The Therapy Edit - One Thing with Mrs OT on allowing yourself to acknowledge the loss of your former self in motherhood

Episode Date: November 10, 2023

In this guest episode of The Therapy Edit, Anna chats to guest Mrs OT, (aka Kate Okello Tarrant) who shares her one thing; allowing yourself to acknowledge the loss of your former self in motherhood.After years of establishing a successful career as a voice artist and stage/film actor, motherhood took Kate on an unexpected plot twist as the pandemic hit alongside the birth of her first born. Recognising the lack of support for mothers during this time, she used the career 'pause' to train as a breastfeeding specialist as well as an ante-/postnatal & birth advocate. This has snowballed in tandem with her own mama journey and now exists as an online platform focusing on maternal mental health and wellbeing as well as luxe 'mama only events' across the capital which she hosts in person, oftentimes with special guests / industry professionals.You can find out more about Mrs OT hereYou can follow her on Instagram here

Hello and welcome to The Therapy Edit with me, psychotherapist's mum of three and author Anna Martha. Every Friday, I invite one guest to tell me the one thing they would most like to share with mums everywhere. So join with me as we hear this dose of wisdom. I hope you enjoy it. Hi, everyone. Welcome to today's guest episode of The Therapy Edit. And I have with me, Kate. Oh, hello, Tarrant.

Kate is on Instagram as Mrs. O.T. And I highly recommend that you go and seek her out because you grab a cup of tea and just sit down and have a scroll, basically, because Kate has the most beautiful way of articulating the nuances of motherhood and life. And she shares so generously and beautifully that you will just see your heart poured out in her words. and you'll feel really seen and you'll, yeah, just go and find her because her words are just poetry. Anyway, a little bit more about Kate other than her beautiful writing. She is a mother.

She's, I call her writer because she is. She's just got such a gifting. And she is also founder of Mrs. O.T. the retreat. So these are, how would you explain them, Kate? You hold these retreats and some of them are at David Lloyd in Rains Park and they just look like the most beautifully nurturing spaces. I need to come to one. Oh, please do come to one.

They are, there are a variety of different things. So the one in David Lloyd is lovely. It's called the urban retreat. So it brings mums from local catchments together, which is why we started in one catchment area. But hopefully we'll expand, if anyone wants an urban retreat in their local area. It brings mums together to kind of create little mini networks. And then we also have events, which you know about, which you've been part of that have rolled out across London.

And it's all for the mother. So we obviously have a plethora of support for mums. And all of it is very just and needs to be there. But when I was a mum myself, I realized that there was an element that was missing. And that was nurturing my mental health and my well-being, but also something that was just for me. So these are like lux, nights off, just for mums where we often have industry professionals or guest hosts or contributors that come. And you basically just have these glorious, sometimes candlelit, sometimes auditorium, sometimes private talks, sometimes whatever. these beautiful events where mums come together of all ages so like grandmiles can come

and my own mum often makes an appearance where we just kind of come together and and talk about life as a mum but at every stage and every generation so they're really really special and yeah we'd love to meet lots of new mums so please do check us out on the website if you go over to kate yes go over to kate's page and her website and have a little look at what's going on. So I met Kate originally at an event that I spoke at at David Lloyd in Rains Park and I then hunted you down on the gram and that's where I found all your beautiful words. And then we bonded, didn't we, over kind of deep chats and a real relating of hearts and that passion for mums to feel nurtured. And you're doing that in so many different ways.

So yeah, it's good to have you. It's an absolute pleasure to be here. Thanks so much for saying all those very kind things about you. I'm blushing profusely over here. but no it's nice i write everything that i call my instagram like my personal public journal um and i guess it's just if anything resonates with anybody then that's the goal of every post just so that we feel a little bit less alone because it can be bloody lonely sometimes can't it it certainly can and uh just before we clicked record you're saying that you feel much more comfortable on the other side of the of the conversation being the one being the one doing the interviewing which you did so beautiful at your prevent. Absolutely. I think that there's also vulnerability. So, you know, you can control what

you put online and what you're capable of. I'm willing to share. But I think that, you know, when you're putting yourself in a vulnerable position, I think that it's very, very different. I'm much better at getting information out of people than people are at getting information out of me. So good luck, Anna. Good luck. No, I feel like I've got a knack just to see how you have. So we're going to be just fine. But first of all, I'll ask you how you are. How are you today? I'm okay. Do you know what we were speaking a little earlier, just about everything that's going on at the moment? And I think that we're all feeling a little bit heavy and a little bit at unease. And also, I don't know about anyone else, but I'm massively affected by the seasons. So now that we're kind of starting to finally, I mean, a couple of months late, go into this autumn season, I can really feel my body slowly going into the kind of autumn winter hibernation. So things seem slower, things seem a little bit more paste, which, I suppose is a little bit appreciated after the kind of chaos of summer and, you know, the September start. So I'm feeling cozy like a little bear ready to, ready to getting ready for

hibernation and enjoying the slightly slower pace of life. Yes, I'm kind of trying to find ways to lean into that. So the other question that I ask besides how you are is, okay, if you could share one thing with all the mum's listening, all your wisdom, your knowledge and your, nurturing heart, what would you say? Now, do you know what? I dilly dallied on this for so long because there are a million things that I wish that people have told me before I became a mum that would have been really blimmon useful when I did enter motherhood. But the one that I just kept coming back to that I wish someone had said to me was the art of giving yourself permission to grieve the person that you once were. Whilst simultaneously,

in fact, in the same breath, giving yourself permission to fully accept and embrace the new person that you're presented with. And I think it's incredibly hard to kind of find the juggling act of the two. But it's okay for those two feelings to coincide with each other. And I think that we can often focus so much on one or the other that we can sometimes forget that. And I certainly did. And I was really affected by the shift that I don't necessarily think I prepared for. or thought it would happen. And so I just wish that someone had said, you know, it's so okay to miss that person that you were,

but also you're grieving because the reality is, and it sounds like a harsh truth, is that you can never, ever be that person again. In the most beautiful way possible, but we often find ourselves striving for this lost person, and they're not lost, they're still a part of who you were, but you're on this new journey. And actually, when I finally gave myself permission to accept that the new could be just as fulfilling as exciting, I just felt I'd let go of a breath that I'd been holding for an incredibly long time.

And I just could have probably let go of it about two years earlier. So I think that's what I'd love to share with others if I can in any way. Yeah, so that acceptance, that it's okay to grieve who you recognize yourself to be, before becoming a mum. What do you think stopped you from allowing yourself in that couple of years that you really wish that you had just had a bit more acceptance for that? I think, I mean, going right back,

I'm incredibly lucky in that I always knew what I wanted to do. You know, when people say, what do you want to do when you grow up? I always had the answer from a very, very young age. But I only have had one answer. And so I did. I mean, I trained and I wanted to be an actor and I loved it. And I mean, we can have another day about why I ended up in that career

and I'm picking, you know, the kind of stepping into another role and the escapism and all of that. But as a young child, I just wanted to be an actor and I found an immense amount of joy in that. And I worked incredibly hard to get there. My parents were obviously thrilled after when I was younger. Someone had encouraged them to send me to a private school because they saw academic this potential and then everyone was really thrilled at the age of 16 when I was like no I really want to be an actor and they were like great investment thanks for that but I did and I kind of checked out of school and was often in trouble because I really did fully check

out of school I was there in person but not in mindset because I was just so focused on this one goal and I blam and made sure I got there and I trained and I was lucky enough to go to the drama a school that I wanted to go to. And then I set about this kind of decade-long career where that was my every day. Now, people get into acting for a plethora of different reasons and voice work. Mine was never for like recognition or fame. I just wanted to be able to say that it was my job in the same way that everybody else that had gone down perhaps a more mainstream path could say that their job was their job. I just wanted to know that it was my bread and butter and that I was able to do what I loved for a living. So then, fast forward when I had my first little boy, Oscar,

I mean, I prepared for a pause. And the only other thing that I wanted more than this job was to be a mother. And that was always non-negotiable. It was never a question as to whether it would be a good choice to pause my career. It was what I wanted to do. But fast forward to having him. And, well, I mean, weirdly, the world stopped. I knew that I was for a little bit of I have to pause for a little bit, but I also timed having my first baby with the height of the pandemic. So quite ironically, I find quite a lot of comfort. It's quite sadistic to say in the fact that when I did pause my career, the entire arts industry paused as well. So I never actually saw immediately what I was missing. But then when I first kind of came back and, you know,

we could start getting into rehearsal rooms again, albeit with masks on. And I got offered my first job and I did my first tour and I was so determined to make it work again and get back on the horse and then I was shocked when I found that it wasn't as maintainable as I thought and so I think I mean I was also three months pregnant and then six months by the end of the tour I spent a lot of time sleeping on cold dressing room floors with that awful pregnancy fatigue and I shipped my husband around the UK with me and my 18-month baby, trying desperately to fly the flag for, you know, pregnant women can be actors and, you know, new mums can be actors. But suddenly this thing that I'd always wanted and had always made me happy wasn't making me happy anymore. And I think

going back to what you asked, the block was that I didn't know anything else. So I was suddenly faced with I've always only ever wanted this one thing and suddenly I can't do it anymore and if I do it's going to break me in some way or I'm not going to be able to show up as a mother which actually trumped everything for me and I felt lost and I thought the minute that I admitted that I couldn't maintain it was the minute that I kind of jumped into oblivion and that I had nothing left and it's hard because you know when you've really vocalised that you want to be a mum and you've got that and I've got I love my kids more than anything

there's also then a guilt attached to saying I do love my kids and I want to be here with them for every second but there's a creative outlet that needs to be nourished and there's a part of me that needs to be nourished but I can't do it and so it's kind of it's admitting all of that which I think that's what took the most guts to overcome. Yeah, those two things that couldn't sit in tandem in the way that perhaps you'd hope that they might.

And the grief, I guess the grief came in in that recognition. Absolutely. I just felt like quite frankly a part of me had died and I didn't know how to resurrect her because I knew nothing else. And I was always envious of people that had multiple strings to their bow because I just thought, oh, well, they've got, they've got something. And what have I got now? I've got motherhood and that's brilliant. But that's only such a small part of me. What about the rest? What now? What do I do? So you can feel incredibly lost, incredibly quickly. And I think that you can be so focused on that past self. And this is what I did. I hadn't actually acknowledged what motherhood had brought me

or what actually I had been doing subconsciously that could that could fill or bridge the gap. I don't think we should ever say fill the shoes because I think that, again, if we start saying that it's going to be filling the shoes of something that we were doing before,

we're giving ourselves a false sense of hope that it's going to give us the same kind of joy and different things, bring us different elements of joy. So it's like stilettos and ugs. And like right now, I'm in ugg's season. I mean, I am actually very much in ag season. I love that. but it's just these are the shoes that I've got to wear right now

and actually I've kind of got okay with the idea of parking those stilettos on the shelf for special occasions and I'm very lucky to still be able to do voice work and that was my compromise but I've grieved that I can't go on four month long tours twice a year because it's not currently right now sustainable but the shoes are still there and they still fit but they're not right for walking through the autumn news

they're not your main shoes right now They're not my main shoes right now. Exactly, exactly. So beautiful. So powerful. And I think when we shame ourselves for that grief. And I think I wrote about this, I think, in the little book of kind of New Mom Feelings.

And it was, I said, you know, it's okay to miss good things. It's okay to miss things that you enjoyed and a part of you that you enjoyed being. And I think the more that we shame ourselves for that grief, and we hold back from that recognition that we missed that and that's sad, the less likely we are to be able to find new avenues to explore and practice those parts of us. And do you think, so now I see you being incredibly creative in what you're putting out in the world and putting together for mums. And I wonder if that only came after you gave yourself,

permission to grieve or whether it kind of came alongside each other or I think it was almost like the moment that I finally had that kind of awakening of I just I can't mope about this any longer and I think moping is good we all need to mope sometimes but I was getting actually a little bit sick of myself and I thought I can't actually progress in the amount that I'm kind of moping and you start to resent people I was resenting my husband going out to work and I hated it when he complained about work because I was like, I would do anything to have a day in the rehearsal room again and you get to go and you get to speak to real people and I've just pretended to be like a duck all day. And so like I knew that I couldn't continue that resentful dialogue between us because

it wasn't helpful. But also, again, it was like there was, the avenue was in front of me. I just wasn't letting myself look at it. So when we did hit pause during the pandemic and I had my first baby, I am a bit of a, I always do need to have a project. I think a lot of creative souls do. And so when I'd seen firsthand the kind of lack of support for women just becoming new mums, I spent that time training as a breastfeeding specialist and as what people refer to as a doula. I don't. Just as a FYI, it means slave.

It translates to slave. And as someone as an African descendant, I really have a jarring time using it for that. But that's a conversation again for another day. So I refer to myself as a birth advocate or a postnatal anti-natal advocate. And so I did that because it meant that during lockdown, I had this kind of network. I found a community. I got to work with mums. And I found out I was a bit of a booboficionado, like who knew?

And so I just, that's what I spent my time doing. I had no idea in that moment that something that I did when I couldn't do anything else was going to end up where it is now. But because I was so focused on the past, I didn't even realize. how it was snowballing. I didn't start Mrs. O.T. Literally was a business name because that was my married name and it was just a good way to introduce myself to local mums to help them with their boobs and with their babies. And then, you know, I mean, we've spoken about this before. You create what you need. So as I realized there was more support needed here, I started creating that support under

Mrs. O.T. So it kind of just, it became blogging. It became the social media. It became the Instagram. community events. And then suddenly I was like, no, this is not just support in early motherhood. It's support across all of motherhood. And there are great companies that exist for during maternity leave. But when my maternity leave finished and I still felt like I needed support and that kind of community, I couldn't find it in the capacity that I was looking for. And suddenly I thought, okay, actually, this is the path that I'm on right now. And it might not be the path that I'm on forever, but because I've now accepted that one path has just got a little bit of a pause in it, there's a few roadworks there, I can actually go down here and I can, I can walk

these shoes for a little while or forever. Like, I don't, I don't know what's going to happen, but I know that it's, it definitely scratches an itch and I love it and I do, it's not the same feeling as being on stage, but I wouldn't expect it to be, but it brings enough joy and enough, I don't know, comfort and something for me in my life, selfishly, that makes me feel not so lost anymore. And I think having purpose, but like self-purpose rather than motherhood purpose is just so important. But we have to be open for a little bit of change in order to achieve that. It's so helpful. So there might be so many people listening who feel like they're standing at the top of that road that they've just come up that was very familiar and may be really

enjoyable and they're looking back and they want to keep going down that road but there are road signs there you know there's some roadblocks you said and they're thinking you know we can get stuck in that place thinking I want to go down there but I can't I want to go down there but I can't and then we can shame ourselves for for wanting that and thinking how dare I have got everything else that I want and I've got my children I should be feeling grateful but actually as soon as we get to that position of allowing ourselves to grieve the fact that actually I'm so grateful for my kids and it doesn't it doesn't jeopardize that in acknowledging that I'm also sad that that isn't my road right now. And in only in doing that I guess we start to zoom out a little bit and look

for other other routes that might be a little bit more windy and might be a little narrower or might be a bit more bumpy or might look totally different. But yeah, we're just standing there staring at that road, feeling a little bit frozen. When we allow ourselves to grieve, there's such a, the powerful thing about grief is that it is a journey, it is a process and we're moving. I think when we're shaming ourselves and we're feeling guilty for missing things and not allowing ourselves to grieve, that that's the thing that keeps us stuck. So I absolutely love that it was when you came to that place of acceptance, that you were sad and that things were different, the things were also good, that the other way started revealing

itself. Yeah, we're all probably going to end up in the same place, I think. I do think that a lot of our journeys kind of mapped out for us, but are you going to sit in traffic or are you going to take the scenic route? I love it. It's up to you. Oh, such a, such an encouragement to just question whether we're feeling a bit stuck because actually we're not allowing ourselves to feel that sadness and move through that process so that we can get to that place where other options do feel possible. And we can get creative. in how in how we're living out those parts of ourselves that perhaps feel like they're getting a little bit of dust. So thank you so much. And I encourage people because actually this is so

reflective of some of the conversation, the kind of the depth and the warmth of the conversation that we had at your event when I was there. Oh, it was so special. Thank you so much. But, you know, huge encouragement to go over to the Mrs. O.T page and go on Kate's website and see what else is going on because I promise you you will you will leave just. feeling nurtured, which is everything that Kate, Kate writes and everything that she's about is that passion to nurture you and empower you. So before we go, I would love to ask you a quick file question. Okay. So what is, what's a motherhood high for you? Oh, motherhood high is, oh, everything, everything, just the cuddles and snuggly babies and really big sloppy

snogs when you need them the most. I've got two empathetic babies that just really tune in. They're proper little gentle boys. And it's lovely that we nurture our kids, but it is so special when they know when to nurture mummy too. How lovely. Those, those slobbery moments just when you need to. Slavery snogs. Well, thank you so much for bringing your warmth and your wisdom to the therapy edit. Thank you so much for having me. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Therapy Edit. If you have enjoyed it, don't forget to subscribe and review for me. Also, if you need any resources at all, I have lots of videos and courses on everything from health anxiety to driving anxiety and people pleasing nail all on my website, anamatha.com.

And also, don't forget my brand new book, Raising a Happier Mother is out now for you to enjoy and benefit from. It's all about how to find balance, feel good, and see your children. flourish as a result. Speak to you soon.