How Being A Mom Can Make You Better At Your Job with Christa Sisson
This Episode’s Guest, Christa Sisson.
A Speech Language Pathologisr and owner of TIdeSpeak Language and Speech Therapy
Episode Description
When we become parents, it’s easy to latch onto the unhealthy expectation that our lives will be exactly the same. We’ll get our bodies back and re-enter the workforce, the only difference being the baby sling across our chest.
Today I’m speaking with Christa Sisson, Speech Language Pathologist and owner of TideSpeak Language & Speech Therapy about letting go of that expectation and creating new boundaries. What we bring to the table as women in our professional careers is only STRENGTHENED as we become moms.
Christa, the mother of a baby boy (plus two fur babies!) and wife to a general surgery resident, specializes in parent education and sensory communication, with the goal of helping to support parents so they can support their loved ones. Trust me when I say Christa brings it on this episode.
In the midst of starting her own practice, she made a fulfilling discovery: that becoming a mom made her innately better at her job!
This next phase of life will be different
When you get pregnant, the idea of someday giving up your leisurely weekends and weeknight happy hours with girlfriends can be unnerving. Not to mention your career that you’ve worked so hard for. For some, myself included, the expectation that you can do all of that remains until you experience firsthand that your ‘freedoms’ look a bit different these days. Christa resisted changing her caseload and grew frustrated with how differently her body moved. Her experience was not, as she recalls, “a beautiful, glowing pregnancy.”
After giving birth to her son in January 2020, she was eager to get back to work. At the time, her employer was a private therapy clinic in San Diego where she and her husband had recently moved for his medical residency. Her plan was to begin work again in March 2020, same as always – just attached to a baby via sling.
“I took a tiny human with me to work to meet everyone, which sounds absurd now, right?” she says. “We were meeting about some other things, and everyone cuddled him. Then I [went] home, and it was like, ‘Just kidding! Your job is completely changing. It’s going to telehealth.’”
It was difficult for Christa to figure out what her new normal was going to be since there were no women around in her exact scenario. Many of her coworkers had children, but nobody on her team specifically, and nobody had a newborn. She continued to work until June, at which point, decided it just wasn’t working anymore.
She sent her resignation letter in June. Later that summer, out of love - and possibly rage, TideSpeak was born.
Being a mom can make you better at what you do
Starting her own practice was a way to create a career that better fit her and her family’s needs. But first Christa needed to rid herself of self-doubt. She found herself questioning her abilities.
“I’ve only been a SLP for a few years. Who am I to do this?”
“I don’t know what I’m doing!”
Christa found solace and support among her neighbors, many of whom were parents of toddlers. They became her first clients, watching her newborn while she organized activities for their kids. Another big supporter was her son’s daycare. Its once we start with even the smallest action do we start to expand our view and recognize the opportunities right at our fingertips.
“I literally walked in one day and was like, ‘Hi, I just started a private practice. Do you have anyone screening your kids?’ And they were like, ‘No, come on in.’ So now I have this working relationship with the school.’”
One of the most remarkable realizations for Christa was that being a mother made her actually better at her job. She could better relate with parents, because she was now a parent.
“Being a mom has made me a phenomenally better clinician because I get it,” she says. When we can bring our own personal experiences to the table and relate to the person across from us, we’re bound to create something magical as it comes from a place of love and our own personal values.
Identify what gives you energy – and use it
What gives you energy and brings you joy and calm in your day to day? It can be simple. It can be something that only takes a moment - walking barefoot in the backyard as you take the dog out, sipping your team as you take in the silence of your home before everyone else wakes up. For Christa, it’s baths. Pools. The ocean. Water in general.
Plus, a rock solid support system that involves her mother, who moved in to help with childcare, and her therapist, Bethany Warren, who encouraged Christa to walk to the pool and take a swim in the middle of the day between telehealth appointments. On the weekends, she revels in the outdoors with her paddleboard and recently began taking surf lessons.
As Moms, we can only run on fumes for so long. If we can know our limits and know when we need to take a break, who says we can’t learn to navigate the ebbs and flows and begin to thrive, not just survive.
It’s not easy to find the time to do the things that give us energy. It involves being creative and setting boundaries. Perhaps it involves reframing how we already go about our day and incorporating a few changes that light us up instead of drain us. I am willing to bet that when we find the right thing, it’ll feel like we’ve found a missing puzzle piece.
Notable Quotes from Christa Sisson
“Following pregnancy, I don’t want to say it was disappointing. But none of it was what I thought it would be. I remember having this child and texting my friends in the middle of the night being like, “what the hell? Why have none of you told me this?”
Resources & Links
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.
Visit TideSpeak.com to learn more about Christa Sisson, M.C.D., CCC-SLP, and her company, TideSpeak.
For more about Christa’s therapist Bethany Warren, visit her website, or check out her postpartum workbook, The Pregnancy and Postpartum Mood Workbook.