Living Into The Parent You Are

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Fourth Trimester Podcast Episode 36: Living Into The Parent You Are

The Fourth Trimester Podcast welcomes back Kimberly Ann Johnson to the show for an episode about identify and discovering the mother you are. Kimberly shares her thoughts with us on the show and in her article below.

Ideals vs Reality

Part of what’s difficult about becoming a mother is deciding the mother we want to be.

Sometimes the mother we are and the mother we imagined we would be are different.

Kimberly Ann Johnson
Kimberly Ann Johnson

As a single mother, I have had to confront my ideals and reality. My daughter has played with plastic toys, eaten sugar before she turned one, and been babysat by a device. None of these things were my first choice. However I have had to get real with myself about what is possible for us, about what works.

Also for every personality strength I have, there is a corresponding downside. I am a flexible person. You want sushi, I want pizza. Ok, I can do pizza. On the shadow-side, my daughter got the mistaken idea that her preferences are king. Imagine how mortified I was when in the company of four adults who all wanted Italian, she insisted (and won) on going to sushi. I don’t like routine- that makes me fun and spontaneous. Not so great for twice daily tooth-brushing.

Self-Acceptance

Like every mom, I can be very hard on myself. I wish that I could be giving her both sides of the coin. I wish that I could be equally as flexible and assertive. I wish that I could embody the perfect proportion of masculine and feminine- knowing just which direction to go at any given moment. Oh yeah, but then life!

One of my biggest practices in motherhood has been acceptance. Accepting the uniqueness of who I am that comes with limitations. (You can’t be strongly opinionated and a peacemaker at the same time).

Explore what being a parent means to you

Becoming a mother has been filled with reflections on what my upbringing offered me in terms of images of motherhood. I find a lot of opposites. Sexuality and motherhood. Pleasure and motherhood. Fulfillment and Motherhood. These are some of the tensions that I am living to resolve right now.

What parts of you are dormant right now?

What would you like to become part of your experience of motherhood that seems foreign or mysterious?

These explorations are part of our visioning of the new age, how we shape our communities and what we leave as a legacy for our daughters.

Selected links

Connect with Kimberly Johnson kimberlyannjohnson.com | YouTube | Facebook

Kimberly’s books The Fourth Trimester (Catchy title!) | Call of The Wild

Other resources mentioned Women’s Power to Heal Through Inner Medicine | Women Who Run With the Wolves | Mother Daughter Wisdom | Maternity, coming face to face with our own shadow | The Red Tent | Becoming the Parent You Want to Be 

Learn more Post-Birth Libido, Birth Injury & How Past Trauma Affects BirthFour Relationship-Saving Questions To Ask Before Baby Arrives

Connect with Fourth Trimester Facebook | InstagramAbout & Contact

Episode Transcript

Download transcript (as pdf)

Sarah Trott: [00:00:05] Hello. Welcome back to the Fourth Trimester podcast. This is Sarah Trott and I’m here with my co-host Esther Gallagher, and our guest Kimberly Johnson, who are welcoming back for the second time. Thank you for being back on our show, Kimberly. 

Kimberly Johnson: [00:00:59]  Thanks for having me.

Sarah Trott: [00:01:00] Yeah, you’re welcome. As a quick reminder, anyone can go to fourthtrimesterpodcast.com to sign up for our newsletter or indeed go to https://kimberlyannjohnson.com/ to sign up for Kimberly’s newsletter, which I encourage everyone to do because it’s super cool. Yeah.

Kimberly Johnson: [00:01:18] Thanks.

Sarah Trott: [00:01:20] Yeah. So you can subscribe and get access to a pelvic floor tour video that she does, which I listened to recently and it was phenomenal. I will be listening again. 

Kimberly Johnson: [00:01:31] Yeah, Thank you for that. It’s kind of like a pelvic floor walkabout with some differentiation so that people really know how to do Kegels since everybody thinks they should be doing Kegels all the time. Like what exactly it is.

Sarah Trott: [00:01:45] That’s handy. There are different kinds. It sort of blew my mind, so it’s really cool.

Sarah Trott: [00:01:51] So on our last episode with you, we touched on a number of topics: pelvic floor health, sexuality, postpartum, even some body image stuff. So anyone who hasn’t listened to that episode, please do listen. But for this episode we thought we could talk a little bit about identity as a mother. So why don’t you talk to us a little bit about that?

Kimberly Johnson: [00:02:18] Well, you know, before I ever Became a mother, I had my own relationship with my mother. And I think that everyone could agree that between our let’s say, most people would agree that between all the choices of combinations of father, daughter, father, son, mother, son, mother, daughter, in a way, the most complex of those is mother daughter. And it’s how, you know, it’s the continuation of the lineage through birthing.

Kimberly Johnson: [00:02:48] So like most people, my relationship with my mother was multifaceted. It wasn’t just one way. And I’d say it was complex, complex. It was complicated. And as such, it was even a challenge for me to decide if I wanted my own mom to be at my birth, which for me was a big decision because I lived in another country and my mom traveled to the country. I was in Brazil so that she could be with me. And she came at 40 weeks and I went to 43 weeks and my midwife didn’t speak very good English and my daughter’s father didn’t speak English. So there’s a lot of dynamics in choosing that.

Kimberly Johnson: [00:03:29] And what I noticed in becoming a mother was just how my relationship with my mother changed and influenced the kind of mother that I wanted to be.

Kimberly Johnson: [00:03:41] And the chapter in my book that’s on this is called Discovering the Mother that You Are. So we have all of these influences about what is a mother, what and then we have these influences of what is a good mother. And then we have the choice about recognizing who we are as a person, who we are as a woman and who we are as a mother. 

So a very basic example is like my mom is a very traditional kind of mom, like she is a Betty Crocker mom. Now she’s an interior designer. But when I was growing up, she was the mom who made chocolate chip cookies when I came home from school. She loved Hand-sewing Halloween costumes, who’s really good at cleaning, like doesn’t even think about it and cleans while she’s talking.

Sarah Trott & Esther Gallagher: [00:04:32] I love that. I mean, just just the way you describe it. I love that. Yeah. Yeah.

Kimberly Johnson: [00:04:37] So she has these very traditional characteristics of what a good mother is. And I thought, okay, you know, I just didn’t really get it that being a mom is also like being a general manager. And I have terrible production and management organization skills. And then when I became a mom, I was like, wow, Like, there’s a whole lot more that goes into this. 

And these are not my strengths. Like housekeeping actually isn’t a strength of mine. And when I realized that, it’s like, okay, so then what do I think about myself because of that? Like, am I a failure as a mom because I’m not that mom?

Kimberly Johnson: [00:05:19] And, you know, this conversation is so deep and so complex. But I think the main idea is that as we become mothers and I only have one child, so I haven’t done that multiple times, but I know that we awaken to ourselves as a mother in a different way each time. 

Our archetypal reference points are kind of limited in Western culture about what a mother is and because we are living in an individualistic culture. And we don’t have a lot of you know what a sociologist would call an extended kinship network. We hold ourselves to a very high degree of perfectionism on motherhood because we’re not distributing that task. So I love Clarissa Pinkola Estes says that even if you have the best mother, like even if you won the, you know, the mother jackpot. You still need Todas las madres.

Kimberly Johnson: [00:06:25] You still need all the mothers. So that really what that means to me is like each of us is only one facet of the gem. And even in and of that, I mean, we’re all such multifaceted beings. But like for me personally, like what I do well as a mother is I’m very emotionally attuned. I’m sensitive, creative and I’m playful.

Kimberly Johnson: [00:06:52] And some of those things I certainly got from my mom. The things I’m not good at are routine, doing the same thing at the same time every day. Sometimes I’m not good at being emotionally consistent. Sometimes I’m unsure about the boundaries of what’s appropriate for that relationship and what’s not appropriate for that relationship. And so if I surround myself with other women, then my daughter gets to experience and my Mom and my Grandmother, she gets to experience, Oh, this is that version of womanhood. 

Like, oh, grandma is really fancy and she loves getting dressed up and wearing high heels and spending lots of time in front of the mirror. That’s like, wow, that’s really that’s like an Aphrodite version of femininity. And then, oh, wow, my mom’s, like, really fierce and really opinionated and strong and I think that when we can see it in this way, that really we are meant to have a team, a tribe, a community of people that are raising children. It takes some of the pressure off of us to be the perfect mother, to be the mother that is all of those things, which is impossible.

Esther Gallagher: [00:08:11] I like the way you’re saying it. I would reinforce being the mother, I think. We’re the birth mother. Perhaps, you know, maybe we’re not. Right. But I also think the one of the mirrors on what you’re saying is that it also invites other people to come in closer and be whatever it is they are in relationship to a kid. Right. I think so much of what you can experience as a mom and I think in particular perhaps as a single mother sometimes is, hh, I’m supposed to do all this and everyone else is not. Right. Thank goodness for the people who are willing to come in close and. Spend time and be who they are. Around my daughter because that’s nice for her and that’s nice for me.  It’s a resource.

Kimberly Johnson: [00:09:20] Yeah. And we learn about interdependence that way and we learn about giving and receiving. And certainly that was a huge part of my identity that shifted as well, was really the kind of friend that I could be. I used to be a friend. That was the glue, the friend that reached out, the friend that was always there, the friend that would buy the plane ticket to make the visit. And then I had a baby on my own and it was like, I can’t be that friend anymore. And what does that mean and what does that mean? 

My community and I think also, you know. This idea that we’re I mean, I feel like I’m sure I’m sure you both are in these conversations a lot, too. But, I mean, we’re just constantly combating this image of the superwoman, this image of like, you know, that we can do it all, have it all, be it all. And if we’re not, you know, and you’re in my office three weeks postpartum and you don’t understand why you’re feeling tired and then, oh, you’re in my office ten weeks postpartum and you don’t understand why you’re not further along. And everyone’s feeling this pressure to be to be farther healed, to be more put together, to be, you know, the best partner, the best mom.

Sarah Trott & Esther Gallagher: [00:10:34] And to need nothing.

Kimberly Johnson: [00:10:38] And we don’t even know how to receive it or how to ask for it. So I think that that’s one of the huge gifts of this period of time really softening into our vulnerability. That’s it’s not that’s crazy. Thing is, it’s not even necessarily a personal vulnerability. I mean, it’s a time of life vulnerability, but nevertheless, it’s a big opportunity to mature into realizing, you know what? It’s just not true. Like, I really actually can’t do this all myself. And if I do, it’s taking a huge toll on my health, a huge toll on my relationship, a huge toll on my physical health. 

So that brings me to one thing that I wanted to make sure that I mentioned, which I learned before I had a child, which was from reading Mother Maya’s book, Women’s Power to Heal Through Inner Medicine and Reading Christiane Northrup’s book, Mother Daughter Wisdom. Both of them are very clear that in treating women for all kinds of reproductive and, let’s say, women’s health issues, that at the headwaters of that is the mother daughter relationship. And because the postpartum dialogue is so stilted towards postpartum depression. I think it’s really, really worth it to mention that when we become mothers, our relationship to our mothers and our relationship to our mother lineage is awakened in us. 

And so we will all of a sudden have an ability to see our mother from a mother point of view. And then we will relive our mother from a daughter’s point of view. So if people have had mothers in very complicated, sometimes abusive relationships or they were not mirrored well as infants, that that is possibly being awakened in their psyche, not only possibly probably and can contribute to those feelings of lack of connection, of a difficulty and attachment, that can feel very confusing because no one ever told me that. No one ever said. 

And I feel like I was mothered very well in my early months. But nobody ever said to me, you know, as your child grows, you’re going to relive those stages that your infant and your and your toddler are at as they go through that. I sort of had to figure that out myself. And it was very complex. When your children are in pre-verbal stages that are activating your own pre-verbal attachment stuff.

Kimberly Johnson: [00:13:12] So I think that it’s really worth it to look at our relationships with our mothers and our culture, this American culture that North American, whatever United States culture that we live in. We give ourselves a lot of permission to be very hard on our mothers, like we give ourselves a lot of permission. It’s okay here to, like, move far away from your parents and then just separate from them. 

And it’s so complex most of the time, you know. As advocates for women getting care in the fourth trimester, we’re often trying to get them to have an extended family network, you know, to rally the troops, so to speak. Like who do you have in your life that will come and stay with you and take care of you and help you. And oftentimes that’s family. And it’s so conflicting for most women to invite Mothers, fathers, mothers in law’s, fathers in law. And most people will say, well, I just want it to be me and my husband and or me and my partner.

Kimberly Johnson: [00:14:12] And then it’s like as an educator, it’s like, well, I get that. And let me just tell you, like, your partner’s going to need support, too. And you need more support than just two people.

Kimberly Johnson: [00:14:26] So who could that possibly be? And what we don’t do as much is realize, you know, what are the things that I do want to carry forth from my lineage. And I’d ask everybody even listening to just give that a thought. Make that a journaling entry for a morning. Like what are the parts of my mom that I actually want to repeat?

Kimberly Johnson: [00:14:54] What am I carrying forward in my parenting? And when we get really honest about that and we express that to our parents, the dynamic completely changed because instead of being petulant kids who are pissed off about what we didn’t get, all of a sudden we become grateful adults. And that changes the entire matrix.

Sarah Trott: [00:15:14] Because parents just feel like we’re not giving enough to our infants, parents feel responsible for all the weight, all the things and ways they feel like they didn’t do well with Us. And they don’t often give themselves permission to take responsibility for the things that we’ve done really well. And if they’ve parented well, we should be a higher evolution than they are. We should be carrying forth the best of the possible characteristics that they gave to us.

Kimberly Johnson: [00:15:39] And so identifying those positive things. And then not only that, but expressing them can be a really powerful way to create an atmosphere that you want your child to be in. So there’s less avoidance and eye rolling and division in family.

Esther Gallagher: [00:16:03] Well, I’m going to just insert a little plug at this point, because I think that in our culture in particular, and we’ve talked about this on the podcast in the early, early days of the podcast that so often I’m being recruited hired to be a postpartum doula because of the complex relationships people have with their parents and a sense of not being well connected to family members in terms of being nurtured and nourished. 

And so that’s a big discussion for us in the trajectory of this, this and the history of this podcast. And I think there’s a lot there in the early podcast for parents of parents to be or new parents or even potentially not so new parents in terms of. What is it? What? What do our kids need when they’re becoming parents?

Sarah Trott & Esther Gallagher: [00:17:21] And some parents might also not feel capable of giving that support. And they’re probably very grateful to pay someone else to hire the doula on behalf of their children. Yeah, in some cases. Basic human needs.

Kimberly Johnson: [00:17:32] I don’t think parents are replacements for postpartum doulas because it’s a completely, you know, I mean, a postpartum doula is somebody that a woman can count on and that’s going to come and have a completely you know, there’s not going to be all these potential triggers that there would be with a parent. 

Esther Gallagher: [00:17:52] Hopefully not. Yeah. But also vice versa, wouldn’t you say? Like, I don’t think that like I there’s no sense in which I can bring the wonderful richness that the complication of your relationship to your parents is going to bring you. There’s so much that you’re pointing to, Kimberly, in terms of all there potential to learn and grow as a human in the process of also being a parent that we can dive into in terms of our ancestral relationships, whatever those are.

Sarah Trott: [00:18:35] I’m hearing two strong themes, and I would love to hear your thoughts on what you think about this. But it seems as though there’s two things that have to happen. One, maybe a prerequisite for the other, and that is loving oneself enough to feel worthy and deserving of working on themselves and loving themselves enough to want to go on that journey of self discovery and then two, kind of knowing how how to go about that self discovery. Like if there’s someone listening who thinks this is a great idea, but where do I start? Like, where would they where would they find that information? First of all, how do they feel worthy? And then secondly, where do they start?

Kimberly Johnson: [00:19:24] The worthiness piece is one that’s really big on my mind because I feel so passionate about the work that I do and I feel like it’s just like the nexus of women’s health in a way that is has so much potential for women to heal and mature in so many different directions. And I get very frustrated because a lot of women contact me and they tell me these really intense stories, you know, like they’ll write it out and it will be even hard to read, you know, like these birth stories that are just, you know, it’s where they just prepared for one thing and another thing happened. 

And then there are four and a half months postpartum and they’ve gone to 12 visits with different doctors and everyone’s telling them everything’s fine, but they don’t feel fine and then they come in and I’m like, No, obviously this isn’t fine but when those people write me their stories and then I tell them what I charge and then they write back and say, Oh, I have to talk to my husband. 

And then I never hear back from them and it’s very frustrating to me how little women are willing to invest in themselves, because I know that if it was their baby, they would just they wouldn’t say, I’m going to ask my husband. They would be like, Oh, my baby needs this. And what’s happening is that so many women are not caring for themselves that their anxiety is getting displaced onto their baby. And so people are doing all these tongue tie cutting. And it’s like the incidence of that is like so I mean.

Sarah Trott: [00:21:01] Whereas 15 years ago, 1% of babies are tongue tied or lip tied, now it’s like 50% and, and it’s all because women aren’t being both being supported and valuing themselves enough to rally the support, pay for it, save for it, whatever it is. And people don’t know so they know to get childbirth education, they know to pay attention to the kind of birth that they want, but they don’t know, save up for postpartum and like put your resources there if you want to if you want to actually be stronger as a mother.

Kimberly Johnson: [00:21:38] And on the other side of these 40 days, 60 days, three months, then there needs to be a support system in place. And so, I mean, I can’t really say how for someone to value themselves enough. What I can say is that it will return to you exponentially. 

And rather than waiting, waiting until it’s so bad that you’re so deep in a pit that you don’t even know which direction to go, which is, you know, people just they wait. They wait until it’s like, I can’t possibly bear this anymore. I’m wetting my pants all the time or I can’t possibly bear this anymore because I won’t even look at my partner or I can’t possibly bear this because I want to have another kid. But I’m so terrified because of my last birth. It’s like, let’s have some long term thinking and value our health like what we’re contributing. 

I hate that analogy of putting your own mask on first. I think that’s bullshit. And especially as a single parent that is so not what parenting is. It’s just how many times I was like up in the middle of the night for hours and hours on end and there’s no such thing as, like, me getting self care first, right?

Esther Gallagher: [00:22:50] There’s no not getting up.

Kimberly Johnson: [00:22:52] Yeah, there’s not a choice. It’s not like, Oh yeah, I’m going to go for a walk around the block right now and lock my kid in the room. It’s just like, it’s what it takes is actually stamina and steadfastness and like, crazy amounts of, like, spiritual warriorship.

Kimberly Johnson: [00:23:06] But so, yeah, so valuing yourself. All I can do is speak to what I know to be true, which is if you do it preemptively, you save yourself a lot of. Time, space, heartache, perhaps even your relationship if you have one. Like that’s what’s on the line. Like, I kind of want to tell these women, like, we have your partner call me because I’m pretty sure that they want to have an intimate life for you with you. 

And I’m pretty sure that if you’re wetting your pants, like, nonstop or sex is painful or you just don’t feel like yourself, that’s not going to come online for a really long time. So I’m pretty sure that $150 or $200 or $400 is worth it. When we’re talking about your relationship over time.

Esther Gallagher: [00:23:48] Or think of I mean this may seem extreme to some people, but, you know, people don’t budget for getting cancer either. Right? But if they got it. They would pay, right, to try not to have cancer. Right. And what would their justification be? I have family members, you know, I don’t want to leave my family. I’m not ready. Okay. 

Well, here you are having a life, right? And nobody budgets for life. Yeah. You just get a life and then you live through it. And sadly, we live in a capitalist culture where this kind of stuff costs money. That is sad. I mean, I’m sure, Kimberly, you and I would give ourselves away if somebody paid her rent and made sure we had groceries. Right? Like we would do this work because we were born to do this work. 

Kimberly Johnson: [00:24:50] People also I’m sure it’s the same for you. I mean, we don’t get it. You don’t get into birth work because you’re just I was a yoga teacher before this. I just laugh at myself. It’s like I go from one poverty mentality, career to the next. But it doesn’t it if somebody wants to work with me, they figure it out because they bang on my door until they say, Can I give you a payment plan and pay you $30 a month for the next 12 months? Of course I’m going to say yes to that, of course. 

But that’s not what happens. People do have people drive up. I was doing a pay what you can day. People drive up in a BMW SUV to pay me a third of my rate. And I’m like, okay, this but this speaks to value and now I’m getting better about it for myself because I’m like, I’m in the mother martyr where like, you know, I’m a single parent and I’m doing all these things and I’m definitely not driving a BMW SUV. So how serious are we? And I really I’ve never heard this cancer analogy, but it’s true. I mean, if you got in a car accident and you totaled your car, you’d have to figure out a way to come up with the money.

Kimberly Johnson: [00:25:57] And Our health and our intactness is that important? And if people think, oh, it’s just a little leak here and there, so I’m going to get these fricking special underwear that will not get wet. Well, how do you think you’re going to be when you’re 60 or 70 or 80?

Kimberly Johnson: [00:26:17] Like, I mean, it’s just going to get worse. And people don’t realize until they come and attend to it. And I mean, whether that’s mental health, whether it’s a physical injury, whether it’s attending to your mother lineage, they don’t realize how many other areas, including how their ability to show up as a parent is like it’s not like, Oh, it’s just going on in your own mind. It’s happening because you’re in the mother baby matrix.

Esther Gallagher: [00:26:44] Yes, absolutely.

Kimberly Johnson: [00:26:46] I mean, if if the mother lineage part is the part that someone’s interested in, like there’s a chapter in my book which will be out in November, there’s I really do like the two books I mentioned earlier, which we can add to the show notes. Great. I love, love, love. Laura Gutmann’s book. It’s called Maternity. Coming Face to Face with Your Own Shadow. Is a beautiful book about this. And, you know, engaging it, engaging it and recognizing how what’s current, What about how you’re relating with your own mother or the mother inside you is really the mother that you want to be.

Kimberly Johnson: [00:27:32] And taking stock of those archetypes like we’ve got you know, we’ve got the Virgin Mother. Okay, So that’s a whole other piece of this conversation that would go into another time, which is like. What is a sexy mother look like?

Kimberly Johnson: [00:27:46] Yeah, like we’ve got the Virgin Mother, but what’s a sexy mother?What’s a seductive mother? Do you have any models of that?How does that resonate in you? Perhaps that’s affecting how you can engage with your partner if that feels incoherent? So there’s just so many ways that our identity shifts and we don’t really talk a lot about that in Western culture of like, transformation sounds really good. Everybody wants to transform, but it’s painful. There’s. Things that die and have to let go of our identity as we birth a new part of our identity.

Esther Gallagher: [00:28:22] Absolutely. Yeah. And when that’s happening, that grief and loss is real and a worthy engagement in and of itself. And I think so much of how we’re asked to be mothers is some sort of sterilized version from an emotional social standpoint. Right? Like we’re told. Oh, you have to always have a happy face on for your baby or your baby’s going to be depressed, right? 

Well, no, I think babies are made to read our affects, whatever they are. And that’s how they learn whether or not they’re safe and whether the environment is healthy or not. And yes, it’d be nice if we’re not depressed and not low affect 24 over seven and that might take work. It doesn’t take it doesn’t help to be shamed into it. It means we need to be invited to have a broader experience. Right. 

And not just one experience, including the sanitized. Mom’s always happy. Everything’s fucking great all the time version. So yeah, I. I love talking with you, Kimberly. You’re just so fiery about all of this, and. And Yeah, it’s all, it’s all so important and also deep in the mix. Yeah. Do you want to say a little bit more about the variations on the archetypal mother. That’s always fun to talk about.

Kimberly Johnson: [00:30:10] Yeah, well, you probably have a lot to say about it, too, but I just. An archetype is sort of what our culture projects out there as kind of extreme versions of certain qualities. And if we look to other cultures like Hinduism. It’s a culture and a religion. But you know, for Christianity and the version of Christianity that we have in the US and Catholicism that’s pervasive in South America where I was living. 

There’s just not that many options for the expression of womanhood and the expression of mother. I mean, I remember when I read The Red Tent by Anita Diamant, which is such a great book, it really gave this feeling of what it’s like to have so many different versions of womanhood. And, you know, some women are giving birth to babies and giving it to their sister and some, you know, acknowledging that sometimes you might have a stronger relationship with a nephew or another person around than you do with your own child. And we just don’t allow for those realities, you know, like that. You could have a kid that you don’t like, like that’s possible. 

You know, like I always tell my daughter, I feel so lucky because I actually really like her and that I feel like I would choose to be around her. But that’s not true for everyone. And and it doesn’t mean that we’ve done anything wrong. It’s just like these are souls and humans and we have some input and we have some not input. Some things are out of our control and some things are in our control. 

So I think the most important part again is this softening around the perfection of what it is to have to be at all, to be the perfect mom, whatever that is. And just to come back to the knowingness that we’re on this planet as mammals with other humans for a reason. And part of that is so that our children can experience a diverse characterization and a diverse feeling of what it’s like to be human in different bodies and different forms.

Esther Gallagher: [00:32:28] Yeah. And in different moments. Right. I was thinking about how we’re going to be interviewing someday very soon. Janis Keyser, who wrote Becoming the Parent You Want to Be and how she talks about at different ages and stages of development on the part of your child, but also of naturally, I think instinctively on your own part, like they’re just going to be developmental phases that parents either really relate to and enjoy or really relate to and don’t enjoy or don’t relate to at all in in the trajectory of their.

 Baby becoming a five year old eventually. And that’s kind of what’s true. You know, you’re not going to like every phase. You’re not going to know how to settle into every phase of your child’s development. But I would say because I’m old now, you know, like that’s true for myself. Like had I not had kids, you know, I’m looking back over 57 years and going, boy, some of that was really fricking awkward and difficult and some of it was really grief stricken and some of it was just pure joy. Easy peasy, happy, you know? 

And that’s, you know, simultaneously someone else that I was in a relationship was having their own trajectory. And we interfaced nicely at those times sometimes and didn’t at others. And that’s life. And that’s what you’re doing with your kids. Yes, if you’re a parent. So yeah. Kimberly, we’re going to wrap up now. This, of course, was just another excellent session. And I know that we could go on for about an hour and a half. I wish we could.

Kimberly Johnson: [00:34:31] Yeah, Thanks for having me back.

Esther Gallagher: [00:34:33] We’re happy to have you. So Yeah, that’s it. People who are listening to Kimberly and I and Sarah today won’t necessarily be listening on International Women’s Day, but it is International Women’s Day today. While we’re chatting and just want to acknowledge that, I like to think every day is Women’s Day.

Kimberly Johnson: [00:35:00] Yeah, me too I think it is in our lives.

Esther Gallagher: [00:35:03] Yes, of course. Yeah, absolutely right.

Kimberly Johnson: [00:35:06] I had to admit I did a little bit of an eye roll today because it’s like people are like, are you going to strike and not work? I’m like, no, because this is like what I do every single day.

Esther Gallagher: [00:35:19] Yeah, right. I mean, when you work on when you do your work on behalf of women, then every day is Women’s Day. And you don’t not work when women need your help, right? That’s right.

Esther Gallagher: [00:35:32] That’s the deal. So wonderful. Well, thank you. Great to chat with you again, Kimberly. And take care. And we’ll see everybody back on our next podcast.

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