8. The myth of the perfect mother ends here

Welcome to She's Honestly Mental, a podcast for women who are done pretending they're fine when they're falling apart on the inside. I'm your host, Karina Rawlinson, ADHD brain medicated mind, and proud mental health hospital.

Alumni still here, still showing up somehow. This is the space for the feelers.

The fixers, and the ones who carry it all and still wonder if it's enough. We talk about the chaos, the connection, and everything in between, because silence nearly killed me. And these conversations save lives. All right, cacao in hand, headphones on, chaos semi contained. Let's get honestly mental.

Welcome to episode eight of She's Honestly Mental. On today's episode, we are going to be talking about my day to day and how I try and get through. It's something that I really struggle with most days, is arguing with my brain. I'm not gonna lie. My life is not perfect. Things are messy, things are chaotic. But I still try to find glimmers throughout the day that help me get through. Something that I touched on in the last episode was talking about the foundations. And this goes back to when I was admitted into hospital. I think the third. No, it was the second time Jarrod had been at home. And so when I was first in hospital, we had two boys, and this was the same kind of week that Spotties started. And so here my husband is trying to start his first business and his wife's admitted into a mental hospital. Our house got broken into, which was just wild. I remember it was the first morning that I just got to the hospital and he rings me at lunchtime and he said to me, corinna, I've just gotten home and our house has been trashed. I'd brought in this beautiful bottle of scotch to celebrate Spotties. And they'd gotten into that. They'd gone through all of the drawers in our bedroom and they had taken jewelry that was my grandparents. They'd gone into the office and just ransacked the whole thing. It was just. It was horrible. It really felt like someone had invaded our personal space because they had. And that's just. It was rough. And so I remember something had happened and Jared and I were fighting via text message, and I. What a man. Honestly, he has put up with so much of my shit, I don't even remember what it was. It was so pathetic. And I remember getting into the shower and just having this massive cry and woe is me and everything's just terrible and I'm back here again and blah, blah, blah, blah. And that afternoon, I Had to catch up with my psychiatrist. And when I was in hospital, my psychiatrist would call class three times a week. So we would see her Monday, Wednesday and Friday. And then, of course, we had the nurses around as well. And they were able to call my psychiatrist at kind of any given moment. And I remember walking into the little office where she was and I just bawled my eyes out. And I said to her, like, is this my life? Is this what it is going to be like forever for me? And she said, no, it's not. But what I need you to do right now is to try and find three things that will help you get through the day. Whatever those three things are, find them and use them. And that was the best advice that I have ever been given. Find three things and have them help you get through the day. And I'm a really, really big believer in this. This is why I love seeing kids these days with noise cancelling headphones on and fidget things and those kind of things. Because if that's what they need to cope with the world that is so loud, then cool. Like, who cares? I don't. I think it's amazing that we've been able to really get these tools that we can. And so that was the beginning of my foundation, is being able to find ways for me to cope throughout the day. So I generally will start my day off with my cacao. For those that know, you know, I grabbed my cacao from Invictus here in Esperance, or naturally esperance. And it's this pure ceremonial cacao. It is the bomb. Jared makes it for me every day when I try to make it myself. It tastes like shit. And even when we go away traveling, we take the cacao in a little box. I get it in a like 5 kilo slab, and he cuts it up, puts it in a container, and then when we go away, he will make it with one of those, like, little whizzer things with a battery in it. And so it doesn't matter where I am, I start my day with my cacao. When I'm traveling on my own, obviously not. And that's when coffee helps. But, you know, it's just those little routines. And when I'm sipping on my cacao, I am consciously sipping it and tasting it and taking a moment with it and savoring it, because it's for me, it's to be enjoyed. And yeah, some days I might take three mouthfuls of it and then forget about it. And it's cold and I might even chuck it in the microwave. And then some days I take two mouthfuls out of it and come home a week later and I've left it somewhere and it's growing mold, you know, yolo. I try to make sure that I leave the house about 8 o'. Clock. I find it really easy these days because the big kids are really helpful. With Reuben, I really struggle trying to get myself ready, let alone trying to get three other humans ready as well. My boys know if they want to leave the house, I have to be ready to leave the house. And so they know that they've got to get my bag in the car, they've got to get Reuben in the car, and they've got to get Ruben's bag in the car also. Once that's done, they can go to school, do whatever they need. For me though, I still have so much guilt around this kind of stuff because I want the boys to have freedom. But I also worry that sometimes I am. It's really hard to talk about this sometimes. What I find is that I guilt myself around my parenting and whether it is actually good. I know it's good because I've got good children. They're well behaved, they're respectful. I try to ask them to do their jobs and they don't. And then it just gets to the point where I just give up because I'm struggling to handle my own emotions, let alone theirs. And so in the mornings, if they crack the shits because they want to be at school, I just say to them, go. Like, just go. But what I make sure I don't do is I don't like guilt them into it because I don't think building that kind of shame is useful. So I find in the mornings, if I can get Ruben to daycare about 8 o', clock, I can get to work at about 8:30. And then I start my day. And my day can be anything from back to back meetings, zoom calls, which is usually just me trying to keep my shit together or try and fix something. It could be running out of town to go and do a parts run for Jarrod, which I really love because I love being able to see him and catch up with him, see him on the road, get out of the office. It could be hanging out down at the bookshop for the day, it could be plenty of other things. But I still find that I end up catching myself sometimes in a bit of a spiral because I can be hyper focusing on something that's not actually even important. And so what I try to do when I Realize these things is to catch myself. And then I also use ChatGPT perplexity, any kind of like AI thing that I've got open on my desk at the moment to really help me nut out what is the most important task that I need to get done today. And sometimes that looks like me actually putting a voice note into ChatGPT and just saying, this is what I've got going on, rambling it all off. Send help SOS please. And some of the other things that I really struggle throughout the day is what the fuck am I supposed to eat? I find it really hard. I don't know if I've shared much about it, but I've been taking Mounjaro, which is a GLP1 medication to help with weight loss. My weight is something that I have always really struggled with. My doctor recently upped my dose and the side effects were really unbearable. So recently I've just only last week reduced my dose, which has made the symptoms, the side effects, I should say a lot less. And so I've been able to function and fuel myself a lot better. But I do find it really hard, particularly being gluten free, trying to think of what to pack for lunch and if I don't get to the shops because for me going to Woolies is just nuts. It's really, really hard. It's very overwhelming, it's very consuming because there's too many options, there's too many choices. So Jarrod does a lot of the shopping and if I don't tell him what I want, because a lot of the times I'll say what I want. But then when it comes to actually eating it, that's not what I feel like anymore. So that is really, really difficult. I do always try to check that I've got protein snacks and that kind of stuff available, but sometimes I'll just. Lunch will be a can of Coke and fries or chips or McDonald's because I'm better off eating than not eat. I wrap up work in the afternoons depending on what the kids have, but Normally it's about 3:30, 4 o'. Clock. I pick Reuben up from daycare at 4 o'. Clock. The big kids are at home for about 45 minutes to an hour on their own and again the mum guilt kicks in. I'm pretty fortunate though, because we live in a bit of a loop, I suppose you could call it, where we've got lots of different parents that we're very close with living in the same area. So the kids, we literally have a Facebook messenger Group called Where are our children? And it's as quick as sending a quick message on there, hey, can my boys be sent home? That one of the six families that live in the street will send the boys home. So it makes it really, really handy. Then obviously when I get home I really then struggle with what the fuck am I going to feed the kids for dinner? And in particular if Jarrod's home late, which often he tries to leave early and then get home early so that he can help. I don't cook because I find it really overwhelming. So I hope that there's food in the freezer or that my mother in law has cooked something or that I can hold the kids out until Jarrod gets home at about 5:36. It works most of the time. But sometimes again I then end up spiraling because I feel like a really shit mum because I haven't had dinner together, I haven't eaten properly and all of these things kind of compound. But I know when Jarrod gets home everything's okay, except sometimes I'm extra shitty and he's got to deal with my crankiness. But I suppose this comes a lot down to this systemic generational trauma of the women are supposed to have it all together. And that's where the guilt comes from. And this is why I love things like permission to be human. Because I feel like I am actually the living experiment of giving myself permission to be human. And I talk about it because I know so many other people are out there the same. I've talked about this before and it's this bullshit which is called the perfect mother. Or actually what is it called? The perfect mother myth, the perfect woman myth, something like that. It is this myth that some bullshit fictional story that we are supposed to have it all together. Be the perfect wife, be the perfect mum. What the fuck is this perfect bullshit? I don't know what perfect is. There is an idea, but it is somewhere someone decided that we should be keeping up with the Joneses and that you should be Martha Stewart and Marie Kondo. Your house and all of this crap. It's just this expectation that people are trying to push on us. And it is not real. That kind of behavior, that shame spiraling, those un asked for pieces of advice. That is the stories that are slowly killing us. It's those shame cycles. It's cultural, it's generational. It is just a weight that is burning women out. And I say no more freedom. Cue the internal like picture of Braveheart. Is it Mel Gibson in the movie? No more no More. And so that's why I find when I share my story or I hear other women talking about the same things, it just makes it more powerful. The purpose of she's honestly mental. These conversations that are saving people's mental health, that are saving lives. When I found the courage or the capacity, I suppose the mental capacity, because that's what I think it comes down to a lot of the time, is we literally don't have the mental capacity to handle all of the things that the world expects of us. And then, of course, of all of the things that we expect of ourselves from these stories that we're telling ourselves. Again, it comes down to the language that we're using. It's those small changes that you can be making with your language and the way that you talk to yourself, just by being a bit kinder to yourself, a reminder to talk to yourself as if you would talk to a friend or someone who is in crisis. You're not going to sit there and be, this is your own fault, you did it, blah, blah, blah. That really doesn't help. And so be kind to you. Show yourself a little bit of empathy, a little bit of compassion, and just be nice. So when I found the capacity to actually ask for help, to put me first, that was probably the hardest thing that I have ever done, was learning to prioritise me. I have to fill my cup up. And if I don't fill my cup up and only give from the overflow of filling that cup up, then I'm just a tired, grumpy, miserable bitch. And so for me, making sure that I have my solid foundation, that I have my scaffolding around me, starting my day with my beautiful cacao, realizing the things that I say yes to and no to, not going to Woolies and doing the shopping, not being the mum that tries to do it all, cooking, cleaning, blah, blah, blah. I have a lady, I have a team that come and does my cleaning every week. It's so great. I have someone that comes and mows our lawns every fortnight because I got sick and tired of Jarrod arguing with the lawnmower or him being too busy to do it. And then I tried to do it, it just became too much. And for the sake of $45 every few weeks, I thought to myself, why not? It's giving ourselves permission to outsource. It's giving ourselves permission to not have it all together. And asking for help can be that simple. Paying someone to do the things that you really struggle with. I know I can clean my house. I know I can mow the lawns. I know that I could pick the kids up and take them all to the sporting things. But, you know, it's having those people around you that can support you and knowing that when you do ask for help, it's not actually a failure. Who said that asking for help is a failure? Don't know. There's plenty of ways throughout the day when I know that I very easily, back in the past, would have landed myself in a shame spiral. More often than not, everything ended in a shame spiral. And I think that's when I realised that the shame spirals were more than me living, I suppose, more. The shame spirals were stronger and more frequent than me being able to find a little bit of positivity, finding a little glimmer, a little piece of hope. I think that's when the good is more than the bad, is when you need a space to be able to just be. And I think this is why I found being in a mental hospital so incredibly powerful, because it was a place where I got to just be. To be me, to not have to look after anyone, to be able to be held. And that was a really powerful moment because I also knew that everyone at home was fine. They were able to survive. They didn't need me. As much as they loved me and as much as they wanted me to be around, they were able to survive without me. And I think that's a really important point, is that as much as you feel that people truly need you, you need yourself first. You don't need to perform for people. When performing for people, literally pours everything out of your cup and you're just giving yourself away. And I know that's what I was doing. And it is really funny how relationships have changed for me since I've stopped performing, pretending that I'm fine. Since I've openly say to people, hey, I'm actually really struggling with xyz. For example, this morning, one of my friends, I saw something on Facebook and I sent it to her and I said, this is what really fucks me off. Like, I don't know where I stand with this stuff. And then I reread the post and I said to her, oh, this isn't actually about me or the job that I'm trying to do. This is something else. Ugh, my brain spiraled. I actually said that to her. I was like, oh, my brain, it spiraled. It's okay, I'm all right. And I actually was all right once I realized that it's like being on a train station or on a train and your brain's just saying all of these bullshit stories to you and it doesn't know how exactly what story is true and what story is not true. And sometimes you can say, hey, actually, I'm going to get off at this next station and let that train full of your brain bullshit stories continue on without you. You can choose what story you want to lean into. And so this morning, after reading the post and then realizing what it was, I was then able to choose the different version of events other than the ones that I jump to so quick to jump to conclusions sometimes. Oh, and the other thing that I forgot to mention too, is for me, part of my scaffolding and my foundation is taking my medication. For me, taking the medication for my mental health is actually about quality of life. I know for me, when I take it, I'm able to function better. I can be a better person. I'm a lot kinder to myself. I'm a better mom, a better wife. I look after myself better. And then I also realise the moments when I'm not taking it properly and I go, fuck. Okay, all right. Just be more aware that because you haven't been taking your medication properly, that you're gonna be a little bit more on edge and you just need another moment to breathe. So, yeah. Anyway, friends, if you want to join me, come and jump over in the messy middle. Subscribe to the Chaos Letters or ask about Permission to Be Human, the new program that I'm currently running. Again, I still feel like a flog saying this stuff, but, you know, I gotta put food on the table. Anyway, guys, have an amazing day, and I hope that you have been able to take away something from this episode.

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