Guest Tori Torrence Graham, a social worker at the Erikson Institute, talks about how she strives to strike a work-life balance by making Chicago-style pizza for her family.
Guest Tori Torrence Graham, a social worker at the Erikson Institute, talks about how she strives to strike a work-life balance by making Chicago-style pizza for her family.
Welcome to the Self Care Society podcast with your hosts Celia Williamson, ashley Kutcher, louis Guardiola and Carrie Shaw, a podcast devoted to those whose job it is to help others get or remain mentally, physically and emotionally healthy, but who also need to take care of themselves.
Speaker 2:How we're going to do this? By first showing you the filtered, pretty version of success and then the real struggles, real work and raw grit it took to get there, how they took care of themselves and also achieved their goals while doing it.
Speaker 3:Together, we will work with you to improve and maintain your internal health and growth, while helping you achieve your external goals and your next professional achievement in life.
Speaker 2:And we're excited to show you how to follow your own individual and unique path and achieve the dreams you have, while taking good care of yourself. So let's get started. Welcome to the Self Care Society podcast. I'm Carrie Shaw and with me this week we have Tori Graham, Tori Torrance Graham works at the Eric works at Erickson Institute, a graduate school in child development in Chicago, Illinois. Tori considers herself a student of self-compassion and self-care and has become particularly interested in building these muscles upon becoming a mother.
Speaker 2:Tori is a social worker and infant mental health specialist, providing professional development on a communication approach entitled facilitating attuned interactions for a fan for short for home visitors, therapists, nurses and beyond. Self-care and self-compassion are threaded throughout the fan approach. As they say, the best way to truly learn and integrate a skill is to teach it. Welcome to the podcast, Tori. Thank you so much, Carrie. It's so nice to have you here with us this week and kind of talk a little bit about what self-care means to you and kind of who you are as a social worker and who you are personally. So we usually start out with just talking about how do people see Tori on the outside? Who is the real R-E-E-L Tori?
Speaker 3:I love so much this real visual and when I was thinking about this I was thinking about like a film reel and almost watching myself as if I were someone else kind of looking in, and I think I hope it's fair to say that this is how others see me. But I just imagine that I can often appear sort of like polished and like I have it together. I'm well rested, I have a work-life balance and I've really sort of owned what it means to have self-care and I wonder, if we were to sort of dig into that like in a therapeutic space, if we'd unearth some things that are really more rooted in insecurity around why my sort of self-care, real R-E-E-L identity, wants to appear like I have it together. So I don't know if it's like my need to appear credible or exactly what it is, but I'm really on this journey of kind of unpacking why I believe that my real self around self-care needs to seem so polished.
Speaker 2:That's fascinating, tori. So so you're kind of unpacking this now. You're in the midst of really realizing this and reflecting on it. So I wonder, if we dig into who the REAL Tori is, if we might gain some insight as to where this, what the connection is.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I don't know if this is a lifelong journey. My instinct says yes, but there also might be something about my like age mid to late 30s, fairly new parent, All of those things perhaps coming together where I'm unpacking this now. But when I think about self-compassion and self-care, mentors or people that I really admire, I think about people that I perceive as if I really know them and that our relationship is really authentic, and it's perhaps sort of the less seemingly polished parts of people that I feel the most connected to when I look at self-care for myself and self-compassion for myself. So I wonder if I am definitely still in process of uncovering the real, REAL Tori around these things. But I know it has something to do with authenticity and a phrase that I learned from a really dear colleague in my work around responsible vulnerability and being able to not necessarily have to come unglued but be more transparent in who I am as I discover my own self-care needs and help others to discover theirs.
Speaker 2:Thanks for sharing that, tori. So now let's talk a little bit about who you are on the inside, or the REAL, that maybe not everyone knows.
Speaker 3:I think that I am a person who often wants others to feel supported, even if it might mean that I'm not feeling super supported in the moment, and so I'm really trying to look at that in terms of self-care. I also think that I can trust the opinions of others, sometimes more than I can trust my own opinion of myself. So all of that is I sort of try to unpack all of that and what that means and particularly around my identities and the identities of those that I care about I wonder if starting with self-compassion will help to unlock a door for me to be more thoughtful in my self-care journey, if I can learn to speak to myself like I speak to people that I care about. I have a feeling that's sort of like a port of entry so that I can be more thoughtful in my then self-care journey. But I don't know. I don't know if that makes sense.
Speaker 2:I think it does make sense.
Speaker 2:Tori, you spend a lot of energy being mindful of what's going on around you, and your job kind of requires that you be pretty externally focused, and so maybe that creates a little imbalance for you or just a pattern, it seems, of always looking on the outside.
Speaker 2:I told you that this weekend I went on this really great women's weekend with some good friends and we were in the mountains and we came through a natural arch. And so as we came through this natural arch you know we're all the four of us are walking through, and one of my friends says okay, as we go through this magical portal, we're going to leave something behind that we don't want to carry with us through this portal. And so it was this really amazing kind of surprise thing, like what comes to mind right off, you know, right just in this moment, when she says this. And so we all left something behind and walked through and maybe felt a little bit lighter. But I think about that with you. You know, is there something that you're journeying through? You know, this portal, and what will you leave behind and what will you pick up?
Speaker 3:I love that question and I think mistrust of myself might get in the way, or allowing insecurities to kind of build a wall between taking care of myself and also being, you know, in the service of others, and I think that that's something that I would like to leave behind and I'd like to pick up seeing myself as my own friend and being able to speak to myself in that kind of a way.
Speaker 2:I love that. I love that and I would bet that a lot of our listeners especially because we have a lot of listeners in the helping professions might really relate to what you're saying.
Speaker 3:And I think it just became particularly I mean, this is a familiar trope but particularly top of mind for me in becoming a parent and having a four year old and kind of moving from my day in my work and wanting to give a lot to my work. And then, you know, parenting parenting is always there, but then parenting kind of starts for the day and not having a lot of transition in between that and feeling a little bit like how can I be successful or good enough at least, in both of these roles? And then where can I make space for myself so that I can be better in both of those places?
Speaker 2:too. Yes, that's a big question, isn't it? When you feel like you're giving in all the directions, you've got to carve out that time and space for yourself. Okay, oh, I was going to ask you a question about motherhood. So that seems like was there a moment when you realized that motherhood was affecting self-care, or you know just something that has shifted you in some way? Because it seems really like the prevalent kind of thread through this conversation that something changed. Obviously a lot changed, but just wondering if there are any particular moments that stand out for you in this journey.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think it's when sort of intrinsic parental guilt started showing up. Carrie mentioned at the beginning of our conversation that I work at a graduate school and child development, so certainly I have an understanding of normal developmental stages and yet sometimes when you're in it it still kind of hits. My daughter was sort of acting out with her little doll like little figurines, and one was the mom and one was the child, and she was saying okay, I have to go to work now, I'm going to go upstairs and I'm going to talk to the ladies for a while. And the baby said, okay, I'm just going to sit by myself for a little bit. And I just had this feeling of, oh, she like this is. It wasn't even, you know, it was fairly innocuous, there wasn't a lot of emotion in what she was acting out, but I felt something like she is navigating my different roles and so what might I be able to do for myself so that I could start to kind of mitigate some of that guilt?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I can imagine how that would maybe be a hard thing to hear, and even though you're right, it's not good or bad, it's just what it is. But my mentor once told me that if we could harness maternal guilt, we would have renewable energy for the rest of the time.
Speaker 3:Isn't that true?
Speaker 2:Yes, so yeah, that it is just so pervasive sometimes. So have you found anything that has been helpful? Or you know what has self-care looked like over a cross time for you, as maybe before you were a mother and now that you're in it, what does it look like?
Speaker 3:I think that I have kind of two things that are probably going to sound pretty different, but I think that the concept of responsible vulnerability has really been a gift. Like, carrie, if you and I were meeting and talking, I could say to you I am feeling you know my daughter's downstairs today and I'm feeling something right now and I'm noticing a pull, and you wouldn't have to consume our whole conversation but you would know where I was authentically and that would build our connection and our relationship in an appropriate way. So as I start to share more of my true self with my colleagues and my friends, I think that that has really been serving and sort of a corrective emotional experience, in the sense that I'm noticing the people that care about me can really tolerate my truth and that's really been healing. And this is a little funnier perhaps, but as a Chicagoan I have a desire to perfect making homemade deep dish pizza.
Speaker 3:I love this, I like to cook pizzas, kind of my favorite thing right now, and so I've noticed that when I can build in a little bit of time to make dinner, kind of between the end of my work day and then family time, and there's me a little space for myself that I can just kind of, I can kind of either leave my body or I can come a little bit more inside my body by like meeting the dough. And then, of course, when you make pizza, everybody's happy. So it's for me and my family.
Speaker 2:I love that pizza as self care. I can get behind this tree, it's all.
Speaker 3:Self care, it's everything.
Speaker 2:It's a hashtag. I'm sure it's fantastic, I think. As a mother myself, I think that this self-care journey as a parent is a long and winding road and it does change depending on the developmental stage, where your child is and what you're noticing with your child or children. So I really hope that you continue to unpack this and continue to discover how to nurture yourself along this journey, because you do do so much to support other people, and I myself have felt very supported by you and I appreciate that. But at the same time, I would also love to hear that your teeter totter is leveling out Any final words of wisdom, tori, as our listeners are, you know I'm sure thinking about pizza right now, but is there anything else you'd like to share?
Speaker 3:Yes, everybody is opening their phone books or their door dash and looking for some pizza. I really like the teeter totter analogy and it's spaces like this and talking with friends and colleagues like you, kari, that really do kind of level out the teeter totter and being able to talk about these things. I appreciate that we are in a space where we're sort of challenging professionalism and we're challenging kind of my internal struggle of like what it might mean to appear, you know, polished or prepared or ready, and that when we can be more authentic and more transparent with each other, I think that's really in the service of self-care and attunement and our relationship building.
Speaker 2:Oh, I love that. So authenticity, bringing our authenticity, bringing our lived experience, bringing our full selves to work.
Speaker 3:Even if it's a little drop at a time.
Speaker 2:Thank you, I love that, tori. Thank you so much. Oh, thank you, and good luck with your child and your pizza efforts and maybe unpolishing a little bit of your polish or finding what's underneath there.
Speaker 3:Next time I'm in your area, I'm bringing a pizza, Okay sounds great.
Speaker 2:Thanks for joining us and thank you so much. Thank you to all of our listeners. This is the Self-Care Society podcast and join us next week and we'll talk more about self-care. Remember, it's not selfish, it's self-care. That concludes the Seeks episode. And remember, it's not selfish, it's self-care.