FTBM Podcast Ep313: What Do You Actually Want

Vanessa: [00:00:00] My daughter turned two this month, and I spent most of the morning watching her eat her birthday cake with zero regard for the mess that she was making, and completely absorbed in the moment, not thinking about what was next or what she was supposed to be doing, just entirely joyfully present.

And I thought, "Wow, kids are so good at that, and adults suck at it." We all used to know how to do that, but then life just gets so loud, and every quiet moment becomes a to-do list.

This episode is for the mom who can't remember the last time she asked herself what she actually wants, not for her kids, not for her family, not for her career on paper, but just for her.

Let's get into it

You're listening to the Free To Be Mindful podcast, where busy moms get practical tips and real talk conversations to find calm, joy, and a little more breathing room in everyday life. I'm Vanessa, licensed therapist, mom coach, and a mom to a tween and [00:01:00] toddler. Each week, we get honest about motherhood and mindset, helping you live with more presence, less pressure, without losing your... well, you know. Here we go

Hello, and welcome to episode 313 of the Free To Be Mindful podcast. I hope you're feeling good, looking good, and doing better in this world than you were yesterday.

So I think I'm ready to share probably one of the most personal things that I've ever shared on this podcast. And I feel that it's really important to do so because I know that it's going to touch so many of you in many different ways.

So when my son, who's now 12 and a half present day, when he was just two years old, my husband and I had wanted another child, and it just wasn't happening. We went to a specialist, and we did all of the tests, all the appointments, all the procedures, and we were told that there was something significantly medically there that just wasn't allowing it to happen. And so we made the decision that we were going to go down the IVF route.

And the [00:02:00] day before the medications were scheduled to arrive, I had a severe panic attack, like long 30 or so minutes hyperventilating, wasn't able to think. It was absolutely awful.

And at that moment, my body was telling me something. And now I've come to understand it as divine intervention, as the universe, as God letting me know that that particular route just wasn't part of my story.

So we went back to meet with the IVF specialist, to close that chapter. And I remember as we were leaving his office, my husband was already reaching towards the door. The doctor was right behind me, and I turned around and asked him, "What are the chances that this could happen naturally?" And his exact words and his exact tone was, " Naturally, it would be a miracle. I'm surprised you even have one."

And I'll be honest with you, it was absolutely crushing. And I was angry for a long [00:03:00] time after that. Not outwardly. Outwardly, I had come to terms with it, and I just said, "Okay. We'll get a dog," and it, it was gonna be fine. We were just a family of three. But inwardly, I was angry for so long. I was angry at God at the time. I was angry at the doctors, at the world. And of course, it was all misplaced anger, but it was real anger.

And it wasn't until years later, actually in Italy, that I genuinely let it go. I was in prayer in a very, very old church, and I was able to genuinely release it. And I came home different.

And so I continued to live my life. I left my career in school. I became an entrepreneur, full-time therapist. I established multiple businesses. I was living life at 110 miles an hour, and I absolutely loved it. I was in wonderful shape. And you can imagine the surprise, the shock that we felt when we [00:04:00] realized, oh my goodness, this is actually happening.

And the thing there was that my identity had fully shifted. I was okay at that point with just being a mom of one and a mom to a pup. I was okay with being a business owner. I had literally just co-founded a business and a partnership four months before I found out I was pregnant. My life had taken a new shape, and I had rebuilt my wants around this different version of my future. Different from when I thought 10 years ago, but had accepted it and I was happy.

And not that I wasn't happy when I found out I was pregnant, but again, it was a complete shock because it wasn't what I had in mind, right? It was completely unexpected in the middle of a completely different version of me.

And that is, one of the most honest things I can say about wanting things. Because we know, especially with age and time, that what we want changes. The life we're living changes. And [00:05:00] if we're not paying attention, if we're not genuinely checking in with ourselves about what we want in this current time, in this season, in this version of life, we end up chasing things that belong to a previous chapter, or we stop wanting things altogether and then just live life on autopilot, which is its own kind of loss.

And that's what this episode is about. It's about not having it all and knowing exactly what you want in the life that you're actually living.

And this kind of thing, I believe, happens to almost all moms. When you have the baby, whether you birth the baby, adopt a baby, surrogate baby, the fourth trimester, those few weeks afterwards, and sometimes they turn into months and years, it is real neurological, psychological, physiological event because your body is recovering, your nervous system is rewiring, and every single resource you have, mental, [00:06:00] emotional, physical, gets redirected toward this tiny human who needs you to keep them alive.

And that's not a metaphor, obviously, right? That's your brain chemistry doing exactly what it's supposed to do. So in that season of life, when you're asked, " Well, what do you want?" It almost doesn't compute. You want sleep. You want a shower that lasts longer than three minutes. You want someone to bring you food without having to ask.

And then there are the bigger wants. There are the professional wants, the personal dreams, the, the things that are just yours. They kind of just go in a drawer or in a box that gets tucked away, not because you give up on them, but because survival comes first, and your brain knows that. And right now, it's not just your survival, but the survival for your child.

And this is all completely normal, but where it gets complicated is that a lot of us, yes, we do survive, and, and some in better shape than others, but we do survive the fourth trimester, And we do get through that first year. But then [00:07:00] our wants are still in that drawer, are still in that box. Because somewhere along the way, we forget to take them out of there, or we convince ourselves that the drawer or the box doesn't even exist, or we completely forget about it.

And once in a while, when we do remember, we take it out, we open it up, and then we feel guilty about wanting something for ourselves, and then quietly close it up and put it away again.

And the tricky thing is that the world has been very happy to fill that space in for you. Social media shows you what a successful mom's morning routine looks like, And suddenly you want that even though you've never actually wanted a 5:00 AM workout before. A colleague gets promoted and suddenly you want that title, even if that role would make you miserable. You hit a follower count or download number, and you convince yourself that that is the goal because the metric is trackable and the validation is immediate, and it feels like progress. But if you really think about it, if you [00:08:00] really check in with yourself, are those your actual wants?

And sometimes they're not. Sometimes they're borrowed wants. Sometimes they're wants that you picked up from someone else's life and tried to wear it as if it were yours. And sometimes we get really good at collecting those wants without even realizing it. And professionally, we're navigating something that no productivity system was ever designed to account for. Because we are simultaneously building careers and raising humans, and the timeline for doing both can be really unforgiving.

Because a promotion opportunity doesn't wait until your toddler sleeps through the night. A speaking engagement doesn't reschedule because your kid has a fever. And so we have to push ourselves to keep up with the pace that was designed for someone who does not have our life. Or then we pull back when really we're just exhausted, and exhausted can look like giving up sometimes.

[00:09:00] And neither of those is what we actually want. What we actually want is somewhere in the middle. We wanna have our cake and eat it too, but we haven't had the space to figure out what that actually looks like.

So I wanna talk about something that we tend to skip in this conversation about mom life and about goals, and that is the question of seasons. Because the version of you who wanted something five years ago was living in a completely different season. And the wants that made sense for her back then, that timeline, that pace, that shape of that goal, they might not map out into the life that you're living right now. And that's not failure, that's just life actually happening.

I have to remind myself of that all the time When it looks like about the things that I can do physically, I think about, "Oh, in my early 30s when, you know, I was at the gym all the time, I could do A, B, and C." But it's not that I'm failing at doing A, B, and C now, [00:10:00] it's that I'm living life in this body, not in the body from 10 years ago.

And here's something that we need to be reminded of because I know it to be true, and that is that some seasons are loud and consuming, and there is genuinely less bandwidth for certain things. A newborn season is not the same as a toddler season, and a toddler season is not the same as a school-age season, and that's not the same as your college kid season.

And here's the part that we always forget because we're in it, and we forget that those seasons do come to an end eventually. And most days you're wishing for it to hurry up and be over so that you can just get on to the next thing. But then one day it will be. And then there's a version of you that will miss it. Maybe not all of it, but some parts of it.

So part of redefining what you want is getting honest about what season you're actually in right now. What's possible and what's meaningful inside that [00:11:00] season. Not the pre-kid version of your life, not the version where you had unlimited time when nobody needed anything from you, but the version today. The version that exists for you the day that you're listening to this podcast episode. With the constraints that you have today, what do you want here and now?

And I wanna acknowledge something because I think that we skip over it way too quickly, way too often, and that is finding your village. And yeah, some of us have big family support systems, and then some of us do not. So realizing that the village can look different . And that village isn't sometimes the way you thought it would be. Sometimes your partner's depleted, your family lives far, your family's no longer there, or you're not in the financial reality to allow yourself to get the help that you actually need.

And I don't wanna stand here and tell you just to ask for support like it's a simple thing, because sometimes it isn't. But what I am saying is that the work in that case isn't giving up on [00:12:00] what you want. It's just figuring out what the want actually looks like inside that constraint of your life right now.

Maybe the certification takes two years to get instead of one. Maybe the business grows slower than what you've planned. Maybe the goal is the same, But the path through it requires more patience and more creativity than you expected.

And that compromise, we must remember, is not defeat. This is strategy and really self-respect for you. Your life doesn't have to look the same way it looked before you had the kids to be a life worth wanting things in.

And this is something that I speak a lot on when I'm working with organizations and leadership teams. What happens to these high-achieving women and their ambition and their season of lives when all of this is pulling them in opposite directions, and what it actually looks like to build a structure that holds both.

I do this within speaking engagements, within [00:13:00] consultations, and within mom leadership coaching. So if you're ever interested in that, you can find all those links down in the show notes.

So I want to leave you with some practical takeaways. And the first is a practice that I call the I want practice. It is quite simple because sometimes the best tools are simple, but you have to take the time to do it in order to get the things that you need out of it. So once a quarter, not every week, not every month, because we know that life is busy. I want you to take out , a piece of paper the notepad on your phone. Date it. It's super important to date it and just write I want statements. Not with goals or deadlines, not a vision board, not a SMART objective. Just honest, unfiltered statements that begin with the words "I want."

I want to finish that certification. I wanna have one dinner a week that I didn't plan. I wanna feel like myself in my body again. I wanna stop being the only person in this house who [00:14:00] knows exactly where the scissors are. 

They don't have to be big out of this world I wants, and they don't have to be in any particular order, but they do have to be honest because the act of writing, and if you can do it on paper and pencil, the act of physically writing what you want is actually a radical idea for us. I mean, many of us haven't done it since our Santa days. This is an acknowledgement that you exist as a person with needs and desires that are separate from everyone else in your household, including the dog. This is you giving yourself permission in writing from you to you.

And then the part that matters just as much is as you do it again once a quarter, whenever you have the moments for, then look back at them. Not with judgment like, "Oh, I didn't, I didn't do that yet," but to notice what you did do. And when I look back at things, what I do is, as I notice I accomplished it, I check it off, and I put the date or the [00:15:00] month or the year that I accomplished it in. Because so often we are in such go, go, go modes that we forget that we do a lot of big things. And it's nice to see the things that you once wanted that have been checked off or sometimes the things that you once wanted that then changed completely.

What I know from years and years and years of talking to moms, of working with moms, and in these past two years of being a mom to a tween and a toddler, is that we accomplish so much and we register almost none of it. We check something off and immediately move on to the next thing. And then we wonder why we feel empty even when we're technically doing so well.

This I want practice isn't a productivity system. It's like a witnessing practice because you get to see yourself doing and yourself saying, "These things matter to me and I'm gonna pay attention to them because I'm gonna pay attention to me, and I'm gonna celebrate them and me [00:16:00] when they happen," even the small ones, especially the small ones

So if you're listening to this on a podcast platform, you may not have noticed, but if you're watching this on YouTube, please make sure by the way that you follow or subscribe to the podcast or to the YouTube channel so that you immediately see the next episodes when it drops. But if you're watching this, I don't know if you noticed that I got a little emotional as I was sharing my story because it is a very personal part of me.

And a personal thing that my entire story and, and my daughter especially has taught me Through all of the chaos, through all of the sleepless nights, through all of the complete rearranging of life that I had already built, is that she is completely unapologetic about what she wants.

She wants the purple cup, not the blue one. She wants that song. She wants that episode of Miss Rachel. Maybe she wants dad right now, and she wants nothing to do with me. Kids are really good at knowing what they want.

And when I think of my daughter, she hasn't learned yet to make herself smaller. I hope she never learns that, but [00:17:00] sometimes life teaches us to do this. She hasn't learned to want less so that other people feel more comfortable. She hasn't learned that her needs are inconvenient. She's two. And what I've noticed is that sometimes our toddlers teach us much more than we teach them.

So Amiga, I ask you, what do you actually want? Not what you're supposed to want. Not what looks good on paper. Not what makes sense in a season that you're no longer living in. What do you want right now in this life and in this version of you?

I want you to think of one thing, just one that you want for yourself right now. Not for your family, your career on paper, but for you. The person who existed before she became someone's mom, someone's partner, someone's everything. [00:18:00] It doesn't have to be big, it doesn't have to be impressive, but it does have to be honest.

Notice what comes up in your body when you name it. Does it feel like relief? Like finally someone asked. Or does it feel like guilt? Like you shouldn't be wanting that right now. Does it feel far away, like you're not even sure if you're allowed to want it anymore? Whatever you feel is data. It's not judgment, it's just data. It's telling you something about where you are in this season, and that is so worth paying attention to.

This is your homework I leave you with. Take the time for you this week. Write this want down somewhere. And then just notice. Notice when you move toward it, notice when you move away from it, notice what gets in the way. And know that you don't have to solve it today. Just [00:19:00] have to notice and see it. Because you deserve to know what you want. And you deserve to go after it in this season that you're living in with the life that you have today, and as the woman you are right now.

If this episode resonated with you, I'd love for you to share it with a mom or an amiga mom who needs this message in their life right now. You probably know exactly who she is, the one who's been carrying everything and never stops to ask herself what she actually needs. Send it to her and share this moment with her. It's so very important.

And I invite you, if you haven't yet, to write a review on Apple Podcasts because it genuinely helps more moms find this show, and that's how we get to keep growing this community together.

I'm still in my feelings after this. Again, if you're watching on YouTube, you probably see it on my face. And if you're in your feels too, that's okay. Treat it as data and [00:20:00] remember that you matter too.

And as always, in a world where you can be anything, you're always free to be mindful. Catch you next time ​