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A few weeks ago Dennis was taking Ailish to the playground and I noticed he didn't have snacks.
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Now, I'm the playground parent in our family about 99% of the time, so I know the snacks.
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I know which water bottle to bring, I know what will keep Ailish entertained, and what time hunger is going to hit.
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And the words were right there, sitting in my mouth.
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Did you bring snacks?
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Four words, and very helpful ones I would argue.
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But I didn't say them.
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What surprised me was how hard it was not to.
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And if you ever typed out the reminder text and deleted it before you hit send, or watched someone load the dishwasher in a way you would never load it and walked out of the room so you wouldn't say anything, or caught yourself answering an email that was somebody else's before they even had a chance to open it, then you know exactly how loud the sentence you don't say can get.
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Welcome back to Unscripted, a Mantaring Podcast, the show for the ambitious working mother who is everyone's default and is finally ready to hear her own voice again.
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I'm Andy Salcedo, I'm a coach, a working mother, and the founder of Manthearing, the coaching brand and community for working moms behind this show.
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And if you want honest conversations about what it's really like to be everyone's default, the things nobody sees, and the reasons we keep carrying them, make sure you follow Unscripted.
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It's a small way of making space for yourself in the middle of everything else you're carrying.
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Last week I talked about what it's like to be the default parent, the one everybody goes to first.
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I told you I was never only worried about the forgotten bag, I was worried about what it said about me as a mother, and I ended up by asking why so many of us keep taking full ownership of everything, even when it's exhausting.
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This week I want to show you where all of that lives in my own house, and why letting go can feel even harder than holding on.
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If you missed last week, it's worth going back to.
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So Dennis took her and I stayed home to help Sophia with something she needed.
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But I've done the playground hundreds of times, and I know what can turn a perfectly happy Ailish into someone negotiating with the United Nations over a granola bar.
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I have data.
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So when I saw Dennis getting ready without them, a part of me wanted to step in right then, and I didn't.
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I thought this is his.
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He's taking her, he's in charge, so it's his.
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But then I had to sit there holding information I knew would make things go better and choose not to hand it over.
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Which I know it sounds ridiculous when we are talking about a granola bar.
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But here's what I started to see.
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What I was handing Dennis wasn't only the job of taking Ailish to the park.
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I was handing him the outcome too.
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She might get hungry, he might buy something there, they might come home early.
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Or he might have a plan that hadn't even occurred to me.
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And if I gave him the job and then anticipated every possible problem, reminded him what to bring, checked what he'd done, and stepped in before anything could go wrong, I hadn't really given him ownership.
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I'd given him tasks.
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Plus, he would say, Yes boss.
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Because he loves saying that.
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He loves calling me boss.
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Maybe I am a little bit of a bossy.
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I don't know.
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Now, this made me wonder why was it so hard for me to keep those very simple four words in my mouth?
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Are you bringing any snacks?
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The way I've learned to talk about this comes from internal family systems and the book No Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz.
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There's one idea from the book that changed how I hear myself.
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When I say I'm controlling, I'm completely inside of it.
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I can't really see the part anymore.
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It just feels like me, and the judgment comes along for the ride.
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Oh my god, Andy, just let it go.
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Why can't you let anybody else do anything?
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In IFS that's called being blended with a part.
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But when I say there's a part of me that wants to take control right now, something shifts.
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There's me, and there's this other part over here yelling, SNACs woman! Snacks.
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And the goal isn't to get mad at her, because she's very good at her job.
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Think about it.
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She remembers the forms and answers the emails.
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She puts everything in the calendar, checks the backpacks, thinks three steps ahead.
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And she's a big reason a family with two kids, a career, two schools, and a hundred appointments and birthdays somehow keeps
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running.
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She is competent as hell.
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So instead of asking how I get rid of her, I get curious about why she works so hard.
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And a few months ago, something happened that showed me exactly why she works so hard.
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This year both of my girls changed schools, which meant new schedules, new systems, and new enrichments.
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I am a calendar person, and everything goes in the calendar because if it doesn't, then it does not exist.
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I had signed the girls up for their new enrichments, chorus for Sophia and piano for Eilish, and I had it in my calendar that they started that Friday.
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So Friday comes, and according to my very organized calendar system, pickup is at four.
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Great! And then at 3 o'clock, I get a call from Sophia.
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As soon as I saw her call, I knew it.
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I had gotten it wrong.
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Enrichments hadn't started yet.
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Pickup was at three and I wasn't there.
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What happened inside my head was so fast.
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It wasn't Oh no, I got the date wrong.
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No.
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It was what kind of mother doesn't pick up her kid on time?
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What is the school going to think?
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We're new here.
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They don't know me.
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They don't know that I'm careful, that I'm involved, that I'm always there, that I'm not a mess.
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It was incredible.
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Because the mistake was a date.
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And inside me the story became what does this say about me as a mother?
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And that's when something clicked.
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Because that's the exact worry I told you about on my last episode, and I had just watched it happen in real time.
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The part of me that remembers everything, that checks and anticipates and wants to say, Did you bring snacks?
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isn't doing all of that only because she likes things downright.
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Somewhere along the way, being the mother who remembers everything got tangled up with being a good mother.
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And if I remember everything, anticipate everything, and check everything, then I never have to be on the other end of that phone call.
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I never have to feel that I dropped the ball, that someone's disappointed, that someone might judge me, that I should have known.
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And to be honest, I used to think of control just as a behavior.
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I step in, I remind, I organize, I check, I redo.
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And now I'm starting to wonder whether I've been looking at the wrong part of it.
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Control is a behavior.
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Protection is a function.
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And that's why I think a part of me feels safer staying right where I am.
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Because there's a payoff to being the one who remembers.
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Things don't fall through, people aren't disappointed, nobody wonders why you didn't know, and you never have to sit there asking what it says about you when something goes wrong.
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The very thing that's exhausting me may also be the thing a part of me believes is keeping me safe.
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And if that's true, just let go is not very useful advice.
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Neither is just delegate, because I'm not only handing over a task, I'm asking a part of me to put down one of the ways it has learned to protect me.
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And I want to be careful here, because I am not saying this is why every woman controls things, and I'm definitely not saying that women carry the mental load because we can't get out of our own way.
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We talked about this on the last episode.
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There are expectations around motherhood that were here long before any of us arrived, and families and workplaces and schools that have learned exactly who to call.
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None of that was created by somebody remembering the snacks.
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I just want to be curious about what happens inside me when I try to change my position in it.
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Now I want to be clear about where I'm stopping in this episode.
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Because the worry I just described, what a mistake says about me as a mother, is a layer I can see.
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But sometimes there's another one under it.
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When a part has been working this hard for this long, it's often guarding a feeling it really doesn't want you to feel, and that can be a lot bigger than a missed pickup.
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And I don't think you should go digging for it on your own, and I don't think a podcast is the place for it.
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Getting close to something like that goes better slowly with someone in the room with you, and that's the kind of work I do with women in my coaching.
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What I can tell you is that this isn't about becoming a woman who never controls anything.
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Some days I decide I'm willing to pay the price of things being done differently so I can stop paying the price of controlling everything.
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I've made that trade more than once, and some days I decide
the price is too high, and I pack the snacks myself, and I do it on purpose.
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Both of those are choices.
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The difference I'm starting to notice is whether I'm choosing or whether that protective part has taken over so completely that I don't even realize there's a choice.
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So here's a question I would like to leave you with this week.
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What does the part of you that wants control believes it's doing for you?
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And before we go, I want to leave you with something else.
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It's something very small to try.
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Now, if you're driving, please save this for later.
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Otherwise, let your feet find the floor and take one slow deep breath.
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Think of a snack-sized moment from this week.
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A time you wanted to step in, to remind or redo something that was somebody else's.
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It can be from motherhood, it can be at work, anything works.
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Now notice where you feel that in your body.
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Maybe you can feel it in your jaw, maybe it's in your chest or your stomach.
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Maybe you feel it in your hands.
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Now say to yourself, there's a part of me that really wants to take control of this.
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Just that.
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One part of you, not all of you.
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And notice how you feel toward that part.
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Maybe you feel annoyed, maybe a little bit embarrassed, maybe you just want her to stop.
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You don't have to change any of that.
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Just notice it.
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And if it comes a moment where you can actually accept this part, and where you can actually make space for it to listen to it.
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And if there's a little room for curiosity, you can ask her the question, what do you believe you're doing for me?
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If nothing comes, that's a good answer.
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And if anything feels bigger than you expected, then you can stop, look around the room, feel your feet, and come back here.
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That's enough.
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Letting go might start with understanding why that part learned to hold on so tightly.
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If this brought something up and you want someone in the room with you while you work on it, that's what I do.
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You can find ways to work with me at Mamtoring.com or you can follow me on Instagram at andy.mantaring.
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I'm Andy Salcedo.
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This is Unscripted, and I'll see you in two weeks.