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In this episode, we discuss:

• What conscious parenting is and why it has more to do with you than your child
• Why no one is ever truly ready to become a parent
• Shifting the paradigm of responding versus reacting
• How motherhood makes a path to healing our own inner child
• Learning how to give yourself grace as you reparent yourself

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Episode Transcript:

And there’s been a lot of talk on Instagram, TikTok about gentle parenting and conscious parenting. And I’m really happy that we’re looking at the paradigm of parenting in a different way. Our generation needs to do that in order to heal and in order to move the next generation into a more conscious place. And I can feel that shift and it’s pretty powerful.

This is a Soulfire production.

Sarah: Jenn, welcome to The Uncensored Empath Podcast. I’m so, so glad that you’re here.

Jenn: I’m super honored to be here. And it’s my second time on this amazing podcast and experience with you, so yeah, super honored.

Sarah: We were just chatting, before we pressed record, on how far back we go and how our journeys have obviously evolved in very different ways. But here we are today, both mothers, to have a conversation about conscious motherhood and parenthood. And what would you say has changed and shifted? I’d love to hear from your lens, the last four to six years since we first entered into each other’s worlds.

Jenn: Oh my gosh. So when we first met, I was searching and searching and searching for support around my health because I was moving into IVF and moving into egg donor, and I needed to really get my body into physical alignment and shape and everything. And then through that journey, sadly, I experienced a loss and was really passionate about just motherhood. I just was getting so into that energy of being driven to be a mom because of the journey I had been on and I was just very determined to be a mom, that when we finally became, when I finally became a mom through IVF, egg donor, and surrogacy, which was unexpected, but a beautiful gift, I found myself kind of lost because it was something that I worked so hard in how we met and worked so hard in getting to and being, and then when it finally arrived, when I was finally holding my son, healthy and here and crying, it was not what I imagined it to be, which was really interesting.

Sarah: I remember just conversations with you and that emotion that you brought to the conversation around desire to be a mom. And just from my perspective, just fighting so hard to be a mom. We had a conversation, I don’t know if you remember this, but on the phone after one of your losses. And I just remember not knowing exactly how to hold space for you, doing the best I could, but because I wasn’t a mom yet, right? And now I’m reflecting back on just everything that you have navigated to get to where you are today and to build this business that you’ve built today. And now that I’m a mom, I can look at you in a little bit of a different lens and just be like, holy shit, this woman is so strong…so strong. And I just want you to hear that today.

And everyone listening, Jenn was one of my very first health coaching clients. And now, here we are, we both have these beautiful businesses, and yeah, both mothers. So we’ve just, I think, both evolved and changed so much. And this is one of my final episodes of the podcast and so we were also talking about how it’s just so full circle to be in this space with each other at this point in time. And Jenn, so you’re a mother to a sweet little boy now. In my mom’s group, we say, what’s your motherhood status? So I’d love to ask you, what is your motherhood status? Meaning how many, how old, and just what’s on your heart as far as status within motherhood at this moment?

Jenn: Oh my God, that’s a great question. And of course, I’m going to answer it probably differently than…well, maybe not. So my motherhood status is I have one living child, Milo, who is turning three on Monday.

Sarah: Oh my gosh. 

Jenn: I know. He is an Aries true and true. He is sensitive but has those leadership qualities as well. He knows what he wants, which is very interesting because I’m a Cancer sign, so I’m water and he’s fire so that’s been a great learning experience. But I also have a daughter who I lost in stillbirth and she’s a beautiful angel and she will be, oh my goodness, five in May. And so, we talk to her and we include her in our lives as well. And the status of motherhood in general, it just feels really chaotic but also the most deepest healing experience I’ve ever invited into my life or welcomed into my life.

And I have been through a lot, you know? I remember that conversation that we had that you just spoke about earlier, where you said something that actually was quite profound. And I don’t know if you remembered it, but you said, Jenn, I really think that you’ve been in survival mode, you’re in survival mode. And I was like, oh my God, Sarah, you just summed up my entire infertility journey in that one word and shifted the way I look at things. So I wanted to bring that up as well. That was pretty. I remember that moment. I remember the room I was in, I remember I was sitting on the floor, I remember we were talking.

Sarah: I remember that conversation in a different way, but also clearly, but in my own way. I remember I was at my mom’s house and I was on her back porch, which is not a place that I usually take calls. And just like I said, wanting to be so present with you and at the same time, there probably weren’t the right words to say. And I certainly didn’t feel like I had the right words to share other than to hold space. And I’m so glad that something from that conversation did resonate and stuck with you. So now you speak about conscious motherhood and like you said, even the water and the fire signs together, and I would love for you to share with the listeners, with this amazing empath community what you mean when you say conscious motherhood. What does that mean to you or how do you live it?

What conscious parenting is and why it has more to do with you than your child

Jenn: Mm. Yeah. And there’s been a lot of talk on Instagram, TikTok about gentle parenting and conscious parenting. And I’m really happy that we’re looking at the paradigm of parenting in a different way. Our generation needs to do that in order to heal and in order to move the next generation into a more conscious place. And I can feel that shift and it’s pretty powerful. Saying that, it’s not easy. Conscious parenting, gentle parenting, present parenting is not easy because it has more to do about our emotional legacy, our wounds, our triggers, and less about our children. And what I mean about that is they are beautiful souls that come into this world as pure and unique and joyful and they know only really the highest vibration. And life starts to condition, starts to manifest or change. Manifest, I mean that in the way of changing and asking of them. And then they start to shift away from that pure, authentic self into more of what I feel society needs of me and what I need to do to feel included. Because as a child and as humans, the two basic needs we have is to feel validated and that secure attachment to be seen, to be safe, to feel part of a community.

And so, with conscious parenting, yes, we look at a child’s behavior, but we look at the need of the behavior. But we also look at how am I seeing this behavior through my own lens? What’s the perception I’m putting on my child? What’s the conditioning I’m putting on? What’s the wound or the trauma, the trigger that I’m seeing what’s happening now? And when we can really lean into that and get curious about that and look into that a little bit more, then we can start to see wow, that actually had nothing to do with my child. I was feeling anxious or triggered or fearful in that moment and I reacted rather than respond. And so, the conscious parenting is really about us healing and reparenting our inner child so that we can keep that authentic space that our child has brought into this world. 

And I’m hoping that the more we do this, the more the generations to come will just stay as they are, authentic, knowing their true self and be able to stand up for who they are rather than the disassociation or creating an identity that they’re not. Not saying that they’re not going to experience trauma because that’s a human condition, that’s why we’re here to experience trauma, but they can process through that trauma in a more resilient and confident way.

How motherhood makes a path to healing our own inner child

Sarah: Yeah. You know, I hear from a lot of the women in my community who have watched my motherhood journey who are preparing themselves sort of in this preconception conception phase for motherhood, and one of the fears that they bring into the conversation the most is that they’re terrified of passing along all of their shit and projecting onto their child their own fears, their own beliefs, their own borrowed stories. And something within me has also felt a frequency, a flavor of that and at the same time, I think my inner dialogue kind of shifted to well, Sarah, if you wait until you’re this perfect, pristine human being, it’s never going to happen. 

So have the baby and figure it out as you go. And you’re going to fuck up, you’re going to make mistakes. And as much as possible, let’s do this in a conscious, very intentional, aware, present state so that I’m not…my daughter’s Emersyn obviously…not projecting onto Emersyn my stuff or not allowing her to…well, she may trigger me, but when she triggers me or her behavior triggers me, to realize when it’s about me versus when it’s about her. And so, I know something you teach deeply on is just how parenting helps us heal our own inner child. And what has been your personal experience with that?

Why no one is ever truly ready to become a parent

Jenn: Oh my God. Woo. And it’s so interesting because that was my journey too. I was like, oh, I’m not ready for a child. I’ve got shit to deal with, I’ve got so much baggage. But you could think that you dealt with the baggage and then you have a child and you’re like, where the fuck did that come from?

Sarah: Yeah.

Jenn: You know, you are not going to be ready. You can be as ready as you possibly can, but there are things that are going to come up. And I love how you said, you know what? I’m just going to be as conscious and as intentional as I can be, and give yourself that compassion and that grace. Because there are going to be moments where we’re going to be so starved of sleep, of nutrition, of our own life, that we’re going to fall into those subconscious behaviors and we’re going to maybe act like our mom or our dad. But in that moment when you do, you notice that and you can repair and you can change. That’s conscious parenting. It’s not saying that you’ll never be like your mom or you’ll never be like your dad. It’s when we notice these things, we have the awareness, and we choose differently after. The repair is as important as being conscious, right?

My own journey of reparenting and healing my inner child; and my journey has grief involved, but also I didn’t realize the amount of childhood wounds I had or trauma I had. I knew they were there, but when a child comes into your life, they mirror a lot of wounds that we put aside. And it’s not that we put it aside and ignored it, it’s just we didn’t know they were there. And so, when we have a child and we have that space to hold, it starts to come up. And so, my own personal journey was I realized that there was a lot I haven’t dealt with or a lot of healing that I was unaware of. And what made the difference for me was the reparenting. I realized that my mom and my dad parented through trauma, and very much intergenerational trauma, and they were stuck in that trauma loop and that trauma bond. And they parented through very, very much fear and emotional neglect and anxiety and that came out with a lot of control.

And when I became a parent and started to see how I wanted to parent and also to grieve my own childhood because I’m like, I’m going to give my son all this, and then you sit there and you go, fuck, I didn’t do any of this…I didn’t do any of this. And then you have to be like, you know what? You have to give your child space, you have to give your inner child space to grieve that. She needs to feel that. And so, there’s this, and I know you talk about too, this duality of parenting physically your child, but also reparenting yourself and moving through those emotions. So that was the biggest thing about conscious parenting. And what my son has brought to me is the grief of my own childhood, but also the fact that I can start to reparent myself and not live my life through him, but choose to live my life the way that I desire or that I want to live it without fear. Because I didn’t feel safe in my childhood and so I’m trying to create that safety with myself first, always have to do your work first, and then you can hold space for your child.

And that’s another thing. I mean, I’ve learned so many things, but one major one that just came up is just really knowing I have to put myself first, I have to take care of myself, my nervous system, my emotions, that reparenting is so incredibly important so that I can hold that authentic space for my son. Does that work all the time? No, I’m human. But that is my conscious intention of doing that as well.

Sarah: I see in my lineage, a lot of codependent bonds that have formed and how women in my family have had babies to fulfill a need to feel loved and valued and important and appreciated, which is also really fascinating to me because there’s also hardly any women in my, at least the lineage that I knew in this lifetime, that were also working moms. So their purpose was very much solely motherhood. And I don’t say that with judgment or that there’s anything wrong with that, but what I’ve noticed is there’s codependency in my family. It might not be in somebody else’s family, but in my family I see this codependent bonds that have formed around how the children feel, then all this pressure to be and fulfill this need for the parent.

And it’s the opposite really of what you were just talking about, Jenn, where it’s like, you’re taking care of you first and you’re focusing on regulating your own nervous system. And something I’ve learned in my studies on regulating and healing, especially highly sensitive nervous systems, is that when we’re babies, we learn how to regulate from our primary caregiver, which is potentially one of our parents, and that we can’t be these powerful co-regulators that you and I may want to be without focusing on ourselves and our own nervous system. So I’d love to just see what comes up for you as I share that.

Jenn: So much. So, so, so much. My main focus with conscious parenting right now in the community that I hold is really based on nervous system. You look at your child as a nervous system and they’re mirroring your nervous system, you’re co-regulating their nervous system, you are building their nervous system for their future life, you know? The subconscious, the nervous system, everything is created between zero and three, but zero and seven, really. And so, being aware of that is not to heighten or create anxiety, but it’s just to be like, okay, this is why I need to do the healing for myself and this is why I need to regulate my own emotions before I can really hold space for my child.

And when you talk about codependency, that was my family as well. Very intergenerational, where you have children to help you with the family, or you have children to provide you with an identity. And not saying that’s wrong or right, just saying that what happens with that is they start to rely on the child to fulfill their needs. When children are young, they’re very egotistical and everything is about them so if your mother or your father is relying on your emotions or your identity or your being to make them happy, you feel that’s your job. And so, you create these archetypes; you create the people-pleaser, you create the savior and the fixer, and that becomes who you are as an adult subconsciously. And then when you become a parent, you’re like, hold up. No, no, no. I just realized I’m doing this with my own child, or you can see the people-pleasing coming out of your own child and you’re like, well, that’s triggering. So you lean into that and get curious.

But when we grow up with emotionally immature parents, which a lot of our own generation has because they themselves are patriarchal, the patriarchal society is like push your feelings away, we need to be strong, don’t cry, don’t do this. And also very much the social conditioning of women and men. But if you grew up with an emotionally immature parent, there will be codependency, and that codependency subconsciously will happen in relationships with partners, which was very much my case when I first got married. I didn’t realize that and I was like, oh my gosh, I’m relying on him for everything emotionally and physically. And then you have a child and you can start to see that coming out. And when you’re consciously or your intention is to be more conscious, you can start to lean in that and heal that. You know, that’s definitely a wound there.

So yeah, the codependency resonates massively. And it’s happening right now. My mom sadly is dying of terminal cancer and I can see it with my dad, with me. My role as a child was the savior, the fixer. I was very much the parent in the family, which came out in my parenting because I was exhausted beyond belief and I didn’t understand why. And I was like, oh, my son is triggering that wound because I had to parent my parents and now I have to parent him and it’s too much…too much.

Sarah: Fuck. I’m over here going, oh my gosh, that’s been my experience too. I would, I feel, at least from my perspective, that I was the parent amongst my parents and my siblings and sort of the solid ground. And I always told Andrew, my husband, I don’t know when I’m going to be ready to have kids because I feel like I’ve been parenting my whole life.

Jenn: Oh.

Sarah: I’m so tired. I’m so tired of parenting. And at the same time, I knew I wanted to have my own baby, I wanted to have that experience. And eventually, it’s kind of like my womb just spoke to me and was like, okay, go girl. Now it’s time. But I wasn’t sure if that was going to happen or when it would happen because I was…I was just so tired of being the parent for so long.

Jenn: And imagine what that does to your nervous system.

Sarah: Mm-hmm. You wrote something I think I scrolled upon the other day, about how our childhood can distort our view on life and like you were just saying, expectations that we have of a partner, maybe what we think things are supposed to look like based on what we learned to be true when we were little or the environment we were raised in. And I think that most of our listeners are well aware of this concept of inner child and how that might be at play and affecting them today, but I guess I’d just love to peel back a deeper layer on that conversation of how our childhood circumstances and experience may create some distortions in our current reality. Do you have anything to say about that?

Jenn: Mm-hmm. Literally, get out of my head. Yes, I have a lot to say. And I think currently that is a healing. That’s a healing journey for me. And growing up as a child, we have, obviously, our parents modeling relationships and our parents modeling how to respond to situations and how to deal with stuff. So we have that; we have our parents’ modeling and conditioning, societal conditioning, and cultural conditioning. And so, we create a narrative based on that. And that really is our subconscious in our thinking. And when we move into adulthood and parenthood, it comes with us until we know when we know, when we become more conscious of it.

Personally, when I was a child, there was a lot of uncertainty and a lot of chaos. And so, I would create a life, or I would dream, or I would tell myself it’s not as bad as it seems. And I would take that into my teenage years and then in my adult years. And it wasn’t till really recently becoming a mom, I realized that I was still holding onto this fantasy of my childhood and I was still seeing the world in a very distorted way. And what I mean by that is I was seeing it as my inner child. So I was creating this fantasy and imagining and daydreaming and doing these things, but also, I was seeing the world as a place of lack, very much of lack, lack, lack, lack like the survival mode, right? And when I came to that realization that, wow, Jenn, you’re really creating this life of lack because you had lack in your childhood and so you’re reconstructing this now because it feels known, it feels safe, but in actuality, it’s not what life is really about. And that’s not the life you want your child to have.

You want your child to see the abundance, obviously, be conscious and mindful and aware and resilient, but not to always see lack and have to think he has to strive. He is enough. He’s enough. He’s enough, where I was in a world where I was not enough because I always believed that I wasn’t enough as a child. And so, you literally, when you have that moment, your eyes change, your lens change, and you start to really think, holy shit, all this time, my inner child was really running the show, or all this time, I was just recreating these stories because that was what I thought was safe. In actuality, it’s actually not reality. So I don’t know if that resonates but…

Sarah: No, it does. And it reminds me of this realization I had in my own inner programming of the struggle or the chaos or the drama or the stress being more comfortable than the peace, the stillness, the balance, the pleasure. That’s what I know and I know I’m really fucking good at it. I know. I know how to find my feet in the chaos, I know how to move through the drama and the struggle. And it’s comfortable and at the same time, it’s not. And so, I say I want something different, but my subconscious mind is very comfortable in the chaos. And I actually just had a little aha moment as you were speaking and it links back to what we were just talking about, about feeling like I was the parent in my family unit. And now here I literally am, parenting alone, right? as Andrew’s away for most of this year, and it is really triggering. I actually spoke with my own coach and mentor about how there’s conflicting parts at play for me right now in my life because what I want more than anything is to feel supported like I’m not alone. And at the same time, it is the scariest thing to receive the level of support that I actually desire because it means I have to depend on people.

Jenn: Woo, and that does not feel safe.

Shifting the paradigm of responding versus reacting

Sarah: I have so many people that I’m bringing into my inner support circle right now and Jenn, it is so uncomfortable. I’ve got a dog walker, I’ve got a dog sitter, I’ve got one nanny, I’m working on hiring a second nanny, working on hiring a house cleaner because I can never vacuum my upstairs of my house because the baby’s sleeping or I don’t have hands. And then family support and friend support and just oh my gosh, it’s kind of cringy in my body and at the same time, I want it so badly. I just want to be held and nurtured and cared for and mothered. I want to be mothered. And so, it’s conflicting parts that are butting heads against each other and I’m sifting through it all right now. I don’t have an answer, but I know that I’m working on the integration of those parts so that I can feel more whole and less conflicted. But holy, it really is a lot of what I learned to be safe in childhood showing up now in my life.

I feel like I’m at this pivot point where it’s like, so are you going to choose, Sarah? Are you going to choose to continue to want and be more comfortable in the struggle or are you going to shift the paradigm? Are you going to create generational healing so that this doesn’t pass on to future generations? And shit, it’s hard. And it’s like you were saying, where gentle or conscious parenting doesn’t mean it’s easy just because it’s gentle. But to me it’s a worthy cause, it’s a worthwhile commitment. And I am only 10 months into this journey, but I feel very committed to continuing a path of consciousness in this journey. Yeah, it brings up so much inner lessons, inner workings. And going back to the nervous system, how do we start to look at how our nervous system has been wired, like mine, for struggle and sift through some of that so that we can be powerful co-regulators for our babies, for our children?

Jenn: Mm. Yeah. And that’s the key, isn’t it though? That’s the work, that’s the work. And I honestly don’t think it ever really ends, but it does get integrated like you said, you know? We have all these different parts and when we’re able to see the parts from the adult, aware self, there’s less chaos among them. And so, we can see them, acknowledge them, and show them love and compassion, right? With regards to the nervous system, a really good takeaway for our community is your foundation really needs to be quite solid. And if you grew up in a household that was chaotic and what we’re sharing here is resonating because you can see your nervous system or feel your nervous system reacting, then there’s definitely something to lean into and to inquire and get curious.

But in parenting, with regards to your nervous system, the number one thing is to really have a good foundation for yourself, right? And what I mean by that is, and without going into the polyvagal theory and everything…totally do a series on that…

Sarah: It is fascinating. And it’s really helpful to know to… I mean, we obviously don’t have time for polyvagal theory, but I will say that the understanding of polyvagal theory was part of my foundation for healing so that I could understand what the hell’s going on in my body and then start to do the things and have a deeper why behind them and understand this is the reason why I’m doing breathwork, this is the reason why I’m doing cold exposure or cold therapy, or this is the reason why I’m focusing on my vagus nerve. It just deepened that why.

Jenn: Yeah. Yeah. It does. For me, it gave me forgiveness and compassion because I was like, oh God, okay, this is what’s neurobiology. This is what’s happening. This is what my body’s done to help me survive through the chaos. And now I can sit here and go, okay, how does it feel to be in that green, grounded human connection? When do I feel like I’m in the yellow zone where I’m going to feel anxious and frustrated? And then, the red zone is the fight-flight-freeze full-on stage where you just kind of get, you know? You want to fight or you want to flee or you want to freeze. And so, it’s making sure that you have that strong foundation. And so, that doesn’t mean that when you get triggered or when there is chaos that you kind of like, okay, I need to up my self-care, I need to do this. It’s really building that somatic memory, that understanding of okay, have I eaten well? Have I drank enough water? Have I gone for my walk? Have I…you know?

You know, I share this and it sounds ridiculous because that’s our basic survival. But sometimes when we’ve dealt with trauma in our life, basic survival is scary. It’s something that we’ve had to put aside for survival. So when we become parents, at any time really, but when we talk about conscious parenting, we really need to really bring in that basic survival because our foundation needs to be quite strong to hold space for ourselves and our child. And so, knowing that with our nervous system, just being able to really fill our cup as much as possible, actually overfilling our cup, overfilling our nervous system. So finding those moments where you can find stillness and feel that stillness, feel that presence, drink that tea and taste it, that is somatic healing. That is being present. That is your nervous system going, oh, this is how it feels to be present. This is how it feels to feel joy. And so, really building that up because again, if you’ve had a traumatic childhood or you’re being triggered quite a bit with your own child, we forget what joy is because joy has been scary or unsafe.

You know, there’s so many other things that you can do, and I know you share so many, but I think foundation; like where is our foundation? Where are we parenting from? Is it depletion and lack? Or is it, okay, I can sustain this? If I can’t sustain this, how can I create that for myself?

Sarah: My experience has been that my inner martyr really, really wants to come out in parenthood. And you posted about this. I scrolled your Instagram this morning getting inspiration. And you were talking about how the dominant parent doesn’t have to be parenting alone like I’m doing or single parenthood like other people are doing, but just the dominant parent can often fall into martyrdom. And this morning my in-laws are here because we’re going to trial, to court next week for my brother Joe’s death. And so, they’re here to support me with my daughter while I’m in court all day. And they’re here a couple days early. 

I went downstairs this morning, Emersyn slept horribly last night, she has a stuffy nose, and my mother-in-law was like, okay, Sarah, I got her, I’ll feed her breakfast. Go back upstairs and lay down for a bit. And it took every ounce of my being to be like, okay. Okay, I guess I could go do that. And I could feel my body fighting. And it was like, no, I’m not going to go back upstairs and lay down. I got all of this. I can do it all, and I’m the martyr, and watch me struggle. And then I turned around, went upstairs, and went and laid in bed. And oh my gosh, that pattern is tough to break. And so, the reason I’m reminded of this is because you’re talking about overflowing your cup and filling your cup. And it’s like, yes, yes, yes. And in order for me to do that, I have to break this pattern of feeling important and valued by my sacrifice and my pain and just go upstairs and go lay back in the damn bed. I’m sure there’s another mama or human listening that can resonate with that so I just wanted to share.

Jenn: Oh my God. Right here. That is huge. I’m so glad you shared that because going back to the conversation about our mothers having children, codependency, what I saw in my culture and my family is yes, they had children and that was their identity. But at the same time, they were playing the victim, you know? Like, oh, I’ve got so much to do, I’ve got all these clothes to do, I’ve got to get back in the house, no one helps me and I’ve got…you know? And so they sit in that martyr survival mechanism.

Sarah: Victim. A little bit of victim I feel like.

Jenn: Super victim. Why are you doing this to me? I’m so stressed out. And then all of a sudden the child is like um…you know? So yeah, and that’s generational patterns, that’s conditioning, you know? And also that’s our survival mechanism. We’re not feeling safe, we’re kind of feeling anxious and you know what? That martyr identity’s going to come out because I don’t feel safe right now. And you being aware of that and actually pausing and choosing, you know what? I’m disturbing the system, I’m disrupting the pattern, and it feels icky, but you know what? I’m going to lie down. Woo. Shifting timelines just doing that, you know? But yeah.

Sarah: And who knew it would be so hard to just lay the fuck down, but it really was.

Jenn: Your child needs you to lay the fuck down. Your daughter needs you to chill out.

Sarah: And consciously I can hear that and I know that and still, walking my feet up the stairs, they felt really heavy. It was like, go to sleep. Just do it, Sarah.

Jenn: Yeah. It’s supposed to be hard because you’re disturbing…you’re…Yeah, it’s supposed to be hard.

Sarah: Breaking patterns. Especially generational, intergenerational patterns that have existed in our DNA and our frequency and familial patterns for hundreds of years, let’s say. We’re doing big work. I think we’re doing big, important work that is hard, that is challenging, but like I spoke to before, I also feel like is worthwhile and a worthy cause to help… I think so many people, especially empaths who listen to the show, have this aspiration of having an impact on the world, being of service to the world, and what better place to start than right there in your own life, in your own relationships, in your own family. And that has a massive ripple effect if you can be the breaker of chains in your family.

Jenn: Totally. Totally. And there’s that duality again, right? Yeah, it’s hard and look what I’m doing. I’m breaking generational patterns, I’m creating new, and it’s still that duality.

Sarah: Oh, I could keep going, but we are at the top of our time. And I just wanted to give you some space Jenn if there is anything you want to speak to about how to navigate the unexpected parts of motherhood and then also just ways people can deepen their experience in this journey and work with you.

Learning how to give yourself grace as you reparent yourself

Jenn: Yeah. When we were talking before we pressed record, we were talking about how motherhood has so many unexpected things happen. And I think the reason they’re unexpected is because part of our survival mechanism is having high expectations. And so, we expect and we create this dream and we create, and not no fault to ourselves at all. It’s just that this is part of our survival mechanism. So we have all these expectations, but in reality, there is no such thing as expectations or there’s no need to have expectations, and to be in the ‘as is’ is very important. And I think us being in the ‘as is’ is noticing when you have expectations and then reparenting yourself or noticing the trigger and then reparenting yourself.

And so, just allowing that to sit with everybody and just get curious about, oh, okay, yeah, there’s a lot of uncertainty and that can cause trauma as well, but knowing that with the uncertainty, how much expectations am I putting on myself? How many expectations am I putting on my partner, my life? And what can I just let go and surrender to? That’s the biggest lesson I have, I took, or I’m taking away from parenting is surrendering. And even saying the word is icky because surrendering as a child was too scary, way too scary. But as I reparent myself now, I can continue to tell myself, I’m safe. I got you…I got you. We got this…we got this. I’m safe, I’m safe, I’m safe. And it’s really important for me to say that all the time. So just leaning into what are you really expecting out of yourself and giving yourself that love and grace.

And also, if anyone’s curious about reparenting, and that’s one of the biggest things that has given me that ease and flow in parenting in life is that reparenting, they can reach out to me on Instagram. I actually have an upcoming course around reparenting your soul coming up. The waitlist is open. So all the information I’ll share with Sarah and also it’s on my Instagram, ‘a.conscious.motherhood’. What’s dropped in for me just to close our time together is that sense of duality. You know, we live in a society that’s very polarized and becoming more polarized. And motherhood is hard, but it also has its joy, and to know that seasons come and go and that within those seasons and the duality, what you have is you and your heart and your love and compassion and that stays.

Sarah: Yeah. Thank you for sharing that last piece. I feel like I also needed to hear that and that there’s these seasons that come and go. And this first year feels like a really hard season for me.

Jenn: It is hard.

Sarah: It helps to be reminded and to remind myself that eventually, she will sleep through the night, and eventually, she won’t need me as much, and eventually, my husband will be back, right? And sometimes when we’re in the thick of it, when we’re in the day-to-day, when we’re watching the little ticker on the clock tick by to bedtime, it feels really long, but it is these ever-changing seasons of life and of parenthood of motherhood for us. So thank you so, so much, Jenn. It’s been such a delight to have you here in this space and share this conversation with you. Everyone, we’ll put links on how to connect with Jenn and her upcoming offerings in the show notes as well. Thank you so much.

Jenn: Thank you.

Follow Jenn:

Instagram: @aconsciousmotherhood

Founding Coach on MASTRY

Reparenting Your Soul Healing Experience Waitlist

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Instagram | Facebook Community | Pinterest | YouTube 

Work with Sarah:

Online courses | 1:1 coaching | Send show requests to sarah@theuncensoredempath.com!

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