Invisible Load: Unveiling the Judgements that Compound the Burden on Mothers

In this thought-provoking episode, join me as I discuss the historical and contemporary biases faced by mothers, both in the context of parenting and in the workplace. I start by highlighting the longstanding tradition of blaming mothers for their children’s problems, attributing developmental issues to a mother’s perceived failure. 

The discussion extends to workplace dynamics, exploring how gender stereotypes influence judgements. I talk about a body of research that has demonstrated that mothers, even in the same roles and with the same commitments, are judged more harshly than fathers. 

Personal anecdotes and reflections are woven into the narrative, and I encourage you as you listen to this episode to reflect on your own experiences and potential biases. 

My hope is that this episode will spark a conversation about how gender biases continue to shape perceptions and impact the lives of women, especially in the realm of parenting and professional endeavours. 

Thanks for listening! If you are a soon-to-be or current parent of multiples, be sure to head over to my website http://www.fiercekindmama.com to get my FREE resources designed specifically for you!

Be sure to follow me on Instagram and Facebook too.

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Transcript

Dr Cristina Cavezza

Welcome to the Fierce Kind Mama of Multiples podcast. This podcast is for anyone raising multiples, twins, triplets or more. I speak to inspiring parents of multiples who have healed from unexpected pregnancies and birthing experiences and who candidly share the highs and lows of raising multiples.

I also speak to the professionals that work with multiple birth families.

Together we cover the practicalities of raising more than one baby at a time, as well as enhancing the emotional wellbeing of caregivers and children alike.

Come join us as we laugh, cry and share our personal and professional wisdom on all things multiples. I'm your host Dr Cristina Cavezza, and I am a Fierce Kind Mama of Multiples.

Welcome to the show.  

Before we get started, I wanted to let you know about a new free resource I have available for those of you who are pregnant with multiples. 

If you want to learn more about how to be fully prepared for your multiple birth journey, then this guide is for you. In this guide, I take a holistic approach to help you prepare physically, financially, and emotionally. 

And if you know anyone else who is pregnant with multiples, please tell them to head over to my website: www.fiercekindmama.com 

And click on the free resources tab. 

The link is also available in the podcast show notes.

 
For today’s episode, I’ve decided to talk about an issue that I feel really strong about and that I want to open up a conversation with you about. This is something that has been on my mind for a long time and that I have grappled with over the years in many different contexts and circumstances, but I want to specifically relate it to my experience as a mother. And what I want to discus with you today is stereotyping and judgement as it relates to being a mother, specifically, but also as it relates to being a dad.

And I’ll be honest, before becoming a mother, while I was aware of and witnessed and personally experienced unequal treatment because I was a woman, I don’t know how much thought I gave to the experience of mothers before becoming a mother myself. 

Like I had friends, other family members, colleagues who had children, but maybe because I wasn’t a mother yet, they didn’t feel comfortable sharing their struggles with me. And while I did witness some people close to me experience challenges after becoming mothers for the first time, I don’t think I appreciated those challenges as much as I could until I became a mother. 

Once I did become a mother, it was like all of sudden, all those conversations I had with other mothers, all those moments I witnessed as a child seeing how mothers were treated, it felt like all of a sudden those memories were real, they were more tangible, more visible, much harder to ignore. 

And the memory that comes to mind right now is a personal experience. I was with my partner who happens to be male and the father of my children. I think my kids were about 3 years old at the time. We were on a holiday and we were waiting at a bus stop. We decided that we were going to cross the road and go to a café on the corner to use the bathroom facilities. I was urgently needing to go so I told my partner that I’d go first and he could catch up because it was literally just across the street. Now my partner that day had decided that he wanted to push the kids in the pram because as I said we were on holiday and even though they were 3, they weren’t really yet able to keep up with all the walking and sightseeing we were doing so we basically had the pram there as back up. So, once we decided that we were going to head to the café across the street, I started walking first because I felt like I couldn’t hang on much longer but I didn’t realise that my kids weren’t yet strapped in the pram and they started following me across the street. I didn’t know this. But as it turns out, a big bus suddenly turned round the corner and was honking at us to get out of the way because if you can imagine one of those huge public buses – it is much harder for them to slam on their brakes and where I was walking, not knowing my children were right behind me following me at a much slower pace, the bus simply wouldn’t have had time to stop. 

At this very moment, my partner raised his voice to get the kids attention to come back to him and sit in the pram and I quickly crossed the street to get out of the way of the bus. The good news is that no one got hurt and we were all safe. But an older woman was screaming at me “why would you do that?” and she started berating me basically for putting my kids in danger.  

Now at the time, I was kind of shocked because I obviously was just as concerned about my kids’ safety as this stranger was. And it wasn’t until much later that I asked myself “why hadn’t she yelled at my partner?” “Why was it my responsibility alone to make sure the kids weren’t following me across the street?” Like he was there supposed to be strapping the kids into the pram – why wasn’t he being yelled at too?

Now I am not suggesting that he was to blame. I honestly don’t believe that. I think it was one of those split-second decisions when you are a bit disoriented in a different city and there’s lots going on around you and yes, in hindsight I probably should have waited until the kids were strapped in so we all could cross the street safely together. But I had assumed that my partner had it under control. He’s a grown man, a competent father, he has strapped them and pushed them in the pram multiple times before. So, if we are going to be completely fair, then one could argue he is just as responsible as me for ensuring that the kids weren’t following me across the street. 

After the dust had settled, I said to my partner “If the tables were reversed, I don’t think that woman would have yelled at you like that.” In other words, if he was the one to cross the street and I was supposed to be getting the kids in the pram, I believe that she would have still yelled at me.

Now this sparked a very interesting discussion between my partner and I on gender inequality and what’s come to be known as mother blame. And while this now happened over 4 years ago, I remember it and I am still fascinated by the implications of this story and my hypothesis, if you like, that he would not have been viewed so negatively by a stranger for his parenting decisions or at the very least, I doubt she would have had the nerve to yell at him like she did to me. 

Of course, we will never know if my hypothesis is correct – it’s really just an assumption I have made but my assumption rests on a body of literature and research. 

There is a long history of blaming mothers for problems with their children, even their adult children.

“Bad” mothers raise “bad” children. 

Historically, fathers despite clearly having an influence on their children weren’t held to the same standards as mothers and that may be because women were largely responsible for the domestic labour, but it is absolutely a reflection of centuries old patriarchal notions of what it means to be a good mother. 

There is a phenomenon in the literature where mothers with children with intellectual disabilities were referred to as “refrigerator mothers” because it was thought that they must have been cold and overbearing caregivers, and this parenting style was seen to be the direct cause of their children’s problems.

And it pains me to think that health care providers, educators, psychologists, doctors -all the professionals who were meant to help children and their families were either implicitly or explicitly labelling the mother as the problem.

As a psychologist myself, I know that historically we viewed mental illness or psychopathology as resulting from how a child was parented by their mother. Good mothers raised emotionally healthy children and if your child showed symptoms of psychopathology, then you the mother must have failed to meet some standard.

However, if we go back and we look at some of the messages mothers were receiving from psychological theorists and researchers, we see that it was really a no win situation for mothers. 

If you spoiled a child with love and attention, you were causing them to be overly dependent on you but if you were too distant, at the other extreme - then you would cause autism.

You were damned if you did and damned if you didn’t.  

In fact, there was a booked called The Empty Fortress by Bruno Bettleheim who was a psychologist and academic and an early writer on autism. The book I believe was published in 1967. I haven’t actually purchased or read the book, but I have read in other peer-reviewed academic sources that Bruno likens the symptoms of children living with autism to Nazi concentration camp prisoners claiming that so-called “refrigerator mothers” were withholding affection and neglecting their children which resulted in their children having autism. And he likened this neglect and lack of maternal emotional warmth to how the SS guards of Nazi Germany were treating their prisoners. 

Paula Caplan, was a psychologist with a special interest in woman studies. I believe she died in 2021. During her career, she looked at 125 articles published in 9 different mental health journals that examined 72 different kinds of problems in children, from mental illnesses like schizophrenia to colour-blindness and all 72 problems were attributed to the mothers’ behaviour. I think that’s worth repeating. They attributed all 72 problems, not to the child’s genetics, or the child’s family environment, including the behaviour of the child’s father- the responsibility - the cause of these 72 health problems were all deemed to be the mother’s behaviour. Meaning she had a choice – she could have prevented these illnesses in her children and the implication here is that she is solely to blame. 

It’s shocking to think of this perspective from a modern-day lens, but I do often wonder what the legacy of these beliefs and this type of thinking are on parents and their children today. 

Even today, we have access to prenatal vitamins, testing and monitoring, and parenting classes and research shows that there is still a widespread perception that disability in children can be prevented if the mother adheres to medical direction. 

So, we blame mothers. We judge mothers. We hold them solely responsible for their children’s behaviour. 

We perceive mothers differently than fathers in many contexts. 

Let’s take the workplace as an example. 

The first thing to say here is that we know from a considerable amount of research that stereotypes regarding gender exist and that these stereotypes affect the judgements people make about us. 

For example, women are often considered to be warmer and more caring and less assertive and achievement-oriented than their male counterparts. 

In some sectors that are traditionally more male dominated, research shows that women in these jobs are viewed as less competent than men. 

When we look at how humans make judgements, I think it might be useful here to explain a couple of models. 

The first is called the shifting standards model as articulated by Monica Biernat. Monica is a social psychologist who is known for her research on stereotyping and prejudice. 

Essentially the shifting standards model suggests that we make judgements based on relative comparisons. 

So how this might look in the example of a workplace and gender stereotypes – it might go something like this. 

Because we might think women are generally less competent than men, we might judge a particular woman’s ability relative to lower standards of women in general.

Similarly, we might judge a man against relatively higher standards of men in general. 

And we do this because of a gender stereotype that women are simply less competent on this particular task than men so we can’t directly compare men and women. What would be deemed good or competent behaviour in a woman isn’t the same as what is deemed good or competent behaviour in a man. 

If we apply this theory to the case of parenting where stereotypes exist about mothers being more nurturing and more involved in childrearing than fathers, then we can assume that others will evaluate mothers and fathers according to different standards. 

In one study, participants were given subjective descriptions of parents and how effective they were. So, for instance, they may have been told that the parent was a “very good” parent versus an “all right” parent and then participants were asked to translate these subjective descriptions into something more objective like how many parenting behaviours does this parent perform?

The results showed that mothers and fathers were judged as both being effective parents but interestingly, mothers were judged as engaging in more parenting behaviours than fathers and this is despite there being no mention of how many parenting behaviours they performed. Remember participants were only told that the mother or father was a “very good” or “all right” parent and while both mothers and fathers were equally judged as being “good,” a “good” mother was seen as one who performed more parenting behaviours than a “good” father. In other words, mothers and fathers were held to a different standard. 

In another study by psychologist Judith Bridges and colleagues, they looked at how stay-at-home vs employed mothers and fathers were judged in terms of how effective they were as parents and how much childrearing they did. They found that participants judged stay-at-home fathers and mothers as equally effective but again stay-at-home mothers were judged as engaging in more physical and emotional caregiving tasks than fathers. And what’s even more interesting is that while an employed mother was seen as providing more care than an employed father, it was the employed father who was regarded as a better parent than the employed mother. 

Now this study really hits home for me.

I am going to share some personal reflections here and this comes from my experience in speaking with many parents but also from my personal experience as a mother. 

I don’t know how many times I have heard mothers of multiples say that when their male partner takes the children out on his own or looks after the kids at home while she is engaging in some other task and often that task is another domestic duty or paid work – but the father will report how family, friends and even complete strangers will compliment or praise him on what a fantastic job he is doing. And the mothers that I’ve spoken to who have experienced this will say to me something like “I look after the kids by myself all the time and no one, not even family, tell me that I am doing an amazing job.” And it’s usually the case that if the mother wants that feedback and praise, she needs to ask for it. 

And I can certainly relate to this. I have mothers tell me that their friends and family will them how lucky they are to be married to their male partner because he helps so much with the kids. I have experienced this too. 

I remember one woman complaining how she was breastfeeding her newborns which anyone listening to this knows it can be super challenging to breastfeed more than one baby and she absolutely was doing the best job she could. She needed support in order to breastfeed her newborns and her male partner, the father, would help her get rest by taking over some of the nighttime feeds with bottles of expressed breast milk. Now this mother complained to me how her friends and family were basically expressing how wonderful her husband was, how lucky she was to have him in her life – essentially, he was receiving all the accolades – and none of them praised her; none of them acknowledged how hard it was to sustain breastfeeding multiples. 

And she said “why should he get all the praise for doing what any father should do?”

So again, this points to the judgements we make being relative. What we perceive as being a “good” father isn’t the same as what we perceive a “good” mother is. We hold women and men to different standards based on gender stereotypes that we all have internalised to some degree. 

Going back to the example of the workplace, research shows that mothers whose behaviour goes against the stereotype – so, mothers who are employed full-time, are not only perceived as less nurturing but they are also perceived as less competent in their role than fathers employed full-time in the same role. So the job is the same. The amount of time spent at the job is the same. The fact that men and women in these roles both have children is the same. The only difference is gender. The full-time employed mother is seen as less competent than the full-time employed father. Why is that? Is she actually performing less well than her male counterpart or is it a reflection of how we as a society view mothers who work outside of the home?

Hi there Fierce Kind Mama

Sorry to interrupt the discussion but I have something to share with you that I know you are going to love.

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In another study, a researcher sent application letters to several accounting firms. He looked at the outcome when the applicant was either female or male and either a parent or not. Not surprisingly from what we’ve already discussed, applicants who were perceived to be mothers were contacted significantly less often about the job whereas being perceived as a father had no effect on whether the male applicant was contacted about the job. 

It's important to point out here that very things are black and white. And so far, we’ve been chatting about the shifting standards model and how gender stereotypes influence our perception of mothers and fathers. 

But other theories and research would suggest that things may not be so clear cut. In particular, social role theory would say that an individual’s behaviour and attitudes are shaped by the roles they play in society. Gender roles still come into play here. The idea that women are expected to be nurturing and caring and men are expected to be assertive and competitive is a fairly common gender role, according to social role theory. According to sole role theory, we also develop expectations of people based on their role. So, if you were visiting a medical doctor, you would probably expect him or her to be knowledgeable, competent, and professional regardless of the doctor's parental status. In other words, you would expect a mother or father who is a doctor to be knowledgeable, competent, and professional. Whether or not the doctor is a mother or a father doesn’t really matter. 

So, in the workplace, social role theory would say that it doesn’t matter if the worker is a mother or a father; the judgements we make about the worker would rest solely on our expectations of what he or she should be doing in the role. So, mothers and fathers would be judged similarly. 

In one study by Kathleen Fuegen and colleagues, they gave participants a number of job applications from different types of applicants. The applicants were depicted as either male or female and as either single with no children or married with two young children. Participants were then asked to make judgements about the applicants’ commitment to the job, their competence, and how available they think they’d be. Participants were also asked what they would want from the applicant before deciding to hire him or her. They were asked questions like: “what level of performance would you require from this applicant before hiring?” “What degree of commitment would you require before hiring?” Participants were also asked if they would consider hiring the applicant. 

According to the shifting standards model, we would expect an applicant depicted as female with children to be judged more harshly than a male applicant with children. So, mothers would be held to different standards than fathers. 

If, on the other hand, we were basing the results on social role theory alone, then we would expect applicants with children would be judged more harshly than applicants without children. So, gender is not important here; what matters is our perception of parents in general. 

So, let me pose the question to you…what do you think they found?

Were the results supportive of one of these models?

Well, yes and no. I said earlier that very few things are black and white and this research demonstrates that quite well. 

The results supported social role theory in that parents were seen as less committed to the job, less available, and less assertive and achievement-oriented than non-parents. 

But the results also supported the shifting standards model because when the job applicant was a father, he was held to lower performance and time commitment standards than men who were not fathers. And when compared to mothers, fathers were also held to more lenient performance standards. So basically, participants expected less from fathers and more from mothers. 

In fact, mothers were not only held to somewhat higher standards compared to females who were not mothers, but mothers were also judged less likely to be hired and promoted than females who were not parents. 

All in all, participants judged mothers more harshly than they did fathers. This suggests that mothers will need to do more on the job to prove their competence. 

Regardless of whether you are a mother or a father employed outside the home or not, I invite you to consider the judgements you and others around you make about mothers and fathers. 

If you are in a heterosexual relationship, do you notice that you are treated differently when you engage in the childrearing tasks as opposed to when your partner does?

Have you ever been treated differently in a work context than to those who don’t have kids?

Do you agree that we as a community, as a society as a whole, as a culture – do we treat mothers more harshly?

I’ve been thinking about this topic a lot lately because in my community and the clients that I work with, I’m having lots of discussions with women, in particular, about working outside of the home and having to take time off work to raise children and the broader implications of this. 

One of the consistent themes I hear is that workplaces may say all the right things in that they may say that offer flexible working arrangements and they may offer hybrid ways of working.

We saw this increase in more flexible working arrangements and hybrid ways of working during the pandemic. 

But I also hear from many women who say things like: “I have to take one of my kids to an appointment this week and I’m afraid my boss won’t let me swap days or make up the time.” And then I get curious about that and I say, “what makes you think that?” The response is usually something along the lines of “well, they weren’t too happy when I asked last time, and I can tell that they are getting tired of me asking.”

Now we could argue that that’s all in her head and unless they actually said those words that they are sick of her asking, she’s probably just imagining it. But I trust based on all the research I’ve summarised here which is really just the tip of the iceberg that when a woman and a mother is having to repeatedly ask for time off or for special considerations and she senses that her employer is annoyed, I trust that that mother’s gut feeling is probably correct. And while an employer might also get annoyed with a father who is asking for lots of time off or for special considerations, I would suspect that some, if not most, workplaces would see that differently -they would probably treat him more leniently. 

In fact, one of the reasons I decided to work for myself was because after having children I needed more flexible working arrangements, and this is a really common story I hear from mothers. 

This isn’t unique to mothers of multiples, of course, but it certainly can be more exacerbated in mothers of multiples who often have more children to care for and find it harder to return to work because of the cost of childcare. 

I know here in Australia the majority of families report that the cost of childcare is prohibitive. Many mothers take off more time from paid work than they had wanted or hoped to because they simply can’t afford childcare. And sadly, we know that this is the case in many other countries too. 

As I’m speaking I’m reminded of another personal example where I felt judged as a mother and it’s relevant to me also being employed. 

At this stage, my kids were maybe 3 years old, and I was working employed part-time at a 9 to 5 job. So, this was before I decided to work for myself. 

On the days that I worked, my boys would go to a local childcare. 

One day, I received a call form the childcare service that one of my sons had developed a rash. And they wanted me to pick him up and take him to the doctor to make sure it wasn’t anything contagious. 

It was a hot day and I asked them if they had put sunscreen on him and they said yes and so I wondered if it could have been a reaction to that because I knew when I dropped him off that morning, he wasn’t showing any signs of illness. 

But of course, I went to pick him up and I was really lucky that I was able to get an appointment with a doctor that same day. 

My son was really happy, showing no signs of illness at all and when we saw the doctor he confirmed that it was a reaction to the sunscreen and that my son was fine. 

I then told the doctor that I needed a medical clearance so that my son could go back to childcare because the childcare centre specifically asked for that. 

And the doctor said no, he wasn’t able to write me a letter. 

And when I asked him why not, why he couldn’t write the letter, he said “somebody has to stay home and to take care of him.”

I was quite surprised by this response and I said “but you told me it was nothing and that if I put this other cream on him that he’d be fine, so why can’t he go back to childcare?”

And the doctor just said “you need to look after him in case he gets worse.”

Now I left that office feeling really angry for a number of reasons. I was angry at the doctor for first telling me my son was perfectly fine but on the other hand, telling me I needed to stay home and look after him in case he got worse. But I was also angry at myself for not doing more or saying more to this doctor who happened to be an older male doctor. 

I’m not sure how he would have responded but I later felt the urge to question whether his decision to not provide me with the medical clearance to send my son back to childcare was because I was a woman. 

In fact, I rang my partner straight after the appointment, after I picked up the over-the-counter cream that I was meant to put on my son which by the way cleared up the rash within like an hour, and I was livid. And my partner couldn’t understand why the doctor didn’t write the letter. He even questioned what I had said to the doctor as if maybe something I said made influenced the doctor’s decision. 

At this point, I remember my feeling of complete powerlessness and I said to my partner “I bet this wouldn’t have happened if you had taken our son to the appointment.”

Again, this sparked another discussion between my partner and I about how we are treated differently when it comes to childrearing. But I truly believe that if my partner attended the clinic with our son and asked the doctor for a letter so he could return to work that the doctor would have provided the letter no questions asked. 

In my opinion, this is simply another example of how mothers are held to different standards than fathers. 

I feel like we started this conversation on one path which was how mothers are perceived by others, in particular, how they are judged differently in comparison to others, and I think we’ve shown that mothers may in fact, be treated differently to women without children and of course, to men – both fathers and those without children. 

We’ve explored how mothers have traditionally largely been held solely responsible for problems we might see in their children, including medical illnesses or disease, and the idea that somehow these mothers should have done more. Had they only been warmer, more nurturing – we could fill in the blank here with whatever would fit – but the idea again being that the mother could have and should have done more. 

And of course, this lineage of maternal blame spills over into our modern-day perceptions of mothers, particularly in the workforce. 

I’ve highlighted several studies that show how mothers are held to different standards on the job. 

I know that I’ve shared with you my personal experiences of how I too have felt judged by others and treated differently than my male partner, the father of our children. And we’ve done a lot of work and continue to do a lot of work on our relationship to address the inherent gender inequality that can exist in couples raising kids together. 

In fact, if as your listening to this, you are thinking my partner and I could use some help in navigating our relationship then I encourage you to check out my workshop called Love Rekindled: Baby-Proofing your Relationship with Multiples – it’s available on my website https://www.fiercekindmama.com/services

It’s not only for couples who are expecting or have newborns – it can also be for those of you with older children who maybe feel like the spark between you and your partner is gone. And I do try to make it inclusive for those couples who are not in a heterosexual relationship. 

I just think it’s really important to have frank, open and vulnerable conversations about how we experience being a parent to multiples. But I’m also mindful that what we’ve been speaking about here today can raise a lot of discomfort or negative emotion in us too. I know that when we focus and think about issues like gender inequality either at home or in the workplace, we can experience a sense of injustice and we can feel anger, frustration, sadness and even loss. 

We may experience a yearning for a life we once had before having children that was unencumbered and more carefree perhaps than it is now with all the adult and parental responsibilities we have day to day. 

In fact, I’ve spoken with many mothers from my community, my social as well as professional sphere, including in my clinical work and so many mothers I speak with seem to be expressing themes of being blamed or feeling like they are being treated differently than fathers. 

And this can range from more minor perceived failings like when their kids accuse them of misplacing their favourite toy, for example, all the way to more serious allegations like when their adult children blame them for their current problems and stop talking to them. I’ve had some mothers tell me that their adult daughter or son will speak to their father, so the adult child’s father that is, but the adult child will choose to cease contact with the mother because no matter what she does or says, it never seems to be good enough. 

So, if you are listening to this and you are thinking oh my goodness, that sounds like what my kids do, like maybe your kids seem to blame you for everything and you feel like you can’t do anything right sometimes or maybe as you are listening to this you are thinking about your relationship with your own mother. I know that when I became a mother, I often reflected on how my mother raised me and the challenges she must have experienced as an immigrant woman. 

And in many ways, I am in a similar position to her in that I am raising kids far away – very far away in fact from my own family.  

It wasn’t until I became a mother myself that I could fully appreciate what she had been through, and I could see her in a different light. Becoming a mother helped to give me that perspective that previously I was somewhat blinded from. It was like someone pulled the curtains open and I could finally see what was right in front of me the whole time. 

So, as we wind up this discussion, I encourage you to check in with yourself now and simply notice if any negative emotions are present and take a moment if you can to acknowledge those feelings. You might like to grab a pen and paper or jot some notes down in your phone or wherever you are listening to this episode. You might like to spend some time journaling or writing the feelings down. 

You might like to reflect on a time where you felt judged as a parent and simply speak out loud some words of encouragement and praise that you could offer that younger version of yourself. Often when we can see the situation as more of an observer, from that perspective of someone else looking in, rather than getting entangled in the emotion, that can help bring clarity. It can help us see the situation from a clearer point of view which helps us to know what do next. 

If this is something you’d like to explore more in a therapeutic way, then I would suggest seeking out the support of a psychologist, coach, counsellor, spiritual leader - anyone you think you could build a therapeutic relationship with. I know many professionals, including myself, offer online therapeutic services these days so there are lots of options out there that I’d encourage you to explore if you think that could be useful to you. 

For now, I hope that you have found something useful from this conversation today. If anything I’ve said today in this episode has resonated with your experience, or if you have any thoughts or feedback about what we’ve discussed, please get in touch. 

And if you have a story or experience you’d like to share with me, please reach out to me. As always, my inbox is literally here ready and waiting for you. So feel free to email me at hello@fiercekindmama.com

Thank you so much for being here.