Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
CW: Self-Harm, Mental Health Jess sits down with Sarah Landry from The Birds Papaya [https://www.instagram.com/thebirdspapaya/] to discuss the challenges of authentically sharing your mental health struggles online. Sarah opens up about her experience with PMDD (Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder) and the courage it takes to be vulnerable about the messy, uncomfortable parts of life.
They explore the delicate balance of modelling a range of emotions to your children while ensuring they don't feel responsible for fixing a parent's struggles. This episode is a must-listen for anyone struggling with their mental health and wanting to raise empathetic kids who understand that it's okay not to be okay.
Hear more from Sarah on Instagram! [https://www.instagram.com/thebirdspapaya/]
Get 10% OFF parenting courses and kids' printable activities at Nurtured First [https://nurturedfirst.com/courses/] using the code ROBOTUNICORN.
Learn more about the Solving Bedtime Battles course here [https://nurturedfirst.com/courses/solving-bedtime-battles/].
Credits:
Editing by The Pod Cabin [https://thepodcabin.com/]
Artwork by Wallflower Studio [https://www.wallflowerstudio.co/]
Production by Nurtured First [https://nurturedfirst.com/]
Join me, Jess VanderWier, a registered psychotherapist, mom of three, and founder of Nurtured First, along with my husband Scott, as we dive deep into the stories of our friends, favourite celebrities, and influential figures.
In each episode, we skip the small talk and dive into vulnerable and honest conversations about topics like cycle breaking, trauma, race, mental health, parenting, sex, religion, postpartum, healing, and loss.
We are glad you are here.
PS: The name Robot Unicorn comes from our daughter. When we asked her what we should name the podcast, she confidently came up with this name because she loves robots, and she loves unicorns, so why not? There was something about the playfulness of the name, the confidence in her voice, and the fact that it represents that you can love two things at once that just felt right.
Welcome to Robot Unicorn.
We are so glad that you are here.
As always, let's start the show with a
Question from Scott.
Jess, do you ever feel like on social media people want you to show up authentically?
But deep down, it's hard for people to accept like any negative, let's say negative emotions.
And I say that in quote marks or air quotes.
Like for instance you can show up and you can talk about how tricky a situation is with the girls or something like that or a work situation
But if it's a little bit too far on the negative side or you're having a really hard time with it, then all of a sudden people kind of expect you to mask those true feelings.
Yeah, that's been a common theme, I think, in the last
seven-ish years of doing social media, it feels sometimes like being authentic is okay, but only to a point.
So I'll give you two examples.
First, when I was struggling after weaning our youngest, I think I expressed how it was really hard for me to wean her.
And
at the time, I mean people didn't know, but now I can look back and be like, I definitely was going through some post-weaning depression.
Like I think the sadness that I had when I was weaning her was more than I was really able to explain to anybody at the
the time and I know it was like a hormonal thing and all of that.
But I remember trying to share that and people were like, just shutting me down.
Like, oh well you're lucky you even breastfed her to begin with.
And this is insensitive to parents.
And I don't think people were able to hold the truth of like it's actually okay for Jess to be really struggling with this.
And that doesn't take away from anybody else's experiences.
And people also would say to me, well, just stop posting about this on social media and go breastfeed her again.
Like stuff like that, right?
So that made me feel unsafe to share what I was actually going through.
So I didn't.
And then later back in December and January of this year, I was going through another
tough time really feeling burnt out and struggling with burnout.
And I actually had scaled back from doing stories quite a bit.
And one day there's literally only one story slide up which said, I took a shower tonight.
I did some meditation and I'm
I'm feeling really good.
I'm trying to get out of this state of burnout that I've been in.
That's been so, so hard.
And again, it was almost too hard for people to hear that I had been burning out.
And they said, well, just get off social media then.
Stop posting about it.
And it feels tricky for me because it's like I want to be authentic because actually that's what I've built nurtured first around is being really open and honest and authentic and I am
But sometimes when I'm struggling with something that's too heavy, if I share about it, I feel like it's just dismissed or shut down.
But I wanna be able to share about that online because I think sharing the authentic human experience is really important.
Yeah, that kind of seems like that's the
Expectation but only when and I mean this is a very much a generalization, but it almost seems as though at times people want you to be authentic, but only if there's like a tidy little bow at the end of it and everything works out perfectly in
end.
And also I'll be honest, as a therapist, I struggle with that too.
Because I really try to not post from wounds.
Like I try and I don't know if this makes any sense.
This is what I call it in my own head.
I say don't post from a wound, post from a scar.
Like so I I try and post from something that's like
That you've healed.
I've healed.
Like I've worked through this, I've processed this.
Maybe it's not fully healed yet, but the scar is there, so it's not an open wound.
Why do you do that?
This is my own thing.
Well, I mean we could unpack this for a long time, but I feel like as a therapist
I don't want anyone to feel like it's their responsibility to fix what I'm going through.
Right.
And I truly believe that even when I do post from a wound
Like when I was burnt out, I did not think it was ever my community at nurtured first their responsibility to fix what I was going through.
Right
But I just wanted to be open with them to say this is part of the human experience.
Sometimes you burn out and like that's okay.
Here's what I'm doing to get myself out of it.
But I would never want to put that on the audience like
Send me nice messages so that I feel better.
Like that's not their responsibility.
So that's why I try and post from a scar to say I've actually processed this on my own time with my own therapist or friends or family and
here's what I've come to and here's how I've processed it and that kind of thing.
Does that make sense?
Yeah it does.
I just wonder like is that actually authentic though?
So then I would challenge you
So I do understand what you're saying, but also in the same sense you're saying you want to post and you will we want to talk about things online authentically
And sometimes like you have a wound that's open for a long time and it's not something that can be healed over the course of a few days, a few months, even a few years.
Like there are things
I can say from experience, that are going to be constantly open wounds.
That's where I struggle and anyone listening, like I would love your feedback on this because I want to be able to share those.
Right.
And I feel like right now, so now, for example, I've shared my journey with post-weaning depression with our youngest because it is wrapped up a little bit more.
Right.
There's a tidy bow on on that story.
And so it is authentic because I've taken this time to process it, to work through it on my own
And I can share that story now and it there is an ending to it.
So I still think it's authentic because I have done that work and I'm sharing my true story, but it's the end of the story.
And where I struggle is I want to actually be able to post some of the stuff, the things I feel comfortable sharing, as I'm in the messy middle of it.
But that's where I don't know what that balance should look like.
And I think that's what Sarah and I talked a lot about today in this interview is where is that balance?
I feel like she's very wise on the subject.
Like she honestly talks about how some things, they're not completed or they're not something that you can have a positive ending necessarily immediately or potentially ever.
And it's just something you have to live with.
And I feel like that is real.
That is authentic.
Right.
And if we can't share about that, the messy middle of these situations, and we can only ever share things that are in its
tidy bow, then you're right.
Then everybody just thinks, well, my story's not in the tidy bow yet.
Yeah.
Right.
Like I think about you and your journey last year.
Like it wasn't a tiny bow.
Well I mean I'm even still dealing with
that now so it's not like it's going away.
Yeah and my my journey with let's say being an anxious person like I think I've developed a lot of tools and and things to deal with it but there's never going to be an end date
Like I'm always gonna have anxiety.
It's always gonna be a piece of who I am.
But it's difficult to share that.
And that's where Sarah talked a lot about masking.
Then you show up and you act like everything's fine when really it's not.
Is that because people are just
uncomfortable with those kinds of feelings and their discomfort is what makes them say, like, stop sharing about this.
Can it bring other people down kind of with you into those trenches or open wounds for people as well, seeing you in those situations?
I think, I mean, for me, again, as a therapist, I feel like I have a different lens on this.
If people are seeking me to be someone who they're
their following, right?
And they're like is a leader to them to share a wound.
I think it can be very, very healing.
Like I I think there's that too, like, hey, I'm going through the same thing.
Thank you so much for sharing this.
helps me to know that you're a human being.
But B it could also be like, oh, this person who I'm learning from is human and a lot of us haven't done our own work to be okay with humanness and they want to see someone who's leading them like me or like Sarah as people who have it all.
Together, right?
Because I I look up to you and I want you to have it all together so that I can eventually have it all together as well.
But I think there's a lot of beauty in saying every person that you look up to is still human and they're still working through their own crap
Like we all are.
And that's the beauty.
And you can be both.
That's something I've been really working on this last year.
It's like I can be multiple things.
I can be an amazing leader and educator, which
I do believe that I am.
And I can be a human that struggles with feelings of burnout and anxiety and whatever it is, post-wanning depression, that doesn't take away from the other things that I am
Does that make sense?
I think it does.
I absolutely love this conversation with Sarah Landry from The Birds Papaya.
Sarah and I actually met for the first time many years ago.
We talk about it in the conversation, but we both lived in the same town.
I have followed her since she had a couple hundred followers on Instagram and now she has over 2.
3 million followers.
She is a mom of four kids, from a toddler to her oldest, just graduated from high school, who talks about body confidence.
She's also a speaker, a model, and a weekly podcast host.
Sarah has so much wisdom to say about everything from body confidence to talking about her own mental health struggles very vulnerably online.
So I think that all being said, in this episode today, Sarah is very vulnerable.
And so I would just say as you listen to it, take care of yourself if you are in a very vulnerable state
Just know that we do talk about things like mental health, we talk about PMDD, and we talk about feeling suicidal.
So just please be mindful of that as you listen to today's episode.
Take care of yourself and this was an amazing discussion.
I'm really excited for you to listen.
So without any further introduction, let's dive in
So Sarah, I was just watching your stories right before we're recording this podcast, and I saw you talking about your experience with PMDD.
And maybe you can explain a little bit about what that is if people have not heard about it before.
And I saw that it's just been a really difficult week for you.
And I just wanted to check in before we get talking about anything else that we're talking about today.
Yeah, so PMDD is something that like most people I learned about on social media.
It is not something that I was aware existed.
There are some fellow creators that I saw talking about their symptoms and I honestly didn't
relate, I was like, okay, like that sounds awful.
Like I'm so sorry.
Like must be so hard to navigate.
I've always struggled with uh like anxiety disorders and things like that, but nothing really to explain
I had prenatal depression, so that was my only other ever bout of depression.
But about a year postpartum, I started really tinkering with trying to take my health back into my hands.
I feel like there was a lot of things up in the air early postpartum.
And I started to have this like bit of cyclical issues that were happening, anxiety, depression, nothing too extreme or too alarming.
But I started tracking my headaches actually.
And so when I started tracking my headaches, I
I had suspicions that they were around my period.
And I started tracking them.
And when it came up on the Apple Health app, it prompts you for like mood things as well.
So I would start inputting those things.
And it wasn't
long before I recognized that there was a cycle to the anxiety and depression and these like really bizarre thoughts that I would have.
And it it's weird because it's almost like, did I just like
Is this a self-fulfilling prophecy?
Did I just like now that I'm paying attention, it's there?
But over time it really did start to get worse while I was experiencing other symptoms of hormonal imbalance, which
is a whole other podcast.
But essentially what PMDD is, it's called premenstrual dysphoric disorder.
And it's similar to
PMS, but it's a very extreme form.
So just a trigger warning, some of the things I'm going to talk about are including self-harm here, but I remember one of the first months after I'd sort of had some
suspicions about it.
And I was driving and I was very, very, very overwhelmed.
And I just thought, you know, it would just be easier if I just drove my car off the road.
Because then I wouldn't have to deal with all of this.
And it would delay everything.
I would just be able to just be somewhere else and not have these responsibilities, not have this like overwhelming dread that I was experiencing
And that wasn't the first time I thought that.
That was a repeated thing.
And I went and I talked to my doctor about it.
And her first thing, it was actually not my actual doctor.
It was like a seven.
And her first thing was
Are you sure like that's not just part of motherhood?
Like we hear a lot of mothers say things like that.
And I was like, I've been a mother for 17 years and I've never entertained the idea of driving my car off.
road.
Anyways, I did get the process of going through getting diagnosed first by my naturopath who recognized it as she experiences it herself and then through my general practitioner
And I started, you know, the path of understanding it a little bit more.
It felt really weird because I'd heard it been talk about so much online, but
I never really absorbed it in the way that suddenly I was like, I couldn't get enough information because I was so desperate for an answer.
And I think I was also so relieved that I wasn't just
And uh I think when you struggle with anxiety or depression and it kind of comes and goes, it's hard to ever take it seriously.
And so when I started being able to recognize the pattern, a lot of things became glaringly obvious.
I was not actually doing well for a while.
And there's a lot of times that I had become very, very sad and distant and just chalked it up to life or whatever.
And because it's in the cycle and you go back to feeling quote unquote normal
It was really hard for me to pinpoint, but about two months ago, after I started SSRIs, I had taken my medication late.
And did not catch it on time.
My period came early.
It was like a whole bunch of things all at once.
I had a really stressful week.
And I remember I'd never struggled with suicidal thinking before, but in this sense, I just wanted my brain to stop.
I just wanted it to stop.
And I remember thinking, this is not me.
This is the PMDD.
And if I say something.
it might save my life.
So I told my husband and we told a couple others and we just like safe protected me for those few days.
And after that happened, about four weeks later, I just like
Couldn't I was on vacation with my family and I was looking at them and I was thinking, oh my god, like I was so close to losing my life to something that I'm not talking about, and it's such a huge part of my life
It's so uncomfortable.
I literally hate talking about it, but it feels so important because I feel like it is women's health in general is so under discussed.
We're so good at masking.
We're so good at compartmentalizing and moving on.
And I feel like it really took me pausing and paying attention to even get to the point of asking for help.
And I just wanted like the women before me who had been so brave to be so vulnerable about it, who saved my life, that I now in turn would
Hold that baton and be like, this is a real thing.
It's really effing hard.
And I'm here today because I got help.
I'm here today because I'm not gonna be quiet about this anymore
but also understanding it's a cycle.
So I'm in it every month and I am gonna keep being in it every month until menopause or hysterectomy or another form of medication, we don't know.
Right now it's all about managing.
what is.
And uh I will say I'm in my cycle right now and I'm like at a level four.
And I and I said this in my stories, but
A level four is so beautiful when you came from a level zero.
A four is amazing.
A four is incredible.
And I know that like the eight, nine, tens are around the corner
But a four is life-saving.
And so while I'm not the energetic bubbly version of myself that I'm
more comfortable with the four version of me is just as lovable, just as valued, just as important, and just as worthy of showing up in spaces, even if it creates
a ripple discomfort, I guess.
That's the part I feel bad.
That's the part I feel bad about.
I don't like that it makes other people uncomfortable.
I remember when you were sharing about on your stories for the first
time that's probably a month or two ago and you were saying that you were just like losing these followers and and people were leaving.
And it it's incredible to me.
And it shows kind of it goes back to your story about the doctor who didn't take you serious and how people just think, oh, okay, well this
this isn't serious, or maybe it makes them uncomfortable and then they leave.
And here you are sharing this incredibly vulnerable time of your life.
Going through that experience, especially it sounds like there is that one month that really
change things for you and maybe you were able it sounded like you were kind of able to mask things until you went through that month and then that month was just
What was it like coming out of that month?
I know for me, like I've experienced postpartum anxiety recently.
I experienced a real big struggle that reminds me a lot of your story with weaning.
So I was pregnant or breastfeeding for probably four years.
And then just this last summer weaned my my youngest daughter.
And when you talk about this elephant sitting on your chest, when you talk about life just feeling like it's so weighty and there's so much and
And I wonder for you, I know we have some similarities in our lives, if there's like a weight on being like a boss and an employer and a mom and all these pieces.
And I remember feeling similar.
It's just too much.
I can't handle it.
So how was it coming out of that month and like looking at your life and looking at what was that feeling like?
I wasn't like I I felt a responsibility to my children to do something.
um to my marriage to do something.
As my job, I felt like we basically created a path in which I could quit.
But I knew that's not what I wanted.
I just wanted a way out from masking.
I wanted a way out from the fear of others' approval.
Which is why I sort of created the method of like, I'm done in a year, or show up as the version of yourself that if you only had a year left online, what how who would you be and how would you be and how would you sp
speak.
But I think it made me really realize the severity of this and the severity of these issues and that when we talk about
So many things.
We we do it so reflectively.
I do it all the time when I talk about body image stuff or moving past things or postpartum.
It was so reflective.
And I remember going through this last postpartum, I showed up in the mess of it.
I showed up in like
the emotions of it in the day of.
And so I was like, there's such a gap in mental health where we see people
talk about it and then we see people be better from it and not a lot in the mess of it because it is uncomfortable.
I struggle watching it.
I struggle watching people go through things but
I knew this time was different because I almost didn't have a choice.
And like I have three employees.
It's not just me and my family.
It's theirs as well.
If I don't figure this out and if I don't move forward in a way that is like honest.
I won't make it through even keeping this career.
So I did have feel a little bit of responsibility to like as a boss, as a leader, not having to be this version that I thought I had to be.
And
There's been so many women that I look up to who are so honest about their mental health and they run businesses and they do amazing things
And I realized a lot of my thoughts were incredibly ableist, that I've had this feeling that to struggle with mental health meant that I couldn't be a great mom, be a great boss, be a great leader, be a great creator.
And I realized while working through that own internal thinking that you can be both.
And like joy and when we seek it is that's something I was talking about was like I've been
Overly seeking these pockets of joy because I need them to live in my body.
I need them to take hold.
I need them to fight for me because when you're real sad
those bits of joy are your hope.
They're like what you can look forward to.
And so it's been, I think after that, after that one cycle, I just looked at my whole life and I thought, my God, I so much that I have
minimize way too many things that I've maximized like the power of what other people think of you.
And I just wanted to be, as I've done before.
I had to sort of unrestrict myself a little bit.
I had to come out of that shell of need of validation, I guess.
And I thought I'd never be in a place like that again, but I really it's hard.
It really is hard.
People will assume what they will, and I know that now, but it just felt
incredibly important to me that if I'm gonna show up and be an honest version of myself, that I had to be fully honest.
And I'm glad I have, even though it scares the crap out of me.
And I genuinely, like I said, I hate talking about it because it's
I it's the same way I hate being angry.
I'm somebody so uncomfortable with emotions other than happy, but I'm really coming to grips with like that's what's gonna get me through this.
And
And I was sort of sharing today that like in my head I thought diagnosis was like, okay, now we get to like move on.
But diagnosis is like the first step on a staircase.
And somebody commented and they're like, diagnosis is not treatment.
And I was like, yes, yes, yes.
We need to talk about how important diagnosis is, but without it being like this blanket, everything's better now.
You're diagnosed, you've got words, you've got validation, you haven't been faking it, this is real, but really you're on step two or three of the staircase.
You've got a ways to go
But at least you're going.
At least you're in the right direction.
Today what I sort of I was driving my kids to school today and I kept in my head repeating, repeating, repeating.
That hopelessness is a feeling, not a state of reality.
Nothing is without hope.
And so I've sort of been just like, okay, I feel hopeless, but that's not real.
So I know that like I am not without hope
And that makes me very driven and just sort of knowing that this fight isn't just about me.
It's about so much more, my family, my coworkers, everything.
It does put it into perspective a lot more.
Totally.
Yeah, there's there's so many big things that you said there, like about your family and seeing your kids and being like, okay, I have this thing to fight for and seeing your employees and being like there is hope on the other side.
And I think that's the thing when you're in it
I I remember even being in it with my own postpartum anxiety or my the weaning struggles.
I have a name for it with the weaning.
I remember it was similar to what you're describing where I'm like something's wrong, something doesn't feel right to me.
I'm not quite sure what's going on
It feels I think you maybe said this in your stories today.
There's like an elephant in your chest and it just feels like it's so weighty.
And I remember feeling that and I didn't really know what was going on.
And then all of a sudden I realized I was weaning, my daughter, and I did it on such a slow progress that it hadn't even really dawned on me.
And then I was like, okay, I have a name, but I still have to experience it.
I still have to go through the emotions.
And I'm thinking to myself, like, I'm a therapist.
I know, I know all these things.
I know what I'm going through, but that doesn't make it less hard.
That's
kind of where you're in right now, right?
Like you know you have a diagnosis, you have a name.
So there's hope with that.
It's not you, there's something you're going through, but also you still have to live through it.
And and I love that you're showing up honestly.
when you show up online like that.
I know it helps so many women because they can see that they're not the only ones to feel that way.
Yeah, I mean it really h it really hit home when a mom messaged me and told me that her daughter had been hospitalized twice.
self-harm and they were really running out of hope.
They didn't know what was wrong.
They didn't know how to fix it.
And uh she recognized some of the symptoms I was talking about in her own daughter and ended up getting her diagnosed.
And now they have a path towards treatment and hope.
And I thought, my God, if that were my 15-year-old daughter, I would only hope for people online that I would be able to give her hope.
Right.
And so
It's so deeply uncomfortable, but I think we are at this crux of social media where people want real, but are we willing to sit in the discomfort of what that is for everybody?
And are we willing to like be real about that?
Because I'm somebody who just likes to make people laugh.
I just make I like to make people think
And I like to make people laugh.
I always say like I'll make you laugh or cry and there's not a lot in between.
But when in I'm crying, when I'm the one that's like in it, that's real different.
I don't accept like
Even other people like I can see my phone as we're sitting here lighting up with messages of people just showing support.
And even that makes me uncomfortable because I'm still
working through that I'm just as lovable when I'm sad.
I'm just as lovable when I'm like in the thick of it.
And if I take care of myself and if I get better and and similar to yours, very hormonally charged.
And if we talk about hormones more and we understand ourselves more, the connection between hormones and mental health
Hopefully more and more people don't go through these stages of life where they just feel like this is just motherhood or this is just being a woman and they realize that there's just major, major gaps
In knowledge, and there's major, major gaps in discussion.
And it's really, really interesting.
And I'm not gonna blanket like diagnose or say this for anybody, but it's what's been really fascinating to me is how many people have said they've been diagnosed after they're done
childbearing because there's something about being pregnant that sort of sets your hormones at a new pace.
So a lot of people can take
several years or it might get chalked up to something different.
Like for a while it was like, am I just getting postpartum a year late?
Like am I just am I just really, really late to this?
Because
I was breastfeeding.
I was like, there were things that were leveling my hormones in a way that when I was sort of on my own and outside of childbearing and outside of nursing
suddenly got to see where my hormones were without all of these other interactions.
And it made me really look all the way back
To times in life where I'm like, oh, I've had these cycles before, but I never paid attention and I never gave it gravity because it's
Only if like it's I say only a few days.
There's like a it's like a wave, right?
Like it crashes and then it is it comes back out.
It's very interesting though, and I and I guess I just feel this level of
I don't know how this all works.
I don't know the answers.
I don't have them yet.
But I want to encourage other people to at least take the first step of just at least asking for help.
Don't get to the point like me where you go so, so dark.
And I actually had been seeking help by that point, but I don't know that I had been taking it seriously enough
Cause I was sort of um slacking on my tracking and taking medication on time.
And that almost cost me my life
That's really important for me to rem and I think that that's changed my life forever because once you fall out of alignment with your mind that way
There's a whole new level of I have to rebuild some my self-trust.
I have to rebuild my self-confidence in a very different way because now I have to build up my confidence that I can trust my own brain.
And that's new.
Yeah.
The idea of trusting your own brain again is huge.
Like, especially when you go through an experience like that, that you've from my understanding, you've never gone through that kind of like a suicidal thought.
It's like so dark, like you have to be on a watch like that.
So then that the feeling that comes is like I don't trust myself.
I can't be alone.
I think I was listening to a podcast with you and Shane and I loved how you had Shane on and he was talking about how he helped you and stuff like that.
And you guys were just sitting there and he was playing switch or something.
And I think that's important too because like when you do take it seriously, and after that did happen, it also allowed me to, so for instance, Shane was actually a wave my last cycle.
And so we had informed my neighbor Becky.
We had informed, you know, family and friends.
And that's uncomfortable to be like, I'm a small child and I need babysitting.
That's how I felt
For me.
It just made me feel like so juvenile and like, oh god, this is like so embarrassing.
But I'm so glad I did it because even though I never got that low again, I was able to basically for work, I pause all major decisions.
I let my team know I'm functioning at like a four.
Like just I'm at a four, so I'm probably not gonna be the best to answer answer any big questions right now.
They can wait for a few days.
I let my family know.
We get a really gentle about like
what our meals are.
We're like ri eat like incredibly nutrient dense food, like try and just like lean into comforts.
Like my husband would make me like a bowl of soup.
We just like lean into anything to get me comfortable and resting as much
much as possible and we like kind of clear my schedule.
It makes me feel like I'm somewhat unreliant, but it's important because it's like this is priority right now for these few days.
reminds me of postpartum when like you prepare for self-care.
And that's I have to do that every month now.
I prepare for self-care instead of getting into a catastrophe where it's like my only option is like on the couch.
There is no other reality.
So it is uncomfortable though.
And I think that it's really nice that my husband now is in this cadence with me where he understands it enough.
that like when he asks me how I'm doing, I can be honest with him and I can be like, today's hard.
He gets gentle with me for sure, but I don't feel embarrassed anymore.
I don't
feel like I'm a burden anymore.
And that part has been really important too to sort of like shed some of the shame around struggling.
Yeah, I feel like the more you talk about it, the more it's the shame goes away.
But when you have it all, you're holding it all in your own head, it the the shame feels so heavy because it's like, oh, I can't say this to anyone.
Even online, I can't say it'll be a burden, it'll be too heavy, people don't wanna see this.
But when you start talking about these things and the shame goes away.
And I feel like you've done such a good job of that on your page, even though, like you said
It's so uncomfortable.
And I wonder is you've talked about it being uncomfortable a a lot.
Is the uncomfortable feeling like it's too much for people?
They're not gonna wanna see it, or is
Like what what's that uncomfortable feeling?
I think it's just the vulnerability hangover.
I think it's just like the okay, now I've like cried online.
How do I move?
And then I'm like, ha ha ha, here's a meme.
Like, I don't want to stay here.
I get so weird about it because it's like you get you release it
And you're right, like when you hold on to something, it kind of sticks with you.
Like and I I had the the video I posted today has like literally been sitting in my drafts for a week because I'm like I literally hate this so much.
So freaking uncomfortable.
But then whenever I'm scared to post something, there's this weird part of me that knows it's important.
Like I know it's like, okay, I I kind of
gotta do this and I know it's gonna like emotionally charge some people and I know it's gonna validate others and it's gonna confuse some but like I don't that's not my responsibility like it's not my responsibility to
answer to everybody's needs.
It's my responsibility to be authentic and honest.
And I felt when I was going through, actually I'll tell you the true story, I was
On the sofa feeling suicidal.
And I was trying to not let anybody realize that I was like away
or that anything was wrong.
So I was like casually posting little pictures or memes every couple hours in my stories to sort of appear that everything was fine and somebody messaged and she
She said, I love when I see you quieter on stories because I know you're living your best life.
Like you're just out doing all the good things.
And I thought, I'm just
I felt like a fraud.
I felt like no, I have to if people only think that I'm happy and joyous and that that doesn't also come with
sadness or that happiness is or like joy is, you know, somehow void if you struggle.
I think that's what's kind of hard.
And I think a lot of my fears were also realized.
I didn't talk about this on TikTok because I rarely post on there.
And a few days after I sort of told everybody what I'd been going through, I posted an anniversary video on TikTok and somebody commented and they were like
I thought you were on the couch.
Why are you like suddenly out?
Like, I don't even know what they said.
They said, like, don't you have enough attention with that many followers?
Now you need to have something else going on.
And I was like
You only knew, if you only knew, and this is exactly what I feared, that once you become the sad girl, you can't have happiness.
And once you say that this is going on in your life, even though when I shared about it, it had happened six weeks ago
that like because you share this one thing, it makes everything else not real or not existent.
And I think that's what makes it so hard to share now is like
What happens afterwards?
It's the vulnerability hangover.
How do I just like also show up as like the happy version of myself when I just poured my heart out on this
one thing.
It's weird because when I've done the outpouring, it's like I'm I'm releasing it.
That's me being like, okay, I'm letting this go.
And so other people are receiving it and I'm already like a step ahead, right?
Like I've already released it and I'm like, okay, I'm ready to move forward.
And so I think it can g I think there's a big part of mental health that's confusing.
How can somebody both struggle so much with so many things and yet also live a beautiful, big, successful, happy life?
How can both things be true?
And I think I need to figure out how to bridge that a little bit more for myself and how I show up because that that's the part I have it I'm still so uncomfortable about.
Yeah, it's super tricky because people love hearing stories of mental health.
I found this too on my five years online, but they like it more when it's neatly tied up and it's
a testimonial, it's the end journey, right?
And I think you've talked a lot about that too in terms of your body image and all of that kind of stuff as well.
That
It's not necessarily the end journey.
Like even with that, like you're still going through it.
It's not like, okay, well, I went through the e this disordered eating and and now I'm like this perfectly tied up bow and I never struggled body image
The world loves black and white.
They love this content that you're they're struggling and now you're better.
And but that's often not the reality for the majority of us.
And I know even with myself, like I've shared about like I was telling you postpartum anxiety, that doesn't mean I don't still have anxiety.
I I'm not in postpartum anxiety anymore, but anxiety will always be a a piece of my life and just a piece of who I am.
And I feel like
that's what people want, so then that's where your struggle is because that's not life.
Yeah.
And I felt that with postpartum with my body, like sort of as you shared.
I felt it very important to be honest with people that there is a grief step that you have to take.
And I had to take it.
And because I had been such a neat
bow from before.
It was a little bit more of a healed version.
Stepping back into postpartum really put me back in the trenches and reminded me how much body change can really shift your whole
State of mind.
And in order for me to be honest about that, I had to grieve.
And I had to grieve openly the body I was, the life I had, in so I could receive
the new version of myself, not so that I could shame who I was, but to allow the past versions of me to be put to bed and to be grieved properly and loved properly
And there's that beautiful quote that I've said so many times that my friend Nicole told me once, which was grief is love with nowhere to go.
And so when your body has changed
You have to grieve it.
So the love has somewhere new to land.
And that's where I sort of felt was so important in sharing that and being honest about the fact that for so long I would say things like self-love was so much about
how you felt about yourself and now I realize that to love yourself is the action of showing up for yourself.
It's not the feeling.
The feeling ebbs and flows.
The feeling will come and go.
Sometimes you'll get up in the morning and you'll be like, wow, like I really appreciate my body and I love it.
And then there's other days where you're like, my mind is so loud with hate.
And there's also some science now behind
where we are in our cycles and where our brains connect with how we feel about our bodies as well.
But there is so many times throughout the month that you will have like bad body image days.
And it's so fascinating because I'm like, I feel like even in my journey, recognizing how many times I've like sort of been like, just wear the shorts, and here I am like
you know, five years later going like, you don't have to wear the shorts if you don't want to.
Like it's totally okay.
Wear whatever you need to.
Just show up.
Figure out what that is.
Figure out how you can be that person, how you can push past those thoughts or how you can create comfort for yourself through them, not this black and white version of like you go from hating yourself and then you
suddenly love yourself.
It's so weird.
How can we do that for every other relationship in our life where we're like, we know the tangible acts it takes to love our children.
We know the tangible acts it takes to love a partner
But then for ourselves, we're like, I don't want to pick up socks off the floor.
That's like mentally like, I don't want to do that.
I don't want to have to deal with those things.
I just want to love what I see in the mirror.
And that's like the disconnect where we forget that the relationship with ourself is a relationship and it it demands action.
It demands
Certain sorts of maintenance and picking up the socks off the floor of our own minds because it is not
it's not so clean.
It's not so easy.
And I realize now that my own confidence doesn't come from what I look like, what I'm wearing or what I'm doing, but more so how I choose to show up through just
comfort and through some of those loud thoughts.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
I love how you said that that our body, our relationship with ourselves is like
It's truly a relationship.
And I think especially with the body positivity movement, a lot of people will say, Well, I don't feel positive about my body every day.
And it's like, well, that's okay.
You don't have to.
You don't always feel positive about your relationship with everybody.
Like there is that time where it's okay to be neutral.
It's okay to say, yeah, I don't really want to wear the shorts today.
And and that's okay too
Absolutely.
Create comforts for yourself.
Show up.
Like at the end of the day, like I do even did like an ode to the one-piece bathing suit because I felt like there was such a drive for just like wearing bikinis.
Yeah.
Like another thing for people to have to like feel like they failed at when they don't want to bear it all.
They don't have the ability or the capacity to find all that confidence that day
And it's not because they're not worthy of it.
It's just like it's not like if you want to shut your brain off, wear as much clothing as wear a sweatsuit.
Like doesn't matter.
Like do whatever you need to
to show up in your life because we sideline ourselves from how we feel about our bodies.
We sideline ourselves when we feel unworthy.
And so when we recognize that like
The bad days are just as worthy as the good days.
The days that you feel the most unlovable, you're just as lovable.
It's just different and it demands a different type of love.
I'm saying this out loud and I'm listening to myself talk and I'm realizing like this is literally what I need to apply to my life.
Because I do it so well when it comes to the body because I've worked so hard on that.
But when it comes to my mind and my mental health and my emotions.
It's still uncomfortable.
That's just it.
It's uncomfortable to feel lovable when you're messy.
Absolutely.
It it's so hard to feel lovable.
And you're in this mess, right?
I feel like with the body image and all the things you talk about, you've been talking about this for so long that it's it's something that you've worked on a lot.
Whereas the PMDD that's new.
I was gonna say to you, I don't know if you know this about me, but I actually followed you when you had less than a thousand followers.
Oh my gosh.
I was there since the beginning of your page because
Hey friends, so at pickup last week our daughter asked Scott a truly kind of tricky question in front of her younger siblings.
Scott was telling me that when he heard a question like this, he used to panic, but this time he had a plan.
And he said to our daughter, thank you for asking.
Let's talk tonight when we've got privacy.
And that's a line that he learned straight from our new body safety and consent course at Nurtur.
So this new body safety and consent course is taught by me.
So Jess, if you listen to this podcast, you know me.
I'm a child therapist and a mom of three, and I have taught body safety and consent education for years.
This course takes all my years of experience teaching this education and gives you calm, age-appropriate language for body parts, consent, and boundaries.
You'll learn how to teach your kids that no means no, you'll learn how to teach them to read facial cues, you'll talk about safe and unspeakable.
safe touch and you'll even teach them about their uh oh feeling.
There's guidance inside this course for the real life stuff like tickling that goes too far and even the difference between a secret and a surprise.
We made this course at Nurture First because research shows that body safety education helps kids speak
up sooner and we want that for our family, for Scott and I, but also for you.
So check the course out at nurturefirst.
com/slash body safety and to save 10% use the code
robot unicorn.
And just full disclosure here, we are the creators of this course and we're so proud of it.
So I lived in Guelph 2 for 11 years.
Yeah.
I met you on the streets outside the market, I remember.
I remember, yeah, when we met you on the streets outside the market, you probably had maybe 40 or 50,000 followers or something like that at the at that time.
And when I found your page, so when I found your page, you were kind of in the midst of still your own disordered eating journey.
And for me, I found your page and I liked it and I followed it because I was also in the middle of my own disordered eating, struggles with eating journey.
And so I remember you would post things like how much calories does a salad dressing have?
I'm sure you have all those posts.
There's a reason I left those all up.
It's it's important to see the evolution of someone.
Yeah, it's wild though.
It is wild, yeah.
And so I remember I followed you four because I was in the same journey and then
It was been interesting over that must have been what eight years ago.
So I remember f finding your page and and I was kind of in the same journey and you had your purple hair and I loved your purple hair and just all of those things back then.
And it's been really interesting just watching this like true evolution of your page over the years.
Like you've really gone from this account that talked about
uh weight loss and your your weight loss journey to now where you're talking about loving your body, embracing it, or even just being neutral, the relationship with your body and
And that's been a journey that I've been on too.
So it's been really cool to kind of be on that journey together.
Yeah.
Oh, it's so real.
And it's also
I kind of love it.
I kind of love that it's been such a journey because I feel like we do meet a lot of people online that sort of have it figured out.
And I love that people can scroll back and go all the way to when it was
all of the things that I used to say and and watch me hit rock bottom and come back from that.
And I back then when I hit rock bottom and I knew that I was like no longer I no longer could responsibly be a weight loss account.
This was like what I was promoting was
potentially dangerous.
It had become dangerous for myself.
I needed to get out of it.
And it took me a long while to like really figure that out.
And I feel like I'm sort of at that crux again where like I recognize that
I hit a weird rock bottom that I didn't see coming and that I felt sort of on the top of my game.
And I wrote this once, but I haven't actually posted it.
But just
When the other shoe drops in your life and then you figure out how to pick it back up, you no longer have to like walk around with that fear of like the other shoe is gonna drop in your life.
And I feel like because this happened to me at like a peak of my life.
Where, you know, I'm feeling pretty good about my body.
I feel like my family is amazing.
I've got a beautiful career.
I've got a beautiful marriage.
I I've checked all the boxes.
Like there is I I should need of nothing.
To hit rock bottom then feels like the other shoe dropping, but now I know I can pick it back up.
And I know that it's probably gonna require some discomfort.
It's gonna require change.
It's gonna require me showing up differently.
But yeah, you reminded me of that is like I've I've been here before, just in a different way.
I've I've I've hit different rock bottoms and
whether it was divorce or with body image and there's always a way out from that.
And I think that's what's cool about life in itself is that even when you've checked off all the boxes on the list
you might still have a ways to go.
And I think that's where I am.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think that's such a powerful, like even in therapy, it's it's this like thing that we talk about where
Telling yourself the story of when you've done something hard before and you've gotten through to the other side.
And I was thinking about that too when I was thinking about like when I first found you and and where you were and what your content was about and stuff like that at the time
And now I can see how you've come out and and you've come to this point of healing and it's taken a lot of work for you.
So you you've gone through this whole
process before, but now you're you're kind of in there again.
But I think what's always been great about you and which I admire so much is you've always really valued showing up authentically and and being open about the mess.
And like you've been willing to say, okay, well this is what I've been doing, but you know, it that's not really working anymore.
So I I'm gonna share you
my life in a new way.
And I feel like you did that a lot with your journey with your body.
Like you were able to say, you know what?
No, I don't want to be this weight loss account anymore.
That's that doesn't align with who I am.
And
And you s you shifted gears and then you started being honest.
And I think people really value and that's why they love you so much.
And that's why I've always followed you and loved your page too, is like your transparency and your willingness to be open about the messy part that a lot of people aren't usually open to share.
Which is a way harder when you have anxiety, because let me tell you, I've already created 45 different scenarios of how poorly this could all go and how this is
strewed it can become and how I've already answered the questions to why everyone is going to hate me for this.
And you know, you you do that to yourself.
So I I think it's also important to sort of note that in the level of showing up authentically
It's also shedding that massive fear of rejection that I feel has followed me my whole life.
But when you're anxious and online and millions of people have eyes on you and they're just waiting for you to screw up
Kind of show them your hand, you know, be like, you know what I am gonna screw up.
I'm a freaking human and this has been hard and I've been hiding parts
to myself and I've been trying to show up online authentically, but the reality is I'm really still scared about what people think and I'm really still scared about what this all means for me.
And
being honest about that too, because I think that there's so much that people are just like, how do you get to the point of like being able to talk about this stuff?
And it's like, I don't know, with my knees freaking shaking every single day.
It is not easy.
But I swear to God, it is easier than masking.
and pretending and showing up as being authentic and vulnerable, but really just hiding the parts of yourself that you feel are so unlovable.
And
you know, for the longest time I thought that was my stretch marks and then I thought it was my apron belly and then I thought it was going through divorce.
I thought it was all of these things.
And time and time again you get so humbled into what really matters in life.
And I think that
This has just sort of really shaken me up and in a really good way because I think that and I hope that because it it really made me
want to quit everything, that it's really made me show up in a new way where it's like I already did quit.
And so now it's no longer this looming threat over me.
And and I hope that people will soon see me take more breaks.
I hope people will see me share uncomfortable things or or be honest about when I don't want to.
I hope that people get the version of me that I feel I had for a split second years ago and
then you know a pandemic happened and everything and we there's a big part of me that's like the online space has shifted a lot in the last few years and I think it's caused a lot of people to become smaller versions of themselves
And I want to sort of break that wall down again.
I kind of want to stop worrying about every tiny move and just start trying to make them and
I texted my friend this morning.
She's actually one of my employees, but I was like, I have a very honest video, but I'm scared
But usually when I'm scared, it's important.
And she goes, I think you should.
I wish I had someone like you when I was younger.
So for little me, I think you should.
We are all little specks of dust floating on a rock.
Do whatever you want.
And I was like, screw it.
And I pressed share.
And that's all it took was like somebody just reminding me, like, what is all of this
matter in the end of the day.
And sometimes I'm I that sounds like so morbid, but it's like who cares?
Like when you when you realize the gravity of like what we're talking about here, what people online are gonna think about you
And you realize like how much more it's important that you're existing and here and being authentic.
It sort of like shook me into a new reality where she was like, we're just dust floating on a rock.
And I was like, yeah, who cares about my video post?
It was so like refreshing to have that.
And I hope more people can kind of figure that out.
It's like you kind of gotta be, you gotta kind of cringe if you're gonna make it in in the creator world.
You've gotta let yourself cringe at yourself and even though that's a hundred percent what I'm doing
doing today.
Yeah, I totally get that.
I I feel like any post that I've done too where I'm like, ooh, I don't know.
Like it feels a little uncomfortable.
It feels a little big, but when I share it, yeah, and then people can resonate with it in a whole different way.
But it does feel scary.
I I totally understand that.
Yeah.
And I love what your friend said.
I I honestly have that visualization so many times too.
If if someone is upset or or I get a nasty DM, I'll just like
think about myself and the grand scheme of the world and all the people and be like, okay, if what I posted did help someone, like even one person, then I guess it's
It's worth having someone mad at me or having someone saying it was too much.
And yeah, there's just like a lot of unpacking of like this feeling of being too much or just how vulnerable it can feel to share things in this space for sure.
Yeah, you're always too much for some and never enough for others.
It also weirdly
I hate this about us in general, but it weirdly comforts me that you also sometimes get a nasty DM because I'm like, what could possibly anybody say to you?
I saw somebody doing this like embroidery video and she was like, not everybody like appreciates this art.
And then somebody else who's a sculptor was like, that's not art, it's a craft.
And that everyone started arguing and I was like, okay, so you really can't even embroider anything online without people like arguing you.
So I think we're just like in the state of like, how do you be authentic when people are like
Can you stand your ground?
Can you stand your ground?
Can you be yourself?
Can you still produce content in the real in the face of that?
Right.
And and I don't know, like it's a weird club to be in when you're like, I get nasty DMs sometimes and like not everybody likes me.
And it's like this weird.
I know it's like announcing that you're like uh unlovable to some and but really it's it's a drop in the bucket to white
really matters and accounts like yours that really make a difference for people, it requires you to not have everybody like you, but it is
It is weirdly refreshing, although I am sorry you get those DMs.
I am You know, whenever you share about the nasty DMs, I feel the same way.
I'm like, Sarah, like who can have anything bad to say about her?
She's can you remember like the nastiest DM that you've received?
Ooh, some people just like go off on like your appearance.
I've had people mock.
This is so wild, but because I've like modeled underwear, I've had people like mock openly like my vagina.
I've had people accuse me of altering my size or yeah, like just a lot of like sometimes you'll open a message request and you'll see them be like
You're annoying or you're ugly or you're this or you're that.
And then you scroll and you see like hundreds of messages that you've never seen of them just like attacking every little bit of you from like
Your hair is frizzy, your skin is stupid, your eyelashes are dumb, like your brows are stupid, like you're ugly, you're nothing, you're this.
And you're just like, what in the world is this?
Like for so long.
I think that's where it's like it makes you feel unsafe in your own space when you're like, whoa, there's people just like watching just to insult you or like their hate their hate following.
That part's really weird for me.
I'm curious.
I I kind of wanted to go back to what we were talking about at the beginning.
Your kids.
So you you share so openly about PMDD and your body and and all of that kind of stuff.
And I know you have a couple teenagers and then of course little Lemmy, who's so sweet, who's the toddler.
How do they respond to like you sharing this stuff?
And how do you have those discussions with them before you share these things online?
Cause I'm sure they like your teenagers, I'm sure they follow you and stuff like that as well.
It's interesting.
I grew up in a very mental health positive home.
So my mother had gone through a hysterectomy at 34.
So she went through like a lot of she had endometriosis.
So she went through menopause at 34 and I was a child witnessing my mom going through menopause and going through like mental health struggles with that.
And she was really open about it.
And even though I never really felt
connected to that.
I was like, well, that's not me.
It did create a lot of empathy and understanding watching somebody else go through it, especially somebody who is such a brave hero in your mind, like your mother is
And so I think when it came to talking about mental health, we always have and we've been really, really open.
And my oldest daughter has shared before as she's given consent to um her she struggles with uh seasonal affective disorder.
disorder.
So she experiences sad.
And and I was like, it's because we've had such open, honest conversations about these things that she was willing to raise her voice to say
I feel like something's off with me and being able to advocate getting help and support as well.
It's not I mean if it were Gemma if we're talking about Gemma, she will probably make a joke that makes me shake out of a sad feeling.
She's very good at being very sarcastic and dry in humor and a little dark.
And I love that because she knows when I'm down
That's the peak time to sort of like bring me a good meme, bring me a dark joke, or she'll be like, snap out of it.
And I'll be like, you know, I can't.
And she'll be like, well, you could try.
Like, she's just very
She's very good at like sort of alleviating some of the heaviness about it.
But I think it's I think it's been so refreshing.
I think growing up with a mother who was so honest with us and watching how kind she is.
how generous she is, how brave she is, how beautiful she is.
And I never othered her because she struggled with mental health.
I always saw it as part of the whole package.
Like she was both joy and she experienced sadness.
So that I as a mother, as I tried to do this for so long before I left my previous marriage, I tried to hide sad parts of me.
I tried to
you know, I I used to call it like falling on the sword for the family.
I tried to just be this like big brave person and the kids always saw it.
When we talked about it afterwards, they always knew.
Like they always were aware when I was sad, even when I was like trying to mask it.
They understood it.
So I think it gives them a lot of understanding when I'm like, mom's going through this right now.
This is what it feels like.
It's nobody's fault
This is just what's going on with me.
So they never feel like, is she mad at me?
Is she disappointed in me?
Is this my fault?
They just have uh now like my my kids will come over and be like, are you okay?
They'll give my little
squeeze of a hand and like they're just so it makes me emotional because I'm like as hard as it is to be honest about your mental health as a mother, it is so beautiful
to watch your kids become empathetic humans.
And like that's our role is to teach them how to be adults in this world, how to be in this world.
And I'm so grateful.
that they're empathetic and I can only hope that me being honest with them helps them recognize things for themselves, but also understand things for other people like I did when I hadn't
experienced depression or anxiety for a really long time, but my mother had, and all I did was love her.
All I did was respect her.
All I did was empathize
With her and be with her.
And so as hard as it's been for me, I'm so glad that I've been honest with them because they have been just
beautiful in the way that they respond back and they make me so, so proud that they're the people that will carry on the next
parts of this world, I guess.
Well, yeah, you definitely have me feeling emotional too, just hearing the way you talk about your mom.
Like to hear a daughter talk about their mother who struggled with mental health, but also shared the joys and and
all of these different things with such love and admiration.
And I know just from watching your page that you have this close relationship with your mom.
I think it's so beautiful that you've been able to take that in and share that with your kids as well.
And I I thought something that was really interesting that you were saying is like how even when you were trying to mask, so when you were going through your divorce and you're going through that messy period
your kids still saw and they still knew that you were struggling and now you're kind of come around the other side and just like, I'm just gonna tell them.
I'm just gonna be open with them.
I'm just gonna show them that I can be both the happy mom, the mom that does the school drop offs, all that stuff, and a mom who
sometimes struggles.
I think like what more beautiful thing than showing our our true humanness to our kids and saying to our kids that it's not their job to fix it though.
Like this is how I feel.
This is what I'm going through.
It's not your job to fix it, but I'm human and I think
For your children to see that.
That's that's so powerful.
Yeah, it's been really inspiring to see them adapt.
I think we all worry about, I mean, what's the report card on parenting gonna be?
How do we ever find out if we
Good job and we don't.
And there's these little blips of moments where you're like, I think I did the right thing.
And and that's one of them, you know, even speaking to the sense
that they always knew.
There was one day that I put on an old shirt or something and Bowden walked in the house and he looked at me and he goes, I don't like this.
And I was like, what?
And he's like
I don't like this outfit you're wearing.
And I was like, why?
What the heck, man?
Like, what did I do?
And he's like, it reminds me of old mom and it's making me sad.
And I was like, oh, they literally have in their brain old mom and new mom.
And until that moment I didn't know it because I had triggered him remembering a version of me that was sort of a shell of myself because that's what happens when you mask for too long.
That's what happens when you try and pretend that everything's okay.
It does eventually catch up with you.
It does eventually come to the surface.
And then everyone knows it, right?
And so it was really interesting in this weird moment, years after it happened.
I think he was like
Maybe he was like nine or ten at the time that he saw me wearing a shirt and was like, that reminds me of old mom.
And it wasn't until that moment I really realized to the gravity that they remembered a different version of myself, a version that was like really a shell
just surviving.
And so as much as this is all such a struggle right now, going through these cycles, there's part of me that's like, I've gone through
harder moments and harder times and at least this is like I am like I said that staircase I'm stepping up in the right direction and I know that there is
It's not without hope.
And I know that my kids, like you said, it has never been their responsibility and it's never been something for them to fix.
And
And it's nice seeing them get to continue on their lives and find happiness and joy and not feeling the weight of my sadness in any way.
And I think I owe a lot to that to my husband too, because he really does set it up for success.
Where he's like, Mom's going through her thing, like we're just gonna get her comfortable on the couch, like we're just not that I'm on the it sounds like I'm like couch brown the whole time.
I'm not
But like they're I'm just very honest with them.
I'm like, I'm having a sad day.
Like I might cry, guys.
Like that's just where we are at.
And they're like, that's okay.
Like that's like whatever.
We all
And they're all open with me, like usually.
They're teenagers, but a big part of it too, like even going back to what you said about my own mom, like sometimes I will talk about something that's like big and heavy.
And what I find so beautiful is my mom will often call
Comment and she'll be like, you know that I know, and here's the things that I've learned.
And I'll watch her go comment on some of my friends' pages when they're having a hard time
And there's a certain level of empathy when you know what it's like, that you show up for other people in a really understanding, compassionate way.
Without a how can I help?
I think that's just such a beautiful place for us to wrap up too.
And and like we talk about parenting all of the time on our page and and that is exactly it, right?
Like that nurtured relationship.
helping your kids feel safe, feel seen by you and and feel heard.
I mean that's that's it.
If we can do those things.
I mean, of course there's tons of other tips and stuff like that, but that relationship that you have with your mom where you're like
I see that you can struggle and that you still love me and that you'll always be there for me and you're even there for my friends.
And and now your kids see that in you.
Like that is like that's winning at parenting.
That's the parenting report card right there.
And I I really think that you're doing that and you're modeling it also too, I mean, literally millions of people online and and I just yeah, I wanna say I just
admire you.
I think you're doing such an amazing job.
And I hope that my girls can see that too when I struggle or when I'm sad or something like that.
I hope that they can see all of those things, the both and that you were talking about.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think it just
We're just raising really beautiful humans when we allow them to see our own humanness in the best ways possible, right?
So
It's a delicate line, but it's so worth it.
I think as parents to raise empathetic kids is so worth it, even if it means a little bit of discomfort along the way.
Yeah, exactly.
And and like you said
those uncomfortable conversations, whether it's with our audience, whether it's with our kids, or our own parents, like those are the ones where we show the messiness, we show the true humanity that
I think have the biggest difference and build the the most real relationships and are just the most impactful for us.
And I think it's just great that we've been able to really talk about that today.
Yeah, honestly, I think this has been so interesting timing-wise because I'm literally in uh I woke up just in a horrific way.
And so, I mean, it is messy, and I think that that's important.
Like anybody listening is like
probably like wow you have a lot to figure out.
Yeah, I do.
And that's okay.
Like a lot of us do.
And we don't have to wait to be a perfect version of ourselves because it's never going to come.
It's never gonna happen, you're never gonna have a perfect body, you're never gonna be in the perfect state, you're never gonna have the perfect anything.
But how can we show up in the mess?
And and I think that while I've done that so much for my body along the ways, it's time for me to do that for my mind and my heart too
And so I appreciate you allowing me to sort of share from such a raw space because it's uh it is deeply uncomfortable, but I think it's also important.
And so it's uh it's really been lovely
Thank you so much, Sarah.
I really appreciate having you on and I'm so glad that we could have this conversation.
Thank you so much for being so open.
For anyone uh who wants to check you out, where can they find you?
I'm mostly on Instagram and in stories at the birds
papaya so that's where I am almost all the time.
Unfortunately, if you're a story watcher, you're gonna watch a lot of them.
I don't like to shut up.
Yeah, I love that about your stories.
There's always something new.
Top of the screen.
It's like concerning amount, but I'm always like, oh my God, there's this.
Oh my god, there's that
It's like a really fun little trait that I have is never never stopping.
Well, thank you so much again, Sarah.
It's been great.
Thank you
Let's head over to Coffee Time where Scott and I share some of our reflections from this amazing conversation.
Something I loved that Sarah talked about in this episode is she talks so highly about her mom.
And I feel like we've done so many shows
about reparenting and cycle breaking and there was something that just made me teary even listening to the episode again about how she talks about her mom with so much res
respect and love and talks about how her mom struggled with mental illness, but she was able to embody being okay with having all sorts of different emotions and how Sarah really looks up to her for that.
That really stood out to me
because that's something I want for our kids.
I don't want them to see us as always happy.
Like my parents were never
sad and they always were happy and they were perfect.
Like I don't want that for that.
I don't think the girls were gonna say.
of different feelings, but it was never their responsibility to fix how we felt.
And I feel like that's a balance that parents really struggle with.
Why?
Because like I'll get asked by parents a lot of the times, like let's say I'm going through something really hard, someone passed away in my family, and I'm crying a lot
How do I tell my child about my grief and not make my child feel like they're responsible for making me happy?
I think a lot of our kids, especially our sensitive kids, I see this in our middle daughter all the time
they want us to be happy.
So if they see a sad parent, they're like, they try and be playful or silly or do things to make us happy.
But I want our kids to be able to tolerate the discomfort and to know that it's actually okay if mommy is feeling sad today.
Like it's not your job to make me happy.
I'm just I'm feeling sad today.
So I'm going to take a bath or I'm going to listen to some sad music and let out some tears.
But it's not your responsibility to make me
be happy.
Was she gonna understand that though?
Like at what point, at what age do they truly understand that?
Like for our four-year-old, she's kind of at the beginning stages of understanding that, but when she was three and younger.
She would still try and make us happy if we were if we were ever sad or angry or whatever, annoyed.
But it's not as though you can like explain that to her
that this is not your responsibility.
You don't have to fix it.
And sometimes we just have to feel these feelings.
Like how do you do that?
I think it's okay, even if you're not explaining it to them, but you're showing that to them.
So as an example, you wouldn't be bawling your eyes out and say to your kids, come here, you have to give me a hug.
You have to comfort me.
Oh, I see.
You know what I mean?
They might come to you and they might give you a hug and you say, that's okay.
Like thank you so much for giving me a hug
But if that's happening to me, I'm gonna go to you for comfort, my partner, right?
I'm not gonna go to turn to my kids.
Or you're not gonna say to your kids, do something funny, mommy's crying so much, like I need you to make me happy.
It's in the way that we're modeling it to our kids.
More so, I think, than even the specific words that we're saying.
I can see it though, that let's say our oldest daughter, or even our middle, would come up to us and give us a hug.
And my default would probably be to say, oh, that makes me feel so much better.
Yeah, and I think that's okay.
So what's the difference though?
Again there's nuance and I don't want parents thinking, oh, it's not okay if your kid hugs you because I think there's a beauty in the fact that
our children are born empathetic and we don't want to crush that out of them either.
But there's a big difference.
So let me paint you two scenarios.
So one scenario is, let's say me, what I talked about at the beginning, struggling with post-weaning depression.
So I'm sad
I'm crying a lot.
There's a difference between our oldest daughter coming up to me and being like, oh mommy, you're sad, giving me a hug and me being like, Thank you so much.
Like when you give someone a a hug when they're sad, that feels really good.
Like that really helped me.
Thank you.
There's a difference between that and I'm crying and my daughter's playing.
And I'm like, honey, can you please come here?
Mommy's so sad.
I really need a hug from you to feel better.
Oh, I'm I'm so sad right now
And making it her job to give me a hug, to go away from her play, to make me feel better.
Like it's a slight difference.
Honestly, I have a feeling that a lot of people do that though.
I don't know, that sounds to me like a very normal thing.
Not that I do that necessarily, but that's doesn't sound out of the realm of possibility for just any regular parent to
to do that.
Oh it's gone.
And again, if it's like a few times, I'm sure I've done that.
But is the difference between doing that a few times where you're like, okay, sometimes I am sad and I want to ask my kids for a hug, and that becoming the norm.
And the norm for a child to take care of a parent's emotions.
That's what we want us to stay away from.
It's not your child's job to take care of your emotions and try and keep you happy.
And Sarah talked about that, I think, in a really good way
It's okay for your child to be empathetic.
It's okay for them to want to tune into those caregiver instincts that they have, but it's not their job to take care of you.
You're still taking care of you.
Yeah, okay.
That makes sense.
I was thinking about when you were really struggling uh with your own mental health and you were feeling anxious and and all of those things.
You didn't turn to our children.
to make you feel better.
They maybe wanted to give you a hug or be playful with you, but you didn't turn to them to say, Oh, daddy's having a really hard time right now.
Can you like help me calm down?
Yeah, I feel like they just inherently wanted to cuddle with me more.
But yeah, it was
not asking for that.
I mean for me, and maybe this is a a guy thing.
I don't know.
I feel like it probably is.
But like I would turn more inward, right?
So I'm not necessarily
talking to too many people about it.
It's more you kind of forcing me to talk on the subject to heal, right?
Yeah.
But I will say a lot of the adults I work with in therapy, they really struggled with being that parentified child.
So the child who was put in the role of being a parent or was put in the role of being the emotional container for their parents' emotions.
And I think a lot of people listening to this podcast probably can relate to that.
And then it was becomes their responsibility to take care of the parents' emotions and make the parent happy.
And that stays with you till adulthood.
So I think that that's a really valuable lesson and something Sarah has navigated so beautifully.
I have a lot of respect for her and the way she was talking about how she tells her children that she's having a hard time, but she also lets them know it's not their responsibility.
And I think it's beautiful to know that there can be both.
You don't have to mask your emotions around your children.
It's actually okay for your kids to see you have a whole range of emotions and it's not gonna mess your child up
that you struggle with your own mental health.
I think a lot of people who have depression or anxiety or PMDD think, oh my goodness, I'm gonna ruin my child because I have this
No, you actually can understand the depth of all these different emotions.
That's actually really beautiful and a gift to your child to be able to model that to your child, as long as your child knows that it's not their responsibility to fix it.
So I loved this episode.
Sarah is such a beautiful soul.
It was incredible to listen to her talk.
And I hope that you loved it as much as we did.
Hey friends, thank you so much for listening to today's episode.
We are glad that you are here.
If you enjoyed today's episode and found it interesting, we'd really appreciate it if you'd leave a rating and a review.
Scott and I actually sit down together and read them all.
A five-star rating helps us share our podcast and get these important messages out there.
Thank you so much for listening and we can't wait to talk to you again next week.