EP 137 Guilt and Shame in Motherhood: Breaking Free with Dena Farash

All of my guests are so special, and today's is no exception. 
She also happens to be a long-time dear friend. 

Dena Farash has walked alongside me through establishing and growing an online business and I've been honored to witness her do the same. 

Dena shares sameness and sanity so that moms can feel cool, calm, and confident without guilt or shame.  

She is the founder of The Mindful Mom Revolution, an online space for Mothers to come together to deliberately create community, inspiration, and progress through awareness of their thoughts and inspired actions in their parenting.  

Dena is a successful online entrepreneur who has found her unique way of sharing how to thrive in motherhood while still creating personal fulfillment, accomplishment, and connection with others.  

Happily married and a mom of three, Dena loves to share with women how they can become the best version of themselves while raising the best version of their kids.  

Using tools like meditation, mindfulness, grit, and charm, Dena has established herself as a strong voice in both the motherhood and online business spaces.

In today's episode, we're sharing: 

Steps to take toward prioritizing releasing trauma and practicing conscious parenting 

Where damaging parenting behaviors come from. 

The influence of our thoughts and why awareness of them is the first step toward breaking generational patterns

How to work in the mindfulness practices that will make the biggest difference even in modern life without adding anything else to your to-do list. 

Dena is showing up on social media, telling stories, and leading by example.

She showcases the sacredness and mundane moments which has been such a beautiful gift, not only to myself but also to so many others.

I'm sure you'll take away so much wisdom surrounding what motherhood is all about in this powerful conversation. 

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Chapters

• 0:02 Postpartum Care and Motherhood Challenges
• 16:27 Implementing Mindfulness in Motherhood

Transcript

Depression, anxiety, and autoimmune symptoms after birth is not how it's supposed to be. There is a much better way, and I'm here to show you how to do just that. Hey, my friend, I'm Maranda Bower, a mother to four kids and a biology student turned scientist obsessed with changing the world through postpartum care. Join us as we talk to mothers and the providers who serve them and getting evidence-based information that actually supports the mind, body, and soul in the years after birth.

Hello everyone, welcome to the postpartum university podcast. Maranda Bower here. 

I have a dear friend of mine who has been in my life and in my business or, oh my gosh, feels like the beginning of my online life. We have worked together in a multitude of capacities and I knew that she had to be here on this show. So everyone welcome Dena Farash. She shares sameness and sanity so that moms can feel cool, calm, and confident without guilt and shame. So we are going to get into the heaviness of this conversation. 

She's also the founder of the Mindful Mom Revolution and she's happily married and a mom of three, so she gets it. She loves to share with women how they can become the best version of themselves while raising the best version of their kids. So, gosh, welcome. I'm so happy you're here.

Dena: 1:34

Thank you so much for having me. I am so excited to be with you in this capacity and to have walked alongside you and to witness all of the incredible things that you continue to do for women and mothers worldwide. So thank you.

Maranda: 1:48

Thank you. I'm so like, seriously, you kind of took a break for a little bit, for a bit of time, and you're back on the scene and you're freaking, blowing up, and I am just like over here clapping for you, like I was talking to my, my lovely assistant. I was like, do you know Dena?

Do you know her? Like she's freaking amazing. Have you seen her stuff? She's got to be on the show.

You are just such a powerhouse and every time that you come in you just like people flock to you because you're telling a truth that needs to be told.

Before we get into that, tell us like, how did you get into this work?

Dena: 2:29

You know it's so funny because people ask me that question all the time and the truth of the matter is I lost my mind. I had such a difficult time transitioning in those early years of motherhood for me and I was crippled and overrun with this loss of sense of self, right, this complete identity I was.

I was overtaken by the amount of sacrifice that I had to give as a mom and I really lost it completely. I was creating a home life that didn't feel good for me, that didn't feel good for my children, and was very challenging for my husband and I.

Until I was able to get out of my own way and recognize that the only way for it to get better was for me to get better, then I wasn't able to kind of rise, from the undertaking that motherhood takes us on. It's a wild ride.

Maranda: 3:23

Yeah, you know, and we talk about it being our wild ride fairly often. I think, like now we're starting to recognize that wild ride and we've given it a really bad name. 

There's tons of resistance to this ride and I know that I experienced it too. It manifested in severe depression and anxiety and just so much resistance and pain and frustration and struggle and it sounds like that's not something that has to happen.

Dena: 3:53

That's an interesting point, because I really see motherhood as an unraveling. It is very much so an unraveling of who we thought we were and who we are becoming, and I think those who are conscious and aware want to undertake that unraveling so that they can build themselves back up better. 

But some moms are happy to go along with the ride right. They're happy to become addicted to stress, addicted to being overwhelmed, addicted to blaming their children for every issue that they have in their home. I see that more so now because I'm being pulled into this mainstream world as my children are getting older.

There is a subset of women who are happy just to go about life and say motherhood is overwhelming, it's stressful, that's just what it is.

But then, on the flip side, there is this other group of women, and these are the group of women that I know are the women that come to me and possibly come to you.

They are the ones who say I want to consciously insert myself here so that I can create a home that feels more calm.

They want to take on the responsibility of being a mom because motherhood is a relationship, it's not a role, and when we parent with the end game in mind, which is that place of connection, that heartfelt connection that we can have with our children forever, then we can parent consciously, we can parent intentionally. 

But I definitely think that there are two different groups of women out there.

Maranda: 5:22

Yeah, and I see that quite frequently myself, especially in this field and it's been going on for quite some time. We become our story, and I was the same person for a long time. I became my story and it was really hard to let go, because that's where you get attention, that's where you get the love and respect that you're so much craving. I think, at least it was in my own personal journey.

Breaking those patterns is really hard, and I think it's not only difficult because we're breaking our own patterns that we've created, but we're also breaking these generational patterns. We've got baggage y'all, and I especially I have some deep-rooted baggage.

I see this in the clients that I've worked with, too, over the last several years, and the women that I've worked with specifically.

We're not carrying just the weight of our own, we're carrying the weight of the generations before us, and that's freaking heavy.

Dena: 6:19

Yeah, it's a lot, and we are all coming from being raised by dysregulated adults, right, and dysregulated adults wind up raising dysregulated kids and then we continue to perpetuate the cycle until we don't, until we say hey, man, feeling like crap all the time, as a mom feels like crap. So what can I do about it?

I can't blame my three-year-old anymore. I can't blame my husband, who gets up and gets out of the house to provide for us, anymore. 
I have to figure out what's going on with me so that I can create the type of relationship I want in my life.

I see this all the time in my own self. But what we're actually doing, and what makes intentional parenting so challenging, is that not only are we parenting our kids with kindness and calm, we are reparenting ourselves and we are healing from our trauma and the generations of trauma that have come before us, so that we can have more of the good feelings that we want in our lives. 

Maranda: 7:23

This is beautiful. I feel like there's almost like we can say it, and it feels so aligned, but the doing part and the being part is a whole other game 
How do we show up in that space? How do we do that?

Steps to Establish Conscious Parenting Strategies

Dena: 7:40

First of all, it is so hard. It is so hard. Everything that you're describing is so hard. It's a challenge because it is easier to give into the emotions that want to take over in the moment. It's easier, and then you're left with the regret, you're left with the guilt, you're left with sending your kids off to school after you screamed at them all morning. Right, and then it's cyclical.

Then you go to bed at night and you're wondering if, did I screw my kids up for life? Because I'm screaming at them all the time. And so the way we can consciously insert ourselves is first, we have to understand what we're thinking and what we're feeling, and that is very difficult to do. It's even more difficult to do when we're feeling triggered, when we're feeling alarmed, and when we're feeling like we just have to keep things moving.

Maranda: 8:22

As a mom, yeah, yeah, it's so true. You talk a lot about like this shame and this guilt and I felt it here as you're like sharing that story about screaming at our kids all day.

Why do we have so much of this? How is this intertwined with the story that we're talking about here?

Dena: 8:43

I think much of it is societal. I think the first place where we go wrong is that we compare.

We compare ourselves to others, we compare ourselves to our parents, we compare ourselves to people on social media who only post the highlight reel of their lives and are not fully telling the truth. But we forget. And so, right away when we're in the comparison train, we start to feel badly about ourselves. 

Then our children have a need as children do, especially our young children and we respond to them. We react to them from this place of already feeling badly about ourselves or already feeling insert your keywords stressed, overwhelmed, rushed, whatever it may be. 

So we're constantly reacting to our children from this emotional place we have within ourselves. 

Now, if we have no conscious awareness of the emotion we're feeling in that moment, we're always going to breathe fire at our kids and respond to them in that way. 

But when we can gain control of what's happening within us, what's happening in our mind, and what's happening within our bodies, with our emotions, then we can act differently and we can shift the cycle of reactive parenting into responsive parenting.

Maranda: 9:52

Oh, OK, that was huge right?

You're saying the first step in all of this is this conscious awareness.

Dena: 10:02

And it's so challenging. Right, I'll give you a little bit of the statistics.

We think 60 to 80,000 thoughts a day and Dr Joe Dispenza, who I love, he shares that 90% of these thoughts are on repeat.

So by the time you even recognize that you are replaying a thought in your head, whether it's a fight with Karen from the supermarket or a disagreement you had with your support system or your partner earlier in the day before you even recognize that you're having that thought, you've already thought it 10 times, 100 times, 1,000 times.

Then all of a sudden, you're reacting to your children based on that emotion and that thought that was inside of your body and it's cyclical.

It comes over and over and over and over again until we say OK, hold on a second. 
I'm thinking about a fight I had with a stranger at the supermarket yesterday. My child has a need. 
Let me forget about this thought I had with the stranger yesterday and let me get down on my child's eye level and figure out what their need is and how I can meet it in this moment.

By the way, it is so freaking hard. It is so hard because modern life is so fast-paced. 

Modern life doesn't give you a place to pause and have emotions. Modern life just makes you want to go and go and go. You have school, and then you have football, and then you have wrestling, and then you have cheerleading and you have karate. 
When do you actually have time to sit and focus on what you're thinking and how you're feeling?

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Maranda: 16:40
This is why I always say journal in some form or fashion because that is the first step to that conscious awareness.
Journaling is something I do every morning when I wake up and every night before I go to bed. I don't care if it's for five freaking minutes. 

It is so important to me to do that, to release those thoughts, to be able to recognize them for what they are. 
I feel like so much of my conscious awareness comes from that and I recognize that might not be everybody's thing.

But even if you're talking to your phone, leaving yourself some voice message or something, talking out your day, or finding a friend to do that with.

It's so, so incredibly supportive and helpful and releasing those thoughts and recognizing them.  

Not to say that it'll ever go away, right, like at least in the very moment as you're learning. I think there's a process to that.

Dena: 13:05

Absolutely, and to find a space to witness those thoughts without judgment. Right? The judgment and comparison just sinks us lower.

When we think things like I'm so stressed, I can't get it together. My kid has three sports plus homework, plus the household, plus the husband, I can't do it.

Then we insert the word but we say but I know it's not as bad as some other people have. What we're doing when we insert the word, "but" is that we're putting ourselves more into judgment, right?

So you're recognizing that you feel a certain way and for a moment you're saying it's okay. But then you're comparing yourself to other people's plate and then you're feeling guilty, that you feel overwhelmed, even though you have a roof over your head and a partner that provides, and a car in your driveway and heat and food and all of those things.

When every time we insert the word, "but" we are just judging ourselves even more and we're making it that much more challenging to pull ourselves out of this place of cyclical behavior for ourselves and our kids.

Maranda: 
What are the top three tips that you give moms so that they can really learn how to free themselves of this guilt and the shame that we all experience in motherhood?

Top 3 Things Moms Can Do to Release Guilt and Shame 

Dena: 

The first thing I say, without a doubt, is you have to become aware of your thoughts. The method that I preach - I think journaling is fantastic.

The method that I preach that has been most significant in my life has been meditation, and so the way I teach meditation is that it's not about emptying your mind completely and sitting still for two hours because nobody has got time for that.

It is about intentional connection to your breath and shifting your awareness so that you are in control. Your mind and your body are not in control, but your sense of self are in control.

Every time you recognize a thought, bringing it back to the breath slowly but surely, and every time you do this even if you're driving in the car, you are essentially in a state of meditation. So for me, meditation has been the most impactful because it's given me this gift of awareness.

It's given me the opportunity to figure out what I'm thinking at the time and how I'm feeling, and see how my thoughts and emotions are dictating my actions. Right. That's first and foremost.

We have to get into a place where we are able to become more aware of what we're thinking and how we are reacting to that thought.

2. The second thing is one of the most powerful questions I love to share with people is this thought 100% true?

Because once we recognize those thoughts, we can either feed into them and allow them to snowball or we can take the power away from them.

So, for example, if I'm thinking something like today is just such a hard day, I have sacrificed so much. Nothing ever goes my way as a mom, I can ask myself in that moment is this 100% true? And the second I pose that question to my thought, it takes the control away from the thought. Does that make sense?

Maranda: 

Oh yeah, hands down.

Dena: 

3. And the third thing is you absolutely have to move your body. Emotions need a way to be processed, so they can't just live swirling around in your head with nowhere to go. You have to have a physical or creative outlet. So, whether that's journaling, whether it's exercise, whether it's yoga, you have to assist your body in processing all thoughts and emotions. You have to move, you have to create. It's non-negotiable.

Maranda: 16:40

And going out on a walk whatever it is, and I think this is such an important conversation because you're saying meditation was really helpful for you. I'm journaling. There are so many different approaches. I think that's really important to recognize here.

That it doesn't matter what it is that you're into or what you find to be helpful or not. Just do one thing or do something that's really aligned with who you are and that feels really helpful for you. There's something for everyone. Like no matter what, there's something for everyone.

Dena: 17:14

I totally agree. I think mindfulness is the destination, but there are so many different roads to get there. I was just speaking with a woman this morning who teaches mindfulness through photography.

So she's hitting the creative box and the mindful box, and we were sharing how our paths to get to the same place are different, but ultimately, the goal is to live a life where you are not inundated by the overwhelms and the stress of the modern world.

Maranda: 17:42

I feel like having a conversation about it is one thing. It's so challenging. We know it, we recognize it and then living it in the day-to-day and recognizing the sacredness of the day-to-day like the sacredness of the mundane doing the dishes, paying attention to our thoughts, being in the state of meditation, taking time for ourselves, addressing our children's needs is a whole different ballgame.

Often and I know this was the case for me when I really started this journey 14 years ago but I didn't have a place to look. I didn't have somebody that I could be like. Okay, what does this look like? Is there something that I can emulate? Is there somebody that I can pay attention to and follow?

You have created that space. You are showing up in social media and your groups and you are telling these stories and you are leading by example, and the stories that you're sharing are just like I mean, everybody is hooked and they're so relatable and so down to earth.

You showcase the sacredness and these mundane moments, or what society has considered mundane. I think that has been such a beautiful gift, not only to myself, but also to so many others.

Where can people find you so that they can see these things in action and so that they can understand a little bit more deeply how to apply these things in their own life?

Dena: 19:18

Well, thank you so much for that. I share most of my stories on Facebook. That's where I show up the most. I also offer a Facebook group called the Mindful Mom Revolution. I'm on all social media platforms, but where I do the majority of my sharing and my storytelling is definitely on that platform.

Maranda: 19:37

Yeah, and we're going to have a link to that so that all of you can go join her incredible group. I'm in there, always watching, always paying attention and sharing how amazing your work is. So thank you for all that you have done. Is there anything you wish I would have asked that? Maybe I didn't.

Dena: 19:57

Can I use an example of what you just shared to connect with? Please?

Maranda: 

Okay, please do.

Dena:

You spoke specifically about the mundane right, and I think the toughest thing in motherhood is to give a woman one more thing to do on her to-do list. Dena,  Miranda, how can I meditate? The kids are up at five o'clock in the morning. They go to bed at 9.30 at night. How can I journal, right?

You journal twice a day. How can I do it?

You can use those mundane moments to tune into what's going on. One of the processes I teach is just that right.

My three most powerful places to find meditation are when you're doing the dishes, when you're folding the laundry, and when you're taking a shower.You physically cannot do anything else during that time, so you can tune into your thoughts and figure out what's happening.Or you can make a small shift, a small pivot, and just think about three things you're grateful for in that moment.

You know where I went wrong very early on in my motherhood is that I would sit there and fold the laundry and I would just be so resentful of my husband who got three outfit changes a day.

He got to go to work. He got to go to the gym and then he had whatever he wore at home.

I would sit there and fold his laundry wearing seven-day-old sweatpants, pissed as hell that he got to live all these different facets of his life and I was covered in breast milk and diapers all day. 

Same thing when I was washing the dishes, I would look out the window and I would wonder what my neighbors were doing or why their cars were never home at the same time and I was constantly putting my mindset in places of judgment or feeling not good enough.

When I recognized that, I was able to make those shifts. 

It's not about giving women one more thing to do.

It's about taking advantage of those mundane moments and making sure your thoughts and emotions are intentional during those times so that you can start to feel better in the long run. 

I share very openly about my journey because I don't come from a place of perfection, and you shared about my group and I'm so grateful for that.

But the truth of the matter is I didn't create this group, I didn't create this business because I knew what I was talking about. I created my group specifically because it was what I needed. I needed that accountability, I needed that support, I needed that real talk about motherhood that wasn't all just fairy dust and rose petals and beautiful staged photos online.

That part of motherhood was killing me and it was sinking me further and further into states that didn't feel good for me, which didn't then feel good for my children and didn't feel good for my partner.

When we think about how can we implement these things in our lives right away, you use those mundane moments, you tune in.

Then you have to do these things anyway. Right, as a woman, as a wife, as a mother, you have to do these things anyway.

So take advantage of the mundane and be really intentional in those moments, because you can't do anything else.

Maranda: 22:49

I am so glad that you said this and it makes me think, too, in my own journey. If you would have asked me 10 years ago if I was journaling twice a day, or if I had that opportunity, I would have laughed. And so I'm so grateful that you said that, because I do find, yes, this is my life right now, but that's not how it began, especially when I was a single mom, especially when I was legit counting pennies in the checkout line trying to get a bag of cereal.

It was not possible for me to think of anything else or to do things like that in my life at all. But because I have implemented and started small and failed a million times and have gotten back up every single time to do what I believe is the right thing and to connect with people like you there's a whole world out there, and my local community, too, has been a huge help in all of that as well.

But that has been the gift that has allowed me to do the things that I do now and allowed me to pass that along to my children.

That doesn't mean that I don't screw up. Happens all the time. I had to apologize to my son the other day and I was like, oh gosh, I'm so sorry, and he was like, Mom, I'm just glad that, like, we're having this conversation.

It just it was a whole melting moment, right, but yes, I can blabber on and on about this, but thank you so much for bringing that up, because that's a huge point that I need to be more clear on.

Dena: 24:30

Yeah, and I appreciate you sharing that. I got chills when you did. I am such an imperfect mom.

In fact, I built my entire brand on being an imperfect mom because it's honest and it's truthful.

At the end of the day, our children don't need a perfect mom. They need a real mom that teaches them that it's okay to make mistakes, that teaches them that when you make a mistake, you reconcile, and that teaches them, at the end of the day, the greatest gift is our presence in one another's lives.

I mean, when we lose sight of that and we think it's about the football trophies and the cheerleading and the karate and the grades at school, then we lose sight of what really matters in life and that is the connection that we have with our children and everybody's state of health.

Outside of that, it doesn't matter.

Maranda: 25:17

So true, so true. Y'all go find Dena. We've got her info. It's in the show notes. Please, please, please. We can keep going on here, but I'm telling you what she's sharing is absolute gold and she's a wealth of information. So let's connect with her. Thank you, thank you so much.

Thank you, I am so grateful you turned into the postpartum university podcast. We've hoped you enjoyed this episode enough to leave us a quick review and, more importantly, I hope more than ever that you take what you've learned here, applied it to your own life and consider joining us in a postpartum university membership. It's a private space where mothers and providers learn the real truth and the real tools needed to heal in the years postpartum. You can learn more at wwwpostpartumu.com. That's the letter U.com. We'll see you next week.