889. What every ambitious woman needs to hear about motherhood + purpose

0:00Lindsey Simcik:Being a mother is going to be enough. I feel like I've been in just this long era of hyperachievement and showing what I'm made of and capable of creating and being. This fear of what if motherhood fulfills me more than any of that stuff. But I just had this overwhelming emotional knowing that it has expanded my heart in a big way, but it's also challenged my identity. It has made me feel more purposeful than ever. And there are moments when I feel two things that are seemingly opposite, seemingly conflicting, can be true at once. Motherhood has brought me the deepest love I have ever felt for my child, for my husband, for our family.

0:48Just a deepening that is like so intense and a meaning in my life that is just so powerful.

1:12Lindsey Simcik:Hello, and welcome to the Almost 30 podcast. It's your girl, Linz. I'm happy. I'm grateful you're here for this solo episode. Krista and I do solos every single month, and this is a time where we can go deep on things that we are either navigating or questions that have come up within ourselves or maybe from our community. And this one, I was inspired to record because I was weirdly like going back to my content from like over two years ago on my Instagram feed, just seeing what I was doing back then. And I stumbled across a clip from an episode I literally recorded. I think it was like a week before I gave birth, something like that.

2:06And this clip was posted a day after I gave birth. And I want to share the clip with you. We'll share it. If If you're watching on YouTube, we'll share it on the screen, but I'll have the audio playing for you here as well.

2:22Lindsey Simcik:Is being a mother going to be enough? I feel like I've been in just this long era of hyper-achievement and showing what I'm made of and capable of creating and being this fear of what if motherhood fulfills me more than any of that stuff. I see a lot of respect and praise to the mother that can retain the maiden within her. Be the mother, run the business, create the thing, impact in this way. I'm about to step into my greatest purpose. And will that get the validation that I think my ego needs? Probably not. There is a death and rebirth cycle happening always. And so can we bring in more appreciation for what was once alive and reverence and appreciation for its need to be shed and put down for it to die?

3:18Lindsey Simcik:And reverence and appreciation for what is coming through, what is being birthed. Can we hold both the death and the birth? Can we allow our feelings about it to be fully felt? So that was a week before I gave birth to Mav. I remember that was not the first cry of that week. I feel like I had many, which I now kind of know was just the heart opening even more before birth. I'm curious if other people who have given birth have experienced that. but this feeling I had before becoming a mother of a knowing that this new identity this experience would fulfill me more than what I had been doing and creating you know over the last 10 years or so, or even like, you know, a good part of my life, whether I was pursuing acting or teaching SoulCycle or, you know, starting the podcast, doing the podcast, like all things that I know my soul chose and I love so much.

4:36And I found great joy and fulfillment and growth in those things but I just had this overwhelming emotional knowing that this new chapter as mother would be the most important of my life and make a lot of things feel not as important and not as fulfilling and I was just a little bit uneasy about what that would mean then, you know, how I would be able to show up for those things in my life after becoming a mom. And so in this episode, I kind of want to give you an update over two and a half years later. And I'm also about to have my second child really soon. And so I kind of just want to bring you up to date and into my process around, you know, the shifting identity and kind of reorganizing my priorities and yeah, just, just where my heart is at.

5:53So, and I think this would be helpful and relevant for whether you are pregnant now or you eventually want to become a parent or maybe you are you know past those toddler years and just reflecting back on your own transition into motherhood but I think it can be I hope it can be a really good thing to reflect on for all of us um so I think the first thing that I just want to call out is how much duality dances in my every day now there is so much duality I think in in in more moments that I could have ever imagined and that is that two things can be true at once two things that are seemingly opposite, seemingly conflicting can be true at once.

6:54Motherhood has brought me the deepest love I have ever felt for my child, for my husband, for our family, like just a deepening that is like so intense and a meaning in my life that is just so powerful. And it is also the deepest and craziest surrender I've ever experienced. It has expanded my heart in a big way, but it's also challenged my identity. It has made me feel more purposeful than ever. And there are moments when I feel more lost in other areas of my life than I ever have before. And I think my world feels a bit smaller and as far as like where my time, attention and focus is going, but then in a very strange way, like it's expanded my world in like a very infinite, cool way.

8:03And I think that's more energetic of what I'm feeling and picking up on and what I perceive to be possible. So yeah, that's just a taste of the duality I feel on a daily basis. This morning, a funny piece of duality is like every morning, Mav, whether he ends up in my bed by 5am or not, we meet in my room and we brush our teeth together and we do my skincare. He likes to like pick the little bottles off the shelf and then squeeze them and put them on my face and all the things. And this morning, you know, he's, he's being a little bossy boss because he is. And I couldn't help him do anything. He was having a little attitude, but then he would like so intently like take the little eye roller and put it under my eye and squeeze the little, you know, tincture and put that on my face.

9:00And I was just looking at him like, man oh man you you are the cutest thing I've ever seen like you are just so precious look at this moment I know I'm going to look back to this moment and just cry because it's over and yet in the last five minutes you've annoyed me to the point of wanting to just like walk away from you so it's all of that and more all the time um and I think I just want to distinguish that But this feeling I have that motherhood is my most purposeful season role yet and probably will be for the rest of my life. It doesn't mean that my career doesn't matter anymore. It doesn't mean that women should only mother.

9:50It doesn't mean that ambition is bad. I believe none of that, but I just think there's so much nuance and it depending on your individual experience, it's going to be different. And I think for me, my point of gravity, I think for me, my center of gravity has shifted. It feels more anchored now in a place rather than like anchored in multiple places, kind of pulling me all the time. It's a really, for me, a great feeling to have that anchor in the center of my life. My children, my family, my husband like anchored there. So just wanted to say that at the outset, this is my experience, not a prescription for you.

10:45So let's get into it. The identity shift that I was expecting, but like didn't expect to take shape in the way that it did. I knew that motherhood would change me, but I did not realize that it would reorganize me psychologically.

11:12I think before motherhood, my identity was deeply tied to a few things. My career, my ability to do, do, do. So like productivity, my identity was tied to visibility on the internet or on the podcast. It was tied to momentum. It was tied to building something and achieving on a daily basis. It was tied to impact. It was tied to how my body looked. Yeah. And none of that is bad. It just is different. At the time, before motherhood, we were on tour. We were launching different products and content and creating content and just in that adrenaline of growth and building we you know kind of becoming uh familiar and like expecting the recognition feeling very on purpose through the actual work so I think before motherhood I thought it would be some sort of like layer on top of who I already was, like a veneer added to the layers of who I had been over the years.

12:39But I realized that I had been completely rearranged in my internal world. And that definitely changed how I saw my external world. I want to talk briefly about matressants. So I'm saying that in a fancy way. But this is a real term. And this is describing, basically, you're entering into this real shift, becoming a mother, hormonal shift. And we can liken this to like an adolescence shift, like a puberty. There are psychologists like Dr. Alexandra Sachs talks about this. There's the hormonal shifts, there's the brain shifts, there are the identity shifts, the social role shifts, the relationship shifts.

13:34It's wild. You know, we prepare women for so much. So just a lot changes. And I think from what I see on the internet, we're preparing women for birth, you know, we're preparing women for, you know, how we take care of ourselves postpartum, We're preparing for how to get pregnant, all important things. But we're not necessarily preparing women for the identity transformation afterwards. You know, I was prepared for loving my child, for example, but I wasn't fully prepared for grieving parts of myself. But I feel like it died at the same time, you know. So there were things I was prepared for and things I certainly was not.

14:24And that brings me to just this idea of fulfillment and achievement. You know, those parts of myself that I feel like died were some of those parts that really enjoyed a very specific type of fulfillment and achievement in my life, especially in my professional life. Um, and just to distinguish fulfillment and achievement to me are not the same thing. Um, I think fulfillment to me today feels different in my body than achievement. Achievement feels like getting things done, meeting your goals, you know, having kind of an external validation of the things I'm doing, but fulfillment feels internal.

15:10Fulfillment feels like a soul level achievement, if that makes sense. I realized that in motherhood, fulfillment for me was happening in these very small moments, mundane moments, everyday moments. And once I started to become so present in those moments, I was actually able to experience the fulfillment. I think so often we're thrust into this new season of our lives and we're in these mundane moments and we allow them to make us feel so disoriented and uncomfortable because it's not giving us the same hit as moments before becoming a mom. But really when I became present to moments like when I was just like holding Mav when he was sleeping or watching him hit a milestone or like, you know, lift his head for the first time by himself or, you know, trying his first food or smiling for the first time.

16:18It's like these moments just feel different in my body than the other ones. Those other like feelings of achievement. This was true, deep soul fulfillment why I'm here and just how nourishing witnessing a child just be you know and grow and develop before your eyes can be I think the fulfillment piece is really supported by the fact that I am just deeply attached to this being you know there is a biological attachment there is a spiritual energetic emotional attachment to this sweet sweet baby and it's like I don't even have words for that type of fulfillment in just that the fact that we are attached in that way I will say being pregnant

17:21Lindsey Simcik:and again has made me even more intentional about the choices I'm making. I've done a few episodes on this. I found myself reading labels more closely, investing in higher quality products, and asking what do I actually trust enough to use every single day? My standards have definitely gotten higher. That's one of the reasons Ritual has remained part of my routine. Their essential prenatal is the number one best-selling prenatal and the only leading prenatal backed by its own human clinical trial. I also really appreciate the experience of taking it. The capsules were designed with an upset stomach in mind and dissolve in the small intestines.

17:59Lindsey Simcik:And compared to other supplements I've tried, they've felt easier just overall to take and gentler overall. I trust that I'm getting thoughtfully selected traceable ingredients like choline, folate, and omega-3. And I love that ritual aligns with the choices I am already making. They're non-GMO, gluten and major allergen free, and don't use synthetic colorants. Don't settle for less than evidence-based support. Save 25 % on your first month at ritual.com slash almost 30. That's ritual.com slash almost 30 for 25 % off your first month. Um, and I think I, as I watched Mav grow and I continue to watch him grow, I just feel like the profundity of like how of the biology of motherhood how connected we are still even as he grows more independent I I feel like there is the mother's intuition that taps into the physical form of the child and so you know when he's sick I feel like I am tapped into kind of what he needs on a level that other people wouldn't be even like a doctor not saying I don't call the doctor but like I've noticed that I can trust myself in these moments and I think what this type of fulfillment has done for me as well and lastly you know just on this is that it's really stripped away the performative layers of myself and I was a performer so like I have that in me to like even though I'm being authentic I can have performative layers where I might be someone different depending on who I'm in front of I might read a room you know and say things a certain way none of it is bad but it just feels like I am hyper attuned to how I'm being perceived and I think with motherhood I just don't have the energy for that as much anymore I'm sure I still do it at times but I don't have the energy and I don't want to set that example necessarily for my children You know, I want there to be a consistency in how I show up and I want to be true to myself because that gives me energy rather than takes energy away from me.

20:39So I just feel like that has shifted in such a profound way, just how I'm like so much less performative in so many moments.

20:53related to achievement just how I felt like I was you know getting my hits before motherhood I realized that the low the low any low that I felt after becoming a mom was kind of like my brain and my nervous system reorienting to fulfillment rather than to achievement. Because the achievement would give me that validation and dopamine hit. And so it was kind of like my brain chemistry was having to like shift a little bit and reorient to the fulfillment rather than the achievement. I still have moments where there's a tug, you know, where it's like, should I be achieving more during the season of my life?

21:46Do people expect that of me? Do I expect that of me? If I'm not expecting that of me, will I lose it forever? Will I be disappointed in myself? And I've realized like that is not my highest self-talking. It's an anxious part of me. but it's certainly something I just want to recognize and honor if you are going through that postpartum where like how you feel satisfied and fulfilled is just shifting completely and it can feel very disorienting but now I am in a season as a mother and maybe I'm speaking to some of you who have become mothers, a season of meaning, a season of feeling so grounded and connected, having perspective like I've never had before, having a depth within me and around me and how I see things that I've never had before.

22:47And it's not one I can describe very easily. And it's not one that gets me the likes all the time or the validation that I'm used to or the money in my bank account. So it's just such a shift. And again, I've had to let those parts of me that strive for the other things to really sit down and die or just take a break because that's not the season that I'm in right now. I want to shift into this idea and this choice that I've made that I mentioned earlier to prioritize my family. So I have things that I work on. I have a sub stack. We have the podcast. Creatively, I have projects that I'm working on, but it never comes before.

23:40And I think a part of me judges me and says, well, would those things be more successful if you just sacrifice some of your time with your family and energy with your family and gave it to those things? And I think the answer is probably. Yeah, they'd probably be built sooner, maybe have more momentum or consistency. Yeah, probably because we live in a time where like the quickness of those things happening, the virality, the consistency, all of that really, really matters to all the different algorithms that we're trying to, to hack. But it's just not something that I'm willing to do. That is just me.

24:30That is just me. That is just me. And I haven't, I haven't figured out how to do both. Well, I read a book. My friend Erica actually recommended it to me. It's called Being There. It's by Erica Commissarts, who I love and deeply respect her work but her work around early childhood development and attachment is just so profound she talks about how important those first three years are in a child's development and how being there for it is incredibly impactful on the child and on your family system. And it doesn't mean you need to be a stay-at-home mom 24 hours a day. But she kind of explores the nuance of that.

25:25If you are a stay-at-home mom, maybe you work part-time, maybe you do work full-time. How do you be as present as possible for your children? How do you make them feel seen and heard? And how do you not outsource all of the care and create kind of this greater disconnection from who your child is and is becoming in the process of it? And so she speaks to all of those experiences. I think it's a book for anyone, especially in those first three years. But what really resonated with me in this book is the idea of emotional attunement and nervous system safety and secure attachment and why it is so important to have consistency of presence, why it is really important for our children that we are slowing down and not just continuing the push of, you know, getting to the top of our career, getting to the top of whatever we're trying to get to the top of.

26:35And I think that's part of the heartbreak that a lot of us experience is that like I was a very achievement oriented person and was doing the most before becoming a mom. But something shifted when I became a mom and I wanted to be more present and I wanted to slow down and I didn't want to do the most, not because like I felt forced to do so because this baby was here, but because I could feel how meaningful it was and how necessary it was. And then I read this book and I was like, oh this is why I'm feeling this way like the science is there so I definitely recommend reading this. I think what this book brought up for me as well was just this idea that our culture kind of dismisses caregiving labor and as you know that former girl boss era subscriber stepping into a role that you know I wasn't on the payroll for it I couldn't show you the stats on the back end.

27:54Motherhood is a very, I wouldn't say thankless job because I do feel that I am thanked and I do feel the people around me who love me and who I show up for and support and take care of like feel that and appreciate that. But it's just not the type of validation that I was used to getting on a regular basis. And so I think a lot of us just feel conflicted, you know, and then we look around us and I think women are going back to work ASAP for multitude of reasons. They feel pressure from work. They don't have the flexibility to take off more time than their maternity leave allows. It's a financial thing.

28:38It's a wanting to not have their job taken kind of thing like I don't think we are supported in this period of our life to actually be present for our children if we are working professional mothers and again some people choose to continue because they want to and that's amazing too that's a choice that I feel like if that is your calling you need to own that but I would just say that society isn't necessarily supporting us to meet the new part of us that wants to be present for our children. I think a lot of us, again, I'm speaking generally, but I've witnessed a lot of people in my life quiet that part of them that feels grief and feels deeply conflicted about just continuing to push like they were pushing before motherhood, so desperately wanting to slow down and be present for their kids, but just quiet that part and just keep pushing and kind of push down and not feel that part.

29:44But I think it is really important to feel that part, whether you can, you know, be, have that flexibility or not, because it's a part of us that wants to be more known. You know, it's a part of who we are as mothers. That instinct is trying to communicate with us. So what I would say is, you know, if you are someone who doesn't have that flexibility and you have to dive back into kind of the life that you had before becoming a mother, after you became a mother and after you've deeply changed, allow yourself to feel what you are feeling and also allow that feeling to inspire you to get creative with how you can be present and show up for your family and your children because it doesn't have to look like you know the stay-at-home mom right like get creative connect with how your soul wants to design your motherhood and I think you'll get a lot of information if you feel what you feel, release the judgment around it, and listen to what your soul has to say about how you can creatively be an incredible, incredible parent, despite the fact that you might have to jump back into the life you had before.

31:09Let's jump into just the grief I had around the old me, my old life. This is something I talked about a little bit when it was happening. But I remember riding in the car with my husband not too long after having Mav. I think we were on a little date and it was so nice. And I just remember looking at him and saying, is it okay that I have moments where I miss our old life? You know, the Saturday mornings where we'd have breakfast together and then I would grab my yoga mat, go off to yoga. And afterwards, I get a pedicure and then maybe take a walk and come home, meet you for whatever. Like just having that flexibility, that freedom, the ability to...

31:59Lindsey Simcik:Summer is always a funny time because I want to enjoy the burgers at the barbecue. I don't know about you, the breakfast bagel before a beach day, that's my thing. The pasta salad at a friend's house. But I also want to make choices that support how I want to feel. I've realized I don't do well with the all or nothing approach anymore. that's just not me. That's why I've been loving Hero Bread. I was honestly shocked by how soft and fluffy and delicious everything is that they make. There's no stiff cardboard texture, just the bread, buns, tortillas, and bagels you actually crave. I've been using their tortillas for easy lunch wraps for myself, for my son.

32:39Lindsey Simcik:They're bagels when I need something quick and satisfying in the morning. And nutritionally, it's such an easy swap. Depending on the product, Hero has zero to five grams of net carbs, zero grams of sugar, and 11 to 32 grams of fiber, which is unbelievable. They even have noodles with 32 grams of fiber and 12 grams of protein. I'm obsessed with the noodles. So is my son and husband. So Hero Bread is offering 10 % off your order. Go to hero.co and use code A30POD at checkout. That's code A30POD at h-e-r-o dot c-o. Take care of myself on a whim, do what I want to do, like spontaneously go on a date with you or out to dinner with you and not have to plan and get a babysitter.

33:24Like, is it okay that I kind of miss that? And he was like, I do too. He's like, yeah, that is totally okay. I think that's so real. And I was so relieved in that moment because one, he felt it too, and two, that we just like said it out loud. And it felt like a bad thing to say, but it just was and is still that way. You know, we, of course I miss aspects of that. I think we've gotten better about kind of creating the new version of that, of our spontaneity, of our dates, of self-care and flowing a little bit more freely. it's definitely not like it used to be so I just love taking the charge out of that the judgment out of that um yeah I just want to like liberate couples out there you could feel that way absolutely that is part of the duality I think I was I was missing the parts of me that could go into deep flow state with my creativity and not be interrupted, you know, missing, um, missing the feeling that I could be more to more people, more to my friends and my family and text back sooner and attend things on a whim.

34:48Like just, yeah, that part of my life and pouring into my relationships. I think I do it in a different way now, but it's definitely not the same. And like the strangest thing is that I don't want my old life back, right? Like that's the weirdest part of this grief. It's like, I am grieving what is no longer. I have moments of like, oh, I miss that, but I would not trade what I am experiencing now for what I experienced then. You know, I've never been like that. That's not my personality to be like, I want to go back. But I just, I don't wish for that life again, but I have allowed myself. And just to name this, there is a psychological concept called ambiguous grief.

35:39You're basically grieving something that still exists, but it's in an altered form. So I still have my life, but it is different now. It's in a totally different form. And I think motherhood contains a lot of ambiguous grief. You deeply love the life that you have while also mourning the parts of you who were and who are no longer. And I just don't want us to feel guilty admitting this as mothers. It doesn't mean you're a bad mother, it doesn't mean that you don't love the life you have. But I think it's more liberating to talk to your girlfriends about this. Maybe your therapist about this. Maybe some of you are worried about feeling ungrateful.

36:27I don't think that's what this is. You know, I do think grief is, I heard this the other day, grief is like a receipt of love. You know, it's proof that you have like deeply loved and been connected to someone or something or an experience. And so you know I feel that way about my life before motherhood. I had deep love and reverence for a lot of my life and it just is different now and I can grieve it. Now I want to shift into kind of my current creative professional season. As I mentioned earlier I am pregnant. I am giving birth very soon to our second child. And I'm gonna be honest, yet again, I kind of feel like I'm in this in between.

37:19I've been here before. So I know it's not the worst thing ever. And I know that there will be clarity eventually. But I'm in an in between as far as my creativity goes. um I have I still have fulfillment in almost 30 um I am also starting new things like my sub stack from scratch which feels really fun and vulnerable and I'm trying not to put so much pressure on it to become a thing but also holding myself accountable and wanting to be consistent um I am also just not sure what wants to come through me in a big way and in like a a daily creative way it's it just feels very unpredictable right now it feels like I'm not I'm not like on it or it hasn't met me yet or I haven't met it yet um so I'm just allowing myself to be here I am allowing myself to for lack of I don't want to sound cheesy but like just to like embrace the unknown and I think from there and that surrender there will be clarity eventually and what I know is that my priority right now is to welcome our second child and be so present for that transition.