Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Today I have a very special guest. Her name is Allwin.

She reached out to me in an email with the subject line, almost a success story.

Of course, I always love to read success stories that people share with me and it was interesting that she said almost.

So I was intrigued and I read her story of how her repressed childhood memories came to the surface,

sent her into what she calls a survival mode, merely existing as a mother.

And the memories that resurfaced for her were overwhelming and made it feel impossible to be the kind of parent she wanted to be for her children.

Her message is what a survival and hope and I think will be a gift for any parent listening.

So hello, Allwin. Good morning. It's evening for me, morning for you over there in Australia.

Yeah. I just want to say straight out that you are my favorite kind of hero.

You reach out to me with your subject line, not yet a success, which I love that in itself for so many reasons that you know you're in a process.

And your goal is this just beautiful thing. And I'm just going to read it from your, from your note here.

Your goal is that you want to spread awareness that it's okay to not have it all together, that others are not a failure if they feel that way.

You said, I want your listeners to know that no matter what it is that they are failing at as mothers, no matter what it is they are doing wrong, there is so much they're doing right.

So anyway, this message that you're so brave to be here and share with us is you want to give hope.

I'm just in all of you. So I just have to say that starting out.

Thank you so much. And you know, I'm definitely quite emotional is that even as I talk because being willing to be seen is probably the biggest obstacle that I've had to overcome.

So I started out, you know, I wanted to be a mother my whole entire life.

And I guess I, I imagined it will be hard, but I just never imagined it to be as hard as it has been. And I started out my journey and I became a mom and I was really, really blessed to find a group called the conscious mothers.

I didn't have any idea about conscious mothering or respectful parenting.

I started to really, really struggle with my toddler and he was 16 months at the time and was really, really struggling with his behaviors. And I remember saying to someone, I was like, I'm just angry all the time.

And I'm just so tired of being angry and he doesn't deserve it. And I remember, I remember people saying to me, it was normal.

It was okay to be angry. It's kids make you angry. And I think it upset me that that was normal. It upset me that everyone was saying that it was okay for me to be angry all the time.

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