Are you tired of struggling in silence, join me as I get real with Erica Djossa about the deep-rooted struggles that so many of us face in our journey through motherhood. Erica opens up about her personal experiences and the common threads she has identified through her work with women, both personally and professionally.
We delve into the invisible burdens mothers carry, the societal expectations placed upon them, and the pervasive ideology of intensive mothering. Erica shares invaluable insights on how moms can start to dismantle these pressures, redefine their roles, and reclaim their time. Whether you’re a new mom or a seasoned parent, this conversation is sure to offer empathy, understanding, and actionable steps towards finding fulfillment in motherhood.
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TRANSCRIPT
Monica Packer: Erica Djossa, welcome to About Progress.
Erica Djossa: Thank you so much for having me. I love that your community pinged me to connect us and I’m so excited to be here.
Monica Packer: Well, they always have the best suggestions. Last week I interviewed Casey Davis, who they recommended. And I’m like, okay, yeah, you guys just know, you know where it’s at. Because when I fell into your world, I just can’t seem to fall back out of it.
It’s such an amazing community that you have built up. And we’re here to talk today about why moms struggle so much in motherhood. And there’s a lot of reasons. And I know that we’re not here to just give like. You know, blanket statements on why that is, but there are a lot of common things and threads that we all have interwoven with our own experiences with motherhood.
So I would like to know for you, why have you struggled within your own motherhood journey and why you have also seen this in women that you have both worked with personally and professionally and what the common threads are.
Erica Djossa: yeah. It’s interesting because I feel like there was this storm brewing in my, like I had three boys in the span of three and a half years,
and in retrospect, I struggled to adjust, With the first, I had a lot of anxiety and intrusive thoughts and trouble sleeping. The second, it was a little bit, like he was a little bit easy going.
I don’t know. It was a bit different, but then with my third, it kind of all came to a head and I write about it really candidly and openly in the beginning of my book where I was trying to get the kids out the door, and I had been trying so hard to just kind of like, grit my teeth and prove that I could do this motherhood thing right, you know,
Monica Packer: Mm
Erica Djossa: and that I could keep up, and I could do it perfectly, and I could, like everybody else appears to be doing it, Why do I feel like I’m struggling?
Why can’t I do it? And this real sort of facade to feel like I had to be the one to do it all.
And ultimately, uh, it led to this breakdown turn breakthrough that I talk, uh, that I talk openly about. And I realized that I was suffering with postpartum depression and anxiety after my third and probably from my first and sort of pushing, pushing through. And. And that day, that moment for me to see, wait a minute, like I can’t carry it all. I shouldn’t have to carry it all.
Perfect is not the goal here. It kind of just like shattered this idea of perfectionism for me and allowed me to accept that I’m human and that it’s okay to struggle in this role. And I didn’t know maternal mental health was a specialty at that time.
I was working in children and family practice. I didn’t know to be on the lookout that this is such a high risk time for onset of mental health challenges for, for mothers, for women. And so I really niched down in this space and, um, took to social media to build my community and just create awareness and help people adjust in their role. And what I didn’t expect to do was come out the other end of that and advocate for some of these areas that I see that have an impact on. maternal mental health. So the division of labor in the home being a big piece of the puzzle, also understanding, um, that as women, our hormones and our emotions can be very interwoven with our mental health, not emotions in like a hystericalizing us type of way.
Not, not that, but I have ADHD, for example, and people with ADHD tend to be more sensitive to their fluctuations in hormones in their cycle,
which impacts mood and ability to function. And so I started to really niche down and understand also how our biology and the lack of research in,
you know, women’s bodies and lack of understanding.
Um, and I think understanding there is here plays such a role because we aren’t prepared when we enter postpartum, and we can struggle so significantly, but then we feel like, oh, was I not cut out for motherhood? Am I not? Was I not made for this? Like where are those instincts that I was, you
know, told would show up and things.
So to sum, to sum up what I think are some core factors here, the division of labor, just the high risk time biologically to struggle with our mental health during the adjustment to motherhood. And then this perfectionism piece that comes with the intensive mothering standards that that we are going to touch on that really causes to look out and see. What we think is like everybody doing it perfectly. And so we feel that we must be the only one who’s struggling in our role.
Monica Packer: And regardless of the factor, that’s what I feel like I keep coming back to is the self blame piece of how easy it is for us to fall for this trap that if we aren’t, quote unquote, mothering well, and that we’re not thriving in motherhood, or we don’t find it super fulfilling, that that means something’s broken about us when really it’s such a larger issue.
system at play that is broken, including these factors that you shared and how easily it is for people to, to just blame moms, to blame women. And also our hysteria, you know, for what we’re lacking. And instead of seeing the bigger picture that we’re in, we’re living in a faulty system to begin with.
Erica Djossa: Mm hmm. That’s one of the biggest things that I feel like I see with clients or with people who are struggling in the adjustment to motherhood and who feel like they need help or they’re drowning. Mm hmm. We often don’t seek help or support because we feel like it’s admitting that we are failing in our most important role.
It feels like we are admitting that we are flawed in some way. And the underlying belief or assumption there is that I believe that I should be able to do it all, and I’m struggling with that and I can’t. So when I ask for help, I’m admitting that I’m failing. And this belief that we should be able to do it all is. It’s displayed to us as if it’s on billboards everywhere throughout society, when really it is unrealistic to expect what we expect of one person. If we think back to 1950, 25 to 26 percent of mothers worked outside of the home. And now not even quite 75 years later, 86 to 87 percent of mothers work outside of the home. And yet. The vast majority of the domestic and care work still rests in mom’s domain to own, to be responsible for, to upkeep and orchestrate and manage and organize. Like, how did we as a generation who is mothering get defaulted into carrying all of these things? Like it is entirely unrealistic to expect of
Monica Packer: And I mean, there’s so much we can talk about with the division of labor, and I think we’ll touch on a bit. But the thing that has fascinated me the most about your work is the intensive mothering ideology. And I would like to spend some time there. Can you define that for us and explain how it works?
Erica Djossa: Yeah, so what I saw with clients who like Eve, we were talking about off air is a friend of mine. I love her system. I love fair play. It’s such a practical tool. And then I would have clients who would take that. They would do it with a very, like a willing partner at home and they would divide it out and they would find within like four to six weeks, they’d be back into the default patterns in the home.
And as a therapist working with these moms, I’m like, What the heck? Like, what’s going on here? And it really got my mind turning to understand what are the beliefs or assumptions that cause us to default assume this labor or have it be handed to us that keep us going in this way. And sociologists have deemed this the era of intensive mothering, where Their every generation or society or culture has sort of a, a construct or a set of norms that are expected of the mothering role. And right now, the majority of that for us in, you know, North America, Canada, U S is to, is this intensive mothering ideation. So what this means and what this includes is the expectation that you will. Give and be and do it all for your child. So that mothering should be time intensive, labor intensive,
resource intensive, and you should freely give of yourself and your time to your child. That their needs should come before your own and that Being a good mom equals martyring your own needs for the sake of your family.
Um, there’s also that you should be wholly satisfied with being a mom because you are best biologically suited to do this role and this should fulfill you. And this is really kind of counter the messaging we are, or I was raised with, where it’s like, You know, women are being like liberating and can shatter glass ceilings and can go after their goals and can do all the things they want to do, then they step into motherhood.
And it’s like, but you shouldn’t want to though, because mothering should be enough for you. That should fulfill you. You should, you should be satisfied. And so all of this has created a really sort of perfectionist, Intensive form of mothering where there are no boundaries, there are no factoring in of our needs, and there is an intense pressure that is felt to constantly be attuned to and zoomed in on our child and their needs in a very, um, like intense or just zoomed in ever present kind of way.
Monica Packer: Is this something that society has, this is a standard that society gave to us that we’ve internalized? Is that what that is? Like it’s, we’re doing it, even though it’s happened to us, we’re also doing it to ourselves.
Erica Djossa: Yes, so what this starts to look like is, if you imagine a filing drawer, and we have motherhood the label on it, and I imagine this as like you pull it and it like ever scrolls like infinitively scrolling out because from the time we could imagine. or store memories of what it means to be a mom. We’ve been collecting messages into this drawer in our minds, sort of in our being. So I might see in the shows that I’m watching growing up, what this mother, you know, how she behaves and what she does. And I might get my friend’s house and see how their moms perform. And I start to form this concept of what it means to be a good mom based on all the messages that I’m seeing.
seeing in society, in media and entertainment, in my family of origin, you know, and, and my upbringing, culture, religion, all of those things. And so then when I step into motherhood. And I go to pull on some form of like manual or guide or roadmap. I go ruffling through this drawer that is so jam packed full of junk mail that I didn’t even intentionally mean to put in there.
But it’s all of these things that I’ve observed and internalized over time. And this is what actually forms what we think it means to be a good mom. From these external messages and the things that we’ve put into this drawer, but really it’s often based on those external pressures, not rooted in our values and not really according to research what makes for healthy, thriving children, which is usually why we want to be a good mom.
Like we want to raise well adjusted children and have a strong relationship with them. But many of these things usually are not directly tethered to that in any kind of way. They usually actually equal domestic labor. Being good at domestic labor, keeping house well, keeping well behaved, well manicured children, and they really are not really tethered to anything of substance usually.
Monica Packer: It’s fascinating how easy it is to slip into those definitions without us defining it for ourselves. And I think it would help to know what the research does say about it so that maybe for that first step is to redefine what does it look like to be a good mom? What does research tell us about that?
Erica Djossa: So it doesn’t specifically say good mom because that’s so subjective, right?
But what it means, like, we want to have well adjusted, healthy children. And what is required in order to do that? A healthy, well mom
is one of the key ingredients. And somebody who is dependable and reliable over time, who is like a safe space that your child knows that they can return back to at any time that they need something.
So there’s a safety, a trust, and it is about showing up over time.
In a reliable, independable way. So it’s not about the quantity of time that I’m going to sit down and give you all of my attention all today and feel like I need to be zoomed in and on every moment. It’s that they know consistently they’re going to get their five magic minutes with you at bedtime where they have your undivided attention and you’re going to talk to them about the friend who pushed them at daycare or whatever it is. Right? So, it’s really about that relationship with them
over time. But
really what I hear people when they’re evaluating themselves, being a good mom means really like, it’s not really equated to any of those things usually.
Monica Packer: I have a friend, Dr. Julie Hanks, who talks about this a lot, that mothering is, uh, not a role. It’s a relationship. And that’s what you just described to me. It’s so fascinating to get the research that backs it up. It’s the relationship. And when I think about my mom, you know, she parented seven kids and a lot of it solo parenting because my dad had a very intense job.
She was that mom. She was just like, I always knew she was there. I wouldn’t say she was a helicopter mom. It was constantly in my orbit and like taking care of everything for me. I was telling a friend the other day that I like went all of seventh grade, not wearing a bra because I didn’t know I was supposed to, like,
I just didn’t know yet, you know, like things like that, but it wasn’t because it was, she wasn’t in my business all the time, but she was there, so it’s helping me see.
Oh, That’s what matters. It’s, it’s that relationship. How fascinating. Okay. Well, this is, oh, go ahead, please.
Erica Djossa: No, and one other thing I’ll add to this is that that relationship doesn’t require us to be perfect. I think a lot of us think of our relationship with our child as this fragile thing that can crack and shatter
at any moment. But I like to envision it as being a rubber band that has some flexibility and some give to it for us to be human, for us to make mistakes, for us to, you know, maybe lose our cool and repair.
And it doesn’t. Thank you. It doesn’t have that, uh, like rigidity or fragility to it that it feels like it has
Monica Packer: Mm hmm.
Erica Djossa: stakes moments or when we lose our cool and we’re really feeling down on ourselves. Right? So that’s also important to note. Cause it’s so counter this cultural message of mothering, being nurturing, patient, kind, and, and doing this in such a perfect way for fear of harming or traumatizing our child.
Right? Like that’s just, it’s unrealistic. One and two, again, not. Based in any kind of research about how real relationships play out over time.
Monica Packer: I’m thinking about even relationships outside of parenting, like my marriage relationship is not perfect, but it’s good, you know, and that’s, that’s what we need that it’s not the goal. It’s not perfection. So with that, I feel like we’ve gotten some good information. I think it’s always helpful to know the truth so that we can remove the self blame and understand there’s bigger things at play.
Um, and that can feel really illuminating, but also, uh, slightly hopeless, you know, cause it can be like overwhelming. Well, how can I fix society or how can I fix how the division of labor is happening in my home? Like overnight, like that’s a lot and I’m the one who’s going to have to figure that out.
Whew. So let’s just take a deep breath here. And I would like to move into some things they can begin to do today that can help them You know, strengthen this relationship we’ve been talking about to find more fulfillment in motherhood, just feel like they are struggling less, um, both personally and in their motherhood.
So what would you say are some tangible ways they can start to make progress in that journey today?
Erica Djossa: One of the first steps that needs to happen is making the invisible visible, and I call this in the book, my aha moment, where I saw the invisible. Uh, tasks that are underneath the iceberg for the first time in a real tangible way, we get handed this invisible backpack of all of these essential tasks that are undervalued, not seen, but we must carry them and they’re default handed to mom a lot of the time and we feel the weight of them. Like we feel the weight of the responsibility. Like anyone who I speak to can describe the almost smothering feeling that that can come with. And it grows exponentially with the more children that you have. But to articulate it, to to know what it is exactly we’re talking about, because it’s not one big task.
It’s like a thousand tiny little cognitive tasks that are hard to sum up. So in the book, I actually create what are called load maps, where I create Try to take some of the labor of figuring out how to express this off of your hands. And I map out the invisible pieces of being the one that feeds the family or being the one who manages laundry or these kind of like key components of childcare and, and household labor. And when you make that visible, one, you can be compassionate with yourself and say, Holy smokes, look at the volume of things I am carrying. And then two, you have this concrete list of things that you manage that are now a jump off point to have some constructive conversations with your partner about who is going to take ownership over what, and that is the other piece here, practically, is to just pause for a moment and ask yourself, How did I get ownership over these tasks to begin with? Was there a conscious conversation that we had? Was I, did I default kind of autopilot, assume this labor and same with my partner because these are how roles were modeled for us. Were these tasks assigned to me and I’m like pulling them out of the backpack realizing, wait a minute, my signature was forged on here. Like I didn’t subscribe myself to this. And just entertaining, unpacking that for a moment. What we’ll usually see is that we, on autopilot, step into these norms and roles, these parenting roles, and without question, because this is like the air we breathe, this is the water we’re swimming in, it’s not, we don’t think to even evaluate how we’re going to do these things initially. And that’s understandable. And part of my book is to be that guide to help you do that so that, you know, you have that. A roadmap forward and don’t feel like you’re free falling without any structure or direction
Monica Packer: And I’m, I would love some examples of those icebergs that you talked about, how there’s a tip of the iceberg, like something that we can see on the outside, like maybe Signing our kids up for sports or, you know, or whatever it may be, but what’s underneath the iceberg. So can you give us a couple of those iceberg examples?
Erica Djossa: Yeah, I talk about one, my aha moment in the book, it was over a mountain of laundry that I had. I was eight to 10 weeks or so postpartum with my third and like, you know, young children and we are a family of five. My husband would wash the laundry, transfer it to the dryer. My role was to fold and put it away. And it must’ve been several weeks and this mountain is just growing, kind of staring me in the face. And every time I walk by it, I’m like, what kind of capable adult can’t just fold laundry and put it away? Like, why is this so difficult for me? And like, you know, would berate myself or be self critical. And it wasn’t until I stepped into curiosity to say, why am I struggling with this so much? What is my resistance here that I can’t get myself to do this task? It turns out that it was a changeover in season. So I had to rotate all three of the boys dressers. From one season to another, I had to get clothes from the basement, to start to rotate the sizes, write a list of what was needed, what we didn’t have for each size, go and source those items to make sure they had it.
And before I realized it, I had four to six hours of physical, tangible labor to do as a result of just trying to fold and put that laundry away. And that is Just one example of so many tasks that we manage in the home that come with this depth of cognitive planning, researching, anticipating, sourcing of things before we even get to the physical folding and putting away of the laundry itself.
Monica Packer: Another one that comes up a lot for me and my community is, uh, feeding the
Erica Djossa: Mm
Monica Packer: you know, even beyond just, taking stock of what’s, It’s in the pantry and, and meal planning and shopping and prepping and all of that. Evrosky talks about this in her book about carrying around the mustard preferences in your head of every family member.
Like you’re mentally knowing, Oh, so and so doesn’t like this brand or, Ooh, they don’t like this food, you know? So it’s, it’s so much more than we ever really think.
Erica Djossa: And if you do all of that labor, like if you do the researching of all the recipes, the creating of the inventory lists and the tracking of all the lists and the planning of what meals are going to happen, what day is making sure all the ingredients are there and you consider preferences and you even plan out what dinner is going to be tonight. Asking your partner to make the dinner is like the least. And then you’re left still to manage, okay, now we’re out of this because this was used up. And then we’re back into that cycle again, and that is work, that is labor, that is valuable. Many of our partners get paid, whether it’s project management or managerial roles, or to fulfill this type of labor that they are capable of doing in workplace environments.
So it’s not for lack of they can’t do it or they might not see it because they might not have been expected to see it. And that’s why I make this, I help to make it visible. So you have a place to really concretely discuss and plan through, but they, they are capable. It’s just that they haven’t been expected to do it in the same way that we have.
Monica Packer: So for, for those who have been doing some of this work and they’re making invisible visible and they’re questioning how they’ve got ownership of these tasks,
what other tips can you give them on how to move forward with that information?
Erica Djossa: Yeah, through recognizing your values and holding the, now what you see. This invisible labor up to your values and seeing whether it aligns. Is it an external pressure you feel, or is it something that really is in alignment with what you feel like you need to do in motherhood?
So like, obviously we’re talking about laundry and feeding. These are essential components
that we can’t scrap, but there are potentially things about them that we can change up. Like your guest, Casey Davis, and I’ve had her on and had some great conversations and, and cite her in the book talking about keeping house.
Like. We can maybe scrap some of the societal rules about how laundry should be done and just kind of like my kids have their clothes in baskets in their closet in a way that is just more functional for all of us.
So we can like start to emphasize function versus these external pressures. But then also going through our values and understanding what is important to us and what a good mom means to us, then we can determine whether some of these external expectations even need to be carried at all. Like, I think about, um, I don’t know, Big birthday parties or bit like a Pinterest worthy like lunches or just things where maybe you do them and you sincerely enjoy them and all the power to you. Like, I love to plan a birthday party, but now my kids don’t want me to because they want to do their own thing and I
can’t, I can’t
control it like their one year old birthday.
I could, right. Um, but I, I love to plan and do things like that and curate it, but. I also cannot do it and it doesn’t feel like it weighs in on my worth as a mom, or I’m
not failing because I didn’t do the whole big production for the birthday. We just did pizza and movies and a sleepover or something, and it doesn’t change my value and my worth. So there’s a lot that we are carrying that is not essential that we don’t need to be carrying based on, you know, things we see in the expectations of others. And then there is some work that we can do even in the essential things that we are carrying that we can either streamline or make more functional for us in a way that works for our family versus trying to adopt something that wasn’t built for us.
Monica Packer: Some of, of what you’re describing here feels like a dance and, you know, often an, an internal one, starting here, starting with what we can control the most, which are our own expectations of ourselves, our own values, our own decisions about where we’re going to stay in alignment with those, Determining what’s essential and non essential.
And then it moves into outward changes. And this is where, I mean, you literally wrote a book on all this. So we’re just going to say that it’s a whole other conversation on how, what to do from there. And I would advise them to check out your book, Releasing the Motherload. But I do want to touch on one big factor and it’s kind of the elephant in the room almost, you know, for a For many of us who have a partner, and most often in my community, that’s a husband who to pass off what is not essential or essential, but can be, can be done by someone else, that is a whole other ball game that women are so.
Needing to go there, but so terrified of doing it.
Because of the disruption it will cause within relationships, the, the worry over them being unwilling, the other, another whole task that they have to manage themselves of, of, of distributing the labor. Huh. It’s a lot. So I just want to ask you what you would say to the woman who are scared of that giant piece of this puzzle.
Erica Djossa: hmm. It’s interesting because you’re describing a pattern in which there is an over functioner and an under functioner. Right? And it’s not always in the underfunctioner’s best interest to step into functioning more in a partnership or relationship. There’s more required of them. But more being required of them is not a bad thing.
It actually benefits them. builds their confidence in their role. It builds their relationships with their children. And the question of whether a partner is willing or not is one that comes up a lot in conversations I have with people and the experience working with the families that I’ve worked with is that the vast majority of, of partners or fathers have been willing, but they show up in a way that it’s like, how can I help? You know, give me a list and I’ll support you. And they don’t realize that the real need here is ownership over the domain versus support within the domain.
And, and so I think that when we go through releasing the mother load or go through doing some of the work ourselves, then we can have more productive conversations.
There’s also another piece of this where if I think that being a good mom means Um, doing these things, this is tethered to my identity and my role as a mom. Then when I ask you to do it or I hand it over to you, or you take ownership over it and then, you know, with my husband and then you put hot dogs and something on the table, which we have hot dogs all the time, I’m not bashing hot dogs, but like, you know, and, and it’s not what I expect or think that it should be. It feels like a reflection on me. It feels like I’m failing in some way and I’m going to step back into that labor and I’m going to pick it back up. So there’s this dance that happens between willing partners, but us also not having done this identity work that we cycle through
this pattern often. And so there’s some identity work that we have to do to be able to have the tolerance. That we need to build to release some of this and then there’s also the making it visible and having these constructive conversations with our partner so that they can understand that there is an ownership component here.
I don’t want to be your delegator. I don’t want to be your manager. I want you to stay.
Um, I don’t want to see this labor now that it’s mapped out here for you and to own it, and I don’t want to have any piece in carrying that. And so, there’s a, there’s a couple of pieces here, but it’s hopeful to me that a lot of the people I speak with, there is a willing partner. And for those who aren’t and are not with a partner who is willing, then we have bigger relationship challenges that we need to be, you know, speaking about or seeing somebody about.
Because if they’re not valuing Your position in the family or the work that you do, or, you know, not supporting you, whether it’s emotionally, physically, whatever, psychologically, then that becomes what needs to be addressed more than the division of labor initially.
Cause that, you know, we need that support. I need to have, uh, that teamwork established.
Monica Packer: I’m grateful you’d be frank about that because it’s almost, it’s almost good for a woman to know. That if they can’t fix that part of this dance so quickly, or if it doesn’t happen overnight, that it’s not that there’s not hope for your relationship. It’s just that there’s deeper identity, you know, issues within a relationship that almost need to be taken care of.
And that will give you the path forward to make bigger change over time. And while that can be really scary because the end may be unknown, honestly, in my experience, and I would say both personally and professionally, What happens in the long road is so much better.
Erica Djossa: Mm
Monica Packer: So much good awaits. And maybe that’s where we need to end is to give them that little target that they’re moving towards.
What changes when we’re able to let go of what we’ve internalized ourselves about what it means to be a good mom. When we’re able to do away with the non essentials, when we’re able to pass off and better distribute this labor that we have taken on, what are they looking forward to?
Erica Djossa: Mm hmm. I’ll just add that. While we are in that figuring out of our relationship, or even if we’re a solo single
parent, there are still things that we can unload and do in the interim that,
you know, are a life raft for us. Like we don’t have to maintain this stance of drowning while, you know, waiting on our partner to figure out.
There’s a lot that we can release independently outside of that, in that process. So just asterisk that and, and the
book takes you.
through that.
So in doing this work, it’s kind of like, yes, there is some unlearning to do upfront, right? And, and for sure in the throes of early postpartum or any time of mothering, it doesn’t necessarily sound appealing to have one more thing to, to figure out or to work on. And I face that. But when we do this work, we are laying down boundaries and patterns that free us. So I stepped into motherhood and I did not have any, uh, like awareness that my time would be spoken for. It would be spoken for in domestic labor, it would be spoken for in care work, and all of that would be so consuming that there would be no space left for anything else. And it’s not even because it was consciously decided, like, that’s just what, what was expected or how the cookie crumbled based on these norms that we talked about. So in challenging these norms and these patterns and, and redistributing, or even just letting go of, frankly, some of the things that are expected, we buy our self capacity and space. We buy back our time. And then, like, we get this, this pocket for ourselves to, whether it’s rediscover our identity, explore our hobbies and interests. I built an entire platform and company out of that space. And if I didn’t redistribute that labor, there would have been no capacity or brain space for that whatsoever. And, um, That what that looks like and how that gets used and what pulls you in when you buy that time back is so unique to every person, but it frees up your space to play, become curious, find yourself again, and do something for you that just in turn makes you show up in your role in a more satisfied and happy and fulfilled way.
Monica Packer: And to me, that’s the number one word there is that fulfillment, you know, happy and fulfilled and how that can look so different for each of us. I think if anything, they can have that permission from you that Mothering gets to look as different as there are mothers, like as many mothers. And, and it’s, it’s more about you and your relationship, your experience with it and how that’s going to trickle down to your family.
This has been phenomenal. I want them to check out your book, Releasing the Motherload. Is there anything about the book you would like them to know? Just based off this conversation, how is it the next best step for them?
Erica Djossa: I walk you through it. I act as your guide. I’m not leaving you free falling. I’m not leaving
you with questions and then not providing some solutions for you. So it is a really like thoughtful, tangible guide to help walk you through these assumptions. So if you feel like you want to do this work and you have no idea where to start, Start and it feels maybe a little bit chaotic in this moment. I am like your kind and reassuring coach through this journey. And I call out the assumptions. I give you the reframes that I try to do as much of this work for you along this journey as possible, because, uh, we’re just going for that and end result of you, uh, finding yourself again and buying back some of that space.
So it doesn’t have to feel so hard. I support you throughout the process.
Monica Packer: Okay. I love that practical guide to move you through all of it. Fabulous. And also you have a podcast and an Instagram platform that they should know about. Can you tell us more about those and where they should head?
Erica Djossa: So MomWell podcast, MomWell on Instagram, MomWell. com. And that is my maternal mental health platform. We’ve got, uh, specialized therapists across Canada and the U. S. that help to support moms and families. Lots of free content and downloads to support your adjustment to motherhood and beyond.
Monica Packer: Fabulous. Okay. Erica, we always end with a final question. You know, we’ve talked a lot and we’ve covered a lot of ground here, but is there one thing you would recommend they can do based off of this conversation? What would that one small thing be?
Erica Djossa: Mm hmm. It’s really that ownership, like pull that invisible backpack in front of you, open it up, start to take out even just one task and say, did I put my name on this or was this assigned to me? Even just one small thing and just start there and then maybe each day or once a week you take out another task and you question where that ownership came from and honestly that will just change things in such big ways.
Monica Packer: Thank you. Oh, I’ve enjoyed my time so much with you. Thank you for being here.
Erica Djossa: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. Okay.
Monica Packer: Okay. That’s it. I’ll stop the recording here. I was so good.
Um, and so in terms of. Sorry, I’m gonna
Erica Djossa: pause and remember your question. Yes. You’re talking about sorry change target where we’re headed. Oh,
why like
Monica Packer: What’s on the other side? Yeah. Yeah. How will things get better?
