36. Worthy As You Are: How to Stop Overfunctioning As a Mom with Chelsea Boateng

Do you ever feel like your value depends on how much you accomplish as a mom? In motherhood, when life becomes a constant cycle of giving, striving, and proving, it’s so easy to forget that your worth isn’t something you have to earn. 

In today’s episode, Alyssa Carlene is joined by Chelsea Boateng, whose heart-centered work focuses on helping professional women in motherhood heal their worth wounds—the tender places where we learned to measure our value by our productivity and achievements. 

Together, we explore what happens when your sense of self-worth is tied to doing the most, how the absence of a mother can deepen that wound, and what it takes to gently come home to your inherent value. 

Listen to the episode to answer the following questions:  

• How do I know if I’m struggling with a worth wound in motherhood?
• Why do I feel guilty or anxious when I’m not being productive?
• How does not having my mom’s presence impact the way I see my worth?
• What small mindset shifts can help me separate my worth from what I do?
• How can I begin to rest and receive without feeling like I’m falling behind?

1. Want to join a supportive, heartfelt community with other moms who are also navigating motherhood without their mothers? Join our Facebook Group today!

2. Are you ready to build confidence and emotional resilience as a mom, even without the support of your mother? Access the free video training now: Five Steps to Navigating Motherhood Without Your Mother!

3. Want to chat more about what it's like to mother without your mom and get personalized support? Send Alyssa Carlene a DM on Instagram!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Have you ever noticed how your sense of worth seems to rise and fall with how much you do? Especially in motherhood when days are spent giving, producing, and achieving, it's easy to forget that your worth was never meant to be earned. In today's episode, I'm joined by an incredible guest who helps women heal what she calls worth wounds, those deep places where we learned to tie our value to productivity. Together we talk about what it's been like to navigate motherhood without our mothers, and remembering that who you are is already enough. Stay tuned because this is an amazing episode. You're listening to Navigating Motherhood Without Your Mother Here. We help moms with young children who lack support from their mothers to make peace with the past, build confidence in their present role, and break harmful generational patterns for the future through the Five Step Roots framework. My name is Alyssa Carleen. I am a motherhood empowerment and generational healing coach. My mission is to help you discover the root causes of your struggles so you can foster emotional resilience and create a healthy, loving home environment for your family. Please remember my podcast content is for educational purposes only and should never replace proper medical and mental health guidance from licensed professionals. Let's get started. For our show today, I'd like to introduce Chelsea Boitang. Chelsea is a mom to four amazing kiddos and currently works as an elementary school counselor. Recently, she started embarking on her own coaching business called The Professional Parent. Her passion is to guide women in early motherhood who are professionals to heal their worth wounds because worth can often be tied to productivity and achievement. So, Chelsea, thank you for coming on the podcast today. This is so exciting. I know we've been talking back and forth about this for a while. We met, gosh, when was it that we met? Like maybe three or four months ago? I can't remember. Chelsea and I met in a healing mothers support group, and I had posted about, you know, anybody else in here navigating motherhood without their mother, and then we were messaging. And so we instantly clicked and we just feel so aligned. So it's super exciting to have you today, Chelsea. Thank you for being here.

SPEAKER_00: 2:16

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. Um, it's interesting because I think we've mentioned this before that it's almost like a secret when you are mothering without your mother. Um, and like of course we don't want it to be, but it almost feels that way. So it's so like when you find somebody that's going through that experience, you immediately jump on it because it's like, oh my gosh, you could connect with me. Um and not a lot of people can.

SPEAKER_01: 2:39

So yeah, it definitely feels it kind of feels yeah, hush, hush or taboo, or especially if it is estrangement or something that's different like that. It definitely feels like, ooh, you know, there's that pull that it's like tangible, you know, you can feel that energy. So let's, yeah. So let's dive into your story of navigating motherhood without your mother. And today we'll specifically be talking about worth and something that you came up with called the worth wounds. And I've experienced this, other moms have experienced this, and I think a lot of that too stems from either the mother wound that you develop, you know, if you didn't have your mom's support in your childhood, but also just this feeling of that we have to overfunction or we have to be the perfect mother when we don't, you know, but we put all this pressure on ourselves. So before we go into that, let's talk about what it has been like and and your experience in navigating motherhood without your mother.

SPEAKER_00: 3:43

Yeah, like you shared, I have four kiddos, and um, my twins are nine, and then I have four and a half and two and a half. So I've been through the thick of it and I'm still in the thick of it, which is an interesting, you know, place to be. I've always had a a pretty toxic relationship with my mother. She has a lot of her own issues with like mental health and some things that happened in her own childhood that did not allow her to mother me in the way that I should have been mothered. And logically, I know that. I mean, I have a counseling and psych background, so I can, you know, kind of pathologize that in my head, but that doesn't tell my heart anything. Yeah. Um, you know, and so that's that's yeah, so it's still, you know, I it's that still hurts. But so we have we've always had kind of a tough relationship. And when I was I had my twins, I got pregnant with my twins my last year in my master's program. And if you're ever been at a uh counseling, master's program, you get counseling. Um, that's part of the program. And so a lot of that stuff came up for me, and um, I finally decided to confront her about it. And um yeah, and it was really hard, it was terrifying, it was absolutely terrifying. Like I said, I was pregnant for the first time with twins, and I have a twin sister, so I could have definitely used her support on that since she uniquely could probably understand that for me. And uh I kind of confronted her about you know our my childhood and how I was treated, and you know, there was just something that happened that you know I shared with her that she should have been on my side, and she decided not to be. And so I was eight months pregnant and I said, I can't, I can't do this anymore. You know, I you you have made your choice, and now I'm making the choice to protect me and my kids because I can't allow you to influence their life in the way that you influenced mine. It was interesting to me because one of the last things she said to me, which this was 10 years ago, was you'll understand when you have kids.

SPEAKER_01: 6:05

That's like the typical, oh yeah. Were you told that? I've heard the you know, just wait. It's it's kind of like the just wait until you have kids. Yes. And it's kind of like for me, the opposite where I'm like, wait, I have kids and I would never Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00: 6:24

Yes. I remember I had my twins via elective C-section. I remember the moment I heard my daughter crying, the moment I heard her crying, the first thought in my head was, and I'm gonna choke up saying this, even though it was so long ago. There is nothing, nothing in this world I would not do for that girl. And then they pull my son out, and I said, There is nothing on this planet that I would not do to protect them. And it was the opposite. It was the opposite of I I can't fathom what she meant. I I cannot put my shoes. I'm a you know, I'm an empath, but I could not put myself in her shoes as far as understanding how she couldn't protect my sister and I. Um, and and I also have a brother. Um, yeah, so again, opposite of that. It solidified my decision, you know, when I had them. I it's been 10 years and there has still been no contact.

SPEAKER_01: 7:29

Wow. And that is just so uh like it's so devastating and it's so painful to navigate because in your circumstance it feels and mine too, it feels taboo. People don't understand she's your mother. It's just like yeah, she's my mother, but she cannot provide for me what I need. It's not healthy. Do you think it's it's it's almost like I would want to return the question do you really think I want this? Do you really? I mean, I can't tell you how many times I have felt so sad wishing that my mom, or even just kind of like this idealized, different version of her could support me. And then you go through this grief and you're wounded. And and a huge part of it is your worth. Yes, your worth is wounded. And so tell me how you came up with then, you know, so you this was 10 years ago, and now you have four children. Yes, you've you've become, you know, you did your schooling, now you're at an elementary school, you counsel, and then you started to work and and do this professional parent coaching, you know, all of this. How did you get to a place where you've not only been working on yourself, but you want to help others heal and grow and recognize that we have these wounds, and I love that you call it worth wounds. So I want you to explain why you call it that. And sorry, Mike, I try I'm trying not to have such loaded questions, but yeah. So just kind of tell me how you've come to that and what what are like what is a worth wound for a mom, especially a mom doing this without her mom's support.

SPEAKER_00: 9:24

Yeah. So to kind of share a little bit about the journey piece for me is I recognized probably about seven years into motherhood. So I had, you know, I had my twins that are a little bit older, and then um I had had my third, who we thought was gonna be it, and then surprise my fourth came as an exclamation point on our family. And we would not be our family without him, but he was he was a surprise that we needed. Um, and so seven years in, and there was a couple things that happened. One of them being I had my third, I was having my third, it was during COVID, and I she came about 10 days early. And um, I say it during specifically during COVID because the way that we were teaching during COVID was that's a whole another podcast. But yeah, that Monday, that Monday, I uh I had her on a Tuesday, but that Monday I had had so many plans to wrap up all the things that I needed to wrap up before I was gonna have her. Like I wasn't starting any new projects. I was gonna wrap them all up. And when I woke up to contractions, knowing, oh my gosh, she's coming either today or tomorrow, I was breathing and swaying through contractions my whole morning emailing people to say, hey, so sorry I'm having a baby today. Like literally, like literally, that's what I'm emailing people. And I was emailing parents and colleagues and all these people, and I laugh about it now, and I was laughing then. And somebody finally emailed me and was like, Chelsea, stop emailing, go have your baby. Yeah. Oh my goodness. Like into that maternity leave, I was like, that was my first, like, Chelsea, what are you doing? Like, everybody knew you were having a baby. Why are you apologizing? Um, you know, and so it was like that moment where I was like, and I didn't cognizantly think of this at the time, but I just recognized on a subconscious level that my idea of how people saw me as worthy and how my saw how I saw myself as worthy was so tied to what I could achieve and do for people that I couldn't even have a baby without apologizing for it. Wow, you know, and and again, people knew it was happening. I mean, you know, people were so excited for me and and things like that. But I just remember walking away from that going, oh my gosh, there were so many things I didn't finish. And the grand scheme of things didn't actually matter. You know, in the big picture, it didn't matter. And I it was hard to let go of it, of the things that I didn't finish and the things that I didn't quote achieve. And so around then, and then kind of, you know, really just bringing that awareness level to my own self and recognizing that I was overfunctioning to the point of not actually like living my life. Wow. I was kind of existing in it, and it felt like being a ghost because it was like go, go, go, go, go, go, go all the time. And I remember, you know, I would one of my kiddos would come up and say, I'd be folding laundry and like, hey mom, can you build blocks with me? And I would, but I would be cringing, like, oh my gosh, I'm spending this seven minutes playing blocks with them, and that means I'm behind schedule by seven minutes. Like, I I was micromanaging every moment of my day to achieve and produce and get things done. And I was doing the same, you know, in my career as well. I couldn't, I couldn't let myself be joyful in the moments I earned being joyful in. It was interesting, it was an interesting juxtaposition because I had done the therapy work and I had done the inner work and the self-development. You know, I read Oprah, Brene, Mel, you know, all of them, right? And I was still in this like pattern of behavior that I wasn't emotionally safe, even though I had created an environment that was emotionally safe. And so that's when I was recognizing that I had a worth wound. And to your credit, listening to the mother hunger, that first podcast you put out was I don't know what universal download came to me, but I was listening to that podcast in the car, and I was like, worth wounds, like that's what it is. Like that's what I've been talking around this whole time. You know, I'd been kind of speaking about things and I, you know, helping women in some different areas and you know, really um doing, I was doing very symptomatic work. I was recognizing, and I wasn't actually hitting the core. And it's when I recognized, like, oh my gosh, the core is that our worth, how we're seen as valued, how we access love for others and for others to love us, is by proving that we're worthy. And we often prove our worth through achievement and productivity and overfunctioning, because that's how we created our emotionally safe environment when we were kids. And so our brains can say, oh yes, you're emotionally safe, but our nervous system and our bodies and our sense of worth still don't feel that way because we have not transitioned our mindset into practices or behavioral patterns that can shift our line of thinking, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01: 15:18

Yes, it makes complete sense and it's beautiful and so amazing that you were listening. And that's my previous podcast too. I was talking about the book that I read, Mother Hunger, and truly it's just it's just something that you're right. Like logically, we can think I'm safe, I'm okay, but there's that inner child, there's that subconscious part of you that just feels like if I'm not go, go, go, or if I'm not proving to myself that you know I'm gonna be the best mom. That was my thing, was like I needed to be the best mom possible so that I wasn't gonna end up like her at all costs, you know. And then it was like I was driving myself into the ground because I wasn't giving myself the care or the love that I needed. So yeah, that is amazing. And I love I love that story. So tell me then, what are some of the biggest worth wounds that moms face? Like, do you have names for them or examples? Okay, I would love to hear.

SPEAKER_00: 16:26

Yeah, definitely. So I'm sure that there's more. There's probably more terms, but the I have five that I talk about the most because often the population that I work with, not all of them are based off of mothering without your mother, but I would say 99.9% of the women that I work with had some type of feelings of emotional or physical unsafety in their childhoods. And so those are the worth wounds I'm typically talking about. Again, there could be more, but this is just mostly for the population that I serve, which had those kind of traumatic childhoods. And so one of the big ones is your earned love wound. And so it's the belief that love is transactional and that you need to earn it through your performance because you used to have to. Like it's it's not a it's not um it didn't happen for no reason. It didn't just pop up in your brain going, I think I need to earn love today. Like you were conditioned and this was true for you at some point in your life. It's just not true for you now, but your body doesn't know that. And so that's a big one that I work with is um, and and often a dominant pattern is like that earned love wound or having to earn your worth or love through through transaction. Um, another one is my shrinking needs wound, which is I will never have a need ever forever in my life. And you can't know that I have needs and desires and wants because that is unsafe, you know? And so the the other way this shows up, this um shrinking wounds wounds need shows up is as a kid in an un uh emotionally unsafe environment, you got really good at these patterns. You got really good at them. Absolutely. This was a survival strategy and you survived. And what happens though, the reason you got good at it, one of the reasons, is your needs, in order for your needs to be met, you needed to meet other people's needs. So, for example, a personal example for me is uh when I was, especially like in high school, I was working like two jobs, taking all the AP courses, you know, I had all these after-school curricular activities. Weird how I'm overfunctioning now, right? I have no idea where that came from. You know, and I remember in the mornings, I would have to get myself and my other two siblings awake, dressed, ready to go, because I did not have parents that were going to do that.

unknown: 19:10

Wow.

SPEAKER_01: 19:11

Were you the oldest?

SPEAKER_00: 19:12

I uh yes, by 13 minutes.

SPEAKER_01: 19:15

Okay. Well, still you're the oldest.

SPEAKER_00: 19:19

I am the oldest.

SPEAKER_01: 19:19

I feel that. Sorry to like interrupt, but I just I feel that to my core. Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 19:24

Well, yeah, we're early parentified, right? It's it's it's interesting because I do think, well, we could have another conversation about this, but part of being the oldest is because you're the first one that can be parentified. And so then you are, and you the other ones don't have to be as parentified in the same way as you automatically uh get to be. But yes, and so you know, in order for my need of getting to school in time and being able to see succeed myself, I had to meet everybody else's needs. So I never told anybody what I needed because as long as what I was needing was being, or as long as I was fulfilling everybody else's needs, my needs, I could then meet my own needs. And so that's what I learned to do. And a lot of women that I work with, that's that's what one of the things that happens. And so we shrink our needs because we've never practiced how to even voice our needs. We just serve other people and then get our needs met. In motherhood, though, as you know, everybody's needs are like exponential.

SPEAKER_01: 20:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 20:26

There's no over the top, you're providing. It never ends, it will never end. So what happens though, because you're still in that pattern of behavior, you're still fulfilling everybody else's needs, but your needs get pushed off to the side. And so you thought you were exhausted before, and now it's like I I'm exhausted and I can't even get re-energized because I'm not meeting any of my needs. But I have never practiced actually asking for what I want or what I desire or what I need in a way that I'm not gonna get rejected. And so we don't say anything, and then people don't even think we have needs because we're so good at what we do, right? Yeah, um, or that we're fulfilling them ourselves. So that's my shrinking needs wound. That's kind of how that one plays out. Another one is the um perfection protection, as it sounds like you sound very familiar with. I wonder if this is a total. It's a dominant pattern for you.

SPEAKER_01: 21:18

This is totally, yep.

SPEAKER_00: 21:20

Yeah. And I see this one as it's your armor. It's this, it's this invisible armor that you're wearing. I am perfect. There's nothing you can criticize for me. I will get everything done, and you never have to worry about it. And as long as I'm perfect and I don't let anything drop, then I will be safe. I'm emotionally safe. Nobody's gonna say anything, nobody's gonna do anything to me. I am, you know, micromanaging to the last second of my day and making sure everything gets achieved. Because if I'm perfect, which you were taught was the bare minimum for like praise, right? Is to be perfect. Now you don't know what your bare minimum is. So even though you surrounded yourself by people that are gonna love you as who you are, you don't know what that looks like because the person that you were taught you had to be had to be perfect. And you can logically know that that there's no, you know, that's not a goal, but when your nervous system requires you to get as close to perfect as you can because that's how you stay safe and loved and accepted, you're constantly go, go, go, go, going. And then when you never reach that goal, you always feel like a failure. So then you're like, hey, Pinterest, what's the next thing that I can do to be perfect? I mean, you're not you know typing that into Pinterest, but you're you're getting that next product. How can how many colors can I put on my calendar? Is there another shade that I can use? Right?

SPEAKER_01: 22:59

Like, yeah, that's and that's when that overfunctioning comes in. That was what I experienced because it just felt like, you know, I and I and then I also felt like it made me super judgmental of other people, you know, because then it was like, even like, how could this person work, you know, like and be a working mom? Which which I am so embarrassed and like to even say because that's so ridiculous, but it was just my own projection on, you know, like it was just my wound, this deep wound that I'm projecting onto everybody else. And I think, how dare you, you know, and then I'm like, well, I have to be with my kid 24-7 and I have to make sure I'm doing it perfect, and blah blah blah. And then it became chronic pain, depression, like it manifested into these other things, and it wasn't until I acknowledged it head on that I started to heal and I started to stop doing that. So, you know, for you then, what are the ways that you teach women and moms to stop? To stop with these, you know, patterns of overfunctioning, of feeling like we have to earn this, you know, we have to be this way. What what is like how do you how do you stop? What do you do?

SPEAKER_00: 24:23

Yeah, so the the big overarching uh things that I use are the pathway that I use is I call it raising your worth because you're restoring your worth. I say restore intentionally because you never lost it. You were born with it. We just need to always there, it was always there. I just need you to remember it and and feel what that feels like.

SPEAKER_01: 24:44

I love that. That's beautiful to restore your worth.

SPEAKER_00: 24:48

Restore your worth, anchor in your values. And so one thing that I had to do is actually figure out what mattered to me because I realized that I was doing things that didn't matter, but I thought other people thought should. Oh, don't should yourself to death. That's the other thing. Yeah. The shoulds. If it's if you say should, uh, inquire about that for yourself. Yeah. So really thinking about like what actually matters to me, and then how do I base my decisions and my time and my energy on doing those things and showing up for those things and figuring out how to do the rest without overfunctioning in it. Um, so that's part of like that anchoring, kind of like anchoring in who you are and your values and not the the whispers of other people's values, whether that's society, whether that's your childhood, you know, and and um to kind of tying that to your worth. Um, the third thing is really uh is S for shaping your support. And what I often find, and this was my experience, I don't know what your experience was, but what I often find is we struggle to let people support us because it was never safe and it didn't get done the way we needed to be emotionally safe. And so I have a partner who is more than willing to jump in and support me. I have colleagues and team members and other people in my life that are more than willing to support me and I wouldn't let them. Not consciously, but I mean, I don't know if you've had this experience, but my automatic response to somebody asking if I need something, want something, or need help with something is I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine, I got it. Like it just comes out of my mouth. I don't, even if I'm like, brain, what no, help. No, they offered help. Like, say yes, say yes, right. And no, automatically it's I'm fine. I I got it. You don't worry about it. I couldn't let them, I couldn't let them do it. Whether it was the over control, the it was easier just to do it myself, worried about being rejected or not looked at as competent and so if somebody else did it, whatever it was. So, really shaping support that is going to allow you to rest, have joy, pursue something outside of the benefit of somebody else, really have energy freedom. And I struggled with that concept for a long time of recognizing I don't dictate where my energy goes. Oh, well, I wasn't. I do now. I was not. I was not dictating where I was I was listening to the inner whispers or what I assumed people thought of me dictating where my energy went. And so shaping your support to be able to show up as your authentic self. And that that's not saying I'm never doing laundry, right? Like I'm clearly doing things that I don't want to do.

SPEAKER_01: 27:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 27:49

The difference is I can say I'm gonna do three loads of laundry this weekend, and that means everybody has enough clothes for five days, versus I'm gonna do eight loads of laundry and get it all done. Because it doesn't actually matter to me that it's all done. It's just that nobody goes naked to school. That's what matters to me, you know, um, where we have clean clothes, you know, for the week. So it's really shaping, you know, anchoring what matters to you and then shaping how how do I want to show up? How like can I be spontaneous in my weekend and my whole life not fall apart because now I'm having to do something or getting to do something with my family and thinking that is a chore and not the chores I actually have, right? Or this, you know, same, same in your in your workspace. It's like all of a sudden this unexpected thing happens and then your whole system falls apart because you've micromanaged every day without accounting for life. So, really kind of shaping your support through that. And then the last one is embodying. And so it's really like how do you now embody a mother who can show up and be present and joyful and exist in the life where their worth is inherent and known, and it doesn't connect with one, other people's thoughts of them or really their own thoughts of themselves of not achieving. Your achievement gets to be separate from your worth, and um, that's really the biggest thing is is once you can do that for yourself. I'm not saying it's not, I mean, I still struggle with it, like I'm not perfect in my journey and I work on things every day, but being able to just breathe into your own self and not have your nervous system flooded constantly with what do I need to do? How do I earn my love today? How do I make sure everybody else's needs are fulfilled? How do I how do I make sure that, you know, people are gonna see me as perfect mom or worthy or, you know, I'm absorbing all this emotional tension or, you know, whatever it is, how am I doing all those things? And just be in your own state. Self for a minute. And one of the hardest things that women that I work with do, or one of the hardest tests I give them, I tell them they have to choose five minutes a day to start and do nothing. Sit there. Whether that's at work, whether that's at home, whatever it is, five minutes in their day, that they just sit there and breathe, or eat a snack, or drink a cup of coffee, or whatever it is. But they're doing something that is energizing or nothing at all instead of you know doing something else. Um, and it's a real struggle for me, it was, and um for you know other women that I work with. And I originally got that idea from uh Tiffany Doofu. Um so that's not my own creation, but well, that's amazing.

SPEAKER_01: 30:46

I love that. And I was when we when you were talking about, gosh, what were you saying? It was about it, just reminded me. I remember one time I texted my husband and I said, Why is it so hard for me to ask people for help? Yeah. And he responded and said, Maybe because your whole life you were taught that you needed to help everybody else. And I like it hit me. I was like, I wasn't thinking it was gonna be such a profound, you know, response, but it hit me like a brick wall. And I just felt like, whoa. And and you know the crazy part is that you can do all this work, but I'm still untangling. Like when it comes to my siblings, oh my gosh, I feel like I'm constantly like, okay, what can I do for them? What can I say to them? And in the past, it used to be, you know, I was probably overstepping, I was giving all this advice, you know, and everything. And now I just am an observer. And I think that's another key component is recognizing that these are harmful patterns and that we need to figure out how we can just sit with it too. Like when you're talking about five minutes of like nothing, can you sit with some discomfort? Can you sit with the fact that you feel like, oh my gosh, I'm gonna crawl out of my skin, I gotta go do something, you know? And sit with the fact that, yeah, this is a deal, this is ruling your life, because eventually you'll get to go to 10 minutes or 20 minutes and exactly you will feel so much better when you recognize that yes, your worth has nothing to do with this overfunctioning, with this productivity, with even like your children and how good they're doing, and you know, because that's another part of it too, is feeling like, are my kids doing okay? Are my kids, you know, am I gonna, am I gonna ruin my kids? You just have all these thoughts. So that's just amazing. Thank you for sharing those wounds and for sharing the ways to overcome and to stop doing this, and also to just really step into what do you want? What are your values? And it's so funny because I've had other guests on the show and they've talked about the same thing. They've talked about the power of values, and I've been doing values work recently, and it's amazing because I didn't even realize that there are these things that I want that they do not align with what I've been doing because what I've been doing was showing up for what other people, yes, what I imagine other people want from me. So it's like crazy work, but it's beautiful work, it's important work, and it's it's necessary. So I know that you mentioned, you know, I have this Facebook group, Navigating Motherhood Without Your Mother. You're a part of it.

unknown: 33:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 33:29

We have about 22 members and we want it to grow. Yeah. And I know that you mentioned that you would love for anyone who wants to, if you're listening, you want to join, that you could help and you could offer, tell, tell them what you would love to offer for them for joining the Facebook group and becoming part of this community. And if it's if this message, this conversation specifically speaks to them, how you can help them, what you can provide for them.

SPEAKER_00: 33:53

Yeah. So one of the really cool things that I do um for women that I work with, um, and well, so women that I work with and um just some women that I've been connected with is I offer um a custom worth wound healing blueprint. And so it's really cool because I have um a set of questions that I ask, and it's it's uh through like a little quiz. So it's like, I don't know, 10, 12 questions, I think. Um so it does not take you long, and I tell you not to think too hard about it. Just go with your guide. Um over for the overfunctioning brains, like, oh, I need to sit down and do this for two hours. No, just go with your gut, whatever works. Because what that can tell me, um, based on those 10, 12 questions, I can figure out what your dominant pattern is or your dominant worth wound is. And most people have like some sprinkles of all of them, but usually there's one that's like more dominant, you know, one sometimes maybe two. And the unique ways in which your worth wounds show up for you, I'm able to give you very personalized um shifts to make. So I named some like overarching ones or some common ones, but I can look at what your answers were and um share with you some unique shifts for you. Um, I share um, oh, I share the survival strategies that most likely are showing up in your life. I call them powerhouse patterns. Things like being the peacekeeper, you know, the person who's always keeping the peace, or the one that goes, yeah, that one's really common, especially among women, me too. Or the overloaded overachiever, right? You're just like, give me everything on everybody's plate and I'll just tuck it in on mine. No worries. Like my my uh my plate's made out of plastic, it's never gonna break, right? No glass plates here, right? So these different survival strategies that are strengths, right? They are strengths, but then they misfire, especially in motherhood. So I kind of share with you like, what's the strength of your pattern that you want to keep? But then how can we repattern the misfire so that you can start to really heal? Um, because a lot of my work is in how do you shift your pattern? The women that I work with, they know mostly what's going on. They're still entangling it, but they have an idea that what they're living is there could be more. Um, and and the real work comes in how do you rewire your brain, how do you restructure your nervous system, and how do you how do you put these things into practice? In my blueprint, that's one of you know, that's all things that I give you and share with you to really give you that first step um into kind of your healing journey. Um, it's really cool. Like I said, it's completely custom to you. I take your answers, I take a lot of time on them. Um, and so I make sure that everything that you're getting is um, I would say as unique to you as the 12 10, 12 questions allows me without having met you yet. But for everyone that I've done it for, they're they're pretty accurate and very cool. And it's more than just information, that's why they're great because it does give you some information and then some implementation strategies.

SPEAKER_01: 37:13

So cool. And so they can join the Facebook group and then they can connect with you there. And we can also connect, I'll tag you, you know, in this in social media and everything, but on your professional parent page, I think is a great place too for women to go and look and see everything that you have to offer. Truly, this has been such a good conversation. I'm like stirring in my mind thinking, what are mine? I want to work with you.

SPEAKER_00: 37:37

You're welcome to take the take the quiz.

SPEAKER_01: 37:39

I want to, I do. And I just I love that we're talking about this because there's something about I feel like moms that we just we just feel like we've gotta do it all. Like we have no choice, we've gotta do it all. And yeah, I mean, we wake up, we have to take care of our children, you know, there's there's that part of it. But when we start to really put ourselves first, to really look inside and recognize that there's not all this other stuff. And and I love what you had to say about the fact that the way we've been functioning, this overfunctioning, it can actually be a strength. It's just the way you do it, right? Which which is beautiful because it's not saying you're wrong, you're doing this all bad, you know, blah, blah, blah. Right. And I teach that too, in that we do things, we recognize these patterns that can be harmful. But I love what you'd said that they are also a strength and really survival that we learned probably when we were just little girls, because you know, that's that's how we learn to survive. So this has just been such a great conversation, Chelsea. Thank you for being here and sharing all of this. I hope that if you're listening, you will consider joining the Facebook group. It is such a great place and we just want it to grow. We love the support. I mean, I don't know what your experience has been. I love having you in the group. You've just been so fun to get to know and meet. And yeah, what do you have to say? Tell them to join. I I say it on every episode, but I would love to hear what you have to say and just, you know, pitch pitch the Facebook group for them just a minute.

SPEAKER_00: 39:13

Absolutely. I I really love it. I love getting to see the different experiences that people have because as we all know, you know, mothering without your mother, especially in the way where it's like kind of traumatic where it's more of an estrangement piece, it's so isolating. It's really isolating. And so when you actually get to connect with people and see, like, oh yeah, they had that experience too. I think sometimes in the back of our minds, it we're almost like, did that really happen the way I thought it did? Like, are we crazy? Like, you just have that in your mind, and even though, and you have to convince yourself, like, no, that was not okay. Like, that didn't happen the way it was supposed to. So then when you get in the Facebook group, is awesome because then other women were like, yeah, I had that experience too, or this was my experience, and you get to read it and go, Oh my gosh, like me too. No wonder why we're feeling this way or we are operating this way, or you know, those kinds of things. What I also think is really cool about it is to see how people have taken their pain and repurposed it in something else. And so while it's amazing to connect in the trauma piece of it, because you do need that too. What I think it can show you is this is who you can be. Like you, you can be anybody you want to be. And these people, they got out of it or they're getting out of it, um, getting out of those survival patterns and and things like that. And so it's a really cool, unique group of people. I also like that it's like different ages. Um, so there's some people that have young, young children, and there's some people that have older children, and some kind of all in the mix. And so you really get to see like different stages of life that people have gone through and what their experiences have been and how they've, you know, coped and things like that. And so it's a really lovely, wonderful, you know, group of women already. And I would love to see it grow as far as I don't love that all these people, you know, didn't are mothering with other mothers. No, but if, you know, we can't control that. So what we can control is to, you know, create a safe and warm and loving, non-judgmental environment uh that people can voice these things and not get the cringe face that you get when you say, I'm estranged for my mother. Um the face I'm telling you at the oh, what the people react to, you know, that's that's not here in the Facebook group. So yes, join. It's really lovely. Alyssa's amazing um at moderating and and really just like putting the name to people's, you know, what people are feeling or checking in. And so I definitely advocate for being a part of that community.

SPEAKER_01: 41:49

Well, thank you. Thank you so much. That was a beautiful testimonial, and I really am just so excited. I mean, when I started my podcast and everything, all I wanted was community because just as much as people listening might feel like they need support, I need it. You know, so almost a little bit selfishly, I'm like, please join. I want more friends, you know, you know, blah, blah, blah. But really, it's it's safe, it's beautiful, and it's it's incredible. So join and get in touch with Chelsea. Talk to her about your worth wounds. We are both here to help you. And this has just been so great. Thank you, Chelsea, again for coming on the show today.

SPEAKER_00: 42:25

This has been amazing. Thank you so much for inviting me. Um, and I can't connect wait to connect with you guys in the group.