A Fireside Chat about the Challenges of Mothering & Motherhood

Hayley Anderson and Lisa Jara shed light on the hardships and challenges parents, especially mothers, face in our modern societies and the impact their normalization (“That’s just how it is.”) has on the individual person’s nervous system and well-being.

Talking with friends, I often hear that they experience motherhood or parenthood as a lot harder than they would have imagined. And I believe it’s in part due to the distorted societal views on what it means to be a mother/parent in this world and the unrealistic expectations placed on them.

My guest Hayley Anderson and I are here to shed light on the hardships and challenges parents, and especially mothers, face and how harmful it can be to normalize them by insisting “They’re normal.”, “That’s just how it is.” and “It’ll get easier”.

We dive into:

• The impact normalizing the challenges of mothering and motherhood/parenthood has on your well-being
• Why it’s true that “it takes a village to raise a child”
• What birth story medicine work is and how it can help you process your birth experience
• How to release and heal internalised shame
• The healing gift of being present with another person

Resources we mentioned:

Book a Free Curiosity Call with me, for a happy, healthy period or happy, health (peri)menopause experience!

Connect with Hayley through her website or on Instagram

About Hayley:
Hayley is a mother working to restore life-sustaining connections between body, cycles, soul and the land that supports us. Through her offerings as a birth story listener, sensory herbalist and fertility awareness method educator, she guides menstruators and birthing people towards easeful fertility cycles and matriarchal post-birth experiences.

She is passionate about creating a menstrual health culture where the cycle is understood as an initiatory pathway to wellness, wisdom, elderhood, cultural and ecological restoration. Her work offers a place for our experiences and stories around fertility, conception, pregnancy, birth, postpartum, matrescence to be witnessed and honoured for the power and significance they carry.