Episode 37: [GUEST] Mitigating Burnout As a Mother and Author with Alyssa Brade

This week’s podcast episode with guest, Alyssa Brade, is packed full of insights into mitigating burnout as a Mother and Author. You’ll come away with insights and strategies for your writing. You’ll find yourself connecting right away with Alyssa’s stories of motherhood that led her to write, Mommy Needs a Minute: From Burnout to Empowerment (this is an affiliate link, so if you click here and purchase you’ll be supporting the Inspired Writer Collective). Alyssa talks about the exhaustion that comes with being a new mom and trying to do everything for everyone, and ultimately losing herself in the process. She was trying to navigate childcare while: working, going to school, maintaining a relationship with her husband, and managing her home. A traumatic experience involving one of her sons, and becoming very sick herself, led Alyssa to evaluate her priorities and where she needed to put her energy. She was exhausted from pushing hard, a feeling many moms can relate to, and it led her to share her insights about how to mitigate burnout and hold onto your identity with the hope of helping other moms not feel so alone. Alyssa wrote her book in 12 months and is a self-published author. Here are a few of her tips she shares about how she was able to get writing done: making sure she met a daily word count goal, writing even when she wasn’t feeling inspired, choosing a time of day to write for an hour. The words Alyssa wrote were far from perfect every day. This is a reality of the writing process. It’s not going to be your best writing every time you sit down. Alyssa emphasizes the importance of making the time to write. Even when you don’t feel like it. Even if you’re not inspired. Alyssa shares her experience with publishing and marketing her book. She encourages you to get started even if you’re not sure what you’re doing. You’ll learn a lot in the process and what works for someone else may not work for your book. Alyssa goes on to talk about her struggles with entering motherhood and taking on that identity. It wasn’t what she had planned for, but she has since embraced the joy of the journey. She continues to work on not losing her own sense of self as an Author. She shares words of encouragement to other moms and women about holding onto what you enjoy and not letting motherhood consume you. Also, that it’s okay to grieve the loss of an aspect of your identity, and this should be normalized. The pressures of society often make many women feel guilty for how they feel about becoming a mom. You’ll appreciate hearing the honesty and down to earth perspective shared by Alyssa in this podcast episode. It’s real and relatable. If you’re interested in listening to additional podcasts that touch upon this topic, you can find more discussions in the following episodes (these links take you to our YouTube channel): Episode 34, Episode 20, Episode 13, Episode 7

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Transcript

Elizabeth: 0:00

Welcome listeners. We are back with another guest episode of the inspired writer collective today. I'm here with Alyssa braid who lives with her husband and two toddler boys in the remote countryside of Washington state with degrees and experience in English and anthropology, plus her own new mom level of research. She has brought us a new book. This is called mommy needs a minute. From burnout to empowerment and this is her self published book About a number of different areas of burnout that moms particularly new moms experience So we're going to talk with elissa today about why she felt led to write this book in the first place What her writing process as a mom of two young kids looked like And now as a published author What that marketing piece is like for a self published nonfiction book. So welcome, Alyssa. Thank you so much for taking time out of your, I'm sure, busy schedule to be here with us today. And welcome to the podcast.

Alyssa: 1:04

Thank you so much for having me, Elizabeth, and thank you for the warm welcome. I'm very excited to chat with you.

Elizabeth: 1:10

Awesome. So start us out. Tell us what it was about your own experience that led you to say, I need to write this down because I'm struggling and I know others are struggling too.

Alyssa: 1:24

Oh, that's a great question. I think it all started when I first had my first born son and I realized just how few protocols were in place for moms in particular when it came to support, um, and how exhausting and overwhelming it was. I feel I talked to a lot of new moms and Exhaustion, burnout, um, and it ended up leading to trying to do it all and be it all and manage it all and how exhausting and overwhelming that was. So, I ended up, I had my first born son in the middle of my master's degree program. I was working as well and I was a full time stay at home mom. We didn't have great child care in my area. Um, and then after I graduated, I found out I was pregnant again with our second and so I was working, I was pregnant, I had a five month old, I was really sick and I was just pushing all ends of the spectrum, um, as far as work, mom, life, um, trying to maintain my relationship with my husband and it was felt really overwhelming, uh, it ended up getting to a point where I got really sick, uh, I ended up fainting, carrying my son down the stairs, uh, dropping him, dropping him. His head hit the concrete. He ended up getting internal hemorrhage hemorrhaging inside of his brain. Um, doctors told us he might not live. It was a quite traumatic experience. Long story short, he ended up being okay by some miracle. And I really equated that to I needed to get my priorities in my life. together and started lead what in our society and w a woman as a mom was lead to such extremes um, in o mom and to do it all and

Elizabeth: 3:16

is so beautifully written guilt cycle chapter near Where you share that story of like holding your son while you're pregnant with your second child and all of that thought process that you share. I mean, you really put the reader like in that scene and anyone who has been a mom can so relate to that level of. guilt that you feel over those, you know, accidents that invariably happen. I mean, our, our goal is to keep our kids alive. Right. And there are some times where some things happen, where we have these potentially catastrophic things that, that occur. And we like rake ourselves over the coals for it. I'll share. I had an instance, I think my daughter was 10 days old. I had wedged her in the corner of like, A multi piece sectional. So she was like far from the edge of the couch and I was setting up her swing. I was literally right there, but I was turned away from her and a baby who had never rolled and didn't roll again for another, I don't know, months and months and months, somehow I turned around and she's on the floor. I mean, this is like a fall from a couch, you know, like standard size couch. And I. Was absolutely mortified and felt all of the guilt and all of the emotions and, you know, asked my then wife for help, but also felt super guilty about the fact that, like, I may have just caused, you know, spinal cord injury or, you know, something awful and. Luckily babies are pretty resilient and flexible and are made to do some of those things. Their bodies haven't, you know, solidified quite yet. And, and so she was fine, but I could absolutely relate to the level of guilt that you portrayed in that story. You know, feeling like, oh, I tried to do everything I could, I tried to turn my body, I tried to do this and that and protecting this baby and this baby. And then just feeling at a loss of like, it's never enough. It's, will it ever be enough?

Alyssa: 5:17

I'm, uh, yes, and I'm so sorry that happened to you. I feel like so sorry. Many women have stories along those lines of mistakes, accidents, you're human, you, you're exhausted, you're functioning on such little sleep and you're doing your best. And yes, that guilt, that soul crushing guilt that you've just destroyed this young person's life that you were trying your best to pour everything into. I'm so happy to hear that your daughter is okay. I, I, as you know, I can very much empathize and relate to that, that feeling of overwhelm and helplessness. so much.

Elizabeth: 5:51

So what did your writing process look like while you had these two young boys? You're this full time stay at home mom. You do such a beautiful job of painting this picture in the book, but I won't spoil that for the listeners. So if you'll share with us, uh, for our podcast audience, what did that look like? How did you carve out the time? And I believe you said you did this in like 12 months. getting this book written and out.

Alyssa: 6:14

Yeah. So what I did for me was it was very important to treat writing as a discipline as much as it was something that I. So I didn't just write when I felt inspired. I committed to a certain word count every day. It started out at 100 words, and then I pushed myself to 500 words a day. Um, and I would get up early in the morning. Uh, for some people, they're more night owls, so they do better in the late evening. Uh, but I did better in the early morning. I'd get up at 4 a. m., and I would write for an hour every day. Fired at the words came, if they didn't come, I forced myself to sit and write for at least an hour every day. Um, sometimes I wrote over the 500 words. Sometimes the 500 words were just gibberish. I was like, I'm going to have to go back and totally rework all of these. Um, but it was that commitment and that dedication and that discipline, um, is what really ended up helping me get to that point where at the end I was like, Oh my goodness, I have, I have a book and it's, and it's ready and, and Um, that time management to just take take the time, whether you feel like it or not, whether you feel inspired or not to sit down and write.

Elizabeth: 7:27

Yeah, and in the book you describe the scene of you and this parka with this little space heater in the basement using a cooler as your table. And while that's not my writing environment, that's certainly a similar vibe to the environment I might use as a mom to like, go eat a snack that I want to eat and I don't want to have to share with anyone little, you know, it's so it was very relatable in that sense of like the way. We as moms have to find those small little spaces that maybe aren't the most ideal environments, but it's what we've got. And it gives us that little bit of escape to have that time for ourselves. Whether that's, you know, you're talking into your phone, making a voice memo as you're on the treadmill at the gym that happens to have the free childcare, you know, whatever that looks like. Um, I think that's quite admirable that you took that approach and that level of discipline with your writing. That has not been something I've been able to implement very well. I started shifting to the 4 a. m. timeframe because I'm much more of a morning person than a night owl. And my daughter decided she was also eager to get up Um just as early if she got any vibe that I was up I don't know if we're just that well connected or whatnot, but she crept into that early morning time and i'm like Forget this we're both losing sleep And i'm not getting anything done Um, but that's so admirable that you were able to to focus that way and to be so diligent with your writing process Did you find um, just curiosity? Um That you're like first draft is vastly different than your final draft or were there just minor tweaks and changes and shifts. What what did you notice about like your writing process or editing process?

Alyssa: 9:12

So for a nonfiction book, I feel like it's probably different than a fiction book. I'm in the process of writing a fiction novel right now. So I would say the two processes, at least for me, were really are really different. Um, the first draft of my nonfiction was, it was my heart. And it was my stories and how I explored and worked through a lot of the areas of burnout in my life. Um, so the first draft was very similar to the final draft. The only difference was that I, um, I went in for the final draft and I added in all the research I'd done. So I did a lot of research on my own before I even wrote the book to start working on my own self and understanding what was going on on a social level. Um, so I took a lot of different sources from sociology, anthropology, communication, um, and I looked at how all of these different factors influence motherhood and our perceptions of motherhood and our perceptions of ourselves, our identities within motherhood, um, and so I wrote the first draft with a lot of my personal experience. And personal stories and the takeaways that I took and then I went in for this final draft and I added back in where I found that research what helped guide me to that conclusion. Um, so that was kind of the process for the nonfiction. I feel like for fiction writing, at least. In my opinion, it's been a really different experience. Um, the first draft looks night and day different from the final draft. You probably wouldn't even think it's the same book.

Elizabeth: 10:41

Yeah, that could happen for sure. I think you did some really genius things with this book. Um, for one, I love that you started with information burnout. And then you did not inundate the reader with information throughout the rest of the book, you know, you allude to the fact that, like, if you want to dig into more there, here's the, you know, citations and references in the back of the book, but also know that information burnout is a real thing that's going to hold you back and lean into your intuition instead. And then you went a step further and provided the reader with what I think is the most genius piece of this book, which is the takeaways at the end of each chapter. So at the end of each chapter, Alyssa has. Clearly takeaways, and then a number of bullets, usually no more than a page, of the key information that she wants the reader to have for each of these chapters. Now, as I was reading your book, what I ended up doing is I, I read the intro in the first chapter and got to the takeaways, and I was like, oh great, I can save time. Let me just breeze through the takeaways of each chapter, um, to see which ones I want to go back and read in full. And so, While I don't have, you know, young kids anymore, I have a five year old, um, that I'm still a busy mom trying to manage mostly stay at home mom life plus the, you know, podcasting and writing business. And so it was so helpful for time management to have these takeaways because then I could flag the chapters I wanted to spend more time digging into ahead of this interview and this conversation, but also like of the ones that I was like, Oh, I don't have a whole lot that I can relate to or that, or I feel like I've. I've already learned a lot of these lessons through my own process. It was so easy to be able to really utilize this book as a tool, um, in order to figure out, okay, here's where I can relate. Here's where I want to do a little bit more reading. And personally, because of my own experience, I spent some time in the identity and career chapter. And I wonder if you would be willing to speak a little bit about your own struggles with that identity and that career piece and the division of, of your time between wanting to have these achievements and also trying to be the kind of mother you wanted to show up to be, but not just be a mom.

Alyssa: 12:53

I think that's such a great question. Um, one that I feel like, um, a lot of women I've talked to can really relate to. I, when, when I was really little, I told my mom, I want an extraordinary life. And I told her, and I, from a little young age, I didn't want to babysit. I didn't want to play baby dolls. I didn't want to play house. I was the explorer and I was always the one going and the hero saving the day. And that was the games I wanted to play when I was little. I never wanted to be a homemaker. I never wanted to have children. Um, when my boyfriend and I got together, I told him kids are not in the cards for me. I don't want to have kids. Um, and I was told by doctors that I'd have a really hard time getting pregnant. You're like, perfect. This is it. No kids. Um, I was very career focused. So was my then boyfriend now husband at the time. Um, we were both looking at careers that were 70, 80 hours a week, a lot of travel. And we were thriving. We were excited about this. Um, so as I was finishing my master's degree, um, and I was preparing to send out my resumes, I found out I was pregnant right before COVID started. And I. was devastated. I ended up calling my mom crying and just telling her I'm never gonna have that extraordinary life that I wanted. My life is over. Um, and it took a long time to get to a point where I realized that my Children are a beautiful addition to my life. But they are not the only thing that defined my life. And I think I've grown up with the role models in my life for women who they gave everything for their children. There was no them outside of their children. Um, and everyone's careers got put on hold and that's what you were supposed to do. And that was one of the biggest steps I took in my family being the first one to say, Oh, I might not want to be a full time. Homemaker, I might not want to homeschool all of my Children. I might not want to, um, be give up my career and just watch my kids grow up and then not know who I am afterwards. I might not want that. Um, and so starting to work through that and also in conjunction, letting go of the guilt that comes with that, that guilt of Feeling like you somehow owe your children, everything, all of you, every part of you. And so you lose yourself in that, um, was a really big step to take. I think that you have your children and they only need you like they need you now for such a short time. So of course, prioritize them, give them, give them the best parts of your attention and your mental energy and your physical energy and your emotional wellbeing. Um, but don't. But don't lose yourself or forget about yourself in the process. And that looks like things like writing a book or pursuing the career that you're still ambitious about. And being able to find the balance between knowing who you are and knowing that it's not going to look the same as it would if you didn't have any children. And that's okay. I think those are the two hardest aspects of motherhood for me, for sure.

Elizabeth: 15:56

Yeah, I definitely came. I mean, the choice to enter into motherhood was an intentional one for me, but when I became the stay at home mom, that was, I guess it was a little bit of a choice, but it was a force leaving my career and then it became a what now? Okay, I guess I'll be the stay at home parent while my then spouse goes out and becomes the breadwinner. Whereas I had been the one going outside of the home prior to that. And certainly I've run into a number of struggles, which I. I'm writing about in my own memoir about, you know, how I, you know, had challenges facing my motherhood obligations, such as breastfeeding and pumping and everything, along with my going to work and being called out to crime scenes and just everything that I was dealing with and experiencing on a day to day. Um, so I can, it can relate in that sense, but definitely came at it from a different way where it wasn't so much a choice of, you know, My part is like, Oh, I'm going to choose to leave my career to be the stay at home mom. It was like, I've left my career. Now, I guess I'm going to be the stay at home mom because that's what my family needs from me. And I also felt that extreme loss of identity, especially since we, we, that came along with a move, a relocation, and so losing that support system, losing that sense of community, and having to like rebuild all of that, right? Um, so I really love the the advice that you give within the identity chapter, and I also love in this chapter how you take the time to talk about some of the things that is true about motherhood and is wonderful, like motherhood is beautiful, it's life changing, um, It'll fulfill you with your natural nurturing role and then you go on to list an equal number of things That you weren't told that are also true about motherhood motherhood can be lonely motherhood can be complicated it can be monotonous and repetitive and you know, you would feel depleted balancing the role of mother and lover and I I love that you went there in in these these lists and and are helping kind of normalize the fact that Yeah, it's beautiful, it's great, it's one of the best things I've ever done, and it's also one of the hardest and one of the most draining and one of the things I have to be most intentional about because it feels so high stakes, but yet when you look back at it, it's almost like, does it matter if they ate an organic cracker or a regular cracker? They were fed, they were happy, you know, they're not going to remember this. Why am I driving myself absolutely crazy? You know, trying to, to be this. whatever this vision or what society paints as like the ideal mother role, right?

Alyssa: 18:41

Yes. And I, I love that you say that. And you talk about that too, because I feel like many women, um, are, there's so many different ends of the spectrum and so many different stories of you, you were kind of forced into this. To the motherhood role and you were like, I feel extreme identity loss and I feel like in some ways sometimes when that happens, um, at least for me, I felt like the life I wanted or the life I've been working so hard for was stolen from me. Like it was stolen from me and replaced with motherhood and. I wasn't allowed to grieve it because in doing that it may be a bad mom because I didn't want my kids or I didn't, I didn't want to be a good mom or every mom wants to be a stay at home mom. There's women around the world who would give anything to be a stay at home mom. And so you should be extremely grateful and you shouldn't grieve the career you lost and you shouldn't grieve the identity you lost because this is something everybody wants. Um, and I think there's that also that social element to that comes into play that makes you feel guilty about losing that piece of yourself or that part of your life you've worked for for some people for decades. And, um, and there's that element of guilt that it's like, No, I think we need to normalize the fact that it's okay to grieve a loss. And that is a loss, whether it is being. replaced with something just as beautiful. It doesn't mean that it's not hard to let go of that piece of your life.

Elizabeth: 20:07

And I noticed it most within my social circles because being the stay at home mom, and I don't know if you experienced this too, especially being in a remote area, like you are all of my socializing then became defined around being a mom too. So it's like all the groups I was spending any kind of time with. I was there because I was a mom, right? And so it was like, I wasn't able to exercise any portion of my identity outside being a mom. It was like this play group or this thing, and you just hope you meet other parents there that also have similar interests to you outside of, you know, their child rearing practices and beliefs, you know, but it's, it can be really difficult to find even those social connections outside of that mom identity. Everything becomes just so. Um, I don't know, just singular in the fact that it's all around being a mom. It's

Alyssa: 21:01

true and I love that you say that because I think even our conversations are, even my spouse, I have to be like, we're not talking about the kids right now, we're talking about us and what we want and what we like and how your day was and how my day was outside of just our children. And I feel like I can really empathize with that even in the, like you said, your, your identity becomes centered around. Mom life. So your conversations are all about your kids. And most of, I had this conversation with my spouse. I was like, most of the people I hang out with my friends don't even realize who I was or what I did. Nobody knows if I have a degree or not, what I did outside of my children, who I was outside of my children. Um, sometimes some of my friends get a little over a little comment or something in there. You have that and it's amazing to discover how little you know about your friend group when you're a mom outside of their parenting preferences and what snacks they give their toddlers.

Elizabeth: 22:02

Absolutely. Well, I think that's a perfect segue to take this conversation away from our roles as moms and the various burnouts and talk about as a writer and as a now published author What has it been like? What are the difficulties, challenges, new areas of growth and learning around marketing this book? Because, and I ask this specifically because so many writers pinpoint the marketing of the book as one of the reasons why either they want to go the traditional route or they don't want to write at all, and you self published this book, so I'm very curious about how you have viewed the marketing, how you view the long term plan for this book, And just your experience as a, an author.

Alyssa: 22:47

I think I would agree with you. Marketing was the most intimidating part for me. Writing the book was easy in comparison, doing, figuring out Amazon's KDP, um, and figuring out which formats to do and the ISBN numbers and then figuring out how to bring it to market in a way that reaches my target audience was exhausting. I think that the biggest takeaway that I could give people is not to be afraid to start. If you wait until you're going to do it perfectly you will never do it. Um, because there is no perfect way to do it. The information is always changing. The audience is changing. What might work for one author won't work for you. I had fiction, fiction, author friends who are fiction writers, and they told me all these incredible tips, wonderful tips, tips that had helped them build their book sales exponentially. None of them worked for me. And that's okay. It doesn't mean that their tips were wrong. It just meant that my demographic, my book was different. As a non fiction book, I had to market it a little differently. Um, I could go into specific tips or specific advice that worked well for my book, but I think I would love to tell you. Is you have to do it. And you learn through trial and error. Mm-Hmm. everybody loves to hear. If you want to wait to deal, you do it perfectly. You can't do it. Um, because there's so much to learn and there's so many things that you're going to do wrong. And if you view those failures as incredible lessons to learn and to grow instead of as setbacks, if you adopt that growth mindset, then there's. Nothing that you won't be able to a successful in if you just pushing it and learning and growing, taking away from those failures and setbacks all of the incredible lessons that you can apply and pass down. And if you look at successful people, everyone who's ever been. Way more times than they succeed the big consistently throughout so many people's lives is their dedication and resilience to stick with it and to keep doing those small dedicated steps. So, my goal is, I don't do all of the marketing things. I don't do everything perfectly. I tackle 1 small area and I do 1 small, sustainable, manageable, imperfect every day. Whether that be a small. Whether that be a conversation with Elizabeth, I choose one small thing and I connect with the incredible people in my audience who are interested in my book, and I don't stress or worry about the millions of other things I could do that might reach millions of other people because it's too exhausting and overwhelming. And when I do that, I don't have the motivation to even start or try because I'm too overwhelmed. Um, So for me, I just focus on one small thing and I do one step at a time. Um, and connecting with other authors, other like minded people like Elizabeth is such a great way to network and encourage each other and gain more tips as you're in the industry. I think one of the hardest things to do is to. You can't gain tips without actually having a book published because it's hard to see how it's going to play out and the dynamic, and you don't have anything concrete to go off of. You just have other people's stories that you're trying to write your own story based off of. And when you do that, you have an incomplete story. So

Elizabeth: 26:23

cliche, but it feels so apt. And it's what the analogy that's coming to my mind as I'm hearing you talk. Not only are you mimicking, you know, the discipline that you had with your writing with your marketing now. But it makes me think so much about parenting as a whole and about how you have to treat each kid uniquely Just like you have to treat each book uniquely And certain marketing things that work for even you as an author With your non fiction book may not work for you as an author with your fiction book That's a different book a different kid a different thing. You have to Approach and you as the guardian of it have to decide what's going to be best for it maybe you try something and you see if it works and And maybe it does or maybe it doesn't. And then all the advice that you hear, you still have to filter through that lens of is this right for my book, just like you would as a parent filtering through, well, is this right for our family? Is this right for my child? You know, is this, you know, Is this other, you know, cry it out method better? Or what kind of bedtime do I want? What works with our family? You have to filter it through that lens using that intuition, using that insight and that you that knowledge that you have because you uniquely know your book. You uniquely know yourself as an author and making sure that you're doing what represents you and the book best. And so it's exactly what we try, you know, to do as parents. So, um, you know, if maybe writers will, you know, writers who are parents will make the best, you know, marketers who knows, but I just, I just had to, I know it's cliche, but I just had to put that analogy out there because that's what was kind of ringing in my head of like, Oh, Yeah, I have, I don't have a book I have to market yet, but I'm familiar with what Alyssa's saying, but I'm familiar with it in a like getting all this information and all this advice lens of parenting and then having to decide, okay, what's gonna work for me? What am I willing to try? What re do resources do I have and how can I utilize those to best serve, you know, this project?

Alyssa: 28:28

I love it. I love that you brought it full circle, because I do think just like, just like with marketing your book, just like with parenting, you can waste. So many resources on things that aren't appropriate for you or right for you or right for Um your child or your book and you can spend time, money, energy, doing all the things that work for other people, and you keep hitting dead end walls because they don't work for you. And then you get frustrated. And instead of thinking something's wrong with the method you're using, you think that something's wrong with you. So I would encourage you not to get to that point. Um, there's nothing wrong with you. Um, there might be something wrong with the method that you're using and it might not be authentic. People are attracted to what is authentic. Um, your children will be attracted to what's authentic, authentic parenting that comes from who you are, whether it goes with what everybody else is doing or not is always more attractive and sustainable than a role that you're playing or a mask that you're wearing. Um, and I would say the same thing with marketing. You need to choose a marketing technique that is authentic to who you are as an author, that's sustainable for you, um, and that is authentic to what your book is and the message of your book, because that will appeal to way more readers than all of the other millions of things that you can try stretching yourself too thin.

Elizabeth: 29:49

Exactly. So Alyssa, thank you for being here today. Listeners grab a copy of her book off of Amazon. Mommy needs a minute. We will have Alyssa's links to social media and everything within the podcast episode notes. Again, thank you for being here, Alyssa, and have fun with your boys today. Thank you. Thank you for having me. All right. Bye.