High-Performing Anxiety, Mom Guilt & Self-Compassion| No Small Talk with Amanda O’Rourke

Let's go back to talking about the loss of children.

First of all, I'm so sorry that this has gone through your family.

How old were you when you had your children?

I was 28 when I had my first child and 30 when I had my second.

Because you lost your mother quite early.

I lost my mom two years later, 32.

Yeah.

So looking back with hindsight, do you feel that there was also something around the loss of your mother, the loss of that person who's supposed to help guide you through becoming a mother yourself that heightened this feeling of loss? But for you, it was just focused on the children because you knew that from your family history?

I think that's quite a good summary, really.

I think My mum was probably high-functioning anxiety as well.

She probably had that too because on the face of it, my definition is it's a swan.

Basically, above ground, everything looks fine.

You look gracious, you look in control.

Under the water, completely different story.

And I think that was my mother because of what had happened to her.

And she'd lost two children.

So I think that's what had happened.

And that experience or that way of being... was role-modeled to me.

And, you know, I don't hold that against my mum.

I think she did an amazing job of keeping it together.

But it didn't allow for talking about it.

And this is what I wanted to say about it.

This podcast is so important because what you're doing, I want to acknowledge, having conversations like this is really important because You know, we're told we need to talk more, but I think actually no small talk.

I think we need to talk about the deep stuff.

We need to talk about our emotions, how we're feeling and not be ashamed of it, not feel like nobody's interested or I should do better.