For years I tried to attain what my mentors had. I assumed that once you got to a certain place in life, you would be all set - forever. You would finally know how to manage all the things and feel confident in all the things. I kept desperately hoping I could find the level of mastery my coaches had because then life would be full of ease. For a number of years in a row, I chose ease as one of my “words of the year”. I chose this word because when I looked around it seemed others had actually found this elusive ease. My coaches, random people I followed on Instagram, other school moms - all seemed to have it. I figured if they could find it so could I - DAMMIT. But over time - one by one - I started to see cracks. People who seemed to “have it all together” offered glimpses into their real lives. There was definitely much less ease than I expected. Sometimes, there was no ease at all. Instead, there was uncertainty, struggle, raw pain, and sometimes straight-up trauma. When we only show the world our pretty, shiny parts, we are doing a disservice to all women. It is in showing up with transparency (as long as it is safe to do so), that we allow other women to do the same.   We have been socialized to give 110%, to actively desire and desperately pursue perfectionism, to quietly keep our struggles behind closed doors. This greatly harms women while upholding and benefitting the Patriarchy.  By only showing the shiny parts of our lives and withholding the more authentic pieces of ourselves, we harm other women by:  Creating unreal and unreasonable expectations for other women Upholding the social construct of perfectionism (that only exists for women) Perpetuating loneliness and isolation for women (and moms especially) Undermining authentic connection and the collective growth of women on a societal level Eroding the collective mental health of women & moms Impairing and inhibiting your relationships  In this episode, I talk through how we have been socialized to hide certain parts of ourselves, why this works out great for men, and how you can start to practice transparency in safe ways in order to show up more authentically and create space for other women to do the same. We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: https://shamelessmom.com/sponsor Interested in becoming a sponsor of the Shameless Mom Academy? Email our sales team at [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices