93: Mothers Going Beyond with Randi Zinn – Dr. Veronica Anderson

by | Oct 13, 2017 | Podcast

“I’m trying to help women tune in to what’s most important to themselves to make the whole thing better”

 Randi Zinn 

 

Born from her own experiences of motherhood, Randi Zinn founded “Beyond Mom” which encourages mothers to cultivate a life beyond being a mom – embracing the gift of motherhood while expressing all that they are as individuals. She wrote the book, Going Beyond Mom, a guide for mothers looking to jump-start their business ideas by finding the connection from within.

On this episode, Randi reveals the challenges and mistakes of motherhood. She delivers inspiration to all the mothers to continue their lives and careers while being a loving mom. She also gives advice to all the moms out there who are unhappy, whether they are working or stay-at-home mothers. Listen to this conversation about the struggles and triumphs of a mother.

Listen to episode 93 on iTunes here or subscribe on your favorite podcast app.

 

93: Show Notes


Dr. Veronica Anderson’s Links:

LinkedIn
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Instagram

 

Book:

Going Beyond Mom: How to Activate your Mind, Body, and Business After Baby

 

Time Stamps:

0:57 – Frustrations with motherhood

3:38 – Why she’s passionate about motherhood discussions

4:44 – Mothers as a community

5:56 – “Have it all” perception

7:41 – Process of motherhood

9:38 – Beyond Mom

11:04 – The miraculous moment of birth

12:18 – Hypermothering

15:39 – Tips for unhappy mothers

18:33 – Reaching out to other women

20:56 – Turing your ideas into a book

 

 

Full Transcript:

Female VO: Welcome to the Wellness Revolution Podcast.

Dr. Veronica: We’re back here on the Wellness Revolution Podcast. Thanks again for joining. And today I have with me Randy Zinn. And we’re going to talk about mommy hood. And this is something that I don’t talk a whole lot on this show. But over the half the world are moms and we have to talk about this in a different way, in a different light.

Some women think that when they become a mom it’s all about the kids and then that’s the end of the story. But it’s not the end of the story. And there’s something else besides kids going on.

Let me tell you a little bit about my frustration about being a mom. I’m a professional woman. I had my baby. I dropped my first one as I graduated my medical school, five days before medical school graduation. I have my next child 13 months later. I’m a pregnant intern working 100 hour weeks. And my frustration with being a mom was how unwilling mothers who were home have been to be helpful to professional women.

That has been my question and frustration with motherhood. There seems to be this competition. And so we go through these people who are super moms and they’re stay at home. And they’re doing everything perfect. And then you have those of us who are professional women who work outside the home. And the moms that are staying home are a little bit looking down their noses at us. “Why aren’t you staying home with your kid?”

Then one day I had to go to a professional meeting. And I asked my neighbor down the street can you pick up my son from whatever because my husband’s away. I need some help. “Oh no, I can’t do it. Phil has tennis and I need to take him to his tennis. So I’m not going to be able to pick him up.” I was like, “Huh?”

And then I had this one episode where I’m in my office one day. I’m running around seeing people. This was back in my eye surgeon days. And a woman walks in and lectures me about how I should be staying home with my kids. She’s sitting in my office. I’m taking care of her eyes. She has chosen me as her doctor yet she lectured me about why I wasn’t staying home with my kids.

This is the craziness of momhood. And so Randi who has a new book and talks about how to do mom, and moms at different ways, the book is How To Activate Your Mind, Body & Business After Baby. We need to start helping other women. Randi, welcome to the Wellness Revolution.

Randi: Thanks for having me Dr. Veronica.

Dr. Veronica: I’m glad you’re still laughing. I would have been calm in a little bit about what I said because this has been one of my frustrations with how us mothers treat each other.

Randi: I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing with you. If I were to describe using adjectives and such about the stories that you just told, it’s just that word, just all not able to recognize that we’re all different and it’s all okay. And really we’re all trying to do the same thing which is just be the best we can be.

It’s sounds so obvious but we do lose sight of that. So I’m sorry that those moments have happened because it shouldn’t be that way. It doesn’t have to be that way. But I think like most things, and this is why I’m so passionate about these discussions, that if we’re not giving time and space to tune inward and to know what’s really important to ourselves personally, our interactions are going to be off.

And so I’m no doctor, but if I were to give a prescription to some of these other women I would be like, “I need you need to do some tuning in and to recognize that we are all doing our best. And we need community and support. Because you can’t be an eye surgeon, and she can’t be a productive stay at home mom if we’re all not like this together. Somewhere there needs to be bridge.

But we can’t fix the outside world. We can only start with ourselves. And so that’s my job. I’m trying to help women tune in to its most important to themselves to do the whole thing better.

Dr. Veronica: I can congratulate you because you’ve created a mommy community. And my point of telling these stories is because I feel that we as women and mothers have fallen down on the community. It used to be that we all lived close together and we all helped each other.

No matter how you feel about different political candidates, when Hilary said it takes a village it’s true. She wasn’t the first person that said this but I noticed from travelling that here we’re very individualistic and every woman has their little queendom. And how perfect their queendom looks is what seems to be the utmost importance.

Whereas when you walk out to other places of the world there’s this community that helps us all treat all of our children well, so that there would never be a point where I would say, “Hey, I got to go off and do this.” And I would be wondering where I was going to get help from. And that my child was going to struggle because of that one day where something interfered.

Randi: I like to look at this conversation first likely let’s blow it up a little bit more culturally. And then maybe we can start to talk about what’s happening in these micro moments. From what I see we’re living in this time where we’re told that women can have it all.

And of course we want to believe that we can. But what’s happening with this perspective of have it all is that we actually feel like we should have it all the time. And that’s impossible. And what I’ve realized through many, many conversations with many women, we’re talking about working women, professionals, stay at home moms, and I’ll call them the entrepreneurial stay at home working moms, which are that fusion mom, kind like me.

What’s happening is that all of these women are feeling crushed by pressure. And what do we do when we feel crushed by pressure? We tend to react. We tend to push back. We tend to operate from places of ego. We are not coming from a place of our core truth without sounding new age-y about it. But what do we really need? What do we really want as people, as individuals? What do we want our experience to feel like.

And if you ask most women they say, “I just want to feel good. I just want to be happy. I just want my kids to be happy and healthy. I want to feel like all the things that I’ve worked for in my life amount to something.” We can’t do that if we’re not tuning in. And certainly we can’t do if we’re operating out of fear and competition with other people.

In my book it’s exactly this process that I walk the reader through. It’s how do we rebuild our foundation as a woman, as a person after we’ve had a baby. And by the way this process can happen whether you had a baby two months ago or ten years ago, because frankly there’s never a wrong time to get back to your health and to yourself, ever.

Dr. Veronica: I think there’s a need for women who’ve had a baby 25, or 30, or 40 years ago to also go through this process. There are a lot of women who have thrown themselves into family first. And then when that family has branched out their core…

Randi: It’s like who am I?

Dr. Veronica: Exactly. Who am I? The transition sometimes is not very pretty.

Randi: No, they’re not. And they’re painful. I have retreats all the time for moms, sort of these day getaway. get back to self-retreats. And we have women of all ages, some women who have even gone into grandma zone, and they say these things. They say, “The transitions, the letting go, the challenges, they don’t stop. They just have a slightly different look because the child’s age is different. But it’s all the same.”

My hope is that this book, this conversation can help women at any phase. But hopefully when women are getting a hold of this stuff when they’re pregnant and when they’re in early motherhood that they never reach that phase of who am I because all along it’s been an inquiry.

And it’s not that it has to be perfect. That’s exactly the discussion that I’m trying to say. No, it’s not about perfect. It’s not about reaching the destination, whatever that is, but it is about daily consistent inquiry. What do I want? What do I need? How do I find strength in my body? How do I find clarity in my mind every single day?

And it’s with that inquiry that I have turned this phrase beyond mom, because it’s not that we don’t care about being mom it’s the opposite. We love mom. We love being mom, but how do I go beyond that role or that title and continually develop me? And with that work there’s so much more that’s possible from a productivity standpoint, but also so much more joy to be had.

Dr. Veronica: I got to put an interesting analogy in it. I know people who watch are from different religious backgrounds,  but go with me with this analogy because it’s culturally relevant that you’ll understand what I mean. When women have a baby it is like Jesus Christ is born. Seriously, it’s all of a sudden the light gets shined on that child and a miracle happened. And having a child is a miraculous moment.

I remember the first time I was in medical training and I delivered a baby. And it was so awesome. It was just like, “How did this happen? Oh my gosh.” And so to deliver a baby and see the baby come out of someone else’s body is just a miraculous moment every time.

Especially knowing everything that has to go together to make that baby, and especially when they come out beautiful and perfect. But even if they don’t come out “perfect” so much went in to making that being. You think, “Oh my god, the messiah has arrived.”

So you say, “What do I need?” And so this is a different perspective when you become a mother. Let’s shift it over to a religious analogy. Again, a lot of religions they talk about Jesus. But then there’s just as much light shined on Mother Mary. People pray to Mother Mary.

And so I believe that what you’re talking about is Jesus is over there. And the messiah was born again and again. Seven billion times the messiah’s been born. Don’t get mad at me if you think about this a different way. It’s just an analogy.

Randi: No, I’m going with you Dr. Veronica. I’m right with you.

Dr. Veronica: But then there’s Mother Mary, and without Mother Mary there would be no messiah. And so therefore Mother Mary’s got to be tended to. And so now you’re saying, “Let’s focus on Mother Mary.”

Randi: I love the analogy. I think it’s great. It had me thinking of a few very interesting topics that have come up in my conversations. It’s very interesting. A lot of women that I’ve spoken have talked about this hyper mothering. It’s definitely a bit of new-ish phenomenon.

A lot of women that are in our age group was that, “I don’t even really remember being raised, I just remember that I had parents and I was happy.” Now, raising kids is like a thing. And it’s become this intense thing to raise these perfect kids and make sure they have everything and have every opportunity.

You know what the reality is on the other side of that? Studies have shown, and I’m sure you’ve seen some of them. Our youth are growing up with more anxiety and more depression than ever before. Because they think they also have to be everything, do everything, achieve everything.

To me that’s heartbreaking. I don’t want my kids to be raised feeling like they have to be everything. I just want them to be good people.

Dr. Veronica: It’s an interesting phenomenon. I was thinking about walking to school. You hardly see kids walking to school in a lot of neighborhoods. Even going to catch the bus, a lot of parents drive their kids to the corner and sit in the car with them until the bus comes. My son was unusual because he wanted to walk himself to and from the bus. And he was the only kid practically walking himself to and from the bus. It’s just interesting. What’s that all about?

Randi: We live in a time where there is a lot of stress out there. There’s fear. There’s some crazy stuff happening all over the world. There’s a lot of unexpected or perceived threat that does make parenting difficult and a little more anxious.

I live in the middle of New York City and so I’m constantly thinking about almost like herding my kids when we’re in the street and making sure everyone is safe from god knows what things that could happen. But we also have to know that the likelihood of these things is like slim to none in the grand reality. And we have to make sure that we’re raising kids that can function independently, and breathe for god’s sake.

The other thing that I would add is besides the fact that our youth is growing up with more anxiety than ever we are suffering underneath the pressure of having to provide that perfect life as oppose to just focusing… Again, getting back to my thesis, as opposed to just focusing on what matters most to me as an individual. What are more core values that I want to impart on kid.

And if things like the importance of physical health, how do I live that with my kids as opposed to hammering in constant doing, and perfection, and schedule. Trust me, I just feel so strongly even just in my few years of being a parent that it’s the things that we do with our kids, the conversations we have, the times we spent together that make the most impact. Not this keeping up with the Jones, having to do everything right. It’s crazy time if you’re trying to live up to that.

Dr. Veronica: Let’s talk about some of the takeaways also you talk about in your book. You talk about what do you if you’re an unhappy working mother or an unhappy stay at home mother. Give some tips about that.

Randi: Yeah. There’s a whole bunch in the book but I’ll pull out a couple of little tidbits for our listeners today. It’s like we have to be as we know with busy productive moms. And I mean productive, whether you’re in the workplace or whether you’re productive in your home, we have to be really diligent with our schedule and our calendar. And it’s very, very easy to book ourselves up with everyone else’s stuff.

I encourage you every single day, or at least every other day to block out space and time that’s yours, your time, and make it just as important as everyone’s time. And put in there the things that you feel are most important for investing in yourself.

For me I block in my physical time. Movement has always been my medicine and my way of staying grounded, and positive, and clear in my mind. I am blocking out my time for moment, working out, whatever that means to be that day.

But I also encourage women to open up their idea of what fuels. So getting back to what we have said before, the “I don’t even know who I am anymore. I don’t even know what I like.” Maybe consider what did you love when you were a child? Did you love to dance? Did you love music? Did you love to cook? What was it?

Bring little bits of that back into your life somewhere. Build it in. And don’t tell yourself that by stepping away from your family to engage with those things that it’s selfish, that it’s not valuable. It is. It is an investment in you.

And when you come back into your home and into your children, and into your partner, and into whatever else you do you’ll be emanating that job, and that thing that lights you up. And that’s the person who your family loves and wants around. And that’s the person who’s going to start that business, or launch that great new project at work, or simply just show up as an authentic person.

So we have to reframe this discussion about investing in self-care and time for self. It is the foundation. And it’s the way that will step into anything. In the book I give real tangible tips and tools, and really great stories from women who are doing all different things. And figuring out how to maneuver that.

Dr. Veronica: You also talk about reaching out to other women. So how do you recommend people reach out to other women? Because a lot of us who are in the entrepreneurial space and work a lot on our own feel like we don’t have a network. Give us some ideas about how to reach out to other women.

Randi: In this case I actually want to say that social media can be a huge asset. There are groups and there are conversations for moms who are entrepreneurs all over the country. There are support. There’s content. There’s videos like myself included and many others where you can begin to be part of a group, part of a dialogue, realizing that you’re not alone.

Just because you love your kids and you start having all these new ideas of things you want to do you’re not the only one. Many women are out there like you. So using social media in a positive way, not in a shaming way, in a positive way. There’s women out there like you who want to engage.

I also really encourage people to get out there in their home towns and in their home cities. Most areas have women who are gathering to connect. If there’s not like a group that’s exactly fit for you find something that’s related.

Maybe you’re a mom who wants to be an entrepreneur. Maybe there’s not that yet. Certainly you could start it. Let’s just throw that into the mix. You could be the first, and sometimes we have to be. But maybe you just start out by finding a mom group and you put yourself out there and you talk. I guarantee you there’s other women in that group that want to do something, and that want to have someone else that they can talk to about these things. We have to be bold.

A lot of women think that they just wanted to come to them. But if you’re lucky enough to live in a place like I live in New York City, there’s just endlessness in terms of entrepreneurs, moms, working moms, meet-ups, and events. It’s non-stop.

Dr. Veronica: That could be problematic. I live part-time in New York City. And I find that more overwhelming to be in a small town because there’s so much, and it seems so impersonal that it’s just like, “Which one do I choose? I don’t know anybody.”

Randi: You have to experiment. I’ve actually found it to be kind of empowering since I’ve entered motherhood because you only have limited time to work with you become very picky and choosy. And so I don’t go to everything, trust me. I go to that which matters the most.

And that comes from looking at who’s involved, who’s behind things, what brands are involved, where am I going to meet the women that are going to be most important for my network. You have to think through your time. But this is you owning it. You got to think. You got to put yourself in the right places. You got to use your time wisely.

But the community is out there. There are women out there who want to be loving on their kids and loving on themselves. It’s out there. But you have to put it out there and look for it.

Dr. Veronica: Okay. I interview a lot of authors and I’ve never asked them this question. But I think this is important. There are a lot of people that have a book in them that wanted to say something. Give some advice on how to get your book actually out of your head and on to the paper?

Randi: This could be like a separate podcast interview. If you want that we could do that another time. Getting your book out there, it is a journey. This book has been several years in the making. Like anything that you bring to the world you got to have your patience hat on. And you got to know that it’s going to happen in phases.

But honestly the process of this book for me has been very similar to many of the other processes of my life. I’ve always been a writer. It’s always been a way that I’ve communicated and felt inclined to communicate. So when I had this vision for this book and had a sense of what I wanted to share with people and the difference it could make, the first thing that I did was I wrote, for lack of a better word, a treatment of the book.

I sat down and I wrote down the vision for it. I wrote down sample chapter concepts. I started to think about if I were to interview different women in the book, some of the women that I knew, I love to have their stories, I started to shape a vision around it.

And then I started to really utilize the network that I had already. I immediately started asking women for coffee that I knew who had written books. And I’m telling you, this is where the manifestation starts. You have to be willing to put it out there a little bit, to have some conversations, to ask for help. And those early coffee conversations with women who had done it put me in touch with the people that I needed to help get this book off the ground.

And from there I found a women who’s a published author herself, who works with new authors to help them shape their concept and outline the beginning of a book. And there began the first tangible phase of the book. And through her I connected with my book agent. And through my book agent I got my book deal. And then I found I found my publisher.

So the story begins when you start to organize yourself on paper or your computer, and you start to put yourself out there and network on your idea. I think that a lot of the trouble that women have is owning their idea. It’s like I have an idea. I want to share it. I need to make this happen.

Okay. Do it. Start talking about it. Even if, again, utilizing social media for the right reasons. Even if you don’t know someone who’s written a book, I guarantee you, you put up on your Facebook or whatever and you say, “Friends, I have a book idea. Does anyone know any published authors that might be willing to chat with me?” Something will come across. You got to get creative and start putting it out there. That’s my story.

Dr. Veronica: Wonderful. And I love it because it’s like do it. Do something. And so you’re like, “The first thing is I started just putting an idea down on the paper.” And so for people who are interested, just like Nike says, you got to just do it. You can’t think about the end game. You can’t think about, “Nobody wants to hear what I have to say.” Yes, there is somebody out there that wants to hear what you have to say.

And so I think one of the other ways that you might have told about this is if somebody says they want to write a book start small and write a “blog,” Write it 500 words at a time. Just put it all together. And whatever comes out of your head write it down. And then you can take all that material and actually put it into a physical book. And so one step at a time,

Randi: Right, or like a little eBook that starts the conversation. There’s lots of ways of doing things. Another thing that I want to say, two important things. That story I just told you, that process occurred after my first child was born, but he was small-ish, I started working on it.

I landed my agent, just to jump forward in that storyline, three weeks after my second child was born. And then the actual development of the rest of the book and this whole process that’s now evolved happened when she was tiny, and now she’s 20 months old. And today is my book launch day as we’re recording this. It takes time. And it’s just like your baby, it’s growing and evolving.

The other thing I want to say is that I’m not bashful about saying that I have help. I have a nanny. I have a husband who supports me. I have people I can call and turn to when I need support, when I need time. Whatever I need I figure out how to do it. And I’m still an involved mom. There are ways that might look different for everybody but you work with what you have.

Dr. Veronica: Wonderful. The book is launching. And by the time people see the podcast it well be launched. Where can people get the book?

Randi: It’s available everywhere. It’s available definitely on amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com. It’s in bookstores. So hopefully you can actually just pop in to your Barnes & Noble and get a copy.

If you’re interested in learning more about the book and about the community in general, our website beyondmom.com. We actually have a video book trailer as well, which is just fun to get the vibe, get the feeling of the dialogue. We had a lot going on and those are places to find them.

Dr. Veronica: Wonderful. Randi Zinn, How To Activate Your Mind, Body & Business After Baby. And beyondmom.com, people are going to remember that very easily, beyondmom.com is where you go. People know that they’re going to look in the show notes and get all this type of information.

Randi, thank you so much. Interesting conversation, talking about motherhood and some of the challenges of it, but how you can triumph with motherhood in a different way than we think about today.

Randi: Thank you. And thank you for sharing your honest stories, because it’s so important that we do. Because it’s only through that honest frustration that we can get to the heart of it, open it up, and do things in a different way.

Dr. Veronica: Wonderful. Thank you so much Randi.

Randi: Thanks Dr. Veronica.

Female VO: Thank you for listening to the Wellness Revolution Podcast. If you want to hear more on how to bring wellness into your life visit drveronica.com. See you all next week. Take care.

_______________________________

Medical Intuitive, Functional Medicine Doctor, Functional Medicine New York, ManhattanDr. Veronica Anderson is an MD, Functional Medicine Practitioner, Homeopath. and Medical Intuitive. As a national speaker and designer of the Functional Fix and Rejuvenation Journey programs, she helps people who feel like their doctors have failed them. She advocates science-based natural, holistic, and complementary treatments to address the root cause of disease. Dr. Veronica is a highly-sought guest on national television and syndicated radio and hosts her own radio show, Wellness for the REAL World, on FOX Sports 920 AM “the Jersey” on Mondays at 7:00 pm ET.

To get started transforming your health, schedule a consult HERE.

0 Comments

RSS
Follow by Email
Twitter
Visit Us
Follow Me
YouTube
YouTube