"Knowing What I Know Now, I Wouldn't Become a Parent" with Holly Murphy

My guest today, Holly Murphy, is accomplished in their profession, a devoted parent in love with their kids, a vibrant personality, AND they’re open about how if they knew what they knew NOW back THEN, they would not become a parent. 

You might not agree with Holly, but I know they’re not the only one.  If there’s one thing we are on Failing Motherhood- it’s honest - and that’s why stories like Holly’s have a place here. 

There is nothing more serious than making the commitment to become a parent.  Do you truly know what you’re signing up for?  Can you?

IN THIS EPISODE, WE COVERED...

• Holly's two different paths into parenthood
• Why we believe parenting is so much harder than teaching (as teachers) 
• Ways to find yourself outside the parent role

DON'T MISS-

• What to do when parenting isn't what you thought it would be

I believe in you + I'm cheering you on.
Come say hi!  I'm @parent_wholeheartedly on Insta.
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Transcript

Holly Murphy  0:00  
I can sit here on this podcast and tell you right now, but if I could go back in time, I wouldn't be a parent. And some of those things are hard to say, because I'm not going to ascribe to the thinking that, like, if I wasn't a parent, my children wouldn't exist. Like I could go down that rabbit hole and spiral a bit, but if I'm just thinking at isolation, in a vacuum about myself solely, I would not do it. But even though I can't go back and change anything, this is a tenant to life in general. You can't go back and change anything. What I can do now is try to find a balance between who I am as a person and make space for all the feelings - and none of that changes the fact that I desperately love my children, and I can feel burdened by them quite frequently, actually, and yet still love them immensely.

Danielle Bettmann  0:56  
Ever feel like you suck at this job? Motherhood, I mean. Have too much anxiety and not enough patience? Too much yelling, not enough play? There's no manual, no village, no guarantees. The stakes are high. We want so badly to get it right, but this is survival mode. We're just trying to make it to bedtime. So if you're full of mom guilt, your temper scares you, you feel like you're screwing everything up, and you're afraid to admit any of those things out loud - this podcast is for you. This is Failing Motherhood. I'm Danielle Bettmann, and each week we'll chat with a mom ready to be real, sharing her insecurities, her fears, her failures and her wins. We do not have it all figured out. That's not the goal. The goal is to remind you, you are the mom your kids need. They need what you have. You are good enough, and you're not alone. I hope you pop in earbuds, somehow sneak away and get ready to hear some hope from the trenches. You belong here, friend, we're so glad you're here.

Danielle Bettmann  2:10  
Hey, it's Danielle. My guest today, Holly Murphy is accomplished in their profession, a devoted parent in love with their kids, a vibrant personality with many facets and layers to them, and they are open about how if they knew what they knew now, back then, they would choose not to become a parent - and I encourage you to hear them out. You might not agree with Holly, but I know they are not the only one. If there's one thing we are on Failing Motherhood, it's honest, and that's why stories like Holly's have a place here. There's nothing more serious than making the commitment to become a parent. We discuss whether or not making the decision to become one involves informed consent. Do you truly know what you're signing up for and can you? in this conversation, Holly shares their two completely different journeys into parenthood with their two kids, what to do when parenting isn't what you thought it would be, why parenting is so different and so much harder than teaching and that you can find yourself outside of parenthood and prioritize the person you are outside of the parent role as well. There was so much to cover. We could have talked forever. Here is my conversation with Holly.

Danielle Bettmann  3:42  
Welcome to Failing Motherhood. My name is Danielle Bettmann. On today's episode, I am joined by Holly Murphy. Thank you so much for being here, Holly.

Holly Murphy  3:50  
Thank you for having me.

Danielle Bettmann  3:52  
Of course, so real quick, just give us you know the rundown. Who are you? Who's in your family?

Holly Murphy  3:58  
Okay, I have two young sons. They are six and eight, so thankfully, we're out of the diaper stage and on to the they want to sign up for everything stage and do all of the sports and activities and somehow find a way to pack my schedule. So I spend a lot of time with my two children, and then outside of my family. I also work in education, so I am a Curriculum Administrator for a public high school here in my city, as well as a Doctoral student about halfway through my program focusing on positive behavior intervention supports and secondary urban settings. I adjunct as well for the Masters of Education classes at a university here in the city too, and have some pretty significant professional pursuits, which might find its way into our conversation as well, as we balance the you know, the personal/professional goals, as well as the caretaking of my children.

Danielle Bettmann  5:03  
Yeah, yeah, you're a multifaceted person. We are here for it. I love that. We are definitely going to dive into to all those sectors and how they overlap and interact. And this will be fun conversation. I'm excited. So before we dive into kind of all the backstory, the prerequisite that I like to ask as kind of a disclaimer for all the guests that I bring on Failing Motherhood, is to kind of take everybody off the pedestal and then bring in some reality that you don't have your whole life together and have it all figured out. So have you ever felt like you were failing parenting at all?

Holly Murphy  5:37  
Every day, I felt that while I was even pregnant before the babies even arrived.

Danielle Bettmann  5:45  
Okay, you are one of us.

Holly Murphy  5:47  
Yes, Yes, I am very much.

Danielle Bettmann  5:49  
So back up and just give us a quick recap. Who were you prior to becoming a parent?

Holly Murphy  5:55  
Yes, okay, so this is actually pretty integral, I think, into understanding my relationship with parenting now, because I would say that who I was before I was a parent and who I am after becoming a parent are pretty different in comparison, if not like borderline opposites. When I was younger, I had a lot of socialization that supported me in becoming like a wife and a mother, and grew up wanting a big family - was doing the teaching thing before I was even able to drive a car, teaching like summer camps and Sunday schools and all the things and working in the daycare. And I really believed that having a large family was something that was really important to me. When I look back now, I recognize that there were, like, some commitments to codependency that I had not fully understood as an adult.  And my conception of what being a parent would be like, and the relationship between a parent and a child was very rose-colored glasses. I think that you know, maybe some people who don't have those types of relationships with their own parents believe maybe that they can recreate something that fulfills that need by having their own children. This is not my professional opinion. It's just my personal opinion as I look back and and think about what I had hoped to get out of parenting when I initiated, like becoming a parent, and in some ways, I was still growing. I didn't have the opportunity really ever in my life to live independently on my own until I was in my 30s, and that was really when I started knowing and understanding myself better as an individual entity. So at the time, I was thinking about becoming a parent and then through an emergency placement for foster care from a family member, an extended family member of mine that I'm not close with, it became clear that a child who is now my oldest, needed a home, or was going to have to go into like, a group home situation or foster care situation with another person that he was not related to. And so I became a parent, actually, without fully having time to process, like what that means and making that choice. And I think maybe that is, like, probably the foundation of parenting right there. It's like, I'm just going to take my own little needs and I'm going to put them over to the side, and I'm going to make the decision that is best for this child, and wholeheartedly, like the decision was best for this child. So at 18 months, I was able to add my oldest to my home, and I navigated that pretty well. There's still a little bit of, like, some disconnect between what I thought it was going to be like and what it was. Especially just like, a lot of work constantly, and I did not have an understanding of yet, like, the language to describe what, like, autonomy and agency I would just be, like, kind of giving up. Like I want to go to the bathroom, I want to take a nap like I don't want to go to the grocery store right now. Like, oh, I'll just eat Ramen. Like any decision I could make for myself was now through the lens of making that decision with someone else's needs as a priority, which was not super great for me at the time. I was married at the time, and walking around with my oldest, and everyone would be like, oh, just wait. Just wait till you have one of your own, and that just kind of wore on me, honestly, having people make presumptions about my fertility because I foster adopted a child actually was quite difficult. Or people making assumptions about like functions of my body that they did not have access to knowledge relating to, and I very much did not appreciate a lot of those things. But you know, you hear something time and time and time again, and it does kind of wear on you, especially when you hear it from lots of different people. You know, you love him so much, but that's just because you haven't had one of your own yet. You know, the kind of coded language that situates families that are like non-biological as being less than or not as fulfilling as an experience. So eventually, you know, I made that decision, and I worked on getting pregnant with my partner at the time, and it took a little bit of time, and I remember finally having the realization, I don't want to do this. I don't, I don't actually think I want to birth a child. And what do you know, a week later, I got the positive pregnancy test. Gosh, darn it. That is exactly how that works. When I told people that I was pregnant, you know, of course, they were excited. Then the layers of assumptions again, see, as soon as you stop worrying about it, that's when you get pregnant. And like no actually, me deciding to get pregnant now had no bearing on me being less satisfied with the way that my oldest child entered my family. His addition to my family was completely irrelevant to my fertility, so unexpected , and I remember the feelings of autonomy and agency just really even getting further buried in the pregnancy process. You know, we watched those movies - can't remember the movie right now - where someone like sneezes and the baby comes out, and I just, you know, oh, we have such a glow and like that was not me. I had every single negative pregnancy symptom you could have, whether it was carpal tunnel or hemorrhoids. I could barely sleep. I was sick all the time, and my own body just felt so alien. And, you know, as a non-binary person now, I recognize how I have the language to use dysphoria to describe the significant disconnect that occurred in my body, and almost like the intentional dissociation, like I'm going to pull back from my own body because it doesn't feel safe for me. I'm gonna reside more, maybe in my mind, and that's not great, because we don't want to treat ourselves like incubators. But I recognize that like it was very difficult to feel safe and at home in my body when I could not predict what had happened. And then my youngest came seven weeks early.

Danielle Bettmann  12:38  
Oh no.

Holly Murphy  12:39  
I had Preeclampsia, pretty bad, actually pretty, pretty bad. I had done this whole plan to do hypnobirthing and a medication-free delivery, and I had been meditating for like an hour to two a day to be fully ready for the delivery. I had invested so much and like, well, I can't go back and okay. So at the time, my thinking was, I can't go back and become unpregnant. I appear now, like I made this choice, although we could have a separate conversation about, like, informed consent because it's hard to make a choice when you have no idea what the outcomes of that choice are going to be or what it's going to look like. I had missed all of this stage with my oldest, but regardless, like I can't, I'm here now. I'm going to do it. So how can I move forward and kind of reclaim, like, some agency and some autonomy, and how do I decide to birth this child that I am growing to love before I even have him? Unfortunately, that was not what ended up happening. I had a pretty significant emergency delivery after a 30-hour failed induction. I was absolutely miserable and horrifically in pain, and my body did not respond well, and eventually baby didn't respond well, which is why I ended up having to have the emergency C-section, which was, like, the thing I didn't want. I'm just sobbing as they push me down, and they're treating this like, oh, it's normal. It's another day, and I'm just like, sobbing in this wheelchair getting pushed towards the operating room, after being poked and prodded and cervical checked way too often, for what I felt comfortable with, and all of the things in the body. Then after you have a baby, after suffering preeclampsia, if your blood pressure is significantly high, you know they worry about whether or not you're going to have a seizure, so they put you on this medicine called magnesium. It makes you essentially, like some magnesium supplement or whatever, that makes you feel like you're drunk, and so they don't let you get out of bed. But the baby was seven weeks early, you know, can't breathe essentially on his own yet, so he's in the NICU. So it was almost like 36 hours before I was even allowed to see him after birthing him, and that just pulled up all the feelings as well as I am finally having, like, a sense of like, he's out of my body, and yet like my body can't go to the bathroom and I can barely move. I remember, like, trying to sit up. Oh, gosh. I don't know if this is too graphic or not, but I just remember trying to defecate and sobbing.

Holly Murphy  12:39  
Oh, we've all been there. 

Holly Murphy  12:55  
Like, what have I done? Like, what did I do? Why did I agree to do this? But then you're looking at it like a whole human. And you just, I mean, for me, anyways, I just was completely awestruck that I created this, like whole other living thing with my body. It really is wild, and this whole other person is gonna have this life because of me. It brought up lots of feelings. So the jump from one to two was not easy.

Holly Murphy  15:08  
How old was your oldest? Like, two around this time? 

Holly Murphy  15:12  
Yeah, so he was about two, and, no, actually, he was three by this time. I would say, almost instantly, from the time that I came home with my youngest, my oldest's behavior started to change. And you know, coincidence or not, this is when we started having manifestations of his disabilities at this time, and because my youngest child was born prematurely, as well as some genetic factors that put him at significant risks and disability. So both my children actually have disabilities that have a significant impact in our day-to-day, especially when it comes to like behavior management and having like a calm and peaceful home, because you know, at one point, I thought I could just give them Barbie dolls, or I could give them small babies and, like, if I just avoid it, like the guns, the fake guns, and like the ninjas, maybe they wouldn't just, like, try to fight everything and destroy everything and be rambunctious. Like I just disagree that boys are rambunctious by nature. Oh, no, I'm leaving my words now - they can do so much with so little, and they have energy for days. There is no surface that they cannot find a way to catapult themselves off of or they have no tools, and they can somehow find a way to destroy that toy if they want to. They're lively. And I was a kid who, like, wanted to stay with a book in my little like nook in my closet that I set up for myself and eat my snacks and organize my toys in a line. I see none of myself in either of my children somehow, and it is a delicate balance with the responsibilities. Because the reality is that, you know, maybe other people have the ability to, like, give their children a task and then go complete it. For me, like my grad school homework, it's not possible in my household, my children, you know, have to be supervised 100% of the time. In anything less than like three minutes, they could make decisions that result in harm to themselves or like harm to my furniture. So I struggled for a while, especially after starting grad school with you know, I am parenting until they go to sleep at eight o'clock, and then at eight o'clock, I reset the house. That takes an hour or two because they are not quite yet there with being able to support doing that and being responsible in that way. We're clearly working on it. You know, my oldest goes to therapy. We have a medication plan or a treatment plan with some professionals that help improve and manage his coping skills with his disability to help him navigate the world. But those small gains while celebrated, don't help me pick up 400 Legos off the kitchen floor. I just remember nights when I went to pick them up and just like, on all fours, just sobbing, like I I took some time to myself, and I went and sat on the front porch for 20 minutes because I needed a breather, and then I come back in the house, and it's just like destruction. And because I took that 20 minutes, now I have an hour and a half of work. Why did I take that 20 minutes? And kind of like the thinking spiral that can happen from that. So during that time resetting the house, and now that means the only free time that I can choose for myself comes at 10 or 11, which now means I'm choosing to sacrifice sleep. Because I do want to meditate. I do want to read. I love to write. I want to watch Grey's Anatomy, darn it, like I want to sit in a bath with incense like I want to find ways to restore my peace, but for the longest time, that was at the sacrifice of my sleep. So when my children were younger, I was maybe running for years on only maybe four hours of sleep. It was exhausting long term.

Danielle Bettmann  20:40  
Yeah, to say the least. That's an understatement.

Holly Murphy  20:43  
Yes, I am a little closer to like, six now. It's going to get better, as they get older. They get more independent all the time. What I thought parenting was going to be like and what it is, are vastly different things. Your original question was about who I am now versus who I am then, and I did not have the space or the language to really understand myself. I was not in therapy when I was younger. Why? I don't know. I did not really work on my self-improvement journey until I started seeing how much I was starting to resent, truly, like, resent parenting and just thinking, what have I done with my life? I'm gonna be in this forever. I love them and I don't want them to go anywhere, and yet, there is no escaping them, because they're my children for the rest of my life. How do I reconcile this? That's when I started really focusing on myself and understanding myself and maybe healing some of the ways that I needed to heal. And it's probably like the final linchpin that helped me begin to understand my sexuality as a queer person, and my gender identity as a non-binary person, and how I was trying so hard to like, make these fit into this mold of what conception I had of like parenting and motherhood would look like, what being a wife would look like at the time, and how I was getting very little fulfillment out of it in its construct at that time. It was wearing me down. But doing that was super important, going back to like, well, I didn't get to do that hypnobirthing, but I do have the skills to meditate for long periods of time. I haven't picked up a journal since I was a child, and the journal became ways for my parents to, like, read through them and find out what I was doing when they weren't around. So I had stopped journaling as a child, but I kind of reclaimed that for myself and started carving out space for you know, this many nights when the kids go to bed, I'm gonna go do a thing, and I'm gonna find who I am outside of this. I ended up putting myself a lot into the professional sphere and creating lots of really accessing, like, power and autonomy in professional settings. And it brought me some new understandings. It helped me recognize that if I had been thinking and making decisions from my safest, most settled self, I would have not made the decision that I made to become a parent truly. The reasons that I chose to parent were because of the thinking of like, I'll never be alone, like someone will always love me. This is how a good relationship, a good marriage, produces children. People are wondering what's happening because it's been a few years and there's no kids like -I want to be good at it. That's really my like deepest thing, because I want to be really good at it, and getting to the place of recognizing that I was not good at it, I wasn't going to like get good at it -when I say that, I don't mean good at parenting, but just good at becoming the embodied version of what my perception of good parenting looks like, and how I was never going to get there. It really changed my relationship with really parenting as a whole, but my relationship with both my children. Because somewhere along the way, I had this misconception that parenting was like 70% rewarding and 30% difficult, but the reality is that parenting is like 98% difficult and maybe 2% rewarding, at least for me in my life right now. It is not a healthy way of thinking to like, just chase those rewarding moments as like the tiniest drops in the bucket to sustain you until the very next one. But if anyone else in my life raised their voice and screamed at me, or cursed at me, or called me names because I didn't cut their sandwich in the right way, like that person wouldn't occupy space in my life, because my standards for my interactions with people in the world are so wholly different than the standards I have to have in my home. After all, I'm not on an equal level playing field with my kids, my role is to teach them and to guide them, and even if that means that they struggle in ways that are hurtful to me, that doesn't stop. I just have to learn how to negotiate it better and to use the coping skills of my therapist, and the coping skills of my children's therapists and do what we can to navigate it with the least amount of discomfort, but like discomfort in a way that is beneficial. I sat with that for quite a long time. Why? Why do I tolerate things in my personal life, at home, that I would I would never tolerate in relationships with other people? That was the stage I signed myself up to, like I subjected myself to things that actively harm me because I'm not made of steel. I understand that therefore. But if they say, you know F you, you're the worst parent ever, I cannot believe you would think this. They can be sassy, they can be sassy, and that hurts over time, especially in the context of like but I'm going to be a parent, because I am really good at teaching, and I'm going to be the best parent ever, and I've been doing things with children for 15 years. I've been teaching, you know, classes at the library or the summer camp or the Sunday school since I was 12. Like, I'm gonna rock this parenting thing, and then being confronted with the fact that, oh no, nope, teaching 14 four-year-olds how to identify their letters is not even close to how difficult it is to put my youngest to bed like, oh no. It's not the same. 

Danielle Bettmann  27:17  
It's not the same. It's not the same at all, and that was actually to be my very next question was like, how do you compare teaching? I do feel like I end up working with a lot of families where there is an education background and that you come in with an even more skewed perception or preconception of what this is going to look like, because surely, if I can do this with a bunch of other kids, I can do this with my own and it'll be fun like this is what I'm meant to do and meant to be. Instead, it ends up keeping even more pressure on you, that you should be able to do this and it shouldn't be this hard. And why is it so hard for you? And what does this mean about you as a person, if you're failing at this, and it becomes this, like mental gymnastics nightmare for what I see it is, you know, teachers, social workers, therapists, counselors, that then have their children and really struggle.

Holly Murphy  28:18  
Yeah, and I think that you know, when I leave school and I take my bag home, and I get in my car like school is over and teaching is absolutely performative - like you adopt a persona that's my professional self, that's not my full and total self when- I'm at school.

Danielle Bettmann  28:36  
You leave parts of you in the car.

Holly Murphy  28:39  
Absolutely. Then when I'm interacting, you know, with children, I'm not saying what I think,  I'm employing, like, what are the evidence-based practices when I'm interacting with children, very specifically, in a way that is both an art and a science, and it is work. It is a performance.

Danielle Bettmann  28:56  
And when they struggle, you do not take it personally. It does not enter a level of depth that your child can access.

Holly Murphy  29:04  
No, definitely not. And so, you know, I go home, and then I find myself sitting in the car and not wanting to get out of the vehicle and being like, poof. I gotta take some breaths. I gotta ground myself. And I then would go back inside and almost like, adopt another lens of performance. Now I'm going to be like the really common, regulated person, and I'm going to, you know, go through the routine and the structure and every 15 minutes like we're switching our toys. And here are your visual cues, and here's your calendar. Like, these are the types of things I would bring into the home, because that's what I knew worked at school. And you know, it can work if I commit to that fully. I do believe my home would be a more like peaceful, positive place, and my kids would benefit, but the reality is that is not reasonable. I cannot teach all day, come home, and then stay in that teaching persona down to the minute, because when I'm teaching in the classroom, I'm thinking about, like, every five minutes, like, I know what's happening, I know what's next. I know what my plan is. I'm thinking four steps ahead to make sure that we end at the right time when the battle's going. Like, that's a lot of cognitive load. 

Danielle Bettmann  30:17  
That's a lot of mental load. 

Holly Murphy  30:19  
Yeah, it's a lot of mental load. And so to come home and do that again, like, that is a complete shutdown of my actual needs. I can't do that. 

Holly Murphy  30:28  
You don't even pee at school. You literally disconnect from that part of yourself.

Holly Murphy  30:31  
Yeah and I've gotten really good at that. Honestly, it's a feat after birthing a child.

Danielle Bettmann  30:38  
Just don't go to trampoline.

Holly Murphy  30:41  
Yes. Oh, my. But no, that is a whole other difficulty, and that's in addition to, like, some of the compassion fatigue and some of the ways that teaching in general can leave you really emotionally depleted. Then you come home, and you have to then adopt that, you know, performance once more, and navigate that until they go to sleep and that has been difficult. You know, ultimately, I've had to give myself space to be like, you know, if it's 400 Legos, it's 400 Legos. And maybe those 400 Legos don't need to be picked up today. Maybe they can pick them up in small chunks over the next like two days, like, things don't have to be perfect. Maybe they're just eating a bag of grapes that they got themselves out of the refrigerator for their lunch. And we'll call it a picnic.

Danielle Bettmann  31:31  
The bar goes a little bit lower each day when you make peace with that reality.

Holly Murphy  31:39  
Because I have to balance my kids' needs because they depend on me, and I see the outcomes of the choices I make with my kids like in real time, I recognize long-term the impact that those choices have on them, and I take that responsibility for parenting very seriously. But you know, I also have to show them what it looks like to have healthy boundaries, teach them that other people's needs are important, that there are emotions that they can provoke with their behaviors that matter, and that I am more than just a parent and sometimes that's a little bit stressful. Maybe difficult to understand, is probably a better word than stressful. I remember, just like, maybe even two months ago, my mom said something like, I just don't know where you got this idea that you need to have nights off, or that you should get breaks. I never had a break, and it hurt just a tiny bit, just a tiny bit because that kind of stuff reinforces that you're not a good parent for prioritizing your own needs. But really, in my processing after that, I recognize that generationally, we are probably one of the first generations that have space in society to say, I do need breaks, and we have a long ways to go. But that was probably not something that my mom could have said 30 years ago, or that she had ever seen anyone else say, or that her parent got to say. And when I think about that, like long term, I realize, I'm in my era right now, like here I am as a parent. I have to navigate a lot of things that are really difficult. It is difficult to parent children with disabilities. It is difficult to parent children when you live alone. It is very difficult raising two children who have queer parents. To be frank, that is a whole other topic that we could go down, you know, that very first time that my son was like, why do people think we're weird? Like, why do they say mean things? Why did that person yell at us? You know, I wish I could tell you that I get to navigate life as a queer person and as a non-binary person in social spaces without ever receiving harm, but that is just not the reality. That is not the reality. And my children have had to witness this. And so in addition to all of that, just finding ways to fit all the pieces together, and it's not going to be a puzzle that makes a masterpiece that anyone else is going to recognize. But it is like a work that I am proud of because I do feel like, it's so many layers we can attack. We can talk for hours.

Danielle Bettmann  34:31  
I know, there's so much to talk about. I have all the questions. 

Danielle Bettmann  34:43  
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Danielle Bettmann  36:43  
So let's go down that path of, well, okay, first question, then second question. First question, circling back to informed consent. Do you think that when, let's say, even in the best case scenario, parents are deciding to become parents, that it is an informed, consensual choice, that they understand all the ramifications of the decision they're making?

Holly Murphy  37:10  
I don't think it's possible, honestly, and maybe the gap for some people's perception and reality is actually quite slim. I mean, based on my social media feed, it would seem like some people are really killing it, and maybe that gap is really small, but I don't think there's any way to truly know. And if you did, that wouldn't also be honoring your children's like, unique individual selves. They are going to grow into who they grow into, and they're going to struggle in the ways that they struggle. Honestly, they're never going to stop struggling in some way, because that's part of life. It just changes to different types of struggles as they get older. They're whole people, I remind myself all the time like they are whole people who get to experience the world in the way that they do. I'm just kind of like one stop on their journey, but there is no way to predict, what a child is going to be like with any multi-dimensionality that reflects who they are as whole people. And I think some of this could get better with conversations, like the one we're having. I remember the very first time, I told someone I absolutely hated motherhood, and I would never get pregnant again, and no one could ever pay me enough money to do this process again. I hated it, and honestly, I had a little bit of postpartum, and that did include some thoughts of wanting to harm myself, which I was able to rectify with the support of my medical professionals. But I almost mentally and physically did not survive this. I will not do this again. And the very first time I said that out loud in front of a person, they started to cry and revealed that they had some infertility issues, and they would give, you know, quote, anything to have what I had. And I remember just walking away from that conversation being like, I don't know how to navigate these spaces with moms who feel like they're doing well, or other non-binary parents who feel, you know, really attached to this, because I feel so disconnected and like where is my community? But luckily, that one experience didn't keep me from repeating it, because the further I got into parenting, the more I said, you know, if I had any reflection of what this looked like in my younger years, I would have been able to make a better decision. If any single person had told me that it was so hard, maybe I wouldn't have listened. But I don't recollect hearing anything like that in the same way that, like, I didn't know any non-binary people as a child, I didn't know any as a teenager, I had very few representations in the ways that I was raised that allowed me to interact with queer individuals, let alone queer parents. So I'm open now to talking about this, not because I am trying to dissuade people from making choices to fulfill their lives, nor do I think that being a parent is not fulfilling in some way that I would recommend to other people, but just with this idea that we have this archetype of what parenting is like, and we're all kind of like ascribing to it, and until we have more representations and conversations and just more reality to what this looks like. You know, I don't know that we're ever going to have a more complete picture that allows people to be informed when they consent to it.

Danielle Bettmann  40:30  
So well said. So well said, and that was where we had originally connected for, you know, this topic, and I felt like it was very important to represent on Failing Motherhood, because if you are feeling that prevailing feeling of I don't want to screw this up, and I do feel like I'm failing at it, and I feel like I'm the only one  - I know that there are listeners out there that you just gave words that they didn't have yet to describe how they have felt, and they have been too scared to say them out loud, because they're afraid of offending someone who wants what they have, or afraid of, you know, saying that they don't want what they had so desperately wanted before, or that they don't love their kids. After all, for some reason, those two things can't exist at the same time that we don't enjoy motherhood. That means that it negates our love for our kids or vice versa, like absolutely not, was not what we were saying at all. And until we can allow for the nuance and the complicated conversation that brings up all of the emotions that paint the picture that it is way more complex than that, can we actually validate and hold space for the dichotomy that both of those things can be true and can exist in someone's life experience and be true and be very much how they feel and how their experience has been, and there's a space for that. The more people that can hear those words and that can feel validated and maybe even have that perspective earlier and sooner, the better. We're not on a campaign to say nobody becomes parents. It's just being able to reach those who feel so isolated, so alone and so hard on themselves for feeling that way as well, that we're just trying to shed light on.

Holly Murphy  42:20  
Absolutely, I can sit here on this podcast and tell you right now, but if I could go back in time, I wouldn't be a parent. Some of those things are hard to say because I'm not going to ascribe to the thinking that, if I wasn't a parent, my children wouldn't exist. I could go down that rabbit hole and spiral a bit, but if I'm just thinking in isolation, in a vacuum about myself solely I would not do it. But even though I can't go back and change anything, this is a tenant to life in general. You can't go back and change anything. What I can do now is try to find a balance between who I am as a person and make space for all my feelings.  None of that changes the fact that I desperately love my children, and I can feel burdened by them quite frequently, actually, and yet still love them immensely. If I didn't have that, I don't know how I would manage to survive this choice. I think that going through this experience has helped me learn a lot and empathize a lot with people who have decided to give up their children to other homes, because they didn't feel like they could provide for them, people who have been like, forced to deliver a child or maintain a pregnancy they did not want. You know, I'm not making a comment really, on the validity of any of those choices, but I can say that I have a more complete understanding of why people have resistance, and I know I can't be the only person, as evidenced by this podcast, I can't be the only person who feels this way, and it makes me sit in my big, deep feelings when I think about how many AFAB people throughout time have felt this and still did it every single day and had no choice, and how grateful I am that we have choices, that I know people who have decided to be child-free and are living healthy and fulfilled lives according to them or their goals and their values, and I know people who have you know families of 10 and are living in a way that is according to their values and fulfillment, and that I can reside here, and there's space for me too. That space for me as a person who has a difficult relationship, for me, I should just say a complicated relationship with parenting. 

Danielle Bettmann  42:34  
It's the little Facebook thing where it used to say, it's complicated. 

Holly Murphy  44:04  
It's complicated this relationship. And I don't expect that it's ever going to become uncomplicated, because we as humans are complicated, but there's also space for me, as a queer parent and as a non binary parent.

Danielle Bettmann  45:08  
Yes, and you do need more than love to parent.

Holly Murphy  45:13  
Oh, yes.

Danielle Bettmann  45:14  
I think that simplistic idea of like, you know, the love just takes over, and then you just, it's all-natural, you know you'll know what to do when the time is right, and that there's still even a stigma around enlisting in support to help you parent that's wild to me, that you're just supposed to come like predetermined and predestined to know everything you need to know about staying calm and stress management and clear communication and holding boundaries and all these things. Nobody has that. What are we doing? Why do we think that that's just something that everybody has for you so you're a bad person for needing help? No, that's not how this works.

Holly Murphy  45:58  
No, I suspect in communities that have cultures that have more multi-generational homes, perhaps there would be such a sense of isolation or communities that are closer than that. You know, I think about my cul de sac upbringing, like I bet my parents connected in some ways with other parents on that cul de sac. But that's not that inner connection. This is not necessarily the same in our, like, social landscape. Now, it's not the same, you know, for my children and my experiences. 

Danielle Bettmann  46:26  
We're definitely moving away from it, if anything.

Holly Murphy  46:28  
Yeah, and we're moving away from it. And even if, over wine night, you know, someone would have said something that doesn't necessarily mean that they would have been given, like, actionable things. And I think it takes an intense amount of bravery to say, and it feels like it's putting your needs first, but you're also prioritizing your kids' needs because an unhealthy, unhappy parent cannot raise healthy, happy kids. And there's an interconnectedness there. But it takes some bravery to say, like, I need help. This is not working. This is not what I thought it would be. And oh, I am in a book club. I think everyone should join a book club. And I am. I have been in this book club for three years, and the other individuals in this book club are all maybe like that suburban mom archetype. And I don't mean that in a negative way. I just mean it to highlight the fact that like, our experiences are quite different, and that there was a meeting that we had over a book about a year ago, and I remember just breaking down in tears and being like, this isn't good. I don't like this. I can't do this. I'm struggling. A year ago, I had a pretty bad peak of like, this is hard for me. And I remember at first them being like, it's okay, it gets better. They'll get older, they'll grow out of it. And I remember just saying, like, no, it's not gonna get better. Like, it's not gonna get better, because I'm doing this for life, and I feel so trapped by the fact that I have to navigate this significant stress every single day, and it's making me feel all these kinds of ways, and I just kind of push harder. And in that like meeting, they all started crying, and they all started saying, like that they struggle too, and that they understand my struggle. And it's almost like we have to say the words. We have to be brave enough to keep saying them because sometimes people need to hear them more than once. And I think that for a lot of people who are socialized to become parents, become mothers, specifically, we have been taught a lot of caretaking, and sometimes when someone says this is hard, our first reaction is to say, like, oh, let me offer this or let me validate that it's gonna get better and let me try to caretake for you in the social conversation, it's like, I don't need you to help me out of it, well, I do a little bit. But I don't need that right now. I need you to tell me you're down here with me in it. I need to know that I'm not alone. And then, you know, none of us are crawling out of, not to use a whole depiction metaphor, but we're not like crawling out of this, this well of struggle in isolation, that we're like doing it together. We are lifting each other, and we are finding ways to, like, have reprieves that I can send a message and say it was a rough week, and I could drink a glass of wine with you for an hour tonight after the kids go to sleep. If you're free, like, you know, do you have time for a FaceTime? I just need to have a moment before I transition to those dishes. Or do I need to just leave the dishes in place of going out and finding community, but has been the most helpful thing, is understanding and knowing myself more, giving myself more grace, and making space to have those that appear to be conflicting feelings, rewriting that narrative, if I ever have in my mind like I'm a bad parent. Nope, I am the best parent that I can be, and my children are blessed to have me as a parent truly. Truly they are blessed, and I get to treat them with respect, and I get to teach them things that they would not learn otherwise, because who I am as a parent is or who I am as a person truly beyond just as a parent is a unique tangle of so many things that they'll never be able to unwind to fully understand me before my life is over, and every person is that way. Every person is still multifaceted. Maybe someone else could step in and do the actions of parenting, but no one can step in and be the same parent you can, because who you are is so unique, and the way you see the world and the way you communicate and your values, who you are is amazing, and no one could replace you. So yes, I am a great parent.

Danielle Bettmann  50:56  
I love that.

Holly Murphy  50:57  
Some days I fake it, but I am a great parent.

Danielle Bettmann  51:00  
You have read my mind this whole interview like I keep thinking something, and then you pick it up on ESP, and then you start addressing it before I even ask it, but you already addressed the last question I ask every guest, which is, how are you the parent your kids need? And summed it up so eloquently, I love it. And then just it's so valid, though, because we are such complex people that, like our kids, only get to see sometimes a glimmer of one side of us at any one given time. And it's going to be so much fun to get to know each other at deeper and deeper levels as they get older, which is really cool, and they are absolutely blessed to have you, and the fact that you can continue that development on yourself and not have guilt for your, you know, professional endeavors and to be able to continue to pour into yourself so that you are fuller then that pours over to them only enriches and benefits them. You know, the more you diminish yourself does not benefit your kids. It's the opposite. The more you pour into yourself, the more you have to give, and the more that you're able to accept them in their full experience of their individuality as well. I love that for your whole family, but I can't let you go yet, because we have, I feel like we've still only like, scratched the surface.  For like, five more minutes, I wanted to to ask you about, you know, reckoning with the role and word and term of, like, being a mother. How have you kind of reckoned with that? And what does that look like now? You know, just sum up your whole journey.

Holly Murphy  52:39  
Yes, no. In five minutes? No, but I also think it's important because we haven't talked about this. You know, the things that I'm able to tell you now today about understanding myself as a mother or as a parent is because of my connections to other people who are also parents, but specifically other people who are also queer parents. You know, other people who are also non-binary, and having all of that, you know, help frame my understanding of myself. And not every queer parent, not every non-binary parent has that connection to community, and community is so important, you know. I don't feel strong ties to the word mother, I don't consider myself a mother. For me, when I think back to what it means to be a mother, I think of what I think back to like caretaking, nurturing behaviors, and these things that are described as wholly feminine. And in my non-binary identity, I still have all of those things, but they don't reflect, to me as inherently feminine and solely specific to femininity, and I don't feel a strong call to like Mother's Day and the like, although I appreciate the space set aside to celebrate parents in that way, I consider myself a parent. I usually use the phrase parent. I let my children choose what they want to call me, and if they call me mom I don't force them to call me anything other than what they want to, because their expression of affection to me should be genuine. So they do call me that sometimes, they call me dad again. I don't correct them. I don't know that everyone understands it. I'm sure it's just a reflection of how I fulfill different roles in their life because I want them to see me as, you know, steadfast and consistent and authoritative and powerful and all of the things that we as society, in the broader term, tend to ascribe to masculinity, which is honestly also kind of a farce, because you can do all of those things and still be holy woman, but from a binary stereotype, you know, they can see me as both. They can see me as both, and they rectify, you know, the different parts of that are both and sometimes they understand it and sometimes they don't. I answer their questions in a curious way, I expect that they will understand it more as they get older. I feel very strongly about not sitting them down and having this big conversation. I am non-binary, and here's what that means, and you will only call me this. I look at it more as I continue to know and understand myself and grow and change and express myself in different ways like they are just responsive to what they see. If they ask me a curious question, they will, and I'll answer it. And if someone uses they/them in front of me, maybe they'll use they/them too. Maybe they will for just a little bit and go back to she/her. You know, again, I don't police their language because their relationship with language is different than it is in my life, where I can be more intentional about the language that I use and how I communicate to others with a precision that fully represents, hopefully, the things I want to communicate. And so I guess I just make space. It's hard some days. You know, like Mother's Day, Father's Day is difficult. I remember, I will not speak to which school district this was, but I went to enroll my kids, my first, and my oldest in kindergarten, and I remember getting a form that I had to fill out that said mother and father and I called once I got home and read the forms and say, like, I need you to send me other forms, because my children have two moms, and I am not going to decide which one of us gets put in the father line. I would like a different form, please. I just remember the person who answered the phone, being like, we don't do that here. And I just felt so invalidated as a parent, because that's the part,  I think that's difficult for me. I know I'm coming up on the five minutes, but I think what is difficult for me is reconciling how my children view me not how the world views me. My children get to see me as you know, their champion and the person who cares for them and the person who loves them and the person who teaches them like all the roles I get to fulfill, but a lot of those roles are not validated or recognized or made space for by others, and then having my children ask me questions that I don't have the answers to for why the world works the way that it does, and why? I remember last year, I had two friends who are lesbians and parents, and someone lit their flag on fire in front of their house. And I remember my son overheard me talking about it with someone, and he was just like, why? What's wrong with us? Why would anyone do that? And I think that's probably the hard part. Being a non-binary parent, being a queer parent, I get to carve space out for the way that I want to live the world and the way that I want to experience the world. And part of being non-binary is saying like, no, I'm actively deconstructing what is expected of me, and I am creating an authentic path for myself, and I am not allowing these social influences to tell me how I should live, or tell me that I should behave in a certain way or identify in a certain way. And so I can I navigate that well, and in my home, I can navigate that well while being a word I'm kind of using liberally, but I can, I can navigate it as I navigate and I can carve out what it means to be a non-binary parent with my children because my parenting relationship is with them, but the things that happen outside my home, the things that my children have to experience sometimes or hear about, the things that I see occurring to other people my community, that's what makes it difficult. Something to be a little kinder to each other. 

Danielle Bettmann  59:08  
Yes, for the love.

Holly Murphy  59:11  
For the love.

Danielle Bettmann  59:12  
Yes, and that's what I appreciate - the opportunity to just hear your story, because I think that the more stories we hear, the more insight and perspective we have into just how different everyone is how complex community is, and just how much we can learn from each other when we have the words for things that we haven't firsthand experience. It just takes that proximity to your story allows us to feel much more like we understand something we didn't understand as much an hour ago. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your transparency, honesty, vulnerability, and willingness to be the person who says the things that other people are afraid to admit because that is a needed rule in this parenting space, and we can only get better and better at being braver and saying those things so that we don't feel so alone and can support each other and find that community we so need. So thank you, Holly, for being here. We really, really appreciate it.

Holly Murphy  1:00:17  
Oh, thank you for having me, and thank you for creating a platform for people to realize or remember that they're not alone.

Danielle Bettmann  1:00:30  
Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of Failing Motherhood. Your kids are so lucky to have you. If you loved this episode, take a screenshot right now, share it in your Instagram stories, and tag me. If you love the podcast, be sure that you've subscribed and leave a review so we can help more moms know they are not alone if they feel like they're failing motherhood on a daily basis, and if you're ready to transform your relationship with your strong, willed child and invest in the support you need to make it happen - schedule your free consultation using the link in the show notes. I can't wait to meet you. Thanks for coming on this journey with me. I believe in you and I'm cheering you on you.