Tag: maternal ambivalence

Paulette  0:03  

Hi  thanks so much for coming on the show. Can you introduce yourself and tell us where you’re from?

Anne  0:07  

My name is Anne Zimmerman, and I am a writer and mother living in Portland, Oregon.

Paulette  0:15  

Anne it’s so lovely to have you on. I should confess that you were my writing teacher at Stanford for a classified suck and you’re a beautiful, beautiful writer. And that was a great class. So I’m excited to have him on. So one thing that’s interesting about your story is you have three kids. You are not Mormon but you grew up in Salt Lake City, which I think of as a pretty happy place and a place filled with big families. So maybe correct me if I’m wrong. Is that your experience?

Anne  0:44  

Yeah, you’re right. And it’s interesting because I’ve gone through various periods in my life where I think about the Mormon Church and the influence of the Mormon Church and the influence of the psychology of the Mormon church a lot because it is really interesting. Parents are not from Utah. And my family has not never been Mormon, but I was born in Salt Lake City. I lived there until I was 18. And my parents are still there. So I continue to go back there fairly frequently. And so it is baked into who I am in it. For those that have been to Salt Lake. You will know that it’s laid out on a grid with the Mormon temple at the center all the street names are keyed off of the Mormon, Mormon temple in the center of the city. So I grew up in a in a beautiful old grid neighborhood and of the like 18 houses on either side of the street. At the time, there were maybe only three other families that were not Mormon. I mean, maybe an older couple or two who did not have children. But in terms of the kids I grew up with, and there were a lot of them. There were at one point there was a family across the street had eight. There were you know, big families and the Mormon church was just pervasive, and I knew it, because I always knew that we weren’t Mormon. It was very clear. We were not going to go to the Mormon church. We were not going to go to the Mormon church just to see what was happening or try it out or anything like that. But it wasn’t until I got a lot older that I was like, oh, so what what was that like, you know, most if not all of the women at home, I should pause and say I only have one brother who’s five years younger than I am. So I did sort of experience something different within my own family unit, but just in terms of being out in the neighborhood or playing with other people from school. Or just being at school, this culture of child after child after child and also everything just seeming really I mean, you’re right. It’s like it doesn’t describe it but perfect and happy is is really true. I think you see it now in social media. I used to have a more than obsession with following in sort of humans, the lives of Mormon and mommy bloggers back when blogging was more of a thing or Instagram because it is in a way it is something that’s so familiar and comfortable to me. Yeah, just that whole we’re gonna have a baby and then we’re gonna have another baby and everything’s gonna be happy and everything is gonna be perfect and everybody’s gonna match. And we’re gonna make cookies and dad comes home and we play basketball and you know, just this very wholesome, very happy, very clean, white, obviously, culture and just I don’t know, just even talking about it. There is still something that is like, appealing about that, even though now being a mother. I sort of see that there that there’s, you know, dark dirty corners. There have to be there.

Paulette  3:48  

Yeah, having kids is too complicated to have just one

Anne  3:52  

more than I mean. We do have three children. And when I went into my motherhood experience, I think I thought we would only have two and we wanted a third child, we plan to have a third child, but that adds to the chaos factor. And sometimes when I’m in just very normal, but chaotic moments at home, I’m like, wow, so then what’s it like if you get each kid to their lesson, that’s their passion that they are willing to live or die for, you know, three tantrums or whatever it just it’s work. It’s it’s an incredible amount of patience and management. And chaos

Paulette  4:28  

yeah, it’s certainly it’s harder than a lot, right? parenting has very good marketing has we all go into it thinking it’s not going to be quite as hard as it is? 

Anne: Right? 

P: We focus on that on the easy, lovely parts that everyone wants to share and glorify and there’s you know, reasons to do that. But it is an incomplete picture. So it sounds like you grew up thinking you were gonna have a family. 

A: Yes. Yes. 

P: And was it easy to get pregnant the first time? 

A: Yes. 

P: And how was that pregnancy?

Anne  5:01  

I would say that of the three. That was my most difficult pregnancy and not because there was anything’s physically difficult about it. I mean, you know, just the normal, the normal stuff, early morning sickness, the changes in the body, all that kind of stuff. Everything was very, very routine. I was still pretty young, especially by San Francisco standards. I had a difficult birth, but the whole pregnancy was very healthy and very normal. But I think I also I had I had published a book I was teaching I had wanted to have children my entire life and then after getting married, that it amplified, it definitely wanted to become pregnant and have this child but then I remember at the time feeling like it was just super practical stuff. We have the San Francisco and but where are we going with this baby? You know, just all of a sudden it was like I remember feeling like, Oh, I knew I wanted this and I thought about this and chose this. And yet now that it’s happening, no one told me it was going to be to negotiate some of these things and to decide I was privileged in that I am able to take care of our children but just sort of like where I was going to draw the boundaries.

Paulette  6:21  

Today we’re lucky to talk with Jessica Sorci and LMFT perinatal mental health certified and certified internal family systems therapist and Founding Director of Family Tree wellness. And we’re here to talk broadly about maternal ambivalence. Jessica, thanks so much for coming on.

Jessica Sorci  6:39  

Thanks for having me. Call it. It’s fun to be here.

Jessica:  6:53  

That’s right. Yeah, there’s so much pressure on moms to be quote unquote, good moms or perfect moms. And there’s a lot of societal ideas about what motherhood supposed to look like. And feel like and that pressure is alive in every every mom. I think we just we all get that memo and feel compelled to embody something that is really not real and doesn’t exist some sort of perfection and yeah, and then having having those those real feelings that are not in the realm of bliss, and ease and connection really feels threatening, I think to to the ideas we hold about motherhood and maybe to our own sense of being decent for. For many of us, we want to be more than decent, we want to be exceptional moms. And when we start noticing that we’re actually feeling those things you mentioned, you know, some might be irritation, it might actually be rage, resentment, regret, is definitely a very big, common feeling that moms have and it makes a ton of sense that those those sorts of feelings really threaten that clean image that we think we’re supposed to aspire to. So not only is it uncomfortable to have the idea of being perceived as something other than a perfect mom, or a really good mom, or supermom in terms of how people are seeing us as we’re so comfortable inside in our inner world to hold the complexity of those polarized parts that seem like they need to do away with each other, you know, the perfect mom feelings, or maybe we could say in a more specific way those feelings of I wanted this baby or this child, I value motherhood. I enjoy the feeling of connection. There are there aspects of me that really like taking care of someone. Sometimes, I’ve got these feelings of real pride in my child, a feeling that I understand them and I am in tune. And that’s got kind of a lot of dopamine around it and a lot of feeling maybe actualizing what I was meant to do on Earth in some way, my purpose. So there’s all of that. And then to have other feelings that are completely almost seemed like they delete or erase or destroy the good feelings, right? Those ones that come up that are like so so black and white, so absolute around this was a horrible mistake. I really should never have done this. There is no room for me in this picture anymore. And it seems like it’s all or nothing. It’s the baby or it’s me. Somebody’s got to take one for the team and I’m sick of taking one for the team right like I’ve I’ve held back and maybe exiled so much of my own need in my own truth, to be of service to this child and there is a feeling inside of being really done with that of hating it of wanting my own. Well being back on use of space and time for myself. It feels like those two are just wildly in opposition.

Anne  10:41  

I had watched women not work outside of a home to choose motherhood as their profession and then and I had been like, maybe that’ll be me. Maybe that’s what I want to for sure do during a certain period of my life. And my husband was supportive of it for his own reasons. His mom had been away a lot when he was little and he was like, Yeah, we’re on the same page. This is what we’re going to do and then it just very quickly kind of became oh but what if that was wrong, what if that’s not actually what I want, but then how am I going to negotiate all that nice still? I still feel like I’m trying I mean, every Sunday night I’m looking at the calendar and going okay, what do I have to do other for other people? What do I have to do for myself? What am I getting paid for? What do I get? You know, what do I What is the writing that I want to do that I might not be getting paid for yet but in some ways is more important than any of the other stuff. I have to put that in all right. I don’t feel like myself. It’s very tricky.

Paulette  11:37  

But yeah, the the the happy marriage of parenthood and a job is a really difficult thing. And I remember early on thinking oh, now I’ve reached what I’ve heard many women describe which is I feel like I’m failing at both jobs. So that seems Yes. Now I’ve reached the level right i i can’t fully put myself into my work and I can’t fully put myself in a way that I want to be present with my child and this is the world that we live in.

Anne  12:06  

And I am incredibly lucky. My schedule has always been very flexible. My students have been very understand that you know, they’re they’re adults with hearts typically in mind, they’re incredibly understanding if there is ever a time when something has to shift a little bit, but just today, you know, it is 2023 But between yesterday and today, I think for alerts that there’s COVID at the preschool you know sort of starting to infiltrate and cutting hours a little bit because two teachers are sick and it’s like, the preschool that my littlest child goes to, is close to a hospital. So there’s a lot of working professional parents. What can people do? I mean, we’re so lucky and sometimes they think about doing something different. In air quotes, they don’t really know what that is, but it’s hard it I don’t eat I don’t know, it’s an incredibly hard balance

Paulette  12:58  

and finds the spiritual within her about I am a creative person. I’m a writer. I want to do this work, but I’m also a mother and how those things fit together.

Speaker 3  13:08  

Yes, yeah. So as I think about, you know, what, what the parts of a mother or mom parts might look like in a in a kind of generalizable or predictable way. I think there are those those parts that emerge when you have a child for basically all of us. We call one in particular the baby’s representative. There’s like a part that shows up in mom’s consciousness. That’s the baby’s rep and it’s here to advocate for that baby, and it’s here to pull all of mom’s attention and energy and resources toward the baby and does that through you know, brain changes and other physiology. It does that through kind of CO opting the cognition and preoccupying the thoughts of mom, and it does that through attachment through building a bond, and that sense of real deep caring. So you’ve got that whole babies rep going on that’s so inarguably occupying it takes up a lot of space. But you were a person before you had your child and you had those things you’re naming that and felt around your own creativity, your own reason for being your own inspiration and ways that you got your dopamine before you had this baby. That didn’t go away. It got kind of elbowed out when the babies are out showed up. But I think of those as sort of self interested parts and they do have to take a backseat. You know, in the beginning I think it just happens it’s like you don’t have any choice. Your physiology demands it when you’re giving birth and in the days that follow when you’re really not yourself on a physiological level. Sometimes that’s months that follow for some folks years, but the self interested parts are there and there’s nothing wrong with them. You know, I think the system can start to feel like it’s a threat to the baby rep. And all that is aspiring for and you are holding in your one nervous system, essentially two nervous systems. So how, how gracefully can this one individual mom hold multiple nervous systems? And multiple agendas, the babies and hers there is no getting around that it’s complicated and taxing and requires a lot of adjustment and a lot of work. But you know the the only answer really is becoming more conscious and being deliberate in your self compassion. That self compassion starts to open up more space so that maybe both things can exist. Maybe you can be a good mom who is tending to the baby really beautifully, and has her own needs her own reality her own, you know creativity or desire for productivity or let’s Let’s even say desire for control because there’s not a lot of control in mothering. You don’t get to kind of exact your own visions and volition like your baby runs. Oh, they are and you’re sort of attuning and following their lead. So, you know, to respect in a compassionate way they don’t impulse and your own desire to follow your own dreams to make them the color you want. The tone you are feeling. You know that that’s real and true and does not go away with motherhood. Very long time and I mean it goes so deep right? You don’t get to take a nap when you want to take a nap. You don’t get to think so you want to think that was a really hard one for me. I wanted some space to think like that and they would be interrupted every 30 seconds or less. I was so so frustrating and also created a lot of grief. I missed having that space with myself. So I think we have to be really respectful. How much babies wrap is asking us to give. And in that respect, there’s compassion right like they’ve given it up for a long time. was not easy. Let’s find some space for you to have your own self interest.

Paulette  17:52  

Now that my kids are grown, my sense is your grandparents. That’s the way to make it work and and but then you have to be okay with grandparents parenting your children.

Anne  18:04  

Right. And that’s actually a really important waves to lift the veil on on Utah on Salt Lake City on the Mormon church to some degree. Of course. You can’t make a blanket statement, but it is in a way it’s in the village. You know, I remember at one point, the people who lived across the street for us grandparents lived tutors. You know there there was just this really flowing back and forth and we wanting to have children younger, which grandparents are younger, which means we are all with whatever childcare or something during the summer going on vacations, you know whatever just generally being participatory factor and you have a lot of siblings sometimes, you know, and so it’s also like you can be it. It’s, you know, answer those houses together and that is that I’m not sure if that really clicked for me until after I get there. Maybe we don’t have family. We don’t have family living around. That’s where this whole weird fantasy of being like, you know, Norman Norman, I’m not sure it was ever that explicit but this desire to have kids and have this feeling of fullness and busyness and excitement and fun and like that’s where this is going to hit a real roadblock is because we don’t have any support men pandemic it and then then we all know, yeah, got parents of young children and families and that type of thing. You know?

Paulette  19:42  

Yeah, that made it much more stark for sure to say oh, actually you’re I guess what? Super hard. So let’s talk for a second about the birth. And actually the pregnancy. You walk by it because you say oh, it was normal. I remember in the first trimester falling asleep on my keyboard at school and and just being knocked out by fatigue in a way that I never understood or

Unknown Speaker  20:08  

read about that. That

Paulette  20:11  

was just it was such a shocking thing for me. People say oh, you’re gonna be nauseous and Oh, you’ll be tired. But the feeling of that is so much different than the description that it’s just shows it’s so hard to create another person and we just take it for granted because that’s what I do. Yeah,

Anne  20:29  

yeah. So yeah, so I mean, I think one thing that popped into my mind but when I left once I had one child, subsequent pregnancies, I just looked like a rock because I was tired. But with my first pregnancy, I remember being awake in the night a lot, which was really notable because my husband has struggled with insomnia for most of his life. And I remember being so angry that he wasn’t awake was like okay, I’m finally awake. Where are you think that you are sleeping soundly. So insomnia and then also I plan as the illness often is. And I remember when there was the bombing at the two men are sort of on the loose on and this was back when I was on Twitter and Twitter was kind of a easy place to be. And I just didn’t sleep practically all when they needed to know if they were going to find these people and it was so weird because I hadn’t ever felt like that water in the business and that restlessness before and I remember finally getting to the point at 330 or four o’clock in the morning orient that I just have to get up. You know, I did a lot of food writing and in written a biography about it. I just have to get up and start cooking because there’s nothing else to do. I’m not going to sleep. And that was definitely a nervous kind of again with I was very anxious about what was going to happen. You know, my husband’s mother was notably dying while I was pregnant, which is interesting element to the whole thing. And I remember he had gotten to be with her over Fourth of July weekend. I was due to have a baby in September, so I was seven months pregnant. And I didn’t go to a barbecue and I remember telling the women at the barbecue that it was because they needed to figure out how I was going to organize my closet and in my mind that was just because this is the most important thing to do right now. This is it. This is this is it, which is in some ways I will that just stem so much the stereotypical new nervous moms spinning her wheels about you know, whatever. But at the time, I think so much of it was feeling really destabilize my own identity really destabilized. It did have something to do, obviously with the fact that I was growing human in my body and all of the effort it takes to do that. But so much more of it was about me and feeling really destabilized. And, and also, again, kind of going back to both my childhood in Utah but also just the culture around pregnancy, feeling like there was I could not say anything to anybody. You know, it’s not like I didn’t want to have my child. It was just it was just so much bigger and realer and so much more of an identity ship before I even had the child than I ever anticipated. And I remember here’s something I remember that is interesting as I remember being probably I would say, I don’t know, still early in my pay, let’s say four months pregnant. And I was teaching a night class in person. And I was leaving to go to the class. And I took a picture because my mom sent me her shirt or something, took a picture and texted it to her and I said no, you gonna be able to tell that I’m pregnant question question mark, exclamation mark. And she wrote back and she said something like, Do you not want them to know that you’re pregnant? And in that moment, I was like, I do know that I’m pregnant. I do not want them to think that anything about our dealings or our interaction is in any way influenced by the fact that I am right now that I’m going to watch out.

Paulette  24:32  

For and she talks about being anxious or during the pregnancy about this identity shift. She anticipated that she’s going to have an identity shift. And it is this, I think making space for these two identities like you talked about. So do you have any suggestion about how we one goes about?

Unknown Speaker  25:33  

She’s

Speaker 3  25:41  

that natural and inevitable, but good girl. You do so it’s not a bad thing to encounter that grief. The fact that there’s grief and loss doesn’t mean it’s bad or that you should avoid it or that there’s nothing better on the other side. Having that clarity should add about identity shift.

Speaker 3  26:20  

Energy or access to your own resources. You are working which are very different in terms of your your body and your being. It’s temporary you know that the massive loss a massive hit is temporary. That’s the good news right you’re gonna get much more of yourself. So having having some softness around the surrender, I think surrender is usually the most graceful way to go in like and it is and there is a loss. You know, people don’t say that I heard a podcast recently where a therapist was talking about moms having ambivalence, and that sometimes there are moments of hate and she said nobody likes the word hate so I’ve actually stopped using it. And I thought to myself, of course, can can we just allow our parts to feel what they feel the more we can make space for that is truth and honesty, the better the playing field for the baby and for being understood, making sense being seen not feeling shameful or like there’s anything wrong with her. Not starting to think of herself as a failure or more or less of a mom. No, that doesn’t mean that your feelings can be here. No matter what they are all all parts and all feelings are welcome. And you can be great

Paulette  27:53  

Are you imagining that they’ll think something negative?

Anne  27:55  

Yes, definitely, like negative rather than positive which is so funny because I actually also remember that when they found out I was just being over me and one of the students in this particular class no one of course, no one thought your brain has been diminished by this. But I think yes, I think I’m worried that they would think that somehow. I guess specifically the comments that I might make on their work would somehow be not valid for us.

Paulette  28:37  

Totally interesting. Why is it so powerful driver of your behavior in a way that you’re not necessarily totally conscious? Of in the moment and that anxiety? Jamil and appropriate, and I guess I regret that there’s a negative overlay on that to say oh, the anxious first time you should be anxious, guess what? Right. Every single thing has changed. I have no idea where this is. Going. I just heard some statistic that 70% of pregnancies are relatively normal and go off without a hitch. But you don’t know if you’re in that camp. And it’s just for many people because we don’t know we’re relatively young. It’s the first time you were introduced to this idea that you are not in control of your body. And that’s such a weird thing to feel and to experience. And I remember saying to my husband while I was pregnant, my belly was growing. I must be doing this wrong, because this is the weirdest thing I’ve ever experienced. Except there’s no cause and effect here that I can. You’re no longer in charge of your life. Yeah, true. True and I feel like that’s a line that’s slowly being revealed to you. Right? The nausea and the fatigue is a good entry into that idea because it’s nothing that you you’re doing in the moment. Something else is going on in your body that you can’t control. It does become more and more true right as you get further along. So something about your first birth, what were you hoping to do

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