In today's episode I'm taking you for a peek behind the curtain of my life with a vulnerable conversation about firsts and lasts. This episode had me a little emotional and there may or may not be some tears shed.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Seafair Indian Days Powwow
Next Week on Mama's Cup of Ambition...
Tune in for my conversation with Mallori Rojas to find out how she turned a leap of faith and $100 at Trader Joe's into the thriving business she has today.
Have you been dreaming of starting a podcast but have no idea where to start? Ditch your podcasting paralysis with my FREE podcast checklist for aspiring mama podcasters.
Let's Connect On Instagram:
connect with the Show (@mamascupofambition)
connect with Rachel Mae (@rachelmaemusic)
May your dreams be ambitious and may your coffee be strong! xoxo -Rachel Mae
In today's episode I'm taking you for a peek behind the curtain of my life with a vulnerable conversation about firsts and lasts. This episode had me a little emotional and there may or may not be some tears shed.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Seafair Indian Days Powwow
Next Week on Mama's Cup of Ambition...
Tune in for my conversation with Mallori Rojas to find out how she turned a leap of faith and $100 at Trader Joe's into the thriving business she has today.
Have you been dreaming of starting a podcast but have no idea where to start? Ditch your podcasting paralysis with my FREE podcast checklist for aspiring mama podcasters.
Let's Connect On Instagram:
connect with the Show (@mamascupofambition)
connect with Rachel Mae (@rachelmaemusic)
May your dreams be ambitious and may your coffee be strong! xoxo -Rachel Mae
Hey, I'm Rachel Mae, Country Singer, songwriter and host of Mamas Cup of Ambition, the podcast for ambitious mamas with big dreams and little kids. Or maybe your kids aren't so little anymore, but your dreams are still just as big as ever. Wherever you find yourself in your motherhood journey, if you've got ambitious goals that you're longing to achieve and you're looking to spark inspiration, cultivate motivation and develop community with like-minded mamas, you're in the right place. As a new mama myself, I created this show as a place for honest and empowering conversations about motherhood, entrepreneurship and dream chasing. So grab a notebook, top off that cup of coffee and let's turn our goals into action plans and our dreams into reality together. Now let's jump into today's episode. Hello, hello and welcome to another episode of Mamas Cup of Ambition. I am actually I'm sitting at home recording this. I had initially planned on doing this as another park podcast episode because at the time of this recording, summer is in full swing and I've really had fun doing my solo episodes out in the park and I've had so much feedback from so many of you saying that you've been enjoying those and that you find them fun. So that was my initial plan with this as well, but then every time we have been at the park lately and I've busted out my little lavalier mic to try to do this, it just has been a shit show. There's no other way to put it. It's just been a shit show. I like either it's so loud or there's like something going on at the park and it just it wasn't working out. It wasn't in the cards for this episode. So I'm at home and I'm recording and I mean it's loud. Here too, the kids are screaming downstairs. As soon as I hit record the dog started barking, but it's not as crazy as it has been at the park the past couple times that I've tried to do this. So we'll see how this goes.
Rachel Mae:One of the reasons that I wanted to do this one as a park podcast was because I was hoping that maybe it would stifle the tears that I feel this episode might strum up. Strum up is that the word I'm looking for there. Stir up, that's probably a more accurate way to phrase it. I was thinking maybe if I was in the park I wouldn't be so prone to tearing up, but I've actually already had a pretty big release of tears around this topic earlier this week and last week as well. More on that later in the episode. So maybe that will help too.
Rachel Mae:But all that to say just right now, right out of the gate, I'm going to get really vulnerable here with you today about some things that are happening in my life right now, and this episode just might feel a little bit heavy and I'll try, as I always do, to weave in the pieces of hope and the lessons that I'm learning from the complexities of my situation. But I just want to say that I also totally understand if you aren't in the headspace to hold that kind of emotional energy and you want to skip this episode. I get it and I totally understand. And next week I'll be sharing a really inspiring and fun conversation that I had with a mom preneur named Mallori, who got laid off in 2020 while she was pregnant with a toddler at home, and in our conversation she shares how she took a leap of faith and $100 to trade her joes and turned that into the thriving business that she has now. It's really a fun story. And how's that for a teaser? So if today feels too heavy, just come back next week and I promise to fill your cup with some inspiration and ambition then, and hopefully today too. If you do stick around, hopefully there will be something as I move through my notes here. Hopefully there will be something here that you take away that feels inspiring or resonant, I guess. Anyway, what I wanted to chat a bit about today is the experience of firsts and lasts, and I feel like this is something that you'll definitely relate to on one level or another, because it's a pretty universal experience, no matter where you are in life. Thanks for watching.
Rachel Mae:Something that's really been on the top of my mind and really heavy on my heart the past few weeks is how sneaky life's first and last can be right. Like I know, as mamas, this is a concept that I feel like we think about often, especially as our babies grow, and I mean like from the minute you see those two pink lines on a pregnancy test or however, you get the news like maybe you're adopting and you get the news that your adoption has been finalized. However, you begin that ascent into motherhood Like the first and last. They just start to unfold right in front of you. Then in there and you hear people talking about the fact that so often those seemingly small moments in motherhood that we shuffle through day to day almost like on autopilot, eventually begin to taper off, but you don't always even realize it's happening.
Rachel Mae:So I know I've shared this poem from an unknown author on the podcast once before, but I'm gonna read it here again today, because whoever wrote this just has the most eloquent and poignant narration of the experience that I feel like so many of us share, and it just sort of sets the stage so perfectly for what I want to talk about today that I felt like, instead of me trying to Say all of this in my own words, I'm just gonna share this poem, because it sums it up the way I wish I could. So it's called the last time and it says from the moment you hold your baby in your arms, you'll never be the same. You might long for the person you were before, when you had freedom and time and nothing in particular to worry about. You will know tiredness like you never knew it before, and Days will run into days that are exactly the same, full of feeding and burping, whining and fighting, naps or lack of naps, and it might seem like a never-ending cycle.
Rachel Mae:But don't forget there's a last time for everything. There will come a time when you'll feed your baby for the very last time They'll fall asleep on you after a long day, and it'll be the last time that you ever hold your sleeping child. One day you'll carry them on your hip, then set them down and never pick them up in that way again. You'll scrub their hair in the bath one night and from that day on they'll want to bathe alone. They'll hold your hand across the road then never reach for it again. They'll creep into your room at midnight for cuddles, and it'll be the last night you ever wake for this.
Rachel Mae:One afternoon you'll sing wheels on the bus and do all the actions. Then you'll never sing that song together again. They'll kiss you goodbye at the school gate and the next day will ask to walk to the gate alone. You'll read a final bedtime story and wipe your last dirty face, and they'll one day run to you with arms raised for the very last time. The thing is, you won't even know it's the last time until there are no more times, and even then it'll take you a while to realize. So while you're living in these times, remember that there are only so many of them, and when they're gone You'll yearn for just one more day of them, for one last time.
Rachel Mae:So that's the end of the poem and, like I said, it's an unknown author, and I'm seriously trying not to cry right now because that just freaking gets me every time, and I think it's just such a powerful reminder that every time I read it I feel like a new layer hits my heart and Hits me in a different way, and it's not like a totally foreign concept or something that I haven't ever thought about before. Right it just. I'm finding it, particularly in this season of my life, that I'm feeling a deeper and deeper pull to really slow down and just soak in all of these little moments that are happening around me, especially because I'm part of what they call the sandwich generation, which basically is just a term that society coined to categorize those of us who are raising our babies while simultaneously helping to manage the care of our aging parents, and I've shared on the podcast before that my mom died when I was 19, but my dad has just recently turned 75, and he's been having some health issues for a few years now and they've just significantly slowed him down, and although he's fiercely independent and doesn't exactly want anyone to help him with anything, my sister and I are working together to sort of walk alongside him as we all navigate this uncertain season of his life, which it's just layered in complexity for all of us. For so many reasons, like for me, it's been bringing up a lot of anticipatory grief, because I know our time together is limited and the notion of facing that hard truth, it really just shakes me and it takes me right back to that teenage version of myself that got the news that my mom died. And then there's this layer of knowing how much my kids adore their grandpa and knowing how tricky it's going to be to chart into that end of life territory, both as a daughter but also as a mother, and watching my dad buck up against his own limitations and frustrations with this season of his life, knowing that I can't change it or fix it and I certainly I can't make him do it my way right.
Rachel Mae:Like he has to do this dance with his own aging process in his own way, just like we all do, and he's entitled to that. Like I don't want to take that away from him, but because I love him so much, I have this strong, unwavering desire to want to fix it. So it's frustrating when it feels like he's unwilling to accept help. But I'm having to just sort of like walk this line of being there and showing my love and support and also just backing off and letting him do this in his own way, you know, and it's just a hard space to hold, like to be supportive and to offer help and to also just extend radical acceptance for the fact that, ultimately, this is his life and it's his dance, not mine, and he's entitled to the suite of emotions he's experiencing, and so am I. That's just messy and heavy and complicated. We have to let him live into this chapter of his life in authenticity and for him, accepting help, especially from his children, like that just runs contradictory to his core because, like I said, he's fiercely independent. And all of this to say.
Rachel Mae:When I came across the last time poem and I read it again this time, it got me thinking about the lasts with my dad, and there were a lot of lasts that I didn't realize were happening. I mean, like, for one thing, my dad's a musician and over the years I've had the privilege of watching him perform on so many occasions, but he's not playing anymore and at some point along the way I watched him play for the last time without knowing that that was the last time and like that just makes me really sad and it's a strange part of life that you can't really prepare for. And another more recent example of this is that every summer our family attends the Seafar Pow Wow. It's here in Seattle and it's something that we've done for years with my dad, who is extremely proud and connected to our family's native heritage, and I've shared in a past episode how every year for as long as I can remember, I would have these like really strong intuitive pings that would fire off whenever we were at the pow wow that said you will be a mother, there are children waiting for you, and it was just like this deep knowing that I felt most strongly connected to in that space. But I could really easily like quiet those messages and ignore it the further away that the powwow got. So like once we left I could kind of just chalk it up to like, oh, it's just something I feel there and I don't know it's woo, woo, whatever, until the next year when we would go back and there it was again, usually louder than it was the year before, and it was just this like undeniable intuitive hit. And I know that sounds wild, but it was my experience, and there were seasons where that experience really freaked me out, like it terrified me because I was honestly so afraid of acknowledging my deep rooted desire to be a mama, because I felt like I had to choose between having a family or a music career. So those intuitive hits sometimes they made me feel really uneasy, but they also always made me feel really emotional.
Rachel Mae:And when I finally embraced my desire to step into motherhood and Gabe and I started to try to have a baby, I had so much faith that it was going to happen for us, because of all of those energetic hints that I'd been receiving for years and years at these powwows. So when we attended in 2019 on the heels of a pregnancy loss, my faith was being tested in a big way. And when I tell you that we walked into that space with heavy hearts, I mean it felt like we were carrying the weight of the world on our shoulders and because I had been so excited to go to the powwow with this tiny baby in my womb, like some self fulfilling prophecy, and instead it was like I was walking into a sensory reminder of all that I had desired and just lost. It was a lot. So I shed quite a few tears that day and also bought a tiny little powwow onesie as like a gesture of faith, like a physical token for me to visualize my babies that were still to come. Because, even though my faith was being tested, I still felt deep down in my soul, I knew that I had babies somewhere that were going to come forth and make me a mama. I just knew. And so we bought that little onesie to visualize our babies. And then I kid you not two weeks later I found out I was pregnant with Waylon, which means he was there with me and I had no idea. And now I have pictures of both my little powwow babies in that onesie, which is just like mind blowing to me and such a powerful reminder of how things happen in our lives. And I have just been like really excited, sort of like anxiously waiting to take my boys to their first powwow to carry on this family tradition of ours.
Rachel Mae:And then in 2020 and in 2021, obviously the powwow didn't happen because the world was locked down. And then in 2022, both Waylon and Wyatt were sick and so we couldn't go. So there were three years out where we missed that family tradition. So finally, this year 2023, we were going to be going back and I was going to get to bring my two babies to the powwow. But the thing is like when I envisioned this moment happening, taking my babies to the place where I felt their existence long before they ever existed, at least in this plane my dad was always there with us in that vision of us being there, and the reality was he didn't feel up to going this year. And it hit me that there's a pretty good chance that I attended the last powwow with my dad and didn't realize it was the last.
Rachel Mae:And when we walked into that circle with our boys and there was this like glaringly obvious sense of duality again firsts and lasts, addition and subtraction like it was a lot. And on one hand, here I was having this experience at this first time with my children and Watching them soak up this experience, which was incredible, and on the other hand, I was missing my dad and the experience felt like it had just been forever Changed and I found myself just completely washed over by the emotions that that whole experience just sort of unearthed and and I felt really grateful, like in one respect, I felt really grateful that my dad is still earthside, like he has not passed. He's still here. I can still go and throw my arms around him and give him a big old bear hug, like I can do that. He's still here.
Rachel Mae:But I also felt sad for the parts of him that are already absent from my life, from my boys life, you know, and I felt so joyful Watching my boys, just like take in all the culture and the magic of the powwow and eat their weight and fry bread Waitlin's still talking about the fry bread and the salmon, which is just like melt my heart. He's so cute, but it just it was a bummer, like it was sad that they didn't get to experience that energy with their grandpa, because I know they would have loved that and I know my dad would have loved watching them experience that too. So I, I cried, I cried river and I cried some more and they did a blessing for all of the babies that had been born since the last powwow. And as I walked into the circle with Wyatt for this blessing and we walked through the blessing line and the drum circle was vibrating all around us, I cried some more and it was just such a surreal moment watching the elders lay their hands on my baby, offering prayers and extending blessings into our family and into our lives, and Realizing that life just moves in some of the most mysterious ways right. And although on some level all of it feels intense, I know that it all means that I'm experiencing deep, profound love, and what an incredible gift that is.
Rachel Mae:And and I told you this was gonna be emotional and I'm really trying to hold it together here right now. But I guess the point of what I'm sharing all of this here with you today, it's just to say that one I wanted to just give you a little peek behind the curtain of my life right now, because if you're tuned in right now, then we're friends and it's always been my intention with this show to speak candidly with you here and to share the parts of my life that aren't just the like really fun, ambitious, dream-chasing, glamorous side of things. Because what kind of friendship is that right like? How shallow a friendship would that be? And this is just something I've been reflecting on a lot lately and I wanted to share those reflections with you here because, I don't know, maybe you can relate and if this is something that strikes a chord with you and you want to share it with me.
Rachel Mae:Just know that I do love hearing from you and sometimes I may be slower than a sloth at responding because, quite honestly, there's just a lot happening around here these days and I can't always keep up in real time, but I read or listen to every message that comes through and I will eventually respond. So Please, please, please, don't ever feel like I'm just ghosting you or ignoring you if you don't hear from me right away, because I promise that's not the case. I just like I said, there's a lot going on around here and so sometimes it takes me a while to get back. But if we haven't already connected, you can come find me on Instagram at mama's cup of ambition, and I'd love to get acquainted again. Not super active over there all the time, but I do pop in from time to time to see what's shaken and to connect with people there, and when I do, it brings me a lot of joy. So if we haven't already connected over there, let's, let's get on it, let's make that happen.
Rachel Mae:So I suppose to wrap this episode up here, a few things. So, first of all, got a little shaky there, got a little emotional, but I did not have a full on breakdown, so I'm patting myself on the back and If you made it this far into the episode, thank you. I hope it wasn't too much of a downer and again, don't forget to tune in next week for a more uplifting episode. My conversation with Mallory will definitely Leave you feeling inspired, so come back for that one and second.
Rachel Mae:I think I just want to say there will always be firsts and lasts in our lives, and some will be like super joyful and some will be super hard and some will be sad and some will be all three at the same time. And, like the poem said, some will be happening without us even realizing what's taking place. And that's just life, right, like it's the human experience, and all we can do is just try to slow down a bit when we can to soak up all that's constantly unfolding around us. It's something that I'm really trying to practice right now in my own life and it's something that I kind of just keep coming back to because I don't want to look back years from now and wish that I would have known that, like they say, these are the good old days, right, even when my days feel messy and everything seems unpredictable and overwhelming. There is real magic in the mess of it all and a beautiful life composed of firsts and lasts and in-betweens, and no matter where we land, this is something that connects us all.
Rachel Mae:So thank you for being here, thank you for tuning into this episode. I hope that this didn't feel like a downer or that I was laying on a couch in a therapy session just pouring all my baggage on you, because that wasn't my intention. I just really wanted to share with you what's happening in my life right now. So I hope that something in this episode strikes a chord with you. And yeah, until next time. May your dreams be ambitious, may your coffee be strong and may you have a lifetime full of beautiful firsts and lasts. I'll talk to you soon.