Sheroic Motherhood with Jennifer Louden

Welcome to Mama Goddess. I'm your host, Alexandra J. Johnson. This podcast is all about rocking your goddess life, creating vibrant health and celebrating motherhood and family life. It's about living an authentically awesome life. Let's have some fun. Hello, I'm Alexander J. Johnson and today's fabulous guest is Jen Louden. Jen's motto is savoring and serving the world. She is a champion of soulful service, best selling author of six books, Spreader of Satisfaction and A Curious Shero. Today we are chatting about one of her wonderful books, the Pregnant Women's Comfort Book. Welcome, Jen.

Thank you. Since my girl is deciding which college she is going to go to, it is really wonderful to go back in time and talk about this and what I learned during that process for myself. So I'm delighted to do so. Well. Thank you.

Yes, thanks for being here and thanks for your book too. I'm really loving it and I love how it's focused on nurturing our emotional well being through pregnancy and early motherhood. It's not just the nuts and bolts.

I love that.

It's the emotional, the spiritual. It's amazing. So what inspired you to write this book? Going to college.

I know that's a whole other conversation we can have in 17 years. So the two things I had written my first two books, the Woman's Comfort Book and the Couple's Comfort Book, and they were really successful. So my publisher was looking for a series and I was like, really? I don't have any more to say. And then I got pregnant and it was not a planned pregnancy. I had been married for a number of years. We had been together for a number of years and we were delighted, but we thought we'd wait a while. So suddenly I was in this life situation and much of my life has been about experiencing something and writing and teaching about it. So it just seemed like a natural offshoot. The other reason that emerged though, once I said yes to doing the project to myself and to my editor was, oh my gosh, this is an invitation to love myself on a whole deeper level. Because if there's something I have learned, and I'm learning it again today, about self love, it never ends. It's like any spiritual practice. And what I totally can tell you from 17 years down the road is how you take care of yourself and how you can inhabit your center, how you can heal your emotional wounds and how you can have boundaries with your child or children is like the best gift you can give them. It's better than the Waldorf. Cool Wooden toys, way better.

That's awesome. That's a good reminder because people get wrapped up in the toys in the nursery in this stuff, and it's like, what's most important, like, what's really going to nurture me and my child. So I think that's beautiful advice.

It's so true. It's so true. And I'll give you an example from today. And I know a lot of you. We'll see if we can make this example work for you. But my daughter is a pretty high achiever, and in the college application process, she got turned down at her two top schools. And she's really withdrawn about it and devastated. And I watched myself this morning, we got the second, or I should say watch that. That we thing. That's exactly where you don't want to go. She got her second. They have some, like, euphemism for it, but, you know, rejection. And I watched myself get sucked into her pain, wanting to fix it, wanting to save her. This is one of my big wounds in life. And working through it throughout her life has been incredibly important. And it just gets more important as they get older. Because your job is to raise a kid who feels self. What's the word I'm looking for? Able to take resilience, to take on what life brings and that you instill that confidence in them. And when you are needy and wounded, you can't do that.

That's awesome. So you wrote this while you were pregnant, going through all of your kind of healing journey and just processing, or did you write it afterwards?

Oh, no, I wrote it while I was pregnant. And my very favorite part of that book, which I am so proud of, out of the thousands and thousands and thousands of pages of stuff I've written, is the postpartum section, because I wrote it while I was going through postpartum hell. And so there's a real, I think, transmission in that book about the honesty of pregnancy and early motherhood. And a lot more people talk about that now. There's plenty of blogs about mommies doing their martinis in the afternoons, but nobody was talking about that then. Everything about pregnancy was either very clinical, like, what expect and you're expecting, you just felt like a machine or all happy and like, oh, my God, you're so blessed, and let's put a pink bow on you. And I didn't feel that way. I felt a lot of ambivalence. I was really hitting a high in my career. And I felt, you know, and Lily was not an easy baby. Even that Is such a bullshit term, you know, easy baby. But it reveals my age and my. The cultural bias. But she had colic for a year and didn't sleep through the night for years. It takes a huge toll on you. And working with that can be a real gateway to. Again, to your own healing, your own spiritual evolution and your child. But it's not an easy path. And it's especially not an easy path when you're surrounded by people who will be a. Telling you how to parent every drop of that and why she's not sleeping and why she has colic. And the other thing is, when other people do have children who sleep and aren't confrontive or whatever, behavioral issues sometimes just come in your kid. So, yeah, I wrote it while I was going through it. The first three months, I couldn't get out of bed, and I wrote about that.

That's awesome. Yeah, it's amazing, too. I was looking through it and I'm like three fourths of the way through it now, and I'm like, there is ridiculous amounts of books that you had. This is like full immersion for you. I mean, it's. It's such an abundant source of resources.

I love to do that. Especially when I was younger, I would. I mean, I really. I think for much of my early career, what I did was I was like. I remember a friend once said, gypsy scholar, you know, because I was outside of any institution, I would just follow my nose. And this was before the Internet. So you would look in the back of a book and it would, oh, look, there are some other books they mentioned. Let's go to the library and get those. Or let's buy those and then let's look some more. And oh, look at this one line. Oh, that brings up an idea for me. Or I can riff off of that, or I want to know more about that and the same thing through interviews. In all my early books, I interviewed a lot of just very ordinary women. Very unscientific, but I think useful.

Yeah, that's so great.

I love that.

And I love Kindred Spirits. I'm the same way. I have ridiculous amounts of. I mean, I just buy everything, every book. And I feel a little guilty. I'm like, oh, my gosh, I love books so much.

Is that bad?

So thank you for sharing. You love to do that. So what's one thing that you wish someone would have told you about pregnancy or about becoming a new mother that you didn't learn or if you pass on a tip to somebody?

Yeah, I think the amount of pressure you feel to do it right. How your love that breaks your heart open for this creature. I remember when Lily came out. Excuse me, I'm a little stuffy. And I said, oh, it's you. This is who's been in me all along. I mean, it was her. And I can tell you, 17 years later, that's who came out. This personality came out. So that breaking open that astonishment, that wonder can so easily get perverted, I think, by our culture and our natural tendency to want to serve and do well into this constant perfectionism, this quest to do it right. And for anybody listening to this, this is going to be a real issue for you. I'll just be really honest, because you're going to be. You're well educated, you're liberal, you have a spiritual bent. And believe it or not, that's bad news for you as a mother, because it's really easy for that to turn into this constant, like, oh, my God, I ate chocolate. Chocolate while I was pregnant. Or, oh, my God, I had a sip of wine and I forgot. Or, oh, my gosh, once they're born, you know, I let them, you know, drink out of a plastic bottle or have a plastic toy or, you know, and you can really. And I did this. You can. You can concentrate on these details to the sense of wanting to control what you can't control, which is that you cannot keep this being that you love more than anything you've ever experienced from being hurt, from being disappointed, from being who they are. And ultimately, you don't even know if you can keep them safe. And that is terrifying beyond anything you've ever experienced. And so we focus in on these, oh, my God, what school should they go to? Should we move to this other town? Because they've got this fabulous school. And not that those questions aren't worth tussling with, but I promise you, from this perspective, I wasted a lot of time and a lot of energy and a lot of money, but I really could have spent being with her, being with myself, and working with what's going on with me. How do I let go of trying to control everything, really? I mean, it's not a very nuanced way to say it, but. But I think that at its heart, it's like we're trying to be so good.

Yeah.

And I don't know that that really serves our kids.

Totally.

I love that.

I love that personally, because I just had this aha. And yoga the other day, and I was. I totally wanted to be perfect. I wanted to be the Perfect.

Perfect pregnancy, perfect birth. Yeah.

Everything was like perfect. And I was, am I eating the right nutrients? Am I doing this? And I mean, there's obviously inspiration, but I was totally that. And I almost started crying in yoga. I'm like, I'm fine. I need to surren surrender. I'm doing a great job. Everything's going to be okay.

It is exactly. It's exactly what you're talking about. That's exactly it. And that's one of the ways that I saw women get into a lot of pain around their birth experience. And the more controlling they were or the more ideals they had about how they would give birth, I'm not going to say the more they ran into trouble, because that would be absolute bullshit. So don't let anyone tell you that. But if they did run into trouble, if they did end up having to have a hospital or a C section, hospital birth or a C section, because I lived in Santa Barbara and I was immersed in the home birth community, the more devastating their birth was for them and the more work they could do around this issue that we're talking about, really accepting. And man, this, this is a lifetime journey and it is a great opportunity to dive in. What do I really have? What can I really control? Wow, it is pretty minuscule. So what is that like to open to that truth and sit with that in my meditation or on my yoga mat or in a walk in the woods? What is it like to open to that? And what can I learn from that? That's really one of the ultimate gifts. Tortures of raising a child, having a child and raising them.

And so is it. I mean, you talk about surrender in your book. Is that the practice that we as pregnant mothers and then also as parents need to practice? And how do we surrender? Like you said, we like to control.

Well, you know, we find our ways that work for us. I think one of the great gifts of pregnancy is that it's a physical experience of surrender. Everybody listening, I promise you, is super, super smart. And therefore surrender gets a lot harder because I watch my own little tricky mind go, okay, I'll go that far, but no farther. No, I'm sorry, we need to get busy now. We need to do that or we need to focus on this. But when you're pregnant, the great gift is your body says, no more. You will lay down now. Or it says, you must eat now. There's no reasoning with it. You're very in touch with your animal nature. And I say go for that. Drop the story like I had a Story the first three months when I was so sick and I mean, I couldn't do anything. I couldn't read. I just would lay in bed and watch the squirrels in the oak tree. And I remember thinking, oh, my God, I've always been like this for nine months. And once I have a book due, you know, and all the same thing I do when I get sick and you know, drop that every time you drop that story every time you drop the contraction around it every time you drop the. I have to go to yoga today. That's what a healthy, ultimate, perfect pregnant woman does. Or I need to meditate or, you know, whatever it is, I have to drink, drink my greens. God, I really don't feel like drinking my greens. I threw them up yesterday. I really don't want to drink them today. That's a moment of surrender. And as. And then the huge other thing I see happening is once the baby is born, and I'm really sorry if I'm going to blow anybody's bubble. While I say burst anybody's bubble. Excuse me, your life will not be the same. And if there's a little part or large part of your brain, it may even be coming out of your mouth that says to your friends, oh, I'm just going to put it in a sling and we're just going to go. And you just can't believe how I'm going to be. I mean, I'm going to give myself a month because, you know, you need to rest and everything. But then I'm back to normal and the baby is just going to be on my back. Good luck with that.

It doesn't go like that.

It doesn't go like that. And when you set yourself up with your fantasies and your plans for that, you can really get yourself in a knot of real self hatred because you feel like you failed. And all the other mothers out there got their baby strapped to their back and they're out doing it all and looking great. Oh, they've lost all the pregnancy weight and they're back at work and they just got a promotion. And, you know, the comparisons will bring you to your knees. And so. And there's a lot of posturing that goes on among moms and parents. Believe me, you get to see it in the college process. Oh, your child's going there.

Yeah.

And she's really happy about it. Meanwhile, you're like, can I do have a knife in my back, in my back pocket? Can I just like, give him a little prick right now? Oh, my gosh. So how do we do that?

How do we deal with the comparing? Because heard this many times of mothers saying they're at the park, and this mother's doing it perfectly right.

Look at Johnny. He can already do trigonometry. Yeah, right.

My kid can't read.

My kid can't even get up the slide. Well, it's a great opportunity, just like in every other area of life, to shut off the outside influences. I see this a lot. I can get into this online. When I see people crowing about this or that, that they've. And not that the crowing is bad, but if it's bothering me, I use that as a sign to go, oh, what's. What's. What's off with me? And so often what's off with moms is two things. You're exhausted past the point of bearing it, but you're. But you're not tuning into it. And the other thing is you think you're doing it wrong. And you've completely eroded your ability to trust yourself. And if there's anything I want you to take away from this conversation, it is that you really are the one who knows your kid best. That doesn't mean you know them perfectly. It doesn't mean you even know them totally. They are a mystery, just like your partner is and your best friend. There's parts of them you will never know, and that is how it should be, but you actually know out of anybody else what your kid needs. And here's the other thing. What you need matters too. Sometimes it matters more, sometimes it matters less, but it matters. And the biggest lesson I've learned from doing this project or this experiment, this focus around savor and serve, is the savoring is actually more important than the serving. Tell me about that. Well, I tend to be somebody who. Who serves others before I serve myself. And as you. As I progress through life, it's gotten more and more subtle how I do that. So it doesn't look like, you know, oh, that's okay. I'll have the burnt piece of toast. You guys all have the good bread. It doesn't look like that. If you were. If you saw me living my life, you'd be like, oh, wow, that's a woman who's really powerful and she knows what she needs. And, you know, wow, she's great with her kid, and she's great with her stepson and her. And her betrothed, my beloved. Wow. This is somebody who really has good boundaries. But on a subtle level, there's a way that I give myself and my ideas and my energy away when I need to stop and discern, what do I need first? And maybe I need to keep this close to my heart or maybe I need to. Maybe this is just for me. So anyway, that's an aside. But as far as parenting goes, what I see happening, which makes the comparison so much more dangerous, is that we betray and abandon ourselves on such a deep level that we're just scrambling for an answer out there. And we think that Betty across the street, whose kid is doing trigonometry, has the answer. And if we just take them to this enrichment program or get them into this tutor or make sure that they're scheduled every minute, then they're going to. They're going to succeed in life. And also the last thing I'll say is comparisons are just part of life and they're part of raising a kid. And the worst thing you can do for your kid is buy into them because you subtly and sometimes not so subtly, and if your kids play sports, you'll certainly see this on the field. You send the message to your kid, I don't trust you. I don't trust you, who you are or what you believe in or what you stand for or your capabilities. Because I'm over here thinking that Betty is son is better than you are and it taints your relationship and it taints their self confidence.

As you were talking about that, how does it play into us wanting our kids to be successful and comparing and doing all that and kind of shaping them and guiding them and also our own insecurities, like we don't want to feel bad that our kid can't do something right. I mean, that has to play in huge with us.

Oh, my God. So we go back to the beginning of the conversation and here you have an invitation. Now, when I was pregnant, I went back into therapy when Lily was I don't know what age. I mean, let it work you so you don't do more damage by putting your own wounds. I mean, you said it so well. You know, of course I can't think of the quote right now, but the unlived life of the parent is what's dangerous to your child. And we all think, oh, I would never do that because I'm living my passions and my dreams and blah, blah, blah. Oh my God, it can be so subtle. I have a slight learning disability and I have a lot of story that I'm dumb and it bites me in the ass on a regular basis. And when my daughter didn't get into these two Top schools there was. I mean, I'm very conscious of it and I'm working with it. And I don't think she's gotten wind of it from me, but she might have this feeling of she's dumb too. And I failed. And I failed because I didn't push her to do this. I didn't push her to do that. I took a pretty light attitude towards the whole school college application process. So, yeah, it comes up and how can we have compassion and awareness with it? And I promise you that 99% of parents are not thinking this way. And so if you are, you're already way ahead of the ball. They're trying to get it right. They're trying to get it right. And I just think that more and more science comes out and as the pace of change just keeps accelerating, it's not going to be about the knowledge that your kids can master. It's going to be about their resiliency and their health. Mental, physical, emotional health that's going to allow them to have a thriving life, not how good they are at trigonometry at 5.

Totally. Totally. And it's your book too. The emotional, like the emotional intelligence, you know, be. The resilience, like you said, is powerful.

Yeah, I mean, it's really what you want to do. Trigonometry is good, but, you know, and it just, you know, I noticed that my best friend, we've been friends since we were little, and her son's a few years younger than my daughter. He's just going to high school next year, and he's smart, but has some learning disability issues. And anyway, she just starting to get into the whole comparison thing with high school. And it was just so interesting to listen to her and you know how we struggle with it. And I think having a group, you know, finding a group of moms that you can really be yourself with, who don't have the posturing in comparison is a lifesaver. And making sure you have friends that aren't parents, don't cut them all out of your life because they don't understand. Well, of course they don't understand. You know, you don't understand things about them, but keep some of them in your life. The ones that are completely clueless are like, why can't you go out on a Thursday night and go do shots? You know, why can't you go away for a month long teacher training? You know, no, you know, right there, you know, you can get rid of them, but the ones that are like, maybe they're not at your stage yet. Or maybe they just don't want kids. They're important, important voices to have in your life. It's important to have, you know, even if in the first couple of years it's just the occasional phone conversation with them to be able to say, right, I am not just a parent.

In your book, you talk a lot about this too. Defining your needs. So like defining what you need, like I need friends that aren't parents or I need. Can you talk about how we define our needs through pregnancy and how do we define our needs through parenting and actually honor them?

Well, I think one of the first things you can do is notice where you're complaining and getting really resentful and, and I say this not to be negative, but so often, can I just blow my nose for one second so I don't sound like I'm in a. Okay, I'll be right back. I had this nasty cold and it's mostly gone, but it obviously is a little, still a little active in there. So I don't mean to be negative, but one of the things that you'll find is this is for most of us a very challenging time. And the challenges can be an opportunity to look at what we're not getting. It doesn't mean you're going to get it because you're going to go. I mean, part of what's so hard, especially with your first child, is the fact that you are going to give up so many things you need and you get resentful. But part of the beauty of looking at those resentment and complaints is going, oh wow, I'm willing to see that I am not getting what I need. And then to step back into a creator role instead of a victim role, which we all love. And I like a good pair of victim pants any day. Maybe, you know, cute little pair of victim shoes and maybe a little headband to go with it. It'll step back in the creator role. What of this need even if I'm not even sure what it is can I get? And another way to ask yourself that which might be quicker to the bone is what do I want? What do I want? Or what do I think everybody else can have, but I can't? That's a great one. Listen to your complaints, listen to your whines. And then another idea, which is from my last book, the Life organizer is, and this is a great thing to do while you're pregnant is name your minimum requirements for self care. And this is not a list of the perfect things that you need this is a list of the things that if you have them, you feel pretty good, you feel in touch with yourself, you feel like yourself. They're usually pretty basic, you know, enough sleep, maybe getting out in nature, sex. Get to know them. Because then when you start to feel like an insane person who has no idea who she is, you can go back to that list. You can make it as a collage, you can make it as a poem, you can make it as a paragraph, I don't care. You can make it as a video, you can talk about it with your friends. Then you can go back and say, oh, wow, look, I'm not getting any of these minimums. Maybe I could just start there by actually asking for what I need, which is to go away to my girlfriend's house and sleep through the night. And that sounds so small, but again, to bring up my dearest and oldest friend who does so poorly on sleep deprivation, who has had some serious illness issues but would not go away and get a full night's sleep. Her son has disturbed her sleep until probably the last year and he still does because he has anxiety and fear issues and he's in eighth grade. So she has eight years of sleep deprivation. And when I would coach her with all my heart to please go over to her sister's guest house and spend the night, she didn't even have to spend any money. She wouldn't do it because that's not what a good mother does. And he needs me and my husband can't handle it and he'll just get mad at him. And you know, this is how we start to look at our patterns of over giving. And we don't judge ourselves, we don't expect ourselves to change overnight. But we say, well, what would it be like then if I took an afternoon nap just to start with, okay, I can't nap. Well, what would it be like if I listen to a yoga nidra every afternoon? So that's how we start, you know, and really for me, where I'm at in my life right now is allowing myself to want what I want and getting over the guilt of that and discomfort.

I love that. And as you're talking about that too, for me, I feel into it as a mother. It's almost like instilling self reliance and allowing your kid to find their own path. Like we don't get over them and like micromanage them.

Exactly. I'm working on a novel and the bad guy, if you will, is this. It has some fantasy magic elements and the bad guy is Miss. Her name right now is miss bae, and there's a whole story behind that. But her name may change. But anyway, she is like the epitome of overweening love. So much so that she has sort of ensnared the whole world almost in a constant pursuit of perfection and busyness because she never wants them to have to be uncomfortable or not know what to do next. Hmm. Right. So this is not who we want to be, but I can totally feel it.

I don't even have a child yet.

But I can totally feel like you.

Don'T want them to feel.

You know.

You don't want them to hurt.

No. I was going. I flashed on a moment earlier today. I was going down the stairs, and I just had, like, this. This urge, like, why did that. You know, like, that school has to take her. You know, like, somehow I could just will it to happen. I have to say, the hysterical thing is both schools that turned her down are not schools that she would go to because she doesn't want to go far away. And yet both of us are so sucked into that comparison. And I don't want her to be disappointed. And she worked so hard, and so, you know, it's just another opportunity to go, oh, right. This is life beginning to happen on another level for her. And it's not about her, really, and it's certainly not about me.

That's awesome. So on this comparison, what about fear? You know, as we're just talking about this, fears comes up, like fears about pregnancy. I mean, there's so many fears that can come up. And I love in your book, you have a line that says, fear is the shadow side of love, and love comes flooding into your life when you are pregnant. And then it brings a whole other level of sensitivity to dangers of the world and challenges. So can you talk about how we work with our fears on all stages?

Oh, I don't know, really. What can we do? But just. I mean, I think for me, if I can put myself back there, it's being so tender and curious with what's going on with you and not judging yourself and not letting other people judge you and say things like, it's just your hormones or get over it, or, you know, it's like something biological is happening to me, and it is an opportunity, a tunnel, a gateway to prepare me for being a parent. And it's not always pleasant, and sometimes it's really weird. And I kind of joked at times that it was like, alien was in my body. You know, like, there's something Else in my body. I'm carrying it and I don't know what it is. It's very, very wild. So I think the first thing is just to start to get curious, like, what is this fear that I'm feeling and what would it be fear of? And to just give yourself a little spaciousness to be with it wherever you can, whether it's on the train, commuting in the morning or drinking your morning decaf or whatever, you can pause for a few minutes and just be with this instead of going into the perfectionism. I've got to get it right. I've got to get rid of it. I've got to fix it. I've got to get the right mattress in the crib. Oh, no, we're not even going to do a crib. We're going to do family bed. Because otherw they're going to be screwed up for the rest of their lives. So beginning to just have a lot of awareness and mercy and curiosity because so often fear is running us and we don't have any idea. And it's heightened. It is heightened. So that's really that. And then trying to describe to your partner, because your partner, unless she is a woman who's been pregnant, has no idea, has no idea what's going on with you. And you need to try to bridge the gap. Metaphors help. You know, like maybe your partner's a marathon runner, and after they. Before they run a marathon, they're just like. Or after, you know, something physical happens to them that you can say, you know, it's like that crazy feeling you get or, you know, when you just don't feel like you have control over it. That's how I feel about painting the nursery. That nesting thing is real. And I think that's the other thing about all of this, is letting yourself say, this is what I'm experiencing. This is what I'm experiencing. Because that's going to help you so much with parenting. They get the first high fever and you're, wow, is this really as bad as I think? Or is it worse and you're peeing all over the place? And you can come back to the facts. Wow. The thermometer says 103. My pediatrician said to call this number if the fever is over 103. Well, I'm going to make a call. My gut says, call now. This is what I'm experiencing. And the pediatrician says, oh, it's okay. Just get in the bathtub with them in cool water and then you can see. Oh, My God, I shouldn't have called them. I shouldn't have bothered him. No, I honored my experience and now I know it's okay. So starting to build that trust with yourself, with what you're feeling and experiencing. Now I'm feeling fearful. I have to move to New Zealand. I think it's the only safe country in the world. Wow, that's very interesting. I'm thinking that today.

Also is kind of like the feeling of what as you're talking about it, the experience of allowing ourselves to be human. Like, it's okay. It's okay to have fear, it's okay to be scared, it's okay to be ambivalent, it's okay to grieve. Like, all of these things are okay. Which I think, like you said at the beginning, it's so important for us because. Because it's like, oh, you're pregnant. Everything is sunshine and roses for nine months. And then, oh, wow, now I'm a mother and wow, I'm going to be the perfect mother. And it's never okay to be human and say, I'm actually really struggling here.

Right. Or I hate them, I hate them and I wish they would go away. I had the most fascinating conversation yesterday on the trail in the woods by my house and I ran into a friend and they adopted a child later in her life from Ethiopia. And she ended up having major, major issues and is now living in a halfway house after going through rehab. And we just had this really frank conversation standing in the mud and light rain on the trail about how they're not ready to let. She wants to come home and they're not ready to let her. I was so touched by my friend being able to talk about. We've been traumatized too, and we didn't get a lot of the good stuff. We just really got the heartache with her and we need some time. And that kind of courage is what we need with our kids. And it's one of the interesting things about being in a blended family is coming to share our darkness. The two of us together about our kids. And for years we couldn't do it. And we would always be really defensive with each other about our kids weaknesses. And now we can just like go in the bedroom at night and close the door and go, I am so fucking sick of both of them. And neither one of us like judges us or, you know, tries to fix it. We're just like, yeah, I get it. Yeah. You know, because living with two teenagers, let me tell you, it's some lot of Days. It's really challenging. And we have all the empathy in the world for them and we know what's going on with their brains. And you know, still it's like, oh, God, please can you go spend the night at somebody else's house tonight?

I know. I think about my parents. I mean, I was a fairly good kid, but I was definitely snotty in the teenage. Definitely snotty. It's like, oh, my God. And now I just have deep appreciation. I'm like, my parents raised me. They're incredible human beings. Like, they gave birth to me and I have a whole new appreciation. But yeah, the teenage years was definitely not super nice.

So that brings up a really interesting thought for those of you who are intellectually minded. You know, do some reading about other cultures and how they approach pregnancy and motherhood. Because we live in a very particular American story. And I think some of it is beautiful and amazing and we have so much choice and such great resources and such an emphasis on health. Some of it's really twisted and really overly child centric. And the helicopter parenting, it's not even like. It's just like embedded now. It's like, if you're not helicopter parenting, you're a bad parent. And so one of the ways to pull yourself out is to give yourself other glasses to look through the culture at. And for those of you who have traveled and lived other places, that'll be really easy. But for those of you who haven't or haven't for a while, or with the eyes of a parent, even that baby documentary that was popular a couple years ago, I think it's called Baby. Even watching something like that, watching, just kind of thinking of it from an anthropological point of view will help you loosen up a little bit. Like, oh, there's not one right way to do this. As long as I keep him alive. Right. And I'm not locking him in the cellar. Right.

That's so great.

And I'm not smoking or drinking while I'm pregnant. You know, obviously there's like the basic.

Rules, then you have freedom.

Right, Right. You know, I like that.

There's a book that I read, I don't remember the name of it. Something on Tibetan. Tibetan families or something about how Tibet raises their families.

Yeah, Just do some Google searches and you know, read some books, look at some articles, make it a fun thing. Yeah, I love that.

To change perspectives. Because like you said, we can get very myopic. And this is how the Western culture, parents, and that's how we.

So this is the way to do it. And whenever. Speaking about fear, whenever the comes up, this is the way to do it. This is what they say. Get really curious. Really.

Huh.

The other thing that happens is so much what I call sort of monkey science. People quoting things that they don't even know what they're talking about. And then you buy it, hook, line, and sinker, and you freak out and you come home, do a little research. You don't have to go overboard. Trust your intuition. BPAs are a bad thing. Plastics are not the best thing to have. There's some things that we really know for sure, but there's a lot of stuff that we just really don't know. If all sleeping together in the family bed is really necessary for emotional health, we don't know that. I know that's one of the things. Santa Barbara was very much an attachment parenting sort of of enclave. And I was like, really? But she kicks me and she wedges between the two of us and pushes us apart with all of her little body might. And I'm sweaty with her in the bed.

That's really funny. That's awesome. So what about, like, how do we create? You talk about creating a support team. So how do we create a support team for our pregnancy and then also parenting and to have people support us? And why is it so hard for women to actually ask for help?

Well, again, we're enculturated not to ask for help. Help because it makes us vulnerable. And vulnerability brings up shame. Shame that I can't do it alone, shame that I'm not, you know, I'm not an automaton. Shame touches on times that you ask for help and people couldn't help you. So it's just, it's. And I think the more that we can say, okay, right? I'm also doing this for this child that's in me. And I'm going to learn how to ask for help because I'm going to have to do this for their whole lives. And I want to be the kind of mom who's not a tiger mom, who doesn't have to, like, you know, roar at people and, you know, but if I need to, I can be that advocate for my child. And so I need to be an advocate for myself right now. And so it starts with finding the health care that is truly nurturing and truly fits your intuition and not giving in because it's too much trouble, because you really want to feel safe and loved. It's not perfect, but, you know, you want to feel safe and loved by the people who are going to be with you while you're. While you're giving birth and the people you're going to be checking in with for this nine months or however much longer you have to be pregnant. So if you started with a doctor or a midwife and you're like, I'm not feeling. Oh, but I can't hurt their feelings. All right, here's a great opportunity. What are you going to do when your teacher has. Excuse me, when your child has a teacher who you feel is hurting them, Are you going to privilege the teacher over your child or are you going to get in there and get curious about standing up for your child without being, you know, you want to take the teacher's side and perspective into play as well? You know, are you just going to, like, be one of those parents who checks out because you're too afraid? Now is the time to start taking care of yourself so that you are in this equation. You have the felt body experience of standing up for yourself. So that goes, you know, are you having pain with your pregnancy? Do you need to get some massages? Oh, where's the money going to come from? Well, what could you get creative about? How can you start getting wet? What you need to thrive during this time and really take it in on a deep cellular level.

And then like you were saying earlier, the creator and the victim not becoming about it, like, we don't have money, but how do we.

I love that.

The creativity of how do I actually get my needs met? That's interesting.

Right? Right. Yeah. Like, is there a massage school around? Is there somebody who is a massage therapist but wants to learn how to massage pregnant women? Because it's different, you know, is there somebody friend of mine who's taking massage training who might, you know, really love to give me the gift of a massage or two? Because instead of a baby gift, you know, I. There's just so many opportunities to really nourish yourself and to be with it and to be with any feelings of this is too much or I don't deserve this, and, and just sit with those feelings and see what it's like to let the story go about those thoughts. Just let it go and be with, oh, right, what's the feeling that's here? And you can really get to some deep stuff really fast about childhood and not the story about it, but the feelings. And the feelings can move and it can be very freeing. I'm just a real big advocate for getting the care that you need. I started off pregnant. I got Pregnant. We lived in Los Angeles and I started with a birth center there. And I remember just like not liking it. Like, the birth center was set up to be like a fake home. Like, oh, this is your home. And I'm like, my home would never look like this. This is tacky. I don't like it. And then we moved just after my first trimester up to Santa Barbara, and I was so happy that I got to give birth at the Santa Barbara Midwives. And it was so different and it felt so great. And if I stayed in la, I don't know that I would have. I don't know what other options I had. And sometimes there's not other options. Sometimes you're on a healthcare plan and you're like, yeah, this is what I've got. But at least look around, see if you can switch doctors, see if you can have a doula with you, ways to make it more nourishing for you and safe. Because you will have an easier birth if you do that, because you'll feel supported in your body, can relax, right?

The supporting. Can you just speak on the husbands or the partners and what you would recommend them on, how they can support women through their pregnancy, their birth and just becoming a mother. So huge rite of passage. I mean, there's so many changes. And like you said, a man's life, what's happening?

I think sometimes this is a good time to do couples therapy. Even if you feel like your relationship is great because so much stuff is dredged up, you just can't underestimate it. You know, issues about your own parenting, issues about one or other parent. I know for my husband at the time, Lily's dad, who I'm no longer married to, for him, a lot of stuff came up around his dad's early death. His dad died when he was 8. I also think that a lot of issues about self care and jealousy and resentment can come up and the partner can end up feeling really guilty about that. But nine months of being all about you, it's a lot. So sometimes we could go too far the other way. We're like, this is all about me. Don't you understand what I'm going through? And it's like, you know, honey, you know, maybe he doesn't. Or she doesn't get it 100%. But I'm also thinking that stuff's going on for them, so we have to be careful about it being so focused on us. And we also have to understand that there's no way that they can know what it's like. And that was so shocking for me. I remember this probably does not make sense as a story, but I will tell it anyway. There was a moment while I was pregnant that I just stopped. I remember I just stopped. I was in my bedroom and I just froze. And I got the fact that a woman always knows that this is her child and a man can never have that fundamental experience. And just how that reflected on such so many levels in so many myriad ways. This is something he'll never understand because I carried it and it came out of me. And there is a connection that is far beyond words and far beyond any modern concepts that is as ancient as it goes. And we can try to understand it with them. We can try to put it into metaphors. We can journal about it and let them read parts of it. You know, we can set aside a time every week or two to just, you know, for 15 minutes I'm going to talk, talk about being pregnant and my experience and how I'm feeling. And you're just going to listen without fixing or blaming or saying anything. You're just going to listen and say thank you and then you're going to have 15 minutes or 5 minutes or 10 minutes or half an hour, whatever you want. And I will do the same. I'm just going to listen to you and I'm not going to fix it or blame you or think, you know, anything. But thank you. And then, you know, then we can, we're done. The sealed off, you know, just kind of a safe place to give, to give voice to it. And I also wonder about another thing to keep an eye on is just the jokes that get made and what's underneath those jokes. Because a lot of times we get into cliches around pregnancy, especially in male, female partnerships. So start to look for those cliches and those biting remarks that might come out of your mouth or his mouth and flag them. And when you have some time, sit down and give it some attention together like, you know, not as a blaming thing, but like what might be under that, you know, that remark you made that it's all about me these days? Or oh, yeah, you know about moods or. Yeah, I had to go to the store again at 11pm to get her that, you know, hemp milk or coconut.

Bliss in my case.

Yeah, coconut bliss. Yeah, coconut bliss and the hemp milk and the strawberries and the pickles.

Speaking of food and moods and all that, how does a woman navigate? Because I know this is a big topic for women on navigating the Changes of their body. And just, you know, you're carrying another human being and you're expanding, and then you're giving birth and you're breastfeeding, and there's just a lot happening.

Yeah. Well, you could look at it as training for the entire experience of living in your body. And one of the things that I think is incredibly cruel about the time that we live in is that the focus of normalcy, the story of normalcy is the bodies that we have up till the time we're 20 or 25, healthy, no sagging, firm, high breasts, flat tummies, all of that. And for most of us, that. That is a very small percentage of the time that we're alive in the bodies that we have. Even when we're healthy, even when we have a good weight, even when we exercise, things change, things sag, our skin unravels. And so you could take the changes. This is going to be a really weird metaphor and probably freak everybody out, but most of you probably know, if not all of you, that one of the meditations in some forms of Buddhism is to meditate on your death. And the idea of it is to help you understand and experience the preciousness of this moment and this human birth. And so you could use the changes of your body to soften towards the transitory nature of having a body. Or you can get really freaked out and get really clenchy and go on a diet while you're pregnant and hurt the baby. Maybe there's something in between. I think there's something in between. But it's really an opportunity to just love that, which is the fundamental and only truth of life, which is it's all change. And your breasts getting big with weird blue veins on them to you could in somebody else's eyes be the most beautiful thing they've ever seen.

My husband's super excited about me being very pregnant.

My husband. Yeah, my husband had kept this picture for the longest time and probably until we got a divorce, of me pregnant. And I was one of those women, like some women just get the big poppy belly. I was like one of those women that I was just a big dough ball all over. And like a week before I got pregnant, I remember going out to eat with my parents, and the gal, the waitress was like, oh, when are you due? I'm like, I'm due in a week. She's like, no, because I just was like, it was all. It was everywhere. And he just loved that. And he loved my big round face. And I was always like, I can't Believe you have that picture. Get a new picture. And he's like, no, I love it. So finding new eyes to look through, finding the miracle of it, it's all an invitation to this. This acceptance and gentleness. And it's hard. It's hard. Especially when you have that really bad gas. You can't leave the house without your baggie with your snacks. But honestly, I find a lot of parallels as I age with being pregnant. There's a lot of parallels in my. My sweetie and I went on a trip recently, and we were just joking about how, like, when you're young and you go on a trip, you just throw some things in the suitcase. And when you're older, it's like, okay, do I have that cream and do I have that vitamin? Do I have my earplugs? Do I know they're all essential?

Oh, my gosh, that's hilarious. And I'm in my 30s and I'm like that.

Yeah, it's already starting.

I need this, and I need this to travel. That's so great. So one of a couple of things I want to ask you about in your book, and you said it earlier, that this was like, your favorite part, the postpartum, and you have a chapter that's what's going to happen to me after the baby is born and how, like, the baby brings amazing changes. And also, you know, our personal identity, identity shifts. And how do we navigate that process?

Well, I wish that the focus on pregnancy wasn't so much on pregnancy for people like the people listening to this. You all are well educated and intelligent, and you're like, you know what to eat. So my invitation to you is to take some of the focus off the pregnancy, some of the focus off the birth. I found it really astonishing that I spent however many weeks learning how to give birth. I could have done a week of that, and the rest of the time could have been talking about what happens after the baby comes home, but we talked about that for one week. I just find that ludicrous because no matter what happens during the birth, you're going to be fine and you're going to get through. May be the beautiful mystical experience you want with people chanting and you see God, or it might be emergency C section, but it's going to be okay, and you're going to be okay with it, especially if you do the kind of things we're talking about on this call and in all the calls that Alexandra is doing. But to really start thinking about how am I going to support myself emotionally Financially, what are some of the ways that my life might look like? Like, what do I, you know, what's it going to be like to have this baby in my life? I think it's far more fruitful. And it's like a cliff. It's like people just throw you off the cliff and suddenly you have the baby and you're supposed to just know what to do with it. And lots and lots of women feel really lost. Yeah.

It's amazing how many books there are on pregnancy and birth and then postpartum, like, what to do when you have the baby. There's not that many books.

Yeah. It is really astonishing. It is really astonishing. And it's far more interesting and it's far more difficult. Far more difficult. And one of the big misnomers for me that I learned, which I wrote about in the book is postpartum depression is a completely useless term. It most cases, postpartum anxiety, postpartum craziness, postpartum jitteriness, feeling like nothing, feeling like you can't relax, being so concerned with the safety of your baby. This is what I experienced. I've experienced depression in my life and this was nothing like that. It wasn't like, I just want to hide or I want to go to bed or I worthless. It was a lot of focus on something bad is going to happen to the baby. Having really nonsensical crazy thoughts. And nobody, I mean, now people have written about it a lot more, but nobody was really talking about that then and that made it a lot harder. And so what I would really, really, really recommend to everybody is please, if you're feeling at all uncomfortable, you're having trouble sleeping, you're having trouble of hurting the baby that you know you would never act on hurting yourself, please don't let it go on one more day. And there's a ton of resources out there. Just Google postpartum depression and don't let it go on because you can suffer for so long on your own and it's really not good for your brain chemistry long term.

Fantastic. Thank you.

Yeah. And it's also, I want to say the other thing is with the people listening to this that are all very healthy oriented, I'll just tell you that one of my friends at the time who was one of the top yoga teachers in Santa Barbara, had really bad postpartum depression. And I remember her saying to me, I just thought if I ate more salads, it would go away. I think that is very much the same mentality I've been touching on throughout this conversation, which is, if I'm just good enough, if I'm just pure enough, if I just drink enough green juice, nothing bad can happen to me or my baby. And all of those things are wonderful. Don't stop doing them, but they're not magic. And our brain chemistry gets out of whack because our body's just gone through the biggest hormonal shift. I mean, what was evolution thinking? You drop most of your pregnancy hormones in 48 hours. Sometimes this triggers weird stuff in us. Sleep deprivation triggers weird stuff. Unresolved issues get triggered. None of this means you're bad or wrong or a bad parent. But it is an opportunity to turn into it and to work with it with help. You cannot do it alone.

That's so great. Such good advice, especially for us that don't want to ask for help, you know?

Right. Don't want to ask for help.

I'm not good enough. Yeah.

Just drink another green smoothie and it'll be fine. Right?

So great. You're so wonderful. You just give us the permission to be human. Just be.

Yeah, that's really the. That's really the ticket through this. It's really the ticket through this. And it's going to make the whole experience so much richer. And the last thing I want for you is to look back, you know, when your child is going to college and go, oh, crap. I spent so much time worrying and twisting and poking and overwriting, and I missed it. I missed it because I wasn't okay with how imperfect and messy it all is. And I wasn't okay with the fact that it didn't look the way that I thought it should look. Doesn't look like the catalog. Yeah, think about it. Get one of those Pottery Barn catalogs. There are no wires or cords anywhere.

That's hilarious.

But look at your own desk. Are there wires? Are there cords? Yes, there are.

There are definitely wires and cords. Oh, my gosh. That's a great metaphor. I have one more question on how, as you were just talking about honoring the whole process, how do women. You know, because now women are so independent and career focused. How do women balance their careers with motherhood and, you know, wanting to be an amazing mother and also having a career. And I know you talk about this in the book, too, but I think it's a big.

Yeah, I guess I have a couple of thoughts I'm really passionate about. One is that you may well make a plan, and I think it's a great idea to make a plan before the baby is born. But you don't know how you're going to feel once you. A baby is born. And I've seen it go both ways. I've seen, oh, my God, I have to get out of here. I have to get back to work. I cannot stand this thing about being a mom. And we can feel so harsh about ourselves, but sometimes that's what we need. And we need some time for them to develop a personality, for them to get a neck where they can hold their head up before we really want to spend a lot of time with them again. There's just such an opportunity to have mercy. And that will, will help clean out the energy between you and the baby and not make it all resentful and tight. I've also seen it go the other way. I'm going back to work at six weeks. I'm going back to work at one month. And the time comes or three months or a year or whatever, and you're like, I cannot leave the baby. I physically cannot leave the baby. So have a plan, but know it may change. The second thing is I really find that most women want some kind of life outside of the home. And I think from a feminist point of view, it's imperative. I see a lot of women who go back to work at least part time until the second child comes, and then it just gets to be so hard that they give up. And that you are putting your future at stake if your marriage doesn't last. And this is not the reason, the sole reason, to think about your work career, but it is one of the reasons. And the other reason is we are here in the arc of our lives to express something that only we can express and to give it back to the world. And that doesn't mean it has to be a particular product. It can be the way you do you in the workplace is what changes things for people. And if you do your job well as a parent, at some point they're not going to, to be with you anymore. They're going to be launched. It may not be right after college, they may not go to college. We're seeing kids staying home a lot longer, but at some point you want them out. And if you have had nothing of your own, if you had no professional identity, it can be really, really scary at 45 or 50 or 55, and it can be scary financially, and it can be scary from a soul perspective. And it's very challenging to keep that part of you alive and growing and working in the world when your kids need so much from you. But I encourage you to find a way to do it.

That's awesome.

Yeah, I really do. I just see a lot of moms who end up not in the best place, even if their marriages are intact, because they totally gave them. They lost themselves in a way they hid in being moms. Right. You know, like, they need me and this defines me. And let me tell you, it's really comfortable. It is the most important thing you'll probably ever do. And it's groovy as all get out at times. And you really are providing incredible sustenance and form and structure for these beings. And it is. It is wild and. And it can't be your all. And if you disagree with me, I totally understand. That's.

I think it's so great. And I also think it's an interesting thing that our modern culture, like you were saying, different cultures, where you. No woman is ever home alone with two, three, four kids.

Like, oh, it's insane. Yeah, it's insane. Don't get me started on that. They little everyone off in their little house by themselves. I mean, again, I think it's a lot better than when Lily was little because now there's blogs and there's teleconferences and at least there's ways where you can be having some stimulation. You can have home businesses a lot easier now since of the Internet. But you have to watch that isolation. It's built into our culture and it's absolutely deadly. And it preys on that sense that it really can increase those comparisons because. Because you're not seeing what's really going on in the other four walls across the street, you know, so it's very easy to think, oh, they're so happy. And I bet they have sex every night. Ten times, night and morning.

Multi orgasmic.

Oh, God, yeah. Everything goes without saying. Tantra, they're having tantra. They're like you.

They're essentially having sex with the universe all the time.

Exactly. Well, this is a ton of fun. I really appreciate you inviting me. Yeah.

Thank you. Thank you so much for your honesty and as always, your authenticity and your willingness to share it all. The good, bad, the great, the beautiful. Everything I think is so wonderful and it's great. Just like I said earlier, giving us all permission to be human and relax into ourselves. So thank you. Thank you. Where can people find more about you, Your work, your books, all of that. Can you give us your details?

Yes, it is. Jennifer Louden. L O u d e n.com and you can go there and find everything you need to know.

Fantastic. Well, I recommend anybody who's thinking about getting pregnant, starting a family. Check out her book, the Pregnant Woman's Comfort Book. It's fantastic. Tons and tons of resources, and it's very, very empowering. So thank you so much, Jen.

Well, you're welcome, sweetie.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Mama Goddess. Sending you lots of love and blessings. If you'd like to connect more, go to mamagoddess. Com. Until next time, keep rocking it and have an awesome.