In this episode of my podcast, I share my personal thoughts on motherhood and the fears and concerns that come with it. I believe it's important to be honest and open about these things, so that we can support each other through the ups and downs of parenthood.

As a woman, I have always worried about losing my identity in motherhood and being defined solely by my role as a mom. But, I'm lucky to have a supportive husband who values equality in our partnership. He encourages me to pursue my own interests and hobbies outside of our relationship, and I do the same for him. We both understand the importance of being our own person and not relying solely on each other.

In the second part of the episode, Joe joins me to talk about the importance of communication in a marriage. We also discuss the need for both partners to give more than they take, and how this contributes to a healthy and happy relationship. I also share my love for a new book called "The Science of Stuck" by Britt Frank, which offers practical advice on overcoming obstacles and finding your path forward. Oh, and don't forget the Veggie Tray Update!

Overall, the main message of this episode is the importance of maintaining your own identity and interests within a relationship, as well as the necessity of open and honest communication. Thanks for listening!

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Transcript

[0:00:48] (Lacey): Journey to Motherhood I love being a mother and I love my children more than words can express. But at the end of the day, motherhood can be really hard. This is an excerpt from a longer essay about my motherhood experience. This is about my real thoughts and feelings before I became a mother. It wasn’t a simple decision about whether or not to have kids and become a mother. It was a gray area. It wasn’t middle. The yes Years my mother is amazing.

[0:01:44] (Lacey): In a span of ten years, I got eleven nieces and nephews. Growing up, I thought I loved kids, but I quickly realized that wasn’t entirely true. The I don’t know years kids are fine and all, but I prefer adults. Chatting is a core aspect of my personality and how I relate to people, and most children don’t really chat. Don’t get me wrong. My nieces and nephews are wonderful and I love them so much. They all hold a special place in my heart and I admire things about each of them. While I was in college, I would go over to my sister Amy’s house once a week and hang out with her and her kids because they lived nearby.

[0:02:57] (Lacey): When he asked me to come check out the a fort in their backyard, I told him I would love to come see it in action, but I’m not going to be a pirate with him. And he was cool about it and he went about his day. I’m not the fun doting ant and I’ve come to accept that that’s okay to just be the ant that I am. This is important because it started to shape whether or not I wanted to have kids. Maybe I wasn’t meant to be a mother.

[0:03:51] (Lacey): This was always the most bizarre question to me. Basically they were asking if you were having or when you planned to have unprotected sex, which would be so weird if they said those words aloud.

[0:04:06] (Lacey): To be like, you know, Diane, I really prefer to take it in the ass so that makes our chances lower, but will you keep your fingers crossed for me, this has no reflection on my actual sexual preferences. I just figured it would make people the most uncomfortable. I never actually said it, which is a little bit of a bummer. Also, what if we were trying and not being successful or I just had a miscarriage and chose not to share?

[0:04:58] (Lacey): I knew too much. I had seen so much of pregnancy labor and delivery babies and toddlers to know that it was really hard. It was something that was all of the time and I had a hard time getting dinner made every night for just me and my husband. There was also an element of losing myself in motherhood. Working hard to get everything that you have, working hard to like yourself, working hard on your relationship, makes it a lot harder to say, you know what? Yeah, let’s just completely change everything.

[0:06:10] (Lacey): The key in what he said was we. He was showing up to be my partner in this. Not to just change a diaper here or there or take care of the house sometimes, but to take care of each other and push us to be the people that we both want to be. This is the magic of a marriage based on partnership and equality. I don’t want to pretend that my marriage is perfect because it certainly is not. But I never knew a marriage like this could exist.

[0:07:09] (Lacey): While this didn’t eliminate my fear completely, it helped me see we could overcome it and we did. We had our son friendly reminder that this is the continuation of last week’s conversation between Joe and I about advice from the Middle in marriage. A lot of the themes in my motherhood essay show up here in the Advice from the Middle and it is a beautiful, happy accident that I wish I could take credit for but I can’t so enjoy more.

[0:07:51] (Lacey): I will say something that we I think could be better at. Is that kind of that same thing of I feel like we both try to get as much out of one another and we could. Like, you’re my best friend, you’re the person I socialize with.

[0:08:08] (Lacey): I go to you for a lot of things and that’s a lot for you. And I just think maybe that’s something.

[0:08:17] (Lacey): Better at asking for support other places as well.

[0:08:23] (Lacey): Okay.

[0:08:32] (Lacey): Okay.

[0:09:02] (Joe): You have to be a person outside of the marriage, otherwise you become dependent upon the other person. And if the other person isn’t giving 100%, you can’t expect them to if they’re not doing that. Because basically you’re putting all of the relationship burden for your entire life on that other person. That means any interpersonal connection, any activities or hobbies or shows or movies or anything that you want is directly linked to that other person.

[0:10:12] (Lacey): And this is something that Joe has always really encouraged me on. And honestly, it’s something that I really needed when we started dating because I could have very easily gone down the path of just Joe and lose myself in a relationship. But I did for a little bit, we’ll be honest. But then I found more of my.

[0:10:36] (Lacey): Like when we talked about having kids, he was very insistent because I was worried about losing myself in motherhood. And he was like, no, it’s the same thing. You’re still going to be a whole person. We want you to be a whole person. That’s important to us. That’s a value. And he was like, I will help.

[0:10:54] (Lacey): And that’s really cool. I mean, it’s more work technically on your part, but I mean, if we’re just looking at normal societal things because I’m invested in you having your own things too, and your interests and how.

[0:11:09] (Lacey): Of it or not. Yeah, I mean, how many pieces of dice do we have in this household? Die, we have a lot of dice here smiling at me. And I know it’s just because you’re like, yeah, we’re going to keep that in.

[0:12:06] (Joe): So what? Their whole life with you not having any interests and all of a sudden you have to try and find life again? It’s too much to expect people because you’re putting too much of a burden on the other person.

[0:12:21] (Joe): Not your partner or your children.

[0:12:43] (Joe): Some really good yeah, well, and I think that makes another point, too, is your marriage is not going to do well if you see everything as, like a tit for tat. It’s like, I did this, so you have to do this. Keeping score, saying, well, it’s got to be 50 50 doesn’t work at all. I guarantee you it’s going to end in failure, it’s going to end in resentment. And honestly, it stems from a lack of communication, not communicating what you need.

[0:13:23] (Joe): Yes, absolutely. But I think what it comes from is someone not saying, listen, I feel like I’ve been doing the lion’s share of work in this one area. Is there any chance that we could work a different deal out or maybe you could help out and instead they just say, Well, I did this, and then not doing something else. And then it just snowballs into just disaster if you can’t communicate about it.

[0:13:55] (Lacey): We’re getting a lot better.

[0:14:04] (Joe): Where, I mean, everyone does it to a certain extent. I wouldn’t say that we do it more than anyone else, I guess here’s.

[0:14:30] (Joe): It doesn’t help that when you teach children about the world, you teach them that everything is fair and just and everything is equal and the bad guy is going to get punished and the good guy is going to get rewarded. And that’s not how it works, man. I don’t want to say sometimes you have to be the bad guy, but sometimes you have to give more than you get one.

[0:15:11] (Joe): Yeah. And I think, like I said, sometimes you have to be willing to give more than you get. But also sometimes you have to be willing to get more than you give. You have to be able to go both ways. You have to be willing to accept help from someone else. You have to be willing to ask for help.

[0:15:31] (Joe): Yeah, absolutely. And honestly, all of it comes back to communication.

[0:15:43] (Joe): No, probably not. It sounds like just a made up fantasy thing. Now, science, on the other hand, that’s real. You can touch science because every day.

[0:16:03] (Joe): Yes. Almost quite literally, yes.

[0:16:25] (Joe): Beakers and all these we have done that before.

[0:16:32] (Joe): You need to come up with a better experiment next time. Sounds like you need a less boring hypothesis.

[0:16:43] (Joe): Yeah, tons.

[0:16:46] (Joe): You’re trying to do a mini episode about marriage is if people didn’t write entire books, spending their entire lives studying it.

[0:17:07] (Joe): And and come up with some final thoughts. Communication is key. Find someone you are sexually compatible with or make sex not a thing at all. Well, you can be asexual or you.

[0:17:24] (Joe): Yeah. Or you can just have an open marriage which sounds there’s a lot to it.

[0:17:32] (Joe): That’s the only way something like that works. But yeah, guess it all comes back down to communication and not assuming that the other person understands your inner thoughts, you have to say them out loud. And sometimes you have to say them out loud multiple times to really be heard. And when you aren’t getting what you want or need, got to say, got to say it out loud. Even if it’s just texting the other person.

[0:18:06] (Lacey): I love how you’re like younger folks when I know you prefer sometimes. Text.

[0:18:14] (Lacey): Easier to think about your message and edit it.

[0:18:24] (Lacey): I’m just saying it sounded like you were being judgmental of the youths.

[0:18:43] (Lacey): And it’s making sure that your partner knows that.

[0:18:48] (Lacey): Okay. And I’m really proud of our marriage, that it’s not perfect or anything like that, but it’s sacred because it’s ours. And I’m proud of that.

[0:18:57] (Lacey): Yeah.

[0:18:57] (Lacey): You want to switch into Lacey Loves? I’m going to talk about jury duty.

[0:19:06] (Lacey): Life, I will mention Bugs life, because oh, my gosh, that is the moment I fell in love with that man. Okay, so Jury Duty is a show on Amazon’s freebie.

[0:19:24] (Lacey): I kind of did, didn’t I?

[0:19:27] (Lacey): A I usually do have music and that kind of stuff. Well, welcome to my Lacey love. Yeah.

[0:19:41] (Lacey): Jury Duty.

[0:19:45] (Lacey): Okay. All right.

[0:19:56] (Lacey): Well, welcome officially to Lacey Loves. It’s just Lacey. No Joe in this segment since that was last week. But I thought that was still fun. And my Lacey loves. This week is still a continuation from last week. Anyway, I do want to update you all on the veggie tray. You know how excited I was about the veggie tray? And friends, the veggie tray was magic. Two refills of the veggie tray and not even a week later and the veggie tray is empty.

[0:20:48] (Lacey): Will it keep this novelty? I have no idea. But in true lacey fashion, we’re going to roll with it and see what happens.

[0:21:01] (Lacey): About this week is a book that I got for Christmas and just now started actually reading called The Science of Stuck breaking Through Inertia to Find Your Path Forward. I’ve talked a lot on here about how I find a lot of self help books to be very, like a guru on a hill who’s like, this is the way to do this. And if you don’t do this this way, then you’re wrong and never recognizes an individual’s specific situation with systems of oppression and trauma and all those things.

[0:22:15] (Lacey): And in the first chapter about anxiety, she really goes into talking about the science and how that actually could be very true. And so one validating two, I just love her style and that kind of stuff. So it’s the science stuck by Britt Frank, and I love it. It’s in my podcast links. You will hear me talk about this more and I think I might even start doing like a little I don’t know if it’s going to be like an Instagram or TikTok series where I do some of the five minute challenges that she gives in the book of ways to actually overcome.

[0:23:23] (Lacey): I’ve got a lot of really cool things that I’m working on coming up and I cannot wait to share them with you. Not to be that guy, but like, stay tuned. Big announcements are coming from the middle. Thanks so much for joining me today. I’ve loved sharing the middle with.