Hello Everyone!

Hello Everyone! (Insert obnoxious, enthusiastic clap here)

Moving forward, this blog will be a space where I share my thoughts on this big, beautiful, crushing, terrifying, amazing journey we call parenting. I have lots of opinions and ideas about self-love, liberation, slowing down to get clear, and repairing the trust we lost when we abandoned ourselves over and over again. I might reflect on various parenting strategies and my reactions to them, but mostly, this is not about the kids. They are wonderful and complex humans and you are each the expert on your own child. You are already exactly the parent they need. This space will be about how to care for yourself so you can show up when your kid needs you and so you can stay a whole and fulfilled human while you do.Today, though, I want to introduce myself and explain how I got here.

My name is Natalie Whiteford. Welcome to my blog. I grew up an only child in California, went to college back east, got my PhD in Clinical Psychology in Colorado, married the man I fell in love with at 16, and had 2 beautiful boys 2 years apart, all before the age of 30. In hindsight, while all of these are choices I would make again in a heartbeat, there was safety and certainty in jumping through the hoops I thought life held out for me in the order I was “supposed” to. At the time, I thought of myself as a typical high achiever, but I now see that I was terrified of negative feedback, of letting anyone down, and of doing anything other than my absolute best. My way of coping with my terror of imperfection? Be perfect. I had life circumstances and a nervous system that allowed me to do this pretty darn well for a very long time. I loved my life, AND I was always “on,” always in control, always striving. In retrospect, I could have saved myself a lot of worry and had a lot more fun if I’d been a little less invested in perfection.

Then, I hit my early 30s. I’d had 2 kids in just under 2 years, with 2 bouts of pre-eclampsia (my first real “failure” as I saw it then – totally missed that red flag of shame and self-doubt!), 2 rounds of crushing postpartum anxiety, and a slower route to psychology licensure than I’d planned because I slowed down to work part time and be home more while my kids were itty bitty. I started to struggle with my sense of worthiness – Was I “earning my keep?” Was I being a good mom? I had no sense that I could cope if things weren’t “okay.” And then my oldest started preschool and life got really messy. He had huge meltdowns at home, at school and in the car. They were totally overwhelming for both of us and often unpredictable. I was so jealous of the moms whose kids had the capacity to save their worst behavior for home. Mine could not, which meant that we were actively NOT perfect all over the damn place. My nervous system was on high alert for the better part of the next decade trying to manage it all – get my oldest the help he needed, help my youngest through that and through his own challenges, implementing parenting strategy after parenting strategy at home, all while internally berating myself that I wasn’t working more and couldn’t fix all of this. So, what if I have two twice exceptional kids…shouldn’t I still be able to do it all and make it look easy?!? Um, not possible.

Finally, when my illusion of perfection had totally crumbled, I asked my son’s therapist for someone I could talk to, and he sent me to a woman who has become a wonderful mentor to me. He said Taylor would be out of my intellectualized, tightly wound comfort zone and he was not wrong! He was also right that this was exactly what I needed. In my first session, while I was describing how I felt stuck and didn’t understand why I couldn’t get myself to exercise more, lose weight, calm down and have more fun, Taylor stopped me. She said I wasn’t stuck; I was exhausted. She said I SHOULD be exhausted. That there was nothing wrong with me and that I was doing my best with hard stuff. It was a revelation. Now, it took years of talk therapy, multiple yoga retreats, and a yearlong embodied leadership training for that to even begin to truly sink in, but that was the moment everything started to shift for me.

Over the years of personal work, I have come to see that I AM ENOUGH. Just as I am. Just because I exist. And, because I believe this about myself (more of the time than I used to, anyway), I also believe it about the people around me and about my kids. They don’t need to be “perfect” kids (whatever that even means) to be worthy of love. They just always have been, from the moment they were born. Nobody needs to earn love and belonging to deserve it. All we need to do is show up as our imperfect selves so we can give and receive the love we’re all chasing. As my kids grow up and require less of me in a practical sense, there is suddenly more space. The more I trust and listen to myself, the more clear I am on how I want to fill that space. And that…  is with all of you! Parenting is hard. Humaning is hard. And, we don’t have to go it alone. The more we can be real about the mess and the pain and the beauty that is life and the more gently we can hold ourselves through it, the more room there is for connection and joy. I want to do that in my office with my clients, I want to do that with my friends and my family, and I want to share that experience with as many people as I can. “There are too many lonely people waiting for someone else to make the first move.” There are too many people afraid they are doing it all wrong or at their wits end and certain they are the only ones. So, let’s be messy, imperfect, lost and wonderful together. There is no such thing as the perfect parent, and our quest to ace this all-important gig is running us all ragged. We don’t control who our kids are going to be and we can’t save them from struggle and pain. What we can do is take care of ourselves, have compassion for ourselves and them, and stay connected to who we are at our core, so we can show up when we really need to and have some fun along the way!

Sincerely,
Natalie Whiteford, PhD

* I will often reference my two boys, who are now 12 and 14, so I think it worth mentioning that I have their permission to talk about the challenges we have faced as a family. My oldest, who has struggled most dramatically, once said, “Mom, that all really sucked and if you talking about it can help someone else, you absolutely should.” I will always double check that they are okay with any anecdote before I share.