Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - Confessions of a Recovering Helicopter Mom

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00:00:57.940 is made to help. Download it now. Hello, hello, hello. Jo here. You are listening to Under the

00:01:11.360 Influence. My guest today calls herself a recovering helicopter mom. And I love that. 0.97

00:01:19.900 I love it. I found Carrie Fund through a blog post on Motherly called The Secret to True

00:01:28.260 Supermom Status. Now, if that's not a clicky headline, I don't know what is. It was a deep

00:01:34.920 dive into how society keeps propagating this unattainable idea of the quote-unquote perfect

00:01:41.560 mom and how the more and more we see these images of a perfect mother, the more exhausted

00:01:49.720 and anxious we're going to feel. Today we're going to talk about so many things. We are going to talk

00:01:55.580 about Carrie's journey from being a helicopter mom. We're going to talk about how she got rid

00:02:01.320 of a lot of baggage from her own very toxic childhood. And we're going to talk about how

00:02:06.700 we can find space for ourselves within this journey of motherhood. We've also got a diversion

00:02:13.240 on the parents who facetune their kids and what it means to parent like an 80s parent. Booyah!

00:02:26.480 I am Carrie Bunt. I live in Miami. I am a mother of two and I consider myself a recovering

00:02:34.080 helicopter mom. My mission is really to inspire women to turn their pain to their potential

00:02:41.200 and I encourage women and mothers to be the women

00:02:44.620 that they were born to be

00:02:45.740 and perhaps the parent they never had.

00:02:48.420 My ultimate goal is to help women and mothers

00:02:51.200 increase their emotional intelligence,

00:02:53.860 create better human beings

00:02:55.180 and positively impact future generations.

00:02:58.740 But first, a lot of us like myself

00:03:01.580 have to reparent and heal.

00:03:04.920 That is a huge mission.

00:03:06.100 That is way more than my mission of sell books.

00:03:11.200 um, bravo. You are killing it. Your storytelling is quite beautiful and inspiring. And I hope

00:03:18.740 you're working on your next book because I need another one from you. I finished your book. It was

00:03:23.800 just such a great escape. So I think we all have a purpose and we all offer something. And yours

00:03:29.700 was true escapism and enjoyment. And like, I want to plan my next trip to Italy. Oh my gosh. Well,

00:03:34.980 yes, you should plan your next trip to Italy. I will help you plan that trip. And, and just thank

00:03:39.480 you. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that so, so much. I really, really do. So you called

00:03:45.200 yourself a recovering helicopter mom. What does that mean exactly? And so what were you? Tell me

00:03:53.500 what you were when you were a helicopter mom. Okay. So my upbringing was quite traumatic. I

00:04:00.360 had two toxic parents. One, I'm estranged from my mother. My father still in my life respects my

00:04:05.820 boundaries. But with a toxic upbringing comes a lot of things like trauma and anxiety, living in

00:04:16.040 fight or flight, constantly catastrophizing things. So when I became a mother, it really fueled

00:04:23.260 everything that I was sort of pushing deep down inside me from my upbringing and just pretending

00:04:28.620 that I was fine. So when I became a mom, I had promised myself that I would always be the parents

00:04:34.500 than I never had. And I would do whatever it took to do that. But I didn't realize that you can keep

00:04:39.860 pretending things don't exist inside of you by telling yourself you're fine and pushing them

00:04:44.400 you've done inside you. But trauma and pain, they hide in our bones and they will eventually

00:04:49.720 seep into everything and take our joy. And I started noticing my anxiety was being transferred

00:04:56.580 onto my kids. I mean, my daughter's nine now and my son is six. But I would say we were on a trip

00:05:02.240 when my kids were like one in four. And I overheard my daughter telling my husband,

00:05:06.780 oh, mommy will never get into the water. She'll be terrified that she'll be eaten by a shark and

00:05:10.960 die, or she's not going to let us do this. And I was like, oh my gosh, she's only four. And she

00:05:15.860 already has me in this box, which I put myself in and which I didn't realize I was sharing and

00:05:22.200 transferring onto them. So like I choked back tears, put on my mom pants, and I literally

00:05:28.340 walked out to the edge of that boat and I jumped off thinking, God, please let me be around to

00:05:32.980 raise my kid, not get eaten by a shark or whatever is in this water. And I did it. And I saw her

00:05:39.980 response. And that moment that I got back into the boat, I thought I'm no longer going to live

00:05:46.320 through anxiety because I promised myself I would never allow my past to parent my children.

00:05:50.540 And here I was allowing certain aspects of it, too.

00:05:55.480 So I learned to just trust and let go of it and give them the space and freedom that they need and that I do as well.

00:06:04.780 So take me back a little bit further.

00:06:08.440 What can you what can you tell me about your own toxic upbringing?

00:06:12.140 What was that like?

00:06:13.080 um my upbringing was pretty much um i was a guest in a show watching my parents lives just unfold

00:06:24.660 things that probably children shouldn't see or hear or be involved in and i always like to say

00:06:29.980 you know the adults are the adults and the kids are the kids so adults give and kids take that's

00:06:35.380 just the way it flow and um and you should never ask a child to carry like your heavy adult suitcase

00:06:43.600 and all of your baggage so I think you know I never really had space for my own feelings growing

00:06:49.400 up um everything was really about my parents and their battles and you know my father battled

00:06:55.580 alcoholism and my mother was just a constant victim of life um which she did deal with a lot

00:07:01.140 of hard things. And I have compassion for that completely. I've learned compassion through my

00:07:05.380 healing. But at the end of the day, I think now as a mother, I know what it's like to be a mother.

00:07:10.800 And looking back, I see that no matter what our circumstances or life experiences are,

00:07:17.060 as a mom, I think we always have a choice. And that choice for me was to heal and be a better

00:07:22.580 parent. And I realized that she's always had that choice as well. She just didn't make it.

00:07:27.500 Um, so I think a lot of the times I just didn't have space or my emotions. I didn't really have

00:07:33.760 parents parenting. I felt, I think I was being a parent. Um, and I think I just was robbed of

00:07:41.800 like what a childhood should have. Yeah, no, I mean, I feel the same way in, in a lot of respects.

00:07:48.580 I mean, both of my parents were alcoholics and then recovering alcoholics when I was growing up

00:07:54.040 And I was an only child.

00:07:55.820 So I do feel like I was parenting them a lot.

00:07:59.420 You know, there was there was constant fighting in my house.

00:08:02.160 They were screaming at each other all the time.

00:08:03.980 And just like you said, I didn't really think that much about what a parent should do at all until I became one.

00:08:12.480 And then I'm like, oh, my God.

00:08:16.300 It's like you saw behind the curtain and now you can't unsee anything.

00:08:20.480 I can never unsee that.

00:08:22.720 I mean, my dad was a mess. He would stay out at the bar until like 10 o'clock at night. And my mom put up with it. I mean, they would have these rip roaring fights when he got home. But I'm also like, get yourself out of that situation, lady.

00:08:38.620 Yeah, I would never tolerate that as a mother of children. And I mean, that's just a small one. So, you know, I had the same realization. I did all the therapy in my 20s and then didn't have kids until my late 30s. So I feel good parenting them. I do. I actually I feel pretty confident that I parent absolutely nothing like my parents. 0.61

00:09:03.040 um but i do think that old habits are hard to break so what was the moment that you realized

00:09:11.200 you wanted to focus on this uh as work as a passion and helping to heal other people

00:09:19.180 that that want to break the toxic cycle of parenting you know i i love this question because

00:09:25.420 someone asked me this for the first time after probably almost two years of doing this um i had

00:09:31.220 no idea. Like I was doing something completely different before this, living in New York,

00:09:36.800 working in the beauty industry, building brands. I had my own skincare line. I was like all over

00:09:41.420 the place in a very superficial world. That probably stood for my perfectionism and everything

00:09:46.940 I was doing from growing up. But, you know, I started I was talking to a friend one day who

00:09:53.440 was an amazing children's book author, and I was talking about writing this novel. And he was like,

00:09:58.120 what are you doing what are you hiding from like you need to write the book you were born to write

00:10:02.300 and what are you talking about and I was like damn I had way too many frosés in the Bahamas on that

00:10:07.680 spring break trip with the kids I must have started talking about something and he he was like he saw 0.89

00:10:12.860 behind my curtain and he was like you need to write this book you need to show people that you 0.97

00:10:16.980 can become the parent that you never had and you it can be a shit show but you know you can do it 0.95

00:10:21.680 So I started this writing process and then that led to starting a platform on Instagram 0.98

00:10:28.620 for healing and toxic parenting.

00:10:30.620 And I have to tell you, I've been healing in real time and it's simply by turning up

00:10:35.320 the volume on my voice.

00:10:36.640 I have learned that all of the things that I allowed, like my pain, I kept pushing down

00:10:41.800 and pushing down.

00:10:42.640 I allowed by speaking to turn up the volume on my voice and it has literally propelled

00:10:49.180 me forward.

00:10:49.840 like Joe in a way that I can't you know I feel sorry I want to go back and apologize to the

00:10:56.880 little girl and the teenager that like everything was going to be okay I just had to stop letting

00:11:02.780 shame keep me silent and this has just become such a passion for me because it's not only fueled my

00:11:08.200 healing but I have been allowed to connect to so many amazing people and this community that I

00:11:15.680 finally for the first time in my life can say that I'm leaning into women and I trust people

00:11:20.320 and I'm 46 years old so I don't know it feels good to feel good and I'm here and I just I just

00:11:27.320 keep moving forward without looking back you know I think it takes us a long time to grow up

00:11:33.320 yeah I really do um I don't think that we should have all the answers you know by a certain age by

00:11:40.840 20, by 30, by 40. You've written a lot that you felt like you had to be a quote-unquote perfect

00:11:46.720 mom, a trophy mom. What was that to you? I suffered from perfect mom syndrome. Everything

00:11:53.940 had to be perfect. And I think that stems from the fact that I was always trying to be perfect

00:11:58.360 as a child, just trying to receive love because I think I felt so unlovable. And I think my lack

00:12:04.360 of self-worth, I had such a lack of self-worth. I think that I just, that's the only way was to

00:12:09.940 to be perfect. So as a mom, it was doing everything. I was, you know, PTAs, room class

00:12:18.320 parents, the perfect birthday parties, the perfect lunches, the perfect pantry stacked with this,

00:12:23.460 the perfect vitamins. My kids were always, you know, the perfect family photo shoots, the well,

00:12:27.920 you know, perfectly itinerary summer trips and memories. Like everything was just done to a T.

00:12:35.280 Like I did not skip a beat until about two years ago.

00:12:39.100 I was like, wow, you know, I'm in burnout mode.

00:12:42.480 I don't feel great.

00:12:44.000 I'm pretty sure that I should be enjoying motherhood a little bit more than this.

00:12:48.720 And at the end of the day, I look at my kids and I think they're not going to sleep saying,

00:12:53.120 gosh, please, God, I want my mother to be perfect.

00:12:56.180 Any kid wishes that or prays for that. 0.66

00:12:58.520 I just want happy moms and present moms.

00:13:00.840 And so I started just like saying no slowly and slowly, like saying no to things and allowing

00:13:06.020 myself to have more time, realizing that I was just staying so busy in the chaos of

00:13:11.260 living.

00:13:11.680 So I guess maybe I wouldn't feel all the feelings that I didn't want to deal with.

00:13:15.940 But I gave myself some space and I learned to be more present and I'm having more joy.

00:13:22.360 And I realized that my kids don't even notice half the things I don't give me.

00:13:26.640 It was all for me.

00:13:28.000 I get to feel validation from everywhere else because I've always searched for external validation, but they have not noticed anything.

00:13:35.500 No, it's true. It's true. I think I think that kids just want us to be happy in our own lives and also present.

00:13:42.180 Happy and present. I mean, I was trying to think I have to go away for two nights this week for some book events in Virginia.

00:13:49.700 And of course, I was feeling the requisite mom guilt and shame. 0.78

00:13:52.820 And I was like, all right, what can I do to make the next two days fucking awesome? 0.86

00:13:57.120 I'm like, all right, let's make some popsicles.

00:13:59.640 Let's go to the playground.

00:14:00.880 Let's go rock climbing. 0.99

00:14:02.300 And then I'm like, I think they just want you to sit on the floor with them and play fucking dinos. 0.99

00:14:08.120 You also did an oath for yourself, a mom oath that you made. 0.98

00:14:14.580 We're going to take a quick break, and then I want to talk about that.

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00:15:14.380 Okay, so I'm very interested in your mom oath because doctors, lawyers, like professionals,

00:15:22.400 take an oath. And moms, we don't. I don't think that we should be required to have an oath

00:15:28.700 because that would be, you know, very creepy and patriarchal. But I like the idea of creating an

00:15:36.180 oath for ourselves about sitting down and saying, hey, how do I want to mother? And that's what you

00:15:43.260 did. What is your oath? You know what? I love that you said that about sitting down, first of all,

00:15:49.160 because as moms, you know, it's like we get pregnant, we do those things for the nine months,

00:15:53.420 we have these kids and we're so worried about, you know, being perfect and what needs to be done

00:15:57.680 next and follow. And we don't really ever like sit down and give ourselves like the time to like

00:16:04.420 be present and think about like, how do I want a mother? Um, so I actually was making coffee one

00:16:11.880 day standing in front of my refrigerator. My daughter was probably already five years old.

00:16:15.640 And I was just thinking about like how all these people that have these, you know, super important jobs in the world that are in charge of protecting people and taking care of people, whether it's the doctors or police officers or the government or whatever, you know, they have they have these oaths.

00:16:31.700 And it's not to put pressure on me.

00:16:34.300 It wasn't to, you know, create another layer of pressure, but it was just sort of like

00:16:39.080 keep me in check, not only as an oath to be the mom that I want to be, because I really

00:16:44.880 want to be the parent I never had.

00:16:47.560 And I really want to give my children the childhood that they deserve, but also keep

00:16:52.700 myself in check, like self-care, making myself a priority in my mothering.

00:16:58.000 Because to be the mom that I want to be and that my children deserve, self-care is crucial.

00:17:04.260 And I didn't have a lot of that in my mothering when I first started.

00:17:08.040 And that led to my burnout and my, you know, fight or flight, my chaos.

00:17:12.200 So the oath really is just to promise myself for my children to create this nurturing environment where they feel safe and they feel loved unconditionally.

00:17:24.020 And I need to do that with empathy and understanding.

00:17:29.060 And to be present, I have to not only, you know, repeat this sort of oath to myself with

00:17:36.100 my own children, but also make an oath to myself that I'm going to incorporate self-care

00:17:41.920 in my mothering so I can be present and happy.

00:17:45.160 Because at the end of the day, my parents, or not my parents, I'm sorry, my kids need

00:17:49.520 a happy mom.

00:17:50.420 They don't need a perfect mom.

00:17:51.500 So really, the oath is to make everyone happy and to live a happy life.

00:17:58.280 The oath is for everyone to have a happy life.

00:18:01.700 That is what we all deserve.

00:18:04.260 It just is.

00:18:04.980 Yeah, it is.

00:18:05.640 It's that simple.

00:18:06.720 It's that simple.

00:18:07.340 It's that simple.

00:18:08.000 Yes.

00:18:09.520 As someone that was recovering from toxic parenting, being parented in a toxic way,

00:18:17.540 what kinds of things do you personally find triggering on the social medias?

00:18:23.020 Well, one thing I find really triggering, because I swear my mom that's toxic, if Instagram existed

00:18:29.400 in the 70s and 80s, she would have been a major influencer in terms of perfectionism. And I think

00:18:35.020 that's where I got a lot of my perfectionism from and my struggles. I find the perfectionism,

00:18:42.100 the posting of this perfect mothering, how I got my body back, look at the lunches that I did,

00:18:49.400 look at our routine. The perfectionism, I think, is just not only toxic for women, but even the 1.00

00:18:56.520 women that are posting it. Because if we want children to live these compassionate, authentic

00:19:04.220 lives and to live wholeheartedly, connected, and when I say that, I mean just connected with their

00:19:09.220 mind, their body and their little spirits. We have to like embody those same things that we

00:19:13.760 want to teach our children. So if we are putting these fake scenarios and these personas out into

00:19:21.260 the real world, like I just don't know how that can't carry on into your own mothering and

00:19:26.200 parenting. So the perfectionism really bothers me. It also bothers me when I see these women

00:19:33.640 that are major content creators. And they're they sort of make jokes about like, oh, well, 1.00

00:19:41.020 motherhood is so tough, which it extremely is. But they'll say things like who has time in the

00:19:46.260 morning to be present or who has time to meditate five minutes while they're making their coffee.

00:19:51.100 And they sort of perpetuate this unhealthy lie that we already tell ourselves as moms that there's

00:19:56.600 just no time and people just need to accept it. And it is what it is. Well, I mean, I know how

00:20:02.000 long it takes to create a reel I've created thousands of them in the past year and a half

00:20:06.040 I know how long it takes to edit it and write the caption and post it even if I'm like superhero

00:20:10.600 about it maybe 25 30 minutes so I know how long it takes me to do all of that and I know how long

00:20:17.160 you know it takes anyone anywhere from 35 seconds to a minute and a half to watch it and like it

00:20:22.200 and to comment it and communicate so even getting caught up in the social media itself like the act

00:20:28.820 of it, the act of commenting and liking and watching, like there's time, like you just have

00:20:34.000 to make yourself a priority and your mothering a priority and your self-care priority. And maybe

00:20:39.500 it's not being on social media, watching the constant, um, you know, lies that we already

00:20:45.940 tell ourselves that we're just feeding them by watching everything that's being posted. So I

00:20:50.620 feel like, you know, there has to be a responsibility with content creators. Like,

00:20:54.760 you know if you're going to tell people and especially mothers that there's no time

00:20:58.800 maybe you should like put in a little warning except you know when i'm creating all of these

00:21:05.340 things i didn't make meditating or walking or breathing in silence or journaling a priority

00:21:12.800 i made creating this real the priority do you know what i mean yeah no and i think i think that's the

00:21:20.100 thing again no one no one talks about the labor or the time that goes into creating social media

00:21:25.220 posts but then they're like I'm so busy I don't have time for anything else but you're creating

00:21:28.940 social media posts and that's fine if you're making money from that but you know then say

00:21:34.740 say that that is the labor involved and I do think I hope that we're moving away from perfectionism

00:21:41.780 on social media and I don't think that's the case I mean I just saw an article yesterday about

00:21:48.860 facetuning your children, that so many mothers facetune their actual kids to make them look

00:21:56.520 different. And I'm not going to say to make them look perfect, but to make them look the way they 0.73

00:22:00.220 want them to look on their social media. And I kind of thought that was the last bastion of

00:22:06.340 things that we wouldn't screw with is our kids' faces. But that's not the case. That's not the

00:22:10.740 case. We just keep crossing new lines. We just keep crossing new lines. That's heartbreaking.

00:22:15.080 I mean, growing up, there was no social media for me, but I mean, I just know what it's like

00:22:21.940 to hear. I can still, as a child, like, you know, they say sticks and stones break your bones,

00:22:26.700 but, and words will never hurt you, but words linger. And I can still remember words that were

00:22:31.760 said to me that made me feel not good enough or not pretty enough or not fast enough or not skinny

00:22:37.580 enough. And it had terrible effects on my upbringing and led to really unhealthy things

00:22:44.020 mentally, emotionally for me, and even physically, such as eating disorders. So I can't imagine

00:22:49.420 in a world now of face tuning and putting your children's lives on social media that

00:22:57.020 if they were to ever see that, like to know that that's not what they look like, or maybe,

00:23:03.900 I don't know, maybe they got a Paris filter or something. But I mean, that just seems absolutely

00:23:10.020 detrimental to their spirit and their emotional and mental well-being like I would feel like the 0.58

00:23:15.960 biggest asshole if I try to make myself my my kids more perfect for an audience online like that's 0.75

00:23:26.260 already telling them and the world and myself that I don't think they're good enough like I don't 0.99

00:23:31.680 understand that I don't know I don't know if parents are just and people are just not like you

00:23:36.340 said, sitting down and realizing like what's happening here. They just are moving along with

00:23:43.300 the trends and just so busy that they're actually not sitting down and really seeing what's

00:23:50.460 happening. And that's like the scary part because we are shaping these human beings. We are creating

00:23:56.880 their emotional intelligence. Like, you know, no matter what you do in the world, whether you're

00:24:02.100 um, a mom or a doctor or a lawyer or a teacher or anything. We all have a responsibility and

00:24:11.020 we're all shaping like the next generation. Um, yeah, I, I don't know. I don't know if anyone's

00:24:16.560 no one is stopping and to actually think about what, you know, what their actions are doing and

00:24:21.300 what is going to lead to. Oh my God, that breaks my heart.

00:24:25.440 I know. I know it actually broke my heart like in two. Uh, and you know, I don't like to judge

00:24:30.220 other mothers but i'm just gonna say it if you facetune your kids i think you're probably an 1.00

00:24:34.280 asshole i just yeah i'm just gonna say it you're an asshole uh that's where i'm that's where i'm 1.00

00:24:39.940 at with that don't facetune your fucking kids okay it's gross and you know what your honesty 1.00

00:24:45.240 right now like listen sometimes people are always like oh what do your parents think about what 0.99

00:24:48.820 you're saying and things like that and it's like listen i my voice has been like turned down by

00:24:54.360 shame long enough throughout my life i'm 46 years old i turn up the volume on my voice not to hurt

00:24:59.260 anyone. But I imagine just like you did now, Joe, by just being blunt and honest. Imagine if someone

00:25:04.960 would have been blunt and honest back when I was a child. One person, maybe one person could have

00:25:09.720 inspired one of my parents to maybe do different, be better, do better by me. So I think blunt and

00:25:17.480 honesty is you're not hurting anyone's feelings. It's your opinion. But I mean, maybe it'll like

00:25:21.440 give someone a second to have like a reality check and maybe like self-reflect and want to do better.

00:25:27.260 so good for you all right we're going to take one more quick break and we'll be right back

00:25:33.120 i want to date with roars carty says roars raka asks this is the love story of real hinge couple

00:25:45.360 carty and rocker written and read by me nicola dinan listen to the free audiobook now

00:25:51.960 Before you knew what a stock was, you traded snacks, cards, turns.

00:26:00.080 You knew what something was worth because you felt it.

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00:26:06.180 It just grew up.

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00:26:28.520 And we're back.

00:26:30.400 I just want to put something out there.

00:26:33.020 If we could all be a little more honest in our social media, I think that would make mothering a lot easier for people.

00:26:42.220 And I know that people appreciate it when I show pictures of a messy bed, which I'm looking at right now.

00:26:48.620 I'm trying not to post as many pictures of my kids anymore because just really freaking out about pedophiles.

00:26:56.160 For some reason, the social media companies refuse to kick off the pedophiles.

00:27:03.900 Yeah, it's pretty crazy. 0.98

00:27:06.860 But if I did show more pictures of my kids, I would show them just, I mean, they're filthy.

00:27:11.280 They were, oh my gosh, we were in D.C. and Baltimore this weekend and they were so dirty.

00:27:17.840 And so happy. And I would love to show that. But again, I can't because of the pedophiles.

00:27:23.500 Yeah. What what kinds of things do you want to see more of on social media that will help us, you know, just feel comfortable with our normal, regular parenting?

00:27:36.520 um i honestly i think it's just sort of like i i would love to see people realize that they can

00:27:45.400 be happy and sad they can have joy and be completely fucking stressed out and falling

00:27:53.040 apart like real life is about juggling both and we can juggle both it doesn't have to be black or 0.72

00:28:00.320 white like life can be gray and you can be happy at for breakfast and you can be stressed out by

00:28:06.260 lunch and it's just real life it's it's none of the you know pain points or the misery like has 0.99

00:28:13.640 to define us it's really the courage to just pick ourselves back up take a fucking deep breath and

00:28:18.760 go on about our day and and move on and also like be sort of like the leader in our life and be the

00:28:26.500 role model that like our kids need so i i feel like i just prefer to have more real conversations

00:28:32.240 and real moments like just be authentic like show the black show the white show the gray like that's

00:28:39.800 what life is um the other thing i would like to really see less of is i honestly um you know i

00:28:45.520 know everyone's trying to sell something and the influencers with the labels and the perfect

00:28:49.520 skincare routines and all of these things but um it's just perpetuating this vicious cycle of like

00:28:55.880 glamour and fabulousness which just does not exist and i think at the end of the day

00:29:01.540 A lot of people who follow the major influencers that think they have to have like these labels or they have to have this post baby body or they have to have like this hair and these lashes and these nails.

00:29:14.220 Like, you know, I feel like at the end of the day, I want people to sort of look at someone and say, do you see happiness?

00:29:22.760 Do you see authenticity?

00:29:24.160 Because at the end of the day, you can go and buy a dead Christmas tree and you can buy a bunch of fancy, shiny decorations.

00:29:29.760 but you have a dead christmas tree so i wish people would just sort of maybe check in with

00:29:36.220 themselves when they're watching these things like yes shop buy the things people are selling

00:29:40.200 but like ask yourself like what are you truly seeing like is this person happy is this

00:29:45.320 mother mothering like you know what i mean like just check in a bit just check in a bit i mean

00:29:52.680 yes agreed i think just check in a bit i want to circle back to what we started with really quickly

00:29:58.700 because you do call yourself a recovering helicopter mom yes are you happier now that

00:30:07.160 you've gotten rid of the hover i am truly happy um i honestly i can breathe and being able to

00:30:17.740 breathe and not be in a constant fight or flight um allows me to be more present and that has been

00:30:25.540 able to give me the gift of being the mom that I have always dreamed of. When I say I want to be

00:30:31.740 like a super mom, it really just means I want to be a present mom. I don't need to be everywhere

00:30:38.020 doing everything, terrified that someone's going to kidnap my kids or they're going to die or

00:30:43.420 they're going to get hurt. That anxiety is going to manifest in my children. So I would say one of

00:30:50.200 the biggest gifts in my healing this past year and a half has been working on not only dissolving

00:30:55.600 my perfectionism, but also dissolving the, you know, retiring the helicopter. Giving my kids more

00:31:01.960 space has allowed me to have more space. It's allowed them to thrive in their independence

00:31:07.000 and also realize that, you know, I can practice self-care and love myself and it doesn't take away

00:31:14.280 the love for my kids so it has had a huge effect on not only my happiness mentally and emotionally

00:31:22.260 but also it's drastically affect the the livelihood of my kids i saw an article last night uh a woman

00:31:32.520 saying i'm opting for an 80s parenting summer i saw that you know and i i talk about this all the

00:31:39.100 time that I just wish we could revert to 80s parenting in some ways with kids running around

00:31:47.320 outside, you know, just drink from a garden hose. You're going to be fine. You know, that story got

00:31:55.460 a lot of nasty comments on Instagram, actually, from people saying, well, this isn't possible if

00:32:00.720 you worked. And that's a whole other can of worms. I think we are going into the summer season and

00:32:06.680 it's so hard with the lack of child care in this country for us to as moms to to see other moms

00:32:15.560 summering pictures and think I can't do that I have to work or I'm burnt out because I'm with 0.99

00:32:22.160 my kids all the time and for me the essence of 80s parenting is just to cut yourself a fucking

00:32:27.920 break our parents did not and again many many 80s parents were incredibly toxic so let's not 0.85

00:32:34.300 take everything from them. That said, there just wasn't the standard of you are everything to your

00:32:41.960 kids all the time. Yeah. And I think that's what we should take away from this. I 100% agree. I

00:32:49.980 think when we give our kids the time to, you know, my kids sometimes will be like, I'm bored. And

00:32:55.100 I'll hear my husband say, only boring people are bored. Oh, my God. I say that all the time. I mean,

00:32:59.900 he constantly says that. And I'm just like, and he's a huge 80s kid. And I'm like, you know what?

00:33:04.300 God, he's so freaking right.

00:33:05.740 Like, it's true.

00:33:06.780 Like if you if we constantly just like as adults, if we constantly keep ourselves or

00:33:11.160 keep ourselves so busy, keep our kids so busy, how the hell do they have any time to truly

00:33:16.580 like think about who they are or what they want to be or what they like to do, like to

00:33:22.860 get lost, like sort of in time, you know, sometimes when we're doing nothing, we're

00:33:26.500 doing everything.

00:33:27.140 So I am a huge believer in that, like with, you know, becoming less of a helicopter mom

00:33:33.340 and a perfectionist, I will tell you two months ago, I canceled all of our summer vacation.

00:33:38.720 I canceled a lot of their camps and I put them in places that are going to be like working out

00:33:46.720 or swimming with friends. And I'm going to load up on a bunch of non-toxic popsicles and throw

00:33:52.500 them at my kids and tell them to go play with their swing set in their backyard or swim in

00:33:57.320 our pool because they are laying the hammock and let's you know tackle some classic novels or some

00:34:03.960 graphic novels whatever the hell you want to read this summer but it's gonna just be easy peasy and

00:34:09.780 I am going to give everyone time to just be and if they're bored well I think something will come

00:34:16.700 from that you know what I mean like you just got to give yourself permission it's like if everybody

00:34:21.340 just started giving themselves more permission you there'd be like no joneses there'd be less

00:34:26.420 joneses i should say to keep up with less joneses to keep up with yeah yeah that's my summer friends 0.99

00:34:34.240 i'm not i don't keep up with any joneses fuck the joneses they're probably face tuning their kids 0.98

00:34:38.840 they they are but you know what it's when the your kids come to you and be like well sally 0.99

00:34:42.960 and mary down the street it's like i don't care go eat a popsicle go eat a popsicle you know my

00:34:51.600 kids are probably eating the toxic popsicles i don't even know what they're not you know i'm

00:34:55.400 just saying that's wishful thinking yeah totally all right carrie i loved having you on tell

00:35:00.960 everyone where they can find you um you can find me and on instagram at carrie.fund and on my

00:35:06.720 website at carrie.fund thank you joe so much for having me and that is all we have for today

00:35:13.180 thank you so much for being here with us if you love this show leave us a review in all the review

00:35:18.980 places. Make sure to share it. Adore you guys. You're all the best. All the best. And also,

00:35:26.060 hey, as always, Sicilian Inheritance, still available, still available for parties, bar

00:35:34.000 mitzvahs, house warmings, divorce presents. I'm just saying, it's the book for every occasion.

00:35:42.240 Now go do something nice for yourself. You deserve it.

00:35:48.980 Thank you.

00:36:18.980 I don't think I can be your friend, Isabella said.

00:36:39.580 Rebecca's stomach flipped.

00:36:41.700 This is the love story of real hinge couple Isabella and Rebecca,

00:36:45.420 written and read by me, Temi Denton-Hurst.

00:36:47.200 Listen to the free audiobook now.

Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - May 30, 2024

Confessions of a Recovering Helicopter Mom

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