Episode 4 - Guilt

In this episode of the Women Doing Big Things podcast, Sarah Dusek and Mona de Vestel discuss the topic of guilt and the challenges that women face in balancing their personal and professional lives. They share their own experiences with guilt as working mothers and explore the underlying tension between pursuing big goals and being present for their children. They emphasize the importance of leaning into the discomfort of guilt and using it as a signpost to evaluate and adjust priorities. They also discuss the need for self-compassion and empathy as antidotes to shame and self-criticism.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to guilt
• 3:33 The Debilitating Nature of Guilt
• 5:26 What Can Guilt Teach Us?
• 12:29 The Battle of Making Choices
• 18:07 Lean in to the Emotion
• 22:49 The Antidote to Shame is Empathy
• 26:22 Do I Want a Different Life?
• 29:45 Conclusion

Transcript

0:00

Hi everyone. Welcome back to the Women Doing Big Things podcast. I'm Sarah Dusek, an entrepreneur, investor and founder. And I'm Mona de Vestel. I'm an author, a writing coach, and a ghost writer. And we're here to talk about some of the challenges that women face making big things happen. And so Mona and I have been having conversations for the last year that we thought would be good to open up to the world with this idea of talking about some of the challenges, some of the big issues that come up for women in particular. Yes, and today's topic is guilt, which is a big one. So big, in fact, that I've convinced myself that it doesn't pertain to me in any form whatsoever. We'll totally get into that Mona, because I think you were resisting, just like we were talking about last week, you're resisting the guilt. Yes, I think you're right there. So guilt, guilt is a fascinating topic. As you said, it's one of those ones we either are feeling constantly or we're not wanting to connect with at all. And I I genuinely think for working women, especially who have children, guilt is like this underlying thread that we are constantly tiptoeing around over and through and sometimes tangling ourselves up in a big mess and it's a very hard one to navigate. So I was thinking it'd be a good topic for us to have a conversation about. I definitely suffer from mother guilt. I am putting my hand up to that. And Mona, you don't think you've got any mother guilt, but tell us about that. No, I know I do. I like to believe that I don't. But recently, you know, I experienced it over the weekend when my 10 year old told me, it's the summer and we're not doing any fun things this summer. And to which I responded, wait, we did like 10 fun things already. And then I proceeded to spend two days thinking, he's right, he's right. We're not doing any fun things. I feel so guilty. And here we are. So apparently, it pertains to me as well. Tell me about, I'm fascinated when you know you do experience it and you do struggle with it from time to time. Tell me why you don't connect with it or what about it is that you want to like shut down? What is it about not even wanting to talk about mother guilt that like gets your heckles up? I think it's because it doesn't work with my persona of who I like to be as a mother, as a person, as a working woman, as an artist, an author. I'm like, I just live my life intentionally so why should I feel guilty about anything? It just doesn't compute with my self -perception, but the reality is it's almost impossible if you're going to be doing big things. and also be a mother, to not have those two things conflict and create this friction against one another. And guilt is a first response. It's kind of like you cut yourself, you bleed. You're mothering and doing big things. You're going to feel guilty at some point. So it's friction. Guilt, what we're saying really is a type of friction. It's this underlying juggling act of trying to do many things well and the friction between those things often appears as guilt. horrible emotions that likes to suck you down into the pit, isn't it? It's one of those ones that likes to kneecap you and take you down. And it's, now you can't do anything because you're paralyzed or overwhelmed by your own sense of, I'm not doing anything well enough. Exactly. And then for me, it goes into the, yeah, maybe I'm not as good of a mother as I'd like to be or as I think I am. And you go into that spiral of like, well, nothing happens from that space. You know, for me anyway, it's just a paralysis of you're not like constructively building a solution. You're just feeling it's like a pity party. you're stuck in your own "poor me" not such a great mom right now, poor me. I didn't publish eight books, blah, blah, blah. And there's a violin playing in the background and someone is sobbing, that's the soundtrack. It's just really silly. Well, it's also hard to bear though, right? It's a challenging emotion to bear with and to listen to. I mean, one of the things you have taught me over the last couple of years is that our emotions, our feelings are to be listened to and that they all have interesting information to tell us and they all have insights to show us if we can lean in. And, you know, part of the challenge for most of us is we want to lean out. We don't want to engage, like, you know, even you were saying, I want to resist this. I don't even want to look at this. I don't even want to have a conversation with guilt because that's not what I want. I don't want to be associated with, you know, I'm not a good mother or I'm not doing a good job or so I don't want to go there. but I think the interesting thing any emotion, particularly about this one is what does it have to show us? What does it have to communicate to us? What is it wanting to tell us? Because there really is a very real friction between doing big things, making big things happen in the world and being a mom and being a spouse and having relationships and friendships. And how do we hold all those things together? How do we use guilt to help us navigate? Which is a strange idea, I think, because guilt, helping you navigate doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense when you, when you first say that. But I, I have plenty of mother guilt. have two teenage boys and just this last week I was traveling for work. I was traveling to California for a week and I left my kids and husband behind. and I had a whole bunch of media interviews to do for a new travel company. So I was full on all week. I had myself fully scheduled, like trying to like maximize the time away and getting as much done as I possibly could. And it was so painful leaving my kids. And I had one child that was very, very distressed that I was going away for a week. And I'm getting on an airplane and I'm on the phone to him and he's sobbing. Ugh. not want me to go. He does not want me to leave. And I am wrecked, like absolutely wrecked. And I'm like, am I getting on this plane? I don't know if I'm getting on this plane. Should I get on this plane? And I'm having this internal dialogue and I'm trying to comfort him all at the same time and make good decisions. And the torment of navigating a child in pain or a child in distress. to him. horrific. It's, it's horrific. And, you know, on the one hand you say, well, how could you possibly think of leaving your child when your child's in distress? How could you even contemplate it? And it's like, I got on the plane and, and I said to him, do you need me to stay? And he said, well, we should have had that conversation this morning. And, and he said, it's okay. got on the plane and I'm having a moment now because now I'm on a plane. I'm traveling back from South Africa to the U S and I'm having a big moment because my child's having a full on meltdown and I am struggling with what's the right decision here. I'm kind of making this decision, but like, how am I supposed to have? managed this, how am I supposed to have thought about his pain, my pain, this whole thing and then I had this kind of like this light bulb moment that said don't want my life to be small but I don't want to cause pain and distress to my children either but it was like suddenly had this moment of like my child being in distress is not the end of the world. Like I know it sounds maybe this sounds very callous even saying this out loud but my job as a parent is not to protect my child from every form of pain and I was suddenly realizing well that's my instinct right my instinct is to protect them from everything have them experience no difficulties no hardships no pain no nothing. Mm -hmm. actually that's not my job. My job is to teach them how to navigate pain and distress and difficulty, not to teach them how to avoid it because we know it's not avoidable right. even if I managed it for their entire childhood which is unlikely, adult just pops around the corner and pain and suffering are coming at you right left and centre. Mm -hmm. And it was kind of like a light bulb moment. It was kind of like, he is going to experience pain. He is going to have hard times to navigate through. And your job is to teach him how to do that well and how to comfort yourself, how to find your sense of security and your wellbeing and how to navigate your own big feelings. And yes, we're going to have big feelings, but I don't need to play my life small. I don't need to put my life down. In fact, I do him a disservice and I do me a disservice if I do that. But it was like that tension, so intense with like, I should back off. I should quit. This is too much for me and my family. This is too hard. But it was like, if I do that, I've taken myself into the pit. I've... I've backed off from wanting to live the life that I want to live. And actually, you know, I was questioning, am I doing him harm? Am I physically doing him harm by like leaving him? And I'm like, no, I'm not. He has to learn how to navigate, to cope with his own distress when I'm not around and how to self -regulate himself. And he has another parent. I am not a single mom. And I know you are a single mom, Mona, and that creates... very different challenges but my kid has another parent has someone else to lean on but yeah it's it's a lot. How long did you stay in that place of guilt and that, you know, moment? I asked myself one really, really important one. I sat down in my seat on the plane and I asked myself, did I think my child was in danger by me being gone? Did I think his distress was physically endangering either that he would endanger himself or that I was putting him in a dangerous situation? And it took me about 10 seconds to say, no, I'm not. I'm not endangering him. he's not in danger, he's not in danger for himself even, he's just distressed that I am leaving him and he's feeling pain and loss but actually he has to navigate pain and loss I commend you that you were able to not wallow because the wallowing is what I think the debilitating aspect of this feeling. For me, I wallowed for a solid 24 hours where I just took in this feeling of like, he's right. You know, I should be doing more with him, you know, because what he's saying is I want more one -on -one time with you and doing things. And I'm sitting and I'm like, and then I'm like counting all the times, you know, in the last two weeks, have I, you know, what have I done? Calling my mother and telling her and she's like, well, yeah, you've done this and this. Remember you went there and you did this and you. And I was like, right, right. So I wallowed, really bought into that whole narrative of like, pretty bad mom right now, you know. sucks us right into, I'm not good enough, right? I am not doing a good enough job. I am not a good mother. And it sucks us blue, like down into this pit that says, I am not enough. So what, what do you think Mona was the cause of that guilt that you're wallowing and you're stuck in for longer than 24 hours? What was the cause of it? Do you think? I mean, I think for me, it's realizing that I can't be 100 % super mom and 100 % business owner, artist, writer. I can do 50 -50, I can do 60 -40, whatever it is, I have to make choices. And those choices are brutal. And for me, it's like a constant battle because... I need to write to feel whole. So it's not even about business and money and all of that. It's about like fundamental sense of self. Like I am this person. I'm not doing these things because I need to make money doing these things and we need money. No, I'm doing these things because that's who I am and I need to write and I am an artist. But I'm also a mother, right? And I want to be there for my children, I want to be present. And that requires a tough choice. Somebody somewhere is going to be put on the sideline for a minute. It's just inevitable. I mean, yes, everybody's needs are still being met. So just like you, your son was not in danger, my children are not endangered. However, that tough choice is really hard. And I don't know how to not have to face that question over and over. Like, what do I pick? You know? the massive question around guilt, I think. Have I got everything aligned the way I want it to be? And I think one of the big a-ha's for me that has happened over the last month with thinking about guilt is, can I allow the guilt to help me fine tune my alignment. Like, so if the pot is a hundred percent, it's like, how is the pot being dispersed? What, what, what's getting what percentage? And it's like, have I got that right? And in some ways, the guilt is a good sort of flag that says, do I need to make any tweaks? that's been the most revolutionary thing for me about guilt, I think. It's like, Can it be a signpost? Can it be an alarm that says, have I got my priorities the way I want them? Am I giving of myself in the ways that I'm a hundred percent happy with? Like, am I 90, 10, 60, 40, 70, 30, like 20, 20, 20, 20? I mean, like, cause it's never just like singular either, right? It's... When I was just rethinking it through my priorities just this last quarter, and the things that were coming up as the most important for me, it wasn't two things. It wasn't like kids and work. It wasn't that linear. It was like, well, this component of work and this component of work and this aspect and this relationship with this child and like my spouse. And that's like, it's multi -dimensional. If it was simple as like, one thing or the other, I think it would be easier. But it's never that. And so I think if we take a positive thing about when we feel these pangs of guilt, they just get to bring us to a question, which is, am I aligned in the way I want to be aligned? Do I want to tweak anything about all the things that I've got in the mix? Do I want to take anything out? Do I want to put anything in? Is the formula of the cake of my life rising or sinking? And is it baking a great cake? And that is such a helpful question for me. Rather than allowing it to take me into, I'm a terrible human being. I'm not doing anything well. Can I allow it to take me back to, do I want to tweak anything? Do I want to change anything in the mix? I love that about the opportunity to ask yourself what you want to tweak. However, for me, what follows immediately after that question, which is, yes, I want to tweak this, okay, is then I need to sit with the acceptance of the tension that is inevitable. Because of course I need to tweak, right? I'm going to tweak. Okay, my son is telling me he wants more one -on -one time with me. And I have three children, so, you know. one on one time with each of the three. Yeah, it's a lot, right? Plus, you know, my life and as an adult and then there is work and, you know, all that. So the tension, I have to what I don't know how to do very well is accept the tension. And the image that keeps popping in my brain the last week and it's helping me incredibly is. I lived in very snowy weather for 11 years of my life in Syracuse, New York, which was voted the snowiest place in the US. Not the coldest, but the snowiest. And I was a terrible driver for the first year there. And everybody told me, if your car gets out of control on the black ice, you must veer into the skid. You must turn into the skid. And you know, intellectually that makes sense, but of course the instinct is to turn away. I don't want to go that way. And that image keeps popping in my mind. The tension that I feel between those realms in my life is like this sheer chaos of black ice. And I must learn to veer into the skin, to turn into it. Because that slipping and sliding is inevitable. It's inevitable. It's icy out there. So for me to wish it away, it's not going to happen. For me to wish that I had 200 % to give, not going to happen. I have 100 % to give. And for me to believe that there's not going to be tension between those two five pockets of things, it's going to happen, right? So how can I accept it and turn into the skid? That's the challenge for me. Yeah, that same phrase has been on my mind this last week too, strangely, which has just been this like recurring little voice that says, lean in, like don't lean back, lean in to it rather than pull away from it. So I love that. I love that analogy that says steer into it, steer into the tension, hold the tension, sit with the tension because Nine times out of ten, when you lean in and you sit with something, it dissipates, right? It's when we pull away from it and we're afraid of it and we resist it, we push back from it. It's like it gets bigger and it gets worse. But when you lean in, you have a chance to listen to it, you have a chance to engage with it, you have a chance to just be with it and let it be. I mean, that's... That's the other big thing about that. Isn't it? Sometimes none of this is fixable. None of it is like you can make all the tweaks in your life and it doesn't necessarily mean, now you have, now you have it perfectly dialed because the likelihood is going to be making more tweaks, more tweaks, going back on the tweaks you made and making different tweaks. And, you know, it's this constant juggling act. So I love that. It's just being present with it and. leaning in. I love that. Yeah. And for me, it's accepting the chaos because that is, I mean, and that's, you know, a bigger topic, but you know, as a single mom of three kids, there's chaos. And I've spent so much time wishing that away. Like, no, no, no, no, no, there's no chaos. Everything's fine. I have it under control. Everything's fine. And it's, it's like, it's going to be loud. It's going to be messy. How do I want to show up? Right. How do I want to show up with this guilt? What do I want to do about it? Am I going to wallow for three days or for three minutes or 10 seconds for you? So I think that's the key. it was probably a bit longer than 10 seconds. I like the 10 seconds. That's my goal now. Yeah. There's an amazing quote that Brene Brown writes about, I can't remember which book of hers it's in, but it's, she says, the antidote to shame, which is effectively what guilt produces, right? It creates shame in us. The antidote to shame is empathy. And I love that connecting with the idea that we were just talking about with leaning in. It's like, how do we give ourselves something else? Like, how do we feed ourselves the antidote? and that's kindness and compassion and empathy for, yeah, what you're doing is, is really hard. It is really hard to juggle being a mom and trying to do big things. It's really challenging. It's, and so can we give ourselves a little bit of a, of breathing room of a hug that says it's not. It's not the end of the world that you're feeling this. And if I give myself kindness, I can give myself, you're doing the best that you can. You're trying to figure this out on a daily basis and you're doing a really great job of that. And sometimes it sucks and some days it's really hard, but actually you are leaning in consistently to holding this tension and navigating it on a daily basis. and somehow speaking kindness and compassion and validation, it's like taking a spoonful of sugar. I mean, it's like the medicine that helps shame dissipate. I love that empathy for oneself. You know, that is really good medicine. It's a challenge, however, to do that, I find, because, yeah. naturally want to berate yourself, right? You're feeling shame. You naturally want to heap more shame on yourself and tell yourself all the bad things about yourself. But if we can get into the habit of, of, of recognizing, I'm in shame, I'm in guilt. I need, I need something else. I have to go to the grocery cupboard and take a spoonful of something else to help, help appease. the distress of guilt, to help appease the shame of, I'm not enough. And that is taking a big, big dose of empathy. I just just for the first time what that phrase, I am enough means. You know how everybody talks, you know, like people have it tattooed and I'm always like, eh, of course you're enough. Why do you, why is this phrase so important? I just don't understand. I know, I just got it. Just literally, viscerally understood, like beyond the intellect of that phrase, like feeling that your hundred percent is enough. enough yeah and you're doing the best you can you're doing the best you can and some days it can feel like you're winning and other days it can feel like you're failing but you're still doing the best you can and every day is a new opportunity to tweak and change and juggle and and be kind because you're doing the best you can. Yeah, absolutely. I love that. I know for me, when I'm, when I'm at my deepest, darkest place with feeling like profound guilt, I still come back to the same question, which is, do I want a different life? Do I want a smaller life? Do I want a life where I'm trying to do less? Do I want a life that looks different than right now? And then that's a good question. That's a really great question, right? Because again, it's an opportunity to like, I can make change. It's like, what do I want? Like, what do I really want? And I mean, like you said, Mona, you're like, it's like, it's, it's so much more than about making a living, earning money. It's about being true to who we are. I genuinely believe that when we are being true to ourselves, when we are going after trying to be the best version of ourselves, give of our best selves, use our gifts, use our talents, expend ourselves in the way that we desire to, we are showing up in a way that says, I want a big life. I don't want to play small Yes, it's costly to live a big life, but I believe my best life and the best life for my kids is if I don't play small. I don't hold myself back. And that, but that's the question and I have to keep coming back to it. And that's what happened on that plane for me. It's like, do I want a small life? Do I think my, me living the life I want is actually physically really harming my child? And the question in that moment for me was, no, I don't want a small life and I don't think I'm physically harming my child. I think actually. I'm showing them what it looks like to lean into pain and distress. And we're doing it anyway. We're leaning in. We're feeling it. We're all feeling it, because I was feeling huge distress. But we're leaning in. And we're carrying on anyway. I love that. I love that question that you asked yourself. Do I want a smaller life? No. Do I want a different life? I asked myself that question during that wallowing. I was like, do I, what is this about? Do I want a different life? And the answer was no. This is the life that I've built consciously with intentionality. I want this life. Now, what am I going to do about it? Right? What can I tweak? And I love. I take and how do I hold the tension? How do I sit with the underlying tension and navigate it? Without going into denial or guilt or whatever it is, just like... from it and trying to pretend it isn't there. Yeah, because it is there and it is constantly needs looking at and questioning. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. This is great. it's not easy. It's really not easy. It's an ongoing issue. And if we do want to do big things, it will be an ongoing challenge for sure. Yep, I absolutely agree. Thanks so much for joining us, everyone. We would both love to hear in the comments, your struggles with this. I would love to know how you are navigating this, what solutions you have found for leaning in to this particular topic and what are the questions you ask yourself when you're feeling the guilt, when you're feeling the pain of struggle of trying to do big things. and have family life and relationships and kids and all the rest of it. So we would love to hear from you. Love to hear any little snippets of wisdom that you all have discovered. Bring them to the chat, bring them to this community and let's help each other navigate this path. join us next time, ladies. We look forward to seeing you again. Thanks so much. Bye. you, bye.