[SPEAKER_00]: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Mark Grove's podcast.

[SPEAKER_00]: Today we have a guest who is going to break down something that is very fascinating.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is in the context of your relationship to your mother and how it connects to so many things.

[SPEAKER_00]: So many things, so if you've ever heard the term, the mother wound, or you haven't, it doesn't that term kind of get y'all zingy.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, well, there's got to be some juice up in here.

[SPEAKER_00]: And there is.

[SPEAKER_00]: I heard this woman's work a long time ago, Kylie's a very big fan.

[SPEAKER_00]: Kylie's my wife if you're not familiar.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's just such tremendous work.

[SPEAKER_00]: It makes a lot of [SPEAKER_00]: mother womb shows up in your life as men and women and how it shows up in our relationships.

[SPEAKER_00]: It could be such an unconscious way in which we limit ourselves.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, before we dive in, wherever you're listening to this, one of the simplest ways to support the show that costs you nothing is to subscribe to the podcast.

[SPEAKER_00]: You don't miss any episodes.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm moving towards just solo episodes with the odd guest here and there because I'm really, you know, as I was saying, I'm not going to have guests anymore.

[SPEAKER_00]: I then get this chance to have an incredible guest where I'm like, oh, I want to talk about what you're thinking about because you think about the world in a way that I want to understand more deeply because look at the world for it.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's very fractured.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's how do we build bridges back to one another and how do we prevent ourselves from being ideologically captured and emotionally, [SPEAKER_00]: brought to extremes, and everyone is capable of that, so we want to understand the process that leads to that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we want to do our work because the solution to healing the world is healing ourselves, and we have to unify within ourselves to unify our communities.

[SPEAKER_00]: So there's a lot of ways that we end up divided.

[SPEAKER_00]: within ourselves and let's talk about the motherhood because that's at the core of so many reasons that we split away from what we truly desire who we truly are What we truly want allowing ourselves success or not, etc.

[SPEAKER_00]: So without further ado, let's dive into today's episode.

[SPEAKER_00]: I can't wait for you to hear this one.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Mark Rose podcast.

[SPEAKER_00]: Today we have a very special guest, Bethany Webster Welcome.

[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks, Mark.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's great to be here.

[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for having me.

[SPEAKER_00]: So your work has long preceded you in my life.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I know a lot of people have consumed your work.

[SPEAKER_00]: As I said before, we hit record.

[SPEAKER_00]: My wife is a super fan of your work.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so maybe we can get into and for people listening.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's really surrounding this.

[SPEAKER_00]: This, would you call it like a idea concept theory of the mother wound?

[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't feel theoretical though.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think it is in a way, a theory, it's, I know some people define it differently, but I always had a very specific way of defining it that I think has helped me the most and I've always wanted to just share that with others.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it was a surprise to me about 10 years ago and I started sharing it that people really, really resonated with the, this way of seeing both our personal journeys and also the way it fits into a larger cultural context.

[SPEAKER_02]: I define the mother wound as having actually four levels.

[SPEAKER_02]: The first level is the personal mother wound.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I see that as a set of beliefs and patterns that we internalize through our early childhood dynamics with our moms that basically are informed also by the larger cultural context of patriarchy, which says that women are less than, [SPEAKER_02]: and men are better than, and that kind of shapes really how we, the intersection of our need for love, safety, and belonging with our sense of self.

[SPEAKER_02]: So basically, for female conditioning, it's like, I'm a good girl when I'm quiet and appease others.

[SPEAKER_02]: And when I'm small and self-sacrificing [SPEAKER_02]: to our moms is how deeply that was reinforced.

[SPEAKER_02]: So our sense of self really gets shaped and even our nervous system and the way our bodies work, our sense of safety gets shaped around how compliant we are with these both cultural mandates as well as the personal traumatic stuff that our parents passed down to us, you know, to whatever degree that they are still [SPEAKER_02]: So I know that's kind of a long complex answer, but if I had to whittle it down, I would say it's the intersection between our sense of love, safety, and belonging, and that sense of not being good enough.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's level one.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's level one.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's the personal mother of the community.

[SPEAKER_00]: We got three more levels.

[SPEAKER_00]: But that's the important of that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's do that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Keep running that, and then you can can actually walk through the other three.

[SPEAKER_02]: Sure.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so what made you get into or how did you discover this?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it really was not something I ever thought.

[SPEAKER_02]: I just happened organically where I think I was around 27 years old and I just finally felt ready to confront my own mom about [SPEAKER_02]: our dynamics.

[SPEAKER_02]: And my dynamic with my mom was, and I thought this was totally normal, which was that I was her kind of best friend slash therapist and growing up my parents had a lot of tumult in their marriage.

[SPEAKER_02]: So there was constant fighting.

[SPEAKER_02]: chaos upheaval.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so I was kind of like my mom's best friend.

[SPEAKER_02]: So she would confide in me, how she's feeling, work stuff, relationships stuff.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I just thought like, I'm like the golden child, you know, I'm mom's best friend.

[SPEAKER_02]: It made me feel powerful and important.

[SPEAKER_02]: But it wasn't until I was like in college, it wouldn't really started where I started to see, oh my God.

[SPEAKER_02]: Who am I?

[SPEAKER_02]: I kind of broke down when I got into college a bit like I didn't know who I was.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was a drift started having panic attacks.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I thought I had a perfect family.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, like this was normal.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I was the mediator in the family.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I would mediate my parents fights.

[SPEAKER_02]: I would call the bar to try to get my dad to come home from the bar.

[SPEAKER_02]: So early.

[SPEAKER_02]: So probably like.

[SPEAKER_02]: 10 up started doing more active protection mediation in the family and I just thought that's what a good daughter does.

[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't know that that had deeply traumatic damage had been done to my own sense of self until I was at that, you know, started around college where you start to have, you get distance from your family and you start to notice things because you have [SPEAKER_02]: I just had to grow up really fast.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I, when I was 27, I had been in therapy for around, I don't know, maybe eight years at that point.

[SPEAKER_02]: I got into therapy early.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I had some insight, and I wanted to confront my mother about it and try to have a better relationship.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, let's have a better relationship because it had become something that had to be endured.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like phone calls with her were rough.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was always about her.

[SPEAKER_02]: She didn't really care about me.

[SPEAKER_02]: It started to become obvious that I was kind of a prop in her movie set, not really a person.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I had done enough work on myself that I was like, I don't want to be in a relationship like that.

[SPEAKER_02]: No relationship, do I want to feel like, I'm just a cardboard cutout.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it was a big challenge.

[SPEAKER_02]: We're like, all right, I'm going to confront her and see if I can, you know, just how open she be.

[SPEAKER_02]: Long story short, it was bad.

[SPEAKER_02]: It went really bad to the point where she was like, I got an email saying, you're not my daughter.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know who you are.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, we went that bad.

[SPEAKER_02]: Quick, it was like, don't come to home when you come to town.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think you should stay with us when you come to town.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was shockingly, [SPEAKER_02]: brutal and she went for the drug killer immediately.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was painful, but it was so validating at the same time because I got to see, wow, a lot of the things I had intuitive and started to, you know, as I started to read psychology books and I was in psychology, I got a degree in psychology as well.

[SPEAKER_02]: I started to see, wow, my family is not a perfect family.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's so [SPEAKER_02]: what I saw was I was almost like a plug or a lid on top of family dysfunction.

[SPEAKER_02]: And when I started to evolve out of that role of being like a compliant, good girl, sacrificial land type of energy, then everything flew out.

[SPEAKER_02]: And my mom went to some really dark places, you know, like, I said, I said, or I think I need some space.

[SPEAKER_02]: So can we take a break, you know, and [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to come to your house.

[SPEAKER_02]: If you don't, and I'm going to go.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so my situation's a little extreme.

[SPEAKER_02]: I know like the mother wounds is spectrum.

[SPEAKER_02]: I just want to say that some others are not nearly as dysfunctional as mine was it's really a spectrum and it depends on a lot of factors, you know, how these things can play out.

[SPEAKER_02]: Um, mine is just one way can play out, but um, yeah, it went bad.

[SPEAKER_02]: And at the end of it, all I had to go no contact with my whole family, everyone.

[SPEAKER_02]: My brother was like, you're wounded.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't want you in my life anymore.

[SPEAKER_02]: Which was random because I was trying to connect with him because we were always close.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was kind of a protector to him.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's how I felt.

[SPEAKER_00]: Was he upset that you had disrupted the family system?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's like, sweet, there's a spot open.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, it's probably like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Or this, yeah, it's amazing when you disrupt the system and then the system can and often all turns towards the person who says, I, this isn't working the way I want or need it to work in a healthy.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm moving towards health.

[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, this is just when consciously goes, but we work so well without health.

[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly, it's a real threat to the system when someone evolves out of the role and they become the problem.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that's why it's so disorienting to [SPEAKER_02]: go no low contact usually starts low contact and then it goes into no contact for many people, and to really decouple your sense of self from the narrative of the family.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's one of the hardest things is to realize that they can't understand you clearly.

[SPEAKER_02]: They're not invested and understanding you.

[SPEAKER_02]: They don't have the capacity and that you get to choose your narrative [SPEAKER_02]: You know, that's part of your right to be the authority of what is true and best and right for you.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it's a real mental and emotional spiritual journey to exit a dysfunctional family and feel into the safety.

[SPEAKER_02]: of being your own person.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think for me, it's like the road from feeling like an exile to feeling the liberation of it.

[SPEAKER_02]: It stops being about being ejected from the family, being a bit told that you're bad or wrong or whatever.

[SPEAKER_02]: And realizing actually the freedom that you have of having made that choice and how you can define yourself and live within your own integrity in a very deep way.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it's like I think it's like an initiation like straight up initiation into your power if you have to go through that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's so beautiful about it too, which is the complexity of it because it's both the experience of exile, which is, of course, on an unconscious and, I mean, conscious level, but especially unconscious level is so perceivably, like what has always held us hostage in the smallest.

[SPEAKER_00]: So if I now do the thing that's gonna exile me and then I get exiled the very fear, [SPEAKER_00]: I've had my whole life that's kept me in the behaviors, has been realized, but then you realize that for the most part, of course, I know different people have different experiences with this, but for the most part, it does not decimate you, but it does decimate the false sense of self and all the mass that we've had to wear and then you move towards, let's say, you have friends who are healthier, you have friends, families who you witness as being healthier, and they're like, way to go, it's so beautiful to have all of you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I just got this contrast of my blood family and then I have this and it's [SPEAKER_00]: I think what, like when I think about experiencing that, I think about the immense amount of grief that would both end anger, that would join with this sense of unconditional love that's now present because now you have contrast.

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh yeah, totally what you just said.

[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's like something that was upside down that you didn't realize was upside down, gets turned right side up.

[SPEAKER_00]: What a mind F.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's a real mind of and one of the things about anger I just want to say because I love that you mentioned anger is this is something that I see happens over time as well you start to love yourself you start to appreciate yourself and part of that means feeling naturally upset when you're just respected.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: And seeing that as a healthy response, like a normal healthy, you know, you're assessing things correctly when you feel a sense of anger at being totally disrespected or unseen or manipulated or what have you.

[SPEAKER_02]: But that's actually a healthy response.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think when we're in dysfunctional families, I think about this a lot, we define wrongly that love is silence and subservience.

[SPEAKER_02]: And [SPEAKER_02]: andlessly forgiving, and overlooking abuse, minimizing abuse, we learn that's what love is in those dysfunctional families.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so we have to almost redefine for ourselves what love really is, like a healthy definition, which means we get to confront people about something that doesn't work for us, and that doesn't mean the end of the relationship, you know, like that actually deepens relationship.

[SPEAKER_02]: Conflict is a way of path into deeper intimacy.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's necessary that kind of [SPEAKER_02]: and also self advocacy, I think in dysfunctional families, advocating for yourself is seen as being ungrateful, mean, superior, as though you don't have a right to advocate for yourself.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it's almost like we have to relearn not only new definitions of things, but also the skills of how to [SPEAKER_02]: do the things that were actually really scary when we were kids, whether that's saying notice something or advocating for ourselves or telling someone that their behavior isn't okay.

[SPEAKER_02]: And these are all just skills that get really underdeveloped and even associated with [SPEAKER_02]: care if we grew up in a family that was really dysfunctional.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I think I wanted to just amplify what you said about anger because I think reclaiming our anger is part of our...

[SPEAKER_02]: absolute healing personally for men and women in different ways and in the culture like people that can stand up for themselves that can speak out our healthy that's a healthy thing in the face of injustice of any kind personal injustice collective injustice and it's a big threat to patriarchy or those higher dysfunctional systems.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's fascinating to you that it's also super hot, you know, like when you meet someone who's got great boundaries, you're like, wow, you've got something about you and it's I think it's this nervous system goes into relaxation because you realize that they have themselves.

[SPEAKER_00]: So they're not going to hook into you.

[SPEAKER_00]: like there's a sense of sovereignty and a sense of like they know that when shit hits the fan they've got their own back and there's something about that within our own being where we were there's a swagger to that there's a way of walking around that's more attractive and when it's false that I think we can fall for that that's maybe more than narcissistic you know behavior or just like really low self worth masquerading as confidence [SPEAKER_00]: which I guess those are interchangeable a lot of the time, but I'm curious.

[SPEAKER_00]: So if someone, how would someone know that they should go deeper into looking at the motherland?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like what would be the symptoms of that?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: I would say there's many symptoms to look at that.

[SPEAKER_02]: The number one thing is, how do you feel about your relationship with your mom?

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, do you dread those phone calls?

[SPEAKER_02]: Or do you go into a slump after you see your mom for a few hours or a few days, where you just feel awful?

[SPEAKER_02]: Some degree of drain on you in the interaction with your mom?

[SPEAKER_02]: That's a key thing.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think it's normalized a lot.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's like a joke.

[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of us joke about oh my god my mother, you know, it's kind of in the sitcoms and commercials.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's all kind of normalized.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that's part of the reason why it's so taboo is we're all just.

[SPEAKER_02]: kind of dealing with this feeling like they have to endure it without realizing that there's some virulence there because what's fascinating to me too is if we have any kind of issues with our mom, it totally shows up in every other relationship because it's the blueprint, it's the blueprint and, you know, so as a coach, what's fascinating for me is watching people go from, I know some things wrong in this relationship and then they start to work through it and then they come [SPEAKER_02]: Naturally showing up differently and my relationship with my kid or with my husband or with my boss because you're really dealing with that Lynch pin level with your mom.

[SPEAKER_02]: You can stand up to your mom if you can talk truth.

[SPEAKER_02]: If you can open up, your nervous system might be like, this isn't safe.

[SPEAKER_02]: She's going to either, you know, something that's going to happen.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the amount, I mean, you're right, it goes right to the source code.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it is the source code.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, exactly.

[SPEAKER_00]: Or people start with mom and I'm like, sometimes you've got to build up your capacity.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's true as if as a parent now, like we have a just over two year old.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've been really both mesmerized by the the impact mom has in a way like watching witnessing my wife and her attunement and her attention and just like the deep sacrifice and and well of course I want to bear some of that.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's just things that are not that I just can't do [SPEAKER_00]: The he wrote, it didn't start with you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I'm not here to come.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_00]: He said something so beautiful.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was talking to him and I said, Dad's are like a port, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: He was like, yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, wait, wait, what do you mean this?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he's like, listen, dad's important.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, he's like the mother, though, is everything in early life.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he said, the mother, and I, I always prefaced this with like, if you're listening to this or watching this in your mom, [SPEAKER_00]: that grief might come when we have these realizations about the relationships we have with our children and the relationships they have with us.

[SPEAKER_00]: And, et cetera, but he said that the mother prepares the neuroarchitecture of the child for the world and then passes the child to the father to take them into the world.

[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, beautiful.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, whoa, I don't even know what you said, but that was so profound.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like it's so beautiful to think of that and there's so much circumstance of in context and what I really love about your work is when I started to learn and dive more deeply in your work, it gave me it was this both and I then had a lot of grace and a lot of compassion, but I also was like where there's still responsibility here.

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: So how do you, I know that we just touched on like what might bring someone into learning more about the mother wound, so maybe you can weave in what you think about what I just said.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I really love what you just said.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it mirrors what I've experienced to learn as well.

[SPEAKER_02]: I like the way you encapsulated it, though, that the mother is that primary in terms of the earliest development.

[SPEAKER_02]: And we are merged with her even like the, when we're infants, we don't even really know we're separate.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[SPEAKER_02]: We are physically separate, but we don't know.

[SPEAKER_02]: So the way our mother mirrors us visually, all of that is the beginning of the raw material of how do I feel like I'm a self.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's really primal.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that's why people ask me sometimes, why do you focus on the mother and not the father?

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, where's the father's role?

[SPEAKER_02]: And I always say, I just know that it's primary and the father [SPEAKER_02]: And that's what happened with people when they do my course, they start with the mother and then they come to the father later and they're like I'm having so many insights about my dad now, I was not expecting that and it's kind of like when you look at or isolate the mother in their exploration for a while.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's almost like a puzzle forms.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like when you're doing a jigsaw puzzle, you don't really know what the picture's going to be.

[SPEAKER_02]: But then you kind of at a certain point you see it.

[SPEAKER_02]: And you're like, whoa, I get it.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like I get how this works.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think dads are so important.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it's a two about how the dad interacts with the mom that also informs how the child feels about, it's like how the father impacts who am I in the world?

[SPEAKER_02]: Who do I get to be?

[SPEAKER_02]: And how does my dad relate to me?

[SPEAKER_02]: And then it's like, it just becomes more complex from there.

[SPEAKER_02]: How does he relate to mom?

[SPEAKER_02]: What does this mean about me and my gender or my role?

[SPEAKER_02]: So it's really powerful and multilayered.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I totally agree with that about the past starts with this like, oh, well, this is where the deepest work is.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then, okay, now I can do some periphery work.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and I've thought a lot about like this, I listed to the podcast episode you did with almost 30 with Lindsey and yeah, yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I really appreciated just the different levels you went into in layers in that, like one of the things you talked about was body.

[SPEAKER_00]: And like how the body can be, like we can prevent ourselves from being in health.

[SPEAKER_00]: Can you talk more about that?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I found that really interesting.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not sure I'm even saying it properly.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I don't remember exactly what I said, but I think I said something about that in our earliest moments mother is body.

[SPEAKER_02]: So she is our our own body.

[SPEAKER_02]: So whatever our moms are doing with her body is like a there's explicit and implicit messages about what is safe to do, what's good to do, what's bad to do.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's like a [SPEAKER_02]: I think the mother wound kind of like an invisible fence that we all have there.

[SPEAKER_02]: We don't necessarily know it's there, but we can feel the zap.

[SPEAKER_02]: When we do things that bump up against what our parents did or didn't do.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like I can give myself as an example around body.

[SPEAKER_02]: I and this is I think true.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm interested to see what your audience thinks, but if we have issues with our mom, you usually have some kind of food issue, too, or vice versa.

[SPEAKER_00]: Interesting.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's because a food is about, it symbolizes support, survival.

[SPEAKER_02]: nourishment.

[SPEAKER_02]: And if our mother's for example limited her own nourishment or had a disordered relationship with food, like for example, my mother would eat in private.

[SPEAKER_02]: She wouldn't eat with us as a family.

[SPEAKER_02]: She would occasionally, but she preferred to eat alone.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that was strange.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I noticed there were certain things with my own relationship with food that would make me feel strange.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I didn't know why.

[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't even know why.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like my mother struggled with weight.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I did.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was always pretty normal weight.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I always felt like I had to work for it.

[SPEAKER_02]: So there were times when I was like, if I exercised, I felt like I was trapped by my mother somehow.

[SPEAKER_02]: like, like, I was compliant with her wound.

[SPEAKER_02]: If I was overly exercising or overly rigid about it, I felt like almost she was controlling me.

[SPEAKER_00]: So interesting.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think about that in terms of the, like, how many of us hit those inherited food limitations or dietary or body?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I remember as a kid thinking, like, my dad was often on a diet.

[SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.

[SPEAKER_00]: And although we ate fairly well generally like our food quality my mom was like a no G in that we ate from the garden and we weren't a lot of processed foods, but eventually she just threw in the towel because she's like you guys are so annoying you're you don't appreciate what I'm doing and you're you want to eat some pizza pops here's some pizza popped, but I thought a lot about when you were sharing that about the body.

[SPEAKER_00]: I thought a lot about just how we have so many challenges with being in our body today.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I know it's a much more complex and controversial subject, which you don't have to touch on, but I can just at least speak to what I, it made me think about is all of the gender dysphoria, because then I thought, well, if it's not safe to be a woman, which is, you know, considered at the core of a lot of [SPEAKER_00]: what's the alternative?

[SPEAKER_00]: And don't be a man or sorry, don't be a woman or be not sure about being a woman.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it just made me at least bring a little more context to that because I think that conversation is just like absent of diving a bit deeper into that.

[SPEAKER_00]: You could be like, I don't want to touch that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I totally am.

[SPEAKER_02]: No, I hear you.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, hear you.

[SPEAKER_02]: It also makes me think of there's this book [SPEAKER_02]: that was really pivotal in my life by Kim Churnan.

[SPEAKER_02]: But she talks about anorexia that a lot of what's this conflict underneath anorexia is not wanting to develop into a woman's body because you've seen your mother, like your mother almost represents.

[SPEAKER_02]: your destined suffering, basically.

[SPEAKER_02]: And if you can withhold food, it's a form of symbolic control where you can hold back that development and stay like more childlike.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's really interesting.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you undernourish the body in order to stay young.

[SPEAKER_02]: in order to prevent the inevitable suffering of being a woman, which your mother symbolizes.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's really fascinating.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's really fascinating.

[SPEAKER_02]: It gives a sense of control in an otherwise uncontrolled development and what society deems is.

[SPEAKER_02]: destined for women.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I think we're living in an interesting time where we can, and this is what I talk about at the end of my book is really this vision of kind of decoupling our gender stereotype roles that patriarchy has for us and like really get to know ourselves as individuals.

[SPEAKER_02]: So we can kind of be more free in how we express and want to live our lives that's outside of the scope of the patriarchal roles of man, woman, child, [SPEAKER_02]: you know, all of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's it's so interesting, too, for men, because we, you'll often hear someone hear patriarchy and be like, oh, no, that again, and not realizing that we suffer through the the hierarchical structure that is great because we don't.

[SPEAKER_00]: we become unconsciously oppressive.

[SPEAKER_00]: We don't even know that we're seeking control through provision, you know, all these things.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's much like how a Stair Parallel talks about how the me two movement was the reorganization of a power structure, the oldest trading system in history talks about where women trade sex for power and men trade power for sex, but this like calling down of the oppression of power, but also [SPEAKER_00]: What about the exploitation of sexuality?

[SPEAKER_00]: She says, like, talking about that side of the transaction.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, that's a really, of course, again, triggering because like, where's the line between sexual empowerment and sexual exploitation in a system that actually was one of the only ways that you could actually get power.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, you look at things like, only fans.

[SPEAKER_00]: are they exploiting that power structure and running on some level as female empowerment?

[SPEAKER_00]: Do you know what I'm saying?

[SPEAKER_00]: Again, it's a delicate line and I don't know where it is, but I think it's an interesting framework to bring forward.

[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's so fascinating about men and women and the different ways that and a mother wound sets this in place.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think it really kind of locks it in is who do we have to be to be loved?

[SPEAKER_02]: If you want to break it down, like, who do I have to be in my family to be loved?

[SPEAKER_02]: What are the conditions upon which I get access to safety, love approval, all of that?

[SPEAKER_02]: And for many of us, we grew up and we were really unconscious of it into, we think it's normal.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then we have some kind of awakening where we're like, whoa, this is not, I'm actually playing out a role here.

[SPEAKER_02]: I could actually operate more outside of this.

[SPEAKER_02]: What would that be like?

[SPEAKER_02]: the mother wound kind of makes that invisible fence where it's like, well, what's going to happen to me?

[SPEAKER_02]: If I am I going to lose people, am I going to be alone?

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, that's one of the people.

[SPEAKER_02]: People's biggest fears is like being alone.

[SPEAKER_02]: Am I going to be alone?

[SPEAKER_02]: A bandage rejected.

[SPEAKER_02]: If I'm wrote my true self, [SPEAKER_02]: And I think the healing the mother wound journey is really about how can we become conscious of those ways that we limit ourselves, we kind of sabotage ourselves or put ourselves in situations that are less than what we want or harmful, out of automatic compliance with those rigid, you know, ideas.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: And how do we like wipe off the residue of childhood trauma so we can be free, you know, we can be more authentic.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think about the unconscious loyalty to the system that keeps us stuck, you know, this like, yeah, but with the way you say it in your work of this, like, [SPEAKER_00]: unconscious loyalty to mom that we don't want mom to feel all the feelings and this weird it is a correct that like from an unconscious level mom is actually trying to protect you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Is there true to that?

[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think I like to say that there's like a spectrum where our mothers may pass on these messages to their sons and daughters.

[SPEAKER_02]: And in an effort to protect, yes, because we live in an unsafe world, where, you know, if boys cry or if girls are assertive, they could get harmed, they could get lose out somehow if they're outside those lines.

[SPEAKER_02]: So there is a conditioning that's out of protection.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's very common.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's such a strange thing to hold is like the limitations she's placing upon me.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, unconsciously to protect me, but that gives you so much compassion because you realize oh yeah and a world if I am those things she wasn't those things or maybe she tried to be and then she got smacked or her mother did and and so of course it's this like oh it's like a such a strange thing to hold [SPEAKER_02]: It is.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's complex, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: It's not black or white.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's even like if you think about people who reject their child because they're gay or whatever, they're like, well, you have to to fit in and to be my son or to be my daughter, you have to be this way.

[SPEAKER_02]: And if you're not, then you're.

[SPEAKER_02]: They kind of out of ignorance, think you're choosing to be somehow exploited or rejected by society.

[SPEAKER_02]: So there's, I think each generation confronts the limitations of their parents and what they can't see.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that's one of the most painful things is like that unconscious, the burden of being more conscious, whether it's in a relationship with the spouse or a friend or with your parents.

[SPEAKER_00]: The burden of being more conscious.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, whatever we don't own in ourselves, we place upon the other, you know, it's like James Baldwin said, you know, the role of the friend is the same as the lover.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I have to make you conscious of what you don't see the artist.

[SPEAKER_02]: But there's a limit to that, though, because we can't make anyone conscious.

[SPEAKER_00]: Everything that you don't bring forth within you, you have to place upon the person or the people that you blame for not being able to bring it forth.

[SPEAKER_00]: Is that kind of what you're saying?

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm saying like, if we're in a relationship and we're not growing, or like, your parent isn't doesn't want to expand their mind, you will feel that as their child, as they're adult child, that there's something they won't see, they can't see, and that feels like a burden to you in the relationship.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's so interesting.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's, it's, it's, it's fascinating too because we can get stuck in the victim part of that.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know that, like I can't be all of me because of you and there could be, you know, very real reasons for that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: But to change, you have to take ownership that you're still choosing on some level, even very unconsciously as a rabble based to suppress and wear masks and to pretend to be something different.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that, whoa, because if it's like you had to do that to survive, okay, but there still was a conscious or unconscious choice to do it, and that is what empowers you to actually make a different choice.

[SPEAKER_00]: But until, which is, I think the hard part about talking about things like abuse or traumas that create this is that there's this idea that if there was even an unconscious choice of suppression for survival that there's a removal of the experience of the victim.

[SPEAKER_00]: But instead of being like, well, that's not a victim blaming.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're just saying that even from a very brilliant place you created this problem mechanism and now from a consciously brilliant place you can choose something different, which [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, exactly.

[SPEAKER_02]: I love how you just said that that last part that and I like to say this a lot in my work as well that all our defenses and problematic issues, they all come from a wise place like that all made sense at an earlier time in our lives, you know, whether it's defensiveness reactivity, being compliant people pleasing those were all originally survival strategies.

[SPEAKER_02]: So we can thank them and bless them.

[SPEAKER_02]: But now as adults.

[SPEAKER_02]: we have the freedom and the liberation to be able to to rework that and be at choice.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that's the empowering thing.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it's hard as hell to rework these patterns, but I think there's nothing more.

[SPEAKER_02]: rewarding, then transmuting your own pain into something where you can look back and say, wow, that used to totally trigger me or I used to be really stuck with that.

[SPEAKER_02]: And now I can feel at ease about it.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like it hurts.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's only a blip.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's not something that takes me down.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, what if someone is looking and is listening to this because who wouldn't be listening and this would be like damn I got to do some stuff what does working the mother wouldn't look like.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, well, one of the first things, I have brought it kind of broken down into seven steps in my course.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it's like little digestible pieces.

[SPEAKER_02]: The first level is looking at, you know, how your mother impacted how you see a variety of things.

[SPEAKER_02]: I ask people to look at, you know, what were your mother's beliefs about money or about sexuality or about food, you know, the main things.

[SPEAKER_02]: What did you witness in her choices or what did she tell you overtly about these things?

[SPEAKER_02]: So spending some time looking at your just through your own mental recollection, what was the environment?

[SPEAKER_02]: Like I think young said that our parents unconscious is kind of like the atmosphere that we grow up in.

[SPEAKER_02]: We absorb wordlessly.

[SPEAKER_02]: We really absorb her beliefs.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it's like we don't just bond with our mothers.

[SPEAKER_02]: We actually bond with her beliefs.

[SPEAKER_02]: So getting clear about [SPEAKER_02]: It's some people are like, well, this seems kind of too simple.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then they start doing the exploration and they're like, wow, this is deep because what you start to see is, wow, I've taken on a lot of my mother's beliefs, you know, and I didn't even know it.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it's kind of just like evaluating, just looking, what did she believe?

[SPEAKER_02]: I would have her choice is tell me about money.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think about one memory I have where, [SPEAKER_02]: We were in the grocery store parking lot.

[SPEAKER_02]: I must have been like maybe seven years old and she lost a $20 bill.

[SPEAKER_02]: And she couldn't find a $20 bill.

[SPEAKER_02]: We were walking to the car and she had a complete panic attack about a $20 bill.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I didn't, I realized it decades later that I had this feeling like money is scarce and if you don't know where it is, then something terrible could happen.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like something really bad could happen.

[SPEAKER_02]: so you have to like know where it is, you have to keep your eye on it, you can't lose it, you know, it had really informed, not consciously, but I just absorbed the terror that she was feeling in this financial situation and I made it almost like a tenant of how I saw money, totally unconsciously.

[SPEAKER_02]: So that's just one example.

[SPEAKER_02]: Another big piece of looking at the mother wound is looking at the mother gap.

[SPEAKER_02]: So that's the gap between what you needed from your mom and what you actually got.

[SPEAKER_02]: So there's like a gap.

[SPEAKER_02]: We all have a gap of some degree.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like no mother is perfect.

[SPEAKER_02]: We don't expect [SPEAKER_02]: informs how we show up.

[SPEAKER_02]: So for some people it's like my mother never told me that she loved me or I never got physical touch or you know I never got privacy.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of different things like what happened that shouldn't have happened that was intrusive or the the lack.

[SPEAKER_02]: What did you need that you didn't get?

[SPEAKER_02]: And they both feel that they both comprise this mother gap.

[SPEAKER_02]: So doing [SPEAKER_02]: What it could be about, maybe you don't remember much from your childhood, but even you can get a flavor for that in terms of how you feel about your mom now, like do you leave resentful because your mom expects you to do things for her or to maybe she expects you to not have problems as an adult, she maybe she's frustrated when you talk about your life or.

[SPEAKER_02]: And you realize, wow, that really reflects how she was back then when, you know, my feelings were just dismissed or, you know, so your frustrations now can tell you about even in your relationship, even if it's maybe your mom's not maybe she's deceased or she left your life early somehow, what are your, how does that show up with your partner because a lot of times the unfinished business with our mothers shows up with our primary spouse or life partner.

[SPEAKER_02]: or even with our own children for those who are parents, they can feel like if their child has a tantrum or a strong emotional reaction, there can be this trigger of, I didn't get to do that, I didn't get to have a reaction.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was, you know, smacked into silence or, you know, so I really have so much respect for parents who are trying to rework [SPEAKER_02]: the, you know, the gentle conscious parenting work, which is about letting your kids have their feelings, letting them have their emotions without, if you were shut down yourself, that is an enormously incredibly hard thing to do, because your unconscious will try to come in and just replay whatever you received as just how we're built.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, when when my wife started to study this, I really also wanted to dive deep into it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I relate so much to a lot of the things you talk about with the mother wound in that, you know, I felt in mesh with my mom, I felt responsible, a lot for like, [SPEAKER_00]: she was often overwhelmed.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I wanted to manage her overwhelm.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was, quote, I mean, I'll, my brother and sister my disagree with this, but I felt like I was sort of like the golden child to that I took on, like, I don't want to cause too much trouble.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to get the best grades.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to do the best things.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was thinking about culturally how the mother wound would now show up so much in men.

[SPEAKER_00]: because you've got this conversation about men that their toxic can bad and masculinity's bad, et cetera.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I grew up in the 80s and 90s.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so that was really, I would say a very intense part of the conversation in my childhood, like men or murderers, men or rapists, men or bad.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I don't know, are you familiar with the work from Robert Glover?

[SPEAKER_00]: He wrote no more Mr.

Nice Guy.

[SPEAKER_02]: haven't heard.

[SPEAKER_02]: No, I haven't read that book.

[SPEAKER_02]: I love men's books, though, and men's work.

[SPEAKER_02]: I do have a lot of my shelf off to check that out.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a great book.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's a brilliant teacher, but he talks about how boys grew up with mainly females in their life when they're young, like female teachers, often their mom stayed at home.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he said, so they spent a lot of their very young life trying to please women.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then if you add the cultural context to that, [SPEAKER_00]: you then have, you know, the conversation about men.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, and I hear this complaint a lot about dating that men are too nice, they don't have an edge, they're not, you know, they don't stand up for themselves, the nice guy syndrome, and I see it very much in a similar way to how, and it feels like a mother wound or a mother wound.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to say like a major argument, but just like that relationship to the feminine, I'm curious how you've seen the motherhood and show up in men and is that am I like on the edge of is that similar?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, no, I love everything you share.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's an interesting [SPEAKER_02]: But perspective especially with the 80s and 90s thing, yeah, the mother wound with men can show up in a variety of different ways and it's so funny how it kind of mirrors the cultural expectations like some others, you know, there might be a void, maybe they're a single mom or maybe they're divorced, some others can make their sons into their surrogate husbands.

[SPEAKER_02]: This is one way.

[SPEAKER_02]: where it's like they're the emotional maybe more extreme version of what you were saying where the child isn't the child the son is [SPEAKER_02]: coerced in a way into a role of being strong for mom.

[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, that means he can't feel his feelings.

[SPEAKER_02]: That means that he has to even practically step up and do a lot of things.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the tough part is this can be even more complex where the mother wants the son, relies to heavily on the son emotionally, but also at the same time has her own resentment [SPEAKER_02]: you know, maybe in moments when he's, he can't do what she wants or he has his own feelings or he's not there when she needs them to be there.

[SPEAKER_02]: Her needs are totally overblown and her expectations on him are overblown.

[SPEAKER_02]: So when he needs to be a kid, then her frustration or contempt at about men not being there for her can bleed out onto her son.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so that's a deep betrayal of the son where [SPEAKER_02]: both as like an idealized surrogates spouse, but also there's a shadow of that is that he's hated, you know, because he's a man.

[SPEAKER_02]: So if the mother has a lot of issues with men, [SPEAKER_02]: It bleeds out, the idea, you know, right, the idea lies in the shadow and that's an enormous way for a little boy to have.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's that makes sense.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there's my parents had to have reverence for each other.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I didn't experience that, but I see that a lot.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I would say like I felt the unconscious, I don't want to like [SPEAKER_00]: put words in my mom's milk mouth that she hasn't used, but I almost felt like an unconscious contempt or like anger maybe at this idea that like she had all these dreams too, which she pursued a lot of her medication wise.

[SPEAKER_00]: But you know, she had something that she didn't because she was a stay at home mom for our young part of our young life.

[SPEAKER_00]: and all the things she did give up.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so that the system or the patriarchy because she became and was a feminist, which makes sense because it was like, well, I'm in this structure, which is healthy for our system, but also I think a lot of the time when we have things like, let's say a man being the provider, [SPEAKER_00]: Because now you have this, it's almost like if a woman wants to stay at home, there's it's now a betrayal of feminism.

[SPEAKER_00]: And again, of course, this is complex, but what's really fascinating is to see how if if the man is providing or could be the woman too, that there is the system honors what is traded for the staying at home, right, but that the system also has compassion for what the provider gives up because like I think about that as the man who my wife staying at home and their son, and I'm paying for things currently.

[SPEAKER_00]: Is that how much money does my wife need to have access to to feel like she has access to sovereignty and a voice.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's hers.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's her account.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's her that's not dependent on me.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then can the system also because I found that like [SPEAKER_00]: women tend to be resistant to this and then you could tell me your experience at what I'm saying.

[SPEAKER_00]: It, that honoring what is also given up as a father, I want to be with him all the time.

[SPEAKER_00]: So when I'm working, I'm grieving that and what I found is this strange complexity that there's always this battle between providing and presence, and society does not hold any space for the grief that I have and that neither is enough.

[SPEAKER_02]: That makes sense.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it does.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's really profound.

[SPEAKER_02]: I really feel that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's, and also my wife is obviously really introspective.

[SPEAKER_00]: So she's like, yeah, I can see that the, or, I'm resistant to even acknowledging it, you know, at the beginning.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because there's this some thing about like, well, if I'm acknowledging it and actually depending on you, then I'm back where, [SPEAKER_00]: The fear originally began in relationship for her of like if I depend on my man that's how you're supposed to do it and then I give up things and it's like well what does it mean to depend on Mark but not give up.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, the third way.

[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's like the system sets us up where it's either or there's always attention, like if we lived in larger groups, it might be less acute that feeling because there'd be more people that could hold things, you know, it wouldn't just be like you and your wife.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's in of community.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, if we had more community, or if we're like little clans of communities, like few families, I feel like that was a better way because just us and our little nuclear, it's just so much we all have to carry emotionally and financially, so it really sets up this kind of binary tension of like within oneself, which you describe like the provider and also missing out in the presence, and then [SPEAKER_02]: also between you and your wife.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it's like intraintur.

[SPEAKER_02]: These tensions are kind of always at play.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I love that you named named all this, and especially, you know, I haven't heard many men talk about that particular pain of [SPEAKER_02]: you know, the pain of the provider who's away, you know, that's enough.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's not much of a cultural conversation about that.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think that is really profound to talk about between men.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I wonder if men feel that maybe that that's weak?

[SPEAKER_02]: to acknowledge that like you want to be home with your kids and with your wife and that you have to the set up is that you have to the best case scenario that you've decided is to be the working person right now, but you're missing out on these early years that are tough, you know, that are precious.

[SPEAKER_02]: And there's a grief about that.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, just I just want to honor you for speaking that and also thank you for that and I just kind of feel a little bit of longing for to hear for more men about that because it's not I think it would do a lot for kids to hear like it was really hard to be away from you.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you know, I think that's a there's a healing opportunity there.

[SPEAKER_02]: I sense around that that particular point because my father was a way most of my life in various ways.

[SPEAKER_02]: We worked a ton and he also, you know, was a way I think being at home because my mother was so domineering and difficult.

[SPEAKER_02]: He was away as a lot.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I've got to work three jobs and I've got to also do a lot of drinking to cope with life, but I didn't hear any like I missed you guys or I missed our connection.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm sorry that our connection maybe wasn't as strong because I wasn't as able to be present.

[SPEAKER_02]: I just think that we're so healing for more of us to hear the pain of men, the different kinds of pain that men have.

[SPEAKER_02]: I find like that's so nutrient dense to because I think that the miss the myth is that men don't feel pain.

[SPEAKER_02]: They, they, they're like just numb, are they're just not as sensitive, but I think they're, men are very sensitive and feeling all kinds of things that aren't, there's no place in society yet quite for those kind of deeper nuanced feelings.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think the world needs the voices of men and what they're going through.

[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like we're craving it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think of the, and thank you for all that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think of the, like, the conversation I have with so many men about this provision versus presence is that there's not a lot of space for that grief because the way, I think of a lot about the abandoned generation of men.

[SPEAKER_00]: I call them that because they're in their 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s, and 90s, and past.

[SPEAKER_00]: and these are men that were told and society said go be a provider.

[SPEAKER_00]: And again, like I get the power dynamic and that there was, you know, a press of structures sometimes in that in that.

[SPEAKER_00]: it meant the silence of women.

[SPEAKER_00]: I can hold the complete view of all of that.

[SPEAKER_00]: But what has to be held in that complexity is actually that this guy worked in a mine for 50 years and worked as ass off.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then when his kids did personal development, they went, you were never around.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he said, yeah, but I was never around because I was taking care of the family and I was doing the thing I was taught and now you're angry at me and your mom has left me or wants to and hates me and I only did what I was told what it was expected to be and now I'm the villain and so I just think like if we could hold the complexity all of it that like honoring that doesn't mean, you know, that that all the rest isn't true right.

[SPEAKER_00]: But there's something about, like, oh, it must have been so hard having everything to be about you or getting home and dinner on the table or whatever it is.

[SPEAKER_00]: And again, I can understand that anger that exists in the whole system.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it's like there still has to be some space for the experience of the person who was told to, because how's that dissimilar to any other role in a family?

[SPEAKER_00]: that someone wants to break free from and grieve, but how does he break free from that?

[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, this is now true of women to who are the provider who are, you know, which I think that when I'm observed men who are stay at home and women who are providers, there's an interesting resentment that the women often have for being the provider, which is really fascinating.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, wow, we're not talking about all of this, you know, [SPEAKER_02]: It's so interesting.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's almost like as and where we're at right now, it's just provider grief.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it can be male or female and the grief of the the caretaker or that you can't be a caretaker because you have to provide because life's so damn expensive for people.

[SPEAKER_02]: totally.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: I love that.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think there is grief with each and every, you know, peace in the family system.

[SPEAKER_02]: And, and it's all valid.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's all valid.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the father's grief is valid.

[SPEAKER_02]: Just like the child's grief is valid and the mother's grief is valid.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's, we've been living in the side of the system that oppresses us in all different ways.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think I just have the sense that the more we can make space or the more that men take up space, talking about their grief and their pain, about being the provider or about, you know, the privilege, you know, the shadow of that privilege that they've had, I feel like this will all take on a new.

[SPEAKER_02]: momentum, you know, because we do talk a lot about kids and adult children now in trauma, we have had feminists and feminism is growing and deepening, but I feel like the men's work is this like totally untapped, yet to be fully tapped potential of consciousness around that could unlock our new consciousness about [SPEAKER_02]: patriarchy and just the system that structure that we have been living in.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that all of us deserve empathy, you know, for different reasons.

[SPEAKER_02]: And we all deserve space to talk about what that is.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think men's voices right now, I feel like maybe, I don't know, I'd love to hear your thought on this.

[SPEAKER_02]: If men are, it seems they're a little bit in the protest of just like [SPEAKER_02]: be an integrity about it, you know, not just push people away or hide from the need to be conscious about these things about how I do harm.

[SPEAKER_02]: It seems like tricky right now, like how I feel like we're teetering on maybe something new.

[SPEAKER_02]: with men's work.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's an interesting because it's like will take on I agree with you about the protest like it seems like a lot of the men's work tends to be more in the context of this sort of quote unquote red pill movement where it's these more extreme like I'm angry about how the court [SPEAKER_00]: and all that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And there's not any acknowledgment of how the systems are actually like we get less scholarships.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have less graduation rates now for higher education.

[SPEAKER_00]: We do the world's most dangerous jobs.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not saying all of that is like a form of like, look at what we do.

[SPEAKER_00]: But to say, where is the appreciation?

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's where I'm just, if I just like [SPEAKER_00]: feel unappreciated in a lot of ways because appreciation on the other hand means somehow having some sort of compassion that men matter, you know, that they actually, does this make sense?

[SPEAKER_00]: What I'm saying?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'm following this point.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm feeling stuck in the gap.

[SPEAKER_00]: I feel stuck in the gap.

[SPEAKER_00]: It feels like a betrayal to feminism or to whatever, maybe the other, you know, on some level, like if I have appreciation and compassion [SPEAKER_00]: Because I think a lot of men, although we need to heal with each other, we actually even more so need to heal.

[SPEAKER_00]: with the feminine, I think whenever I've done retreats or work in that space, it's so beautiful to see when you work with one person, like let's say a woman, who has her voice default, and then I have her choose a man that she feels safe with.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so she picks a guy that she feels she can explore this edge with, and then that guy's job is to just hold compassion.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, it's speak, not hug, not anything.

[SPEAKER_00]: just hold love.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then she goes to the edge of self-expression in what happens is all the men and women in the audience are crying because we all want that.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, on some level, it's like when my wife was first processing all that stuff when we were dating, I could sense that she was learning more about the mother wounded and all the things, patriarchy.

[SPEAKER_00]: She wanted to process and express some rage.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like let me be that the masculine for you to do that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember we were in our backyard when we lived in Vancouver.

[SPEAKER_00]: And she was doing it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was just like, Oh, like, this is there's a lot of power.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there's a lot in here.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I also saw clarity in her eyes after because there was like.

[SPEAKER_00]: I I as a.

[SPEAKER_00]: men had to de-personalize what she was saying.

[SPEAKER_02]: And yeah, that's what was curious about how you processed that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I also had to hold space for where there was truth, even if it wasn't about me, but that was truth about me.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like when we were, we broke up for eight months.

[SPEAKER_00]: And when we were coming back together, this might be just applicable to your work, is that I remember saying to her if she was going to come to Vancouver to visit.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I said to her, well, let me pay for your flight.

[SPEAKER_00]: And she was like, okay, and then after she gets to Vancouver and she's like, I don't know what it was, but like you came for the flight didn't feel good.

[SPEAKER_00]: And she's also said to me, I don't know what's wrong with me that I just couldn't receive your your gift of paying and I was like, oh, no, there's like something deeper in that for me, I thought if I pay for your flight.

[SPEAKER_00]: I got you.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, so you are a response to that was actually totally healthy.

[SPEAKER_00]: And your nervous system was picking up on my manipulation.

[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.

[SPEAKER_00]: She just like cried.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'm getting emotional thinking.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm getting emotional too.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm feeling that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because it was like the first time that she realized that [SPEAKER_00]: There wasn't anything wrong with her that she had to receive, but yet I also got witnessed in that moment of how I unconsciously had been manipulative.

[SPEAKER_00]: probably my whole life with money, with pain for dinner, with whatever that is, buying a drink for a girl, that I was creating power dynamics, that, I mean, that's shown in the research, like if you buy a woman a drink, she's seen as 90% more likely to be open to sexual advances.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's like there's reciprocity that's coded in our evolutionary programming.

[SPEAKER_02]: Wow, I really admire that you owned that.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was hard.

[SPEAKER_02]: You could totally let that go.

[SPEAKER_02]: You could have totally just been like, I could have had her bear it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I could have been like, yeah, what is wrong that you can't receive my generosity?

[SPEAKER_02]: You totally could have done that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I know that would have been good.

[SPEAKER_02]: What do you think helped you?

[SPEAKER_02]: to be so courageous in that moment.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I've got an emotional thinking about it, but I think it was that I was witnessing her or thinking there was something wrong with me when it was actually me, like who was doing that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think I had to process all the grief of where I totally unconsciously done stuff like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like made a woman think it was her fault, something that was my right, and so I just love her so much.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was like witnessing her suffering.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that I could literally just take responsibility and she sees herself as wise and that was a big moment.

[SPEAKER_02]: Wow.

[SPEAKER_02]: Wow.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, what you just said was really powerful there that you could see the old path way and you could go down it, but you also out of your love for her and not wanting her to suffer, told the truth, that's powerful.

[SPEAKER_02]: You just liberated both of you.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Through that.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's a strange paradox to be liberated through that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we wrote a book called Liberated Love and it was really about all that journey.

[SPEAKER_02]: Wow, that's who, yeah, I also went through an extensive, I went through an extensive a couple's therapy in my last relationship and had a lot of moments similar like that where our therapist was helping us to own.

[SPEAKER_02]: like, and that freedom is an ownership and accountability.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like when we can proactively own our role, or when someone says you're doing something and you can say, ah, yes, I was kind of like a perfect example.

[SPEAKER_02]: You said, [SPEAKER_02]: and do it non-reactively, like empathically, and feel the freedom of that.

[SPEAKER_02]: I really got a taste of that and that couple's work, and it really changed me into someone who really hongers for accountability, like if someone has an issue with me or has something that didn't feel good.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, I want to own it, I want to own whatever role I have played at anyone suffering or harm because I got to in the therapeutic environment start to learn that there's immense lightness that comes out of just, you know, it's not like there's when we own stuff, I think we have this image because of the culture that [SPEAKER_02]: if we admit fault, or if we're accountable, that somehow it means I'm agreeing I'm bad, you know, I'm in the wrong and that makes me an lesser position or I'm weaker when I own my mistakes, but actually I really started to see it through experience that it's so liberating just own a mistake and just say that's part of my humanity, I get to be human.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I get to, I want all of my humanity, including the ability to mess up, be reactive, angry, you know, hurt someone's feelings like all these messy things about being a human.

[SPEAKER_02]: If we own it, it doesn't have any power over us anymore, you know.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a profound shift to get to that place where we realized that the solution to all of it was responsibility and accountability and humility.

[SPEAKER_00]: and curiosity.

[SPEAKER_00]: And also access to anger, you know, I don't agree when people say that anger is a secondary emotion because I think anger is secondary when another emotion is not safe.

[SPEAKER_00]: So like, if grief isn't safe, then anger might show up.

[SPEAKER_00]: If anger is not safe, it'll trade with grief at least based on what I see mostly.

[SPEAKER_00]: But like anger having access to, hey, that's not okay or how you spoke there, then allows someone to be revealed to themselves.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, more insight right and it's and it's again, it's attractive, you know, and I know when I work with couples if because you know usually the dynamic is one person is more [SPEAKER_00]: What's really interesting to the person who has a more avoidant attachment style is that their nervous system actually gets to ease most of the time, when the person who is more of a self-sensor and playcates speaks radical truth, yes, yes, there's a strange they feel better and they feel better because they're like, well, now I could actually trust what you're saying because you're so you add all this colorful bullshit and now.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're not trying to be nice.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're actually just telling me the truth.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, wow, who knew that that would be the liberation?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, that's exactly the dynamic I had in my last relationship.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I remember saying, and therapy, tell me everything you're angry at me about, like let me have it, like go, go out on me.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm ready, I can handle it.

[SPEAKER_02]: I wanna hear it.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that was so, oh my God, so healing for the other person to have me say, like, I've got me.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I can hold, I can take care of whatever feelings come up, but you, I want to really hear the truth of what you've been feeling and speak your truth with power, like I want to experience your power and I want to be able to hold your power and there were times when maybe I wasn't like I'm not in a place where I can really today, I can't really hold it, but you know, let's do something else.

[SPEAKER_02]: Is there something else we can do so.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's some.

[SPEAKER_02]: powerful work.

[SPEAKER_00]: What do you see as the most impactful way that someone can begin or deepen their work with relationship to mom?

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, working the seven steps that you're talking about.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, working the seven steps.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think one of the biggest ones I see is like the thing that moves the needle the most in coaching especially.

[SPEAKER_02]: is when women who have been conditioned to be overly compassionate to their mothers, like overly focused on what my mother is feeling, how she's doing, and they don't have enough compassion for themselves.

[SPEAKER_02]: So there's like block-sided compassion ratio where from childhood they were expected to don't upset mom or make mom happy or how was mom doing and the whole family's [SPEAKER_02]: When these women start to realize, oh my god, like I have my feelings are equally important, like, yes, my mother is suffered or is having trouble, but I have suffered too, and I deserve compassion.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I a lot of the work I do is helping women to have.

[SPEAKER_02]: kind of ease off the focus and compassion on their mother.

[SPEAKER_02]: Almost stop seeing your mother as a child that needs to be rescued, but see her as an adult woman, your mother's another adult woman who has her own choices and has her own path, that has nothing to do with you.

[SPEAKER_02]: You get to be your own sovereign separate, individual who's the authority of your own life, and the authority of what's right best and true for you.

[SPEAKER_02]: So, they have to almost learn to, instead of their mother being their source of validation and center of gravity in the mother, they put the center of gravity in their own body and in their own self and de-center the mother, and then they start to become the mother to themselves where they can start to actually feel their safety is fully within themselves and in their connection with themselves.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that, as that gets built over time through inner child work, they can start to feel their own vitality and their own joy and their own freedom that comes with just, you know, not needing to be perfect, not needing to people to understand you, you know, and that's when you can really step into authenticity and really sharing your gifts from a free place, not from a tense place of like.

[SPEAKER_02]: My good enough, you know, do I measure up all those old ways that we were taught to secure safety, but to just in the being of oneself.

[SPEAKER_02]: So you almost have to create a demarcation or a decoupling with your mother.

[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of people are very co-dependent.

[SPEAKER_02]: Even if their mother is emotionally distant, there's a co-dependency, like a lots of cords.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it's like kind of cutting some of those chords, which feels taboo, it feels like we just like, that's what family closeness is, but it's like the algorithm isn't.

[SPEAKER_02]: It needs to be reset.

[SPEAKER_02]: And many women don't, because I work with primarily women, but this is true for men as well.

[SPEAKER_02]: Women especially haven't been able to permit given permission or feel like they have permission to really be [SPEAKER_02]: fully themselves and prioritize themselves.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of guilt that comes loaded on top of that.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it's about feeling the guilt and doing it anyway, taking exquisite care of yourself.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's really those early years of childhood like being a parent.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, for a mother, it's like the complete erasure of self total.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, exactly.

[SPEAKER_02]: So disorienting.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, and can the system hold both the grief of that, but also communities support.

[SPEAKER_00]: So like I always think that for my wife, when I'm done working or have a break, and I go take him or we have support too, it's like when she gets just 15 minutes to have a shower.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hello, she's like, [SPEAKER_00]: That's why we push your property to take such long showers, you know, it's like the break that which makes total sense, you know, just like I need to be nourished, I need all that stuff and I think as as work like yours gets more popularized, which is already popular, but I just mean like as it gets into more and more people's ears, there's we not only will heal our relationships interpersonally, but we are also given the opportunity to heal our relationships.

[SPEAKER_00]: with our children.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I just wonder, like, I would imagine if you look at history, you know, tribes, women were well-resourced.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's the nature of a tribe, like the child would breastfeed from different mothers.

[SPEAKER_00]: The, you know, there was just like so, I know there's one tribe.

[SPEAKER_00]: I can't remember the name of it, where which is a strange setup, but that every single man who [SPEAKER_00]: who had sex with the woman becomes the father.

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, wow.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's how it all.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't know what number that was, but what's really interesting about it is there was just this communal nature to it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And again, everyone has lots of opinions on relational structures.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it gets as Neil Strauss said in his book The Truth.

[SPEAKER_00]: You could find any track to justify how you want to love.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's fine.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the other one that's really interesting is when boys would [SPEAKER_00]: move into maturity.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was at age 13.

[SPEAKER_00]: They would paint them in black and the village was to ignore them that day.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were dead.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they were given a new name and now they were responsible for the village.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they became men.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's really missing in our culture along as much as being able to travel around the world and live wherever is that which has been beautiful.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the other side to that is we're not surrounded by [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, can we we all seem to be craving buying 50 acres and getting chickens and cows and being surrounded by people we love and I don't think we should ignore that.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, there's something deep about that.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think we're creating family in the new structure that's not about blood necessarily, but about soul about consciousness, like I have a sense that the way we define family is going to change.

[SPEAKER_02]: If it has to change, I think, in the coming years and a lot of people going no contact and living together, some of these things are already starting to happen.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it's a really exciting.

[SPEAKER_00]: It really is.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you know, I want to be mindful of your time.

[SPEAKER_00]: I.

[SPEAKER_00]: have so appreciated your conversation, your wisdom, your work really precedes you in so many ways but getting to chat with you, you're so pleasant and fun and introspective.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I've enjoyed that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I really appreciate it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, thank you so much, Mark.

[SPEAKER_00]: For people who are listening, where can they find more of you?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you can go to my website, BethanyWebster.com and there's dozens of blog articles.

[SPEAKER_02]: I've written over the years.

[SPEAKER_02]: They're very meaty.

[SPEAKER_02]: So there's lots of free material.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's I would recommend going to the blog first and then I also have like a free email course about working with the inner child.

[SPEAKER_02]: And there's a bunch of courses.

[SPEAKER_02]: My main course is the online course on healing them other wound, but there's also some mini courses as well.

[SPEAKER_02]: So there's a lot to explore and you can find it all at BethanyWebster.com.

[SPEAKER_00]: awesome.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks so much Bethany.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks Mark.

[SPEAKER_02]: This has been amazing.

[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for your time.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.