Mom Hotline with Libby Ward
Motherhood is a journey that never, ever ends. Once you are a mother, you are never not a mother again. For the rest of your life, no matter what happens, you are forever changed — your body, your mind, your spirit, your heart. It brings joy and pain and sadness and euphoria and heartbreak and light. And, for a lot of us, it can feel like we’re turning over our sense of self to be a mother.
Psttt…[Here’s how to listen to the podcast on your podcast app!]
Last week, I talked to Libby Ward about maternal mental health — a topic that warrants more than just ONE episode. In fact, when planning for last week’s episode, I asked for mothers to write or call in and just vent, and Libby and I had so much to say that we turned it into an entire episode of its own.
If you take nothing else from these episodes, take this:
Everyone needs therapy. Yes, even you. And you’re NOT everyone else’s therapist.
Asking to be acknowledged or appreciated for the work that you do to keep everyone else’s world spinning is not selfish.
Everything that you’re feeling? It’s all valid. Every single thing.
I also want to share this passage from Libby’s book, Honest Motherhood: On Losing My Mind and Finding Myself (life changing book, BTW). She wrote,
**For so long, I viewed my healing journey as a choice that I’d made, one that my mom hadn’t. It was a choice. I was different. But I had to admit that the circumstances of my life played an undeniable role in making change possible. I had access to the honesty of other moms. And it made breaking the cycle of generational trauma a little easier. **
**Being a good mom was never as plain and simple as making that choice. If it were that easy, every mom throughout the history of time and space would have nailed it. I was far from a perfect mom. I still made mistakes that kept me awake at night, smothered by a heavy blanket of guilt for knowing better and doing worse. **
ICYMI:|[Being skinny isn’t worth the price you’ll pa]y | Bonus EP:[An AI chatbot flirted with me?]|[Save The Date: Office Hours here on Substack on April 25 at 9am!]|[What I actually wore in Q1],[How you (really) are]|[My THC/CBD guide]|[Crawl out of the pit of despair with me]| If you want a podcast that reminds you of the OK things in lifeIt’s Going to be OK is back![Spotify]|[Apple]
Mothers, please remember that you are not alone. Everything that you are feeling has been felt centuries before you and will be felt centuries after you. The shiny, happy, perfect moms you see on social media are not always shiny and happy and perfect.
You are human. You are doing the best you can. Nothing is wrong with you. And, most importantly, you are not the worst mom in the world.
If you have something to share, say, or need to use the Mom Hotline, give us a call or a text: ☎️(612) 568-4441.
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You can join me for a Bad Vibes Only book club with the Society of Working Moms on June 14th!I looooove speaking about mental health, grief and other hilarious topics. You can email
bkane@apbspeakers.orgif you want to bring me to your event or organization.