The Dark Hour, Generational Trauma, and Putting Ourselves First with Lindsay Roselle
This week’s guest, Lindsay Roselle
A Growth and Performance Coach & Host of the Motherload Podcast
Episode Description
What if we put ourselves first on our list of priorities?
For some parents, this might be a crazy or even slightly controversial idea! But for today’s guest, Lindsay Roselle, it has made ALL the difference in her ability to give her best to her family, her work, and even herself.
Her reasoning? She and her partner are the ones who have to shoulder the load. If they’re not feeling strong, then the whole system won’t work.
Lindsay is a growth and performance coach for high-achieving women looking to find harmony between their desire to succeed and their devotion to motherhood. She’s also the host of the MotherLoad Podcast and a mom to two little boys.
Lindsay and I talk about generational trauma (including how she was confronted with this at a plant medicine retreat); her morning journaling practice, the Dark Hour; and how prioritizing ourselves first can make all the difference in how our system works.
Prioritizing ourselves
Lindsay worked in the corporate world until she was in her early 30’s, at which point, she realized it just wasn’t ever going to be that fulfilling to her.
Her career ventures that followed: starting a yoga studio; business coaching and counseling for health and wellness industries; starting her company, Women and Inc., hosting masterminds, and helping local female small business owners.
Then, COVID hit. Both the yoga studio and Women and Inc. were in-person, and Lindsay was forced to shut them down. At the same time, her relationship with her partner RT was the worst it had ever been. For a period, they separated.
She admits it can sound controversial, but what turned things around was discovering her priorities were all wrong. She’d been putting herself last, which meant she wasn’t eating well, working out, sleeping, or dealing with inner work issues.
In order to carry the load she needed to carry, she needed to put herself first, then her relationship with her partner, then her kids, then her business. Putting herself first is not about ego; she says it’s just how her system works best.
Her current business, MotherLoad Inc., is like The Home Edit but for your mental load, working with high-performing women and helping them find clarity and systemization in their loads.
The Dark Hour
Back in 2020, the day after her partner left, Lindsay wrote a letter to herself. She decided she had a choice to make: she could stay in her patterns, or she could begin some inner work and start taking care of herself.
She began a regular morning ritual she calls the Dark Hour – simply because, when she started this ritual, it was winter, and the free time she had was early morning. She gets up, has tea, meditates, reads, and journals.
What she writes about is simple – what’s on her mind. What happened yesterday, what’s going on that day. At the end, she follows with 3-5 gratitudes and 3-5 manifestations.
If you’ve been listening to me, then you know I’m all about journaling. There’s something so magical about removing ideas from your mind and putting them on paper. It’s often how I realize if something’s off in my life. What comes up? What am I reacting to? Why are my choices making me feel out of my zone?
Generational trauma
Part of my conversation with Lindsay touched on plant medicine and her Ayahuasca retreat, where she was confronted with the generational trauma regarding motherhood in her lineage.
It’s insane how the experience of motherhood has changed so much in just a few generations. And it makes sense that we might be carrying some of that in our DNA. What traumas are we holding, based on what our mothers went through and what they had to do to survive?
Recently, I read Patriarchy Stress Disorder by Valerie Rein, which really opened my eyes to how women in previous generations interacted in the business world in order to create this space for us.
It’s also crazy to think about the roles my husband and I play in our home and how we agree what should be done and by who. It’s not necessarily something we decided at that moment. Arguably, it’s hundreds of years of belief systems passed down generation to generation.
Notable Quote from Lindsay
“I will always be an advocate for that analog process of letting the mind take what's obscure and ambiguous and getting it out onto paper, because you will be surprised by what comes out like. It sounds wonky, and you're like, no way. And when you're first starting, it's super uncomfortable. You will just write exactly what your conscious mind is telling you to write, and it'll feel silly. But if you sit there, and you learn the practice of journaling, and you really learn the practice of letting it just kind of channel out of you, you'll be surprised by what you feel yourself wanting to write.”
“I learned to prioritize myself, which can sound controversial. An older version of me – or I guess, a younger version of me – would have heard someone say that and be like, you can't put yourself first when you're a mom. But now, it's literally what I make my clients look at. It’s what I have done for myself. I realized in hindsight, how everything kind of fell apart for me in 2020, and how I had to rebuild in 2021. It was this long lead-up of putting myself at the bottom of my priorities.”
Resources & Links
You can learn about Lindsay’s Ayahuasca retreat and motherhood journey on her podcast, the MotherLoad Podcast and follow her on her personal Instagram and her podcast Instagram page.
Some of the books we mentioned: The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself by Michael Singer; Greenlights by by Matthew McConaughey; and Patriarchy Stress Disorder: The Invisible Inner Barrier to Women’s Happiness and Fulfillment by Valerie Rein.
Learn more about Project: Mom and follow us on Instagram at @projectmompodcast.
Do you want to share your motherhood journey on the podcast? Email me at projectmompod@gmail.com.