Creating Balance Between the Beauty and Challenges of Working Motherhood
Episode 86: Creating Balance Between the Beauty and Challenges of Working Motherhood
Join Dr. Prianca Naik on the Empowering Working Moms Podcast! In this episode, she discusses the very important topic of one’s relationship to motherhood and how to face the dichotomy between being a mother and balancing an identity outside of motherhood. Dr. Prianca invites you to learn about how self-care is not always the answer to burnout and exhaustion for working moms, despite common belief. Tune in for more on this topic.
In this episode, you will learn:
Ditch the ‘Daily Grind Dread Cycle’ with the practices from this episode.
Balance work and motherhood to find fulfillment.
Combat mom guilt through practicing mindfulness, reframing perfectionism, and embracing one's humanity.
Heal and grow through understanding the complexities of motherhood.
To end burnout and exhaustion and get your peace of mind back, check out her free masterclass on 4 steps to overcome burnout, get rid of overwhelm, and get your peace of mind back.
https://program.stresscleansemd.com/4-secrets-to-living-a-life-you-ll-love-podcast
If you want to work with Coach Prianca Naik, MD, go to
www.priancanaikmdcoaching.as.me to book a 30-minute consultation call
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[FULL TRANSCRIPTION]:
You're listening to the empowering working moms podcast episode number 86. Hello there. Thank you so much. I'm so glad to have you here today. Welcome to this podcast, empowering working moms real talk with Dr. Prianca Naik. I will say that February in the northeast, it's a time for realizing that spring is around the corner and the cold days are going to leave us relatively soon.
We're not so much in the dead of winter anymore. And I noticed that it got dark a little bit later yesterday. So I was really pumped about that. The Long Dark days can be really kind of tough. So I'm sure you as a working mom in a demanding career, I'm guessing you've been told that self care is the absolute answer and antidote to burnout and exhaustion. But what most people never realize is that so many moms, in demanding careers are getting mani pedis, they're still exhausted. And you make the time to get the massage and it does not work. And if that happens, what is going to happen to you? What's going to happen your exhaustion? Is self care really the answer? Well, no. It's really being aware of the problem and deciding to do the work, the work to heal. Instead of bandaiding like self care.
In my coaching program overcome burnout for good. I teach clients to heal from the inside out using my tools that are really backed by my experience as a medical doctor, a mom, I have my master's degree in neuroscience too. So I've used all of this background and information to develop my processes, helping so many moms to find peace of mind and balance, to ditch exhaustion and burnout once and for all. Now book a call with me PriancaNaikMDcoaching.as.me, the link is in the show notes, to find out if you are someone that I can help too.
And today I want to talk about really our relationship to motherhood. And I had this feeling, I had come back from a trip and I just felt thrown back in to the daily grind. And there's what I call the daily grind dread, which so many moms are trapped in where they're just dreading the day. And they get out of bed, their alarm goes off, they're dragging themselves out. And then it's work, work, work, work work, they come home. And then it's more work and more stuff to do in the to do list. And it's just totally exhausting. Now, I never feel the daily grind tread because of my processes. But I will say that when I'm not with my kids, I miss them. And they're top of mind, their safety and their well being. And when I am with them, I feel a lot of pressure to spend a lot of time with them because there's that saying that the days are long, but the years are short. And it's so true. So you know, I realized that the next thing I know, they're going to be off to college and ditching me and even before that, they're not going to want to hang out with me anymore. And this time is so so precious.
And as I was ending my carefree time, and it was back to my regular scheduled programming. Meaning my job, my older one is in private school and figuring out when the deadline is for that and tuition and all these things. His camp, I think I pretty much got done, but there are a couple things lingering with that and just those kinds of things. And then also, of course, I love being with my kids. But that's what brings me to the topic of today. Which is how being a mom is the most important job that we will really ever have. And today I'm going to talk about my own personal story, which really is about how I knew I wanted to be a mother at six years old. Now that's not true for everyone. But that is true for me.
My sister is actually six years younger than me. And when she was a baby, I loved caring for her. I loved having a baby sister, I would help to make her formula bottles and supplement them with iron. And I remember very vividly helping do this and even changing her diapers when I was that age and I really loved it. And I love babies. And so, from that moment, I knew I wanted to be a mom. Now it doesn't have to be that soon for people. And maybe some people don't know they want to be a mom and they get pregnant and they decide to have a baby not really knowing. But what happens is, after we have those babies we love them fiercely like no other. And that love that a mother has for her child, there is nothing like it. It is so beautiful. I'm probably gonna cry while I deliver this episode.
But when I think of the day when I became a mom and I brought my older one home from the hospital and looking at him, and he was just, he was the cutest thing I've ever seen. And many of us we have a tough labor, which I felt like with both my kids, I had not the best laboring situations. And yet, if you asked me would I do it all over again, I totally would. Because I have these two magical creatures that I'm so blessed and privileged to call my children. And just looking at them, it's sometimes surreal for me that they're my kids. And actually, it's funny, they don't really look like 100%, like me or their father, they're just some mix of those DNAs mixed together, and you have them and they look like each other.
So definitely, we know that they're our children, but I look at them and it's not like either of them is really a spitting image of me. And when I look at them, and they're doing things, and I just cannot believe that these are my children. And I even had a moment the other day when I was putting my daughter to bed, and we do this really long hug. And I realized, well, I always think, this is it, this is now, these are the times. And I thought to myself, wow, like, there was a time when there was nothing more than I wanted but to be a mother and it's here and it happened and that dream came true. And not everyone gets that dream so easily, right? People go through a lot to have children, and a lot of people have fertility issues. So that's all to say that on one hand, it's so moving to be a mom.
Now the reason I'm telling you all of this is, there's that right? And there's the juxtaposition of how it is yes, being a mom is literally some of the most important work we will do, our job as mothers raising these people, these little humans. But at the same time, it is by far the hardest job. And it's the most important. So it makes it even more hard because we know that whatever we're doing, whatever is going on with us, whatever trauma we have, whatever stories we have, whatever triggers we have. That shapes, how we come across to them, what we're saying to them, and how we're rearing them and raising them.
And so that's why it is so important for us to work on ourselves. And that's where it's not about self care. It's about having intention, and realizing that as we work on ourselves, as we heal ourselves, we're actually being better mothers. So none of that time that we take for ourselves, none of that work that we do for ourselves, because it's really for our kids too, it's not selfish. It's going to have a positive ripple effect on our children, and our whole family. And so we know that being a mom is the most important job. And yet, we want to be human beings. We want to be people besides being a mother. That identity is so crucial. It's so important for our personal fulfillment. And yes, children fulfill us in so many ways. But we also have our careers that we're managing. And that is important. Now for some of us, a career means personal fulfillment, feeling like you're really impacting the world and making money at the same time.
And for some of us, it might just be making money, but either way, those are choices we make. That's something we want to do. We want to be people outside of being moms, we want to have an impact. We want to help make our child's lives better, maybe with the extra money we bring in. Or also I believe that being a professional mom, it sets an awesome example for my children that I have a career that's important to me. And my mother, she worked really hard. She worked many, many hours, and I reaped the benefits of that through she was able to pay for a lot of things. And I had a wonderful life thanks to her. But not just that. She sent an example of hard work that has really stuck with me, and it's wonderful, and I'm really grateful for that.
So how do we make peace or face this dichotomy? Because there is a dichotomy. It's like on one hand, you love your kids so fiercely, you love them to death. And on the other hand, you're spread really thin and you're needing some time for yourself or you need to be a person outside of that. So how do we do this? How do we reconcile this? When we tend to feel so much mom guilt, right? Because mom guilt is something that just goes with the job. It's an inherent part of being a mother. Basically, we feel guilty that we're not doing a good enough job, we feel guilty that we're not perfect. We're not spending enough time with our kids, maybe we're doing too much work this and that. And we set ourselves up for dissatisfaction because we are striving for perfection just like we do in our jobs, just like we do in general because we're type A. And as we can really combat this mom guilt, we can practice mindfulness, and try to be in the present moment.
We can really reframe, and allow ourselves to let go of perfectionism, embrace our humanity, being human, learning to apologize to our children if we make mistakes, connecting with other professional moms as well. Those are ways that we can ditch mom guilt. Now, the bottom line in all of this, and why I bring up this topic today, why am I talking about my love of being a mother, juxtaposed with the difficulty of being a working mom? The difficulty of trying to do it all and being spread relatively thin? Well, first of all, it exists. And that's why I'm talking about it today. It is there. And then how are we going to create peace in this situation? So this is what we do, we learn to be aware. We're aware that we have this dichotomy. We're aware that we have the guilt. We're aware that we want to be people outside of our children. And as we become aware, we can learn to embrace our humanity. We can learn to heal ourselves. We can get help, we can go to therapy, we can get a coach, we can learn our patterns.
And as we do that, as we really practice, healing, mindfulness, all the tools, a lot of the tools that I have on this podcast actually I talk about a lot of tools And then I have way more in depth processes inside my coaching program. But this is how we really heal from the inside out and create this next generation of healing mothers. So that we don't make the mistakes that our mothers made with us. But also, we get to enjoy our lives, we get to find peace and happiness, we get to be working, we get to be moms, and we get to be fulfilled. And we can learn to realize the mom guilt is always gonna be there but make our peace with it. Peace with the fact that motherhood is beautiful, but motherhood is hard. Motherhood is important.
Motherhood can be frustrating sometimes. We can feel all of those things, they can all exist at the same time. That's the beauty. It's not black and white. It's not one way or the other. And as we acknowledge this, we get to give ourselves grace. Knowing that we're doing the best we can. We keep learning and healing and growing. And that is how we learn to connect with ourselves. But also have a better connection with our children, with our spouses, with our families, and our friends and build this life filled with love for ourselves, our families and also alignment to really live out what we want for ourselves. And by doing this, we're helping ourselves and helping our loved ones. So if you want to dive deeper into this work, book a call with me PriancaNaikMDcoaching.as.me. I've helped so many moms just like you. Book a call to see if you're someone I can help too. We dive way deeper into all of this stuff inside my coaching program overcome burnout for good in 90 days or less. Thank you so much for tuning in and I will talk to you next week.