This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - 090 / Unmasking Modern Motherhood with Katherine Wintsch

Episode Date: May 25, 2022

If you are a self-doubting mom who would love nothing more than to feel confident as a parent, you are not alone, and this episode is for you. Our guest on today’s episode of This Is Woman’s Work is Katherine Wintsch, founder and CEO of The Mom Complex, and author of Slay Like A Mother. Her research has been featured on The Today Show, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Working Mother magazine, to name a few. And she’s here today to share some of that ground breaking research from her popular book so that we can ALL slay like a mother. “The dragon raging inside you has a name and it’s self doubt. You’re the only one who can see it so you’re the only who can slay it. You have two choices, either learn to slay this beast, or it will slowly and silently slay you. If you don’t rise up and take back your life, and your sanity, the constant battle and fighting will wear you down and wear you out. And you, your family and the world will miss out on the best of you. You can do this, let’s go slay some dragons.” – Katherine Wintsch This is Woman’s Work To learn more about Katherine, visit slaylikeamother.com, click HERE to sign up for her newsletter, or connect with her on IG @slaylikeamother. To learn more about what we are up to outside of this podcast, visit us at NicoleKalil.com

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you're not going to want to. Get 30% off your first month plus free shipping on any crate line with code WW30 at KiwiCo.com. That's 30% off your first month at K-I-W-I-C-O.com, promo code WW30. I am Nicole Khalil and I am a confident woman. And we live in a world where it feels kind of strange to say that, like I'm boasting or trying to convince somebody. And it might have even felt strange to hear it because let's face it, there aren't a lot of us saying that. Part of the reason is because we've misunderstood confidence as being without any fears, doubts, or struggle. And I'd submit to you that those things are not the opposite of confidence, but rather a requirement of it. You can't choose confidence without having doubts, just like you can't choose courage without having fear. One gives you the opportunity to create the other. And nowhere in my life is this

more true and more relevant than as a mother. It's like the moment of JJ's birth. My child came out and all the mom guilt, fear, overthinking, and constant worrying came in. I'm wondering if my doctor quickly slipped it in while she was down there. If you're also a self-doubting mom who'd love nothing more than to be confident as a parent, this episode is for you. If you struggle with doubt in any aspect of your life, you're not going to want to miss this. Our guest on today's episode of This Is Woman's Work is Catherine Winch, founder and CEO of The Mom Complex and author of Slay Like a Mother, How to Destroy What's Holding You Back So You Can Live the Life You Want. She's been hired by corporations like Walmart, Johnson & Johnson, and Airbnb to help them become better at supporting their mom customers

and employees. And her research has been featured on the Today Show, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Working Mother Magazine, to name a few. And she's here today to share some of that groundbreaking research from her popular book so that we can all slay like a mother. Catherine, thank you so much for being here today. I'm so excited for this conversation. Yay. I'm excited too, Nicole. Thanks for having me. My pleasure. Okay. In your book, which is awesome, by the way, you call self-doubt the dragon that we all need to slay. And I really got that overwhelming feeling that we all need to slay it. Like it's not just me, which was

nice to hear. So I guess my first question is, how do we know, what does it feel like to be living with that dragon of self-doubt? A dragon of self-doubt makes you feel overwhelmed, overworked, undervalued. And you know, you have a dragon of self-doubt. If you're always hustling, you're always working, you're always pushing yourself and you never feel good enough. And there's a voice in your head that yells at you all day long and says, basically, you're pathetic and everybody else is perfect. And so you can't do anything right.

You're not good enough, thin enough, nice enough, tough enough, mom enough, wife enough, you know, whatever enough. And it feels exhausting. And it feels like you just can't get ahead no matter how hard you work. Yeah, as you're going through that, I'm nodding my head. I call that voice in our head, head trash, because it says things that are never kind and never true. And you make an important distinction

in the book that I'd love for you to talk a little bit about. And that's the difference between struggling and suffering. We all struggle, but you know, we don't all have to suffer. So what's the difference? So I've researched women and mothers in over 17 countries around the world. And that's where this insight came from is the difference between struggling and suffering. So struggling is brought on by the external circumstances in your life. So figuring out what to feed your family, maybe you're going through a divorce, maybe you're caring for an aging parent, having teenagers, you know, the struggles are endless and everyone faces them and you can't

grow your way out of them, buy your way out of them, move your way out of them. It's just part of the human existence, quite frankly. But we suffer when our suffering is brought on by the internal circumstances in our life, meaning that dragon of self-doubt, that mean voice. And so an example might be that maybe you struggle with dinnertime, figuring out what to feed your family. And God knows they have to eat seven days a week and it's all very exhausting. And dinnertime is the number one pain point of mothers in the United States. So that's a struggle and it's a struggle every day. But we suffer when we yell at ourselves and beat ourselves up for not being better at it, not doing it better.

And so that might look like, you know, come on, Kelsey, you know, your kids never eat vegetables and everyone else around you is super healthy and your kids only love candy and you suck and you're a terrible mother. And what I want people to know, and I talk about and say like a mother is that the struggle is real. It will always be there, but the suffering is optional because we suffer at our own hand. And while that might sound overwhelming, it's really meant to be empowering because if you're causing your own suffering, then you can uncause it. And as Eleanor Roosevelt once said, no one can make you feel bad about yourself without your permission. And so we have to learn to stop yelling at ourselves and beating ourselves up for every minor infraction. Okay. So all of that sounds very logical, but I feel like it falls into the category of easier said than done, at least from personal experience. The idea that there are other

moms across this country who are struggling around dinner time. Yet, I think in those moments, we feel like we're the only one. Why is that? What is this mask that we are wearing that makes it seem on the outside looking in like everything is wonderful, but there's a different story behind it? Well, we feel like we're the only one because not enough women talk about their struggles and not enough mothers admit it. And you opened the podcast talking about confidence. And I think so many women don't have the confidence to say this is hard. And if we can just admit that motherhood is hard, I mean, we've never, you know, I'm a mother of two teenagers. I've never raised teenagers before. I don't know what the flip I'm doing, you know, and it has nothing to do with having young kids.

And if we can just get that far, we don't have to say we suck. We don't have to admit that we're terrible, but just say that the gig is hard, you know, of motherhood, then it lets us off the hook a little bit. Because if we believe that motherhood should be easy, then when it's hard, we think we suck. But if we can just admit, and that's the first step, the first step is just admitting that being a mother or being a human being is difficult. And we haven't had this role modeled for us. So mothers of previous generations, they just kept their chin up. They never said it was hard. They never admitted that it was hard. And so we haven't had a lot of role models that we're getting a little bit better at it. And women are getting

braver about saying it's hard, but I think that's the first step. And that's what really helped me. So I lived with my own dragon of self-doubt for 20 years. And when I started conducting research with mothers and they all told me that they thought that they sucked, I was like, oh my God, wait a second. If you're filled with doubt, if I'm filled with doubt, why are we not talking about the doubt? And so hopefully hearing that you're not alone will be the first step to admitting that this operation is hard. So many good things in there. And yes, it is hard and not enough of us are talking about it. Like I always joke around, you know, I've worked at an executive level at a Fortune 100 company.

I've left and started my own business. I've bought and sold homes. You know, the hardest gig I have is mom by far in a way. And it's also the one where I struggle the most with confidence. And I think, you know, one of the reasons you said is because there's no roadmap. I've never done this before. And all of our kids are different. All of us as parents are different. So all the books can be helpful, but you know, it's not a clear, you know, step-by-step formula that's just going to work

every time. I'm curious on your thoughts on this. One of the things I've come to realize for myself is that great has become the enemy of good. And what I mean by that is when I aspire to be a perfect mother or in my world, even a great mother. And to me, that means, you know, having it all figured out. It prevents me from actually being a good mother. Like I've kind of gotten to the point where it's like, good is my bar. Good enough is good enough. Am I just letting myself off the hook? What are your thoughts on that? How old are your children? So my daughter's eight. Okay. So, um, yes, I, you're exactly right. Everything that you said is very, very true. And you're very evolved, you know, to know that and, you know, and recognize that. And it's, you know, we want to be perfect, but sometimes we're striving for the wrong goal. So your daughter is a great age. So we often set our own expectations, right? So I have to be a good cook, I have to be a good wife, I have to be a good partner. I have to be a good homework helper, you know, a driver, like all the things. And we have all these different hats that we wear as mothers.

But oftentimes our expectations are externally driven, right? I want people to see that I'm a good mom. I want them to think I'm a good mom. I want the soccer coach to think I'm a good mom. The teacher at school to think I'm a good mom. But sometimes we need to turn those expectations on, you know, our own family members. So when my daughter was maybe five, I went to her, her name's Layla. And I said, Layla, what makes me a good mom? And she said, you're nice to me and you buy me pink clothes.

And I was like, holy crap here. I was thinking that I always had to be on time. I always had to make healthy food and X, Y, Z, you know, all the list is endless. And all she cared about was that I didn't yell at her and I bought her some cute shirts from target every now and then, you know? And so, you know, I would encourage you to ask your daughter and are you leading the witness by saying what makes me a good mom? Yes, you are. But we all need a compliment every now and then. But also you'll realize what matters to your daughter. And it's not all the crap that you are working so hard to try and prove yourself at. I couldn't agree more.

And as you were talking, I was thinking too from our children's lens, I don't think any of us would wish for our children to have perfectionist tendencies or want to do it all, have it all, like the pressure. I don't think any of us would wish to pass on that pressure to our children. And I often remind myself that, you know, the little ones are watching. And so what I do or how I manage the pressure, how I let it or don't let it affect me is probably more important than anything I could say. I don't know if I'm articulating that very well, but I just want to model not adopting all of that societal pressure so that my daughter hopefully won't as well. Any thoughts on that? I think that's a great point. And I think I'm generalizing,

but men are better at this and dads are better at this. And so when, you know, my husband, you know, my son could like have a fever and my husband could have a big meeting and he's like, I got to take him to school. I can't stay home. I mean, I'm exaggerating, but you get the point. And he, he might drop my son off somewhere and then go to work. And he's not taking that baggage with him. He's going to work. He's going to the meeting. He's going to crush it. And you know, where I think with women and mothers, it's like, Oh, I made a mistake this morning. I'm carrying that baggage around and I'm not perfect. And I suck. And our children do pick up on that energy. And that's why dads are branded as the fun parent and the moms are always the one fussing and screaming and yelling. And it's often because we don't want to look like bad mothers in front of other people, you know,

and, um, and kids pick up on that and they just want to have fun and they want to be relaxed, but we have to be more relaxed. And, and part of that starts with believing that what you're doing is good enough. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You go over in your book, seven ways that we are feeding our dragon of self-doubt. And you also share some practical tips on how to stop. All seven of them were extremely relevant, but because of time, you're going to have to buy the book if you want all seven. For our time together today, I want to narrow down on two of them. The first being setting superhero expectations in a mortal world. We kind of already talked about this, but I would love for you to add anything and also just some tips on how to stop this dragon. Yeah. In the book I talk about, there's

a difference between high expectations. You should have high expectations for yourself, but there's a difference between high and too high. So too high is, you know, I'm going to quit my job, go back to grad school, be a stay at home mom. The house is going to be perfect all the time. You know, all this perfection that we've been talking about. And so we have to bring our expectations back down to this planet. And one way that you can do this, this is something I still do to this day is if you're going through a hard time in your life, again, there's maybe there's a medical condition, your child's been diagnosed with something, you just got a new job, whatever it is a challenge, right on a post it note, I expect this to be hard. And put that post-it note, you can put it on your mirror in your bathroom, your computer,

you can put it in your dashboard in your car. And then when it is hard, because remember, anytime you're going through a situation for the first time, it's going to be hard because you're a rookie. And when it is hard, you'll look at that post-it note and say, oh, that's right. I expected this to be hard. Of course, it is hard, you'll look at that post-it note and say, oh, that's right. I expected this to be hard. Of course, it's hard. Instead of this is hard. Therefore, I must suck.

And that's the beauty of the post-it note is you need that reminder in your face because you can say that to yourself mentally. Hey, I'm going through a new time, something new. This is going to be hard. And you're going to forget eight minutes from now. And you're going to start beating yourself up because you're not good at it. So put that post-it note right in front of your face and it will help you give yourself grace during the difficult times. Giving grace has been, it's such a game changer. I'm curious if you have any tips on how to do this. I know one way that works for me is I think, what would I say to one of my mom, best friends

in this moment? Because I find I can be much kinder to the women in my circle than I ever am to myself. And when I can put it in that perspective and then apply it back, it usually helps me simmer down and apply a little grace. Any other tips on like just how we can be easier on ourselves or more? I like the expecting it to be hard, but we are mortal. So how do we be kinder to ourselves? One way you can be kinder to yourself is to teach this mean voice in your head some manners. And so I'll give you an example that not too long ago happened to me. So I enjoy riding the Peloton bike. And I happened to be at a hotel not too long ago, and got out of bed in the morning, kind of early went rode the bike in the hotel gym. And when I was done,

I was resting my hands kind of on the top side of my backside, stretching. And I felt in my hands two handfuls of cellulite. And the negative voice in my head immediately said, oh my gosh, what must this look like? And I'm looking around panicked, like, can everybody see my cellulite? And so the first step was that I actually heard it. I heard the voice in my head say, what must that look like? And so that's winning because many of us don't even realize what we're saying to ourselves. But then I taught that mean voice some manners. And I said, what this looks like is that I got my rear end out of bed and I put it on a bike. That's what this looks like. And so we can be kinder to ourselves by hearing the way we speak to ourselves and then correcting it, teaching it some manners in the same way that you just said, if your girlfriend came to you and said, I have cellulite on my backside, you would say, don't be ridiculous. You're beautiful and you're hardworking. You wouldn't say something horrible back to her. And so we have to learn, and it is a practice, but we have to learn to speak to ourselves the way we would speak to a girlfriend. The second way you said that we're feeding this dragon and aligns a lot with the work that I do in confidence building is you title it

looking for love in all the wrong places. Tell us a little more about that. You can tell you're looking for love in all the wrong places if the people around you aren't the right people, you know? And so, so many of us are looking for love, you know, from the teachers at school. We're looking for love from our parents, you know, even as grown adults, we're looking for love, you know, from acquaintances and colleagues, and maybe we have too many of those. And so if you're starting to collect, you know, people around you that don't have the same energy as you, or if you feed off other people too much, you know, if your self-esteem feels like a really slippery slope, meaning one day someone's like, your hair looks great. And you're like, yay, I'm great. I'm good. And then the next day somebody says you have cellulite and then you're down in the dumps.

Then that is an example of looking for love in the wrong places. Because as someone who did this for 20 years of my life, it will never come. You will never get the self-esteem, the ego boost, the love and affection from people outside of you because their opinions are always going to change and the people are always going to change. And so you are the barometer, you are the rudder on the sailboat, and you have to learn to love yourself. And once you do, you don't need as many people around you. You certainly don't need people around you that are negative or sucking up your energy, but you also don't need them to approve of you at all because it will be so strong within you that the opinions of the people around you will matter a lot less. Yeah. I mean, my research on confidence, that's the single biggest aha I got, which is we all think confidence comes to us from

external sources and it doesn't work that way. Confidence is only something you ever build internally. It can be reinforced externally and it can feel good to get a compliment, but it's the icing on the confidence cake, not the cake itself, right? On that note, someone once said to me about, you know, external love and affection. It just made me think of it when you said that they said, it's okay to want it. It's not okay to need it. Such a good distinction. Yes. You talk about three secret weapons for killing the dragon of self-doubt. Can you share with us what those are? Yeah. One of them is honesty. We have to be honest that I feel

broken. I feel exhausted. I don't feel like I can catch up. I feel like a bad mother. I mean, part of my many, many, many years in therapy, you know, I had to learn to be honest with myself. I had to learn to say out loud that I didn't feel good enough. So that is a really big step. And then another one is self-compassion. And that is what we talked about in terms of giving yourself grace, giving yourself a break and expecting things to be hard. One of my friends says that being a mother is just a series of mountains. And when you get over one, there's going to be one right on the other side. And the mountains are never going to go away, but we do get better at climbing them. And so part of that self-compassion is expecting things

to be difficult and challenging. And another aspect of slaying this dragon of self-doubt is silence and you know learning to adopt a meditation practice and that does not have to be a big fancy time-consuming thing like this morning I just went out on my front porch and I took six really really deep breaths with my eyes closed and that was my silence that That was my, you know, meditation. And throughout the day when I want to lose my mind and I get frustrated about things, I can go back to that feeling that I had this morning by myself, internally focused, taking some deep breaths. And it sounds so simple, you know, but just because it's simple doesn't mean it's easy. And you don't have to do it every day.

But sitting in the silence and learning to trust, you know, who you are on the inside and not need that love from the outside will reduce the dragon's power over you. Okay, I want to finish by asking a question that I think is going to be really important for all of us, because I think the reason we have so much self-doubt is because we care so much, right? We love nothing more than these tiny growing, evolving humans. And so how do we begin to raise dragon slayers? So when we think about what we can do for our children, any tips there? Yeah. Dragons of self-doubt thrive in silence and darkness and avoidance. So the number one way you can help raise dragon slayers is to teach your children to talk about the tough parts of their

life. And it's going to make you uncomfortable. It might make them uncomfortable, but a little activity that I can recommend is that at the end of the day, you sit down with your children. It can be a bedtime, it can be dinner, and each of you should share your peak and your pit from the day, meaning the best part of the day and the worst part of the day. And what this will teach your child is that every day has a part that sucks. Every day there is going to be a low point and we have to be able to give voice to the parts of our life that are hard. And it will also teach them that their mother has a bad part of her day every day.

And it'll also get your kids, especially when they become teenagers to open up, right? So it's not just, how was your day? Fine. It's like, no, what was your peak and your pit from this day? And it's the greatest gift that you can give your children is to allow them to feel safe and comfortable to talk about the hard parts

of their day. And it's so simple and it's so beautiful and it can be done in less than two minutes. I love that. One of JJ's teachers did at the end of each day, what was their drip and their drop? And so it kind of started that conversation and we've continued it forward. I think I've been asking, what was your favorite part, least favorite part, which is not nearly as exciting. So I, I like your answer. One last question. What was the most surprising learning in all of your research and talking to mothers? Is there anything that just was like shocking to you? I think it was shocking to me, the depth of the pain

and the depth of the silence, you know, around it in that when I, after I would interview mother, sometimes I would interview their partner or someone else in their life. And the people around them had, the women weren't so much pain and filled with so much doubt. And they really, truly believed that they sucked. And the people around them were horrified. They had no idea because of this mask that we wear. And we say, everything's fine. Everything's fine. I don't need help.

And it just, it hurt me because to think about the people that surround you, your partner, your parents, your friends, they want to help you. They want to tell you that you're friends, they want to help you. They want to tell you that you're amazing. They want to support you and they don't know what's going on because we hide it that well. And I just want to encourage women to speak their truth and say that they're in pain and say that they're hurting and say that they don't feel good enough because the people around you want to help you realize the truth, but they cannot help you if they're not aware. I would add to from my personal experience that when you speak it to another mom, friend, or somebody who loves you, it's amazing how often the response is me too or love and and acceptance we think it's going to be

judgment and something else but it's never really been that in my experience and and i don't know if you'd agree with me but if you find somebody whose response is judgment, then tell them to pound. Yeah. I know. Yeah. It will be met with more compassion and acceptance than you think it will. And like I said, people want to help. And so, yeah, it's the scary thing is saying it out loud, but once you do you'll find so much more love and support than you ever knew possible. I will add one way to maybe seek the support is to follow Catherine and her great work. You can go to her website, slaylikeamother.com or follow her on Instagram at slaylikeamother. We'll also put in show notes, a link to her newsletter, which you can also find on her website. But what a great way to get some encouragement along the way. And of course, go get your copy of her book, Slay Like a Mother.

You can find it at your local bookstore. I'm always a fan of that or Amazon, or it's also on Audible if you prefer to listen to your books. Catherine, thank you so much for your incredible work and for putting a voice on such an important and impactful topic. I'm grateful for our time together. Thank you. All right. I am going to close us out by sharing an invitation from Catherine herself from her book. She says, the dragon raging inside you has a name and it's self-doubt. You're the only one who can see it, so you're the only one who can slay it. You have two choices. Either learn to slay this beast, or it will slowly and silently slay you. If you don't rise up and take back your life and your

sanity, the constant battle and fighting will wear you down and wear you out. And you, your family, and the world will miss out on the best of you. You can do this. Let's go slay some dragons. This is Woman's Work.