So walk us through that journey, the early years of motherhood.

Yeah.

So I had my firstborn and it wasn't exactly sunshine and rainbows.

She was hospitalized in the first two weeks of life.

She ended up getting an infection in her shoulder bone and And then she ended up staying for a few weeks in the hospital, got better.

But then we found out my husband got a new job in the police service.

So he had to leave for three months to go to police college.

heard of the Titanic.

And the

work of trying to be perceived as a good mom is often what makes us lose our minds, right? It's not that being present in the moment and looking your kid in the eye and listening to what they're actually thinking and feeling and working through the next step.

It's in... oh my goodness, we have to be on time to daycare or the daycare person is gonna think that I'm a lazy mom.

And then if I get to work, then there's this person.

And there's like, so there's like the perception of it as well.

And oh, I have to do the summer trips and then whatever.

And for me, it was often in the work of being perceived, being perceived as being a good mom or trying to give my kids the perfect childhood.

Because you get the urge, right? Like, I feel like it's

Feel like a burden

... and I, I feel deeply, and I can empathize and feel very connected to people, and w- I feel what they're feeling, and I feel responsible for it, can be a good thing.

And I know part of it really came from my own traumatic experiences.

And so now then having a child who is very sensitive like me, and it happens to be the child that was second born, and it happens to be the child that, you know, I felt a lot of stress in his early formative years, I do have to just let go of this piece that's like, you know, there's a part of this that he is born with.

And maybe there's ways I reacted or ways that I was in his early years that contributed to this, and I'm not gonna be in a shame spiral about it.

I'm gonna acknowledge that that could be a part of it.

I will never know, and regardless of the reasoning, all I can do is control how I handle it now and how I support him now, and how I pour into him now, and, like, let this whatever superpower of his be what it is and not try to take all the blame.

[laughs]

Yeah.

I was caring so much.

I was caring also for both of my parents who were separated but disabled separately, and so neither of them drove or work.

I was taking care of them.

I was taking care of my kids.

One of my kids had high needs, and I was really trying to do everything.

And over the course of the first several years, I just had this resentment that built, and it built, and it built to the point of anger and rage where it didn't necessarily come out all the time.

Mm-hmm

Well, what did the diagnosis for your son end up being?

He ended up being diagnosed with childhood apraxia of speech, which is a motor speech condition that affects all the muscles and, you know, the tongue and the throat and everything that's needed to make speech sounds.

And so he knew words.

He was extremely intelligent, but he couldn't make the sounds.

Like he could say ah and he could say tuh, but he couldn't say at.

and so that resulted in he couldn't say his name he couldn't say mom he couldn't sing nursery rhymes speech issues affected every aspect of our it completely took over our lives where i was teaching him sign language We got a picture communication book.

We were in speech therapy multiple times a week.

Mm-hmm.

What was your, did you always know you wanted kids? Like what was your transition into motherhood?

Yeah.

So mine was a little bit different.

I was 26 when I had my first.

And for a lot of people, they would say, oh, that's pretty young.

But in the place that I was living and the women I was surrounded by, that was considered kind of old.

I was going to a small rural church.

It was just, that was... making it

... not just a victim? How do you balance that?

Oh, that's a great question.

How do you balance it? I balance it by being radically honest about the fact that so many things can be true at the same time, and having to continuously remind myself of that, that there's al- like, there's always going to be external pressures, and for some of us more than others.

Some of us are more susceptible than other people.

I, like I said, I, I was someone who just, like, wanted to be told what to do and, and wanted that structure and wanted those boundaries and, and wanted to be a selfless mom.

Uh, I had to be honest eventually about the fact that, yes, Christian patriarchy is real.

Yes, there is this messaging coming through social media, coming through our churches, coming through [chuckles] from...

... you slammed on the brakes, like, what, what went through your head?

I'd never even heard of the word content creator.

Small town Canadian mom who, you know, when I logged on Instagram or Pinterest or Facebook, I felt shame when I saw the way that mothers were living their lives, but I didn't know that people did it for jobs.

I didn't know any of that.

And TikTok really was just a fun thing for me in the beginning.

And when I started growing followers by the thousands, I didn't even know what that meant.

Like I just really, truly liked connecting with women.

But when I realized that that there were so many women who were feeling broken, who were burnt out, who were overwhelmed, who felt alone, who didn't have a village.

and he's working nights I mean it really my heart was like pounding for you as a mom of two daughter first yeah yeah no my

Yeah.

Um, and so I started doing this.

Um, m- by this I mean, like, making content, being a content creator.

But there then reached a point where social media, like, I realized there was a limit to what I could do on social media and that I really...

Number one, I had a story.

Number two, I had a bigger message.

I never wanted to be an influencer.

Yeah

Mm-hmm

... as a mom to me as a child, 'cause I felt like I was, like, dragged along.

There was no intention or love or care, that I was just dragged along.

I thought, "I don't wanna be selfish, and so I must have to be selfless." And surrounded by women who really took on that role of when you become a mom, your kids come first.

You sacrifice your time, you sacrifice your energy, you sacrifice your career, you sacrifice your wellbeing because they're the most important things.

And it was only when I was then two kids deep and you had a...

My second born was extremely needy, was highly sensitive, feeding issues, l- so many things, and I was simultaneously the default parent to a shift working police officer husband, and in a co-dependent enmeshed relationship with my mom because I still felt like it was my job to save her.

Hmm

What surprised you most about the reality versus what you imagined before you had kids?

That's a great question.

I was so excited to become a mom and also terrified.

I mean, I wasn't raised in a way that I wanted to repeat.

And so when I became a mom, I thought I'm going to do this differently.

And all I have to do is love my children.

And then that'll be enough to like help me be the mom I want to be.

Is there anything that you're consciously trying to give your children that you wish you had more of growing up?

So perhaps, would you like to tell people a little bit about how you got started in all this and how the book even came about?

Yeah.

Yeah, I'd love to.

Well, thank you so much for having me and for saying that.

I get messages, I've been getting a lot of them lately because the book came out, you know, about a month ago, and it usually is some version of, "You made me cry so much.

I've been reading this book and I can't stop crying." And I always say, "I'm so sorry, and you're welcome." [laughs] Because it's one of those things where I feel like you almost, like, don't realize how much you need to feel seen until you do or, like, how much you need to cry until you do.

And so I feel bad that it's one of those things that makes people feel things and cry, but also I know it's good and necessary and all of that.

No.

You know, we're starting to talk about some stuff, but this is one area that, hey, I wish we, we would be talking about a bit more.

I feel like when you share in an online space about a certain niche or topic over and over again, and you draw your people in, it can be easy to convince ourselves that this is common knowledge, y- that everybody understands that women and mothers are people too, that we have needs that deserve to be met, that we deserve rest, that the world treats mothers unfairly, that two things can be true, that we can love our children and also not always love motherhood.

I've fallen prey to that idea that, oh, like everybody knows this.

I've said it enough times, and I'm surrounded by enough people that this is just common knowledge.

And I would actually say now that I've written the book and I've been out on tour and I've been talking to women and mothers, you know, almost every day for six weeks now, it has become so obvious to me that the things I share online about that I've been sharing for six years aren't common knowledge to everybody, aren't common knowledge to the average population.

And so I guess I would say there are more topics, more nuanced topics, but I still feel like there is such a long way to go for women and mothers to believe in their core that they matter and that they deserve to have their needs met, and that they don't need to just prioritize everybody but themselves.

If I had to pick a topic that doesn't feel like it's talked about enough...

So I guess what's the positive of being able to do that type of work, but what's also kind of d- you know, harder for female creators than it might be for other creators online right now?

Mm-hmm

... right? I realized that from a very young age, I was someone who self-sacrificed, who put my needs on the back burner, who wanted to save everybody else.

In order to stay safe in the household that I grew up, I needed to prioritize the feelings of my parent, of my mom.

In order to feel regulated, I had to regulate her emotions.

I had to walk into rooms scanning to figure out, what do I need to do, what do I need to say to make sure that this is a safe place to be? What can I do in order to keep the people in this room happy? Because if I keep the people in this room happy, it makes me feel safe, and it makes me feel like I have some semblance of control.

And it took a long time to realize that I didn't just become a person who martyred herself and ignored her needs and didn't listen to herself and didn't even acknowledge her own feelings by accident.

I didn't just do it because I was a good person.

Mm-hmm

Yeah

... somewhere to put my thoughts and feelings, but it very quickly turned to a lot of pressure, and then guilt and shame for the ways that I was.

So when, you know, I would share with my therapist that I was stressed about everything I was carrying, and she would gently push back and say, "Why did you say yes to that person? Did you consider saying no? Why do you expect yourself to clean the amount you clean? Like, why are you doing these things?" And it made me reflect back on why I make those decisions.

That was hard because I had just been living my life on autopilot until then, being a perfectionist, being a people pleaser, trying to do everything without ever stopping to be like, [laughs] "Hey, does it actually matter to me if my fridge is that clean? Does it actually matter to me that my kid watches screen time?" And so her sort of, not calling me out, but gently pushing back, being like, "Hey, why do you say yes to your mom all the time? Why can't you ask your husband to wake up after a night shift to watch the kids? Why are you prioritizing his sleep more than yours?" That was hard for me, and it made me feel initially more guilt and shame for my own role in all of it.

And I did think that just by learning a few things, I would be better.

Like, once I learned what boundaries were, then I could set them, and then they would stay there.

What was the hardest thing for me was not just learning why I became a hypervigilant person who tried to do everything and couldn't say no, but that unlearning those habits would be a lifetime of work.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I, you know, like when, when, you know, my daughter survived and we went home and I think what that initial experience did to me was it sort of compounded this idea that it's up to me to figure it out and I better work hard and do good and meet all the expectations that everybody has.

And Oh, what a privilege it is that my baby is healthy and alive and okay.

So I'm going to go extra hard and be this like ideal mother that everybody paints this picture of.

And so when, you know, we got home, you know, for the first year and a half, I, I went hard at like being that perfect mom who made all the food from scratch, who didn't give her baby sugar, who exclusively breastfed till 15 months.

But as all of these things are coming to a head, what are you realizing about yourself?