Shattering The Illusion of Intense Mothering (1/2) with Jenn Hepton

Why isn't anyone discussing this burnout recovery hack for moms? Jenn Hepton shatters the illusion of intense mothering.

Jenn shares personal details from her mothering and life. Jenn's poignant revelations, sparked by her mother's terminal illness, serve as our guide through the maze of cultural and patriarchal expectations.

I loved this conversation for so many reasons:

• The raw and vulnerable way she peels back the layers of "perfect" mothering (and how we all just believe it, like it's even achievable)
• Naming the deep-rooted struggles that come with rearing children
• The all too familiar fading personal dreams.
• Navigating the treacherous digital landscape 
• We need to have a new definition of motherhood, one that honours individuality and encourages the setting of healthy boundaries. 
• We challenge you to consider how motherhood does and doesn't feel authentic. 

We explore the importance of digital detoxes and the complex emotions that may bubble up when we step back from our screens. From intentional breaks to the supportive networks that can guide us through the noise, we share practical tips for anyone looking to regain control over their motherhood. 

This episode is an invitation to rediscover the joy of the present, unplugged and unencumbered by the pressures of modern motherhood.

Mentionable's
Jenn Hepton is an accomplished educator, Fair Play Life Facilitator, and dedicated advocate for conscious parenting. Through her personal journey, marked by infertility, pregnancy loss, and the stillbirth of her daughter, Jenn uncovered the insidious impact of societal definitions of motherhood. Challenging the prevailing notion that mothers are the problem, she passionately believes in forging one's own path rather than adhering to external definitions. Jenn delves into the profound aspects of motherhood, discussing the emotional and mental labor, the challenges of default parenting, and the imperative to redefine motherhood against traditional gender bias and societal conditioning. Her unique perspective, rooted in conscious parenting principles, provides valuable insights into breaking free from societal expectations and fostering an empowered and authentic motherhood experience. Jenn Hepton brings a transformative narrative to the conversation about rewriting the narratives of motherhood.

Chapters

• 0:00 Reclaiming Motherhood
• 18:16 Social Media Overload and Finding Support

Transcript

Kayla Huszar: 0:00

Welcome back everyone to the Chile Mother Podcast. I am your host, kayla Huzar, and I am here with Jen, and this has been a long-waited podcast episode. I approached Jen a while ago and we have been wanting to get together for so long to record this for you guys. And what we want to talk about today is the illusion, or the invisibility kind of, of motherhood and all of the not all of that we don't have time for that Some of the narratives that we can kind of get caught up in, stuck in, and all of that. And so, jen, I think it's best coming right from you what are your passions about this topic, or your personal experience, or how do you want to start us off today?

Jenn Hepton: 0:46

Wow, and I have been looking forward to this conversation for so, so long, so I'm honored to be here. Where do we start the illusion of motherhood? Personal story of mine where I realized that I was living in the depths of the illusion of motherhood. So my mother was diagnosed with brain cancer and they gave her about a year to live and she, luckily, was with us for about two years, but the two years of her life weren't. We were happy and grateful to have her.

Jenn Hepton: 1:25

However, she was a different person after her brain surgery. She was full of anxiety, she was full of resentment and I love mine but she was the epitome of what society tells you a good mom should be Sell, sacrificing, always putting her children and her husband first, not believing in her own dreams, not pursuing anything, doing all the emotional labor, doing all the domestic labor, mental labor. I mean, she did it all. My dad was an atypical European man. He was the provider. He came home, he had dinner at the table, we had to be quiet and she realized that she only had a few months to live or a few years to live. That's when it really started to hit her. I did not live my whole life. I did not live my dreams. I just didn't do what I wanted to do because I thought it was selfish. And that hit me really hard because at that time my son was two years old and I was a new mom and I could see the same patterns and the same cycles happening with myself and I started to freak out. Oh, my God, I'm doing the same, I'm self-sacrificing, I'm doing all the domestic labor, I am doing all the emotional labor. I am burnt out, I am overwhelmed. I hate being a mom, I hate this whole motherhood story. And here's my mom, at 73 years old, you know, saying no, this is not what it's supposed to be. And that's when I realized that, wow, what we have been conditioned as a woman is to be a people pleaser, to put other needs before ourselves, to be the good girl.

Jenn Hepton: 3:37

And that starts to become even more true when we become mothers. We just kind of put ourselves into that unconsciously until something happens and you realize that that's just not your story. And the way that you realize it's not your story sometimes comes from the fact that you feel overwhelmed and burnt out. But for me that was the moment, the moment that my mom took her last breath. I was in the room was almost the moment where I almost took my first breath in this new, redefined role of motherhood and realized, you know, like I can't do this, like I cannot hate what I'm doing, I can't.

Jenn Hepton: 4:26

I love my son, I love being his mother, but I hate the institution of motherhood. This needs to change for myself and for my son and also for my mom, right, I don't want to be on my own deathbed saying, oh, you know, I self-sacrifice and it was a lot more to life. So that's a little bit of a personal story where I thought, you know what this motherhood that I was thought to believe was the be all and end all and the reward and what I was meant to do and will be so fulfilling to be a wife and a mom. And when you, when I got there, it wasn't, it was that's. That's when I realized that, yeah, the motherhood that I believed in was an illusion.

Kayla Huszar: 5:14

That is such a powerful story and one that I resonate with deeply. Can you break down some of the ways that you then moved forward?

Jenn Hepton: 5:28

Wow, it's interesting to say forward.

Kayla Huszar: 5:32

I think I'm going through it, through it still Through it, through it, and then I go back, and then I go through it again, I go back.

Jenn Hepton: 5:42

Um, how I'm taking steps is really just redefining. So moving into that self-advocacy and self-agency. I was always a very independent person and I was like I spoke up for myself, I was a fighter. But I realized I was a fighter within the mask of people pleasing. So I'm Dependent, I'm a fighter.

Jenn Hepton: 6:10

But then, all of a sudden, if I felt that angst or if I felt like, oh, you know, like I was gonna get in trouble or you know, I Don't want to make you upset, that I'll stop right. So so I had to really kind of I had to redefine that for myself. I could really reclaim my voice and I would claim my voice by understanding the language around Patriarchy, boundaries. I had no boundaries. My mom had no boundaries, so I had no boundaries growing up. I'm sorry to create boundaries, and for me it was reading literature around this as well. So, creating that awareness and when we create and when we educate ourselves and create that awareness and we have the wisdom or the knowledge to really Speak about that or acknowledge it or see things in our lives that we, that we may not have, I guess we may have gaslighted ourselves within that right. So now we're like, oh, actually, no, that's actually a thing. No, I think it's also the conversation in society now is is is better.

Kayla Huszar: 7:21

We're having more conversations around the Institute of motherhood and how culture and society plays with that, and patriarchy and, you know, misogyny and just a lot of that, and I think because of the conversations and because of the brave writers and great storytellers and and and People sharing their stories, then we all as a collective are able to really move forward, and so you come from this personal and professional lens under, I know you've taken training in like conscious parenting and fair play, and so how do you, you know, how do you intermix the things that you know, professionally you know and and also apply them personally, almost going too far into it, where then you also can, like, lose yourself, I think in the, in the framework of it, or the. Well, instagram told me this or this is the way that I should show up. You know, maybe I'll start, I'll back this up and share a bit of a story myself. Is that what I find in my own life is that it's hard to distinguish between what I'm constantly fed on social media, because the algorithm will, like my Explorer page is pretty much all about parenting and scripts and attachment, parenting and like None but none of the other fun cat videos, and so I find it really hard to distinguish between Reading that, even maybe believing that. That's how I want to show up differently. Right, like again, lots of wisdom from dr Becky. Right, like lots of wisdom.

Kayla Huszar: 9:04

It can feel like consuming that information all the time. It doesn't give me time to actually reflect and go inward about oh, I actually show up or I would say that differently, or I would move through that differently, or Maybe that doesn't work for my particular temperament or my child's temperament, when we're, when we're living in this illusion of motherhood or the narrative and feeling invisible and all of it, the part for me that feels heavy, or the energy that's kind of surrounding me parenting right now, is I need to check in here first, because my temperament is different than whoever that mom influencer is or whoever that other person is who's sharing really great information. But it might not actually work in the context of our reality, and so I'm gonna rephrase my question as you're moving through it. I like that you're. You're moving through it, you're still in the ordeal of it. How how do you make that distinction between what I need, what I'm consuming, what's good for my family, what is honoring our temperance in our reality and our life circumstances?

Jenn Hepton: 10:33

oh my god, such a rich question and share because social media, social media, social media. Personally, when I first became a mom, a new mom, I was all about social media. I was a conscious parent and coach and I was always on social media. I would share tools or unconscious parenting. But I was also, you know, following other parenting coaches and experts, like Dr Becky, and because I was in the trenches, in the deck, the, the darkness that can like follow you in being a new mom, I just started to reach out for anything and everything, because I need someone to just take away the pain. I needed someone to just solve my problems and it was so quick, right, oh, there's a script for that.

Jenn Hepton: 11:32

But then, of course, my son is showing neodymium divergencies, like tendencies, and so I would use this, I would use what I know from conscious parenting, and then I would use the scripts that I would hear, and more times than not it didn't work, you know, because some days he will be listening and some days he's very strong will, and some days he just wants to do something, and so, within that, I thought, oh gosh, you know like who am? I? I'm a conscious parenting coach and I was a teacher, a principal, and I can't even parent this child. And then, of course, there comes more scrolling, more scrolling, more speeding that, feeding that story, feeding that narrative, and sometimes that's what we do, right, the trauma linking. And then I just got to the point where I was like, well, I just don't know what I'm doing and you give up, right, you just associate them. So you just associate from life, you just move yourself away and you move into this place of like breeze or just like I'm gonna say, I'm gonna call it a trauma state, it just like you know, this is fine, you burnt out.

Jenn Hepton: 12:45

It wasn't until I got personally to that point that I was like I had to. I understood that I needed pause, right. So at first it became a survival mechanism. It didn't work for me. It fed the story of I'm not good enough, which is really patriarchy, a patriarchal narrative, society narrative like you're never good enough, you can do more and more and more, which is endless and is a lie. Hence the illusion. When I got to the point of complete like burnout, I realized that I had to do something different and create the boundaries of social media, but also, I really believe, like with If anyone is listening and they're following the scripts and they're getting more anxious, you're getting, you know, nervous, they're feeling like they're not good enough, the scripts are not working. I want you to do so, because what gave me the luxury or the grace was pause, was space. When I had space, I was able to really listen to the stories within my head. I was able to be present in what was happening and, you know, some scripts and some some words were really helpful.

Jenn Hepton: 14:14

You know it really are, for when it's like so much you're getting lost in it, lost in it and it just becomes a bit more like beating the narrative and not getting enough to get quite lost in it and for me it was. It was, it was the pause, because there was also something else that was happening, as I was a conscious parenting coach was this idea of you it's all in you, you know what to do, you're intuitive. You just lost that intuitive nature. But I also see a bit of patriarchy in there too, because there's a story that mothers always know, or mothers know best, or mothers have this innate intuition on what to do. And in honesty, and like reading and research and literature, it may be a generational thing and maybe a modeling thing and conditioning thing, but if men had the same conditioning, the same modeling, they would be as good in the act of mothering, right? So when you feel like you don't have an intuition, or if you feel like you're not good enough, or you feel like I should be able to naturally do this, and you have these stories of yeah, you should actually be able to do this and you have the intuition, you start to doubt yourself again, right?

Jenn Hepton: 15:43

So I think to answer that amazing question is space is pause, and sometimes that's really hard to do when you're in the depths of being kind of a new mom or a motherhood, because the pause in this phase can be very scary because things will come up and we have to face things. But I honestly think that for me and for a lot of my past clients, it was the moving away, you know, like the creating the pause instead of being in it, being the observer. So you know, checking in with yourself, if you do see a script and you know how's this affecting me and just thinking about it, just really just creating pause and space around it, and you can use it and if it doesn't work, give yourself grace. You like, you tried it. It doesn't work. My son is different, I'm different, my household is different, it's a different day, gosh, it's a different time of day, like you know, like everything. So I mean I could talk about it forever, but I really need a takeaway from this, which is being to give yourself space and pause.

Kayla Huszar: 17:00

Yeah, and I think I would add on to what you said. If you're in a space where things feel kind of raw and stuck and maybe even vulnerable, especially those early, the early days of motherhood and when I say early days I don't just mean the first year or the first two years, I just mean like, if you still feel like you're in it, you're like that's where you're at, if your three-year-old is still waking up multiple times a night and not eating and you're still battling some of the same things you were battling in early motherhood, but you're three years in, you're still in early motherhood, you're still in it, yeah, like you're still, I'm still in it, I'm still in it, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you know, if you're in this space and if your body contracted with that, how do I pause? How do I pause this such automatic thing that is literally a limb? I can't imagine going to a different room without it.

Kayla Huszar: 18:06

I can't imagine parenting without it. I can't imagine not checking X, y and Z. If that is the feeling, the body clenching, that happens, it is even more necessary and it's likely you're going to need a guide or a support person or a professional or an accountability buddy to move with you through it, because this I haven't looked at this stats recently, but a while ago I did and it was. I think the average human being spends at least an hour and a half on social media and up to six hours a day consuming information through the internet or their phone or some way.

Kayla Huszar: 19:01

This is very new for our very primal nervous system to be consuming that much information, whether on purpose or not on purpose, to interrupt that pattern. It is very likely that by interrupting it, you're going to be flooded with this uncertainty and unknown, maybe even anxiety, or some of the things that we do to avoid. I do it. I avoid hard situations or hard conversations or those kinds of things. It may feel like it hits you if you do decide to say, oh, I am curious about that or oh, yeah, I really like to interrupt that pattern. I think it's just important to not brace yourself but have some kind of person that you're keeping accountable with or helping you through that, because when we pause, the reason we avoid the pause also is because all the things that potentially you may be avoiding are going to start filtering through.

Jenn Hepton: 20:23

Yeah, yeah, and I really appreciate you adding that and talking about that, because we have been told that the moths is a scary thing and we know that the pause is where the healing and the awareness comes in. And the reason that we're always on our phone is because the phone has become our village, our community, the nuclear family now is we've lost our community, we've lost the wisdom of community, and community is now social media, and so, as humans, we need human connection, especially during COVID, social media was that human connection and so that's you know, understandably. And you also have to notice, which can be hard, because if you're in the middle of it all the chaos, the overwhelm, it might feel so normal to you until it's not you know, until it's too much. But, like you said, like if you listen to this or if you think you know, yeah, I feel, I feel weird, you know, like I feel like I'm not good enough or these scripts are really overwhelming and we're not meant to take that much information. We are not meant to take that much information. Imagine if we did not take in all that information and how much room and space we have in our brain right and our emotions because we're holding on to whatever we've seen energetically and it's still with us. So the pause and I wish I remembered the book I read and the author. But he wrote about trauma and he wrote that you know we react to things.

Jenn Hepton: 22:22

So, yeah, the phone is kind of our survival mechanism, it's our crutch, it's like I'm stressed out, so it's my vice. I'm going to look into, I'm going to use my phone and it's not until you get to the point where you start to feel that uncomfortable feeling and then that's when you kind of have to take a deep breath. Taking a deep breath is a good place to start, just like it's a time to pause, it's time to put my phone down. How long am I going to put my phone down and just getting curious, with the intention just being curious and playful so that your system doesn't get too startled. But and that's something that you may need to create a community around to support you and let's get four or five months together and that's just maybe support each other. And not being on social media. I know, I know a lot of parents from my son's preschool have stopped being on social media because there's too much.