S3E12 - What 2 years of motherhood taught me about life, work and growth

In this solo episode, Ksenia is reflecting on two years of motherhood and the 7 powerful lessons it has taught her about life, work, and growth. These are not just parenting lessons; they’re insights anyone can apply in their career, studies, or personal life, especially if you’ve ever struggled with boundaries, perfectionism, or identity in your work.

She talks about:

🌱 The importance of mentorship and guidance
🌱 Why community and friendships matter (even when life feels overwhelming)
🌱 Living and acting from your values
🌱 Protecting your boundaries
🌱 Not letting motherhood - or academia - become your whole identity
🌱 Banishing perfectionism and comparison
🌱 Remembering that growth is not linear

If you’re a scientist, academic, or young professional trying to balance ambition with wellbeing, this episode is for you - tune in for some honest reflections, gentle encouragement, and practical takeaways from Ksenia's journey.

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💡 If you resonated with these lessons about boundaries and balance, you’ll love Ksenia's free Leave Work at Work private pod + guided meditation designed to help you switch off after work, release guilt around rest, and protect your energy for the things (and people) that really matter. Get it here: subscribepage.io/leaveworkatworktraining

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:05

Hello, hello, welcome to this next episode of Mons Maths and Manuscripts. I'm alone again, sitting on the floor of my bedroom. Today was supposed to be a different episode. I was supposed to be interviewing a friend of mine and talking to her about motherhood and how motherhood reshapes, reimagines maybe, or leads to re-imagination of your life, your choices, your career, path, your goals, everything. So it was supposed to be a big, big, big conversation about a lot of different topics concerning becoming a mom for the first time and how this just shifts everything. And then you know, life happened, kids got sick, so today's um going to be a kind of an introduction to this topic done by me solo because the the interview will have to be postponed and it will it will still come, it will just probably be the next episode after this one. And today I thought I will introduce this topic a little bit by talking about lessons from motherhood. I'm my son has recently turned two, I'm two years into this journey, and there were some important lessons that I think I kind of wish that I learned earlier in life, and they are somewhat relevant to, or would have been relevant to my professional life, to my time in academia and research, or honestly, in any career where you feel, you know, the pressure to perform a certain way, the pressure to grind and hustle and show up as this um perfect version, perfect worker. I am going to go through these lessons and explain how I think they would have been relevant for my professional journey, for my career in the past. And they're in no particular order, no order of importance, just I think seven-ish lessons that I thought of that I found important in these last two years. The first one that came to my mind, kind of surprisingly, I was thinking that the most important one would be a different one. But I thought about mentorship and the importance of having good mentors, having good guides on this journey, because as much as this is just a natural process, natural flow of life, you know, the life goes on, we become parents, we uh start, you know, thinking about how do we want to bring up this next generation. There are certain things that, as natural as they are, they are difficult and they are a big, steep learning curve. And it's good when you have somebody holding your hand when you need to uh be held, and there's somebody guiding you, there's somebody at least telling you that you are doing a good job from time to time, because believe me, we need to hear this, especially in early days of motherhood. I used to think that if I got unlucky with mentors, if if I got unlucky with my PhD supervisor or master supervisor, whoever, any former manager, former um PI supervisor that I had, I that's that's just it. That's just bad luck, tough luck. I have to kind of wing it by myself. I never went out of my way to find somebody else who could guide me, who could help me become the best version, the best researcher, the best scientist that I could be. And in the same way, something that I didn't do this time around, and I would definitely do differently if I have another child, is finding a village of wiser women, finding a midwife, maybe finding a doula, maybe I had a lactation consultant, but maybe finding a different one and getting the help, getting the mentorship, getting the support that I needed was um was not done in the best way. In my first postpartum experience, and this is something that I would change, and this is a lesson for me and for others as well that you know, you need to have mentors, you need to have have guides, and you sometimes you do need to go out of your way to find them, and they don't just happen to be your bosses or your supervisors or your parents, maybe, or whoever, you know, sometimes you do need to look for them, and in the same way, in motherhood, a village also doesn't just happen organically, unfortunately, nowadays, because we are living very separated, very detached from each other, and you need to create your village, and sometimes that means that you need to have a paid village, so meaning your own midwives and doulas and support people, and that's fine. And I realize now that in the first pregnancy, I spent so much time thinking about the perfect, the perfect crib, the perfect prom, the perfect this and that, buying clothes and uh making sure that the house is ready for for a newborn, which is all important things, but it would have been much better to spend less time, less brain space, and less money on that, and actually put aside some financial resources and also take some time to look for people who would have then supported me postpartum much better than than you know than what I had initially. And the support, the mentorship, the guidance is instrumental in how many things in life go from early motherhood experience to professional, obviously, professional development and your career. And in the same vein, lesson or thought number two would be about people surrounding you, not necessarily mentors, but your friends, your colleagues, your family. And I remember how much I was trying to isolate myself, and that is for me, that is a warning sign of being stressed or being burnt out or on the verge of burnout. When I separate, like isolate myself deliberately from either colleagues, or then in in early motherhood it happened as well that I didn't really want to share anything with friends, I didn't want to talk to friends because I was thinking they wouldn't understand, and why would I be a downer? Why would I just complain to them? So I deliberately isolated myself, and it is I see it now, and like I knew it, but I didn't think about it back then in the early months of motherhood. It is a warning sign that I am not doing very well mentally, and we need people, we need a circle around us, we need friends, we need sometimes to to vent or to share with colleagues or to just run ideas by somebody. And it's so important to not like motherhood can be an isolating and lonely experience. And in the same in the same way, maybe particular careers can be isolating and lonely experience. Maybe you don't know anybody else in the same line of work. Maybe you think that your family or friends don't really understand what you're doing, and um they cannot relate to how much you're working and things like that. And it's so important to not add to it, to not um make it even worse by just deliberately removing yourself from people and and thinking, uh, you know, they will not understand, so I'm not even going to try, I'm not even going to talk to them, I'm or I'm too stressed and I don't have time, so I'm just not going to see people ever, and just remove myself from my social circle and my social life. And if you notice yourself doing that, don't. And basically, yeah, take it as a warning sign that you maybe need to pull back a little bit and reassess. Um, are you are you really stressed? Are you really struggling? And how can you try to put yourself out there and connect with people supporting you, loving you again so that you can get the help and and the support that you deserve. And one lesson that was difficult for me, I think it still is, I'm still kind of working through it, is that um motherhood is not everything. Like I dove headfirst and I wanted to be mom for like I wanted to be a mother for a long time for as long as I can remember myself. So I I was very much kind of aligning my identity with this with this change in my life. And it's easy to almost lose yourself. There is a big identity shift that's happening, like obviously you can never be the same, you that you were before becoming a mom. And but there are still some parts of you that you need to kind of protect and um still cultivate. So there are still some aspects of you beyond quote unquote just being a mother, and it's like it's your hobbies, your interests, your friends, and you need to put in effort to still have those parts of you and not just have your identity, your entire identity be your motherhood. And I feel like it might be that I have a tendency to do that a little bit, but there is a and I also see this in in some uh students and clients, and in some of my like colleagues or former colleagues, former friends from from academia from research, that their entire identity would be I'm a scientist or I'm a researcher or I am you know this profession and everything else is very secondary and very unimportant almost. And it is just a part of you, it is not the complete you. And if you are putting all your eggs in this basket, sort of, if you are um tying your entire life and your entire identity and pegging it onto the um how great of a researcher you are or how how perfect of a mother you are, you are going to struggle. And I think I'm learning it the hard way. Uh so I am trying to remember that I also have other interests, I also have other aspects of me. I'm not just a mom, and I need to take time and take some brain space and also actual physical space for things that make me feel like Xenia, Xenia, and not Xenia, the mom. So this is something that I'm still learning, but I found it very, very crucial. Um was not easy in the first few months to to remember that, but I think now that my child is getting older, it's getting easier and easier. And this is something that I definitely wish I knew or I understood earlier as well that I'm not just this title or I'm not just this career, this job, and there is it's just a part of me, and it's not the who me, and also you know, the the world is not going to end, and my life is not going to end if this part doesn't work out. And the next lesson is again something that is not very easy, but we are parenting our child in a way that is not very well understood by our parents, for example, or that is very different from the way we were parented, it's different from you know, some the way that some friends are parenting and seeing parenthood. And sometimes there are comments or there are there is pressure from the outside to do things a certain way, and it's not the way we want to do things, let's say feeding or sleep or you know, nursing, breastfeeding. And I think for us, it was always important that you know our we have specific values when it comes to our parenting journey, when it comes to our parenting decisions, and we try to align all the decisions with these values. And in the same vein in other areas of life, it's always important and it's always good to reconnect back to your values and to remember that your decisions and your actions have to kind of align with them and not with outside pressure. And this is definitely something that I I wish I'd done differently in the past in my PhD, that I was much more connected to, would have been much more connected with my with my values and my why and not kind of folded or succumbed to to certain uh certain pressures, to certain comments, to certain maybe side eyes from colleagues or from others. So I don't want to go too much into detail here because in the end it's not it's not about my PhD story or my academic journey story, but definitely there were there were there were moments where, for example, like my family is a value for me. And I was sort of almost abandoning my my then boyfriend, now husband, and barely seeing him, or whenever we would meet at home, we were living together, and I was barely seeing him. And whenever we did meet at home, I would be in my mind, still in the lab, or still like I wouldn't not, I would not be present with him. I would, I would get annoyed with him when he was talking about something that was important to him or about his job, and I was like, no, but my job. And I so in this case, I did not lead my life from this from this value and from realizing how important he was for me or my our family was for me. I was crumbling under the outside pressure to work more and to perform more and be this kind of other version, this this perfect researcher, this perfect PhD student that is just working 100% of the time and not needing any rest, not needing any time off or brain space for anything else other than research. So, in in the same way, in parenting, for me it's important that I'm parenting from my values and not reacting to outside advice, however well-meaning it is, that I'm certain and confident in why we're doing the things that we are doing, and not and I'm not making parenting decisions because somebody else said so, or because um somebody else gave this advice, so that must be correct. And kind of organically flowing from that is the question of boundaries. And you can probably guess that since I was crumbling under this pressure and and not dealing with with like peer pressure and outside um influence very well, my boundaries were also not very good. And I would not protect my me time or my um white space, my my downtime as fiercely as I should have. And motherhood is definitely teaching me that I should get so much better, like there is still so much work to do on my boundaries, and rest is sacred, and downtime is sacred because if I don't get any downtime, if I don't get any time for me to do things that I enjoy or to just chill and relax, I am not gonna be a good mom, I'm not gonna be a good wife, I'm not gonna be a partner, a friend, a daughter that I want to be. So I know that rest is so essential. And for that to be protected and for that to be sacred and to actually happen, I need to also have really specific boundaries and strict boundaries, and there is it's a work in progress, it's not just something that you kind of wake up with and like, okay, today I have good boundaries. So it's still something that I struggle with, it's still something that I uh work on, and then there is communication that needs to improve with my husband, with my family, but at least the I think the first step is there, the important first step is is done that I understand the importance of it, and I understand where I'm lacking and where I need to work on this more. So in in academia, it's it's the same. Like you need to know what your values are, and you need from there from these values, from that, follow your boundaries, and you need to learn to protect them and like to set them confidently and to actually uphold them and and not have the boundaries that are just moving and going with the flow. And this actually regarding boundaries going with the flow is something that um you see very clearly when you have children and how kids thrive when there is a boundary actually, and when the boundary is is fixed and solid. Because if it's constantly moving, the kids are going to be all over the place. And you know, toddler, my my son is too, so he is in in his toddler era, and he is testing boundaries left and right, and they they need to be there, and they need to be kind of maybe not a hundred percent super strict and super rigid, but they need to be solid, and um we are we are still working on this, obviously. We are also like nobody likes to see their child upset, even though we know that it's it's okay, that he gets upset sometimes and he learns to deal with frustration. But it's it's just very obvious how he thrives when there is a boundary, and we also kind of get a better outcome out of it, and a bit more satisfaction and less frustration, less tantrums, less less um uh annoyance if there if we manage to set and uphold the boundary. All right, a couple more to go. So, one thing that I kind of already alluded to, and I know that this is maybe again my tendency, or maybe it's a tendency of people who work in um in academia specifically, or in in research, in this kind of lines of work where perfectionism is rewarded and everything needs to be kind of like rock solid and optimized and troubleshot and and yeah, perfect. So perfectionism in motherhood doesn't exist. There is no there's no perfect mom, and there is the best mom for for your particular child. And if you are trying, or if I am trying to be perfect, whatever that is, if I'm trying to be or trying to compare myself to some other mothers, this is like we know the comparison is a thief of joy, and then you know, this attempts to be perfect and to um follow some sort of imaginary standard of some other mom, it's just going to suck all the life out of me and all the joy out of my motherhood experience of enjoying and feeling joy about my son. And I know I know that, but sometimes I mean it's still difficult. Like sometimes you still see this um highlight reels from other people, from other moms. They they manage things and they they do things that I don't find the time or the energy to do, and I get a little bit upset, but then you know I always try to go back to the fact that first of all, they might have a very, very different child. So all the children are super different, and the temperament is is a big thing in in their life and in our life and our parenting experience, so whatever some other mom is managing might be because the child is just different and easier, maybe, and I should not be comparing myself and my journey to them. And my son doesn't need me to be perfect, and my son doesn't care about how well I follow certain schedules and plans, or how um I'm cooking all his snacks from scratch from organic ingredients. He cares about me being present, and he cares about me being there with him and for him, and holding him and his emotions. So that means that I need to be regulated first and I need to be rested again, coming back to rest and coming back to recharging my own batteries first. But trying to be perfect is is also going to sap the energy and make me, instead of perfect, make me more reactive, maybe make me more stressed. And that is just a straight road to to burning out in in parenthood and also elsewhere. Like perfection doesn't exist and it's stealing any progress and it's stealing any joy from anything, and motherhood specifically, but also I would think that it would be it would be the same, and it would, and it was the same for me in my uh in my research career. Trying to be perfect kept me stuck, kept me from progressing, kept me, or trying to seem perfect and like I didn't need any help kept me from uh reaching out and looking for other mentors, or it kept me from reaching out to friends and colleagues because I, you know, I had to seem perfect, like I'm handling things well, so I cannot reach out and complain or reach out for help to other people, which is silly. So yeah, perfectionism is something that's um that just needs to go. Like we need we need to try to release it and and try to let go of it because it's not helpful at all in in any area of life. And following from that is one last lesson and one last reminder that I that I still need every day, and I um am glad that motherhood kind of taught me this lesson is that growth is not linear, like kids grow in in bursts, and sometimes they regress and then they grow again, so it's not like a neat line, a neat curve that um like all the data points fit onto. So it's going to look very, very differently for each child, it's going to look very differently month to month or week to week, and sometimes there is no noticeable progress for a while, and then there is some big leap and big, big spurt, and um all of a sudden you're like, oh my god, this is a completely different child. And in the same way, progress in in life is also not not linear, and it's going to look like sometimes you're just doing things and and you don't see any result, and sometimes you will see a lot. And progress and also consistency look very differently nowadays from how I imagined them to be before. I mean, obviously they never looked like giving 100% to everything every single day. But this is how I used to think it it was, right? I used to think that I have to that being consistent and and making progress meant that I have to give 100% of me to everything I was doing, to work and other stuff, which is you know, math is not mathing. If I give 100% to work, there's no more percent to give to other stuff. But this was this unfair, insane expectation on me that I need to do that in order to, and that would mean that I'm consistent, and that would mean that I'm making progress in my in my research or in my whatever goals, whatever expectations I had. Which, yes, again, insane, insane expectation. And you know, nowadays I see that this is first of all for me and for my goals, it's not going to happen. And you know, I can do one percent today and maybe nothing tomorrow, and then uh ten percent the day after tomorrow, and this is already much better than me trying to give 90% to something today, and then nothing for a month. It's the same for my workouts, it's the same for my yoga practice. Like it's better that I do one minute of breathing today, and that counts as a yoga practice, instead of going to a class and doing, I don't know, 90 minutes of yoga of asana uh today, and then again, nothing for two months. So it's very it does seem simple and almost like banal and almost like yeah, we know that, but somehow in practice it was very difficult for me to remember that this is how it should be, you know, it's not going to be linear, it's not going to be always always perfect and always the same every day. And that the fact that things don't happen in this perfect way as I imagined them, it doesn't mean that there is no growth. It doesn't mean that there is not going to be any result. And it doesn't mean that I should just leave it because now I'm a failure. Which I also, as we as we discussed in the previous episodes, I also tend to do a little bit. So there you have it. My seven lessons, let's recap them a little bit briefly. Mentorship, the importance of mentorship and finding guidance both on your motherhood or parenthood and also in in career, in job, in in whatever it is that you are doing. It is important that somebody is is kind of showing you the ropes a little bit, at least at the beginning. Loneliness and trying to deliberately isolate yourself from people from your circle is a warning sign, and we need people, we need others. So you know, have some social life, please. Um, identity can be really shifted massively and can be really reshaped by becoming a mom or becoming a parent, and also by some career changes or whatever um path you you're pursuing in your career. But your job and also motherhood is not all of you, you are other things as well, and make sure that you find uh time, find brain space, and find joy also in other things, in other parts of you. And lesson number four was leading from values and knowing what your values are when it comes to again career or parenthood or anything else, and trying to be firm in those because they are going to inform your decisions and your actions and help you not to crumble under maybe some pressure, some weird comments from the outside, or some um advice from well-meaning parents and grandparents, which can be difficult, but once you are aware and firm in your values, you you know that you don't have to take this advice or take these comments too heart. And from that, follow boundaries and firmness in your boundaries and how it's important to protect them and protect especially boundaries around your rest, around your downtime fiercely, because without that you are not going to be neither a good parent nor a good. Um research or academic, whatever it is that you're doing professionally. Creativity, focus, joy, presence, everything needs your batteries recharged, at least to a certain extent. You know, you don't have to be at 100% every day. You cannot probably be at the hundred percent every day, but you need to put a bit of fuel in the tank from time to time so that you can show up in the best way. Perfectionism and comparison are stealing and the energy, stealing all the joy from the experience. So let's not try to be perfect, let's just try to stay present and show up in a way that we can. And finally, let's remember that progress is not going to be linear, growth is not going to be linear, and and little actions done consistently, even if it's you know 1% today and 10% tomorrow, and maybe again 1% the day after and 35% after that, that is actually going to bring more progress and in the same time at the same time protect your identity and protect your protect your mental health and prevent you from just burning out completely. So there you have it. My seven lessons from two years of motherhood that I wish I learned a bit earlier in life, or I'm still learning as I go along. And I'm curious, I'd be curious to hear from you what is one lesson, maybe a few lessons from your personal life, maybe if you are a parent, maybe from your parenthood journey, that is applicable to your work, whether it's research, academia, or maybe some other career that you can take from your personal life and apply to your work, and that you are possibly also still learning. As I mentioned, I'm still learning all these things. It's a work in progress, it's um an ongoing battle with some of this stuff. So, yeah, do let me know. You can comment, you can send me a message or an email, and I would really, really, really love to hear from you. And on that note, thank you for listening. As I said, the interview with Minira with my friend will be coming next, hopefully, if kids don't get sick again. And yeah, that's gonna be a really fun, really interesting, big, important conversation. I hope you also tune in for that one. And for now, I'll leave it here. Thank you and stay tuned. Bye.