Hi everyone.

So I just wanted to start today's podcast by letting you know that we have Get Dopa as our sponsor of today's episode.

Now, you probably heard me talk about getober quite a bit on the podcast over the past few months, and that is because I've been taking this supplement now for probably six months and I really believe in it, I believe that it works.

And that's why I keep asking them to come back and sponsor the podcast, because I'm hearing from you guys that it's also working as well.

So I wanted to let you know that Get Dopa is three capsules taken once a day.

So you take them and then it's done.

They are nutritional supplement created by an ADHD founder purely because he knew what was desperately needed to help him as a neurodivergent individual.

So get DOPA includes 16 high quality bioavailable ingredients that support our mental performance, mood, focus, energy and our brain health.

And they also work to support the neurotransmitters which are the building blocks to dopamine and strengthen, very importantly, our central nervous system system.

Something that I talk about a huge amount on the podcast.

So I know that I'm hearing from many of you guys who are using the discount code, which is Kate10 to get 10% off, and that you're telling me how effective Get Dopa has been, which is why I keep reinforcing it back as a sponsor.

But it's also been backed by clinical experts, by ADHD experts such as Dr.

Rachel Gao and Sarah Osborne, who know that these ingredients are fantastic for the ADHD brain and the nervous system.

So we've got 10% discount.

Use the code KATE10.

It's getdopa.com or head to the Show Notes.

You'll see all the information there and the link to get the discount.

Now let's get started with today's podcast.

Welcome to the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Podcast.

I'm Kate Moore Youssef and I'm a wellbeing and lifestyle coach, EFT practitioner, mum to four kids and passionate about helping more women to understand and accept their amazing ADHD brains.

After speaking to many women just like me and probably you, I know there is a need for more health and lifestyle support for women newly diagnosed with adhd.

In these conversations, you'll learn from insightful guests, hear new findings, and discover powerful perspectives and lifestyle tools to enable you to live your most fulfilled, calm and purposeful life wherever you are on your ADHD journey.

Here's today's episode today, we're talking about something very close to my heart and probably to anyone who is a parent that's listening will really understand and resonate with this conversation.

We're talking about mum rage and I've got an amazing author here today with me called Mina Dubin and she is the author of Mum the Everyday Crisis of Modern Motherhood.

And her writing has been featured in lots of different types of press, including the New York Times, the Sunday Times Magazine, Oprah, Daly, Parents Romper and many the places.

And she is a leading feminist voice on mumrage.

And she's appeared on TV as well in America, Good Morning America, the BBC Women's Hour here in the uk and she lives in Barkley with her husband, two kids and no pets because enough is enough.

I wish someone had given me that bit of advice I have to say when I decided to get a second dog, but that's a whole other story.

Welcome to the podcast.

Thank you.

Thanks so much for having me.

I have a feeling that this conversation is going to get me quite riled up because I resonate so much.

And I literally saw this, the title of your book, and I straightaway messaged the link to my WhatsApp group of friends who basically is a mumrage WhatsApp group.

And I just went, oh my God, there's been a book written about us.

About us.

I love that about us.

Yeah.

So I mean, am I right in saying that the book was written after you wrote an essay in, was it the New York Times?

Yeah, yeah, I wrote an essay in the New York Times in 2019 that was republished in 2020 called the Rage Mothers Don't Talk About.

And that essay went viral and I heard from mothers from all over the world basically saying, oh my God, I thought I was the only one.

I thought I was the worst mother in the world.

And.

And that essay really described very viscerally what mom rage felt like and what the experience was like.

And so, yeah, a lot of people connected to it.

It feels like we're sort of in this relentless battle as women, especially when we are, they've got these huge amounts of expectations that are put on us from society, but also from internally of we need to be doing it all and we need to be at the top of our careers and be parenting in this way that we've got to.

You know, I talk about this all the time, like there's so many expectations and something just breaks that camel's back, doesn't it?

And very often it's a child, not Wanting to go to bed or not get in their car seat or they don't tidy their room.

And you see, my kids now are older.

My eldest is 18 and my youngest is 8.

And I look back at where the rage showed up in different capacities.

And I mean, I'm going to say this in the podcast because I feel like we're all friends here, but I had this point where the rage was so strong that after having four kids, my pelvic floor wasn't as strong.

And I'd be like, screaming.

I'd be like, oh, my God, my pelvic floor can't handle the scream of me telling my kid to tidy their bedroom up.

1.

Like, I must have asked them four or five times, and the bedroom still wasn't tidy.

And it's like this visceral kind of rage.

It's the only way I can describe that just comes over you.

I feel like when we talk about it, we normalize it.

Did you feel that when you wrote the essay, then the book that you'd kind of unlocked, like, almost like a shameful secret that we'd all been experiencing?

I felt like that was the case with the essay because there wasn't much of a mom rage conversation happening, at least that I was aware of before that essay was published.

And now, four years later, maybe five, it feels like there is a large mom rage conversation happening online anyway.

There's lots of Instagram accounts that are specific to mom rage.

And I feel like it is.

It is a little bit easier, at least in the social circles that I run in, to talk about it.

Like, I feel like, oh, mom rage.

Like, it's a term that people know.

And when I started it, it wasn't.

And it felt much more shameful by the time this book came out, which, you know, it just came out in September.

It's really recent.

I feel like at this point the conversation has been open.

But also, you know, each of us with our friends and in our social media worlds, we live in our own little bubbles.

So, like, to me, I feel like momrage has been out there and everyone knows what it is.

But, like, I'm sure that's not true.

I'm sure there are people who are seeing this book in the store and being like, oh, my goodness, what's that?

You know, I'm sure that's happening.

I just don't know about it.

Yeah, I think back and look at the way I was parented, and there was definite mum rage in the house then.

Now we have a lot more explanations with Neurodivergence in our family and understanding the difference between that mum rage that maybe lots of us feel, but also the added layer of emotional dysregulation and impulsivity that comes with very much with ADHD and just feeling, we often say it just feels like 0 to 10 of just like this.

Something just comes over us and it may be our kids, it may be something, you know, when we're driving or when someone says something to us and we really feel very viscerally that kind of that rage come over us.

But I do wonder, I think this must have been here over generations.

But there was different coping mechanisms probably gin, drugs, smoking, because we do hear that, don't we?

And now it's frowned upon to sit at the kitchen table and smoke or to drink gin at, you know, 4:00.

And you know, I know some people do, do do it on a Friday, but you know, it's very much kind of like we have to take a holistic approach and everything has to be organic and we need to breathe and go and do some yoga.

Yeah.

And.

And it sometimes feels really hard to step into that when we are feeling really angry about what's been going on.

Totally.

And I don't, I think you're right.

I don't think that mom rage is new.

I think that the term is new, but I don't think that the experience is new.

And I think that we're still doing the same coping mechanisms that we always used.

Maybe it's not cigarettes, but I think drinking is a very common coping mechanism and you know, also a form of self harm potentially and a way to internalize the rage, like in a way to like punish ourselves also.

Yeah, I think that, I think that momrage is old, but the story of mom rage, like the idea of angry mothers is not a story that we have passed down because it's not a story that serves the larger culture, AKA the patriarchy.

Right.

Like if we tell, we don't want to tell the story of mothers being angry about their place in the world because that messes with the myth of the blessed blissed out mother.

Right.

Like that's the story that we tell about mothers and motherhood so that we'll all keep becoming mothers, so that we keep motherhood as like the pinnacle of womanhood.

If we mess with that story and start sharing that all these mothers are unhappy or furious, then it changes how we feel about motherhood.

And that's not in the interest of the culture at large and men and patriarchy.

Yeah, no, Absolutely.

There's so much outdated gender expectations that we've got on ourselves that, you know, even 20 years ago, 30 years ago weren't there.

And so we're now shouldering so much more with more expectations and still being told that we have to be these like perfect, calm, regulated mothers.

Right.

That's the other thing is that While, you know, 50 years ago mothers may have had mom rage, the expectations of mothers was very different.

And you know, all the work that women did to go to work and outside of the home and to work paid jobs, now we're working those full time paid jobs, but we're still doing as much labor and actually we're doing more domestic labor and childcare than we were doing then.

Plus we're working full time paid jobs.

So we're working like three jobs basically, because the mother job is multiple jobs.

If you actually add up all the.

Hours, oh my God.

Yeah, it's never ending.

And then on top of that, it's the thinking about the things.

And we talk about this.

I mean, I've had Eve Rodsky on the podcast who's written Fair Play and it very much talks about the labor at home and the disproportionate amount that women are having to do on top of everything else.

And there's a definite element of sort of talking about mum rage in that book as well.

And the thinking about all the things when we go to bed, like the birthday parties, the shopping, the sports socks, I'm just thinking about all the things I'm thinking about at the moment.

The parents evening, the birthday presents, the Christmas presents, that all the different things that the kids just message me now everything's on message.

And being adhd, you know, once the message has been given, sent to me, if I've not written it down, then it's gone.

I've like forgotten that one of them has asked me to pick up something for school that next morning, the next morning happens and I've not done it.

And it's chaos.

And there's this sort of spiral of shame as well, because I should, you know, as a mum, we should remember all these things.

And I hear this a lot with women who have been diagnosed later on in life that the shoulds of not fitting, not conforming into this sort of perfect maternal image of what they thought they should be portraying and maybe their own mother, who may have had neurodivergence themselves, worked so hard to fit into this kind of mold that their mental health may have suffered.

You know, they may have been depression, anxiety, Addiction, all these different things.

Because when we're conforming to be someone that we're not and all the pressures is, something topples, something gives.

And I think what you've done is very freeing for a lot of people because the shameful conversation is out there and so we don't need to hide and we can share and we can connect and we can communicate.

You know, when you talk about neurodivergence and all the shoulds that you're experiencing, it makes me think like how hard everyone in the house is working.

I think about my own kid who is on the autism spectrum and has sensory processing disorder and how hard he has to work in order to conform in some ways to the social expectations of the world.

And then how hard I'm working to parent this child in a way that works for him and that also works for me.

I'm always trying to keep him regulated and keep me regulated.

We're all working very, very hard.

And so I think that the, all of the stress and the pressure just of regular motherhood can get exacerbated when neurodivergence comes on the scene because everyone is working that much harder.

Oh my God.

That is exactly.

Yeah.

That is such an important point to make.

Because when we perhaps have been parented in a way that hasn't felt like regulation, it's felt like complete emotional dysregulation and turmoil and dysfunction and chaos.

And we are, we've made that decision, that choice to, to break some cycles and start afresh and do do things differently.

It almost does feel like a full time job keeping ourselves regulated.

And I speak for myself, but also so many of my clients and the women in my community that say every day feels really difficult to make sure they're doing all the things so they can parent their child in a way that they weren't parented and give their child what they didn't get.

And that's, I guess, love, compassion, connection, trust, calm.

And like you say, it's, that's, that's exhausting in itself.

And like I try and explain this to my husband actually, where he doesn't really take a huge role in booking, you know, treatments or therapies or you know, even researching and making sure the food and the essential oils and the Epsom salts and the jaw guards and all these different things that I kind of like think of, how's that going to make life easier for them?

He doesn't think about.

And I get into bed and I have, I literally have nothing left to give.

I'm just so exhausted because we've been.

But what happens is when we are working so hard for our family, but also if with our careers, we are then tipped over the edge very easily.

I find maybe.

I'm going to speak for myself here.

That one thing just has to nudge, nudge me and that dial goes over and I can lose my shit very easily.

Are you hearing that a lot from people who have written to you saying that it's like an accumulation of just piles of things and then it's just one thing that tips us?

Yeah, I don't know that I'm hearing that particular story, but I know that that's what it is.

I mean, I write in the book, I write about MomRange as a cycle, that there are actually phases of the cycle so that when you explode over, you know, something that's basically inconsequential, like a child spilling a bowl of cereal, what you're actually exploding over is not the cereal.

You know, there have been a series of aggravations and, you know, a thousand times when you responded perfectly, when you responded with your perfect mother self, and you were like, just a second, honey.

I'll be there in a moment.

Oh, sure.

Yep.

Don't pull on my dress.

Just a second.

Here, why don't you play with this?

I'll be right there.

You know, like all the times when you said it perfectly, and you may not even realize that your frustration is slowly building inside you, and then.

And then the next part is whacking.

I call it the emotional Whack a mole where we start to feel anger or frustration or annoyance, and we sort of whack it down.

Like that game Whack a Mole, where the mole comes up and you whack it down.

Because we're taught a.

Women are taught not to be angry and not to feel comfortable with our anger.

And so we're like, oh, there's anger.

Push it down, push it down.

Don't deal with it.

Don't process it.

But also, we don't have time to deal with it every time we get angry.

We don't have time to process our anger every 10 minutes.

And so by the time we explode and it feels like it is so sudden because it has just been slowly building inside of us.

And you've said a couple times already on this podcast, it takes over me.

And that's exactly what it feels like, that it.

That it's an.

That rage is an entity separate from you and you don't have control that it.

Like, it takes over, and then it leaves, like, as if it's this other being.

And that's really the difference between anger and rage, is that rage feels like it's not part of you and it's this other being, and you don't.

And you're not the one in control.

Yeah, I think that's really well explained.

And I think it's quite freeing for people to be able to see that, because you don't want to be an angry person all the time, but to know that that rage can come over you.

And obviously, we don't want that to happen very often, but sometimes we need it.

And like you say, women are told to be quiet and to, you know, not.

Not to display this type of emotion.

And then sometimes we need to.

We need to go and scream in a forest.

We need to go and, like, hit a pillow.

We need to go and jump in a cold lake.

We need to, I don't know, like, all these different things, go dancing and just kind of let our hair down.

Because if we don't do these things, it does take over us and it stays within us.

And the resentment and the martyrdom that we can feel, we've seen, unfortunately, there's, like, devastating consequences to that.

And I think when we name it, we see it, we notice it, there's awareness around it, we talk about it, we're then able to be like, okay, well, what.

What can we do now?

Like, I want to have this conversation with you now, but I don't want to leave people thinking, well, I'm just going to be ragey.

And that's just the way it is.

I want to be able to say, okay, what can we do that feels within our capacity that we're still able to get angry?

Like, not say, oh, you're not allowed to get angry.

But have you found, since you've kind of talked about it, noticed it, like, what's.

What's been the most helpful thing for you?

The most helpful thing for me has been a reframe around rage, to not think of it as an enemy.

I think that we are so afraid of our rage because it's scary, you know, to feel that kind of anger and to feel out of control.

And so when we do have the rage, once it's done, we feel a ton of shame, and we basically push it as far away from our consciousness as possible.

We don't want to think about it.

We don't want to deal with it.

And so the most important thing for me actually, has been to think about my rage as a friend instead of an enemy and to get really curious about it.

Because our rage has super important information for us about the places in our life or in ourselves that need attention and healing or change.

Right?

So it might be that you need more support, you need to have someone else watching your children, you need to not be in charge of clothing for your children, whatever it is.

Like, maybe like that particular task is just like that's the one that's toppling the mountain of sanity.

And so that's the task that you're like, I need you to be in charge of this task and all the thinking around it to your partner or whatever it is.

But really the most important thing has been to research my rage, like to get really curious about it and to start taking notes on it.

When am I raging?

Where am I raging?

What was said right before I lost it, what was done?

What's been happening that week?

When's the last time I slept well?

When's the last time I had sex?

When's the last time I saw my friends?

You know, exercise, like getting super smart about it, I think is for me has been the most important thing.

So I'm just interrupting today's episode to let you know about a brand new live workshop that I've got coming up on the 24th of May at 1pm and this workshop is all about reducing your ADHD overwhelm in family life and discovering and welcoming in more calm and regulation.

Now, I want to let you know that I don't have all the answers, but it's something that I deal with on a daily basis and I've discovered over the years.

I've understanding my own ADHD and coupled with all my coaching and talking to my experts on the podcast as well as all my hundreds of coaching clients, that there is a way of living without feeling in this sort of default state of feeling like you're drowning, that you're stressed all the time.

And juggling family life alongside an ADHD brain can feel overwhelming at best and debilitating at worse.

And life is happening at the moment at breakneck speed.

We are all struggling to feel balanced like we're keeping.

And so I wanted to share with you six steps that I know have worked for me and six steps I often talk about to many of my private coaching clients.

I wanted to share this in a group live workshop.

So if this is something that you are dealing with right now and you would love some more support, some new ideas, different perspectives, I would love it if you could join me.

All the details are on the Today's Show Notes, but also on my website, which is ADHD womenswellbeing.co.uk if you head to the Show Notes or my website, you'll find all the information and it's in one hour.

You'll learn some new ways of coping and feeling more resilient and looking at life differently and feeling like you don't have to be at the mercy of everything that's piling up on top of you and that you do have control and choice over what you choose to bring into your family life.

So I really look forward to seeing you there.

It's the 24th of May, 1:00 and it's.

All the details are on my website.

Now back to today's episode.

As women, we've got hormones as well and as we're getting older and I don't know if I'm stereotyping here, but I wonder if having, you know, like, we're getting older as we're having kids.

And so what I'm noticing, there's a, there's a trend of perimenopause kind of kicking in.

When our kids are young and maybe 20, 30 years ago.

There was a distance, we had a bit of time, we had a bit of space because we were having kids in our late 20s, you know, mid-20s.

Perimenopause kind of kicks in, you know, early 40s, mid-40s.

But if there's a lot of women having kids, late 30s, early 40s, what's happening?

It's a hormonal young child nightmare and we're not getting sleep when we need sleep most.

Our hormones are kind of taking over again.

You know, for us in this neurodivergent community, very often the ADHD or autism rears its head around this time because of hormones.

And hormones are sort of depleting our estrogen levels, which is kind of depleting our dopamine levels, which is then having an interface with, you know, our cycles and our hormones and making us more prone to mood dysregulation and all sorts of things.

And so we need to give ourselves so much self compassion as well, because we, we have, and we, we have a cycle that kind of facilitates a lot of dysregulation anyway.

And then on top of that, we have all the things that we've just been talking about.

Would you, would you say that, that, you know, obviously you were researching the book and were you noticing these kind of societal patterns creeping up for you?

You know, I don't have a connection yet between Menopausal rage, which I've actually heard of.

I remember hearing it on a podcast and thinking, oh, my God, it's never gonna end.

Apparently post menopause, everyone's really chilled.

Apparently, that's it.

30 to 50, you're screwed.

So I don't know because I talked to moms who were probably 30 to 51, and they were all experiencing rage.

So I'm not sure where menopause fits in.

I know for myself, my hormones feel like they're a key part of it and I can be extremely hormonal and when I'm in, like the PMS part of my cycle, I need to just like go hide.

But I'm sure it's connected, right?

Hormones are just so powerful.

And I think that what you said about self compassion is also just a humongous, humongous piece because there is so much expected of mothers and there's just so little grace given, I think, to mothers that, like, if we can't give ourselves compassion, who is going to?

And the more critical we are of ourselves, like having a perfectionist streak ends up often coming out as being very critical and rageful towards the people that we love because we hold those high expectations without giving them the compassion that we also refuse to give ourselves.

And so working on a self compassion, like working on trying to give yourself that is also a key to trying to lessen your mom rage.

Yeah, exactly.

So if we sort of lessen the expectations we put on ourselves, we lessen the expectations on others.

And so when our mum can't pick up one of our kids from school that day because they've got, you know, something like golf or bridge or whatever, you know, they do, actually.

I look now and I think I'm so glad that she's got hobbies and I'm so glad that she's busy and she's active and she's social.

Whereas maybe a few years ago there would have been resentment there of, well, how dare she?

She's a mum.

She should be ready to drop everything for me at all times.

And actually I would want my kids to want me to be sociable and busy and healthy and active in my 70s as well, and, you know, give me that kind of compassion that she's gone through motherhood, she's done the hard thing.

And yes, she's got grandchildren, but apparently that's the whole fun of grandchildren.

You hand them back and unless you're like, super, super active in, you know, in the child's life.

But it is very much like using ourselves as this mirror and really looking inwards.

And I think what you said before, you know, looking at our boundaries and our people pleasing and our perfectionism and really seeing all of that.

And what can we let go of, what can we release?

What shackles have been sort of holding us to?

This place where I look back at myself a few years ago and if people were coming over to my house and the surfaces weren't all clean and the cushions weren't in the right place and the flowers weren't out on the table, I would be like mortified.

And I was thinking, actually, what does that portray to other people that makes them feel, oh my God, you can't, you know, and now if I have people over in the kitchen's a mess and you know, there's muddy football boots everywhere, I kind of just lean into that because I would rather sit on my couch resting for half an hour longer than.

And as opposed to being exhausted and resentful that I'm having guests over.

And I've definitely had a mindset shift in all of this and it's helped lessen the mum rage.

Whether or not it's because I'm getting more sleep because my kids are older, my kids are more self sufficient, they are more independent in one capacity.

But then also emotionally, as they're teenagers, they.

There's another kind of whole, you know, dynamic going on as well, like fear, worry conversations, big conversations where when the kids are younger, they're more physical and it's more exhausting physically.

But those needs, those emotional needs aren't as strong.

So I don't really know where I'm going with that, apart from, I think the cycles of being a mum, you know, ebb and flow and sometimes it feels easier and sometimes it feels much harder.

Yeah, totally.

And I would say about like the messy house, like for me, when I'm looking for mom friends, I'm looking for mom friends with messy houses and more kids than me.

I'm looking for mom friends who are much more chaotic, you know, like those are, those are the real people.

Like I'm not looking for people whose houses are perfect.

Like, those are the ones that I don't want to tell that I don't want to send my mom raid shame text to because I don't trust them.

Like it's the mom with the messy house who I trust.

You know, I love that.

And that's connection, isn't it?

You know, we share our vulnerabilities and that's the power of how we connect as human.

And like you say we don't want to feel any more guilt than we're feeling or any more shame than we're feeling because in that moment that the mum rage comes out, you know, it's not like, yeah, go me, like go me.

Look, I'm such a great mum.

It's like, oh my God, what have I done?

My kid's terrified, I've slammed a door, I've smashed a plate, whatever's gone on, you know, something's happened that we, we don't want to inflict in our kids and we don't like it ourselves.

And so it's, you know, I look back and different things and for me the biggest way out of it is the regulation before is like the five steps before of making sure that I've had exercise, I've been outside, I've not over committed, my boundaries have been intact, I've asked for help and you know, now as so my husband, you know, we've been parenting for over 18 years together and I would say the last six or seven years of us parenting has been the best.

Even though we've got more kids, we've got four kids.

But it's been the easiest because he's decided to step into a much more proactive role as being a parent and he does a lot more shouldering of the menial chores and the, those things that would keep me up at night that he would see me being really stressed about.

And he is on some of the WhatsApp groups now and he does the pickups and he knows when the kids bus schedule is and all these different things.

Yes, I would say the share now is a bit fairer.

It's maybe 60, 40 on me, which is not how it used to be.

Yeah, no.

I think one of the amazing things about having written this book is that I suddenly had a very intense deadline.

I had one year that I was supposed to write this book in and it was during the pandemic and I really, there was no way I was going to do it without stepping back from some of the mom duties that I was doing.

He really had to take over and you know, I've stepped back in to some degree.

But that changed has had lasting effects.

He just sent out the emails and got, you know, for both of our kids birthdays, you know, he's like, and he's doing all the communication around that like he, you know, he's very, he's much more involved.

He just agreed to be the chaperone for my kids trip like at school, you know, he's he's way more involved.

I'm not sure that I would say that I'm the primary parent anymore.

I think it's either even or possibly he might be and that it makes a big difference.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, even again, I would say after the pandemic, the shift of husbands or fathers at the school gates has shifted.

I think.

I think there's been.

I think that pandemic period that was so intense for so many families, maybe there's been a recognition that things needed to change.

Yeah.

Well, one of the things that I found sort of exciting and remarkable about the pandemic is that all of these fathers, many of whom were bigwigs at their jobs, CEOs or whatever, all of a sudden were at home on their zoom screens and they couldn't hide the kids.

Instead of being CEOs, suddenly they became fathers before everyone's eyes.

The kids would run in and scream and he'd be like, you know what I mean?

Like, it was chaos.

And we all just became parents, the men too.

And I think that there was like, I don't know how if it will last, but like it felt like there was a shift there that was.

That I thought was amazing.

Yeah.

It humanized so many people and humanized parents as well.

And like you say, wherever we were in that situation, kind of work wise, career wise, or even just being at home speaking to teachers and all of that, it gave us an opportunity, almost like an even playing field.

And hopefully from the even playing field, I mean, maybe I'm being a bit too idealistic there, but, you know, the outdated expectations that were super, super outdated are just a little bit more outdated now.

But why shouldn't you, why should the care not be split between, you know, parents?

You know, And I actually want to open this up, this conversation and make it as inclusive as possible to, you know, people who are listening, who are single parents and, you know, maybe parenting of the same sex or really understanding how when we can find as much support and help as possible, however we parent, will really help reduce our ages as mothers.

And what made me kind of chuckle a little bit internally is when I read in one of your articles that there was this sort of secret desire for divorce because they looked at their friends who were divorced and they were co parenting or they had time off, they had a weekend off and space to breathe and they, they kind of felt they were better parents because they literally had no kids in the house.

And how awful to be in a situation.

Maybe if you're in a happy marriage, to kind of look enviously at someone that's gone through hell through a divorce and looked at them and thought, oh, but at least you get the weekend off.

At least you get a Thursday night off.

Yeah.

That excerpt that you read is actually from the book.

And yeah, it was sort of a fantasy, like I was saying that, like, mothering is so constant, the work of it is.

So, like, even when you're not doing mothering work, like, you talked about the mental load, those tabs running in your brain, like you never stop working.

And so there's.

I talk about this fantasy that I, and like many of the moms I talk to, have about what 50, 50 shared custody would look like in terms of just be the.

In terms of being able to get a break.

And this is, myself included, for moms who don't actually want to get a divorce and moms who are totally in love with their spouses.

Right.

But this fantasy, which many mothers responded, many divorced mothers responded, this is not a real fantasy.

It doesn't actually feel like this and it doesn't look like this.

But the point of that was that is how hard motherhood feels.

That that's the fantasy, that that's the only way we can imagine getting a break.

Yeah.

I spoke about something I did a few years ago on the podcast where I think it was very close to just when life was getting back to normal after the pandemic.

And there was this sort of collective exhaustion from mothers.

It was very, sort of very real, intangible.

And I remember these conversations of, you know, they were in school, they were out school, and we were cooking every single meal, homeschooling, working, and got to the end of this kind of two years, and we were all almost broken.

And I decided that I was going to take myself off to a hotel and have this night in this hotel.

And.

And I wish I'd enjoyed it more because the whole time I was in this hotel and I kind of.

I've just felt so uncomfortable, like I'm in a hotel on my own.

What am I going to do?

I'll order room service.

I'll watch a film or look at my watch or it's bath time or I wonder what the kids are doing.

And it felt so hard to disconnect.

It is hard to switch off as well, isn't it?

Because even if we say we're going to go and have a lie down on the bed for an hour, we can hear the chaos.

We can hear what's going on.

We're looking at our watch.

And that kind of almost like that control freak kind of comes into us and going, well, it's dinner time and I can't hear that dinner's on, you know, being made or he needs to be taken to football practice, but I can't hear that the car's out the drive and it's, it's hard for us to relax.

So it's.

Would you say that we're so finely programmed to not relax that maybe this, this is just part and parcel of being a mum and just.

I don't know how to change the internal programming?

Yeah, I mean, I think that we're programmed that way because the society programs us that way.

Because if mothers are doing all of that work, then men don't have to.

And you know, I mean, even in same sex relationships, what I found is that there is still tends to be a gender dynamic of one partner being more of the breadwinner and primary money earner and one partner being more of the primary caregiver.

And I think that one of the big connections to mom rage of what you were just talking about when you talk about matrescence, is that when we actually have that night away, we have been momming so hard for so long that when we have a moment to go back to being a self, beside that's, that's something other than mom.

We don't even know who that self is.

And for me, I will say that a lot of my mom rage has come from feeling constricted and just being mom and desperately, desperately needing to return or find a new sense of identity that's not just within the walls of my home.

Yeah.

And so I think that's actually a really big point.

Like a really big piece of it is to have this really full self that's not about the family.

Yeah, 100%.

I've really noticed that a lot.

That my most fulfilled friends and the people who are kind of like, I look at them as like balanced people, they have a really fulfilled career, they feel purposeful and it's not just from their children.

It's not just running around and cooking and being, you know, why you.

A mother, a dog's body.

They are, maybe they've got a stressful career, but it really kind of like feels purposeful.

And so when they're in the house, it doesn't.

They don't just feel like that.

That's all they do like this, this busy being a mum the whole time.

And I know for me, I look back now, this interesting, this conversation, I can look back now and see.

Actually, my mum rage really dissipated when I stepped more into working more and fulfilling myself in my career, where I had four or five years of being off, you know, like young kids, chaos, busy.

I.

I probably needed to be in the house, on the ground, doing everything I was doing.

But from like a spiritual and fulfillment perspective, I had nothing.

I was depleted.

And so I would say, even if you don't want to work or you can't work, or find something that lifts you up, find something lights you up that isn't just your kids and your family, because that can make a big difference, right?

Because that, like getting lit up in that way, whatever it's from, if it's from work or a hobby or, you know, running or whatever it is that like, lights you up, that's like another way of saying filling up your cup, right?

So that when you walk into that house, you have this light, you're ready to give in a way, whereas if you don't have that, you just come in and you're like, more of this.

You need that so that you actually have a vibrant self to give some of.

Yeah, exactly.

So you walk in the house, you've filled your own cup, you've got a different dimension.

You've been around people, you've not talked about your kids.

I mean, my biggest bugbear is when you finally go out with friends and all they do is talk about their kids and I'm like, no, I've just literally left a bunch of kids, like, clawing at me and asking me for things.

I just want to sit down at the table.

Not talk about schools, exams, teachers, kids.

Like, I get it.

I know that a lot of people do need to vent and I do know it's really important to talk about things like that.

But sometimes we just need to be us, we just need to sit around the, you know, restaurant table or the we're on a walk or we're at yoga, whatever we're doing, and just be us and just talk about things that interest us.

But some, I think some women do find it hard to identify with that part of themselves that isn't a mum.

If that has been such a big part of your life.

And I'm not judging, I'm just maybe saying that it's all about kind of self awareness.

This, this conversation of exactly what you said earlier, of when does the rage show up, you know, what haven't I had recently, what haven't I done recently?

Who's crossed my boundaries and where have I said yes, when I wanted to say no.

What have I given when I just wanted to, you know, hold back and just do a bit more of a self inventory and kind of go, oh, okay, now I understand.

I wasn't angry exactly like you said why my kids spilled the cereal.

It's because I haven't had any time to myself all week and I've been giving to everyone and no one has cared for me.

And that's right.

Yeah, yeah.

And I think that for me it has been extremely useful and wonderful to have friends who are not moms or friends who are moms of kids who are much older than me, than my kids, so that we're in different places.

Because I do find that moms who have kids around my kids are 6 and 10, you know, who have kids around my kids age or a little younger that like, they're also not as likely to like, want to go out at night or, you know, have a whole night where we're not talking about our kids.

And so it can.

I think it's helpful, you know, to have like a multi generational friendships and, you know, you don't just have to have mom friends.

It's great to have mom friends because then you can talk about that.

But.

But you know, if I'm just thinking like for mothers who are listening who have mom friends and that's all they talk about, you know, to have friends who aren't moms.

It's so important.

That's separation and it is vital.

I guess what my final question would be is, what's your plan now in this, in this space, do you feel like you've kind of done what you need to do here or has it opened a can of worms for other areas in this, in this sort of societal acknowledgement?

I feel like, I actually feel like I've done what I need to do here.

I think there are a lot of people working right now in the mom rage space.

I think there are researchers, scientific researchers actually now doing research, which is.

And there were like maybe one or two doing it beforehand.

But their work is so important because like, if I didn't have that, I couldn't have had any scientific basis for any of the work that I did in this book.

And so their research is extremely important.

There are a lot of psychologists and mental health experts who are working in the mom rage space.

And I feel like, you know, I'm not a psychologist, I'm not a scientific researcher, I'm a writer.

And so the thing that I'm really good at and that I feel Like I can offer the world is my words.

And so I feel like I've done the thing that I do, which is I wrote a book about it and it's researched and reported, but also it's a memoir as well.

Like it's my story in there.

In addition to all the other mothers I interviewed and how I saw.

My job with this book was to offer mothers compassion and relief and to give them a sense of being seen.

So I feel like I've done that with the book and I'm, you know, I'm happy to keep talking about it.

I want to sell the book.

I want to, you know, keep giving mother's relief.

If people ask me to speak, I'm doing speaking events and stuff like that.

But I'm moving on to the next book because that's my thing because that's what I do, you know, that's like my space.

But I would be surprised if Mom Ridge doesn't make an appearance in the next book.

Am I allowed to ask what the next book is?

Yeah, I actually think it's fiction.

I think I'm gonna, I really want to play like this book felt, you know, I've actually gotten a lot of comments that the book is funny, which is, you know, makes me happy I think, because I tend to be more light hearted just as who I am.

But I think that I really want to play a little more than this book allowed me to play.

So I'm gonna do fiction and it's going to be about a relationship and it's going to be about a couple who opens up their marriage and becomes non monogamous.

So I think we're just, I think it's going to be sexy and kind of fun and hopefully page turning.

So fantastic.

Well, you know, thank you for opening up this conversation for so many other women and normalize it and you know, be able to have these conversations on WhatsApp groups and over coffee and dog walks and be able to kind of say, I did this thing last night and I'm not proud of it, but I was so tired and I was so drained and exhausted and I just kind of lost it.

And that other person is going to turn around and go, well, don't worry because I did that last week.

Yeah, that's, that's the dream.

That's the dream, right?

Because if you, if you can, if you can will yourself to press send on that text, that shame text to a friend, then you are saying I am worthy of care, I am worthy of compassion.

Right?

Because you're like it's so vulnerable.

And vulnerability is how we create intimacy, you know, and connection.

Absolutely.

I hope you're right.

I hope it does that.

I hope so.

And I think that if anyone's listening here and actually does feel like they're in a darker space than this and they do feel that this, this rage is maybe daily or too often or too regular.

There's so many different ways.

There's CBT therapy, there's mindfulness, there's ways of like a breathing, of regulating, lots of regulation tools.

I've got lots of regulation tools on my website because I understand this is.

This can be something that we can sort of laugh about, talk about, but actually it can almost feel all consuming as well.

And we feel like we're drowning.

And if we don't have a partner who there to support us or family members nearby or we feel isolated in a community, it can feel really, really challenging.

But I do know that with a different combination of therapy, medication, holistic tools, just going on a run, simply just going on like a run can really help release a lot of tension and anger and rage.

So don't feel alone if you are listening to this and you know, you feel like you need some extra help because I know that it's all there.

So.

Mina, I just wanted to thank you so much.

I really enjoyed this conversation just being able to talk about it.

I feel a bit like I have.

To say thank you for having me.

And I agree.

I feel like every time we talk about it, like it just, it feels good to talk about it.

It's something we don't talk about and I'm grateful that you had me on so that we could have the space to do that.

I really hope you enjoyed this week's episode.

If you did and it resonated with you, I would absolutely love it if you could share on your platforms or maybe leave a review and a rating wherever you listen to your podcasts.

And please do check out my website, ADHD womenswellbeing.co.uk for lots of free resources and paid for workshops.

I'm uploading new things all the time and I would absolutely love to see you there.

Take care and see you for the next episode.

I.