Episode 58: Re-Mothering Ourselves with Amelia Mora Mars (Motherhood Series No. 1)
/Happy (Belated) Mother's Day! To be honest, one day is not enough to celebrate our motherhood. We made a lot of sacrifices in this journey but we also made great moments with our family and kids. Some days are challenging but there are also days that are a blessing. And I am happy to see your growth. Thank you so much for trusting me to be a part of your journey.
So, for the month of May, I want to dedicate the upcoming episodes of The Balanced Parent Podcast to our motherhood. In this series, we will be focusing on re-mothering ourselves, finding our purpose and identity as a parent, and learning to be kind to ourselves. We deserved to be loved just as how we give love to our kids and family. That love must also come from within.
And so for the first episode, we are going to dive into the powerful work of reparenting and re-mothering ourselves and learning how to set healthy, respectful, compassionate boundaries. I'm so excited to have a partner in this conversation, my wonderful guest, who's going to be sharing all of her expertise with us.
Join me and Amelia Mora Mars, who is a mom to six daughters and four sons (Phew!), a psychotherapist and mom coach to women raised by emotionally unavailable mothers as we tackle the following:
Signs that you may need to re-mother yourself, and how to do it
What it takes to be a connected mom, and how this will make you a better mom
How to set boundaries with your kids
The intuitive and healing journey through self-compassion
Follow her on Facebook and visit her website www.momconnections.com to get more resources on this work. If you want to be part of her community, join her MomConnections Re-Mothering Tribe on Facebook.
TRANSCRIPT
Parenting is often lived in the extremes. It's either great joy or chaotic, overwhelmed. In one moment, you're nailing it and the next you're losing your cool. I want to help you find your way to the messy middle, to a place of balance. You see balance is a verb, not a state of being. It is a thing you do. Not a thing you are. It is an action, a process, a series of micro corrections that you make each and every day to keep yourself feeling centered. We are never truly balanced. We are engaged in the process of balancing.
Hello, I'm Dr. Laura Froyen and this is The Balanced Parent Podcast where overwhelmed, stressed out and disconnected parents go to find tools, mindset shifts, and practices to help them stop yelling at the people they love and start connecting on a deeper level. All delivered with heaping doses of grace and compassion. Join me in conversations that will help you get clear on your goals and values and start showing up in your parenting, your relationships, your life with openhearted authenticity and balance. Let's go!
Laura: Hello everybody welcome back to another episode of the balance parent podcast. We are going to be talking today about the powerful work of re parenting, re-mothering ourselves and learning how to set healthy, respectful, compassionate boundaries. And I'm so excited to have a partner in this conversation, my wonderful guest who's going to be sharing all of your expertise with us. So please welcome Amelia Mora Mars to the show. I'm so happy to have you. Why don't you tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do?
Amelia: Well thank you so much for the invitation or I really love, I'm very passionate about this topic. So I am a mother of 10. Always say that's my first role, my most important job.
Laura: Ho! Can we all just have a moment of silence for 10?
Amelia: So I have six daughters and four sons and they range from the ages of 3015 and I am a psychotherapist and Westlake Village, California. And I coach women who were raised by emotionally unavailable moms. And my joy is to help them find their lives back together and fall in love with themselves.
Laura: Oh my gosh, that's what we're all about here. Understanding that this hard job of parenting is a beautiful opportunity to find ourselves, connect with ourselves, love ourselves more fully as we love our Children. Uh, I love it. I'm so excited to talk with you about this. Okay, so tell me a little bit about re-mothering and what some signs are that you might need to re-mother yourself. And also is it something that, you know, most of my listeners are women, but men can need re-mothering too. Right?
Amelia: Yes, absolutely. So most women, they start to notice probably really knew all along that maybe mom wasn't emotionally available for them. And it could be for a lot of different reasons. It could be that she was just a busy woman and or a single mother and she just wasn't physically present there. He could be a woman who had mental illness. And that's really the case of my life, had a mom with mental illness and a furious, furious temper. And so I was very much afraid of her. And so I learned to take care of myself and my siblings and two keep the environment as calm as possible and as trigger free as possible to, you know, calmer for others. It was maybe she had a physical woman and she was there, there's so much focus on herself or a child, another child that maybe had special needs or something.
Or maybe she had a significant other or spouse that she was trying to keep calm. That's so much focus our energy on him. But these Children go feeling as a mom wasn't a horrible and so some of the science is just feeling lost and lonely. Some women described feeling like they have a hole in their heart. They feel they have difficulty making decisions because if I wasn't mentored and coached or modeled it, how would I know someone have anger or resentment and that shows up a level of sadness and really noticing that they've been alone for a lot of their lives and wanting more and not knowing how often times just not not knowing how to connect. So having a lack of boundaries, you know, learning to be people pleasers to be aware of other people's needs.
I had one woman tell me that when her mother came home from work here, she's an elementary school child and she would make her mom or Marty, you know, that's a job that's inappropriate for a child. The children will do what they need to do to feel loved. And a lot of times that's pouring outward and having a life where they're rescuing, pouring out and not receiving as much.
So there comes awareness. And again, they might have had it all along. They might be ready to acknowledge that, Gosh, what I've been missing most of my life is me, I've been most of my life from my life because it's been other centered and centered on a people
Laura: other centered and centered on other people. So then how do we go about looking within and finding our center within ourselves?
Amelia: Well, I think it starts with that awareness and being honest and saying, you know, enough is enough. You know, part of my passion and my crusade and my advocacy is I refuse to allow people allow women to go through this alone. We need women who fight for us. And I know when I went through this process is like wanting to know well who are the safe people in the world.
I know who the unsafe people are aware of the state people in the world. So my program I call it, Mom's breaking the cycle starts with the attachment and becoming aware of their attachment style or connection style because a lot of times makes sense. We could be so hard on ourselves. But when you look at what happened to you, course you might be just cleanly and insecure. I'm afraid that someone's going to leave.
Laura: Of course.
Amelia: You might be the opposite, might be that person who has difficulty trusting difficulty with a fraction and saying I love you because that wasn't there for you. So having that understanding that yes, it's okay that you're here and of course you're here one this together and then that's where the self love and compassion and start, because I feel like self love is the bomb that heals the soul.
We need to just sit in that place because we've been giving and giving and giving and oftentimes have these critical voices to ourselves and so giving ourselves space in a sacred place. Just finally say, you know what? This is my tongue, this is my time to get my heart, and part of that process is having healthy boundaries, those healthy boundaries, it's going to protect us to keep the bad out the good in.
Laura: Yeah, okay, let's talk a little bit about boundaries, because I think we all are in the place of figuring out what our boundaries are, and I really liked how you just said that keep the bad out and the good in. So tell me a little bit about how boundaries fit in with this work.
Amelia: Yeah. Well, the fact that people pleasing a lot of times, we just say yes or acquiesce, or do we perform, they were so afraid that someone's gonna love that leave us, right? That sense of abandonment, You've been abandoned already, right? It's terrifying. So, I have an image of the house and I say that this is houses has unhealthy boundaries and inside the house, I have words like beer insecurity abuse, silence all those words where we feel like we can't step up and really feed ourselves and if that's your norm living in a home where you have to be silenced and careful and walking on eggshells and you know, you're afraid, then it's like the negatives inside the house and the bad on the outside or their goods on the outside and it's hard to reach.
It's hard to reach that if you have the opposite, if you have a home where there's love and security and a sense of belonging and joy and you can relax and just feel like you're seen and soothed and insecure. Like Dr. Daniel Siegel talks about those people can feel the difference and they might recognize someone that's unsafe approaching them because they've had an environment of safety and parents who fight for them and advocate for them.
But if you don't have that, one of my sayings I say is you could be dancing with the devil with your dress is on fire, but you might be talking yourself out of it. Well, he seems nice. Well, he he's charming. Well maybe I'm wrong. You talk yourself experiences when the signs of them, they're all along. You don't know, especially if memories protects us.
Laura: Yeah. Especially too, if those things feel familiar, I think often we go for what feels familiar which leads us to repeat and perpetuate patterns, the patterns that were used to, right?
Amelia: Absolutely. That norm. That's not normal.
Laura: Yeah. Yeah. But what we think is normal, what our experience tells us is that this is what love feels like. This is what a family feels like. This is what a home feels like. And so we go out into the world and unconsciously recreate patterns. Okay, Yeah. And so then how does the healing start to happen? But like now we're becoming a bear. We're noticing some patterns. Were noticing that were quite hard on ourselves.
We're noticing that it feels almost lots of the folks that I work with who are trying on self compassion, who are dabbling in self compassion. It is very hard because they feel so unworthy of it. I don't know if you experience that with the folks that you're teaching self love and compassion to.
Amelia: absolutely to say no to someone in order to say yes to ourselves is very, very uncomfortable.
Laura: Yeah.
Amelia: But like every practice and every practice of two better ourselves in whether it's exercise or the way we eat or the way we treat ourselves, it's just continually doing it even when it's uncomfortable. You know, it's just that repetitive and that reminders of ourselves and I think that's why being in a tribe and having that support and the work you do and the work that I do, it's like we need that to provide a sense of safety and to encourage and celebrate and have these fans and to admit when we struggled and we didn't do it, we didn't quite do it today.
Laura: Yeah, I think so too. I think we all need the support of a community who is committed to doing this work and committed to walking that path with compassion and empathy. You know that we are not repeating patterns are perpetuating patterns of shame and blame and guilt and criticism that we received growing up with ourselves as we look to make changes.
It's always so interesting that many parents who come to me who are looking to make changes in their parenting use the same language with themselves, that they're trying to get out of their parenting vocabulary with themselves inside. You know, it's the same. They don't want to criticize their kids. They don't want to punish their kids that they criticize and punish themselves, you know?
Amelia: Yeah. All the time.
Laura: Yeah. Okay. So then that speaks to me about re mothering, that's what re mothering is to me cultivating a wise in her mother who meets me with compassion, who meets me with unconditional love and acceptance that I deserved from the moment I was born, that we all come out of the room deserving, right? That love, that compassion, that acceptance, kindness, grace and cultivating within me that wise in our mother. And then is that how you see it? This is the vision that I have inside myself.
Amelia: Absolutely right up to that love and generosity that we don't really give up. Three internal.
Laura: Yeah. So I think a question that probably people who are listening to this are thinking right now is okay. But how what does that sound like, what does it look like in the moment with my kids when I'm about to lose it when I'm about to yell or when I feel run down, overwhelmed, stressed out. How do I actually do this in the moment, in the midst of parenting?
Amelia: So if you imagine that you're at the beach and it's just gorgeous day and the water is perfect breeze. Fabulous. You're with the people that you evolve. Your basket is full of delicious food and great beverages and music. It's on, it's just beautiful. And then all of a sudden you hear the shark, the jaws music in the background, right? All of a sudden your experience has been hyperactive and it's no longer safe. And that's kind of like what triggers happened to us. So that's why it's so important for us in that moment to again go back to what I said about the attachment style.
Of course, in this way this is what just happened to me. But I don't need to act out on it. There's people that I loved. And I always think in terms of beginning with the end in mind and I focused on that a lot. You know when I was pregnant because I was so so afraid of being a mom. Always thought that being a mom was my great, this fear. But then I realized not doing something because of fear is my greatest fear. I mean throughout my pregnancy, when women are just so so excited, I was so, so fearful.
And I would really use my mind to dream about and to focus on what is it that I wanted? What was it that I didn't receive? And what is it that I want to become his mom and have that so seared in my mind that when those moments of triggers would happen, I could rely on that. And so it is not easy, right? We have to do things over and over again. Right? And that's why we need this tribe to reinforce us and to love us because we will lose it. And then those again are those opportunities to forgive ourselves, to love ourselves and that were going on.
And I always start every morning saying to myself, how can I grow today? How can I go today? I want my day to start with an intention to focus on looking at the big picture. How do I want to grow today? I don't jump out of bed and forget about those things because I recognize that with the intention, it's really our intention and what we want out of the day and out of our lives. And you know, I told women that every woman, every mother I'll say stands on the bridge between the past and the future, every one of us.
And it's only in the present that we change our future generations. So it's the present, like focusing on the past and we could draw information from that, but it's in the present. And those little opportunities with our Children provide those, those moments of change. And as my Children got older, I would share more and more my story. So they understood where I was coming from and you know, because we're all on that place would be better mothers and were understandable.
Laura: Yeah. Something that I really like that you've been saying all along in this in our chat together is that this idea that it makes sense that this would be our initial reaction, that this would be the way we would take something. That this would be the way we react to whatever our kids are doing. It makes sense. Of course, I really like that. Of course, that's how it would be. Of course, that's how you think about it. Of course, I really like that. That feels so good and compassionate.
I say those things to myself all the time when I discover a reactive moment or an opportunity where I can be kind to myself. This is how I think about my parenting mistakes. I don't know if you do this. I think about every time I screw up as an opportunity to practice being kind to myself and this is not just for parenting, this is for everything. Anytime an attachment system is activated, your attachment like coding or patterns are activated. It makes sense that you would react this way. It makes sense.
You would think about it this way. It makes sense that that's the story you would tell yourself. And we're going to choose a different story. We're going to choose to think a different way. We're going to choose to see it a different way. And I really love how you're talking about having that intention as a guide, this kind of the outcome, the future vision being your guide in the choosing process. Right.
Amelia: Right. Absolutely.
Laura: Yeah.
Amelia: Yeah. I'm thinking about this mentally that I have that my twins were in kindergarten and they played with this little girl and this little girl was sick and she just wasn't getting better. And the parents discovered that she had leukemia. And I remember hearing that and intellectually I felt really sad like, oh my goodness, this is so sad, this must be so horrible. I didn't feel it, I didn't feel it.
And that scared me as a young mom, I felt so disconnected to my emotions and I remember realizing that being so disconnected to my emotions as a child worked for me. You know, it's that way of what I thought, you know of protecting myself. But here I am a grown adult and a mother and I was afraid to connect to those motions because that meant I would really feel, that means I could really grieve and I could really cry and I could really be sad. But the flip side of it, if I didn't, he's that would stay like this.
I felt like this part of my heart was dormant, like it fell asleep and I needed to wake it up because it scared me and I wanted to be emotionally present. And that's just was for me one of those moments of realization of, oh my goodness, this is what has happened to me. Uh this is where I went silent and quiet and I need to make a choice. You need to make a choice for me. I need to make a place for my Children and I'm scared because I'm afraid of feeling but I'm also afraid of not feeling and living in this place.
Laura: Thank you for sharing that. I think we've probably all had those moments of awareness and awakening of the work that's ahead of us and a little bit of trepidation as we move into that path. And I think our kids are so good at giving us those opportunities. You know the way the beautiful ways they trigger us, the ways that they activate within us, all of our old scripts and wounds. They're so good at it. There are beautiful partners in this, right?
Amelia: And I love the way that you see that, because I see them as little nears right there reflecting what they see their experience in this. And if their little faces, the little faces still fear or any kind of negative emotion, it reflects back to us like, oh my goodness, this is an opportunity to change.
Laura: Yeah, an opportunity to change. An opportunity for awareness for noticing. And it always starts right with noticing awareness and sometimes that awareness comes afterwards, you know? It comes a few minutes, a few hours, even a couple of days afterwards, like, Oh, oh yeah, I was triggered there. Oh yeah. Oh yeah, I was in a story there.
Oh yeah, that felt really familiar. Oh yeah, that really reminded me of that time with my family, you know? And then the more and more you practice that noticing awareness, you get closer and closer to noticing it in the moment and having those moments of awareness in the midst of the feeling that takes time and practice. I really love how you talk about that. That's so important to just practice practice practice.
Amelia: Right? Because instead of hating those moments of oh my gosh I just completely unraveled and I hate myself and I hate that this just happened. It's that opportunity of growth, that opportunity to fall leaning into it and it's our friend in a weird way.
Laura: Yeah, no I so agree with you and I think it's hard to do this heavy work that our Children call us to and they hold up that mirror. But it's good work. It's healing work and it doesn't just heal us, it heals our lineage, right? So this is where intergenerational healing happens, you know?
Amelia: Yeah.
Laura: So my mom was fairly emotionally unavailable to me particularly around hard negative emotions. She was okay with softer negative emotions some of the time, you know like crying in tears sometimes she was okay with that. But most of the time it was don't have those feelings. Those feelings aren't safe for good or worth anything.
That doesn't they're unhelpful. It's unhelpful to feel your feelings. She grew up in a home with a wonderful dad but who also drank and when he drank was scary and angry, you know? And of course it makes sense that she was the way that she was, that she raised me, the way that she raised me, it makes complete sense. You know?
And it makes sense that when my daughters do the things that I did that got me in trouble or got just me dismissed that it makes me want to shut them down. It makes sense. It just makes sense. And then there's the choosing of something new, something different, right? And that's what we're all doing here. Oh wow. Well, thank you for this conversation. Was there anything else that was on your heart that you want to want the parents listening to this to know?
Amelia: You know, I was just thinking too about brought my years. I hated my mother, I hated her. You know because I had just developed so much angering and fear around her. But I remember wanting to want to forgive, I didn't want to but I wanted to want to. And it was the oddest thing because shortly after that there was a knock on my door. I was pregnant with my second daughter. And my father wasn't one of domestic violence, but this day he did he should gotten up after the night before and he jumped her and pinned her down and hurt her and she was coming to my house looking for a place to stay. I remember looking at her at the door and I have to let her in.
This is my opportunity to let her in. And because I was in my not quite my second trimester, I was still wearing bigger clothes, She could fit everything I had and because I was expecting a second child and now had a bed so that not just a crude, but now I had a bed, so I had a bed, I had clothes that everything to give her and my mom has always been an apple and and when I would see her nap, she wouldn't have on the couch and I would watch her and I could see her body straining from the hurt, from the, from the pain of getting beat up.
And I had these voices of stories that she would tell me that just came into my mind like I was hit for breakfast, lunch and dinner if I brought food to my father and the food was cold, I get hit for that. And all these things came to my mind. I was just so easy in that moment to forgive her because growing up she would demand to me, why can't you forgive me? Why can't do? And it was a question of her ass. She never actually demanded it So fast forward.
Now I'm 40 and I'm, there's a knock on my door and it's my mother and she comes in and she looks really nervous and standing next to me, is that daughter that I was pregnant with? My mom asked could you ask her to leave? And she says to me, I was at a retreat this weekend and the nun said to me, I had to ask you for forgiveness. So maybe it never occurred to her because it was so easy for her to forgive her past. Probably never occurred to her. So she asked me why was I so muted, why was I mean here? And because I had done my work, I said to her because you did what was done to you?
And she said, that's right, that's right. That was her moment. Of course, course I what was done to me? And it was such a beautiful moment because she was asking me for forgiveness. But I felt as though I was giving her an opportunity to forgive herself. And so, you know, sometimes we don't have that yet or are mothers have passed on, but there is a possibility of something so beautiful where we can let them off the hook and let ourselves off the hook, and we can just sit with that forgiveness and love in a place of love. And that's what happened with me.
Laura: oh, so beautifully. But thank you for sharing that story with us. Oh my gosh! And it's making me think about all the people who are listening right now who think it's never going to happen. I'm never going to have that conversation with my parent maybe because they've passed away by now, or just because they're not capable of that level of self reflection. I do think that forgiveness is not for the person, you're forgiving forgiveness is for you, so that you don't have to be burdened with it anymore.
But I'm so grateful that you were able to have that interaction with your mom. I'm so grateful that you were able to have that. And I hope that everybody listening is able to unburden themselves and forgive themselves and forgive and let go of what they need to thank you for sharing that. Okay, wow, this was a great conversation. I still appreciate you sharing so openly with us. Thank you so much for being here with us and sharing your wisdom and your heart. I really appreciate it.
Amelia: Thank you. Laura is such a great partnership to work with you wherever you are in the world, to be able to partner, ensure this love and passion for me. And it's really enjoying the privilege.
Laura: I'm so glad to have wonderful colleagues and partners, all of my listening community. Just, we're also lucky to be alive in this time and doing this work together. I so appreciate it.
Okay, so thanks for listening today. Remember to subscribe to the podcast and if it was helpful, leave me a review. That really helps others find the podcast and join us in this really important work of creating a parenthood that we don't have to escape from and creating a childhood for our kids that they don't have to recover from.
And if you're listening, grab a screenshot and tag me on Instagram so that I can give you a shout out and definitely go follow me on Instagram @laurafroyenphd. That's where you can get behind the scenes, look at what balanced, conscious parenting looks like in action with my family and plus, I share a lot of other really great resources there too.
All right. That's it for me today. I hope that you keep taking really good care of your kids and your family and each other and most importantly of yourself. And just remember, balance is a verb and you're already doing it. You've got this.