Show notes
I’m so excited this week to introduce Dr. Angele Close on the podcast. We're talking all about motherhood, the myths of motherhood (including the “good mom” myth), and what it's like to be a mom in this modern world. In fact, we had so much to talk about that this week’s episode is only part 1!
You’ll Learn:
- Why motherhood feels so heavy
- A key concept that can help you drop the self-blame and shame around not feeling good enough as a mom
- How choosing to value connection over achievement can benefit your child
- Ways that gentle parenting has over-corrected from traditional parenting styles
- The time I decided I was a great mom
Dr. Angele and I talked a lot about the myth of being a “good” mother and the process of matrescence - the act of becoming and being a mom. We also got into how to release yourself from our society’s unrealistic standards of motherhood so that you can tap into your own internal wisdom and intuition.
-----------------------------------
Meet Dr. Angele Close
Dr. Angele Close is a clinical psychologist, motherhood coach, and mindfulness teacher. She is also a therapist in the Internal Family Systems model.
She is about to release a new book called Unburdening Motherhood: A Guide to Breaking Cycles, Healing Trauma, and Becoming a Self-led Mom. I cannot tell you how much I love this book, and I know you will too.
Dr. Angele is also the mom of 3 teenagers and shares how, as they entered elementary age, parenting got really tough for her. Her oldest child is neurodiverse, and traditional ways of parenting just weren’t really working anymore.
Everyone (including Dr. Angele) was having a lot of big feelings, and she found herself becoming really self–critical and hard on herself. Emotion-focused therapy, mindfulness, and meditation were her profession, but as a mom she felt like she was losing her mind.
This led to seeking out help and support, learning about the concept of matrescence, and discovering the Internal Family Systems model. As she healed herself and gained some traction in her personal life, she quickly realized she needed to share it with other moms.
What is Matrescence?
The word “matrescence” was conceptualized by an anthropologist Dana Raphael in the 1970s. She was interested in what happens to women when they become mothers.
It turns out that mothers go through a significant, profound transformation of identity, similar to in adolescence. It changes every aspect of our lives - emotionally, physically, hormonally, spiritually, our roles, and our careers.
Dr. Angele says, “Some people will say it's only the first few years of motherhood. That's not been my experience. To me, it’s lifelong. Our relationship to our children and our identity are forever tied.”
These transformations can happen at different stages of motherhood. For me, one of those times was when my youngest started kindergarten. I’d lost myself in the previous 7 years of parenting, and I didn’t even know who I was or what I liked anymore.
When you realize that you’re in a transition like that, it’s an opportunity to redefine yourself, your career, whatever it is that feels like it’s shifting. And whoever you become in that transition is okay. We don’t have to make ourselves wrong for any of it.
The other piece that is acknowledged in matrescence is that through motherhood, anything we haven’t healed or dealt with from our own childhoods will get reactivated.
Finally! A concept that lets us see motherhood as a process. To recognize that we’ve changed, and that’s okay.
The “Good Mom” Myth
Dr. Angele says that a key focus of her book is on the myths in our culture about what it means to be a good mom. These ideas change over time, and we absorb them through society. In the 50s, the standard was the stay-at-home mom/homemaker. Then the feminist movement pushed women back into the workplace and told us we could do it all.
Today, we’re in the era of the Super Mom, where we’re actually expected to be superhuman. Society tells us we’re supposed to raise amazing, well-rounded, adjusted children while feeding them organic food, attending ALL the school things, monitoring their grades online, and organizing a full extracurricular and social schedule. Overwhelmed yet?
Women are crumbling under layers and layers of pressure. Here are some of the common myths that are floating around our culture. These are the stories we need to shift if we want to move into a new parenting paradigm. And just a reminder: they’re called myths because they aren’t actually true!
A good mom gets pregnant easily and naturally.
As an adoptive mom, this was a hard one for me. Moms often swap “war stories” of pregnancy, birth, and having newborns. So from the beginning, I felt like I didn’t belong.
A good mom is self-sacrificing.
She puts everyone else’s needs above her own, often at her own expense.
We don’t often hear people talk about the inner split that happens. When you’re torn between the you before you became a mom and the you when you are a mom. That inner tension is normal.
You want to take care of yourself and your kid. You want to be a mom and have a career. It doesn’t mean that you don't love your children and that you don't love being a mother.
A good mom loves all aspects of motherhood.
I’d be willing to bet there are some parts of motherhood you could do without.
It can feel really isolating when you think you’re the only one feeling this way (you’re not!). This is when it’s easy to slip into thoughts like, “I suck at motherhood,” “I guess I’m not as good at this as other people.”
Plus, mothering and homemaking often get grouped together, when they are actually two completely different parts of life.
A good mom raises good kids.
This leads to a belief that you can control your children (which, spoiler: you can’t). So, if anything goes wrong, it’s your fault.
This can become even more difficult in the teen years, especially if your kid is neurodiverse, struggling with mental health, or showing up in ways that are outside the norm.
The truth is that kids misbehave - all of them. If you think you’re a bad mom every time it happens, it’s going to take a major toll on you.
Unburdening Motherhood
The social pressure to look and perform a certain way and volunteer for all the things is counter to your desire to show up in a calm way.
Dr. Angele says, “the job of a mom in this day and age requires an insane amount of skills. We just need to look at the stats to know moms are drinking more, moms are depressed more, moms are anxious more. It's not a great situation. And we're just pushing them even more and more. So we need to shift that narrative.”
Your manager (or momager) part is not a bad thing. In fact, it’s really useful when you’re juggling sports, birthday parties, and multiple schedules. But when we lead from those parts, they can become too extreme and take over.
We’re also starting to see that the heavy focus on achievement can lead to mental and physical health issues for our kids. It makes it harder for them to show up as their authentic selves.
So as we look at the benefits we think our kids are getting (e.g. getting into a good college, earning accolades, or making a lot of money), we also have to look at the drawbacks. How does it hurt us if we buy into all of this?
When we’re chasing what society tells us will make us happy, it takes us away from our true selves. We miss out on moments of joy in the here and now.
This new generation of moms is moving away from a focus on achievement. Instead, we want our kids to feel safe - to feel their feelings and to be themselves.
The challenge is that most of us were raised to suppress our emotions, so it makes it extremely hard to deal with our kids’ big feelings. And Dr. Angele says, “when you raise your kids to feel safe with all of their feelings, it turns out they actually have a lot of feelings.” We are naturally going to get activated in those moments, so we have to do our own inner work to heal ourselves.
Breaking cycles is hard. It’s messy. And it’s an opportunity.
The Good Enough Mother: Lower the Bar—And Find Freedom
Parenting advice as a whole has gotten a little intense. We’re supposed to take care of ourselves, be present with our kids, and validate all of their feelings.
I’d like to add a caveat to that. Yes, do those things…most of the time. Dr. Angele said she’s even heard 30% of the time is good enough. You get to be a person. Your kids get to be people. It’s okay.
In fact, it’s good for our kids when we fail them once in a while. Dr. Angele talks about a study by Dr. Donald Winnincott who said that when moms fail their children in reasonable and expected ways (i.e. not being attuned 100% of the time), the child developed resilience through that adversity.
Plus, when we over-attune to our kids, we under-attune to ourselves. We make their needs more important than our own, which also doesn’t benefit the family.
In my own life, I’ve found that when I’m in a period of deeper healing or focusing on the emotional health of my family, I may not be performing the way the world thinks that I should. For example, my kids didn’t do any travel sports because I wanted to protect our time as a family on the weekends.
Dr. Angele shares that she lives in a community that is very high achieving. Where most kids are in Club sports and 6th graders are stressed about getting into college. So, she says that focusing on connection and emotional health is, “radical, courageous work, because it is choosing to tune into our own nervous system and our own emotional needs. When we're well, everyone in the home can feel more grounded and centered.”
She also shared the example of her own mother being a bit obsessed with a clean, tidy house. And while Dr. Angele likes a tidy home, she learned early on in motherhood that she had to drop her bar lower because she wasn’t interested in nagging or cleaning up after everybody all the time.
The emotional work of healing and managing our nervous systems takes a lot of effort in itself. Then, we’re adding on the work of parenting on top of it. That’s why simplicity in our rhythms and schedules is so important. Managing your nervous system often means saying “no” to stuff.
Lowering the bar of motherhood creates space for you. You can even decide right now that you are a great mom. You don’t have to question it anymore. It’s pretty freeing.
I loved this final takeaway from Dr. Angele: “A mom loving herself is the greatest gift she can give her kids.”
I hope you’ll try on the thought this week of “I’m a good enough mother”. Believe it. See how it feels in your body.
Connect with Dr. Angele:
Resources:
Get your copy of the Stop Yelling Toolkit!
In this free guide you’ll discover:
✨ A simple tool to stop yelling once you’ve started (This one thing will get you calm.)
✨ 40 things to do instead of yelling. (You only need to pick one!)
✨ Exactly why you yell. (And how to stop yourself from starting.)
✨A script to say to your kids when you yell. (So they don't follow you around!)
Download the Stop Yelling Toolkit here
Connect With Darlynn:
Our TOPPODCAST Picks 
Stay Connected
