After the Altadena Fires with Vanessa Bennett

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Description

In this episode of The Happily Never After, host Heather McG welcomes Vanessa Bennett, a licensed depth psychotherapist and author, to discuss the profound journey of resilience and self-discovery following life's unexpected challenges. Vanessa has worked with so many via her professional expertise as a therapist, but this year she was personally challenged as she lost her home in the devastating Altadena fires. She will talk to us about what happened, the aftermath, and the new chapter she is beginning in Costa Rica. She will also talk about her powerful new book The Motherhood Myth, which critiques societal myths about motherhood, offers tools for self-reclamation, and provides guidance on redefining parenting, intimacy, and one's sense of self.

About Vanessa Bennett

Vanessa is celebrated for her deep, soulful exploration of the cultural, social, and relational dynamics that shape motherhood and our most vital connections. After thirteen years in corporate advertising, she became a licensed depth therapist—skilled at combining Jungian and depth-oriented psychology to bring "below the neck" work to the surface. Her work is the go‑to resource for anyone ready to move beyond performance and step into authentic, wholehearted living.

• Learn more about Vanessa at VanessaBennett.com

About Heather McG

Heather is an Emmy and Cannes Lion Grand Prix-winning producer, author, and founder of McG Media. She is the creator of the happily never after, a 360-degree project that explores how life’s endings can lead to a new beginning. A twin mom, endurance athlete, and devoted Trekkie, sitting still has never been her forté.

Transcript

Heather McG (00:20)

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Happily Never After, a podcast where we explore how life's endings can lead to a new beginning. If you enjoy the show, don't forget to rate, review and follow us wherever you are listening or watching the show today. My guest today is Vanessa Bennett. Vanessa is a licensed, depth, psychotherapist, author and facilitator devoted to the lifelong work of coming home to the self. Her latest book,

Vanessa Bennett (00:43)

Mm.

Heather McG (00:44)

The Motherhood Myth explores how patriarchy, capitalism, and generational trauma have shaped our narratives around parenting, partnership, and identity, and how we begin the process of coming home to ourselves. Now today, we are actually focusing mainly on a different subject, something pretty big that happened in Vanessa's life. Her work became even more personal after she lost her home in the Altadena fires in January of this year. Vanessa, I'm so pleased to welcome you to the show.

Vanessa Bennett (01:08)

Hmm.

I'm so glad to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

Heather McG (01:13)

Let's start off with, I think this is like 101, can you explain firstly what depth psychology is for those who might be unfamiliar with that term?

Vanessa Bennett (01:16)

Yeah.

Yeah, ⁓ it's a question I get a lot, right? Even when you're like a depth psychotherapist. It's a bit of a tongue twister, ⁓ mostly because people are used to saying depth psychologist and psychologist is the PhD level, right? So I'm always like, that yet, not that yet, yet, Just to the left. ⁓ So depth psychology is really the umbrella term that's used to describe analytical psychology, archetypal psychology.

Heather McG (01:29)

was like, let me think. ⁓

Just to the left.

Vanessa Bennett (01:50)

Jungian psychology, right? And so they call depth psychology the psychology of the soul. ⁓ It's rooted in Jung's work. ⁓ It is really a psychology that is meant to humanize and to essentially see the human to human, soul to soul connection between clinician and client. We really work with more what's going on beneath the surface. speaking the language of the unconscious, which is not the typical language that we're used to, right? The unconscious speaks to us and

metaphor and image and dream, symbolism, right? Synchronicity, things like this. And so we get kind of beneath the surface, if you will. And so of course there's things like behavioralism and things like that, but it's really more about your soul's trajectory in this lifetime, right? This path of individuation, if you will.

Heather McG (02:39)

Okay, got it. Thank you. That's how I was wondering, I, cause I read about it. Cause I first saw that term actually in your book and I like, what does that mean? So I did a little bit of looking into it and it's very fascinating. So thank you for explaining that. Now something big happened to you earlier this year. on the show we talk about how life's endings lead to a new beginning and your story is a big example of that. You helped so many other people and then life came and got you in a big way earlier this year. Can you talk to us about what happened?

Vanessa Bennett (02:41)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Hmm.

Yeah, so I, like many others in California, was part of the wildfires that happened in January. mean, wildfires happen all the time, right, in California, but this combination of the Palisades fire and then the fire that happened in Altadena, the Eaton fire, at the same time ⁓ is now being called the most destructive or the most deadliest in the state's history. So I was in Altadena.

And so we, you know, we didn't just lose our home, which I've had a lot of people come to me and say, you know, I understand my grandmother or my aunt, whatever, you know, they had an electrical fire, they lost their house. And I appreciate what people come up and say that. But the difference is that we lost our entire community. Right. So we didn't just lose our home and everything in it. We actually lost everything around us, all of our support systems, our schools, our grocery stores, our restaurants or everything. Right. So.

It was like next level on top of losing all your personal things.

Heather McG (04:04)

Now, did you, whenever the fire started and you evacuated, what were you feeling in that moment? Did you take much with you? Like how serious did you think it was?

Vanessa Bennett (04:11)

No.

We took nothing with us. So again, fires happen a lot in Los Angeles, right? ⁓ Every year we have the season where the Santa Ana winds kick up and usually there's wildfires that start because of the winds. ⁓ And in 2020, we had had a fire start right behind our house in the hills that we live in. And ⁓ we took some stuff. Usually what happens is the power goes out. so because they cut the power to try to stop fires.

That's not the opposite of what happened this time, which we can get into a little while. ⁓ And so we gathered our then six month old baby. My mom was visiting and we all went down the hill to Pasadena and got a hotel and just rode it out for a night or two until the power came back on, came back and everything was fine. Right. So we kind of thought it would be exactly the same thing. So we, ⁓ you know, packed an overnight bag and took my five now five year old out of bed. She was sleeping at the time and put her in the car and drove down to the same hotel.

Heather McG (04:41)

Right.

Vanessa Bennett (05:11)

thinking that we would do another overnight and come back in the morning.

Heather McG (05:13)

Now that is just so huge to have lost, you you came back with your lives, which is huge, but you lost everything else, including your community, as you mentioned. Are people going back to that area or are most people moving on? Like what is the, what does life look like now in that area?

Vanessa Bennett (05:19)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Honestly, it's a bit of a graveyard. mean, there are houses that are still standing. ⁓ Some people might not understand this, but my friends, those of us who have lost houses have actually said, as crazy as this sounds, I almost would rather be in our situation than in the situation of like the one house on the block that's randomly standing ⁓ because it's still completely destroyed from smoke damage. ⁓

and the insurance companies are fighting them to give them anything, right? So they were almost forced to go back into this highly toxic, environmentally toxic, but also just emotionally horrible situation ⁓ because, you know, again, the insurance companies are trying to say that it's not the same thing, right? So there are these like random houses on these blocks that are still standing. There are people who obviously parts of Altadena that didn't burn that are still there. ⁓ But the overall feeling when you go is very,

I mean, it is just decimation as far as the eye can see. There's nothing.

Heather McG (06:29)

are you still in contact with your neighbors? Were you close to your community there?

Vanessa Bennett (06:32)

Yeah, very close.

Heather McG (06:35)

you moved, you made a big change and moved your whole family down to Costa Rica, which is to me sounds like such a huge lie. Like that is a lot in one year. What has that been like for you navigating that?

Vanessa Bennett (06:39)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I mean, so to kind of go back to the neighbor conversation, you know, I think in the very beginning, well, first thing, I mean, immediately in the next morning after finding out the houses, you all of our houses were gone. I kind of went into immediate community mode and found a huge Airbnb that was about an hour away and gathered up a couple of the families and we all went down there, kids. I mean, it was chaos for, you know, a week in this house together, but I think it was actually what everybody needed. And what I will say is that after a huge traumatic event like that,

it takes a while to figure out what your next steps are, right? It feels like every day, every day there's a new next step. First of all, you're inundated with the things you have to do, ⁓ but then it's like, okay, this feels right. And then you do that then it's like, no, that's not right. Okay, this feels right. So the decision to move out of the country, ⁓ it didn't feel like a big decision to make. It actually felt in some weird way. Like we'd been talking about exploring living internationally for a long time.

And in some way it felt like, well, if not now, when, right? And it came pretty naturally for us when our daughter finished her school that year, we were like, now's the time. And we had gone down and visited, I've been to Costa Rica many times and it just felt like it was time to downshift.

Heather McG (07:59)

Do you feel like you have, I mean I have to imagine the answer is no, that you haven't processed this. I'm just going to guess that this is not fully processed yet. have you found peace in what has happened? How are you feeling about it now? I it's still kind of fresh. I know it's nine months later, but I think when something's this big, it takes longer to deal with it.

Vanessa Bennett (08:13)

Yeah.

It totally

does. So what's interesting, right? And obviously I'll kind of bring the like therapeutic lens into it here. ⁓ What I guess I've had to reckon with and logically, I think a lot of us know this, what I'm about to say, but then being in it, it's very different. People's coping styles are so different. And when something massive happens, right? Your coping mechanisms get kind of amped up. And so, so often there there's been so many, let's say divorces.

through this, right? Because again, our coping skills are different and they start to up against each other. And so in my close group of community and then even between my partner and I, seeing how we all process it and experience it differently from the jump has been really difficult. So like, for example, that very first week that we were all in an Airbnb together, just trying to figure out, you know, our kids need underwear, that kind of thing. ⁓ You know, a lot of us were...

Heather McG (08:52)

Yeah.

Vanessa Bennett (09:16)

crying every minute and lamenting and in the angry phase. And then, you know, and then my partner would come in and say, yeah, but, you know, like now we get to rebuild and turn the garage toward the sunset. Like we always want it. And I was like, okay, you need to stop talking. That is not helping. I might hurt you. Like just shut it up, you know.

Heather McG (09:34)

Yeah.

Vanessa Bennett (09:39)

And so you start to see the ways that people cling to things or push things away or see things differently. And it can be really hard to be in relationship with somebody who's processing it so differently. And so the process for me has been, right. I mean, it's been nine, 10 months. It's very slow. It comes in waves. And the best that I can do is allow it, the space to come up. Like I'll give you a perfect example. This morning, just this morning,

My daughter, who's five, said to me, ⁓ we're actually decided to build a house here in Costa Rica. And I had to have them put a bathtub in because bathtubs are not typically something they put in Costa Rica homes. And she really wants a bathtub. She needs a bathtub. Exactly. And so she just said to me this morning, out of nowhere, unprompted, she said, mom, did our house in Altadena have a bathtub?

Heather McG (10:17)

Yeah, she's sick. She needs a bathtub for her spa time.

Vanessa Bennett (10:29)

And I was like, it did. And I said, you don't remember what the bathroom looks like, do you? And she said, no, I don't really remember much of what the house looks like. And I kind of brushed it off. like kind of, you and I went about getting her ready and out the door and I came in for my meditation, which I usually do right when I put her on the bus and I just lost it and it broke, you know? And I like cut the meditation short.

Heather McG (10:51)

Yeah, I can see as a mom

that would feel so ⁓ sad, you know, because that's where you brought your baby home.

Vanessa Bennett (10:56)

Yeah,

that's right. That's exactly right. And I knew that she wouldn't remember. I knew that logically. And partly that's a good thing. Partly I feel like the silver lining is that she's not going to have many memories of this experience. But the reality of that, of her saying to me, I don't remember what the inside of the house looks like, was just something I wasn't prepared for. And so you process it in bits.

as it comes up and you sit with that grief and you allow it space and you feel it and you cry. it's just like, it's like a puzzle. It's like a ⁓ million piece puzzle, you know?

Heather McG (11:30)

Well, know,

something you're saying is actually making me think about a passage in your new book. You know, there's a section, and it's really like, to be honest, what this show is all about, and something that I think about quite a bit too, about liminal space, about in the dark night of the soul, in the trenches, and it's so hard and so difficult, but that's where you

Vanessa Bennett (11:36)

Mmm.

Heather McG (11:52)

Gosh, it is so hard. Like I think about my father died about a year ago. I have many siblings and we all dealt with it very, very differently. And to your point, sometimes someone would say something in a way it's like, that really hurts. It's like jagged glass on what, cause you're dealing with it, they're dealing with it. but you want to create space. Everyone should be able to process the way that they process. And we know that, but it's also like so painful. I think it's one of those challenging spaces to be in.

Vanessa Bennett (11:55)

Hmm, differently.

Yeah.

That's right.

Heather McG (12:17)

But to your point from your book, that's where change happens is going all the way down there, dealing with it. And then you come out, hopefully in a better place or having learned some things that you can take into the rest of your life.

Vanessa Bennett (12:21)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I mean, that is, you so you do know depth psychology because the liminal space is a depth turn. It's a depth term. ⁓ That is a Jungian term, actually. yeah, I mean, look, I talk a lot about in the book, too, and again, you know, a lot of the kind of Jungian way of thinking in this. And this is this idea of death and rebirth. Right. And so life is nothing but a series of deaths and rebirths. Right.

Heather McG (12:35)

I just didn't know what it was called.

Vanessa Bennett (12:58)

And so when we say death, obviously we mean metaphorical. ⁓ And, you know, on my arm, I have a tattoo of the Ouroboros, which is the snake eating its own tail. And that is the symbol of death and rebirth, which I got, funny enough, two months before the fire happened. ⁓ But it's exactly that. You cannot have rebirth without first having death, right? And it's after the death where we descend into the darkness, which is that liminal space.

where the thrashing and the discomfort and the questioning and the instability and all of these things happen in order to hopefully integrate, of put the pieces together a little bit differently than they were before, and then we're able to be reborn in whatever this new way is, right? I think, unfortunately, we live in a culture that doesn't really honor and respect these processes of death and rebirth. And so biologically, we grow and we change, right? We move forward.

But oftentimes I see people not psychologically or emotionally ⁓ evolving and growing and changing because we don't really make space for it in our culture.

Heather McG (14:04)

Now you have said that this experience that you've gone through this year has taught you quite a bit about resilience. What did you mean by that?

Vanessa Bennett (14:11)

So I think first of all, going back to what we were saying about everybody experiencing it different, right? I think it's been a little bit of ⁓ seeing that, but feeling it and kind of going back to what you were saying about your siblings, doing the work around not personalizing that everybody is experiencing this different, right? And how resiliency actually looks very different. ⁓ I kind of always knew that I was...

we'll say air quote, resilient in the fact that like, you know, it's the way I grew up. had a single mom and you know, we oftentimes, we were not high income by any means, struggled quite a bit growing up. And I think that a lot of my experiences gave me a feeling of resilience. But I've realized through my own therapy work, honestly, not even just in being a therapist, that there is a difference really in resiliency as in I can survive, which is great, that's important, okay? And emotional resiliency.

which actually is I'm bendable, I'm malleable. I can have the experience like I just said about this morning where I can feel the feelings, I can sit with myself, I can allow the pain, I can acknowledge it, I can respect it, I can give space to it, and then I can move forward, right? A lot of us have the like, can survive type resiliency, but we don't really have the emotional resiliency to feel the hard things.

We numb them, we run from them, we hide from them. ⁓ We don't make space for them. And so I talk a lot with clients about the importance of building both. ⁓ It's not just the pull yourself up by the bootstraps type resiliency that a lot of us are taught in the West. There is a certain amount of resiliency that needs to be worked on emotionally.

Heather McG (15:53)

what you're making me think about is exactly what you just described, the difference, to play it back, the difference between avoiding what's going on, avoiding your feelings in a toxic way, and then resilience ⁓ in getting through something that is very difficult, feeling those things. again, it takes time, and I don't know that it's wrong to distract yourself sometimes through that process. What are some of the things that you think about that can be most helpful in going down the more

Vanessa Bennett (15:58)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Heather McG (16:21)

positive road, the road that is healthy resilience, healthy processing. Like sometimes life is so hard, I have to be honest, I think it's hard to choose that path. It's very, very difficult to do that with divorce. You know, when people get diagnosed, when they lose their house in such a violent way, how do you do that?

Vanessa Bennett (16:30)

Agreed.

Yeah, I mean, first and foremost, you don't do it alone. We have to do it in community and we have to be ⁓ witnessed. There is profound power in being witnessed. We are a very isolated society ⁓ and we are taught that leaning on or needing support is somehow weak and it couldn't be further from the truth, right? And so ⁓ that trope, like you can't do it alone, it's not meant to be done alone, it's very true.

So there's that. ⁓ I think that also, you I like to talk to my clients about this idea of it's gotta be baby steps. It's like this process of if you think about your kind of range of resilience, right, which is our kind of psychology term for it. If you're starting out with a very narrow range of resilience, so let's say you grew up, most of us did, without having the tools, without having the skills, right, to sit with big emotions, to process things, aha, elder millennial, right?

Heather McG (17:33)

Gen Xers here.

Yeah.

Vanessa Bennett (17:37)

⁓

And so you're literally starting as a baby, right? So you probably have a pretty narrow range. That's okay, that's normal, that's to be expected. What happens is you don't throw yourself into the deep end right away. You kind of work on it in increments where you slowly stretch, right? Think about stretching a muscle. You're not just gonna suddenly be able to touch your toes if you've never been able to do that before. You have to do it a little bit every single day until the muscles loosen and they stretch. It's the same thing with building resiliency.

Yes, you've been thrown into something traumatic, right? So for me, obviously, it was the fires. For somebody else, it could be a divorce or a death, right? Or the loss of a career or something. Somebody says to you, okay, you just have to be able to sit with it and feel the feelings. You might be like, yeah, right, right? I can't do that. And I don't judge that. I'm like, I get that. You don't feel like you have the skills to do that. You can't do the extreme of like, well, I'm just not going to then. I mean, you can, you can make that choice, but you're not really growing, right?

or what you can do is look at it as I'm gonna do these slow stretches to slowly build my capacity. So can I make a commitment to myself that for let's say five minutes a day, I'm gonna sit with myself and allow the wash of grief and anger and pain to come up. ⁓ Maybe I do some writing, maybe I do some audio notes around it. I take a walk and audio note around it. And then I go, okay, we're done with that now.

close the book, and I go back to doing what I was doing, right? I think a lot of people think that being able to process something means that you're just gonna lament all day and it's gonna completely overpower you. And that's just not realistic. We have bills to pay and kids to raise and we can't, right?

Heather McG (19:18)

Well, and I've definitely gotten to a point exactly to what you are saying. I really don't, I have a lot of doubt that it's possible to heal from life's big events in isolation. Like I think it is absolutely necessary. Like I'm thinking about, you I know a lot of things in my life like divorce, know, death, things like that. you get trapped in a dark cave, you know, and people do it every day. They just retreat to, because they're embarrassed. They're embarrassed to talk about it. They're embarrassed to be vulnerable. It's hard. Some people don't have a community.

Vanessa Bennett (19:26)

Mm-hmm. I agree.

Yes.

Heather McG (19:47)

And it's, I have just come to a really strong opinion I just don't see a world where I'm able to heal without having community and friends and people to talk to and a therapy, know, therapeutic support and all of those things. Like, I just don't think you can heal effectively in a cave by yourself. It's just not possible.

Vanessa Bennett (19:57)

Mm-mm. Mm-hmm.

No.

Well, and you know, it's funny because my therapist reflected back to me how automatic it was for me amidst like in the hour of finding out that I was like, okay, we all need to go together to this house. Like we need to stay together. And we had a week of witnessing and I mean, we had longer than a week, but really in this small container of witnessing and being together and crying and being angry and struggling.

⁓ And she was like, it was automatic. Like you didn't think twice about it. You just knew that's what you guys needed to do. Right. And I said, yeah, I mean, maybe it's enough of this work and enough of knowing this, I guess, just somehow seeps in. But it was like my being. I knew that this is what we needed and not just us, but the kids. Right. So the kids in their own ways were struggling, but in a very different way. Right. Because some of the younger ones didn't even really understand what was going on. All they knew is that they had their their friends and their cousins and their community together. So.

Yes, I mean, it's imperative. It's the way that human beings were designed to function, right? We would not have made it this far in an evolutionary perspective had we not had community. We're not actually supposed to be alone. We're not supposed to be loner type creatures, you know?

Heather McG (21:18)

I'm curious, you've talked about yourself and described yourself as type A, organized, very methodical. Do you feel like that in any way? And I have to, I'm just imagining this part, but from what you described, I think it's accurate. Springing into action, taking care of things, getting things done. You're trying to take care of everyone else, but it's happening to you too. Do you feel like that?

in any way gotten your way in terms of connecting to what had happened to you personally.

Vanessa Bennett (21:47)

think it's a yes and, and here's why I say that. I think that for those of us who have done and continue to do a lot of inner work, understanding ourselves, understanding our patterns, making ourselves uncomfortable by trying to break patterns, ⁓ I don't believe, and this is shadow work, I don't believe that any part of us should be necessarily cut out or thrown away, right? Every part is important so long as we understand it and we're in right relationship with it.

So for me, yes, are those my survival skills that have been born from trauma? Of course, right? I am the over-functioner that you want around in a crisis because I am, I always say, a master compartmentalizer, right? Yes, that was very helpful to me and to all of my community in that moment. Could it have hindered me? Yes, if I hadn't already been the kind of person that was doing so much work around that for so long.

that I had a level of awareness of we're gonna get to this, just not right now. I'm not gonna completely never come back to it, which I think if you had asked me this question 15 years ago, I would have compartmentalized it, put it on a shelf and pretended it wasn't there, right? I knew I would come back to it at some point. It just couldn't be in that moment because I had shit to do and things to take care of. So that's why I say it's a yes and for me, it's a gift that I'm able to kind of go in and out of that, but it can be a curse.

if I'm not acting out of awareness around it, because it really can be a hindrance to me feeling and processing these big changes.

Heather McG (23:18)

Now as you are looking forward, you know, into a new, very different future in Costa Rica, and it sounds like you are committing to it, you know, building a house, all of those things, what are you excited about? Are you able to be excited at this point?

Vanessa Bennett (23:30)

Mm.

That's a good question. I think I struggle with being excited in general. I think another one of my kind of ⁓ personality traits that comes from childhood. I tend to be very pragmatic, right? I am excited. I'm excited almost via what's happening around me. So I'm excited for my daughter. I'm excited for her to get to have ⁓ a childhood where she's dirty and she's at the beach and she's riding horses and she's learning Spanish. And that excites me, honestly.

I'm excited for the downshift. So it has been really nice for my nervous system to exhale and to be so close to the water. ⁓ But I also, and I think this is also partly again, you're talking about 15, 20 years of doing so much deep soul work. I don't really believe in absolutes. I sure as hell don't believe in absolutes now. Right? Like I will tell people, I'm like, cool, make a plan. Make a plan all you want and then let the universe laugh at you. Right?

Heather McG (24:22)

Yeah, yeah.

Good luck.

Vanessa Bennett (24:30)

The second you're like, this is how it's gonna be forever, the universe is like, hold my beer, right? ⁓ That's what I've realized. That's exactly right. But I do think to a certain extent, I've always kind of lived in that mentality. ⁓ So for example, my daughter the other day said, are we gonna stay in Costa Rica forever? And first of all, she's five, she doesn't really understand forever, The context of time. And I said, well, we're gonna stay in Costa Rica so long as we're happy in Costa Rica.

Heather McG (24:36)

sure way to make sure it doesn't go the way that you want it to.

Vanessa Bennett (24:57)

And she was like, yeah, but is it gonna be forever? Like she can't really understand, you know? And just a touch, just a touch, a little scary. But you know, I look at this as this is what feels right right now. And so long as it feels right right now, this is exciting, right? But I don't tend to feel like anything is forever. And maybe in that way, that's helpful.

Heather McG (25:02)

She might have some of your personality traits in that question.

Yeah, well I think this is so gonna be really helpful to so many people. mean it's, I don't know, sometimes just life delivers you such a shocker of an experience. like, it renders you speechless. I know there have been a few things that have happened in my life and I'm like, wow, did not see that coming, but what is interesting, no matter how awful it was,

I don't want to make it seem any better than it actually was. These horrible things happen in our lives and what I think is interesting is, at least for me and a lot of the people I've been talking to, years later, not now, years later, I'm able to smile about it and I'm able to look back on it and say that was a really terrible time in my life, but I'm okay now. Life ended up being working out just fine. I learned a lot through that experience. I don't want to go through it again. I'm not saying it was good.

Vanessa Bennett (25:52)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Heather McG (26:06)

⁓ I do think that's interesting about these things that in the moment feel so horrible and awful, but then years later you are able to look back on it and the pain is a little bit less.

Vanessa Bennett (26:16)

agree. And also, you know, I'm a big believer in this. We can't jump to meaning making too soon. That is also a coping skill, right? And it can be helpful, but just like me and my compartmentalization, let it be helpful so long as you're aware that that's what you're doing so that you can come back later and be with the physical pain and grief, right, of what has happened. So, you know, I want somebody out there to hear that as well. Like, don't push yourself to make meaning too soon.

allow yourself those moments of tapping into the grief. Because if you don't, it will find a way later to come out, whether that's somatically, whether that's relationally, it doesn't go away just because you pretend it's not there right now, right? So we've got to give ourselves these moments of expanding that window of tolerance.

Heather McG (27:01)

Yeah.

And you can't put a time box on it either I know for me there have been times where, and other people have spoken to where the reaction is, I feel like I'm not supposed to be upset about this anymore. And it takes so much longer to heal from these things or process, uh, then you would like, you know, like someone's like, well, my dad died a year ago. I shouldn't still be upset. That's like such a blink of an eye. It takes like five times as long to get over big life events than you think. We'll not get over, get through.

Vanessa Bennett (27:06)

No.

Mmm.

Yes.

Ugh.

Well, it's also not linear.

Get through, thank you. So was first of all, I was gonna say, I hate the term get over, hate it. I say it to my clients all the time. It's not about getting over, right? It's integration. It's not getting over. ⁓ But also, yeah, healing is not linear. So cool, you feel great today, tomorrow you might not. And that's normal. We have to normalize the fact that there's, to your point, no such thing as a timeline. Everyone's different, but also that it doesn't look linear.

Heather McG (27:32)

I should say get through.

Yeah, because you don't.

Vanessa Bennett (27:58)

You know, like I was just saying about this morning, having a moment of like breaking down. giving ourselves the space without shame to be able to just be wherever we're at in the process is so important. And it's not something we do in this culture either, because again, we're just, we don't give the honor and the respect to these death processes, to death in general, literal death, but also the processes of death and rebirth. And it does a real disservice to us on an emotional and a soul level.

Heather McG (28:23)

Now I do want to spend a little time talking about your new book, The Motherhood Myth. I have read it and something I was telling Vanessa right before we started and then I saw it myself because you got to hit record when we have these conversations. I have read your book and what I love about it and I think this is such a hard target to hit is that the book is very validating. It's very validating of these, you know, I would call them insecurities but I think I might start calling them realities because I've been like things you feel insecure about and I'm like, wait a minute, I think

Vanessa Bennett (28:26)

Hmm.

Heather McG (28:52)

almost everyone feels this way and we're just like embarrassed to say so. You validate all of those things in a really raw way. But what I think is interesting and great is you are also challenging. It's also a challenging book. Like this is real, but this is what you can do about it. Are you going to do something about it? It addresses all the ways that we have been conditioned socially. Can you talk to us about a specific moment or experience that prompted you to write this book? Why did you write it?

Vanessa Bennett (29:08)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I don't know if there was one or if it was just a, it was a moment in my life where, again, it was that kind of liminal space, right? Where I was like feeling the squeeze. And I thought to myself, I know that I'm not the only one here experiencing this. And I knew that because I had the community around me saying, nope, it's not just you, right? People had come before me. And so I thought to myself, I want to start looking for books that helped me put words to this. And I found a lot of books, but, I say this in the book too,

I felt like I found books that kind of fell into two camps, right? There was a lot of these books that had been written by therapists and psychologists and people in the mental health field that felt very validating. And yet they also felt like they put all the ownership on making change on the mother, on the woman, right? So set boundaries, do this specific thing, right? ⁓ Which is fair, but it kind of felt removed and it felt like it just stayed there.

And then on the other side of that extreme, felt like I saw these books that were very like rage and the anger and like, fuck the patriarchy. And it was like, cool, I love this feeling, but like, what do I do with it? Right? It didn't give me any tangible. And so I was like, okay, I need to find somewhere in the middle. So I was struggling a lot in my early motherhood journey, which I'm technically still on and my partnership journey, right? And I started realizing how much the conditioning, even after doing years of therapy leading up to it,

how much my codependency was kicking up, how much my people pleasing was kicking up, how much all of these things that I had worked so hard to dismantle were fully there in my face again, ⁓ and also how much I was struggling just in general in my partnership. And I thought, my God, I have to look at this because it's not just me. This is so much bigger.

Heather McG (31:04)

You know, there's a phrase that I will say triggers me and I have a really hard time with it and I'm interested what you think about this phrase. And I realize this is kind of a leading question, so feel free to disagree with me. But personally, I hate the phrase good mother because I know for me that phrase has caused a lot of stress in my life. You know, that tension between what I want to do, what I feel like I'm supposed to do. Am I a good mom? Am I a bad mom? I think if you're in a damaging ⁓ romantic relationship, that's an easy weapon to lob at your partner.

Vanessa Bennett (31:14)

Hahaha

Mm-hmm.

yeah.

Heather McG (31:34)

how do you feel about that phrase?

Vanessa Bennett (31:36)

Yeah, I mean, I would agree. I think that there's no such thing in a way because we're all such unique humans and our children are all such unique humans. You know, this is where ⁓ Bowlby would say it's the good enough mother and the importance of being the good enough mother and the kind of mental and emotional resilience that your children will have so long as you're able to be the good enough mother, that the good mother is actually a complete fallacy.

And that actually, I would say for those of us who get trapped in the cycle that you're talking about, which is the cycle of shame and guilt and people pleasing and doing all the things to try to be the good mother, oftentimes it actually backfires. trying to, here's what I will say, this is probably hard for a lot of people to hear. When you're stuck in a state of doing everything you can so that you can feel like the good mother, typically that's actually not about your kids, that's about you.

Heather McG (32:30)

⁓ that's about us. ⁓ my God.

Vanessa Bennett (32:31)

That's right, that's right. And

here's what, just like any codependent behavior, whether they have the language to articulate it or they can really set, they sense it and they know it. And that has more of a negative impact long-term than if you just show up as your messy self and know that you're going to be the good enough mother.

Heather McG (32:37)

my God.

Gosh, it all comes back to the ego. I am like convinced. Like all these things that we struggle with, it's like, that's really about you. That's really about like how we see ourselves. It's not about what we think it is. It's about something else entirely, usually your ego. Now you also talk about something which I thought was really fascinating, the intersection between mother wound, sister wound, and witch wound. Can you walk us through what those terms mean and how it shows up in life?

Vanessa Bennett (33:04)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so I'm a history nerd. And so this book for me for sure was obviously, you know, from reading it was not just a book about, okay, this is where we're at now. It was like, I needed to understand how we got here. I think it's really important for all of us to understand how we got here because whether you're talking your individual history or more of like the social history, the cultural history, because what it helps me do is it helps me take the shame out of it, depersonalize it and say, okay, I'm existing within a system.

that has set me up to be this way, right? It's not that I'm a bad person. It's not that I'm a bad mom. It's not that I'm failing. It's that I'm actually functioning exactly like the system intended me to function, right? So cool, now that I understand that I can depersonalize it and not get stuck in the shame loop. And now I can say, what am I gonna do about it, right? And so there's some resistance, some almost like activism in saying I refuse to participate in this anymore. So in my research, this understanding of like how we got here as mothers,

I talked a lot about the Trinity wound. And so I went into the history of the witch trials and witches, right? So the witch wound. And then I talk about the sister wound and the mother wound. the witch wound is really, and I say actually in the book how I was almost embarrassed to admit that I had never considered the epigenetic trauma that has been carried down in women around witches, right? Around the accusation around witches. But here's the thing, we know scientifically,

that epigenetic trauma is a thing, right? We can see it in the DNA of descendants of slaves. We can see it in the DNA of descendants of Holocaust survivors, right? Horribly traumatic things that happen, especially when not processed or kind of air quote healed, right, from carries on in our lineage. So it would stand to reason that when tens of thousands of women, not just across Europe, by the way, Africa,

Asia, North America, South America in different ways, we're going through this horrible time and it's still happening in certain parts of Africa and Asia today around witch hunts. It would stand to reason that those of us that are here right now have that in our DNA, right? So what is the witch wound? Well, it's the wound that teaches us that we can't be too big, can't be too loud, can't bring too much attention to ourselves, don't be too different.

Right? Because these were all surefire ways to get burned at the stake. And so it's in us, sure, socially, culturally, but you have to look at it as there's a level of like, we're starting from a base point of like, it's in my DNA, right? It's in my coding as a woman to not take up too much space because it can be dangerous. Right? Then we move into the sister wound, similar to the witch wound created during these times when, you know, we were going into this more patriarchal capitalistic structure, which is new.

in the grand scheme of our human history. And really what this did was it taught women to fear other women. Women can't be trusted, right? Because they might be the reason why somebody says that you're a witch. There's almost only so much to go around. We have to compete with each other, right? And it was actually a way for those systems to come in, break up our communities, break up our bonds, stick us in a house, right? Put us in the home.

and keep us controllable. Because when we're together, we have a lot of power. And so when the systems that be started coming in and getting a foothold, controlling and disbanding that power was really important, right? So now here we are, our day and age, still living with the sister wound. And then the mother wound, right? So the mother wound breaks, kind of makes up that trinity, which is generations, thousands of years of patriarchal wounding.

carried on from mother to daughter, from mother to daughter, from mother to daughter, not just actually to daughter, I'll say to son too in a different way, it shows up in a different way. We're all acting out these patriarchal wounds. And so the way that that impacts us as we're parenting can't be overlooked, right? It's part of how we got here today. So long-winded, but that's kind of the breakdown of the three different wounds that I see kind of coming together in this trinity.

that we have to be able to look at and dismantle now so that we can move forward in a different way.

Heather McG (37:39)

Well, I think it is a great concept to help understand our lives. I will say that part got me thinking pretty hard. In my family, I had a moment where I realized both my grandfathers were abusers. My dad was an abuser. once I connected the dots on that, like, wow, there is a whole history. And I believe this is how you phrased it actually in your book.

Vanessa Bennett (37:52)

Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Heather McG (38:01)

systems designed to control and punish women. Once you start to like connect the dots through generations, through history, it is not just you. It is a whole system that exists and it helps you understand your own emotional state. And you're right, it does make me, it was helpful to me in thinking about how I parent my own daughters, what I am bringing to that table, what am I passing down? And my hope is that, you know, it's getting better. You know, like I will say in my family, they divorced the person that was abusing them.

Vanessa Bennett (38:04)

That's right.

Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Heather McG (38:30)

It is getting better. We're gonna get to the point where we choose the person that's not an abuser in the first place, and we don't have to get a divorce. But I think when you start to think about how all these things connect together and there's a history there, it's a little overwhelming, I will be honest. It just feels so much bigger than even your own experience, but it informs you in a way that you can make a difference in your own life. So I think it's a super helpful. ⁓

Vanessa Bennett (38:32)

That's right.

Yeah, and look, when you talk about like divorce, right? I mean, we know this. Women couldn't have their own bank account in the States until what, 1978? if our, yeah, that's right. Like our mothers and our grandmothers did not have that. Most of them did not have that as an option, right? And to see that and to recognize that in like a human to human way, that so often there was so much damage done because they couldn't leave, but they couldn't leave. Not that they didn't want to leave, right? And so,

Heather McG (39:01)

Yeah, we were alive or I was alive

Yeah, right.

Right?

Vanessa Bennett (39:23)

I think that's important. I humanizing the ones who came before us is a big step also in dismantling the trauma that gets passed down. ⁓ But also I think this idea that to your point, it can be really overwhelming. You're right. It can be really overwhelming. ⁓ It's both liberating and overwhelming at the same time.

Heather McG (39:43)

It gives me such a feeling of grief and sadness for all the women that came before, because this is really the first generation that had full access to divorce and the ability to run your own life.

Vanessa Bennett (39:46)

Yes, yes, same.

Same. Yep, I agree wholeheartedly.

I 100 % agree. And I'll tell you too, and I hope people hear this, this book, while through the lens of obviously I'm a cishet woman and it's through the lens of being a mother, this book is about men too. And it's really important for us to understand that these systemic issues are not just impacting women, right? When we talk about these dominator systems, patriarchy, capitalism, white supremacy, colonialism, these impact men just as.

Heather McG (40:06)

Yeah, yeah.

Vanessa Bennett (40:20)

negatively as they impact women. Because yes, women might be, let's say, to use your examples of being in relationships with abusers, the women might be the abusers, but what happened to the men to create within them the ability to be an abuser? Right? Like, there is trauma there. There is suffering there. And I don't think it helps us to minimize or to push that suffering away and say, well, it's not as important.

as those of us who are at the hands of the abuser, it's like, we've gotta stop looking at things like that. It's gotta stop being like the men versus women because we're never going to heal this stuff if we keep doing that, you know?

Heather McG (40:59)

It's all rotten fruit from the same tree.

Vanessa Bennett (41:01)

That's right. That's right.

Heather McG (41:03)

Now in writing this book, I was really impressed by you because in this book, I think you show a lot of integrity because you put your own skin in the game. You share some of your own vulnerabilities, which I don't think everybody does. You didn't ask anything of other people that you didn't require of yourself, and you're very vulnerable, particularly the opening scene of the book. I'm like, my God, every woman has been there. I so get it.

Vanessa Bennett (41:16)

Hmm.

Hmm.

Yeah.

Heather McG (41:30)

So get it. Were there any hard emotional truths that you uncovered for yourself in writing this book?

Vanessa Bennett (41:36)

Yeah, I find that even now, it's been over a year since I wrote it and put it out there, people will say, oh, remember that part in the book where you wrote this? And I'm like, oh, God, I forgot about that. It's almost like you put it out there and you forget about it once it's there. I have to give my husband actually a lot of credit, too, for allowing all of this to be out there, because so many of the situations that I write about obviously include him, too.

Heather McG (41:48)

I did do that. Black it out.

Vanessa Bennett (42:03)

for him to be able to see himself and see the patriarchal woundings and how that shows up and say, sure, write about it. This is gonna be helpful to people. I don't think that any of these things that I wrote about, I am 100 % healed from, right? To go back to even what you were saying, I don't really believe that we ever get 100 % healed. I think this is a lifelong journey. It's life school. And I think that we edge towards

more evolution, And more awareness and integration. But even the things that I write about, sure, I'm looking at them maybe from a different perspective than I did in the time, but they still show up. You know, I still say yes when I want to say no. And then I catch myself and I'm like, ⁓ that again, you know? So I think that was also important for me to put out there, talk about integrity is I'm not coming down looking at you from above, wagging my finger, right? It's like, no, been there, done that, and also still struggling.

Heather McG (42:58)

Yeah, yeah. Well, and it really is a good example of, you know, a big learning that I have had in my life lately. The things that are the hardest for me to share are the things I most need to share. It's not oversharing. It's not oversharing. Like, if there is something that is really, it's okay to talk about these things. It's okay to talk about these hard things, these things that you're embarrassed to talk about or that you have a lot of shame around because, at least for me,

Vanessa Bennett (43:10)

Yeah, because they'll benefit.

Yeah.

Heather McG (43:24)

Without fail, if I have started talking about these things I feel ashamed of or they're really hard for me to bring up, without fail, whoever I'm talking to about it says, I get it. I 100 % get it. I have been there. That happened to me. You are not like the value of knowing that you are not alone and connecting to other people that what you're feeling can be worked through is vital, I think.

Vanessa Bennett (43:33)

yeah.

Mm-hmm.

And this is why I'm such a huge proponent of and believer in group work. And this is why when I started leading groups in 2020, I've never looked back, right? Because I look at group work as almost like the rocket fuel underneath our individual work. Because again, this idea of being witnessed and the importance as a human animal that we have on being witnessed, but also in witnessing others and hearing our story in other people,

and how that immediately strips away the shame. I think it is so important that we connect the group with the individual, right? And that could look like you being in community to your point and like having a cup of tea with like three friends and talking about it. But it's so important that we witness and be witnessed so that we stop thinking that it's just us and that something's wrong with us because that is how these systems keep going. They keep functioning on the backs of the shame. That's it.

Heather McG (44:37)

Yeah, you get stuck.

Vanessa Bennett (44:40)

Like without the shame, they can't function, period.

Heather McG (44:43)

Well, that's great. I have one big question for you at the end, before we fully wrap up. And this is a big one, so you're gonna take a moment to think about it. With everything you've been through this year, I have to imagine this has been one of the biggest years of your entire life. What do know for sure?

Vanessa Bennett (44:46)

Yeah

You

Big one.

What do I know for sure? What I know for sure is that...

no matter what I've got me.

No matter what, I can always find safety and security within myself. Not in like a hyper individual way, but in a, I've worked really, really hard to find home within myself so that I'm not putting that on other people as an expectation, right? Or as more of like a parental need. And so I think that's the thing that I know the most is like, no matter what's happening out there.

I can always come back in here and I can find my way back to myself and to being like, okay, even when I'm not okay.

Heather McG (45:38)

Thank you. I am so appreciative of you making the time to be here today. I think this is gonna help a lot of people for you sharing your story. Thank you for being willing to be so open and vulnerable about it. Now, if people want to find you, because they wanna work with you, or they wanna hear more from you, where can they go?

Vanessa Bennett (45:39)

Yeah.

Yeah. Thank you, Heather.

Yeah, so they can go to my website, VanessaBennett.com. I'm mostly on Instagram, Vanessa S. Bennett. I have a love-hate relationship with social right now, so I've been kind of going dark for a while. I think a lot of us are feeling it. But website is where most of my offerings are. I have a community, I have a depth coaching academy that I run. I do a lot of things, Substack, All That Jazz, so spinning all the plates, but you can find it all on my website.

Heather McG (46:19)

Perfect, and I will link that in the show notes so it's easy for everyone to find you. Thank you to all of you for listening today to the show, especially to those of you that are on your own journey, and we hope you have a great week.

Vanessa Bennett (46:31)

Thank you, Heather.