Psychologist Melissa Reilly Shares How She Empowers Mom-less Moms

[00:00:00] Melissa Reilly: The fact that we experience. Is not an indicator of right or wrong. I will say that again, guilt is not an indicator of right or wrong.

[00:00:20] Bettina M Brown: Hello and welcome to In The Rising Podcast. My name is Bettina Brown and I am so excited that you're here with me today. The goal of this podcast is to help. And help others move their needle towards their true north and experience the life that they have in their imagination and in their dreams.

Turning our backs on the shame blame game that does nothing for us. Ever. And my guest today is a person who really emphasizes the importance of turning your back on guilt and really acknowledging where we can help each other grow. And her name is Dr. Melissa Riley, who really emphasizes working with moms who themselves don't have a mom and may not know all the answers.

They hope to know and are feeling guilty. Mom guilt is a real thing. And so I'm so excited for you to listen to our conversation. I'm super excited, not as just a podcast person, but as a mom to be speaking with Melissa Riley, who is a clinical psychologist, also a mom, parent coach, really who has a lot of depth.

I can feel your emotion and your drive and your passion behind your work because you really help moms who are separated from their own moms, by physical estrangement and death and help them move from insecurity, isolation, and overwhelm into joy and peace. Did I sum it up correctly? You did. 

[00:01:46] Melissa Reilly: Bettina

Thank you so much. Absolutely. 

[00:01:49] Bettina M Brown: And you also share publicly a story that's very personal, very vulnerable, that after giving birth to one of your own sons, a couple hours later you felt grief. And that was very personal the way you wrote it. Can you share a little bit more about. 

[00:02:08] Melissa Reilly: Sure, absolutely. So I had this experience.

I was an older mother when I gave birth to my son, so I'm just shy, just day shy. My 38th birthday, you know, I'd been a psychologist. , very confident in who I was as a woman, as a professional. I was really taken aback by how much this longing for my mother and this grief experience that reoccurred for me when I was pregnant and then gave birth to my son.

So I had lost my mom, to death, 15 years prior to giving birth to my son. So, it wasn't a new loss. It was something that I had lived my entire adult. You know, with, and so when I became pregnant and gave birth to my son, the last thing I was expecting was to feel this overwhelming sense of loss and grief and, really feeling so isolated and alone in a way I had not felt in many, many years.

[00:03:16] Bettina M Brown: And did you recognize that that aloneness was because of the loss of your mom? Were you able to pinpoint it right away.

[00:03:23] Melissa Reilly: No. No, I wasn't. I was, thought it was just garden variety, postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, and I also thought there was something really wrong with me, because, It just felt like something was missing.

And here I was, knew a lot about, you know, children and child development from the work that I do professionally. And yet I felt. So unprepared for what motherhood was going to be like. And again, I, I was nearly 38 years old and so I felt this really deep sense of shame over that because, you know, you know women much younger than I with without the, the benefit of.

You know, the, the resources I had were doing great, right? And seemed to just make it happen, and I couldn't. And so it was much later, many years later that after talking with lots of women who also weren't moms without a mom, really discovering that what I was experiencing was a resurgence in grief without recognizing it as being grief.

And, you know, I discovered that it wasn't just, or it isn't just women that, have lost their moms through death that experience this, but it's, it's moms that don't have a mom in their life that's supportive and nurturing to provide assistance and guidance. Yeah. 

[00:04:59] Bettina M Brown: And you know, there is no textbook guidebook for being a parent, for being a mom.

No. But when you have someone who also has been there, that is your textbook, that is your guidebook to kind of bounce ideas of yes, every child is different. Mm-hmm. But a lot of the emotions we feel that you talk about guilt, fear, you know, loss, not good enough. Will I be good enough? Overwhelm.

Those are very, Yes. Among all the moms. 

[00:05:26] Melissa Reilly: Absolutely. Absolutely. And then it just becomes really intensified when you, you don't have a mom, right? Because then you're faced with not even knowing the things you don't know, right? And, and not having that go-to person, kind of watching over your shoulder, oh, you should think about this.

Or, what do you think about that? I mean, don't get me wrong, right? That kind of unsolicited advice could be annoying, you know? Yeah. But in some ways it's very comfort. Yes. So I, I I have a funny story, story that I like to share cuz it's just hilarious, right? When my, son, you know, was still an infant, I was nursing but I had to go back to work cuz I, you know, his pregnancy.

My pregnancy with him was, problematic. So I was out of work for most of it, so I needed to go back sooner than I had liked. So anyway, I was dropping him off at his early learning center and the teacher says to me, Hmm, Melissa, I'm wondering if you think it might be time to go up on a nipple size.

I looked at her and my jaw dropped. I'm like, what? What are you talking about? And she's like, well, you know, when, when he is, you know, eating from the bottle, cuz I would provide bottles with, with the breast milk. He's struggling a little bit, so I, I was thinking we could go up as. Up size, like they come in sizes.

I had no clue that, you know, nipples gave in different nipple sizes. I didn't know, nobody told me I was nursing, so I I never fed him from a bottle. There was nobody in my life to give me that just basic piece of information that I had no idea about. Until she told me. Right. And, and so then, you know, she explained the whole thing to me and I just looked at her.

I'm like, okay, so what do you think? Right. I didn't have anybody else to ask. Mm-hmm. And I'll never forget leaving that day, being mortified, embarrassed. I felt so. Stupid for not knowing something. But, but again, now I realize, how would I have known that I was never around babies. I didn't have other female, you know, family members.

 I, my friends, their children were teenagers and young adults. So, We didn't share those kinds of stories.

[00:07:38] Bettina M Brown: Exactly. Exactly. And you, and that's a, that's a good story because we don't know what we don't know. You can read all the things, you can do all that. Mm-hmm. And you know, as a nursing mom, you only have one size so that they come in different other things.

We don't really, we don't know that. And Right. And when you talked about being mort, You shared something else. You said, you know, mom, guilt, we all experience it. I call mine Gladys and I, I know we say we laugh out loud, but I, I truly did just, it just came out of me in public at a coffee shop. I'm like, oh my gosh.

Yeah, I, I never named mine. But this mom guilt, if you say mom guilt to a group of. You, you get the moan like, oh yeah. Mm-hmm. You know, like it's identifiable. Even if we all share our own view, there's this mom guilt. Share what your thoughts are on that and, and where, where you are. 

[00:08:34] Melissa Reilly: Absolutely. So guilt is a normal emotion.

Just like every other emotion. It's not good or bad, right? And so it's like happiness, sadness, fear, love. It's simply an emotion. And all emotion has a purpose that allows us to live in community. So guilt. Is simply a pause button. It just indicates that we are doing something that's new that's outside of our comfort zone that we're not sure about, and it's telling us to kind of pause and think about, all right, is what I'm doing.

Okay? And so the fact that we experience guilt, Is not an indicator of right or wrong. I will say that again, guilt is not an indicator of right or wrong. It just simply gives us the opportunity to stop and think about what we're doing. And oftentimes when we are doing something that's outside of our comfort zone, we're setting limits, we're doing something for ourselves.

If we're other oriented people, guilt will get triggered and just makes us pause. Is this. So I joke around. I call Mike, Gil Gladys, and I bring her everywhere, but I no longer let her drive. She has to sit in the backseat. I make the decisions, so I don't try to kick her out. She's always gonna follow me around, but she can no longer decide which roads we take.

[00:10:02] Bettina M Brown: Yeah. And that's a good, I'm glad you said it again cause I was gonna ask you to say it again. You know, and outside the box and being a mom, you're outside of your box. Yeah. Especially a first time mom. Exactly. And how did you then go from, Hey, this been, this, my experience, this is what women I talked to, this is my background.

How did you come up with, you know what, I need to be a mom that helps other mom. Who have went through the same thing I am to help them go through, to find up, to rise up, into a different life. How, how did you come to that conclusion? 

[00:10:38] Melissa Reilly: Because the more women I talked to, you know, and, and shared my story with, the more I heard from other moms saying, yeah, you know, I.

You know, my mom passed away, or, you know, I've had to make the really difficult decision to not have my mom in my life because it wasn't healthy and or, you know, my mom lives on a different side of the country as I, and we all shared some of the very same experiences of not having a go-to person, not having our mom community really struggling with understanding who we were as a mom because we, we couldn't mirror that.

You know, from our own mom, you know, and, and experiencing that, that sense of grief over not having what we thought we would have once we had children. And so the more I found you, you other women similar to me, I realized I need to do something. I need to make my voice heard. And start talking about this so that we don't keep feeling this sense of shame and this feeling of isolation and feeling so insecure, that there isn't something wrong with us.

And, and that being a mom without a mom. At times it's different than, than the experience of, of other moms, and that's okay. Mm-hmm. We just need to find our path. 

[00:11:56] Bettina M Brown: Yeah. Yeah. And I like how you talk about reducing, to eliminate this i this isolation, this shame that you know, when you, when you are. Mom, you don't need extra baggage to pull you down.

That is the huge one to, to real eliminate. So when you're working with someone, what are, what are like one or two things that you tend to see often in your clients or those moms without moms when they come to you? What, what is like, aha. That's, that's something I see.

[00:12:29] Melissa Reilly: The need to build community.

Because when we don't have a mom, we don't have that built in person. And so I encourage all moms, not just moms without moms, but especially moms without moms, to create their own mom community, which includes four people and I like to name them this way. One is the wise. So this is the woman that you can go to and she knows stuff so she can answer your questions.

She knows how to give good advice, right? And so this can be another family member, a friend, or even a professional. The second person is the emotional support. So this is somebody you can just share what you're experiencing and this person will listen. She won't give advice. She won't try to cheer you up.

She just lets you be you and talk about where you are. The third person, Is the go-getter. So this is the one that gets things done. And we all know these people, right? The ones that never sit still, that can, can get 8 million things done by 8:00 AM in the morning. That's not me by the way. But this is the one that if we need, you know, something picked up at the grocery, we just can't get ourselves dressed.

She'll go do it and drop it off, right? And then the fourth person is the late night talker. So this is the person that in the middle of the night, especially when your babies are young, right? You can just call up and, and you know that she'll, she'll pick up. So having a community of people, you know, since we don't have that one person that can usually fill many of those roles, becomes real important.

And guilt, right, will often keep us from reaching out. But, I always let people know you are not a burden, right? Mm-hmm. You are worthy of being helped. And if you have four people in your corner and you ask them to help you for one hour, once a month, and let's face it, none of us would bat an eyelash if a friend asked us to help them for one hour, once a month.

Then you have assistance for an hour every week. And that makes a huge difference. 

[00:14:41] Bettina M Brown: And that, that time can make a huge difference on the receiving end. Yes, for sure. For sure. Yes. So say someone's here, they're like, yeah, I need that wise woman, or I have a go-getter, but I never thought about this emotional, support.

How do you find them? How do, how do they, how do you help women get to that point? 

[00:15:00] Melissa Reilly: Well, first it's, it's kind of like recognizing the strengths of your, your friends, kind of the people in your life, recognizing what they're good at and what they're not good at. And, and sometimes that takes time, right? But when we kind of look to our friends to be able to fill all of that, then oftentimes we are, we're gonna be disapp.

So we wanna really only ask for, for, for what we know they can give us. And not to forget that it's okay to get some of those things through professionals. So, so that emotional support. You know, you may not have a safe friend or family member that feels good, like they're always trying to cheer you up, so doesn't feel so good to just tell where you are.

So, you know, there are counselors or therapists, psychologists and even coaches nowadays that, that. There to listen. And, and so you can, you, you can find people. My wise women back then were, were the teachers at my son's school. Yeah. So, so, you know, it's thinking outside the box and, and reaching out. 

And, and certainly, you know, I am open, you know, to help any listener, you know, that, that reaches out. I can help navigate that. So, absolutely. At least get us started. 

[00:16:12] Bettina M Brown: And you also are developing, like you're in the process. We're all in process, right of right, of developing things. Share what, what your role is, what you're doing, how you're helping, and how people can find you.

[00:16:24] Melissa Reilly: Absolutely. So I am, creating a coaching program specifically designed for moms without moms so that they can go from feeling isolated, overwhelmed, and insecure, to feeling confident and resilient and enjoy being the mom that they always want it to be. And so right now I have, two free guides that I will make available to all of your.

One that focuses on, assisting moms to care for themselves without needing to step away from their baby. And then the other is a strategy for moms when those feelings of longing or loss take them away from being present with their children. So those are available. And, currently I do individual.

Which, is very fun and exciting it's a way to connect individually with, with people, regarding their specific needs. And in the fall I plan to have this really amazing group coaching program. That, that will help to build community for many women. So, listeners can follow me on Instagram.

I'm at Instagram, moms Without a Mom. My website is Moms Without a mom.com. And I would love to connect. Wonderful. 

[00:17:47] Bettina M Brown: And you, you have given already so much, you've, you know, putting a guide together, coaching, that's no small feat On top of being a mom, where do you still see yourself rising up to?

Melissa? What's on, on your rise, your horizon, I guess. 

[00:18:02] Melissa Reilly: Well, I am enjoying the ride. I, I'm very much looking forward to, getting this coaching program and just being able to help, you know, hundreds and thousands of, of women feel good about who they are. In my clinical practice, I'm already doing that.

But I can only reach, you know, a few women at a time. So I'm really looking forward to being able to spread that to a much bigger audience. And then just, you know, being with my kids as they, they grew up and, and. New places in their life. My son's being in his first musical this, this weekend. So that I'm really looking forward to.

[00:18:38] Bettina M Brown: Wow. Wow. Well, thank you so much for sharing. What's really, I think, an important mission as, as a support group for moms, talking about mom guilt and then also supporting moms and women, women supporting women to empower each other to. You're okay at this feeling that you're, we're not all superwomen.

Even though we are superwomen, we're not necessarily having to do it all. And so I really appreciate the work you're doing and it was really a pleasure for having you on my podcast.

[00:19:07] Melissa Reilly: Thank you so much. I really appreciate the opportunity. It's been a joy. 

[00:19:11] Bettina M Brown: I absolutely encourage you to listen to this podcast again.

I have actually never even suggested that before, but this is one, especially for those moms that are experiencing guilt, and I have yet to meet one that does not really emphasize the importance of not having that guilt, but learning to expand your community because so many of us need. We used to have that more just by default.

And now because of distance and time and our new generations and new technologies, we are further away from our support system as we raise our children and having more and more guilt is part of the experience of that. If you know anyone. That would benefit from this conversation. I encourage you to share this podcast episode and if you feel that any of these topics on in the Rising would be beneficial, I encourage you not only to share it, but also to leave a five star review.

It helps. Raise this podcast up and put it more in the hands and ears of those it can impact and make a great change for. So thank you so much for your time, because that's that one resource we don't get back. And until next time, let's keep building one another up.