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Mother's Day has come around again and whew, sis, it ain't all it's cracked up to be. We don't have to keep betraying ourselves for mom to feel good about herself.  In this bonus episode, Aja dives into her Mother's Day journey with her mother, as a mother and in going no contact. In her sharing, she drops tools for how you can manage through the day so you feel good and remain in alignment with yourself. And if you are a mother, Happy Mother's Day to you!

Head to the show notes page for more details about the show and ways to connect with Tiffany at www.SheSaidWeShed.com/podcast/9 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ If you enjoy this podcast, share it with a friend! Be sure to rate and review us so others can find us and learn about it. Share your thoughts or practice sessions through voice memo on the website: www.SheSaidWeShed.com Black women with mama trauma, join our Facebook group, Healing Mama Trauma for the Culture: https://www.facebook.com/groups/shesaidweshed Allies and friends who can relate and are impacted by this work, join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/SheSaidWeShedPodcast

If you enjoy this podcast, share it with a friend! Be sure to rate and review us so others can find us and learn about it. Share your thoughts or practice sessions through voice memo on the website: www.SheSaidWeShed.com Black women with mama trauma, join our Facebook group, Healing Mama Trauma for the Culture: https://www.facebook.com/groups/shesaidweshed Allies and friends who can relate and are touched by this work, join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/SheSaidWeShedPodcast

Where has our compassion gone and how do we get it back? Aja explores compassion, the lack of it and how we can begin to address the lack of it; first with ourselves and then to those around us, especially our children. Through personal stories of a forced, unwanted abortion, an epiphany while watching a trauma conference and a recent interaction with her son, Aja shows us the damage of the lack of compassion in mothering. She works to decipher where black moms began to "lose" their compassion and then explores ways to begin to be compassionate to ourselves again.

Aja digs into performative mothering to explore what falls under its umbrella, how it impacts you and what you can begin doing to heal from it. Aja identifies 2 aspects of performative mothering: Mom acting one way outside of the home and a different way inside of the home (with the child) Mom teaching requiring you to perform in order to be loved, accepted, respected With each aspect, Aja discusses how detrimental these are on a child's life and how they can be carried into adulthood. In today’s practice session, Aja reveals steps you can begin taking immediately to reconnect with yourself and learn to trust and honor yourself as you step away from performing your authentic self. _______ If you like what you hear leave a rating and review! It helps others find us and decide to listen. Support us by donating an Patreon. Https://patreon.com/shesaidweshedpodcast

Monique and Aja chat about Monique’s experiences being raised by her mother, who moved to the US to work while leaving Monique and a sibling with her paternal grandmother until the age of 7. Monique shares candidly about how this did and didn’t impact her relationship with her mother. She digs into how she has grown through her journey of acceptance and how she’s found a way to relax into flow and obtain peace of mind, even while her relationship  with her mother still isn’t everything she’s ever wanted but it’s everything she accepts. Join us.

Crystal Tennille Irby, a birth worker among many other crown jewels, joins Aja and shares her birth story, the importance of knowing and understanding your birth story and using it as a catalyst to healing. As Crystal shares her very personal birth story she helps us to understand how, both, her physical and circumstantial birth stories impacted her life but most importantly, how she began to use it self-reflect and begin a road of transformation so that we can do the same.

Aja will speak on learning how, what and why we need to begin shifting our awareness in order to heal ourselves and treat our selves and children with respect and love. She has been focused on this work and we believe it would be useful for us to hear about the direction–the pivot. Also In this episode, we share a clip of She Said We Shed’s unfiltered recordings. In this clip, Aja takes us into her personal story and the impact her mother has had on her life. She shares where she is today in regards to her relationship with her mother and highlight’s steps she’s taken throughout the years to heal and improve their relationship. This shedding helps us to understand why she feels she needs to begin this podcast. Aja shares her previous struggle with yelling on her son years ago and how she brought him into the process of shifting in order to reduce and eventually stop yelling and screaming on him, despite being raised by a yeller herself. She shares how she became aware, checked-in and listened to herself in order to stop inflicting trauma on her son.

A replay from Aja's second public discussion on Black Mama Trauma.Aja’s healing work is specifically related to her relationship with her mother and that’s what’s being discussed today. She’s going to go from just having a conversation about it to really having this massive movement around legacy shifting related to Black mama trauma. Has it been dominant in her life? She says it has. She grew up without a father and with a single mom who was her primary caretaker and thus formed her view of the world from that upbringing. She felt she was more oppressed than cared for so recognizing and trying to heal from that was work. Work that many of us are familiar with in different ways that shows up in various relationships in our adult lives. Motherhood is one of those ways it shows up. Can adults and children deschool together? Aja and her son are in transition mode from homeschooling to deschooling because in addition to deschooling herself, she has decided that her son is going to as well. It felt contradictory not to do so, she felt like she couldn’t do both. She needed her son to think differently, to think for himself and shared examples of this here in this podcast.

Replay from Aja's first public discussion on Black Mama Trauma. When Aja and her son moved back to the U.S. after their natural learning travels took them to Mexico, they ended up staying with her mother longer than anticipated. Aja has been realizing how much her mother’s baggage affected her own sense of worth and value. Who am I? What do I like? What am I healing from? How is my relationship with my parent playing out in my relationship with my child? Those are the questions that have been on the rise for Aja, and she is not willing to leave them unanswered. Listen and connect as Aja talks about what she’s feeling, observing, and moving toward as she deschools herself and makes room for her son and her to continue cultivating a holistic, authentic, trust and respect-based relationship.

We ain’t dragging no mamas, some of us are mamas; we’re just prepared to finally heal.” Created by Aja, and produced by Raising Free People Network, She Said We Shed is a reclamation project for defining a motherhood that acknowledges and helps us heal from the unresolved trauma-informed parenting practices among Black mothers. Aja is raising her Black son while healing from the trauma of being raised by a woman who didn’t heal from whatever harmed her. Black mama trauma is the topic, and honest, love-centered, reclamation and healing are the intentions. Join Aja twice monthly as she and invited guests get vulnerable and deliberate about legacy shifting with support, back-up, and truth-tellers.  http://bit.ly/shesaidweshed