Podcast Episode 392: Burnt Out, Busted Myths, and the BS of ‘Supermom’ Culture Transcripts

Please note: Transcripts for the No Guilt Mom Podcast were created using AI. As a result, there may be some minor errors.

JoAnn Crohn (00:00)

Welcome to the No Guilt Mom podcast. I’m your host, JoAnn Crohn, joined here by the brilliant Brie Tucker.

Brie Tucker (00:07)

Hello, hello everybody. A brilliantly tech-st. Brilliantly text cursed.

JoAnn Crohn (00:12)

We were laughing before this episode because we were teachers, but the way that our recording platform decided to tell us is it just says, doesn’t say platforms having technical issues. No, it just says Brie Tucker’s having issues. ⁓

Brie Tucker (00:25)

And you’re like, my God, that fits my everyday life with her. I’m surprised that it didn’t say something like, Brie Tucker is unstable. ⁓ Stable kind of day. I just take my anti-anxiety meds and I am just all over the place.

JoAnn Crohn (00:45)

Well today, oh my gosh, I’m going to be laughing about that one.

Today, we are talking all about the myth of motherhood. And we have a fantastic guest for you today. It is Vanessa Bennett, LMFT. She’s a licensed depth psychotherapist, facilitator, podcaster, and author of It’s Not Me, It’s You. And her latest book, The Motherhood Myth. She brings her expertise to both the therapy room and the mic offering real unfiltered conversations around mental health, motherhood and relationships. Vanessa is also a mom to spirited five year old daughter. And we cannot wait

to talk with Vanessa. So let’s get on with the show.

Welcome to the podcast Vanessa and thank you for rolling with us for all the technical issues and of course Brie’s issues.

Vanessa Bennett (01:35)

Just Brie’s issues.

Brie Tucker (01:37)

People love me. It’s my quirky and unstableness.

JoAnn Crohn (01:42)

Yeah.

Vanessa, like we mentioned before we started the interview that you didn’t have this situation in your life happening when you wrote this book that we’re talking about today, but you moved your entire family to Costa Rica and it’s only been a week you’ve been there so far.

Vanessa Bennett (01:58)

Yeah, we just landed last Friday.

Brie Tucker (02:01)

my gosh.

JoAnn Crohn (02:02)

and tell us the circumstances revolving around all this.

Vanessa Bennett (02:05)

Yeah, I mean, it definitely wasn’t something we were thinking we would be doing. We were a part of the fires in Altadena in Los Angeles in January. And so we lost our home and our whole community, really. The Palisades fire was really bad and it’s not to compare. The fire in Altadena was actually twice as large. So about 10,000 structures lost about 75 or 80 % of the town. the schools, the…

community center, the parks, everything, grocery stores, all of it is gone. So we’ve all been displaced since January bouncing around and pretty early on, I guess after the grief settled, my husband said, what do you think about getting out of here? And at first it was like, let’s go to Santa Barbara or let’s go like somewhere within California. Yeah. And I had a real like, I don’t know if I’m ready for that. And then it was like, well, why don’t we just leave leave for a year when we don’t really know what’s going on. And we just said, why not? Let’s take a chance. Our little one’s going to be in kindergarten this year. So

She was young enough where it felt like it was something that would be easier to do, right? Yeah. We have friends who have older kids and it’s a lot more difficult for them obviously to uproot their lives. so we said to hell with it. Let’s move to Costa Rica. Let’s put her in kindergarten down here. She’ll be bilingual in no time.

JoAnn Crohn (03:18)

Exactly. Yeah.

Brie Tucker (03:20)

Yeah 5 year olds are incredibly resilient. So I mean, like if you have an opportunity to travel with a preschooler, they are just like so rolling with the punches typically.

Vanessa Bennett (03:30)

She really is. I thought she would have the hardest time actually, but she’s been like, whatever, I’m here for- many new- I’m like tarantulas, scorpions, you sure? She’s like, fine.

JoAnn Crohn (03:41)

Now she’s not gonna fear them, because they’re like every day in her life. That’s what I’m hoping with these things.

Vanessa Bennett (03:47)

Because I’m super arachnophobic and so I’m really hoping that she gets out of what I’ve kind of caused her. ⁓

JoAnn Crohn (03:55)

Oh,

I get it. I get it. I get it. I’m super scared of airplanes and like I have to sit on the opposite side of the plane from my kids so that I don’t infect them with my paranoia because it happens. It totally happens. So in your book, Vanessa, you write about all of these myths that we have about motherhood going into it, thinking that we’re natural nurturers, that it’ll all be easy and it’ll be instinctual. up, Back up, It is a pack of lies. I mean, I experienced this as well when I had my daughter who’s now 16. I just remember thinking, ⁓ my gosh, only 18 years and then I get my life back because it is so all consuming. What was your experience with motherhood like?

Vanessa Bennett (04:39)

Yeah.

God, yeah. know, first off, I actually never wanted children. So that was a big thing even in of itself is that I had to kind of reckon with, okay, I’m making this choice and I made it consciously. I did decide that I wanted to have a child. But, you know, I think also when we’re having them a little bit later in life, which a lot of us are doing now, you know, 35 plus, a lot of women come to me and it’s even harder because you’re that much longer in your routine and your life and your freedom and all of the things, right? My mom had me when she was, you know, 21. It’s different.

It’s like you’re still a baby yourself at that point. But when I first had her, I didn’t have that overwhelming, know, I’m crying with joy. I just can’t get enough. You know, I can’t stop smelling her. It wasn’t that. It was just, it was jarring, I think. I think my birth experience in and of itself was jarring, which led into the pre kind of parenting time, which again, very common, right? A lot of us don’t talk about it. And it just was hard.

Brie Tucker (05:38)

No one talks about that. No, I seriously I have met so many women that have had traumatic births. And I mean, I’m not trying to be, you know, dramatic to anybody listening, right? These traumatic births aren’t talked about. They’re, they’re like pushed off as like, well, she had a hard labor, or she had a hard birth. And then they don’t get into the Yeah, exactly. And there’s all this like displaced trauma that people are left alone to try to navigate. Because if you don’t even know it exists,

Sorry, I’m totally going on a soapbox here. I completely realized that. But my sister, one of my sisters had a traumatic birth and she was left trying to figure, because the doctors played it off. The nursing staff played it off. So then she’s trying to figure out after she had her kid, right? Why is this so jarring for me? Why am I struggling so much? Why can I not find anybody else that had an experience like this? And it’s like that quiet little secret that gets swept under the rug in the name of Procreation.

Vanessa Bennett (06:38)

And there’s statistics around this that show that when a woman has a birth that is considered traumatic, it impacts her ability to feel good about being a mother for up to the first like 10 years of her experience.

JoAnn Crohn (06:50)

That’s insane. Yeah. 10 years is insane.

Vanessa Bennett (06:53)

I know, I know. And so again, to your point, we don’t talk about it. And then we just kind of thrust these, you know, I’m sure you all remember this. It’s like, then they send you home and you’re like, what do I do now? Right? Like they’ve just given me this life that I’m supposed to take care of. And I’m like, ⁓ meanwhile, I’m also recovering, right? And in our culture in particular, we don’t get the support that is given in many other cultures around the world. So we don’t have you know, a community of sisters waiting for us when we get home. We don’t have the birthing centers that we stay at for weeks afterward where they make sure that you’re nourished and fed and spiritually cared for, right? It’s just like, you go, go home and figure it out, right?

Brie Tucker (07:30)

That sounds amazing. Unbelievable.

JoAnn Crohn (07:33)

like to reference TV shows and movies on here because I feel like seeing the paths of these fictional characters is so much easier to explain what like an actual experience is like. And this traumatic birth thing reminds me of Fleischmann is in trouble with Jesse Eisenberg and Claire Danes. Either of you see that?

Brie Tucker (07:48)

But I don’t think I’m as far I’m only like three episodes in it so this could be a spoiler, but a little bit

JoAnn Crohn (07:52)

Well, 

Spoiler alert, okay. But a good one. Claire Danes and Jesse Eisenberg’s characters were married, but they are experiencing marital problems. And throughout the course of the episodes, you start to see why. And one of them was a birth trauma on first. The doctors came in and broke her water against her will and forced the labor of the baby. And after that, she just felt powerless in the relationship. And she ended up leaving.

the kid with Jesse Eisenberg’s character and she was painted as like this horrible person all throughout the series to find out she had significant trauma.

Brie Tucker (08:29)

Okay, that helps, because I did not like her character in those first three episodes and I have no words, because I love Claire Danes. I love her. My so-called life, she’s my girl!

JoAnn Crohn (08:39)

No, significant trauma in it. So it’s interesting how trauma does affect us and our perception and how we figure out motherhood. Now, another thing you touch on, is that we as moms, and I see this mentality all the time, especially like in our balance members, where they feel like they have to do everything. Doing everything all the time.

Vanessa Bennett (09:00)

Hmm.

JoAnn Crohn (09:05)

What have you seen when moms try to do everything? What are some of the consequences of that?

Vanessa Bennett (09:10)

I mean, how much time do you have, It’s good topic. What are the consequences? Let’s go. This was the tipping point for me, right? Because I think that as somebody who, like a lot of us, we were all raised in this hustle culture, our worth is kind of inherently baked into our value, like what we can produce, right? And we live this way before becoming mothers, right? Before having children, before becoming partners as well. And so for so many of us,

Vanessa Bennett (09:39)

it’s carried over into motherhood. And we just keep existing and living as if we are not all functioning under these like systems of oppression that keep us stuck, right? That keep us exhausted, that keep us burnt out. And so myself as well as so many clients, so many mom clients that would come to me and they would talk about being irritable all the time. That’s a big one. Feeling like, to go back to what you were saying about not having control over their lives, right JoAnn? Like this feeling of it’s.

I have no control over my sleep, my life, what I do with my life, my schedule, any of it, right? So feeling powerless is a big one. I think feeling disconnected from your body is another huge one, which that in and of itself, again, is something that usually follows most of us pre-having a baby and then post, it kind of gets exacerbated. I think being disconnected from your partner is a big one. And so there’s so many of these ways that women will come to me and they’ll give me this list of like air quotes symptoms.

And when we like get down to it, so much of it is because we’ve got this coming out of our culture, again, this like hyper individualistic, hyper masculine, you know, productivity first and foremost, achievement first and foremost way of living. And it disconnects us from everything, basically from the neck down. We’re not connected to anything from the neck down and we’re not connected to anything larger than ourselves. We’re not connected to the earth. We’re not connected to community, right? It’s just brain, brain, brain, go, go, go, produce, produce, produce.

And for a lot of us, it doesn’t register until something either massive happens, right? Or like a traumatic birth incident, for example, or a divorce, right? Something like that. The loss of a loved one or loss of a job, something massive. Or a health issue arises, right? Or a lot of my clients come to me they’re just like, I’m unhappy and I don’t know why. No matter what I do, I just have this general feeling of malaise all the time, right? Which is very common.

JoAnn Crohn (11:36)

It’s common. Mine came in the Christmas breakdown where I was on the couch crying on Christmas day because I had brought everything, I’d done everything. Well, I have so many questions about that how we can get more connected to ourselves and the community. And we’re going to get into that right after this.

So first of all, before we get going any further, Vanessa, I meant to ask you this question at the beginning. It says you’re a deaf psychotherapist. What is a deaf psychotherapist?

Vanessa Bennett (12:03)

So depth psychology is an umbrella term for archetypal psychology, analytical psychology, and Jungian psychology. it’s based on the work of Carl Jung. And within the psychology community, it’s called the psychology of the soul. And so depth psychology is inherently more focused on that which cannot be named. So we really work with the unconscious, the language of the unconscious, is images, dreams, archetypes, symbolism, things like this.

we would say that language is really the language of the conscious, mind, and then symbols and images are the language of the unconscious. And so I’m really more interested in soul work than I am behavioral work.

JoAnn Crohn (12:44)

Interesting.

I have never heard of this branch of psychology before.

Vanessa Bennett (12:48)

how many people have not. Yeah!

JoAnn Crohn (12:51)

It’s like the universe is also kind of beating me over the head because I was just reading your bio about depth psychotherapists and then we just got pitched another book by a depth psychotherapist. I’m like, what is going on here? I’ve never like heard this term, it’s appearing everywhere. Maybe it’s something I need.

Vanessa Bennett (13:04)

It’s knocking on your door.

JoAnn Crohn (13:06)

So when you talk about soul work, what is that?

Vanessa Bennett (13:10)

So I look at it as like we’ve got ego work and we’ve got soul work. So a lot of the psychology that we know today is much more focused on the ego work. So it’s behavioral driven, know, a lot of like the CBTs, the cognitive behavioral therapy, right? It’s like thought stopping techniques. How do we function better? How do we minimize our anxiety? You all of these things that are very behaviorally oriented, those are important.

especially if we have low functioning, like somebody’s gonna come to me and if they can’t get themselves out of bed, I’m not gonna be able to go deep and do a lot of soul work with them, right? I have to start with the ego first. We’ve got to get like something to stand on. But if somebody has that place to stand on and they’re functioning, but they’ve got this feeling of, I’m just not happy. I’m just not satisfied. What’s my purpose in life? Why am I here? Right? The more like existential questions that all of us have.

That’s when we’re able to get in there and really go beneath the surface and we can start to do shadow work. We can start to look at ourselves and our relationships and look at how these relationships are mirroring back me to me, the platform to grow and evolve more, our kind of path of individuation, if you will.

JoAnn Crohn (14:14)

That is cool. That’s really cool. So like going back to women doing it all and feeling disconnected, what are a couple of signs that women kind of see in themselves to know that they’re disconnected?

Brie Tucker (14:28)

be like, yep, I got to start doing some work here.

Vanessa Bennett (14:31)

Yeah, and I mean, look, also to kind of just to preface that with this, depth psychology is also very interested in the collective. And so for me, when I’m working with a client, I’m looking at the macro, not just the micro as in the individual. And so, so often when a client will come in, right, it’s not just that one person that’s saying it. You’re seeing it in the collective. You’re seeing women as a whole talking about this. You’re seeing it generationally. You’re seeing it, you know, systemically. And so when things like women come to me and they say, I’m angry all the time. Like I’m like a ticking time bomb, right? I have no patience. I’m ready to snap all the time.

Brie Tucker (15:09)

Okay, I’m sorry, but I know that JoAnn does, but is it more of an issue recently? Like, is this a new condition that moms are experiencing collectively now? is it like the trauma birth we were talking about? It exists, but nobody talked about it before.

Vanessa Bennett (15:27)

think it’s a little bit of both. And here’s why. Here’s why I’ll bring the collective into it. Our mothers, our grandmothers, our great grandmothers, they had a lot in life that they did not choose and they had no way out of, right? For the most part, this kind of millennial gen X mom generation, it wasn’t until what, 1979 that women could have bank accounts without their husbands opening it for them. so, right. And so a lot of times, you know,

people will celebrate and I ruffle feathers when I say this, people celebrate like, my grandparents are celebrating their 50th or their 60th anniversary. And I’m like, cool, your grandparents hate each other. So to me, that’s nothing to celebrate.

Brie Tucker (16:07)

I’m sorry, that is so funny.

JoAnn Crohn (16:11)

She didn’t have a choice. ⁓

Brie Tucker (16:13)

It’s kind

of the truth. It is kind of the truth. Like we talked to our parents, we see this like relationship that happens with the boomer generation and earlier. And they are often like, yeah,

JoAnn Crohn (16:28)

They’re off an edge.

Vanessa Bennett (16:29)

Not at all, obviously, right? We’re generalizing. There’s gonna be those beautiful relationships, and of course I will celebrate those all day, but we have a culture that’s obsessed with longevity more than anything, right?

Brie Tucker (16:40)

Like check out this milestone we made it to. Let’s not talk about how we got here, but let’s look at this milestone.

Vanessa Bennett (16:45)

That’s right.

And so here’s what, right? When I say collectively, I think that our generation of women, so again, we’ll say ours, we’ll say elder millennial and genetics kind of lumped together. Our generation of women are really the first women who, and again, I’m going to ruffle feathers, but like, we don’t need you. IE, like if we’re here, it’s because we’re choosing to be here.

JoAnn Crohn (17:03)

Which is a big thing! ⁓

Vanessa Bennett (17:05)

Huge thing is different than we’ve ever had.

JoAnn Crohn (17:08)

Also, like, correct me if you haven’t seen this, Vanessa, but what I see is that even though we don’t need a partner, we’re choosing to be here, a lot of women are still stuck in that mindset that they have to stay.

Vanessa Bennett (17:20)

And that again is cultural, right? And so we were all suffering from this choose me wound, especially women, which basically says you are nothing if you’re not partnered. And so your number one priority in life needs to be chosen by a man, right? Nothing else matters. So long as you’re chosen, lock it down and make sure you stay chosen, right? My entire sense of identity and worth is wrapped up in being chosen and staying chosen. So there’s that component which patriarchy constructs, right? I mean, they wanna make sure patriarchal structures want to make sure that we are stuck in relationships that are not satisfying to us. They want to keep us in the grind because so long as we’re barely getting by, so long as we’re so overwhelmed, so stressed out, so miserable that we’re like day by day just phoning it in, we don’t get to ask the deeper questions. Who has space for the deeper questions?

JoAnn Crohn (18:09)

the energy to fight against like the injustices of the system. That’s like my whole goal in no guilt mom. want to release people from that guilt so that we can actually fight and make a difference 

Vanessa Bennett (18:19)

You and Me both, sister. Yeah. 

Brie Tucker (18:22)

I feel like for our age group, like you’re talking about, like moms who are in their like mid thirties and up, we 100 % do not want that social construct that our parents had and that our grandmothers had. We know we don’t, but we are fighting against a system that was built to support that. whenever we’re working on this and know, Vanessa, I know our listeners that have been on for a while know this, but like, I’m not sure.

I’ve been divorced for eight years from my first husband. And I think we both felt very stuck in that relationship. Like we couldn’t go anywhere because there were so many expectations for us to stay together. And we thought that it was going to be better. But I feel like we’re running up a sand hill, we’re up a sand dune. And every time it just gets harder and harder, the further up we get, the closer we get to that end goal of being happy and having a life that is fulfilled without the need for relationship that we’re dependent upon somebody else.

JoAnn Crohn (19:22)

or a relationship that we define ourselves by, such as being a mom.

Vanessa Bennett (19:27)

Yeah, we’re a wife.

Brie Tucker (19:28)

or a spouse, yep.

JoAnn Crohn (19:30)

Brie knows how I feel about this. I have brought it up at girls nights. I have stopped conversations of women mid-sentence because all anyone could talk about is their kids. nobody. Why are we even adults if we don’t have our own satisfying lives? Like at teenagers, we were all looking forward to being adults because we could do what we want and we could do all these things. And now we’re here and it’s like our whole lives are around our kids.

Vanessa Bennett (19:40)

You were gonna say that. Yeah, I know.

But here’s the thing, JoAnn, again, this is structured on purpose, right? And so, yeah, we’re not set up to know what does bring me a sense of aliveness. What does light my soul on fire? When do we have the space and opportunity to explore that when we’re just trying to put food on the table, right? mean, and trying to be chosen, right? And so a lot of us, especially women, we don’t ever get the opportunity to sit with ourselves and be with ourselves and really discover who we are.

outside of those constructs of relationships, right? And so I agree with you. I’m all that whole idea of like women only talking about being moms. And also I feel a lot of compassion and empathy because so many of these women, they don’t have anything else to talk about. And it’s not because lack of intelligence. It’s just that we’re not given the opportunity to know who we are. And I see this relationally all the time. know, people come to me and kind of my mission is like in life is really around codependency recovery. And it’s all wrapped up in this conversation.

JoAnn Crohn (20:55)

YES! YES!

Vanessa Bennett (20:56)

Right? It’s all wrapped up. so women will come to me and, you know, not just women, actually, I men too, we’re all in this codependent society and people will say, I’ll say, know, it’s like expressing your needs, expressing your wants, expressing your desires. And so many people will say, yeah, that’s great, but I don’t even know what the hell my needs are. Right? It’s like, we have to start there. We were raised.

by not only a generation of parents, but also a system that made sure that we did not get quiet and understand who we were and what we needed and what we wanted. And again, what brought us a sense of aliveness because the less we know ourselves, the more easily controlled we are.

JoAnn Crohn (21:32)

Ooh, right. And I want to get into that because like you mentioned in your book how relationships, they’re not built on codependency, of course, but really knowing yourself as an individual and coming to like the relationship as an individual. And let’s get more into that right after this. So before the break, Vanessa, we were talking about how moms tend to not talk about anything, but their kids, because they haven’t been given a choice by society to think about anything else. And I think about.

Brie Tucker (21:59)

Right? Like, sorry, I wanted to throw into that, like, because we’re told a good mom devotes her life to her kids.

JoAnn Crohn (22:06)

Yeah, but let’s also think about like all of the support and structures that were taken away from moms. Like we mentioned at the beginning of the episode how when moms give birth, they don’t come home to the supportive gathering of sisters or community or friends. They’re left to do it all on their own. And then when we look at what’s happening in the U.S. right now with the taking away of Medicaid for mothers and taking away of all of those social supports, you’re basically like making day to day life harder for women. And so.

The byproduct of that is us being unable to do anything else but focus on our family just for the sake of survival.

Vanessa Bennett (22:41)

That’s right. I heard somebody say recently, so I have a whole chapter in my book that I call The Loss of the Village. I go, a lot of this book too, I’m kind of an information nerd, a history nerd. And so I do a lot of anthropological research too. And I talk about the timeline, like how did we get here, right? Leading up to the creation of the nuclear family to isolate and control us, right?

JoAnn Crohn (23:01)

Okay,

I want to hear this because I love these things too.

Vanessa Bennett (23:03)

us men and women, right? So I talk about that. just recently heard somebody say something which I thought was so profound and they said, patriarchy and capitalism took away the village and now it sells it back to those who can afford it. So those who can afford it can buy back help with their children. They can buy back help with cooking. They can buy back help with cleaning, right? When we lived in a community, we used to all be able to help and support each other doing that without having to pay for it, right? And I was like,

Damn, that’s right. They sell it back to us. I just thought that was such like an eye opener.

Brie Tucker (23:36)

It’s such an ingrained thought process. Like this is going to be such a weird example, but I immediately was like, light bulb. I have a neighbor. I live in a townhouse community. So we’re all really close to each other, like location wise, but I have a neighbor whose husband needed to take a job out of state. So she’s home alone with her eight month old and her five year old. Yeah, I know. Right. And she had to go to a doctor’s appointment. I’m like, call me anytime you need it. I came over, watched the kids for her for like what?

45 minutes, maybe an hour while she went to the doctor. She came back and she’s like trying to pay me. And I’m like, I’m a neighbor. That’s right. I’m a neighbor. I was here. I could do this. This is what people do for each other. And I think that is such a thing.

Vanessa Bennett (24:17)

It is.

And what you’re doing, Brie, like when people say like, well, give me something tangible. Like, how do we actually work that, that right there? When you say, give me something tangible, it’s that. It’s all of us getting out of our own bubbles and looking around and saying, how can I support the people around me? Right. And it’s not for money. It’s just for the fact that I see you and I want to do this for you. And most likely,

that person’s gonna do exactly the same for you. One of the hardest parts about losing my community and the fire was that we had really started establishing this. We had that street that a lot of us think about from the 80s where all the doors were open and the kids were running back and forth. you know, mom on this house would watch kids while I had a work thing and vice versa. And so to lose that, it was so jarring because now I’m alone with my partner and my kid again, this nuclear family, right, isolated.

JoAnn Crohn (25:05)

It’s interesting though, because I’ve had these conversations with my husband and he was raised in a family which was very individualistic. You didn’t bother people with your own suffering. You just stayed quiet and everybody took care of themselves. So they rarely asked each other for help. So talking about this whole collective neighborhood and community, he brings up the point that a lot of people don’t feel like they want to be in the situation to owe someone else.

Brie Tucker (25:30)

Right

JoAnn Crohn (25:31)

And that becomes such a hard thing and such a barrier.

Vanessa Bennett (25:35)

It’s a mindset. But also again, if I feel like I’m being a burden or if I feel like I’m being too much, I’m not going to ask for help and I’m going to keep myself in these systems. it’s like the thread always goes back to it was all created on purpose. I know I sound like a broken record.

JoAnn Crohn (25:55)

You’re totally right, because a lot of women will not ask for help, because we feel if we are struggling, we’re the only ones and we will be a burden to somebody else.

Brie Tucker (26:05)

That’s it. It’s the burden part, right? Because we get told that asking for help is a weakness.

Vanessa Bennett (26:11)

That’s why I say that this idea of like superwoman or supermom, I have a title, like a section that says supermom is not a compliment or superwoman is not a compliment. find it to be so offensive because I think it’s actually a label that’s used that keeps women in exactly what we’re talking about, which is if I can’t do it all and I can’t do it all well, then I’m failing as a mom, as a partner, as a person, right? And it’s bullshit. You’re not.

James Hillman has this quote and I’m horrible with quotes. I always butcher them, but we’ll just pretend this is the exact quote where he says something like, depression is actually your soul’s way of saying I will no longer participate in the mania. And essentially what he talks about is it’s like, we are all responding normally to abnormal systems, right? And so when I look at things that are like psychology based that are, ego psychology, right? Again, we need to be able to function and.

What are we trying to do? We’re trying to get people to function once so can go back to work and keep participating in these messed up structures, right? That’s not helping. And so I also talk in the book a lot about this idea of like decolonizing therapy. So much of therapy is just also keeping these systems going, right? Let’s just put a pill in your mouth. Let’s just get you back to work, right? Like keep producing. How is that helping us actually move forward, right?

JoAnn Crohn (27:31)

so interesting because I often think that too, like the whole depression debate and it’s coming up a lot now. I’m seeing articles in the media that there are like women’s organizations that are telling women to ditch the Prozac and just eat more protein. And I’m like, well, that’s harmful. But because it’s like

JoAnn Crohn (27:50)

It’s not so much, like you said, therapy and medications, they’re not wrong, but there is something broken in our society that we need those in the first place. And it is not any wrongdoing on our part that we need them, but rather it’s the culture that we’re in. And so I find it so interesting with the whole debate against medication. I always bring it back to how moms in the seventies had like mother’s little helper, which was Valium.

Vanessa Bennett (28:08)

That’s right.

JoAnn Crohn (28:21)

And I’m like, how much easier would afternoons be with a little bit of valium? I mean, I’m saying.

Brie Tucker (28:27)

Can I be a confession here? Every once in a while I’m a little bit jealous that I never got to try out Mom’s Little Helper.

JoAnn Crohn (28:32)

Yeah

Vanessa Bennett (28:34)

We think about it, right? Because I talk about moms who will help her in the book, actually. I talk about, like, why? Why did that become a thing? You have this generation of housewives in the 50s, right, that were mostly miserable. Let’s be real. They had no access to anything that lit them up. They couldn’t work outside the home. They didn’t have their own money. They didn’t have their own support systems, right? They were just producing children. That was the only thing they were expected of, right? That and Mary.

and they needed to actually dope themselves up to get through the day. ⁓

JoAnn Crohn (29:05)

Well, it’s like we kind of did the same thing in our generation with mommy wine culture. I mean, it was always like pour out a glass of wine. Yeah.

Vanessa Bennett (29:14)

judgment, right? Like, if you got to get through the day, you got to get through the day. mean, I take a gummy now and then, right? Like, I’m not here to judge. But also, again, it’s like, we’ve got to start questioning the why instead of just participating in it. We got to ask why this is like when you were saying, JoAnn, about all the moms that just talk about their kids. I feel the same way about when I get in a group of women who all the women are just doing nothing but bashing their husbands.

JoAnn Crohn (29:36)

to. I get that.

Vanessa Bennett (29:38)

I don’t like that anymore because again, I mean, listen, I know I’m a therapist, so I’m probably an annoying friend to have because I’ll do that thing where I’m like, am.

I can’t participate in this. Like, I won’t participate in you upholding the narrative that you are a victim to your choices. It’s disempowering. It’s disempowering.

Brie Tucker (30:01)

And honestly, how many times are we, when you are in a group that a lot of people are complaining about their spouse, I feel like 90 % of the time it’s about how our spouse acts like another child.

JoAnn Crohn (30:12)

I’m like,

why are you married to him?

Brie Tucker (30:15)

back to the point of like, yeah, right? Like you’re a good mom. You’re a good wife. If you dedicate all of your time, energy and effort into having successful children. And on top of that, if your husband isn’t successful, it’s because you were or you’re not even your husband, your spouse, either way, if they are not successful, it’s because of a fault within you that you weren’t the most

Brie Tucker (30:45)

supportive person that you could be.

Vanessa Bennett (30:48)

I think I that a lot. That narrative a lot. it’s, it all, falls. No, I agree. I think a lot of women kind of hold that. think society does that. I think, you know, there’s a part in the book where I call, I basically say like, our self-righteousness is essentially the door prize that we were given under patriarchy. And so, so long as we comply and we go along with what we’re supposed to go along with, we’re owed the self-righteousness. Now, when I say this, hear me.

in my compassion when I say it’s hard. And I’m not saying it’s not hard. And I’m not saying there’s not relationships that are abusive and very unbalanced and that, you all of these things. And also we we still have choice, right? We still have agency. have a lot more agency now than we did again, a generation ago, right? And so long as we’re kind of holding onto white knuckling that righteousness, what we’re not able to see is our partner. And this is the codependency part, right? And this is the part that

people get really upset with me about when I talk about, you know, I’ve been told that I, I victim blame and all of these things. And I’m like, listen, at the end of the day, I just feel like there are always two people in a situation and there is always something that you can own always, always. And so that’s great. We can keep saying, he’s an idiot. He doesn’t know where this is. What a moron. I don’t trust him. I don’t this, I don’t that. And so long as we continue to do that, we don’t have to look at ourselves.

We don’t have to look at how we continue to maintain these systems. We prop these systems up. We participate in these systems, right? By not having to make really difficult choices. Again, I’m not saying it’s easy, but we are participating in them and then we’re just being righteous about it, right? And it’s like, well, but how is that helping dismantle the system?

JoAnn Crohn (32:33)

like it doesn’t help. It doesn’t help. There are like two. I totally agree with you. mean, Bri knows how fiery I get about this one. But also why give up your lack of control in the situation just by complaining when there is something tangible that you could do to move the situation in a new way, whether it is confronting a conflict that you have with your spouse.

whether it is confronting something that you yourself may be doing and you can change and actually get a new scenario that you are much happier in. I mean, I’m thinking of Eve Rotsky in her book, Fair Play, about how she was describing relationships and how when a man and woman first got married, the woman was so fun and did things all the time and it was really spontaneous. I’m thinking actually about if you watch the four seasons on Netflix, the Tina Fey, Steve Carell one, Steve Carell married his wife because she was so fun.

JoAnn Crohn (33:24)

And then she’s been supporting him her entire life, been supporting his career, making sure like their daughter’s taken care of. And what does he do? He leaves her for a younger woman to say like, he only has one life and he wants to have fun in this life. And it’s something that E. Rossi talks about in her book Fair Play because so many women gives up those parts of themselves to support their husbands.

Vanessa Bennett (33:50)

Can I ask too, you know we were talking about how do you see this like culturally like this annoyance or this anger or this frustration or whatever that seems to be kind of bubbling. There is a part of me that wonders if we are at an age too, right? Where most of us are kind of entering into perimenopause, menopause, like that phase of life where you actually do have less fucks to give. Yeah.

JoAnn Crohn (34:12)

It’s real nice

Vanessa Bennett (34:18)

There’s the shitty part to it too.

Vanessa Bennett (34:22)

stuff where you’re like, you know what, I’m done. I don’t want to do this anymore. don’t want, and you start to see things. I don’t want to participate in this anymore. I see now how I’m upholding this, right? I mean, so many women that come to me are in this age range and they’re like, what do I do different? How do I do different? And a lot of times it’s the kids. I know for me, there was something about having a daughter that lit a fire under my ass where I woke up during one of these moments with my partner where I was like, no, no, no, no.

we’re not doing this because here’s what I’m not doing. I’m not teaching my daughter to self abandon in the name of being chosen. Yeah. Yeah. I’m not doing that. And I have actually just recently, like not that long before we moved to Costa Rica, we had a pretty big blow up. And I remember saying to him, I’m 41. I’m not going back.

Like I got like the scary voice out and I was like, my friend, I don’t think you understand.

JoAnn Crohn (35:18)

Good for you. Yeah, there’s something about having kids and not wanting to show the kids that version that does really light a fire. you have so much great stuff in your book, Vanessa. Tell us about the motherhood myth.

Vanessa Bennett (35:32)

God, I mean, where do I begin? It ended up turning into such a massive project. But one I am really proud of, you know, I think that I say a lot. It’s not a parenting book, right? This is by no means me saying I’m a parenting expert. really is more about, of course, it’s written and geared towards women and towards mothers, but it’s really more about all of us coming together and questioning these systems and questioning the ways that we participate in these systems. Right. And so it’s not about victimhood.

all about radical accountability, regardless of kind of what gender you are, what place you are in your family dynamic, none of that really matters, right? Like what is your personal responsibility? And so I break the book into three parts. I’ve got motherhood, I have sex, and I have relationships. And so I really talk about the myths that we inherit, we inherit rather as women around motherhood should be beautiful and lovely and natural. Sex and relationships should be beautiful and lovely and natural.

Right? And then just relationships in general, like us relating to our friends, to our children, to our families, right? Should be, again, like inherently easy and we shouldn’t have conflict. And so I really break down the myths that we inherited, where they came from, how we got here, because I think that’s really important for us to understand. It makes us feel not so alone when we’re like, ⁓ this isn’t a me thing. This is a systemic thing. This is trauma that’s been passed out generations, right? Like I talk about like the witch wound and so many of us that carry epigenetic trauma from the witch trials, right? 

JoAnn Crohn (37:03)

That’s crazy, but I hear that like I’ve heard of the witch wound before and I’m like, ⁓ it’s in our genes

Brie Tucker (37:10)

I think hearing that it’s not just you. You’re not broken. ⁓ You’re finally hearing the quiet stuff that people don’t say out loud. It’s almost like a warm fuzzy blanket of comfort of like, thank God.

Vanessa Bennett (37:23)

I think so. mean, maybe not everybody thinks so. like, when I say there’s accountability part, people are like, and I’m like, I don’t know, I kind of love personal accountability. I kind of love when somebody says to me like, you’re not a victim. What’s your part in this? I mean, it’s a little oof. But at the same time, I’m like, all right, I can work with this. 

JoAnn Crohn (37:40)

I don’t have to be a victim. I have choice in things I could do here. That’s right. So you have some more control. Well, Vanessa, thank you so much for joining us. This has been utterly enjoyable. I love it when we get fiery and feisty on the show. And this is such a fiery and feisty interview. So thank you. Thank you.

Vanessa Bennett (37:55)

I could be fiery and feisty all day. I appreciate you ladies having me on. We could have gone in 20 different directions and I’m glad we went where we went.

Brie Tucker (38:03)

This is fantastic.

JoAnn Crohn (38:04)

So we’ll talk to you soon.

Vanessa Bennett (38:05)

Thank you

JoAnn Crohn (38:09)

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