Moms who are mental health professionals deserve everything.
And, especially during a pandemic, we deserve it on our terms.
However, during the first 40 years of my life, I learned that success wasn’t often defined on my terms.
As a woman, you probably learned this, too.
I was taught that being a successful woman meant presenting like a successful man. You know, like those polished men from the 1960s who wore an impeccable suit to travel on an airplane.
Y’all.
T
his is what I look like on an airplane, and pretty much everywhere I go.
I’m Kambria Evans, a busy mom of toddler twins and an EMDRIA Approved Consultant with a successful private practice. And now, like you, I’m doing my best to hold it all together during a pandemic.
Since COVID-19 began, we don’t fly. Still, the point remains more true than ever before: success doesn’t mean having to look like something we’re not and will never be.
It’s high time we define our own success on our own terms.
We can be moms, therapists, and people just as we are moment to moment. This, my friends, is our success.
And as a fellow EMDR Clinician and mother, respecting you means never expecting you to show up as anything other than who you are in your messy, actual life.
Because it’s in our real lives where the good stuff happens.
I’m committed to building a space of growing and learning that fits who we really are, and what we really need right now.
We need to be seen. We need our imperfect lives to be seen and accepted and celebrated. We are freaking awesome just as we are. This pandemic is impossible, yet we are crushing this mom and therapist thing every day. Even when we didn’t do our absolute best, we did good enough.
We need encouragement. Like all of encouragement. We’re learning on the fly, all the time. No EMDR protocol fits every client. No parenting tool fits every kid. We need to know we’re doing a good job. We need to know we’re a good enough mother as we reparent our trauma clients and parent our kids at home.
We need understanding. Because being both a mom and an EMDR therapist during a pandemic is often an exhaustive, one-sided relationship. We need to know that someone else gets it without us having to explain in detail the context of home and work. You know who can do this flawlessly? Other EMDR Moms.
We need community in a way that is realistic. Because being both a mom and an EMDR therapist is an energy drain, and while we want nourishing connection, we need it in a way that many people won’t understand. We are burnt out on Zoom to get connection. We need community that is internalized, and there for us when and how it feels good.
We need efficiency. Especially during a pandemic, we don’t have time to sift through a firehose of emails about EMDR trainings, and read all the latest stuff on how to be an effective parent. Give us both, quickly. Help us connect all of the stuff we know as good enough moms with all the stuff we know as EMDR therapists to succeed at both.
We need nourishment when we learn. Don’t ask us to watch another boring webinar with lectures from dry, impersonal teachers. Talk to us like you get us, and give us learning in formats that support a working mom’s schedule during a pandemic. Let’s use the precious moments we have to doing something that will fill us up so we can keep going.
We need humor. We have kids with developing brains (aka tantrums) at home, and clients processing some heavy stuff in session. We want to laugh. When we laugh, we feel like ourselves in a way that’s like breathing. Help us breathe! Laughter is lightness.
