Let’s Talk Love Podcast Episode 115 with Vanessa Bennett | Transcript

02.10.25

This transcript is from the Let’s Talk Love Podcast, available in our Podcast Feed.

Welcome to Let's Talk. Love. I'm Robin Ducharme, and today I'm thrilled to be joined by my dear friend Vanessa Bennett. In this episode, we delve into the real life challenges and triumphs of modern motherhood, inspired by Vanessa's new book, The motherhood myth. Together, we explore the myths and expectations that surround parenting, the importance of community and the journey of reclaiming our identities, join us as we share personal stories and insights aiming to inspire and support each other on this ever evolving path of love and self discovery.

Robin Ducharme | Hello everyone, and welcome to Let's Talk Love

Vanessa Bennett | Yay!

Robin Ducharme | I'm so happy that you're here today, watching and listening. We're in our new podcast studio in Victoria, BC, and I'm so happy that today, as we're starting this new time at real love ready, I'm joined by my friend Vanessa Bennett, somebody that I love and adore and I've worked with quite a few times over the years. You were one of our experts at in bloom in Vancouver two Aprils ago, well one and a half, and I've learned so much from you, Vanessa, and I really am just excited for this conversation. Thank you for being here, darling.

Vanessa Bennett | I'm so glad to be here, Robin. It's good to see you.

Robin Ducharme | I'm holding up your book, and I think, yes, okay, this week I had the joy. And look, she matches the back, my art, your background, Vanessa,

Vanessa Bennett | Oh, she's so pretty. You know, when you have a book and you're like, God, she's pretty.

Robin | Your book is beautiful inside and out, just like you. And I'm saying that from the heart with just so much truth and reverence. The motherhood myth, the depth therapist guide to re define parenting, re imagine intimacy and reclaim the self. And I know you've been running around all over the world, doing your book tour and talking about this beautiful, important piece of work.

I learned a lot from you this week, and I, you know, talking about just how in motherhood, things have changed. There's so many expectations of us. Let's start with why you thought was so important to write this book and your experience.

Vanessa | Yeah, I think that, you know, already having been a therapist prior to having my daughter, already kind of being on this journey, learning through relationships, and really committed to that path, right of like, self awareness, self betterment, I was really unprepared for how much of a fire under my ass having my daughter was going to light, and I felt like, when she was about, maybe about two, maybe a year and a half, two years old, I just started looking around being like, Is this real life? Like no one prepared me for this. I feel like I'm like, screaming into the void, you know? And just thought, God, we've got to be talking about this. And it wasn't just the motherhood struggles, it was the it was the relational struggles with my partner. It was the the struggles to come back to a sense of self. I mean, everything was just mixed up in one big soup. I just felt like I wasn't hearing or reading people talking about it in the way that I wanted to talk about it

Robin | exactly there. There's just this, I know, because I've got three kids, right? And I remember, I remember that going through this with my first daughter, Maia, it was like, you have all of the you're surrounded by, the myths that it's going to be just this blissful. I had the birth plan, like you did, Vanessa, like of so many moms do. And nobody really tells you, like, I had a midwife and the doulas, the midwives, even your friends, they're not telling you, fuck the birth plan. Like, really, it's probably not gonna happen. It's good to have in theory, but it's probably not gonna end up the way that you envision. Because it's just like, it's labor, right? It's just like, you never know what's gonna happen, but then just how as moms, it's like so hard to prepare for because you're taking a new role that you would know nothing about. That's right, that's one of the myths that you share in the book around it's not, it's even though it's natural part of human nature to have children, how do we step into that role? And it's, it's a whole new learning from the very start.

Vanessa | Yeah, you know, I tell you, I wrote about this in the book, but I had a client who I saw for a few years, and we actually paused our work when I went on maternity leave right before I had my daughter. And she, at the time, had her daughter, was like two, and after I had Logan, I reached back out to her maybe a year or so later to reconnect. And I specifically wanted to reconnect, because I wanted to apologize to her for what I felt were like, were a lot of my blind spots as a therapist. And, you know, she was very kind, and was like, What are you talking about? We did so much great work together. And I was like, No, I need you to hear me like, I really believe as a therapist. And, you know, listen, we're trained as therapists. To with this idea of you can hold somebody with positive regard, no matter what. You can connect with somebody, no matter their story, no matter their journey, and you can still provide a light. And while I believe that's true on the other side of becoming a mother, I firmly believe that there are two areas that as therapists, I really think it's it's more helpful that somebody connect with somebody who's had this shared experience, and that is race, and that is motherhood, and it just became so clear to me that there were just going to be blind spots that I could not feel into without having gone down that path myself.

Robin | And what, let's talk about the story that you shared with your client, because I think something that is so was so important to me and you two and the client that you're talking about, it's like, we are this full woman right before having babies, but we also want to have the babies. I did, and it was just something that I knew was part of my life path, and I was blessed to be able to have kids. And it was like, okay, but then I also wanted to step back into being a career person like I loved, where I love work and being of service to the world, and just it gives me so much joy and so much purpose. And I also want to be with my friends, and I want to, like all the things travel like, you know, all of that is still me, and I'm now having, have to have a child, so navigating all of it. It's just this. There's so much expectation, but myth around it's like, we can have it all, like you talk about that in the book Vanessa, right? Yeah.

Vanessa | I mean, this idea of you can have it all, right? I think so much of what I did when I was writing this book was because, for my own purposes, I really like to understand the how we got here, that is so important for me. And so this book is like part anthropology, part sociology, part psychology, right? And this idea of you could have it all, I started looking into the different generations of feminism and how we kind of got to this place as women, you know, in our generations, this like millennial Gen X kind of generations that we're in right now as parents. And it really became so apparent to me that that generation of feminism that was really like our mothers and grandmothers generation, while amazing work and amazing things have come from their work, right, one of the myths that I think came out of that was this idea of two things. One, you have to act more like a man, to be taken seriously and to be respected, right, which I think did a real number on on women in particular, not our senses of self. And the other one really is around this idea of what it looks like to have it all. And I think this myth impacts both men and women in different ways. But for women, it was like you can have the career, you can have the kid, you can have the relationship, you can have all of it. And part of that myth was you can do it all. And God, what a recipe for burnout, right? And so you're seeing now the generation of us who were raised by women who were kind of at the forefront of that, and we're all looking around being like, No, this is, this is too much like, I don't actually want all of this. It's exhausting, and I can't keep my head above water. It is too

Robin | much thinking about, I don't know. I think what it is. It's like, I think about you talked, I love that, that you dissected different generations and how like we were raised. So I it's funny, because I get all confused Gen X, and thank you for reminding me of that in your book. But it was like, back in the day, when we were kids, right? It was how we were even parented. My mom was a stay at home mom. She was career person. Before she had us. My dad was working all the time. But as kids, it was like, there was that independence that was just totally ingrained in us. It's like, come back at dark dinner, we're ready by like five, 530 none of us even wore watches back then. We sure as hell didn't have cell phones, and we loved it. I mean, the freedom of it. I mean, that's just how we were raised, to be quite self sufficient, right? But then our parenting has shifted. It's like a pendulum now on this side, right where now it's like, because we were kind of under parented, we as parents are over parenting. The pendulum has completely swung to the other side, like the helicopter parenting and keeping our kids completely busy all the time, like my parents used to give me shit, like, don't use the word bored. That word is not allowed in our household. I don't care if you're bored, right? Yep. And now our kids are like, I'm bored. It's like, okay, well, how can we keep you busy? Here's a screen, here's a show, like, go do your sports. Like, do five sports in a week.

Vanessa | It's exhausting, and the research is showing that we're actually creating and you know, I say this delicately because I know that parents, especially mothers, already take on a ridiculous amount of guilt and shame around the ways that we're screwing our kids up, but the research is showing that it has detrimental impacts on our kids, emotional and mental health, right? We've got the most anxious kids now we've got the most depressed kids now. They're exhausted, they're burnt out. There was actually a new research study that just came out recently talking about kids on screens, and it was saying that kids have been reporting that the reason why, in particular, they want to be on screens more is because essentially, it's the only place in their life where they can be alone and unsupervised. Is by adults like we used to have, because kids do crave that. They crave that unstructured, alone time with their peers, and so because they're not getting it out in the real world, they're finding it in online spaces. So it's just we've got to be able to look at, yes, what is working? What can we learn from those previous generations? How can we kind of tweak and adjust without swinging it so far to the other side of the pendulum that now we're actually not, you know, not on purpose, creating our own brand of harm by the way that we're parenting.

Robin | Yes. And you know what, I think, what I really took away from your book, Vanessa on like this, like this, macro level, it was that it's just understanding us in our societies and our cultures, and how this is that awareness is, is such an important thing, and learning and then applying tools so that once we have that awareness, okay, this is not the right way. How could we do some corrections here? It's not to be in a place of blame. It's not to be in a place of shame. Because guess what? It's like, we can look back on our parent, on our parents, and be like, Oh, really, we're so screwed up and this way, and this way, this way. And actually, I don't want to be I don't want to talk like that. I don't want to think like that. Because here I am as a 48 year old woman, and I'm like, I am becoming and actually, it's happened. I'm my mother and my father. It's, it's official. I'm totally, my parents, same girl, same but, but you know what? I've believed that I've taken the good that my parents gave me and that I inherited and all and the things that I want to correct, the things that I know, oh, that was not so good. I'm making corrections in that way. So then I don't want to repeat those patterns in my life and with my children.

Vanessa | But that comes out of your ability to see and hold your upbringing objectively, which a lot of us really struggle to do. And I would say the same goes for seeing ourselves within the societal structures that we live in, right? Because being able to hold that objective reality is what allows you to depersonalize. It's what allows you to go I see the way that I am living within the structures of, let's say, these Dominator models of society, right? So, patriarchy, capitalism, white supremacy. I see the way that I'm functioning. I see how it's impacted me that that means that I'm not inherently bad. It means that I'm a byproduct of a system. And so now that I can depersonalize, that I can remove the shame, and now I can correct the behavior that doesn't actually feel aligned, it doesn't actually feel like my truth, but so long as I'm not able to see it objectively, I will forever stay in that kind of shame loop around there's something wrong with me that I'm acting this way, or I have these, you know, these patterns that I don't like, or whatever the thing is, and that's why, again, going back to this idea of, how do we get here? That's why I felt like it was so important, because we need a rally cry. We need to be able to say, like, these systems that we're living in do not work. And so the second you can see that, you can go, oh yeah, I can actually step forward with my comrades and say, Let's go against the system. It's not personal. You know,

Robin | That's right. I think this is such an education for us, like, because you are going into, like you said, it's an anthropology, it's an anthropological discovery. Like, these are things, this is our history. This is how we got here. And these are the pervasive myths that actually and patterns that we are surrounded by. They're not going away unless all of us actually do wake up and start making some changes. So but first, first, it is the awareness, and then it's like, how do you make, what? What changes can we make? Right, right, right? So, loss of village, that's, that's a big theme in your book, right? And how and how important community is. So can we, can we talk about that? Because I think that a lot of people are like, don't really understand, Okay, well, how do I build community? I understand that back in the day, our children were raised by a village for sure, right? But we're not there now. So what do we do? Like, how does that impact, like, how we are now?

Vanessa | Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of us are familiar with this idea of the village, and we know that it, it's this kind of thing that existed once upon a time, right? I think one of the things that was so eye opening for me when I was doing the research was this isn't an idea of something that was a long, long time ago in a fairy tale. There are still models or societies right now that are currently existing like we're talking about. And I actually thought that was really important to understand, because it's attainable right now in this world, because it exists right now in this world, right and so that really helped me understand, like there are things that I can do. I might not be able to completely alter the structure of our society, but there are individual steps that I can take to try to bring some more of that kind of communal, family, village oriented way of parenting and partnering, right? Because, at the end of the day, our species would never have survived. If we were structured to have one, maybe two adults taking care of children, we would not have survived. You know, there's a lot of research around this idea too. Like with attachment, for example, we're so upset. Sass with attachment in this culture and we were not designed as beings to have one primary attachment figure. We were designed to have multiple attachment figures, right? Each attachment figure kind of giving us something different, like your grandmother would give you something different than your mother, than your auntie, than your cousin, then your stepbrother, then your whatever, right? So each of these people would kind of give us something different. As that got smaller and smaller and smaller, we started putting more and more emphasis on our like, one primary attachment figure, right? So even when you look at attachment research, this was what the 50s, 60s, 70s, when all of this conversations were being had around attachment and so even that research was done post community, post when we didn't have access to that anymore. So how reliable? I'm starting to question, How reliable is that information, even really, when that's not how our species was actually designed to live and to thrive, right? So what it did for me was start saying, I have to let go a little bit. I actually cannot be nor should I be. My daughter's everything, it's detrimental to her, her development, her well being, her ability to relate from a solid sense of self like I am actually hindering her by making me the center of her universe, right? And so I really started leaning into this idea. I mean, unfortunately, obviously, you know, we lost our community in the fires in January. But prior to that, on our street, we had started recreating this. We had multiple families. We all had kids. It was the very like doors were open. Kids were running back and forth, like we were when we were younger, yes. And I was putting so much emphasis on that because we started realizing how important it was for my daughter to be able to lean on, let's say, my good friend and neighbor, Meredith, for certain things that she wasn't gonna get from me, right? Right? And vice versa. And so it's possible, but it just takes work, right? Have you read there's a quote or something that's been going around recently, I've been thinking about it that somebody said, I'm gonna butcher it, but it's something like, the price we pay for community is inconvenience.

Robin | Never heard that, but that's great. I mean, really, what is that

Vanessa | we've convenienced ourselves out of community, right? And I'm it's starting to blow my mind, because I'm like, That's exactly what it is. It's so much easier for me to deliver my groceries to my house so I can keep working. But in that hour or two hours that I go to the grocery store, I'm engaging with my community, my local grocery store, the people who work there, I'm gonna run into my neighbors, right? So I started being like, oh shit, we've gotta really start weighing in convenience versus community, and start thinking about that in a different way.

Robin | I agree. I agree. I was thinking about when I was raised. We were surrounded by people at all times, like, whether it was, you know, my dad's side of the family, my mom's side of the family, regular family dinners every single Sunday at my grandparents house, it was just and my mom always had lots of friends my dad too, customers. Like, back in those days, I sound so funny. I've been saying those words in those days, those days like my dad used to bring the customers families to our summer cabin every single summer. It's like, and we'd say, Oh, we kind of complain, right? My dad's like, these aren't just my business partners. These are my friends. And go have fun jump in the lake, like it was, that is community, right? Yeah, beautiful. So something that I really I, oh my gosh. I love this part of the book Vanessa, about mothering, martyrdom is not mothering and how martyrdom is quite prevalent, right? It's like the moms are giving have been giving up who they are, thinking that it's in service of the children, right? But really, a lot of it is self serving, because if you're not going to accept the help from your spouse or, you know, let's say, let's say you are co parenting with your partner. You see this all the time, you hear it all the time, right? He or she can't do it the way that I'm doing it, so I'm just going to do

Vanessa | it, yep, and your community, like not asking for help from your community too, right? Not even just her spouse, but this, again, it's the blueprint that we've been handed. You know, it's not just women, but let's say, generally speaking, we are talking more of the mother in this situation where women have been handed a blueprint in the West that being a self effacing kind of give everything. You know, when you think of women, you think of piety, and you think of virtue, and you think of kindness, and you think of all these, all these things, right? That that is what it means to be a good woman, a good partner, a good sister, a good friend, a good mother, right? And again, part of the book is me saying, Where did this come from? Is this? Is this how it's always been? Because I just don't believe that this is the truth. And sure enough, when you start to pull the threads and you start to go in the research, right? So every one of the chapters in my book, I have what I call either an archetypal form or an archetypal story, a myth, right? I call it myths as maps and the image, the archetype that I used in this chapter is one that I know is gonna kind of irk a lot of people, and it's the. Archetype of mother, Mary. It's the archetype of the virginal mother. And I started questioning, you know, where do we get this description of who Mary was is right to us? And I started, kind of again, going back in time and doing the research and realizing how Mary herself is actually a composite of a few different goddess figures that were around during the time that Christianity was spreading, right? Because we know that a lot of Christianity has actually kind of been taken over from paganism, because we tried to get people to convert in an easy way. And so even Mary herself is kind of a composite, because it was what was comfortable for those who didn't worship Mary, right, as as who she was. And I started looking at some of the composites, and I thought, how interesting that when we look at like Kali, for example, who is the archetype of the mother, she's also the archetype of death. She is the goddess of both birth and of death. She's terrifying to look at. She wears a string of skulls around her neck, right? And she's the archetype of motherhood at the same time. And I started thinking to myself, isn't it fascinating that in every other basically, region of the world, we honor the mother as both life and death. We honor both the dark and the light of the woman, of femininity, of motherhood. And I started looking at how, again, these kind of like, let's tick off all these personality structures of Mother Mary, started being used as a way to give women like this is how you should be in order to be looked at as a good woman, a good wife, right? Again, a good mother. And I started thinking, geez, all of these blueprints have essentially been constructed to control. They've been constructed as a way to keep women and men really in line, not questioning, not challenging, right, head down. Stay a cog in the system and stay in your shame. You're never gonna achieve that. By the way, no human woman is ever gonna achieve this created myth of of who Mother Mary is, right? So good luck. Stay trying for the rest of your life, you'll be failing, right? And so anyway, I mean, there's kind of a long winded way to talk about martyrdom, but again, it was this eye opening experience for me. Where I started going. Where did we get this idea that to be a good mother was to sacrifice everything and give to the point of depletion. It's nonsense. And so that was part of, part of my kind of pushing back in this chapter.

Robin | It is absolute nonsense. But it also what you point out is how it's not giving our children the modeling on what it is to be to have a fulfilled life, right? If everything in me as a mother to my children is all about them, how what am I showing them like? That's right. Actually, my life is I was talking to my partner, Hector about this yesterday. I was like, I want my kids to see me as a full person, just like I want them to grow into whatever it is that they want to be and do in this life, because you are going to be a mother, but that's not your only thing that you're going to be in this world, right? What else do you want to do? What's going to light you up? What's going to give you joy? Because that's how you're going to be able to be the best parent you can be. I believe that, yeah, and

Vanessa | I think that it's really important for us to always remind ourselves that children learn by what they see, not by what they hear. So our daughters are watching us to see a blueprint of how to be a woman in this world, to how to be a partner in this world, to how to be a mother in this world, right? And our sons are looking at us assuming they're heterosexual as what they want, as a blueprint and a partner, right? And so if I want to your point, my daughter to live her most fulfilled, most passionate, most wildly unbridled and full of Eros life. I have to be doing the same for myself. She's watching me to see how it's done, right? And so it's so important. And to your point, it's like, and listen to those moms who are like, motherhood is my greatest joy. I love that that's amazing and still, what else like? What else is there for you? What else fills you up? What else brings you joy? Talk about it. Go for it. Spend time there because you're giving them permission to do the same thing.

Robin | Yes, something that I wanted to talk about, the story that you share about your client. Candice around this, right? Because I think this is so common. Vanessa, she's a woman. She was 36 years old. She wanted to be a stylist for you know, but she's got her kids at home. She's and she was freaking out about going away for the weekend, right? But you had been working for her for about a year at this point, and she said, You don't understand, I can't leave them for an entire weekend with their dad. He won't feed them, right? They'll fight all weekend, or just get sat in front of the TV, and they probably won't even get proper baths or brush their teeth, right? I think this, this is just one of those things that just like prevail. It just prevails in our society. It's like, whoever the other parent that's not there all the time, they're not going to do a good night. Job, the kids are going to suffer. It's like, What a load of BS like that. Actually, it like, when I read that, I was like, I've heard this so many times, and I know I probably have thought it myself, like, back in the day when my kids were little, yeah. But it's like, first of all, you're not the be all and end all. And it's like, it actually doesn't, it doesn't really give your partner a lot of credit, does it? It actually just says, like, my kids are going to, like, perish

Vanessa | without me. I really and this, this goes back to this idea again, of saying, like, our children need to have multiple attachments in their life. We can't be their end all be all and back. They can't be ours either, which is what happens so often in examples like that. Yes, right? Because the challenge working with Candice was around this idea of, you've turned them into so much of your everything that your sense of self and sense of purpose is wrapped up on two people that you have zero control over. They're their own individual beings and souls. You don't own them. You don't control them. So what happens when they no longer need you or they they rebuff your advances in wanting to help, right? What are you going to do? And it doesn't always have to be job and career, but going back to what we were saying before, like, what else is there, right? Because the more we pedestalize, actually, it's funny today and I were just having a conversation about this yesterday. We were talking about the way that we as humans dehumanize other humans. And what we were saying is it's not just dehumanizing in, like, the negative way, like they're bad, they don't agree with me, so they're lesser than we also dehumanize when we pedestalize people. It's the same process of dehumanizing, right? Because you're not, you're not real, you're not a fully formed human, you're not, you don't have light and dark, right? Like I only see you in this one way, and I think it's really scary, because we do that with our children. We pedestalize them, or we place ourselves on a pedestal. And so there's actually a process of dehumanizing in that that I think is icky but really important for us to look at and going back to touch on what you said we do, and we do a number on our on our relationships when we are so set in, it's gotta be my way or no way. Not only do we tell the other person that we don't trust them, that we think they're incompetent, right, incapable, but we also tell our children that that other person is incompetent and incapable, and so that is what they believe about that parent as well, right? And it will impact their relationship with that parent as well.

Robin | It absolutely will. Yeah, it absolutely will. So I wanted to go back to the cult of busy. So this, this really is, like, a really big problem in our society, is how we are so consumed by being busy. And, you know, you talk about, like the art, or, I don't know if it's the words art, but it's like learning the unbusy, or learning the undoing, the non doing, non doing and how. And it's actually an active state. This is something that I have, just like in my life, I've adopted, and it's changed. It's changed so much in me, because I'm no longer filling my calendar just to fill it I was before it was like, I and even I don't even like to use the word busy, like, I don't want to use that word anymore, because like that, to me, is not like, fantastic to be like, I'm so busy. Like, I actually don't really, like, yes, I've got lots to do, and I'm gonna prioritize my time, actually, in such a in a more balanced way. Now, I'm very deliberate on, like, creating more space in my life, but I don't, I don't think we're there as a society,

Vanessa | no? And I mean, look at we have to also say that there's a lot of people who the idea of having space in their life is a privilege, right? I mean, that's gotten ourselves as a society so into, you know, people are killing themselves just to put food on the table. Yeah, they're barely surviving, right? And again, this is on purpose. This is all on purpose, because if we had space and we had time to question and we had time to rest, and we had time, then we have time to think, and then we have time again to challenge these systems that keep us perpetually busy, so that we do not ask the larger questions. We do not say, what do I really want for myself in this life? What fulfills me? What you know so part again, was me saying question, why you feel like you have to be perpetually busy, and I'm guilty of it too, right? This is not like me saying, Oh, me too. Anybody? I mean, shit. I was just having a conversation with John yesterday about it with Costa Rica, right where I said, I looked around and I went, Wow, I'm trying to fill my calendar. I'm feeling guilty that I have a light day and that I can go to the beach in the middle of the day, and I'm watching it happen. We're all kind of guilty of this. It's the society that we live in. But it is a sickness and it and it is, I call it a cult for a reason, you know.

Robin | So how are you, like, how are you helping people with that? Like, what would be some ways that we can just even, like, tell me, what are you doing in your own life? Like, like, you just said, it's just, like, it's just being aware, like, becoming okay, I'm doing this. I'm actually going to take, put it in my calendar that I'm going to take an hour just to do, do nothing that's.

Vanessa | Mean, that's one big way, and I've been doing that for years, which is like, if I don't schedule in movement, if I don't schedule in a workout, it won't get done. So for years, I've been putting it on my calendar, and I treat it like a meeting, and it can't be moved, right? So that's definitely one way to do it. And you have to guard it. You can't let other people kind of sway you, if you will. That's one way. The other way that I like to talk about a lot. I think I even talked about this in the book, was I had a moment when I was reading untamed forever ago by Glennon Doyle, where I loved that part, where she talks about watching Abby sitting watching soccer, and how she knows

Robin | she was just so mad, yes, right?

Vanessa | And so I've used that with clients so often since I've read that, which is like noticing that voice in your mind that does the must be nice, because we've all got it. And when that must be nice, well, not, I shouldn't say we've all got it. Those of us who have been kind of raised to hustle and raised in this kind of over functioning, I have to prove my sense of worth by producing and achieving right? We're the ones that tend to have that voice more ingrained. So notice when the must be nice creeps in and question it. Pay attention to it. Turn towards it with compassion. We don't need to judge ourselves for it. But where does that come from? Why does this person, in my mind, have to justify their rest? Why do they have to ask permission to rest? And why do I feel like I have to ask permission to rest? Right? Because you know this, but always, always, when something is activating about somebody else, there's an opportunity there for us to turn and run on ourselves and say, what's going on internally for me, right? What is that projection? What's the hook there into my shadow? And so that must be nice. I think is a really good way to, like, turn inward and do some of that shadow work around busyness and

Robin | worth, yeah, that's what so much of like. That's so much that your work is, it's about, it's depth, depth psychology, right? It's so much about introspection and our soul and how it's like, it's like the marriage between me, individual and the collective, and just all of it, right, mind, body, spirit, soul, Shadow, work, I've just started, like, I don't, I don't know if a lot of people even understand what that is like. Can you give us a really brief what, what is that? Because I've just started learning more about this Vanessa. Like, I didn't really know a lot about even what that meant. What shadow? Can you explain it to us?

Vanessa | Yeah, so shadow is a, I mean, it's a Jungian term, and, you know, there's a couple more modern takes on Shadow Work that have become very successful and make a lot of money, but don't really give credit where credit's due. So shadow work is really about understanding that as we grow up, there are parts of ourselves, that society, our family of origin, perhaps our school, perhaps our you know, our community. People are saying, No, that's not acceptable. You know, you can't you can't act like that. You can't be like that. That part of you is not acceptable, and for whatever reason. And so as we learn to move through the world. We slowly take those parts of ourself and we put them in what Jung called the shadow, right? And kind of lock the key. And as we're creating the shadow, we're simultaneously kind of creating the persona, which is, this is the way I will move through the world. This is the mask that I will wear so that I am socially acceptable. Now, to a certain extent that's necessary. We live in a social society. We learn the social rules and how to move and how to exist, right? But what happens when the shadow is not looked at is it actually is the thing that's calling the shots. It lives in the unconscious. It they whatever components we're talking about are relegated to the unconscious, and as so long as they are in the unconscious, they have far more control over how we act than we want to believe that they do. And so it seems scary to us to actually look at these parts of ourselves, but the more we bring them into the light and work to integrate them, the less control over us they actually have. So I'll give a quick example, because it was really helpful for me when I first started doing shadow work, when I was in grad school, I remember there was a woman that was in my cohort who would sit in the front, in the middle every class, and would get on these kind of like, what I would call like a tangent, where she would be in almost like a one on one dialog with the teacher, seemingly unaware of anybody else around her, right? So just asking questions about her own experience and her personal experience and what. And it was like nobody else existed, right? And around her, we would all be like, hello, like, can we get back to the teaching? Or, like, Can we at least talk about something that's relevant to the other 30 people in the room? Right? And she had this pattern of doing it a lot, so Danae and I to talk about her again, my best friend, we were doing shadow work in class, and I brought this up, and she said, you know, what's interesting about that is what, what are the ways, or, like, the character or personality traits do you find so activating about this person? And I said, Well, there's a seeming like, like a selfishness or like a takes up so much space, with disregard to everybody around her, right? And so we. Obviously went one way, which was like, Well, who else in your life, you know, parental figures that like had this kind of personality, and that's why it's so activating for you. Then we went into shadow, which is, I wonder if there's parts of you who wish you could take up more space, who wish that you weren't always so concerned with everybody else, everybody else being okay all the time, and it was like, like, I remember my head just like, exploding and being like, oh my god, she activates me, because there is some part of me that feels jealous of her ability to just be like, I don't give a shit about anybody else. It's all about me. Now. Do I want to live exactly like that? No, but there is a part of me that wishes I wasn't so always concerned about everybody else in the room, right? And so that's just an example of how you actually could tangibly work with activation as a way to do your own shadow work, right?

Robin | So I think what your story around Candice also illustrated was that shadow work, for instance, right? It's like, what you helped her see was that by her actually not wanting to go on, like she was making all these excuses, really, for not wanting to go away for the weekend to really learn more about her craft, that she wanted to, you know, she wanted to become a stylist, but she was hiding behind those excuses because of her fear, right? That's right of not succeeding, not being great at being a stylist or or being or somehow being replaced by her husband or her kids, not turning to her for everything, because she was getting so much out of that, right? So that would be an example of the shadow showing itself to her so that, so that actually she could address that part of herself. It's nothing that we need to fear looking at our shadow sides. And actually, the truth is, we need to look at the shadow sides of ourselves, because we both, we all have dark and light and shadow, right?

Vanessa | That's right. That's right. And that's it. I mean, it's, it's being able to look at these different individual parts of ourselves and bring them into the light with compassion and with understanding, right? Because that's really what they're desiring. They're desiring to be seen. They're desiring to be heard and understood. So that you can say, oh, I can understand why you feel that way. That makes sense, right? You don't have to do that anymore, because you can trust that I've got this. Like, It's okay even if I am rejected by a job, right? Like, let's use Candice as the example, even if my kids do start to lean more on their dad, and it starts to make me question my role and my worth and my value as a mother. I It's okay for me to look at that, and I'm gonna be okay through that process, right? And so yeah, to your point, that's a really good example of how we can use something like that to be able to see those parts of ourselves, yes.

Robin | And the great thing is that she did go on that weekend, and she did start pursuing what was giving her joy and lit her up and, and that, you know, like, all the things you just talked about, like, all that did probably happen, right? The dynamics of her family changed. But, yes, she but she was raised up in order to, like, it's all, it all work, works out, right? Yeah.

Vanessa | And look at it wasn't perfect, right? She's still struggling perfect. There's that very perfect. And also, like, her kids got a lot more resilient. Her kids were able to, like, stop relying on her for so much, she started feeling a little bit of breathing room. And it was terrifying for her. And also it was great for everybody involved. Yeah.

Robin | And you point out in your book so many times over and over again, the paradox in life. I mean, it's full of it at all times, right? That's right. I can, I can be grieving right now, but also, you know, laugh like, you know, we are enjoying, we can hold the dichotomy. That's right. I just think that's right, we there's, there's a lot of gray, okay, I wanted to talk about the story you shared. It was so good, Vanessa, because I think as women, we've or people, we've done this before, the tattoo story, oh my gosh, that this is all a part of, like, the, let me see, keep holding up again. I want to see this.

Vanessa | Notice how all of my work is so, like, dainty and pretty, and then you have this, like, giant black, dark tattoo. So for those who are not watching, it's just very dense,

Robin | yes, but you know, this story illustrates how, so this is part like, this was like part of your choose me wound how right around how we will bypass our own inner knowing. Because it's like, that's like, we're so we were, so we're so programmed to do that, like a lot, and in order to not, what would you say, not, like,

Vanessa | rock the boat. Like, not rock the boat, yeah, yeah, yep.

Robin | And it was a big thing, right? Because you had planned to have this matching tattoo with your sister, and you found, can you tell the story, please, Vanessa and how? Yeah, yeah.

Vanessa | So I call this my ugly tattoo story, and I was telling this story for years in my codependency recovery groups, and then I was like, Oh, this has a place in the book as well, because what you're speaking to right this choose me wound. It's like the center of so much of our codependency work, and it's all about how we've been programmed to contort and twist and change ourselves to make. Make other people comfortable, to make sure other people are okay, right? To make sure that I've always got a smile on my face and I'm always agreeable, right? The good girl complex for a lot of us. And so my sister and I, during covid, we wanted to get a matching tattoo. It was kind of early days, so people really weren't still sure what was going on, and a lot of the tattoo shops were closed. There happened to be one that was open, and so we just did a walk in appointment, and immediately, when I walked in, there was one tattoo artist there, and I knew immediately in my body, I did not like his energy. I just knew it. I couldn't put a finger on it, right, but it's like, you have that knowing. And so we showed him the picture of what we wanted, and it was fine line. That's all the work that I have on my body is done with very fine lines. And he was like, oh, yeah, totally so easy, very easy tattoo, super quick I'll do for both of you, whatever. And my everything, my body was just like, I don't like him. I don't like him. I don't like this. And then there was, like, you know, there was a couple subtle things, like, he had a couple like, creepy comments he made to my younger sister. And it was just watching myself outside of myself, like, yeah, grit my teeth and kind of smile and nod along. And sure enough, sit down, get this tattoo, and I look down and it is so the opposite of fine line. It is so dark and so heavy and so thick and just exactly the opposite of what I would have ever wanted or gotten for myself. And I didn't say no. I couldn't say no. I didn't say, No, I kept going. And so now, you know, part of me wants to get it removed, and part of me realizes it's a forever reminder not to pull that shit again.

Robin | Awesome. Well, I love that. And you know, I think when I read that story, I just was like, we can all relate to this. It's like times when we've just totally bypassed what we know is like, not right for us, and it's in service of fake. It's you think it's like, just to keep the peace or but and you end up with a freaking tattoo for the rest of your life. Well, no, you're looking at getting it removed. But anyways, it's a good story, even though, like, it's just a good learning

Vanessa | when I tell you, I mean, obviously you have daughters too, I'm like, I use that as an example, almost, of like, how I will make sure that my daughter is not raised. I mean, she is so I don't know this generation is so fascinating to me because they are just raised with a language and with an ability to just stand unapologetically in what they want and who they are that, you know, there are times I'll laugh. I'll say to my friend, how is she the daughter of a people pleaser? It's fascinating to me. She'll be like, No, I do not want that. And I'm like, Okay, fair enough.

Robin | You know, you know what? I really I don't know where I read this, but I actually do believe it to be true. It's like, each generation, and this is not about becoming better than that's not what this is about. But it's like, I really hope to God that it's like we're taking our learnings and each generation we are getting we we are like, operating from our truer selves, right? I believe that. And as as we learn and we grow, we are evolving, that's the whole point of this, right?

Vanessa | And she's my guru, right? I mean, I look at her every day and I'm like, Teach me. Teach me the ways of not caring what other people think of you. You know, I need more of it. Yeah, we're

Robin | here to be each other's teachers. Like I'm not teaching my kids all the time. They're teaching me so much. And that's the beauty of life. It really is. So I thank you for the work you're doing in this world, because it's very it's very important work, and you're helping so many. You've taught me so much, and thank you so much.

Vanessa | Thank you, Rob. And I would say the same thing for you, just always, always in awe of all the things you're doing and all the things you're bringing to this world. So right back at you, sister,

Robin | I'm going to close with a blessing for us with your words, really from your learnings this week. Okay, may we come together as families, sisterhoods and communities, to extend ways to support, listen and uplift one another at all the stages of our parenting journey. May we be reminded that every step we take toward healing, even in the micro moments, brings us closer to coming home to our true selves, and maybe remember that the journey of self discovery, love and life is ongoing, a lifelong process that invites us to constantly grow and evolve. And I really, I hope that all of our listeners take that to heart, because we're all human. We're here to do this together. Really love to learn how to grow and evolve together, and we need each other to do that. That's right.

Vanessa | And it's a journey to your point, it's never ending. And that's not said in like, Oh God, it's never ending way it's Ted is like, this is exciting. You forever and ever get to be in a mode of discovery and learning and changing and evolving. And that's actually really beautiful.

Robin | It is. It is so beautiful. So thank you. Vanessa Bennett,

Vanessa | Thank you, Robin.

Thank you so much for being here with us. Let's talk. Love is brought to you by real love ready and hosted by Robin Ducharme. If you'd like to keep learning with us, visit realloveready.com for more resources and tools to boost your relational skills and get better at love. If this podcast has resonated with. You. It would mean the world to us if you could take just 30 seconds to do these three things, follow or subscribe. Never miss an episode by hitting the follow or subscribe button wherever you listen to your podcasts, whether it's Apple podcasts Spotify or your favorite app, this makes sure new episodes show up automatically for you, and it helps us get more visibility so more people can find our show. Leave a rating and review. Your feedback means everything to us. By leaving a five star rating and a thoughtful review, you're not only showing your support, but also helping others discover the podcast, share an episode that really spoke to you with someone in your life, whether it's a friend, partner or family member, your recommendation could just be what they need to hear. We at real love ready acknowledge and express gratitude for the Coast Salish people, the stewards of the land on which we work and play. And encourage you to take a moment to acknowledge and express gratitude for those that have stewarded and continue to steward the land that you live on as well many blessings and much love.