The Therapy Edit - One Thing with Victoria Emes on admitting it's hard

Episode Date: December 10, 2021

On this episode of The Therapy Edit's 'One thing', Anna Mathur interviews Victoria Emes.Victoria's one thing she'd like to impart to other parents involves chipping away at the shame and silence many feel around the conflicting and difficult emotions that come with parenting.Warning! This podcast can get a bit fruity at times so we'd recommend using headphones if there are any little ears listening in!To find out more about VictoriaVisit her website at https://www.victoriaemes.com/Follow her on Instagram @victoriaemesPreorder her book 'Welcome to Motherhood, Bitches: The real guide from pregnancy, birth and beyond' (out 17th February 2022) at shorturl.at/fxEM2

Hello and welcome to the Therapy Edit podcast with me, psychotherapist Anna Martha. I'll be bringing you weekly 10 minute episodes to encourage and support your emotional well-being. Hello and welcome to today's episode of One Thing and I have got with me today or with me on the screen, over the screen. Hello. I wish we were in person. We would have, we would have much fun. Victoria Eames and I found you on Instagram I probably was scrolling the old Explore page

and something My Minge probably pop up didn't it? Clads in the litre pipe light lycra coated and I just love

I love following you because you're like honest like really honest the kind of honest that gives us the answer to the questions that we might not feel able to ask and they're kind of honest that just dives confidently into the taboos that, you know,

people just find super awkward to talk about. Can you hit my daughter? I'm really sorry. She's going, man, oh gosh. Mom! Mommy! Oh, God, this is the reality. She's welcome.

It is the reality. She is welcome. So I love, I think it's on her Instagram, you've written, you are unfiltered thoughts from a potty-mouthed mama navigating the peaks and troughs of parenthood. and that is exactly your podcast. That's what you find there. It's what you find on your page. Your podcast is no holds.

No holds. No holds. No holds barred. And the conversations that you have there with Laura are just, yeah, just funny and just hugely relatable. So thank you for that. But also, excitingly, news just in. On the seven, although I kind of knew it.

Yeah, you knew it. I might have had a cheetah of February. Your book is out. To Motherhood and Pictures. Yes, it's out on the 17th of Feb, which I'm so glad you informed me of because I'd forgotten the date. I found that online. But hopefully at this point it would have all been announced and everything. So it's very exciting. It's very exciting. I feel terrified, actually, of just how it's going to be received by P.N. people, you know. It's like I've worked on it for a year, Anna. Yes, yeah. It's like putting a bit of your heart on a platter and then sending it out into the world. But I have, I've, I've had a good old weed and it, I just love, it's your own experience, but but hugely interwaven with some incredibly helpful advice and insight.

And just all those topics, all those questions pre-birth as well that I kind of wanted to ask in the antenatal class. you're too afraid to. And I didn't. Yeah, but man, I, I, I, yeah, it needs to be out there. And I can't wait. I can't wait to, to know that people have that in their hands. I'm very, I am very excited. Yeah. And I hope that's what that book, what the book is as well is that it's kind of all the stuff that nobody told you. But, you know, everyone goes through seemingly. Yeah. My experience, I've been spoken to thousands of women online. That, yeah, we've all had massive bum grapes. and huge dinner plate ariolas and half our, you know, whims falling out on a trampoline post birth. So, absolutely.

Absolutely. Well, and you and you go there. You really go there. And thank you. Thanks for that. It's just going to be one. I'm just going to press it into friends' hands and be like, this is what you need to know.

This is the stuff. You won't ask. So how are you? Yes, I'm feeling pretty good actually today. quite tired as always what's new my kids don't sleep so you know that's my life now um but other than that uh well actually am i lying i think i'm lying i've had a terrible time recently of motherhood it's been hard work we were just chatting before we came on just saying how it's just a different challenge every day basically never-ending relentlessness of parenthood yeah and always needing

just thinking this i haven't i haven't done this bit before i know i need i don't I don't know what to do with this bit. How do I deal with it? How do I deal with it? I literally bought a book. I showed you about sibling rivalry, just trying to stop my kids from tearing each other's freight out basically. I'll let you know how it goes. Thank you. Yes, I would like a summary of that book. That would be great. Thank you. So the one question that we ask our guess is what is the one thing that you want to impart in fellow moms? What's the one thing that you want to say to them. So I think as I do, you know, online, on Instagram, on my podcast in my book,

I just think that more of us need to be honest about how difficult motherhood is, about talk about the struggles of motherhood, about how it doesn't all, it doesn't come easily to all of us. that that's okay um and that living you know with that struggle can be it's quite it's quite exhausting isn't it because i think we're sort of told by society that becoming a mother is going to be the best thing that we do and that it's going to fulfill us in ways that we never know and it does and i'm not i'm not disputing that at all but i think what we're not prepared for are just the really difficult parts of motherhood like the fact that you know it's now been eight months

since I've actually had a full night sleep. That kind of thing. No one really told me about that and about how challenging my daughter's tantrums were going to be and how my body was going to change and how my relationship to my partner was going to change and how sex was going to change and just everything. There's so many things that I've just become so much more complicated

since having kids, I think. And also in trying to find the humour in that too. which is how I survive it, basically. Just finding the funny in the shittness in the dark days is what keeps me going. Yeah, and you do that. So you do that so well and you do that for us. I think there are times when you've got me laughing about my own situation in a way that I might have just only been annoyed about it beforehand.

Because it is funny. Sometimes it is so ridiculous. You're just like, wow, what am I actually doing? How can this meet my life? How is this happening right now? Why am I plucking this from out of this or under this? I often feel like that when my toddler's just curled an actual hot turd into my palm. That's those moments.

I'm like, is this, genuinely, is this my life now? Just catching hot ships directly out of my kid's ass. Wow. That is, that is, yeah, that's definitely a moment there. But I think you're right. It's just about, it's about that honesty because often the gap between what we expect, we've learned to imagine motherhood is and the reality of what it is, the bigger that gap is filled, you know, it's filled with that failure, that feeling of failure, that feeling of like,

am I actually doing this right? Am I broken? Yeah. I'm my kids broken. Am I ever going to be, you know, am I getting it wrong? Am I the only one that's feeling like this and finding it hard and actually the more we talk about the hard stuff? Do you also think there's fear sometimes? If I talk about the hard stuff, then people will think I'm not grateful. People will think I think I think for a lot of people absolutely it's not for me really I don't know it's strange isn't it I don't have any qualms talking about how shit it is at all

and maybe that's because I just I don't know if I can lie I'm not a very good liar but if you know I think that's it as well I think there can be so much fear around how we might feel, be judged by others if we're honest. But actually, if you yourself feel confident in the love that you have and the fact that you are grateful for many things,

but also this is a reality, the more confident you feel in living in that funny motherhood conflict, the less you're going to fear, like, well, what if I say this? And then so-and-so is going to think, I don't love my child or I don't, I'm not grateful for being a mom or, you know, I don't see the good bits. I think it's worth that. it's like you just have to detach from really caring about what people think because and this is actually something two things Anna that I've learned from you I remember us having a conversation and you said the only people that matter or the only people's

opinions who matter are like your inner circle of the people that love you I mean okay my mum doesn't count in that I she loves me I love her but her opinions can fuck off but I will still tell her how should it is um so that was one piece and I always think about it's like you're right, especially being on the internet where you do get a lot of unsolicited, you know, opinions from people and especially if you are speaking about things that other people wouldn't necessarily speak about and showing a real side of motherhood or whatever.

It's going to evoke reaction for people. I think that's just standard, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, not that people, it shouldn't be standard that people are dickheads to you, but equally people do have an opinion on it. So there's that. And then you know how you always do that? you always say to you find you find the little moments and you're grateful so instead of being

like oh god i've got all these washings to you be like i've got clean clothes for the children well i am i am so desperate to do a fistache of that because i want it to be that moment of like oh look my child's curling a shit into my hand it's like but i get to catch the shit good food yes you get to catch it and he was nourished guy and food that i've caused that I hear you. I hear you. It is. I hear you. Oh dear. Um, I hear you. Yeah. What, no, what did you ask me again? It was about, yeah, finding you knowing your truth. And yes, you will get opinion when you're honest about stuff. Because actually, that's more to do with the fact that perhaps, you know, there have definitely been times when I have not felt comfortable in my own hardness. Like I've seen that as I've felt like that's failure. The fact that I'm finding it hard. Because. I think, you know, it's so easy to ascribe to the whole motherhood is wonderful and you've got to be grateful and it's a, you know, a privilege and a gift. And it is all of those things. And then we, but then we shame ourselves for feeling those hard emotions. And I think this is the value of what you're doing is you're, you're throwing it out there unashamedly so that other people can own it in themselves. And then other people's opinions doesn't really matter as much because you know, you know you love your kids, but you will. know that there is validity in the fact that it is also, oh my gosh, the hardest thing I've

ever done in my life at the same time. I have had, because I have had a really difficult time recently, especially with there's been a lot of sleep issues with my toddler. So just a lot of nights being up like for two hours in the middle of the night with a screaming child. Like, it's so hard. And I've, I've had moments then when I felt like this is the darkest that I've ever sort of, you know, sunk to in this whole experience. And I've been a mum for five years now. So that's saying quite a lot because there's quite a lot of shit has happened. And then it's always like the feeling that comes afterwards of having those sort of dark

thoughts of like, I don't know if I can actually do this. Like I don't know if I was actually should be a mum, but then equally like, well, I've got no fucking choice now. I've got nowhere to. I can't, I'm not going to glow. This is it. You know, I'm not going anywhere. This is my life.

I've got to just suck this up. So I sit in the moment of despair for a bit and then come out of it. And of course I feel guilty for feeling all those things because you're like, oh, that's awful. La, la, la, la. It's like, actually, no, it's not. I'm just a human being. Like, I am a mother. You're having a human response.

Yeah. And I'm human response. Someone is screaming in my face for two hours. It's like, and I, seemingly, I can't do anything to console them no matter what I do just seems to like more angry. Like those moments, I find that hard to find the humour in those moments because I am just like, oh my God, is it, you know? But then the next day, it's the morning and everything seems so much worse at night time, doesn't it? So you just feel so, like, literally alone because there's no one around and it's dark and it's just like, oh my God.

It's at 3 o'clock. It's like the loneliest time of the day, isn't it? 3 a.m. apparently. Yeah. And that's what she's always up. I can believe that. I can believe that. We can't rationalise these things as well

and just when we're exhausted and when it is in the middle of night and we've got no point in reference so you can't even really see what's around you. So thank you. I think that's it. It's being open about the hard so that we can just be honest with each other

and know for ourselves that we are not contradicting our love, the hard and the love can very much co-exist. They do co-exist. So thank you so much for the truth that you bring to it. We appreciate. you and thank you for giving us the tools to not all just have nervous breakdowns every five seconds

it's very helpful i am having to use them a lot a lot thank you so much bye thank you for listening to today's episode of the therapy edit if you enjoyed it please do share subscribe and review you can find more from me on instagram at anamatha you might like to check out my two books called mind over mother and know your worth. I'm also the founder of the Mother Mind Way, a platform full of guides, resources, and a community with the sole focus on supporting mothers' mental and emotional well-being.

It's been lovely chatting with you. Speak soon.