're not waiting for that hard thing to happen. You're preparing for it ahead of time because that's life. There's going to be the hard things. It's so true. I know you don't wait for that collision to, you know. Hey, Ontario, come on down to BetMGM Casino and see what our newest exclusive the Price is Right Fortune Pick has to offer. Don't miss out. Play exciting casino games based on the iconic game show only at BetMGM. Check out how we've reimagined three of the show's iconic games like Plinko, Cliffhanger, and the Big Wheel into fun casino game features. Don't forget

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please contact ConnexOntario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Okay, so this is for me. I never thought I'd be this mom. right? Okay. For mothers whose children are becoming independent, how do you suggest they begin to reclaim their identity outside of being a mother? And I'll give you a little bit of context

for this. I, you know, I'm about to have my second child at the end of the summer. And for a while, we were not sure if it was going to happen for us. You know, it was a couple years of ups and downs. And so we, my husband and I, we did all this work around like, what does life look like if we have our son and just our son? And it's beautiful. It's this beautiful, I was excited actually about like, we really did the work around the pros of having a singleton. And, but then I was like, wait a second, the pictures pop up on my phone of my son when he's eight months old And the pictures pop up of him at two years old. And I'm like, well, he's already becoming so independent and he barely needs me that like the amount that he needs me now, even at four and a half is so different. And I thought I'm going to have some trouble here. Like if we don't have another baby come into this to the mix, I could see myself. I never thought I would be that person. I was like, get me through this baby phase. Get me through this toddler phase. Get me to get him to kindergarten. And now I'm like, well, what the what am I going to do with myself? What now? What now? Like I've done. So, you know, what do you I mean, I'm about to go into the newborn. I'm going to be probably talking to you in four years from now when we're definitely done. And then I'm really grieving all of that. But what do you tell moms who are in that phase where it's like they're moving on? They're they're they're becoming their little people and they don't need you as much.

I love that you finished it with they're becoming little people. Because the first thing I start is a reframe. Because when we go into it, we're like, oh, we're gonna have a baby. And that's so sweet. And the baby, you're having a person. Yeah. And if we are lucky, we get to watch those people grow and become independent and to become their whole selves. And that is the point. That is the point. And so I always want to say, hey, congratulate yourself. Like you're getting to the next milestone. You're getting to that. You're leveling up in your parenthood journey. And it's hard, but they're always going to need you for something. Right. It may not be the things that you are used to. It may not be, mommy, I want snuggles or mommy, I just want you to tuck me in tonight or let's hold hands or give me kissies. it may not be that I know it may not be that but it'll be new things like yeah mommy can you help me wipe my butt because we're potty training or help me tie my shoes or mommy I want to read or there's always going to be something that you can teach them that you can show them that you can assist them with walk alongside them with so I just tell moms to look for that new thing where you can help and where you can show them the way because they're always going to be learning They're always going to need you, but it's going to be different.

And you have to release the need that you were used to. Totally. And it's so true. I mean, with every little every year that passes, I find it to be more fun even. So it's this thing that I'm just nostalgic, I guess. But I really do find joy in these. You know, I could take my son out in the world and we have like a little date together. I didn't do that when he was eight months old.

Nope. So it's yeah, it is. It's a reframing. And yeah, I mean, I was like, I'm not going to be that mom. I'm that mom. So, okay. When addressing, I've seen this so much on Instagram lately and I love it so much. The invisible load. The invisible load. I think often I'm going to really generalize here, but I think a lot of the time it's the mother who is doing all of those extra things, like making sure they have, what they need for their field trip, the form signed and the snacks bought and the ordering the groceries and all these things that nobody really sees. They just see you

on your phone and they probably think you're scrolling Instagram, right? And I'm sure it's really difficult for women. And I have a lot of women in my life, in my community who used to work, now they stay at home and they raise their kids and their husbands have these really big jobs and demanding jobs. And so for them, even when they're feeling like this invisible load is just insanely heavy and they need help with it, they don't feel like they have the authority to go to their husbands to say, I am struggling right now because they feel guilty that he's also doing his quote job and she needs to do her quote job. How do you empower people to be able to ask or even discuss it? Right. And it's infuriating to me because I don't feel like

the load is invisible. I feel like it's very visible. Like you, you see the things. And I also do when we're in the preparation stage. And even after baby has made it earth side, both partners have to be present for a certain amount of sessions because we need a clear plan in place of, okay, well, what happens when, how do we share the load? Because the things that you did as a single person, you fully took care of yourself. You washed your own clothes. You took care of your dishes. You made sure that you were fed. But now that you're in a partnership, that changes somehow. And I feel like there needs to be a reminder of sorts of this is a group project. So you're not just going to put your name on it. I need you to show up for me. And I do empower

the moms that I work with to speak up and to lean into those things. And even if their partner has a demanding job and they go to work and they do their job, when they come home, most of the time They feel like they can clock out. Motherhood, you don't get to clock out. And so that needs to be brought to the forefront again of saying, hey, I am struggling and I have worked all day to be present. Even if you feel like I've just held the baby all day, the baby needed me to hold them all day. That was my job for the day. It wasn't the laundry. It wasn't making sure there were meals. So what can we do so that we have balance, even if that's bringing in help from the outside to do those certain tasks? But no, it needs to be honest conversation at the forefront. As soon as you start to struggle, as soon as you start to feel an imbalance, we need to start speaking up and asking for help. Yeah, it is so it's really mind boggling to me because I've had the I've had the privilege of having a really demanding schedule work wise. And then I've also had it where I'm home the whole time for several weeks, several months, whatever. I every chance I get with all these men in my community, I'm like, you know, I've done both jobs, right? You know, which one's so much harder? Staying at home with a small child. It is relentless. And even though that child is, quote, sleeping or napping for three hours a day, I'm still not off the clock. Like it's it's like imagine you go to work for 24 hours and you're in your office and nobody ever gives you a moment to step away. You are always on call. You are always having to be at the ready to take care of a human.

And it's just I mean, I just wish that we could do that like Freaky Friday with some some of these men and their wives. a swap because i need you to to understand that it's not all you know giggles and sunshine and i'm not just bouncing the baby and won't get me started if you're breastfeeding and then that's extra job on top of your job of staying on the clock and so it has to be very clearly stated and explained and over explained until they get it and there is a meeting of the minds of understanding, hey, we're in this together and I don't want you to feel alone. And most of the time, partners do have like that light bulb moment of, oh, OK, I see. Yeah. I always tell them, do not ask, how can I help? No. Look around. Oh, man. It's so helpful to have someone like you

in the middle, the mediator, to be able to sit there and tell these partners she's not making this up. This is a universal thing that women are dealing with. And it's just so much easier to have support, like a therapist to be there. And I love that you meet with the couples like how genius. I'm sure some of them come in kicking and screaming, though. Not yet. Let me. Okay, good. Good. I'm not giving the men enough credit here. I need to, you know what? Not yet. And I go easy. I go easy because the postpartum journey for them is hard, too. And men experience changes as well too. So I try to be as balanced as possible, but I am very clear. I am very honest of, okay, what will support look like in real time? How can we protect each

other in this next phase of life? Yeah. Something I've also started to do is I think a lot of moms are sitting in their living rooms on their phones, doing all the tasks, like taking care of all the things. And I'm like, you know what? I'm going to start just going to an entirely different room, giving myself 30 minutes, getting all that stuff done so that I don't have eyes on me and I don't have kids just thinking that I'm ignoring them for no reason. And it's like, mommy's going to go in here for even 10 minutes. I'm going to order the groceries. I'm going to get everything ready for the whatever. And I know it's not always that clear cut because things come in at every moment of the day and you're having to handle them. I guess what I'm saying is it's just better for

everybody. If I just take myself out of the equation for 20 minutes or whatever it is to take care of it, and then I don't have that guilt of ignoring my kid right in front of him, if that makes sense. No, that makes perfect sense. And I also feel like once they get older, right, then you can have those conversations of, hey, mommy just needs a minute. I'm ordering the groceries. Do you want your applesauce? Like, that's what I'm doing. And so they know, oh, mommy's just, she doesn't want to play with me. No, mommy's able to tell you, hey, this is what's going on right now i'll be with you in just a minute but for right now yeah separate yourself i'm doing work yeah oh my god it never ends okay so when a woman is finally

getting the kind of support she needs whether it's with her mental health with a therapist or community or or help from her partner what are the subtle shifts that you see in a mother after she's received that? Physically, you can start to see like they go from this to relax. There is a difference in them and you can see it. You can see it. You can feel it. As a therapist, I do work virtually, but I can see it. I can just see around them that a weight has been taken off. You see that they're starting to prioritize those important things. They're starting to remember, OK, this is what I said was important. This is how I'm going to show up. And they start doing that. And the sessions go from almost a woe is me. What am I doing to let me tell you what I did? And then I said, we need to do da da da da da. I see them putting the tools in place. And so the conversations change. And then I'm like, OK, so now that we've set the boundary, how do we maintain it? And it goes from being very reactive to all right, now let's plan for what's coming next. You start to see them putting the tools in place. And it is beautiful to see. It always warms my heart because I get to watch the progression in real time. And it's my heart work. I love to see it.

That's awesome. Yeah, they're like proud of themselves. And that's really, that's very cool. Okay, so we often hear that it takes a village, but most women are parenting in silos right now, especially post COVID. I can't even imagine during COVID. But how does this affect the experience of motherhood? Like, what are you, what are you seeing from this? I always tell moms, give yourself a bit of grace because yes, we always hear it takes a village, but then the village is different. It's not the village that maybe our grandmothers had or even our mothers had. I'm not going to say it doesn't exist. It's rare. And so I always say, can we build a village? What would it look like if we built one out? What do you feel like you need? And we start there. We try to be very creative. We try to be very solution oriented of what that might look like. And sometimes it is a lot of virtual care. It is the online mom groups. It is different apps where you're just like, I just need people to get it because you don't want to feel like you're screaming into the void. But anytime you're able to find your people or find the right fit with a therapist so that you just have somewhere to where you're not truly in a silo, even if physically you feel like it's just you having an outlet of some sort. So that's why I'm always like, if we can't build out the full village, what can we do?

Yeah. Because you always do something. Yeah, it's so true. The Lady Gang podcast that we started 10 years ago, we just started this Facebook group just to chat. We thought it would be like talking about the podcast. no no it has turned into women all over the world posting on there saying i am dealing with this thing yes is anybody else and it's just feeling less alone is so much a part of the power of the village it's so true um yeah because in my mind i was like yeah the village is the woman who's

going to pick your kid up for you or who you call like that we don't all have that all the time so it is it can be so much more than just that even though that is awesome exactly if you have Oh, my gosh. You're like cherish it. But I do feel like the village of olden days is very rare. You don't have grandma down the street. You don't have the aunts. It's different. We're more spread out than we were before. So true. Okay. Our children are forever changing and their needs change, their independence changes. We kind of touched on this. Do you see a lot of women struggling with the lack of control and evolving dynamics? I will say as they get older, though, that is more of a change because I was just talking to a mom, a recent empty nester. Her child was going to college and she went to, I guess, the orientation or whatever. And they said, all right, now, parents, the relationship is changing. It's no longer parent-child.

It's now partnership. And when she, yes, I had a sense of like, wait. But it was it was so true because in a sense, you have to release that control a bit and you now have to say, OK, I've given you the wisdom and you're not completely alone. But I do have there has to be more give and take. It's not just, OK, well, mom said this and this is how we're going to do it. You now have agency. You now have your own autonomy to be like. And so that gave me a light bulb. I was like, oh, OK. Yeah. Yeah. New level of fear unlocked. Yeah, no kidding.

Oh, my God. That's the thing that I think about all the time is I, when I went to college, I left Atlanta. I went to New York City. I was 18 years old. I mean, at the time, I had no idea what my mom must have been dealing with or my dad or anybody. And I was so fiercely independent.

And I really only called my mom in crisis. I called her when I was running out of money. I had a fight with my roommate. It was never to call my mom to tell her how wonderful I was doing. So I would call her, this poor woman, and I'd be crying or screaming or whatever. And I just think back and I'm like, that was her job at that time. Unfortunately for her, I hope she knows the value in that. I feel very sorry I didn't have a little bit more positivity sprinkled in there. but i wonder and i should ask her even though that was hard it still gave her a purpose and it still had her connected to me in a way but i don't know how i don't know how she did it where she was still that person that i was calling she must have done something right and um it might have been that she wasn't so pushy with me like she kind of just let me do my thing yeah she gave me the space

And I did, you know, I did give her attention. It probably wasn't the best kind. But, and see, and that's what we talked about. Your kids are always going to need you. Yes. They need the juice. Yeah. Mom might not have wanted that, but you still needed her.

And so that's the thing. We're always going to have a job to do. There's always going to be something. We'll never be obsolete. No, no. Thank goodness. Yeah. Okay, this is my final question.

Being the first in a family to break toxic cycles, it brings a kind of exhaustion. And how do you counsel women through the intense emotional labor of being a cycle breaker? This comes up all the time, all of the time, without fail. But I have to say, every single time, my advice stays the same. You have done the work, they have not. most of the time if you are the cycle breaker you've gone to therapy you've done the things to change the tides whatever they have maybe you did the work you did the hard stuff so that it stops with you so that it does not repeat the person or the family member on the other side

of that they probably have not and they might not ever go to therapy and so you have to find a way of how do i exist in this relationship do i want to exist in this relationship and what does that look like for me? Because you can't expect you've done all this work and you're up here. You can't expect them to meet you here. They're not going to. But that doesn't take away the fact that you have become the cycle breaker, that you have made it stop with you and that the next generation will be better for it. Your kids will be better for it. And you just have to be aware of, OK, I'm showing up change, but they're not. So now how do I conduct myself in these moments? What boundaries do I need to put in place so that I am not exhausted, so that I'm not stressed out every time I see

so-and-so or whoever the case may be that's the cause of your pain or the trigger for you, because it's not going to change. And I know that my clients don't always want to hear that, but I'm like, you did the work. They weren't in therapy with you. They weren't healing all this trauma. You were. And it is helpful with just arriving at the place of accepting this is how it's going to be and they will never change. If they do, it is a surprise. It is a bonus and it's probably not likely. But yeah, if you keep sitting there wishing for something to be different, that just is not, I mean, it's easier said than done. I have so many friends who are first generation cycle breakers and it is, it's relentless and it's, it's a brave thing to do

because most people just say, screw it. If they're not going to work on themselves, why should I? We'll just keep this whole thing going. Exactly. They're like, this is too hard because it is It's hard. That's the part. It is hard. But when you come on the other side of it, then it's so freeing. You're like, oh, wow. Yeah. New lease on life. Look, now I can do this. Now I can go here. Now I'm not stuck feeling like this is all there is for me. And I feel like it's a very beautiful thing. But you have to remember that you can't bring them with you. Yeah. Yeah. It's like you guys send them love and have a little bit of empathy, but not too much to where they take advantage. That's a really hard balance too. Very hard. Because becoming therapized and like doing all the work, you do become more empathetic and understanding of people. And it's really hard when those people are also kind of toxic. Yes. And it's like, how do I do this dance? It's really tough.

It's hard. And I always tell my clients and they're like, and I try to tell them this and all the tools. And I was like, yes, but we develop those tools after months of work or after years of work. So you can't hand it to them neatly in a bow because they didn't they didn't take the journey. So they're not going to get it. They're not going to be receptive. And it's it's very, very hard to come to that realization. But you have to get to that point. well sunny you have really brightened my day pun intended um and thank you for being here i know that this community is going to take a lot out of this and thank you to better help i could not ask for a better partner in all of this and a better sponsor for this whole series um yeah i just it was great to meet you yes i had the best time thank you so much for having me on the baby gang thank you for you guys welcome to your second rodeo maybe reaching out soon i'm here okay good okay good all right thank you you're welcome