Self-Care Society
Self-Care Society
Episode 63: Responsible Vulnerability
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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 2How 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 3Together , 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 2And 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 2Tori 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 3I 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 2That'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 3Yeah , 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 2Thanks 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 3I 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 2I think it does make sense .
Speaker 2Tori , 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 2I 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 3I 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 2I 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 3And 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 2too . 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 3Yeah , 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 2Absolutely . 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 3Isn't that true ?
Speaker 2Yes , 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 3I 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 3I 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 2I love that pizza as self care . I can get behind this tree , it's all .
Speaker 3Self care , it's everything .
Speaker 2It'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 3Yes , 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 2Oh , I love that . So authenticity , bringing our authenticity , bringing our lived experience , bringing our full selves to work .
Speaker 3Even if it's a little drop at a time .
Speaker 2Thank 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 3Next time I'm in your area , I'm bringing a pizza , Okay sounds great .
Speaker 2Thanks 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 .
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