REWILD + FREE - Identity Shifts in Motherhood with Amanda, Hannah, Jaden and Rachel

Episode Date: May 16, 2023

Motherhood is a unique experience but also a universal one. This episode is a special tribute to celebrate Mother's Day and honour the nuance within the identity shift that women experience when becoming a mom.  I've complied recordings from 4 different women sharing their story about how motherhood changed them. You will hear from:Amanda  @buildyourbirthHannah @ebbandflowbirthcoJaden @jadeenb_and Rachel @theintuitiveco_Hope you enjoy & Happy Mother's Day ♡Support the showConnect with Nicole on IG (@nicolepasveer) Want to be a guest on the podcast? Fill out this form

I expanded. I am everything that I was before and more. I now know sacrifice. I know heartache. I know pain, but I have reaped rewards. I have found a love deeper than anything that I had previously imagined. Welcome to the Not Just a Mom Show, where we have open and honest conversations about the vulnerabilities and the victories within entrepreneurship and new motherhood. If we haven't met yet, I'm Nicole Pazier and I'm going to be your host. Here on the show, we don't subscribe to perfection. In fact, being present is the new perfect and showing up messy is the new norm. My hope is that this podcast serves as a safe space for me and inspiration for you

to stop living life watered down. Together, we will uncover versions of our most potent selves where we show up unapologetically, intentionally, and without filter. We are worthy, just as we are, as all that we are, not just the label we put on ourselves. We are more than just a mom, and I'm so glad you're here. Hey, no surprise, I'm on another walk. So again, I feel like it's the usual disclaimer to a lot of my episodes about the audio quality. I don't know what you're going to hear in the background. I hear a lawnmower and a car driving by and I'm pushing Aubrey in the stroller so I can hear the wheels on like the sidewalk. I don't know what you can hear. Apologies though if the recording is not amazing. Like I say, we show up messy here.

I'm not going for perfect. Perfect isn't relatable. And frankly, like, I don't have time. Anyways, we just celebrated Mother's Day. And I really wanted this episode to be a special one where we can honor the variety of experiences that women go through when becoming a mom. their birth story although that might be part of it but I'm more specifically referring to the transformation and identity shift that comes with the new role as mother and so this episode is gonna be a little bit unusual in the fact that it's not just me talking or rambling and it's not me interviewing a special guest. Instead, I have enlisted the help from my Instagram community and I have four other women who are

sharing parts of their journey and sharing a bit about what's on their heart in terms of the new identity shift or the identity shift that comes with becoming a mom. So today you're going to hear from Jaden, Hannah, Amanda, and Rachel. And what's super cool is I didn't give any of them much direction on this this podcast I really don't have direction for myself I've really given myself permission to not follow a specific agenda and not get hung up on strategy so there's not a lot of rules here there's a lot of flexibility and so when I had reached out to my community for people to speak on this I literally told them no rules just speak from the heart and so what's really cool is each of them brought things up from a different perspective and I think it really just goes to show how each of our experiences is so unique, but also you're going to see that there's some common threads. And while none of us are walking the same path as each other, there's so many common threads and so many layers that I think many of us can resonate with and I think that's just really

cool and a reminder that while the experience of motherhood is unique it's also universal and I think it can be really humbling to be able to orient to the fact that we're all going through something similar even though we have a different story and a different experience we're all kind of deep in the same trench and there's so many common threads and you're going to hear about just grieving the old version of ourselves when we become a mom and and grieving the things that we used to be able to do while also making space for the massive expansion and transformation and also learning to take radical responsibility. And stop outsourcing our decision making to other people.

And also a deeper connection to self. A deeper connection to nature. It's so many things. And so this episode isn't going to be me talking. Instead I'm going to let the four people share their story. So to start, you're going to hear from Amanda, who is in Fort Myers, Florida, and a mom to two daughters, three and one. I'm recording this as I nurse my brand new one-year-old baby, but I'm really honored to kind of share my thoughts on motherhood. Motherhood was always something that was super, super intimidating to

me. And as bad as I wanted it, I was so afraid to become a mom. And it was honestly for totally selfish reasons. I was afraid to get stretch marks. I was afraid to gain weight. I was afraid to have a mom bod, so to speak. I was afraid to lose my own time. I was afraid to give up my hobbies, like working out and, you know, going out with my friends. I was afraid to be be a slave to somebody else's schedule than myself. And I was afraid I would not be able to function on the lack of sleep required by motherhood. I was afraid to give up things that I loved to do, things like fishing and going to the beach that I spent a lot of my time doing. And I just knew was not going to be possible once I had kids.

I, in all, was afraid to lose myself, and I was afraid that I would be somebody else once I became a mom. And when it came down to it, I was honestly afraid to give up all the things that I thought made me who I am. But I was wrong. Those things were just surface details about me. When I became a mom, I realized all the real qualities about me are what shone through. My heart grew, my commitment grew, my level of selflessness grew, and motherhood made me who I was really meant to be. Now I feel more myself than ever. I work out less, but I am more active. My diet is better

because I care more about what goes into my body because it sets an example for my children and honors my health so that I can be around for my grandchildren. I'm a better partner because I see the commitment that he has made to me and to our daughters. And I know what kind of an example I want to set for our daughters when it comes time for them to expect in a future, for what they should expect in a future partner. In truth, I expanded. I am everything that I was before and more. I now know sacrifice. I know heartache. I know pain, but I have reaped rewards. I have found a love deeper than anything that I had previously imagined. And in truth, I'm honestly just in the beginning of the journey. I'm only three years into motherhood, but I truly cannot wait to see all that's in store. Next up, we're going to hear from Hannah.

Hannah lives in Franklin, Indiana, also a mom of two. She has a three and a half year old son and a one year old daughter. So if this is any explanation of how your life changes when you become a mother. For my Mother's Day, well, one of my Mother's Day presents, I guess you would say, I went and got a pedicure tonight, and now I'm sitting in my car, eating some fast food dinner, and listening to podcasts, because that is my definition of rest right now. But in all seriousness, motherhood changed my life in ways I would have never imagined. It not only changed as far as having to take care of children, obviously, but my values changed, my goals changed, my wants, needs, and desires for this life completely and drastically changed. And it's a little bit overwhelming. I had my husband the

other day said that he thought becoming a father would change his life and change who he was. But he said he doesn't really feel like he's changed much other than he has children in his life now. And to me, I felt really saddened by that in a way because I feel like everything about me, every piece of my being has changed. And in good ways, in bad ways. It's just very overwhelming how much things change. And this new identity that you take on, it's beautiful and it's stressful. And part of it can be heartbreaking just because your life does drastically change from what it used to be but overall it's such an amazing experience and i wouldn't

i wouldn't give it up for the world i wouldn't change anything it's just it's very interesting interesting to see fully the difference that becoming a new parent the differences between of being a father and a mother and the changes that you experience next is jayden jayden is local to me and a fellow canadian she's in calgary alberta and mom to an almost one-year-old. Hello everyone and happy Mother's Day. I am excited to talk about my identity shift on Nicole's podcast who has been such an influence to me from the start of my motherhood journey. So when I think about my identity shift, becoming a mother, I was trying to think of, you know, should I talk about this in a positive way or a challenging way? There's two topics that really come to my mind when I think about motherhood and identity shifts. One is, you know, nature would be the topic and the other is relationships. But because of Mother's Day,

I have decided to take this with the theme of nature. So one thing I was really surprised about is I guess, you know, as a single or I guess, married individual without children, it would be very easy for me to spend like a whole day in bed or spend a whole day, you know, just laying on the couch watching TV. Even as a teacher, I guess on PD days or when it's report card time, it would be very easy for me to just lay on the couch all day with, you know, the TV on in the background while writing report cards. Let's just say as a mother now, this is not realistic for me at all. Those days are long gone of just, you know, laying in bed watching TV all day or movies or laying on the couch all day. The part where I can still be in pajamas all day is real,

but not the part of just, you know, lounging around the house doing nothing all day. One thing that when I became a mom was my rule is that I just really wanted nature to play a big part in raising my son. So every day, like no matter the the weather unless it's like the minus 30 Calgary days but even if it's you know lightly snowing we would go for at least a 15 minute walk to get outside every single day so on the days when it was lightly snowing for example we would take the toboggan or when we're going for a long distance walk, I take the jogging stroller or, you know, if we're just going around the block on a hot summer day, he has this little car or his little bike that I can push him in. So the rule has just always been to, you know,

get outside of nature for at least 15 minutes every single day. And we also try and do one thing every day, which is something I've really tried to do into motherhood. But I always give us a one day a week break where we have like a day of rest, I guess, to really slow down and just make sure we're connecting with each other and only each other, just kind of take a break from people as well because it can get really overwhelming and overstimulating so today for example today is a Thursday that I'm recording this the Thursday before Mother's Day and this day is on the day that we didn't do anything this week we just kind of sat at home and spent time with each other singing songs, reading books, playing, but we didn't even do our nature time today. And I can just tell from both

of us, like it's now 7.30 at night, it's time to get ready for bed. But because we didn't do much today, we're both just like not really tired. Like we didn't get our fill of fresh air. We didn't do much today. Um, we're both just like not really tired. Like we didn't get our fill of fresh air. We didn't get our fill of, um, outdoor time. So we're just like not really ready for bed. We're feeling pretty restless because we were just home all day. Um're feeling pretty confined. Yeah, so it's been a bit of a rough day. And I do really enjoy the connection days like that I set aside to just make time to connect with my son. But I do miss the nature as well. And last but not least is my friend Rachel who lives in San Diego California and she is a mom to a two and a half year old daughter my name is Rachel I have a daughter she's two and a half now which if we do the math I don't know right now is May of 2023 I got pregnant when COVID started. So I literally got pregnant or found out I was pregnant in March of 2020, the week before everything shut down.

And so my transition into motherhood came with a global pandemic and um yeah it it all I mean I totally believe it all happened for a reason and becoming a mother you know really puts you in a position of oh shit this isn't this isn't about me anymore you know this is I mean it's about me but it's know, this is, I mean, it's about me, but it's, I have this other one that is 100% reliant on me and the decisions I make, especially while pregnant. Um, so this all started, um, I mean, my pregnancy triggered me to really start to make some radical decisions about, um, how I wanted to live my life, the decisions I wanted to make for, you know, like on the medical side, as far as, um, where I was going to have this baby and how I wanted it to go. And I, I really had no idea. I had never

really thought of it before because I didn't really plan on having babies ever really until I did. And, um, yeah, so I had a lot of outside forces that I let affect me and I, then, and I let, um, influence me and I let alter my decisions, um, because of what I thought was quote unquote, right. Or what I should do. And I didn't do a lot of practice, um, like turning in inward and listening to my body. You know, I'd, I'd heard all of this and I knew it's what I should do was turn inward to my body, but I didn't really know how. And I, so I outsourced a lot, you know, I'm like, Oh my gosh, I need to know I'm making the right decision. And somebody else needs to tell me that. So that's, um, that's, I don't know if that's how, that is not how I decided to have a home birth. Cause I did decide to have a home birth after a few weeks of some deep research in hospital,

you know, how you're treated as a pregnant woman in a hospital, which is basically like a patient who's sick. And so I was looking into midwifery care. I knew I wanted the best, and the best didn't seem like it was going to come from a hospital setting. So I was looking into midwifery care. Um, I knew I wanted the best and it, the best didn't seem like it was going to come from a hospital setting. So I was looking into midwifery care. I looked into birth centers and then I, I kind of decided on a birth center, you know, because it's kind of the in-between and it's the first time I had done this and I really had a lot of doubts. Um, and, and really just bought into what the media says birth is, which is the hardest thing you'll ever do. It's traumatic, it's painful, it's dangerous. Um, so many things could happen that are wrong and bad and scary. So you, you, the birth center at least like is ready for emergency and it's a quick transfer and, you know, in case, in case, in case. And so I was going that way. And then I went and

saw one and I was like, why would I go to this fake bedroom and try to do all these things that I think I want to do, which is like, you know, be, be on my own as much as I can and really tune into the birth and what I need, what my body needs. And, and why would I go outside of my house to do this? And so something clicked and I made the terrifying decision that I wanted to have a home birth. And this was like the first decision that, um, I knew was right. And I couldn't justify it without just saying, I know, I know, I just know. Um, and so that's, that's when I started doing this research, you know, I had to, I had to do the research so that I could prove my point for all the doubters in my life who were like thinking I was crazy for doing this and, you

know, telling me the what ifs and all the scare tactics. And so I dove into all the research and I was ready in my head, you know, even in my heart and my body, I knew it was the right thing. I, I also felt like I needed to be able to defend my position. Um, so that all happened. I, um, I did get super deep into the research and, and actually after, after doing all the research, I became so passionate about our healthcare system and how women are treated that I changed my course in life and I decided to become a doula. Before I decided to become a doula, I went through the birth. So the birth was probably my biggest transformation in my life. I had a successful home birth.

I had a super fast labor for a first-time mom. And so I learned about expectations really quickly, you know, having expectations for what's going to happen because I'm a first time mom and it's probably going to be a long labor and this and that and this and, um, it was successful, but I definitely still didn't trust my body. Even though I, even though I had a healthy baby and I, and I did the thing, I didn't tune into, I didn't tune into my body. I didn't even trust what was going on when it was going on. I was fighting it through labor. It was so painful because I was fighting it. And, um, so I was making it even more painful for myself because I was not surrendering. I know all these things now, but, but in it, it was like, um, man, it was a fight. So I've learned all these lessons I'm learning all of these lessons continually and and it's always been coming back to surrender and I started preaching this as a doula you've got to surrender you've got to trust but but how you know if you've lived your whole life as a woman, outsourcing your power, looking outside, needing validation from someone else, from something else, that is not trusting your body and your intuition.

It's such a disconnect. And so I'm learning this. I'm learning this. And I'm attending births now as a doula. And I'm seeing this firsthand, even with the women I'm working with, you know, and I'm also like, I don't think I ever promised them, but obviously the goal when hiring me is to prep for birth and to trust your body and for me to help guide them to do that. And, and a couple of births that I attended, you know attended didn't have the outcomes that were wanted.

The hospital birth didn't end without an epidural. And the home birth didn't end as a home birth. It was a transfer to a hospital. So I know now I cannot take responsibility for those births. But in the moment, it's really hard to not feel like I failed these women and wonder what I missed, what they missed, and why, asking these questions why. So this has been recent that I've been attending these births and really digging into what the missing piece is and how we can fix and how we can change. recent transformation that, that I'm really going through now and that I'm really, really honing in on, um, is actual true surrender, which means that there isn't a fix.

There isn't, there isn't a place that you should be. There isn't a, a way, one way to do things. And actually, that's a lie. There is one way to do things and it needs to just be your way. And that's the way. So what that means is really, really, really taking the time to be honest with yourself, to, to learn what you've learned throughout your life and how that's impacted how you make decisions, how that's impacted the things you love in your life, how that's impacted the things you want to change in your life and taking responsibility for those. Um, and, and getting to the subconscious level of them as well. Um, I've learned some

new, some new verbiage around all of this. And one of the things that I love that helps me really picture and visualize, um, these things that I'm, I'm talking about now is, is contracts that you've had with yourself. So, um, the contract I had with, with my body was to be honest, was to numb it, was to, um, to try to put it in this box of what was beautiful. And if anything looked not beautiful from what this what I had in this box which is basically like what the media says is beautiful then I needed to just kind of bury it and and numb it that's the contract I wrote with myself whether I decided wanted to do that or not you know whatever the intention was that that's what the contract said. So rewriting this contract, understanding the contract and understanding and thanking it for keeping me safe throughout these

years of, um, of my process, but then knowing that I'm ready to rewrite it. Um, this has been so huge for me. So really, really sitting down and saying, all right, well, if this contract no longer serves me, what do I want it to say? What do I want it to look like? How do I want it to feel? So really digging deep and finding these feelings, um, within my body, what feels good what feels like a yes how do I know um and going from there you know saying oh I notice when I get a really good workout in and it's for me and it's been body led not not head not in my head led meaning like oh I should work out because I did this oh I ate this pizza so I should work out no when I do a workout now, it's for me, and it's how I want to feel. I notice that, and I write that down in my contract.

This is body-led feeling. This is body-led love. And really, really going there every time with good feelings, with not-so-comfortable feelings, with not so comfortable feelings, um, tapping into the place in my body that doesn't feel comfortable and looking at what contract is there. Like why, what is there? What do I need to learn? How can I learn? How can I show it grace? And then how can I thank it, release it and rewrite it? So it's kind of where I'm at right now. This is totally a tangent, I guess, but, but it's really been the center of my transformation and it's been so huge in the

way that I mother. This has helped me be a responder rather than a reactor. So when things trigger me, rather than just quickly reacting, I feel safe to take a moment, look at the situation and ask how I can respond to this. It's given me more patience. It's given me more space to give the unconditional love that I know that I have in my body for my family. And it's just been such a huge sigh of relief. I mean, I just did it right there. Huge deep breath. Oh, I feel so good. So it's truly who I am. And this woman I'm stepping into now is, is on a never ending journey of transformation and healing and expansive expansion. And, um, yeah, I just know I'm on the right path and I know it's my path and it's not a path that needs outside validation. And that's really been my biggest, biggest step into motherhood and who I

am now. And, um, yeah, there's more to come. So thank you, Nicole, for letting me share my story again. I didn't know where it was going to go, but here we are. Um, and thank you for putting this podcast together. It means so much that the women have a platform to share, um, truth, share their truth and inspire others. So thank you. So a big thank you to Amanda, Hannah, Jaden and Rachel. I've loved hearing your story. Thank you for your vulnerability and thank you for recording parts of your story for me. I hope this episode resonated for you in some way. Like I said, there's obviously, like obviously we're all on our own unique path, but I think storytelling can be really valuable because it can really help us, one, to feel less alone, but two, to actually put language to

something we're experiencing that maybe we didn't have the words for. Okay, before you go, I just wanted to say thank you for taking the time to listen to this episode. If you were thinking of anyone while listening, please send it their way. And if anything resonated with you or you love these conversations, please subscribe and leave a review. This really helps the podcast algorithms put my show in front of more people just like you. And the last thing, I would love nothing more than hearing from you. So say hi, DM me on Instagram and give me a follow at NicolePasvir. Until next time.