(00:01) I believe the recording I recommend more than any other is my victimless mothering Workshop which is the product of 14 years of motherhood where I help smoke out the reflexive control-based habits of unconscious parenting and specifically the way that conditional love hides in the well-meaning holistic Mama Vibes of a woman like me who is so convinced that she’s ending all the abuse of her motherline by imposing rules meant to protect her kids against toxic food Tech and Pharma I have been humbled and I’ve seen some darkness in
(00:37) my own righteousness and in the holistic health mothering world so I want to open the conversation and I think it went really well so I’d love to share these recordings with you and attendee said I was pretty emotional during the call I journaled like 10 pages afterwards my husband told me I looked happier already and I feel lighter that call with Kelly felt like 10 years of therapy in 1 hour it cut through to the core so I hope you’ll check it out and commit with me to truly ending victim Consciousness and
(01:09) fear-based parenting in all of the places that it hides the link is in show [Music] notes I’m Dr Kelly Brogan you may know me as a New York Times bestselling author of a book with an exploding pill on the cover Renegade psychiatrist pul dancer or honorary member of the disinformation Dozen what can I say I’m a born provocator I’ve spent most of my recent life exposing deceptions connecting dots and discovering the secret places my inner victim is still waiting to be liberated and now I feel called to help you reclaim all of your parts your
(01:52) health your sexuality your power and your expression so that you can finally truly own yourself I want to ignite in you that inner knowing and the pulsing Vitality that lives beneath your disempowerment disconnection and resentment so that you can audaciously courageously and playfully alchemize your struggle into the specific pleasure of who you are this is Reclamation radio a soulfire production welcome back to Reclamation radio I am Dr Kelly Brogan and today I would like to talk about choosing motherhood in the teen years this may
(02:34) rank among the most vulnerable shares I have offered to you all and that’s saying something and it feels important it feels important not only to continue to expand the permission field this time for mothers who are listening or those of you who are listening who know mothers you care about to choose motherhood but also to crystallize my process because as we experience these nent seedlings of Truth within us writing them speaking them and sharing them weaves them into the tapestry of what is and so with that I’ll begin with
(03:16) a bit of context which is that yian analyst Maran Woodman talks about the maiden mother Crone Triad in slightly different terms that I really resonate with where she talks about the mother virgin Crone and she says that actually the conscious mother gives birth to the Virgin to this stage in a woman’s lifescape where she is unto herself she is self sourcing where she has as she says the courage to be and the flexibility to be always becoming and in this way the mother archetype is the fusion of devotional service and
(04:03) self-actualization it is the incubator within which we learn intimacy through another that leads us home to ourselves that leads to self intimacy and there is probably never a better circumstance and a diad more ripe for this training this exploration and this expansion of love then the mother child diad it is not lost on me that my Awakening process began because of my children I sometimes think I only even became a mother semiconscious because even though both of my children were wanted and planned because I knew that they would wake me
(04:52) up and I might not have otherwise the ruptures and rumbles of my cognitive dissonance were really crystallized in the diagnosis of Hashimoto that I experienced postpartum and that began my journey you know that brings me into your earphones at this moment and so it would make a lot of sense to me and be a perfect completion to consider the possibility that through my role as mother to my two girls I might actually complete the journey home to myself the truth about my process is one that I know a lot of women can relate to
(05:34) because we have been sold many many bills of goods there have been many bait and switch moments in our journey as women collectively and individually into an experience of sovereign empowerment and expression and one of the potential poor Bargains that we have made is I will follow my mission my purpose I will prioritize my work and it won’t cost anything because I can still be a mom and I am here to tell you that I do not believe that is true and it is an epic gas light to tell ourselves that we can have both because I have an Italian mama
(06:19) and both of my parents have been very devoted to my daughters from moment one I imagined that I wasn’t making a choice and I could have it all because I had this kind of umbrella experience of the family the tribe the way it’s supposed to be and I had you know trusted folks to be with my little girls while I pursued my workaholism which you know the shadow of which I have described and will continue to workshop with you all because I do know that this mission to help others and save the world has a very dark underbelly that’s for another
(06:57) conversation because I had this support I was able to choose work certainly didn’t feel like work at the time still doesn’t nonetheless it was work I was able to choose that over my kids and I did and a short few years later I found myself you know facing a cosmic 2×4 if you will in the form of an unanticipated and unexpected relationship developing in the setting of my otherwise very happy marriage to the father of my children and I made The Reluctant over years actually decision to choose a man who was not my children’s father whom I
(07:41) eventually would marry over my children and the ways in which this relationship consumed my attention and my emotional resources made it very clear that I was choosing that relationship in so many ways over my daughters and if you look from the outside you might not have seen that because this relationship also catalyzed in me so much growth and so much self-introspection and expansion that I became a much better mother over the eight years you know that the relationship encompassed since I chose to leave my
(08:21) second marriage however I have spent the past two years deeply reclaiming myself and have even written an entire book about all of the pearls that I have distilled around what this Reclamation process actually consists of and if I were to summarize it it would be to learn to offer myself the safety that I imagined would come from a partner from a system from a family and to experience the emergent gifts and embodied self-expression that Springs forth after that safety is consistently established in this process
(09:08) I have also decided to take on a life of more intentional sobriety and as I discussed in a vital life project Reclamation real talk on addiction I have never had any sort of textbook substance issues however it became clear to me at a certain point that eliminating you know all sources of Consciousness altering substances from my life was the direction forward and I didn’t really know why what was interesting is that the yield after a year was really imperceptible in like every aspect of my life it’s not like my
(09:46) body was so much different or you know my cognition or anything that I could perceive but my relationship with my daughters changed dramatically and from the outside in you might not have noticed but what changed was my capacity to hold our Divergent realities and to allow them to be who it is that they are becoming as young women even if I didn’t agree I didn’t like it right so the resolution of that enmeshment trauma that otherwise I was really imposing upon them but with like very greenwashed sort of pack ping right
(10:31) so whether it was my holistic perspectives on what they should be eating or how they should relate to their selfcare what they should be you know what kinds of bras they should be wearing what kinds of deodorant they should be using there was a deep underbelly there was a shadow that was operative and I was not ready to make contact with that dimension of myself that would have experienced failure of my mothering identity if they didn’t do what I said and thought was right I believe if I hadn’t expanded my capacity
(11:09) in all these other ways to hold the potential shame that arises right to be wrong as a parent implies that you might be falling down on one of the more important jobs but to develop the capacity to be wrong as a parent is pretty much the only way that you can succeed at the job so since I have been celibate been focused on my home life I live in a house that is so pink and feminine I have joked that if I ever had a man over to this house like I should have like a stash of like GI Joe blankets or something to like allow for
(11:50) some masculine energy in the space because it’s really a cocoon for us and nonetheless in my self- Reclamation process I thought that I was readying for healthy love right and secure attachment as an adult woman I thought that I was readying for a polarized sacred Union and all of the lessons that I’ve learned and all of the ways I’ve come to appreciate marriage as a sacred Covenant and the different ways that we can deepen erotically in Partnership I thought that I was on the path to inviting this partner into my life
(12:30) my daughters are entering and in their teen years and will be with me for what five six more years at least and I figured you know we’ve talked about this kind of thing and I figured that once I found and encountered and built a relationship with this man that they would go with the flow right and that he’d be so great and so cool that they’d like him too and that I would pay very close attention to their opinion of this man right that I would choose somebody who has a strong father archetype so that he could hold that kind of space
(13:11) for my girls and when I would think about the logistics I never really could get to the place where I was like you know and we’d all live together and you know he would have a beautiful home and there would be like a a wing for my daughters in it and we’d all live happily ever after with my cats and chickens it never quite felt right and I think it’s because even though it wasn’t spoken I knew that they didn’t really want that or I’m just going to make that assumption and I am not sure that any kids really want especially daughters to
(13:48) live with a strange man who isn’t their dad and obviously you know I’m speaking in generalizations and there are many examples of extraordinary stepfathers who come in and parent as their own you know children from another man I know examples of that I also know you know that stepfathers and stepparents are statistically significantly more likely to abuse children whether sexually or violently and that there is something we don’t often talk about when it comes to Blended families and what we just sort of normalize as being well that’s what
(14:28) the timing was and it’s certainly easier to you know have a partner than to be a single mom and a single woman so I tried to solve this riddle over and over and over again and when I thought you know well because this is what you do when you’re manifesting right you live into the fantasy you make it real so you can taste it and touch it and smell it I couldn’t do that because I thought you know well maybe I’ll stay in my home and I will on my weeks when I don’t have my daughters I’ll go over to his house and
(14:59) and will live there and that didn’t feel good to me either because if I want relief from anything it is managing a household and you know being in this masculine role right being at the helm of my own ship and managing this place I am interested in a different kind of experience right a more traditional experience if you will so I couldn’t quite figure it out and I tried to do all the manifestation things right the spell casting and the shadow exploration and the existential Kink of like why subconsciously I enjoy you know sitting
(15:41) on my couch in my front P PJs now I have very gorgeous PJs actually recently purchased however maybe I just want to be in control of my environment and maybe I’m really enjoying you know the opportunity to just like chill and watch TV since I didn’t watch TV for a decade of my activism and work AOL and and maybe I don’t really want a partner right and I have this divided will I ended up mostly feeling spiritually deficient for not manifesting the thing I said that I wanted in the timing that felt good for me right and so couple of
(16:16) years passed and if you ask anyone in my life they would tell you that my entire life Escape was an incredible scene to behold right so many wonderful things about my life and that what Kelly is still wanting is this partnership right is this experience of what is possible through marriage and what is now available to her because of her integration and her understanding of the nature of you know man woman Dynamics there was a gripping there was a gripping and I’m sure many of you can relate to wanting something that’s just
(16:55) not coming there is a gripping and you know that releasing that gripping is the way but how the do you do that like literally how do you do that and how is all of the advice in the world that suggests that you should resolve your if then living and come to appreciate what you have and really live into gratitude around what is available that kind of advice is very valuable I offer it and the truth is that there is an organic process that now I have a lived experience of that leads to the release of what was once gripped and the
(17:38) surrender to what is with pleasure and coercing trust in God in a process coercing patience and embrace of divine timing it just doesn’t work I mean I have manifested some extraordinary in my life okay like actually mindblowing stuff I have never had a vision board I have never done the manifestation things ever before encountering my desire for this kind of sacred Union and when I have manifested things very specific things you know like literally a million dollars or a specific house that I’m now you know sitting in my pets when I have
(18:25) manifested things and I’ve watched my daughters do this too little witches that are I’ve just decided I’ve just decided with conviction that this is what’s happening the end I don’t think about it again I don’t talk about it I certainly don’t perseverate on it and keep trying and trying and trying and then try to stop trying that’s not the process right so I knew that on some level and I also felt like I was forever in the caress of the absence right so it’s like that abrahamic sort of bind of focusing on the not
(19:00) for a few years now I’ve been using a flower remedy set by lotus way called sacred awareness I use the Mist on my face the oil as a perfume it smells so good and the elixir in my matcha you may have heard me speaking about how I’ve been maturing my inner caretaker rescuer and savior and really seeing the shadow in my desire to change the world and be the perfect holistic mama with the support of this remedy set I’ve seen deep changes and Liberation from controlling anxious martyy energy inside of me and permission to be a different
(19:37) kind of activist so if you’re curious about what remedy could subtly and powerfully shift you into deeper more coherent energetic States head to lotus.com and use the code kelly5 for 15% off the link is in show notes for you so I have come into a moment with my daughters and my experience of being a mother that I mostly summarize in my master class victim list mothering all of the ways that I had to awaken to my shadow mommy energies hiding in holistic mama you know doting and I’ve seen what it has brought to our Dynamic and I’ve
(20:20) come into a moment where I find my daughters and their friends to be the most delightful human no offense to my extraordinary friends that I know I love hanging out with them we laugh I find them inspirational and I feel expanded by their presence I am very committed to redefining the individuation process for young girls to offer a new model because I don’t know that rupture and defiant rebellion and aggressive individ situation is actually necessary when we learn the art of self-containment and self-sourced safety
(21:07) as women and we can begin to develop secure attachment with our daughters I don’t know that it needs to be the way it was for most of us in our teen years and because of that there is like literally no drama and just fun and co-presence and I am here for their process and that does not mean that it looks anything like I would have scripted especially when I was in my you know know-it-all moment of imagining that you know a sovereign woman’s daughters act like this behave like this do this and comply with what I have to
(21:42) find to be like healthy and safe right so that is the context for a weekend that I spent with my girlfriend Sarah and an experience of a spiritual shift that has changed the game for me I spent the time with her and also a day with somebody who is you know like a spiritual father for me Tom Cowen so somehow involved in the Alchemy of this shift for me and my girlfriend Sarah has been a very important mother archetype model for me her children are slightly older than mine and she has had an extraordinary you know Journey as a
(22:26) mother and her kids are amazing epic human and their process has been devoid of dramatic rebellion and rupture and I have watched her devote herself to these kids in a way that I’ve probably even judged over the years as being like overly intimate in a way and by overly intimate I mean that she really put her mothering so not her children necessarily but her mothering first in her life and I couldn’t totally understand that at the time especially because you know I have been informed by things like family constellation that
(23:08) says you know your relationship your romantic partnership actually comes first and your children come second and I’ve been living a life where so many things come first and before my mothering also because you know I’ve had support I have carried with me though the intuitive whisper right this this little yes for some months now that it’s time for me to be a mother right and it’s time to prioritize that role in my lifescape and it’s time for my children to be center stage in you know my viewfinder so I’m spending time with
(23:52) Sarah who is hopefully it’s okay that I share this Sarah almost 50 and she is hot and vital and tells me all the time that she feels better than she’s ever felt in her life okay so when I think about the possibility of forestalling any romantic Pursuits until after my children leave the house which by the way would make for about the 8-year tenure that would karmically balance one might say the eight years that I spent in you know this second relationship after their father so you know I might tell myself the story like oh well I don’t want to
(24:36) wait because then I’m going to be some like withered menopausal hag and I cannot tell that story standing in front of this radiant woman who is essentially the age I will be when my children leave the house let’s say right so that cognitive dissonance is real I can’t lie to myself about the urgency of this and I have heard her Express and she expressed to me again you know the dividends of honoring this precious window I already know this because I went back to work at three weeks postpartum I already know that I would
(25:15) turn back and say to a woman postpartum who’s thinking about going back to work who has a choice I mean we always have a choice but who has a choice to prioritize differently let’s say I would say it’s that first year you can’t get it back you can’t get it back and it is so essential to the attachment equation and work can wait right I might offer that possibility well she is suggesting something similar to me about the high school years right like how essential it is to honor that window and how this is such a blip on the scale of
(25:50) my years in this lifetime that those let’s say even 18 years of my children’s lives but let’s just even say that the high school years are so formative and so important right we can recognize that I mean if we just think back on what it might have been like to have an available responsive engaged secure connection with our mothers in those years most of us feel you know what that might have been like right and we have resources now that our mamas did not have so we are able to show up in ways that were potentially not even been
(26:29) possible back when so the combination of my little intuitive whisper the fact that I can’t lie in front of this woman about how urgent it is for me to you know manifest partnership and her lived example of what happens when children emancipate after spending this kind of close intimate Dynamic with their mama in the teen years all of those swirled in The alchemical Crucible for me and allowed me to say you know what this riddle I’ve been trying to solve it’s actually not meant to be solved because I am meant to embrace the joy that is in
(27:12) front of me which is my kids and to discover the meaning in why it is that I want it exactly this way now so a lot of the Shadow work that I do is like oh surprise you want it this way now so you can tell your poor me victim story so you can not have something you know and be able to complain about it and relate to other women because you don’t have something too see I don’t have a partner well you don’t have this and I often focus on like the shameful sort of subconscious drives if there’s you know a way to categorize it that are
(27:52) responsible for me not having the thing I say I want but what I don’t often focus on is the fact that I actually can choose the joy that I consciously experience and that that is actually what I want and because it’s best for me to choose mothering while my children are in the house it’s best for everyone involved that’s you know the nature of Harmony and once I made this shift and I gave myself permission to choose mothering in these Precious Years and to no longer be available for romantic partnership with
(28:38) you know anyone at this time in this window I felt like this extraordinary relief and it’s the kind of relief that can only come when you find the meaning and pleasure and joy in your surr render when it is not coerced so there is like a meta for me here because of how much I speak to you know in my explorations of BDSM culture and my sort of like anthropological study of man woman Dynamics how they go wrong and how they go right I have born witness to what it is for a woman to submit and surrender because it brings her pleasure to do so
(29:27) and I had an experience of surrendering to what is because this is actually where my joy lies and because it feels so right to me to offer this balance to my motherline right this investment is the offering and you know this is because I chose to rupture the container of our family unit so if I have any little tidbits to leave you with that I have gathered because of my process and my journey it would actually be first and foremost to do whatever you can to make the marriage to your baby daddy work and I had a practice at the time in
(30:17) New York where Almost 100% of the women I worked with would get divorced by the time they finished tapering off their psych meds and I was married at the time and I thought well this is just what happens when you change as a woman right when you evolve and you change the person you chose when you were asleep may not be the person you want to be with when you’re awake that just makes sense and if Souls have come through you both if you know children have incarnated because of your union I believe that there is a especially in
(30:51) the container of marriage there is a special capacity that you have as a woman to bring the elements of marriage that confer existential safety to you and your children to bring that to bear and I didn’t know those things and I didn’t have those tools back when and that’s part of why I’m so fired up about this and why I hold space for you know my friends marriages to evolve and expand into what might not have otherwise been possible before we knew that it was I love resources like David data like Laura Doyle who talks about you
(31:31) know the role of a wife in restoring repairing and balancing a relationship without coup therapy and I also love Dr Sue Johnson who I will likely have on the podcast soon who teaches emotionally focused therapy and secure adult attachment and the ways that we can repair there are so many different resources out there that we have now and this is because there is never going to be an experience that can stand in for that nuclear family it’s extremely complicated and I am living proof of that right and so many of us are and it
(32:15) does not mean it’s unresolvable it doesn’t mean there aren’t examples of like I said beautiful Blended families that have worked out just fine it just means that there is an experience of being with your children for the 18 years that you are raising them with their father and really accessing the free energy of that unit that so many agendas are invested in disrupting take my word on that one if you have left a marriage because apparently 70% of marriages are ended by women so if you are a woman who has left a marriage who has ended a
(32:55) marriage or has otherwise divorced from the father of your your children I would encourage you to consider prioritizing your role as mother to the extent that feels available to you for yourself for yourself because this relationship between you and your child is a sacred opportunity for you to learn what Sovereign Love is what intimacy consists of and to choose your emotional availab ility your responsiveness and your engagement with your children as a priority for your own Evolution growth and development is the opportunity of
(33:39) your lifetime and of theirs and what it looks like for you to work or not work you know to date or not date I don’t know but I do know that for me I have come to a place because I have built a business over many years where I can be totally available to my children when I’m with them and because I now recognize that I have a choice to Forstall my romantic experiences and future partnership until they are not you know in my life cohabitating with me in this same way I see many choices that we have almost micro choices to put our role as mother
(34:24) first and I see so many women doing this choosing homeschooling choosing you know to turn towards their role as mother and wife in a way that is not sacrificial and Martyr driven but is actually for their own enrichment for their own expansion and because they recognize that it is an opportunity to learn how to give love and to live in love I would also reconsider the whole step parent thing you know to look at the risks therein right and to recognize you know that divorce is for many of us a wound that never heals because it is a
(35:09) representation of you know this enduring sense that something is not quite right for our children and bringing a man into the picture who is not their father I know can be navigated and is very delicate and does come with risks that are real I think it’s also possible that there is a season you know for the pursuit of that kind of romance and partnership and it’s not a delaying of needs right because I have often said that I would be gaslighting myself to suggest that it is somehow natural for me to be alone in a home as a woman
(35:49) right never in human history have women been alone in boxes you know to the extent that we are these days and I would you know be last one to suggest that that should feel good you know or fulfilling and there is you know a hierarchy of the archetypes that we embody right I can be in my wife archetype my mother archetype my lover archetype my Huntress I can embody all of these different energies and prioritize really developing different ones and I do think that there is a safety that is conferred I I have lived
(36:26) this when there is secure attachment between a mother and her children that is measurable it is felt and so if I imagine that that can only come from a man in the house then I am you know left with this Sophie’s choice and I don’t know that it needs to be that so I choose motherhood because I own my journey and its consequences and because I see the opportunity that lies ahead of me to devote myself to my daughters my motherline and to really choose the joy that’s in front of me and to make sense out of why something was not easily
(37:11) manifesting and I feel rested back in my spine and soft and open in my heart and so I offer this to any woman who is attempting to balance teen motherhood and partnering as permission to choose mothering and gentlemen I am sorry to say that I am officially off the market how you soon
