Full Transcript 0:00 The body knows that there's an attachment injury that may not have a concrete memory that goes with it, but the right terminology somehow resonates in 0:13 our body if we have mother hunger. 0:16 Mother hunger is a word I came up with that describes a certain quality of yearning a longing for a certain kind of love that we can't quite get our finger on. 0:30 And we typically might confuse it with romantic love. 0:34 We may be searching for this kind love from our friendships, from employers, authority figures, and find ourselves bumping up against the same longing, 0:47 the craving again and again, just not sure what it is. 0:52 But what I have found is that it is a neurobiological craving. 1:05 Hello, welcome to Spoil Your Baby podcast. 1:08 I am so, so honored today to have Kelly McDaniel here. 1:13 She is a trauma psychotherapist and author of Ready to Heal and also Mother Hunger, which I have right here and I've been devouring over the past few weeks. 1:27 Our work is very complimentary and so happy that you're here, Kelly. 1:31 Welcome. 1:32 I'm so happy to be here and really love the work you're doing, Greer. 1:36 How long have you had your podcast? 1:39 Thank you. 1:40 I started my podcast in January. 1:42 Okay. 1:44 So it's pretty new. 1:45 It's a, I think it is about 40 episode. 1:48 Oh, no, you can't be that far. 1:50 Yeah, maybe. 1:51 Somewhere between 30 and 40 episodes I've recorded so far Wonderful. 1:55 What's your favorite part about doing it so? 1:57 These kinds of conversations, it gives me the space to be curious and learn. 2:05 Yes. 2:06 Wonderful. 2:07 Yeah. 2:08 It's really a privilege to have that be part of my job. 2:12 I'm always curious and learning, but I get to explore what I am interested in. 2:21 through the podcast too, which is really, really lovely. 2:23 That is wonderful, wonderful. 2:25 Yeah, and I followed you for a very long time. 2:28 And I love the work that you're doing so, so much. 2:34 You're helping so many women heal and look at their wounds, help them with all different relational wellness outcomes, right? 2:48 So I wanna start off with, there's a few really huge points in your book that just really, really stood out to me. 2:56 These are all sort of in the beginning where you're kind of introducing mother hunger. 2:59 Actually, maybe we should just start out asking you, what is motherhunger? 3:06 I know what it is, but I don't know if everyone knows. 3:08 Let's start with that. 3:10 That's do, that's great place to start. 3:14 And interesting that, when you say, I know what it is, my experience is that when I say the word mother hunger, if a woman has it, 3:26 her body recognizes it right away. 3:28 There's kind of a pause, there's a moment of silence that almost feels reverent. 3:34 If someone doesn't have it I get this quizzical kind look like, what's that? 3:39 So the body knows that there is an attachment injury that may not have a concrete memory that goes with it, but the right terminology somehow resonates 3:53 in our body if we have mother hunger. 3:57 Mother hunger is a word I came up with that describes a certain quality of yearning, a longing for a kind of love that we can't quite get our finger on. 4:11 we typically might confuse it with romantic love. 4:15 We may be searching for this kind of love from our friendships, from employers, authority figures, and find ourselves bumping up against the same longing, 4:27 the craving again and again, just not sure what it is. 4:32 But what I have found is that it's a neurobiological craving. 4:36 That's why I call it hunger. 4:38 It's as important as food. 4:39 For a certain quality of care, that we associate with mothers, that mothers are uniquely designed to give to their babies and their children in an optimum 4:50 culture that would allow her to do that. 4:53 So many of our mothers didn't have the wherewithal, either from their own ancestry or from the culture they were living in when they became mothers to 5:05 offer the three things that children need. 5:08 And early on in the first 1,000 days of life, the 1st 3 years, those 2 primitive things are nurturing, protecting. 5:16 Babies need the eye contact, tone of voice, sensitive care with one primary caregiver to form a secure attachment. 5:26 This is what you do. 5:27 I love your work. 5:31 That involves nurturing. 5:32 It also involves protecting, keeping a baby safe, but lots of mothers come to motherhood and they aren't safe. 5:39 So, protection can be compromised. 5:42 Nurturing can compromised if a mother doesn't have enough time or primary caregiver is not able to step in and provide adequate care. 5:51 And then as we get older, we need guidance. 5:53 That often is compromised as well. 5:57 If, as we're growing up, we missed out on the essential elements of nurturing, protection, guidance, We're going to feel it. 6:07 We are going feel a craving for that quality of maternal care that we are designed to have because we were little humans. 6:16 Yeah, I love it, and I know I did feel that instant knowing when I heard the term for the first time. 6:23 I was like, wow, you really... 6:25 You're really describing it perfectly. 6:28 And when I started to translate this work, I would say something sort of similar. 6:34 I used to say, infancy is a time. 6:38 It was something like, Infancy Is A Time, it's like this one time where we can eat this specific meal. 6:46 and if we're not fed the meal in infency, then we are starving for it for the rest of our life. 6:52 Oh, that is so well said. 6:56 That is beautiful. 6:57 I love that image because it captures that this is a biological need. 7:01 This is Mother Nature's design. 7:03 Because we're born somehow inadequate that we need to have these things. 7:08 And this what we to flourish and build a healthy right and left brain that will be able to pull on. 7:15 So the fact that it's the meal that needed at that time, so good. 7:22 And it's really hard to do the work that you're doing to help people heal from the early years. 7:30 I have a lot of mothers in my communities who worry about giving the nurturing that they never received. 7:38 And I'm curious, would understanding their mother hunger help them? 7:45 sort of feel more confident about that? 7:48 What do you think? 7:49 I don't know if right away it builds confidence. 7:53 I think, which is why in the book, I very gently and carefully said, please read this as a daughter, not as mother. 8:03 Because I mean, we're so hard on ourselves as mothers. 8:07 And if we're not careful, we could take that book and use it as another way to be hard on ourselves maybe. 8:13 So, I have really been delighted that that isn't always, isn' the case. 8:20 I think the book is stupid generally. 8:23 But of course, it's going to bring up questions about if you already have children or you want to have kids, how do you break the cycle of mother hunger? 8:32 And I didn't write a parenting book. 8:35 I'm not, I am not approaching it. 8:40 Reading it as a daughter. 8:41 Yeah. 8:42 And I work with adults. 8:43 I don't, don´t work. 8:45 Children. 8:47 But I've had the opportunity to work mothers of all ages. 8:53 Some of the most painful work can be working with mothers who are older, because a lot of women don' that they have the capacity to look at mother hunger 9:02 until they're much older. 9:03 Sometimes their mother's already passed away. 9:06 Their children are grown. 9:08 Many of them are struggling with estrangement with their own grown children. 9:12 And then when they find motherhunger, it's very painful because they realize not only what they didn't get themselves, but what couldn't give. 9:24 has passed. 9:26 The good news is, and what I do tell mothers, it's true, is the neuroscience shows us our brains can change throughout the lifespan. 9:33 And there's always opportunity to repair and fill in those missing elements. 9:41 It won't be the same. 9:42 We can't go back and have that meal again. 9:44 I think there is hope in realizing, oh, this is what the pain is. 9:52 because then we quit chasing other things that it might be. 9:57 We settle down, we've got the truth, and I think our bodies are designed to handle the Truth. 10:03 Yeah. 10:04 And when you're ready to come to it, you come it in a lot of different ways, right? 10:13 Totally. 10:14 I've seen this happen that Somebody may read the book and realize, this is too much for me right now and put it down. 10:22 Like, I think Mother Nature's design, the way our bodies are built, is pretty gentle. 10:27 We won't get information that our body's not ready to handle. 10:31 Yeah. 10:32 I've read books before that. 10:34 And I go back and read them a couple years later, and I'm like, oh, did not read that part. 10:41 My brain was just like, nope, we're not taking that in. 10:45 You gotta be ready. 10:47 Have you ever noticed where it could be reading a book or watching a movie? 10:51 You can go watch a moving again and suddenly see something that you didn't notice before. 10:56 Absolutely. 10:57 Yeah. 11:00 So that's wonderful. 11:02 One thing that really stood out to me is that, you mentioned that mothers can be physically present. 11:09 but emotionally and psychologically absent. 11:13 And this is a concept that I do often communicate to parents, right? 11:17 A lot of times people are like, yeah, baby wearing, bed sharing, you know, breastfeeding, like the baby beads of attachment parenting. 11:25 Those are all wonderful and like they help, but there is something more than the physically present. 11:32 I think a lot times when we do look at our mothering experience. 11:37 We do look at the way our mothers... 11:39 Maybe we'll be like, oh, I was fine. 11:41 Like, my mom was at home with us. 11:43 She was always there. 11:44 Um, can you talk more about what does that mean to be emotionally absent or present? 11:51 Definitely. 11:52 I think to... 11:54 When I talk about this... 11:57 I, as a mother, before cell phones, So I still found plenty of ways that I'd be nursing or baby wearing, but not necessarily making eye contact with my 12:14 little one, not always aware of the tone of my voice. 12:20 So that's because, like many parents, I have learned as a child to dissociate almost automatically if I was overwhelmed. 12:32 Now, most of my clients have this automatic capacity to disassociate when something's overwhelming. 12:39 That's another nature's design. 12:41 There's no problem with that. 12:44 Until it becomes somewhat chronic, automatic, we don't even know what it is that's bothering us or flooding us. 12:49 So we didn't know we're dissociated. 12:51 And so there are lots of parents who come to parenthood before they've had a chance to heal some of the reasons they need to dissociate. 13:02 So it becomes this automatic pattern that can be, it removes us emotionally from the present moment, from our own bodily sensations, 13:11 our feelings. 13:14 And it's been interesting to learn. 13:16 I think dissociation comes online obviously when we're frightened and we are powerless. 13:22 There's nothing we can do in a situation. 13:25 So we learn to just emotionally go away. 13:27 Physically we could go way. 13:29 What I've also learned is that even when something's utterly delightful, like loving your newborn, that can be so overwhelming for a nervous system that 13:41 has mother hunger. 13:44 that dissociation can happen then too. 13:46 So there are lots of ways that as we grew up, missing out on the nurturing we needed, the protection that we need and maybe the guidance that needed. 13:57 We learned to kind of step outside of ourselves. 14:02 It was just too painful to have a need that was not gonna be met. 14:06 Yeah. 14:07 so we shut down some of our feelings. 14:10 That makes it very difficult to attune to ourselves and therefore to our children. 14:18 So if we're not tuned in here in our own heart, our body, it's really hard to tune into a baby or to a friend or a partner. 14:29 Yeah, and it is a really a hard concept to explain, right? 14:35 To explain what does that mean to be there. 14:39 you know, really be there. 14:40 And I'm very aware of this in my life with my son and I know when I like packing his lunch and getting his breakfast ready and all these things, 14:48 I am physically there and talking to him and, you now, but I always also make sure that I look him in the eyes and be emotionally present with him too 14:59 and sort of say I see you today. 15:01 I love you. 15:02 I hope that you have a great day, you know, today at school before I say goodbye. 15:07 And I almost always have that in my mind, that it's like, I'm here, but I am not here. 15:12 So I need to come and be here as well from time to time. 15:18 Yeah. 15:18 Well, and the good thing is, again, this is your area of expertise. 15:24 if you think this is not quite addressing what you're saying, but our little ones will let us know when they need us to come closer. 15:33 We don't always need to be fully present. 15:35 And we certainly don' t need o overwhelm them with our urgency to b present, right? 15:40 If we're paying attention, we'r going to notice their cues to com closer, and it's about responding when t meet us. 15:51 we don t have to e constantly on. 15:54 But if we miss their cues for our presence or our eye contact or a holding because we're busy watching the news or we are busy managing lots of other children 16:07 or were gone so often that we haven't adequately had time to let mother nature help us bond. 16:15 We had so much separation that the prolactin and the oxytocin didn't ignite our bonding instincts. 16:23 we might miss their cues. 16:25 And that's what can be disturbing for other ones. 16:29 Yeah. 16:30 I always talk about that balance of like doing and being. 16:35 So we could be a person doing, we also have to be of person being at times as well. 16:41 We can get really into the doing. 16:44 So much, so much. 16:45 So I appreciate that as well. 16:48 And I talk about that too for moms. 16:50 Like they don't need us intensively connecting, intensive attuning. 16:54 That's another thing that it's draining and it not what our babies need. 17:02 But yes, absolutely being responsive and making sure that you are checking in throughout the day and spending some of that time. 17:11 connected and attuned. 17:12 So I love that. 17:13 Another thing that you say that I thought that really stood out to me and is really of interest to be lately, you said that mothering is part biological, 17:23 which we know our brain changes, our bodies change, or hormones change. 17:27 It's part psychological, cultural, and also part spiritual. 17:32 Can you expand a little more on the spiritual aspect of mothering? 17:37 I think this is such a beautiful invitation for people to learn about. 17:43 Well, I feel like I'm still learning that. 17:45 Mothering an adult child, which I thing is the spirtual nature of Motherin, that if we let ourselves be open to what our child is here to show us, 18:02 which sometimes our needs things that we don't know how to provide. 18:08 They weren't provided for us or our children's love language is very different than our own. 18:13 In loving the child we have or the children that have, we to learn what would translate to that child. 18:22 Sometimes that requires us to grow a sense of our capacity to love. 18:30 And if that's not the definition of spirituality, I'm not sure what it would be to take. 18:35 We have to get in touch with something inside ourselves that is so pure and so defined that we love unconditionally. 18:43 Meaning, this is not a reciprocal relationship. 18:46 we don't love so that they are grateful. 18:48 They pay us back one day. 18:49 they make us feel good. 18:56 unconsciously that desire may be there. 18:58 But if we're loving purely, it requires us to spiritually stretch into the best parts of who we are. 19:06 That's beautiful. 19:07 I love that as an invitation for mothers because so often we hear about how hard it's gonna be and so many of the challenges, 19:18 which it absolutely is, but alongside it, there is that incredible opportunity for growth and change. 19:26 and connection is fantastic. 19:29 I love that so much. 19:32 So you also write in your book, so a lot of people listening will experience some degree of mother hunger and you talk about how our mothers had limitations 19:42 in their, in so many different domains. 19:47 Can you expand a little bit more on that, and so we can understand that aspect. 19:52 Because I think a lot of people can be, you know, we go through the phases, right? 19:55 We could be angry about some care we didn't get or sad, and that's great. 20:01 But there's also the point where we have to acknowledge that where mothers were coming from and that they really do their best. 20:11 I think all mothers at all times really are doing their. 20:14 So you tell us a little bit more about that. 20:16 Well, the whole premise of the mother hunger book is, is less about the individual mother and more. 20:22 What needs did you not get the need for nurturing the, need protection or the needs for guidance, or maybe you didn't get all three. 20:29 It's less. 20:30 Her. 20:32 And more about which of those needs that we assign to mothers did you not get, chances are she didn't get them either. 20:39 Chances are, and what we know now through the neuroscience is that, we're carrying at least three generations in our body of ancestral inheritance. 20:51 So if our grandmother went through some adversity. 20:57 And so much really good research about this is in the book. 21:00 But if our grandmother went to adversity, that would impact her daughter and would affect us as the daughter. 21:06 So some of this cultural inheritance that trauma goes through the body and we can pick up our grandmothers trauma. 21:18 That can impact whether or not we get those needs met. 21:22 So it doesn't have anything to do with love. 21:25 That has everything to with the culture that we're bringing children into and whether or not we have the capacity to provide those needs when maybe they're 21:34 not met for ourselves. 21:36 So in the book, there's a good discussion of patriarchy and how that can be traumatizing for most women. 21:41 It impacts our body, our self-worth, or sense of erotic capacity, a sense a safety. 21:49 It's really hard to talk about mother hunger without looking at a patriarchal culture that damages women, which, you know, 21:57 that's going to impact motherhood. 21:59 So again, none of these have anything to do with whether or not a mother loves her baby. 22:04 These things have everything to with the cultural environment that goes against what newborns and toddlers and children need, 22:19 to set up secure attachment in the brain, so then we can weather adversity. 22:24 When we don't have that secure detachment during the formative time, later on in life, when life throws us a curveball, which it will, 22:32 none of us get by, our brain may not have the bandwidth for some of what comes our way. 22:39 I love Mark Wallin's title of his book, It Didn't Start With You. 22:43 They always give that reminder, right? 22:45 It didn't start with you. 22:47 It doesn't with your mother. 22:49 Didn't started with grandmother. 22:50 We're all carrying what we carry. 22:55 Precisely. 22:57 Yes. 22:58 And so I find that lots of mothers that are reading Mother Hunger and not only reflecting about their own upbringing, but children they may have or they 23:09 already have, these mothers are cycle breakers. 23:13 they're breaking an epigenetic inheritance. 23:16 And that is hard because if you're the first one in your generational line to really see this and want to do something about it, 23:24 you kind of a pioneer. 23:25 Yeah, we can't put that much pressure on the pioneer, they gonna make progress, but then it goes on to the next generation if they choose to have children. 23:35 Right. 23:36 Yeah, absolutely. 23:37 I was gonna comment on that too, because so many, so, many of the mothers in my communities are cycle breakers and really identify as that and feel like 23:46 they're really actually healing their mother, their grandmother, or their great-grandmother. 23:50 Um... 23:53 in this beautiful way. 23:54 And when we talk about epigenetics, they actually are healing a lot of those experiences, um, in their babies. 24:01 I talk that with my, I felt that was my son so much. 24:04 It felt like when he was crying and stressed as a little baby, it was like holding the war experiences of my ancestors and just like all of them were right 24:17 there and I was just there for it. 24:19 Well, you could feel that very powerfully. 24:22 Wow, how lucky, your son is. 24:25 Yeah, so sweet. 24:29 But they are, you know, I felt like I'm definitely a cycle breaker, continuing one that my mom had started. 24:35 And so many people are as well. 24:39 So I wonder, this is kind of like an out there question. 24:42 It came up in one of my other recent podcasts was, I'm so curious why there's such an explosion of this information right now and so many mothers understanding 24:54 that they can be cycle breakers. 24:56 Do you think there is some sort of safety? 24:58 Like maybe we've come a certain way with patriarchy or certain certain ways with some self like felt safety that we can explore these things and we break 25:13 some cycles? 25:13 Do have any thoughts about that? 25:15 I love the question. 25:17 Yeah. 25:20 And I don't know that I have a thought right away other than kind of something kind obvious. 25:28 I'm more curious what you think about this, but I was talking with a sociologist the other day who was starting out here in America. 25:35 We're young compared to places in Europe. 25:40 places who have been through hundreds of years of cycles where there had been adversity in the form of war and annihilation. 25:48 And here in America, we have adversity that impacts us, that is a mix of patriarchy, racism, poverty. 25:58 But we haven't had some of what Europe has had. 26:03 I wonder if we some safety that comes from being young as a nation. 26:10 But I'm not a sociologist. 26:12 I really don't feel like... 26:16 I have given that enough thought to give it a good answer. 26:20 Have you? 26:21 Yeah, no, this really just came up for me today. 26:23 I was like, oh, I wonder, we have, definitely had scientific revolution, genetic revolution neuroscience revolution of the past 30 years that we're still 26:36 in the midst of understanding all of this. 26:39 So there's that part. 26:41 And there is also just this really amazing, you know, focus on, like, reclaiming the superpowers of being a mother and the impact of the healing powers 26:55 of a being mother. 26:55 And they're kind of coming up together. 26:59 So, I don't know. 27:00 I'm going to stay curious as well and see what comes up. 27:03 It's rewarding to see. 27:10 I think again, if we look at a socioeconomic way that women were required during World War II to work outside the home, they got a taste of it. 27:21 And then they came back and that's around the time in the 1950s when you had television shows popping up that romanticized staying at home. 27:31 Not carrying your baby and not nursing. 27:33 Baby was up in a crib while mommy was, you know, getting ready for dad to come home. 27:39 I mean, I'm not saying these kids were perfect, but they domesticated a whole generation and made stay at home kind of a thing. 27:48 But it didn't teach us how to mother our children. 27:50 No. 27:51 So Sophie Brock's a sociologist. 27:53 She shares that working mothers now spend more time with their babies than stay-at-home mothers did back then. 28:00 Yeah. 28:01 And I just wonder, too, if it's part of the fact that because in our country, we have time to think about our psychology, 28:13 our ancestors maybe didn't have, they were too busy growing their own food. 28:17 We can go to the grocery store. 28:18 So we've got some time, to really think, about the quality of our relationships and our mental health. 28:24 And so as we explore that, I think it almost seems natural that we'd be more interested in how to help our children avoid some of that we've experienced. 28:35 Yeah, absolutely. 28:37 Well, thank you so much, Kelly. 28:39 I know so many people will be really interested in reading your book. 28:44 Where can listeners find you if they want to know more? 28:48 Well the book is on Amazon, and that's the best way to find it. 28:52 And the feedback I get, which is fascinating, is that people really like the audiobook. 28:57 Some people use it to go to sleep. 28:59 some people listen to it while they're nursing. 29:03 I think for women who grew up in abusive households, the neuroscience has shown me that it makes it very difficult to read the Mother Hunger book because 29:13 you hear the voice of your own mother or your voice. 29:16 But if you listen to it, it the material will go in. 29:21 So I have a chapter called Third Degree Motherhunger. 29:24 It's for adult daughters who grow up with developmental trauma, which is its own category of mother hunger. 29:31 I had to create a separate name for it. 29:34 Most women unilaterally have a hard time reading the book and that makes sense, but they have informed me that they can listen to it and get the information. 29:45 That's a really good tip. 29:46 If anyone in your sphere is dealing with their own early attachment injuries being beyond the spectrum of mother hunger into a category that gets diagnosed 30:00 as disordered, mood problems and things of that nature. 30:05 Anyone struggling with addiction may find that underneath that addiction is some profound motherhunger. 30:11 And it's sometimes easier to listen to the book. 30:14 I don't post regularly on Instagram, but I'm on an Instagram from time to time as well. 30:20 A need to get better about that. 30:21 Just finished writing three new chapters that will be part of the new edition. 30:25 for Mother Hunger and a new book is gonna come out in the spring of 2026. And there will be- Oh, how exciting. 30:32 It's exciting because there's gonna be a chapter for parents and I did my best. 30:39 Maybe I need to send you that. 30:41 Then there is going to be chapter of firstborn daughters. 30:45 The science is fascinating. 30:47 Wow, I'm a first born daughter. 30:49 Its fascinating, its fascinating we are very unique sisterhood. 30:53 Interesting. 30:54 I'm also a firstborn granddaughter. 30:56 I saw some Instagram posts that's like, if you're a Firstborn Granddaughter, First Born Daughter, and something else, you are like a very unique person. 31:07 So I am so curious to learn more. 31:09 Wonderful. 31:10 Yeah. 31:11 Amazing. 31:12 Well, thank you, Callie. 31:13 Really, really appreciate it. 31:15 And we'll look out for your next book and I'll invite you back to talk about that. 31:19 Sounds great. 31:20 It's so good to have you here. 31:21 Thank you for having me.
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