Unpacking the Invisible Load of Feeding the Household with Erica Djossa, founder & CEO of Momwell

0 (0s):

Okay, I don't wanna stress you out, but somehow it's already the hundredth day of the year. I mean I love a good milestone as much as anyone. And I do have a little bit of a thing for the number a hundred. Back in 2016, I created the 100 First Foods approach to starting solid foods, which is an easy, fun way to help your baby learn to safely eat 100 foods before turning one. Because we know that babies who are offered the greatest variety of foods and flavors and tastes and textures early and often, those are the babies who are more likely to become independent eaters and are less likely to be picky eaters. So if you're looking for a done for you solution to help expose your baby to more foods safely, my online program called Baby-Led Weaning with Katie Ferraro has everything you need, including the original 100 First Foods daily meal plan that's 20 weeks of done for you meal plans with recipes and videos and instructions on how to make all of those foods safely so that in a hundred days from now you'll be confident knowing that you did everything you could during your baby's all important flavor window to help them establish a healthy and foundational love of food.

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You can get started today by going to babyledweaning.co/program. I would love to see your baby celebrating their 100th first food very soon too. Come join me in the Baby-Led Weaning with Katie Ferraro program. Again, that's at babyledweaning.co/program.

Puffworks (1m 26s):

Checking in about food allergies and introducing allergenic foods and have you done peanut with your baby yet? Well intact nuts and thick globs of nut butter like peanut butter are choking hazards for babies. But we wanna get that peanut protein into your baby early and often in order to help lower the risk of peanut allergy down the road. My absolute favorite way to introduce peanuts for babies is using the Puffworks babies peanut puffs. So when you hear puffs like you're probably like, oh those starchy little puff things like, no, no, no, not the little ones that earlier eaters can't pick up those kind of crappy puffs from the store that have added sugar and refined grains and lots of salt. Uhuh. The Puffworks, baby peanut puffs have no added sugar. They have just a smidge of sodium for preservatives and they are the perfect size for Baby-Led Weaning. They're about the size of your adult pinky finger so you could baby can pick 'em up, self feed them, but they're so soft that they dissolve in your baby's mouth. So you can introduce these peanut puffs even before your baby has teeth. Puffworks also makes a baby almond puff versus the safe introduction of a separate allergenic food category. That's tree nuts. And now finally, Puffworks put out a combo case so it's half baby peanut and half baby almond. So if you wanna grab one case, then you can knock out two new allergenic foods. We do these on different days though. These are just the no stress low mess way to get peanut and tree nut outta the way. So you can get 15% off everything at puffworks.com when you use the affiliate discount code BLWpod, that's a new code, it's BLWpod. Use that sucker at checkout@puffworks.com and get peanut and tree nut safely outta the way.

1 (3m 12s):

I'm literally drowning in trying to be the perfect mom, trying to be a good mom, trying to prove that I can handle and carry all of these things. What I didn't realize was that I actually didn't have to a healthy dose of anger and rage at how completely ridiculous this setup of motherhood is for us as women is helpful in being able to like challenge the norms. It's not an us problem. Wait a minute, we were set up for failure. Why do I have to do all this unpaid labor and work by myself? This isn't expected of my partner. I also need to run my business or work full-time. We're a two income household. Like when we can shift and see that actually all of society is built on the back of women and mothers unpaid labor and caregiving.

1 (3m 55s):

We can see like this is ridiculous actually.

0 (3m 59s):

Hey there. I'm Katie Ferraro, Registered dietitian, college nutrition professor and mom of seven specializing in Baby-Led Weaning. Here on the Baby-Led weaning with Katie Ferraro podcast. I help you strip out all of the noise and nonsense about feeding, giving you the confidence and knowledge you need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using Baby-Led Weaning. What if you don't love cooking new foods? What if you don't love prepping food for your baby or your other kids. What if you don't just even really like having to be in charge of all the food stuff in your house. In general, So, much of what moms are tasked with falls under this banner of the invisible load, which is a phrase that if you're on social media, you've probably been hearing more about from mental health people in the parenting space.

0 (4m 49s):

And one of my favorite mental health experts in the world is Erica Djossa. She's the CEO and founder of Momwell. Erica is a Registered psychotherapist. She specializes in maternal mental health. She's got over a decade of experience. She's like my go-to-gal when it comes to like the mental stuff about being a mom. She was on our podcast back in episode 372. We're talking about therapy. That episode was Mom's Mental Health, Strengthening Parenthood through Therapy. But I wanted to have Erica back on the podcast because recently she's been itemizing all of the different tasks that we as moms have to do. And I've like been seeing her doing this and I was like, oh my gosh. She has this whole list of things that for example, are involved in feeding your family like every little individual task that really adds up.

0 (5m 33s):

Like if you look at each of these individual tasks, oh my gosh, it's so much work on top of all of your other work. So if you're feeling overwhelmed about having to do all the food stuff in your house, Erica's gonna make you feel better about that. But she also shares some really practical coping tips and exercises for us in this interview because I know speaking personally for myself even as a dietitian, like this is an area like getting food on the table for all of my children and family and having it be remotely healthy is something that like I struggle with. 'Cause our household is super busy. So Erica's here and I love this conversation 'cause she's talking about why we put unreasonable expectations on ourselves and then how we can stop doing that. She introduced me to this idea of weaponized incompetence.

0 (6m 14s):

I'd never heard that phrase before but like how do you know if your partner is deploying weaponized incompetence when it comes to some of the food stuff and how do you handle that? And then she talks a lot about this exercise about value sorting. So how do you sort the most important values, the things that are important to you right now that you're actually gonna be able to act on? And then how do we effectively ignore the rest so that we can like move forward in our lives?So one thing I love about doing this podcast is getting to interview other experts like Erica. If you're not already following the show, please hit subscribe so that both of the episodes that I release each week will show up in your feed. I always do a mini solo training on Monday and then a longer feeding expert interview like today's on Thursdays.

0 (6m 55s):

Please subscribe if you aren't already and if any of the things you learn about on this show resonate with you and you could share them with another mom who might be struggling with some of the same stuff. I really appreciate your word of mouth recommendations. So with no further ado, I wanna bring on Erica Djossa. She's the founder and CEO of Momwell and she's talking all about unpacking the invisible load of feeding the household. Here's Erica.

1 (7m 23s):

I had my aha moment a few months into my third postpartum where I had walked by this pile of laundry in my primary room that was becoming a mountain and every day I walked by it I would criticize myself, how come you can't just fold this laundry and put it away? Why is it so difficult for you? What capable adult can't fold and stay on top of laundry and keep things organized? And this went on for days, weeks and I just felt more and more shame and defeated by this mountain that was growing. We were a family of five.

1 (8m 3s):

There was blowouts and you know spit up and blankets and the volume of laundry had just totally expanded as we added a new little to the family. But one day passing by it, I became curious about why I was struggling so much. What was the resistance? What was the hesitation? And instead of becoming so critical, I just became curious. And what I realized when I stepped back and asked myself what the deal with the laundry was, was that it was actually a change in season and all of the clothes in the dressers actually had to be taken out and rotated. And I had to then create a list to make sure that I had all the sizes for the clothes in the next seasons.

1 (8m 47s):

I had to rotate each of the boys' dressers, store the clothes, find a place to like you know, a bin to put it in to store it away. And when I wrote down and actually calculated up all of the invisible pieces that were really underneath that pile of laundry had another four to six hours of labor. And this is like my aha moment and epiphany of the invisible load coming from this pile of laundry. But I think this aha moment is so necessary and don don't know if you can remember when you had yours or what opened your eyes to the invisible pieces that are behind the physical tasks. Because folding the laundry and putting it away in itself was not the big, wasn't the big heavy task, it was all the other pieces that went with it.

1 (9m 34s):

Do you feel like you've had a moment like that?

0 (9m 37s):

Oh, just yesterday. It's like I know we, I should cook dinner but there's so many baseball games after school today and cooking dinner would mean that I would need to go get more groceries 'cause they're eating so much more. And then if I even did that when it got here, I would've to clean the dishes that are already in the sink. But I would probably have to empty. We have two dishwashers, we have seven kids, all the dishwasher. And I was like, I'm just taking us out tofu for dinner because again, what kind of mom can't feed her kid? What kind of dietitian mom at that. Also my kids are finally at an age where we can go to a restaurant without me wanting to like murder everybody. So I pretended that I was like this will be like a a family bonding experience but it's just like I freaking teach nutrition for a living Erica and making dinner is like just the impossible task sometimes, so oh.

1 (10m 19s):

My gosh. Okay, I just have to tell you. So we have a whole chapter in my book releasing the Mother Load on Feeding. I open every chapter with an invisible load like mapped out of some of the tasks. So this book came out of our like viral popular invisible load series on Instagram. And I got to take it, put it in long form and take people on a journey on how to actually like unpack this invisible labor rather than just make it visible. Which is what we do on Instagram. I get to like teach people how to actually like let some of it go and to release it. But here are just some of the few things, invisible things involved in feeding the household. Okay we've got knowing everyone's food preferences considering nutrition diet and allergy needs, which I know you talk a lot about managing food inventory, researching new meals that everyone will eat, creating a positive food environment.

1 (11m 7s):

I know like our relationship with food is a big piece for many of us. Planning meals, shopping for groceries, coping with the pressure to get kids to eat and to eat nutritious food. Juggling schedules for mealtimes like you're saying, we've got activities to go to. When are we actually gonna have time to, to do all of this making in the moment decisions about snacks and food requests, feeling pressure to set a healthy food example and managing meal prep and cooking.

0 (11m 32s):

Is that all? That's it? Is that it?

1 (11m 34s):

So and so when you're thinking about making dinner or you're like feeling a strong aversion or resistance or avoidance to a task, it's like a little spidey sense moment for me where I'm like what is under your iceberg? you know like what are all the invisible tasks underneath that physical tasks that are causing you to wanna just like actually crawl in the fetal position and just like crawl under the table. And it's significant invisible work is work, it is necessary work to make the household function.

0 (12m 6s):

So I'm increasingly hearing this term invisible load. Can you just define what that means? Is it a clinical term? Is it something you guys made up? I love your series on Instagram by the way, about the invisible load.

1 (12m 17s):

It falls in a couple different buckets. I like the invisible load because it encompasses a few things. We've got like the mental load or cognitive load, we also have like emotional labor and the emotional load. So to me the invisible load is all-encompassing of those mental and emotional pieces that we have ownership over as the default or primary parent and feel that we have to manage. So it looks like practically all the things that we have to notice and anticipate, then we have to research and plan the ongoing management. So if I have a, a combo fed, you know, formula and and breastfeeding baby and I am anticipating already when they're gonna start solids and then I'm thinking about and planning what that rollout is going to look like and how I'm gonna monitor for allergens and like all these things, this research and prep an invisible work starts months out potentially even before I go to boil a vegetable and puree it.

0 (13m 20s):

Yeah, we get pregnant moms on my Baby-Led Weaning for Beginners workshop. I was like first of all you're amazing but there's a lot of other stuff you have to do before you start solid foods.

1 (13m 29s):

Yeah and you think about all of the research and prep. So really like the physical tasks in the division of labor in the home is still not equal. Well we can talk on that but we're talking about the physical tasks when we incorporate the invisible, the mental, cognitive emotional components, the disproportionate amount of work that moms carry that is invisible, not recognized, not seen and undervalued is so vast and significant. So one of the the things that I say is essential and even just like wetting your, you know, appetite with this work is taking that invisible load and making it visible.

1 (14m 13s):

Taking those cognitive prep pieces and putting them on paper so that you can see how much it is like I did just now with that, with that invisible load. Yes. Or that your partner can see and you can share it together. And I provide a tool for this in the book called a load map where we make that visible for you as like a starting point for our conversations.

0 (14m 30s):

Hey we're gonna take a quick break but I'll be right back.

Skylight Frames (14m 37s):

Mother's Day is coming up quick and I know since I became a mom, my own mother and my mother-in-law have been instrumental. I mean total lifesavers in helping me and my husband keep our heads above water with all the new things that accompany parenthood. But I always struggle like what do you get them to adequately thank the grandmothers for all their help and support with the kids. So one thing that I'm decent at that they're not so hot at is taking pictures. Like my phone photo roll is literally bursting at the seam with pictures of all of our kids. And an easy way to share these memories with your loved one is by giving them a Skylight Frame. So the Skylight Frame is a touch screen photo frame that your whole family can upload photos to and they appear in seconds. So you can share your favorite moments with the people that matter the most to you. Like the grandmas, the Skylight Frame so simple to use. The setup really took me like just a couple of minutes and what I love is that even the least tech savvy people can benefit from the Skylight Frame. It looks like a real photo frame adds a beautiful touch to your home and the Skylight Frame comes in two sizes. So they have an original 10 inch one or the newer 15 inch gallery frame. That's the one that I just got from my mother-in-Law. It's beautiful, it's so easy to use. You can send photos to the frame in just seconds via email or I actually set up both of our phones and my mom's two like all of them together with the Skylight Frame app and you can just send pictures that then magically appear on their frames every time you add them to the app. So as a special limited time offer for our listeners, you can get 15% off your purchase of a Skylight Frame when you go to skylightframe.com/baby. That's skylightframe.com/baby. Mother's day is coming right up. So order today to get 15% off your purchase@skylightframe.com /baby. It's so easy and you'll be so glad you set them up with a Skylight Frame.

0 (16m 28s):

Do you remember that TV show out of this world where the girl Evie would put her fingers together and then she could stop time and like do other stuff? Like sometimes I think about that even if I had that power there wouldn't even be enough time for me to do all the laundry and the dishes and the things that I feel terrible about every day. 'Cause they're all always half done like and you know in business if it's not on your calendar it's not gonna get done. Like my team knows that it, you're lying when you say you're going to do this 'cause I don't see it on your calendar. It's like even if I calendared all of the housework, if I never even slept, there still wouldn't be enough time. And like the thought of writing it all out actually gives me anxiety. 'Cause I would just be proving to myself that it's impossible. 'Cause every day there's that glimmer of hope like maybe I'll get it all done today.

0 (17m 9s):

And like no you're never ever gonna get it all done. It's like everything will always be half done.

1 (17m 16s):

Well and this is such an important point because we often feel that we have to have ownership over these things in society. Being a good mom still equals care to and domestic labor, those are the images that we receive for being a good mom. So when we're talking about trying to create a equal partnership in our home where we are trying to release and let go of some of this load, if I feel that in order to be a good mom I have to be the one doing this because this is how I'm measuring my worth in my role, I'm not gonna readily share this with my partner or my support system. It's gonna be very, very difficult for me. So there is a piece here where like I question ownership and why we are the ones trying to fit in all of these invisible pieces.

0 (18m 1s):

'Cause we're better at it honestly is this other thing.

1 (18m 3s):

We're better at it because we've, we've been expected to do it and we've had practice at it. So now we've become better at it and it's gonna feel probably clunky and messy to like include our partners when we've been in our sort of well-oiled machine for a while. But there is a piece here where like we've been socially expected to do it so we haven't had an option of being bad at it. Like we've had to learn and we've had to incorporate.

0 (18m 28s):

It's like when you get a new team member and you're like I know I could do this faster and better than you but I also know if I spend the time teaching you how to do it that you will do it better and faster than me. But there's that.

1 (18m 40s):

It'll take time.

0 (18m 41s):

Exactly. Says the lady who does her own Capcut memes, I'm like, you know, someone on your team should be doing that. Like is that really the best?

1 (18m 47s):

We're just experimented.

0 (18m 48s):

I'm sorry I'm not calling you. I just wanna show like it happens to all of us. Like everything in your business is so systemized. Like I so admire the way you run your business but I like to know that you like also have real world struggles and maybe hate having to make content too. Like that makes me feel better.

1 (19m 3s):

Of course. And I started off as the one doing all the things in the house. That's what led to my, I talk about my breakdown turned breakthrough where I realized I had postpartum depression and I was like totally struggling. I had like this fit of rage, I was pulled over by the police, I got home, it was this whole, I tell the story in the book I was throwing up in my driveway, hyperventilating. It was a whole ordeal and I was like I am drowning. I'm literally drowning in trying to be the perfect mom, trying to be a good mom, trying to prove that I can handle and carry all of these things. What I didn't realize was that I actually didn't have to, I actually didn't have to carry all of the things, a lot of the things that I felt that I had to carry were actually things that were put in.

1 (19m 47s):

Like I talk about this drawer of motherhood. Like if you imagine this filing cabinet drawer labeled motherhood and every image or expectation or ideal or societal norm that you've ever seen throughout your life has been put into this motherhood drawer what you think it means to be a good mom. And we pull on that drawer when we step into our role. But when I get into that drawer I'm like wait a minute, there's so much junk and crap in here that I, I didn't subscribe to that I don't hold true to my values now. And what I realized was happening was that I was going in a million directions trying to please everyone and do all of the things when so much of it was contradictory, it didn't align with my values and they were expectations placed on me.

1 (20m 33s):

Not things I had chosen consciously, intentionally chosen for myself.

0 (20m 35s):

I love that in your book you start a chapter with like a very, very descriptive situation. Like here's how the invisible load like rears its ugly head in this part of your life and the feeding chapter. I wanted to ask you a little bit more about that 'cause I know I shared with you like I don't always love cooking and it's like from personal experience, you know I used to enjoy cooking as a a hobby but now if it's something I have to do for 10 people three times a day, like it's a real drag. So do you have any tips for new moms who are feeling overwhelmed 'cause on top of everything else I already did now like God I have to figure out how to start Solid Foods with my baby.

1 (21m 14s):

I think that it really comes down to understanding what value you're trying to express in your prep of food. It's kind of abstract and unconventional. My, my approach to the chapter on food, because I talk about how food is actually so much more than food for a lot of us and if we think about and reflect on our experience with food growing up, like what does it mean for somebody to make a homemade meal for us? What does it mean for somebody to put in the thought and effort? What does it mean when our kids don't eat or when we don't provide a balanced meal? And what you soon begin to hear from people is that well I show love by doing this thing or I show that I care or I like, there's usually like a value or something like I feel like we need to sit up to the table and have family dinners because we ate in front of the TV every night when I was growing up and I want to parent differently than that.

1 (22m 13s):

And I'm like okay, so the value there is actually presence and connection and we don't have to do that or live that out by being at the table. We can prioritize that in a lot of different ways. So when it comes to food and thinking and feeling like there's a lot of pressure around it, I would get a spidey sense up that like we have a lot of perfectionist ideals and expectations about what dinner should look like and it becomes so cumbersome. It's not like triage, okay let's throw this, this and this in and keep it quick and keep it on the move. There's probably a lot of expectations there around it being such a, a particular way.

0 (22m 55s):

That only you care about. Like your kids literally don't care. I mean you can't have flaming hot Cheetos and regular Dr. Pepper for dinner every night. But like they don't care if there's not like a whole grain starch and a vegetable and some protein with a cup of like they don't care.

1 (23m 10s):

And I really, and this is like probably gonna be an occupational hazard for you 'cause like I have a hard time handing over like the emotional regulating of tantrums in the home 'cause I'm a therapist so you would probably have a hard time handing over like the food and nutritional components.

0 (23m 21s):

We have an au pair who lives with us and again she has her hands full with childcare but like I am like don't worry about the food. Like it actually matters to me. And when she made them like this Brazilian dish the other night with like three types of carbohydrate in it, they freaking loved it and I was like, hey Tali, do you wanna cook more? She's like, I'd love to like great, so maybe I can stop taking him every night and you could help. But it was like, not until it happened I was like oh it's not the end of the world if someone else helps me. And I feel very grateful and it's a privilege to have an au pair. My husband travels a hundred percent of the time, otherwise it would be, and they would literally starve to death. So having another adult there to help I recognize is not something that all the parents listening have.

1 (24m 0s):

Right? But I had, so I handed this load like the, the feeding load over to my husband and he went for function over perfectionism and my brain was like, what the like how did he just like move into functions? What

0 (24m 15s):

Does that mean? What is function in food?

1 (24m 16s):

Like they're hungry, they need to eat. This is what we can do in these 15 minutes. And like just went into like very like logical functional like let's solve this problem mode without the added level of like professionalism and absolute like shit storm that breaks out in my head when I think about having to meal plan. He didn't have any of that

0 (24m 37s):

And they probably loved it and like 20 years from now they'd be like, remember when dad would make his pancakes for dinner and they never remember all of the amazing whole grains I made them. It's what's gonna happen.

1 (24m 46s):

Well and the thing is it's like sometimes people talk about weaponized incompetence and where okay like if you just put pizza on the table every night, that's a problem. But in my book I talk about finding a common tolerable standard and we had some conversations I'm like okay there needs to be at least like a veggie or something makes them with every meal. The whole meal can't be like carbohydrates. Like we need to like figure out some basic tolerable rules like or agreements that we can find together. So that if I like to back off and and take my hands off of this, I know that we've got like a a tolerable standard that we're gonna work towards that we're in agreement about. It's not gonna be perfectionist like my standards are, it's not gonna be like to the level that I would do it but I can take my hands off of it and just like look the look the other way.

1 (25m 26s):

you know look the other way.

0 (25m 27s):

Which frees up other space for you to, I know you told me you had gotten to a conference and I was like can you please tell me about how you got to even like leave your house?

1 (25m 36s):

That's amazing. you know and and if you didn't have the practice of doing the meal then the meal prep, it wouldn't have bought me the capacity to be able to leave for six days days which was would've been unimaginable before.

0 (25m 46s):

And that's what parents listening feel like. I know you and I both my twins are five and your youngest is five, like our youngest kids are five. That's very different than having an infant who's clinging to you 24/7 and physically needs you to be there. But I do believe, especially I saw this was one my friends who had kids before me, they set their partners up for failure by insisting on doing everything. We have a friend who told us one time that her husband had never changed a diaper and I like, I hate him like to my, I love him actually but like how did you make it so that he never changed a diaper and now you're pissed that he doesn't help you with anything. Like I do think sometimes we make it worse and I would self-identify as type A if you're still allowed to do that. Like I'm like oh I got this, I can do it better than you.

0 (26m 27s):

But you practice giving up control. I like that idea.

1 (26m 30s):

Well and it's so important 'cause as you said, we start these patterns early on and then what happens is this maternal knowledge that we've acquired from being in proximity deepens over time. So then it becomes so much harder to hand things over when we are like super expert level status and our partner's gonna still come in at novice level and it's gonna be clunky and messy and uncomfortable to navigate. I also would say that I'm a type sort of perfectionist and that's okay. We don't hear men being called perfectionist. It's a conversation for another day. But it's okay to be perfection. Like I know my occupational hazard and the thing that I'm gonna really hold tightly to is the kid's emotional wellbeing 'cause I'm a therapist and it's just like I know too much.

1 (27m 12s):

I would rather be the one to tame the tantrums 'cause like that's kind of my shtick. I can hold onto that but I'm not gonna hold onto all the things. So if I wanna retain being sort of a type of perfectionist on an area, okay, that's okay. Pick 1, 2, 3 areas, let the rest of them go or share them or transfer ownership so that you aren't trying to do everything all the time and like drowning in plain sight as a result.

0 (27m 47s):

Hey, We're gonna take a quick break but I'll be right back. Erica in your new book releasing the Mother Load, how to carry Less and enjoy motherhood more. You talk about this idea of caring less and I feel like I'm hyper self-aware. I'm constantly surveying my load. I, I would love to have less on my plate but I literally don't think there's anything less to cut. Like what tips do you have for this idea of carrying less?

1 (28m 14s):

I mean on one hand I just wanna validate like holy frick you have seven children. Like you think about the invisible load as a backpack, like a a clear backpack, you know, that we carry, we feel the weight of with each additional child we get another backpack of that invisible labor because they've got different preferences, they're in different age groups, they have different school, different friends, different whatever. So that load exponentially grows the more children we add, it becomes bigger so that it is valid that it feels like we are, you know, drowning in our role. And that makes it makes sense. There's a lot going on. On the other hand, there is a lot of expectation that comes from scrolling social media people in our life.

1 (28m 59s):

Again, those things that are external outside of us that I don't maybe align with in my value system but I feel like I should and need to do to be a good mom. And so I do them. So for example, I might be scrolling and see that my friends have put their kids in like a time, time class and a infant massage class and a all of these things that they've signed themselves up for and I'm feeling like, ooh, it really would be good for their development if I like put them in some things. But at the same time I know that my life is so chaotic at work and so busy and unpredictable that I actually really value any kind of like slowness or presence that I can try and curate and for my family life.

1 (29m 41s):

So now I have this like conflict where I wanna sign us up and take more on the calendar, but my value is slowness. So then I go to that and I say, you know what? Like in order to preserve flexibility and slowness and presence and time with the family, I'm not gonna sign us up for more activities even though I feel the drive and the push that I should do that. And I will just note those down to do them when this one activity that we've agreed to per season or whatever wraps. And then I will do that.

0 (30m 10s):

How did you know that you valued slowness?

1 (30m 11s):

Okay, so I take, I take you through this in the book and I actually have a free, a freebie I can provide to you in your community called a value sort exercise where most of us, like our, our values aren't top of mind unless we take some time to intentionally uncover what they are. And so this value sort is a free download. You print it off and you cut the cards out, there's like 120 different values, words and little descriptors and you narrow them down to your top 10 values. They can be adventure, creativity, presence, thrift, nutrition, like they're all, they could be anything, right? And when you get down to your top 10, you have a GPS and a roadmap for making decisions in alignment with what is important to you.

1 (30m 60s):

And you use those as a guidepost to weigh these external pressures against, to make really intentional decisions for your time, your calendar, your family life. And it takes practice of course. I mean I've been doing this work now for three or four years, but it gives you something to anchor in so that if you're feeling pulled, like I have a, like I'm somehow ended up on like the sourdough side of TikTok where everyone's making homemade bread and I feel like, ooh, you know, that looks very motherly and like that looks like something that I should do and would want to do. And I'm pulled towards and I look at my value system and I look at my expression of motherhood and what it means to me and I'm like, ugh, I could buy a sourdough and have the same experience and just like toast it, put something, warm it, put it in the oven, whatever.

1 (31m 43s):

And I don't need to take that pressure on. It doesn't align with my values and it doesn't define my worth in my role as a mom.

0 (31m 52s):

I know we're in similar spaces in the parenting and baby space and I know we're aligned a lot on you know, what we want for our families and our own time. And knowing there's limited amount of time and you spend a lot of time with parents and I hear from parents who like, I don't like to use the word anxiety and anxious freely. Like I, I know that's a very, very heavy word, but like moms are anxious about starting solid foods, they're anxious, their baby's gonna choke, they're anxious that they're gonna have a food allergy. And these are real life fears, like we say they're rare but it could happen. And from the moms that you talk to like just you know, 10,000 foot meter view whatever of your kid from my Canadian friends, how are moms doing? Is this getting worse? Is talking about it helping us get better?

0 (32m 33s):

What do you think? Like what's your pulse check I guess on motherhood right now?

1 (32m 41s):

I feel like the vast majority of moms are struggling to like "carry it all" or "do it all". But then what happens is because it looks like everybody else is doing it and we look around and nobody else is saying out loud that this is an unreasonable expectation of women to carry. We look to our right, look to our left and are like, well everyone's doing it. This must be a me problem. And so what happens is what happened when I was going by that load of laundry, that pile that was growing that mountain where we say I must not be good enough. I must be flawed. It must be me that can't keep up. I must not be made for motherhood.

1 (33m 22s):

I must not be cut out for this because it looks like we're alone in our struggle but actually everybody is drowning in plain sight and we can't really come together and see and understand that because we go inward to ourselves. So recognizing this and shifting our perspective and focus to the unreasonable expectations that are on mothers that are just wild. And it's not that we're flawed or we're not good enough or we're failing, it's that it is unreasonable of any human to do. This amount of labor themselves is so important. And like that's what my book is really pushing to shift.

1 (34m 4s):

Like we are not flawed, we're not broken, this is ridiculously.

0 (34m 5s):

And staying up all night is not the answer. Like I always think like if I could just do one all nighter a week, like if I could do it, I could get caught up on the school emails and the sports apps and all the life things that you don't do when you're running a business and raising your kids. But like I don't think having to stay up one night all night once a week, it probably wouldn't solve my problems. Even if I could do that and like I feel bad that I can't do one all night or a week. I'm like, what's wrong with me? Like lots of people like me.

1 (34m 36s):

That's an unrealistic expectation of ourselves. And then like there's a healthy dose of like I talk about maternal rage, mom rage, anger a lot on my platform. I mean a healthy dose of anger and rage at how completely ridiculous this you know, setup of motherhood is for us as women is helpful in being able to like challenge the norms. It's not an us problem. Wait a minute, we were set up for failure. Why do I have to do all this unpaid labor and work by myself? This isn't expected of my partner. I also need to run my business or work full-time. We're a two income household. Like when we can shift and see that actually all of society is built on the back of women and mothers unpaid labor and caregiving.

1 (35m 22s):

We can see like this is ridiculous actually and shouldn't be expected to do this.

0 (35m 26s):

So Erica, I love that you went through the litany of things involved just in feeding. Like that makes me feel better. I feel stressed by lots of areas in life and just to think, gosh, all of those pieces that I didn't even realize were like tasks I'm expected to do. What other topics besides feeding do you cover in your new book? Releasing the Mother Load.

1 (35m 48s):

Okay, so feeding talk about sleep, talk about being the memory maker and the fun producer of the home. Talk about being the scheduler. All of the things that we sort of get defaulted into as a primary caregiver or talk about being the keeper of the house and the one responsible for the domestic labor. So the first part of the book actually walks through what the invisible load is, understanding society's, you know, expectations of mothers and then tapping into your values. That's the first section. And then the second section actually carves out each of these loads in individual chapters and takes us through what are the assumptions and beliefs that cause us to continue to carry these loads.

1 (36m 30s):

And now here are some of the skills and ways that we can break out of these patterns and learn to either release some of it that just doesn't need to be carried at all or share some of it with our partner or support system. So we like I go through several of them in the second part of the book.

0 (36m 51s):

Hey, we're gonna take a quick break, but I'll be right back.

FamilyAlbum (36m 54s):

My phone is bursting at the seams with photos of our kids. And over the years I've tried all sorts of different ways to store and share them with family members. So for a while I would just text out pictures to the grandparents and then we tried a shared photo album. But some people were using Google photos and others preferred Facebook messenger for pictures and the more kids we had, the messier it got. Then I stumbled across the FamilyAlbum app. The FamilyAlbum app was created to give parents a secure and easy way to share photos and videos with loved ones. It's a totally secure personal haven for your family's memories. I love that there's no third party ads, no unwanted eyes and it's totally free. No more scrolling through endless feeds or searching folders to find the picture of the kid that you need right now. Another cool feature about the FamilyAlbum app is you can order eight free photo prints every month to be delivered to your home. Which if you think about how quickly your baby is changing, it's really nice to have some tangible pictures to hold onto or share to document the last month of your baby's life. If you are looking to level up your photo sharing and organization game with a secure one-stop, easy to use photo organization app, head over to the app store, search FamilyAlbum, download the FamilyAlbum app and start creating a legacy of love one photo at a time.

0 (38m 13s):

So Erica, I definitely want to do the value sort exercise. My eyes were lighting up and you're like, there's 120 different values 'cause I can't name 120 values, but you did it for us. So I will link to that freebie in the description as well as the Shownotes for this episode. But tell us where we can find the book.

1 (38m 30s):

It's so exciting that it's available wherever books can be found. If you're Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Target, Indigo in Canada, Chapters all the places. And to visit the book website, it's actually ericaldjossa.com and I have a companion guide that you can download to do worksheets alongside the book, the free value sort, lots of resources there to pair with it. And if you're looking for more, more specialized maternal mental health support, I'm Momwell like momwell.com Momwell on Instagram. We have a team of therapists across Canada and the US rolling out in California, New York, Texas, Pennsylvania, Illinois. Lots of big things happening on the therapy specialized therapy side of things as well.

0 (39m 13s):

And congratulations, that is such an accomplishment. I am, as you know, like completely in awe of you both your professional accomplishments and you know, we've talked offline about feeding kids and food allergies and I'm like you we're all juggling a lot, but I think you're doing a fabulous job and thank you so much for bringing this book into the world. I'm really excited. I love a book with a companion worksheet. I'm like, oh my gosh, she made the outline for me. Because again, a lot of this is, it's working on and it's practicing things and practicing how you talk about it. It doesn't come naturally. But thank you for shedding on light, the light on the idea, like we're all drowning in plain sight. So I really encourage everyone to follow you at Momwell. I think your content is fantastic and I'm excited to read your book as well.

1 (39m 53s):

Thank you so much. The book is really designed to try to do all of that think work for you, provide those invisible load maps for you so that I'm not putting more labor on your shoulders. Really meant to try to bring, you know, some space and capacity into this role. We wanna enjoy our roles as mothers. We don't wanna resent our roles. And that's the goal, that's the journey that I take people on. Thank you so much for having me.

0 (40m 16s):

Thank you and thank you for your time today. I really appreciate it. I hope you guys enjoyed that interview with Erica Djossa, whenever I get off of a conversation with her, I feel like I just went through like the most intense therapy session and I just, I love all the phrases. I mean, I'm not a clinical psychologist or a psychotherapist, so I love when they have these terms like weaponized incompetence and I'm like, and Unpacking all of this invisible load stuff. I think it's so interesting and I really appreciate her insight. I really love this idea of itemizing all the things that you're doing. Like sometimes I just need to like go through a list and tell my husband all the things that I did today and he's like, are you just telling me this so you can prove that you're a better person than me? And I was like, maybe. But I just wanna like quantify the volume of things that you have to do as a mom that frankly I think a lot of dads don't have to deal with.

0 (40m 58s):

So I appreciate Erica and all of her coping strategies because maybe listing off a list of all the things I do every day is not like the best communication with my husband, but maybe that's for a different episode. So if you wanna check out all of the resources, including Erica's brand new book, it'll be on the Shownotes page for this episode, which you could find at blwpodcast.com/422. Thank you to our partners at AirWave Media. If you guys like podcasts that feature food and science and using your brain, check out some of the shows from AirWave or online at blwpodcast.com. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll see you next time.