Secure Attachment: Breaking Toxic Cycles While Parenting Abroad

House Of Peregrine (01:03)

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the House of Peregrine podcast. I'm Mikael Weber, and today I am joined by Maria Bordalo, better known to her clients as Mama Maria. After becoming a parent, she decided to leave her position at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to solve an even bigger problem she saw in the world, the lack of access to secure attachment for children. Now she's parenting educator, a certified aware parenting coach, and the founder of the Baby Fair in Amsterdam.

Her work integrates insights from epigenetics, neurobiology, the 12 step program, and deep emotional healing and awareness to help parents and parents-to-be reckon with what they may be bringing into their family systems, consciously or unconsciously. This matters even more profoundly in the context of international and expat life. So many of us move abroad to start fresh, but often that move might be masking internal or family dynamics that come along for the ride. As the saying goes, no matter where you go,

there you are. What happens when we carry that emotional residue into the next generation? Maria and I explore what it truly means to parent or prepare to become a parent while navigating identity, migration, and your own unhealed patterns. We talk about the myths of the perfect parent, what's really happening in our nervous system when we raise kids far from home, and when we go back to visit, and why the stories we inherited can either be passed on or transformed.

House Of Peregrine (02:23)

Welcome, Maria. I am so excited to have you on today.

Maria Mamamaria (02:25)

I'm very happy

to see you too. Thank you for the opportunity.

House Of Peregrine (02:29)

We met on a boat on the canals of Amsterdam. So we're lucky us. But when we got into a conversation, I was really compelled by not only your work, which is already very interesting with parents, but your approach to it. And so I would love for you to introduce your work and what you're up to right now.

Maria Mamamaria (02:31)

Yes. Yes.

Yes,

great. Thank you. So yeah, I became an aware parenting coach a couple of years ago because of my own family history. So I am a mother of two and a stepmom of one. I have an 18 year old who just left the house. So he's my stepson and two kids of my own. One is 10 and one is four. And when I became a mother, I just became a mother on default. I just thought everything will come naturally to me and I prepared for birth.

But that was it. I didn't know anything else. I didn't know about breastfeeding and I of course didn't even imagine the enormity of everything that would come afterwards. The joys, yes, for sure, but also the perils. And through my own healing of my family system and understanding how my own childhood determines so much and touch every fiber of my being and of my behavior, especially when I understood that and I understood how I passed that on into my daughter.

we start seeing the issues, the problems, know, the behavioral issues that my daughter was exhibiting. That's when I realized I needed to ask for help. And that's when my parenting journey started. And that's why I left a very high paying job with Bill Gates. I used to be his advisor in the Netherlands and I decided to leave, which was crazy ⁓ to do this because that really was the job of my heart. I wanted to do more.

healing in family systems and also the understanding that everything that we are today, like the way that we think today, how we relate to each other, how we love ourselves or not, how do we feed ourselves, everything that we put in our bodies and in our heads has so much to do with how we were parented in our early existences or for a few days, for a few years. So why are we not talking more about this? ⁓ So that's just in a nutshell what I'm doing. I'm just trying to help parents

and parents to be there the most beautiful and more important job in the world.

House Of Peregrine (04:50)

Yeah. And so your journey, let's back up a little bit and talk about your journey. So you went from being an advisor for the Bill Gates Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is that right? Yeah. And so you were advising their philanthropic efforts in the Netherlands, is that right? And so they are solving a lot of big problems in the world, right? So that must have felt like a really a calling in a way. ⁓ And it's a pretty big deal to leave

Maria Mamamaria (04:59)

Yes, at the

Mm-hmm.

House Of Peregrine (05:16)

I can imagine it was a journey to go from working for an organization that has such broad and incredible impact. You must have seen this as almost a bigger issue or something, a bigger mission, not just for your own kids, but for others. So maybe give us a little insight, just a quick insight into that journey.

Maria Mamamaria (05:35)

Yeah,

so absolutely. knew that I always like to do advocacy and policy changes because when you change one legislation or one budget, you touch the lives of millions, right? Literally millions. I've worked on many issues related to women's rights and children's rights mostly, female genital mutilation, children, child marriage and so on. But this was different. This was a silent killer.

you know, like childhood trauma and the unspoken issues that run very wide and deep in most, I am realizing now, in most of our existences are widely unspoken and they touch on everything. You know, again, I believe that most of the biggest, most of the perils of our society and the evils of our society, the problems that we see, whether it's addiction, disconnection,

issues with relationships, divorces, issues with internal personal relations at egos, problems with our egos, can be tied up and taken back to childhood. So I was just very surprised that while I started researching, even I am a psychologist, I studied psychology 25 years ago, and I do remember talking a little bit about a touch.

But the information, the knowledge, the research that is coming up now after we decoded DNA, ⁓ you know, in the 2000s and we are understanding epigenetics for the first time. psychology is just unraveling all of these understandings of how much even preconception, you know, can affect us, you know, how were our parents ⁓ before they had us, you know, how was

How was your grandmother? What was she feeling when she was born? When your mom was born, what happened to her? What happened to her birth, to her pregnancy? The birth, the impact of birth, trauma, you name it. All of these, the reason why so many of us have been in therapy or are in therapy is because of things related to our childhoods. But nobody's talking about this. I believe also there has been like huge societal...

campaigns or movements, you know, there's been the Me Too about sexual abuse, there's been Black Lives Matters, you the climate movement. There's been like these huge, humongous societal movements to speak up about unspoken issues that pertain most of us and that are so important and relevant to most of our lives. But I don't see anybody speaking up openly about their childhood trauma or their family dysfunctionality.

There's so much shame, taboo, stigma associated with this that, you know, for me, my own story also, took me years to be able to speak about my own story. And now I can speak pretty much openly without any, you know, my body, you know, going into a fight or flight reaction. And I'm very proud to do so because I do think that silence kills. But it is kind of the last mile. It's kind of the last, you know, ⁓ sort of.

It's not like a rights issue per se, although it's childhood rights, but it's more about a movement to speak up about what happened to most of us.

House Of Peregrine (08:54)

you

you could attach to this, what would you call it? I'm putting you on the spot, but I have an idea. But what would you call it? If there was a campaign, would it be the right to connection?

Maria Mamamaria (09:12)

Well, a healthy, yeah,

yeah, and to a healthy childhood, to a childhood free of abuse, neglect and trauma, which is of course very difficult to achieve, you know, because there are things that are related to completely unhungible factors such as hurricanes, know, wars and things that are very, far from our control. But then when you talk about parenting and bringing back to the role of parents, I believe that

Almost nothing that can happen to you cannot be softened or mitigated by a good parent. know, like almost nothing. Of course, I don't have research, you know, at my finger tip, but I would be. Yes.

House Of Peregrine (09:59)

Yeah.

Yeah. So I have two questions around this. So I know there's been a lot of research about the good enough parent. So when we say a good parent, it can be loaded with lots of guilt and lots of shame and a lot of blame, a lot of women feeling blamed because ultimately, especially those first few years of life, it is a lot on women. And so there's a lot wrapped up in saying good parenting. But what I've heard and I really like is having a good enough parent.

that's been the more recent wording. It's like, don't have to be perfect. You don't have to be like flawless and so educated. You don't have to read parenting books constantly, but a good enough parent. What is that in your paradigm?

Maria Mamamaria (10:44)

Yeah,

yeah, I love this idea of the 80 % rule. So I always think 80%. So 100 % is perfect. So I do everything 80%. And that means that I focus primarily on trying my best and then repairing when I can't. Because I have screamed at my kids, I have said things to my kids that I regretted immediately. But that's what I do. I do what I always say is I focus on preparation and reparation.

And reparation is so key because it's about taking responsibility. Like all of us, I don't know anybody, even though I have like maybe a handful of people that I can count with my hands that have had secure attachments and they have become parents and they have, they're giving their kids secure attachments as well. Like purely both of them really, they've also said awful things to the kids. I've heard them, I've seen them. So for me, one of the biggest things is try your best.

House Of Peregrine (11:37)

Yeah.

Maria Mamamaria (11:43)

Like the more aware that you can be, it's not about reading books, it's really about yourself. Like how are you as a parent? That's why I don't believe in reading a million books. I love educating myself, I love books, but I don't believe that you will be a good parent or enough good enough parents by reading a lot of books because it's about unpacking your own self, your own traumas, your own system of beliefs, your own triggers. ⁓ How do you manage your own emotions? How do you manage your life? How are you, are you authentic?

Can you be authentic? Because most of us are not. Again, for reasons related to our childhood.

House Of Peregrine (12:14)

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, and my journey was very much, had all of my kids, they were all born in the US, but I read a ton of books and found that that helped me reparent myself in some ways and the ways that I wanted to show up as a parent. Not because I didn't think my parents did a great job, but because I recognized some intergenerational trauma that they didn't know about and nobody knew about. You know what I mean? And I think that it can feel overwhelming to try and keep

keep up. But what I like what you say, is like, ⁓ starts with you and it's an internal, it's about values. It's kind of about how you want to show up. But this trauma that you don't even know is there or ways that trauma has come down, even if it wasn't from your parents, it can come energetically. Like you said, you're doing all the right things. You're parenting, you're not yelling, you're not doing, but energetically it's still coming because it's not resolved. And so

I think that explains why some of this trauma gets passed on because you're reading the books, you're doing the things, you're following everything you think, but internally there's stuff being passed on energetically. And I use the word energetically. It can be epigenetically, can be, use whatever word it is when something's going on within that you're acting around.

Maria Mamamaria (13:39)

Yeah.

Well, for me, the biggest healing that or I don't call it healing because that entails that we're sick. And I think that every maladaptive system is actually a good adaptive. It serves the purpose. So was a coping mechanism. It's it's nature making you survive. So I talk about recovery rather than healing. I believe that sometimes it's not so much on things that you do, but also when you stop doing.

House Of Peregrine (13:52)

Yeah, it's intelligent.

Maria Mamamaria (14:07)

for me, my particular journey was when I stopped working for Bill Gates, I still had another client, but I really drastically reduced the amount of work that I had. And that's when my emotions cracked open. That's when I started discovering. So I wasn't reading books. I was not necessarily, you know, hyperactive in filling myself in with things. It was like, okay, I'm going to do less and I'm going to see what comes out. And then

And it's progressive, know, just like sometimes trauma is progressive and the way that we develop through childhood trauma is progressive and we, you know, kind of latch on extra layers of difficulties and complications and reactions. Recovery is also progressive and I love it, you know, every almost on a monthly basis, I go through a new learning of myself, of my patterns, my relations.

generally get better than they get worse for some reason because then you unlock something else or there's something that you hadn't realized or processed yet about a particular family member, for example. ⁓ So it's amazing. It never stops. You never get to graduate about this. And for me, I have a group called the Cycle Breakers where I help parents in recovery to talk about their issues. And it's all about making it a little bit better than what you had. It's not about clearing.

Decades and you know like millions of who knows how many generations have been behind you, you know Or before you with this intergenerational intergenerational issues So it's not about clearing up everything because it's not also like you have to take responsibility But you're not responsible for everything either. You know what I mean? Just do your best

House Of Peregrine (15:51)

Yeah. And so how do you see this? I feel like this happens to every parent around the world. They could be living next door to their parents. They could be living in the same house their whole life. But when we talk about international parents, people who are leaving a country and moving to a different one, first of all, that's intergenerational usually. Like that's a pattern we see, migration, that happens between generations, even if it skips a couple. But then how does that compound? So I have two questions.

Do we see this as a generational thing? And then how does that compound these maybe patterns that happen? And then how does it compound when you move abroad?

Maria Mamamaria (16:31)

Yeah, I'm not sure about the research that shows intergenerational moves ⁓ in different families. I'm not really aware of that. What I know is that ⁓ a lot of people move towards a better life and towards better opportunities and work offers and all of this. And a lot of people also move away from. And recovery

language we call this geographical. So there is a terminology where people, as you said, you you're still there, you are, whatever you go, you're still, it's still you. How do you say it? Like you said it before. There you are. Exactly. So whatever you're running away from. And I this beautiful conversation with ⁓ Angela from Expert Parenting Collective. And she, she said, you know, whenever you move to another country, ask yourself really deep, deep, deep down what

House Of Peregrine (17:09)

Wherever you go, there you are.

Maria Mamamaria (17:26)

Why are you moving? What is your ultimate motive? ⁓ And that will, you know, again, this is almost everything that I teach is all about awareness. And the more awareness that you have, the more you can catch yourself and the more honesty that you have, because it's really about conceding to your inner, inner most self. What are the reasons why you do everything? What are your motives in life, including moving to another country? And if you're not aware of this, then you can't change. Yeah. Yeah.

House Of Peregrine (17:30)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so it's self-awareness.

Self-awareness, yeah. And so I think people often hide behind that, hide behind, they're on for an adventure or a highly paying job or something like this. And it's really easy to just ignore or not even know that you're running away. It's easy to hide it from yourself. And so what are the things that you see come up for people or patterns that you see in international people

that make them go, ⁓ there's something here. There's something more here than just an adventure or a high paying job wanting a new start.

Maria Mamamaria (18:28)

Well, yeah, very often

it's a crisis. What happens is you just hit a crisis, whether it's a divorce ⁓ or you lose your job. So if your identity is linked to external issues and suddenly you lose that, you lose your partner, you lose your job, which are like the two big structural factors in people's lives.

House Of Peregrine (18:33)

Mmm.

Maria Mamamaria (18:52)

then you start questioning yourself. So they call it midlife crisis. Now that we call it burnout, whatever you want to call it, mostly are those moments where most of the times, because we don't listen to our bodies, because we were disassociated, because that's, know, most of us grew up in, with parents that didn't understand children's rights, children's developments. They just didn't know. Many of them were already traumatized by, you know, their parents having lived in wars and so on, especially in So

House Of Peregrine (18:53)

Yeah.

Maria Mamamaria (19:19)

I, for example, didn't understand, like now I'm so highly sensitive to everything. Like I feel my body, my body speaks. And now I know how to listen to my body, but I also know how to listen to other people's bodies. see, you know, the body language and so on, which is so important for being a parent to understand your child. But most people don't have this ability because they have been trained to be looking at those externalities, you know, like what's your job?

House Of Peregrine (19:39)

Yep. Yep.

Maria Mamamaria (19:46)

If you say in an elevator pitch, do you do? Most of the times you're not talking about anything that has to do with you, with your fears, with your passion, your, you you talk about, you know, if you're a parent of how many kids and what kind of job do you do? And it's all external to you. You know what I mean? So I think that's a key factor for sure in families that move somewhere else.

House Of Peregrine (20:03)

Yep. Yep.

So it's almost like they've gotten this far with really externalizing everything and something crashes down and they realize there's a whole lot more going on here and it's all inside and it's in a language I can't understand. There's been all these signs and we've talked about this on the podcast before how burnout, it gives you a lot of warnings before it takes you down as well as divorces or any of these things. There's usually a lot of warnings that you just aren't.

attuned to. think attunement is a really good word for parenting, for everything. So you're not attuned to this wisdom or these warnings. And so that it's too bad that it has to come to that. But it has, I think we have to give at least what I've seen is people who move abroad or take on these challenges are really, they've gone, they've gone a long way with this strength and now they can't go any further. They need new tools. They need new attunement.

⁓ So the systems start breaking down. ⁓ And that really affects kids. So of course we know divorce isn't ideal for kids. Also dysfunctional relationships aren't ideal for kids. And so in my story I had a slow motion nervous breakdown. Like that's what I call my story. Like I was like, I know something's wrong. I don't want to blow up my family. And so I just like slowly navigated or tried to.

for better or worse. But how do we do this differently? What do you encourage your clients before the burnout, before the divorce, before the losing of the job, identity crisis? Where does it start if you want to be maybe ahead of the curve here?

Maria Mamamaria (21:54)

Yeah, so of course there's no silver bullet. It doesn't really come because we're talking deeply that are happening in the family. So the family loads the gun, but society pulls the trigger, right? So again, we live in a society where it's all for me, it's all about vulnerability and being okay in your own vulnerability. Like nothing in nature becomes itself without being vulnerable. Nothing.

We have, this is the biggest crisis. This is why I'm all about speaking about my truth. And the more that I speak about all my family dysfunctionality, my own dysfunctionality, the freer I become, the more authentic, because nobody has reversed love for me or rejected me because of anything that I say to the country. The more I speak up, because everybody's so hungry and needed to

connect with this vulnerability. We are all vulnerable. Maybe women are a bit, you know, in a better position to be more vulnerable because we are a bit closer to our emotions. But, you know, I've been hearing some podcasts of men and fathers coming up with their vulnerability and it's so beautiful and it's amazing. Like I immediately like somebody that is just telling me about a vulnerable story immediately. And as soon as somebody is telling me about all the extra things that I've done, I'm like, that's, that's a

That's a very high ego with a very low self-esteem and that comes from parenting and society. So it's a long process because this is about feeling safe enough. You have to feel safe enough. Most of us didn't feel safe with our vulnerabilities with our own parents. ⁓ don't cry. That's, you're too sensitive. I'll give you something to cry about like to the different levels that is emotional neglect. So.

when you haven't had the possibility to be vulnerable and authentic, it's all about vulnerability and authenticity. It's very difficult because you're afraid. Our nervous system is already wired to think if I speak up saying, mean, a verge of a burnout, for example, or I can't manage my parenting life, or I don't understand my child, or whatever, any issue, because we all have issues, we all have issues. The moment that...

House Of Peregrine (24:12)

That's gonna be the title. We all have issues. This is gonna be the title.

Maria Mamamaria (24:13)

We all have issues. Nobody's normal.

So we are all human. The more that we can understand this and dare, you know, like we need that safety. need it might be for different people, the safety, the comfort zone might be smaller than others. But the more that we can as individuals and professionals pick up, the better, because that also changed society. And I think there is a societal

House Of Peregrine (24:20)

We're all human.

Maria Mamamaria (24:44)

know, ⁓ landscape forming around this.

House Of Peregrine (24:48)

Yeah, in one generation, it's gone from being good parenting to tell your kids not to cry to neglect. Like that's a big shift. And so when you're helping your clients navigate this, this is a tricky thing to navigate with your parents. without saying you did it wrong, and this is maybe easier, and this is why I think in a way, having some space from your family of origin and to work on some of this stuff is really to our advantage sometimes.

So then you can go back to your parents and do a little bit of healing, but in a way that's not so, you're not in the soup of it at the moment. So you're not blaming your parents, you're not, they were doing their best, but there is still the fear that your parents will feel blamed or won't understand your process and it will harm the relationship with the generation before. So that's one fear. The second fear is that, the bigger fear is that you're gonna harm your children.

Maria Mamamaria (25:24)

Yes.

House Of Peregrine (25:46)

And so you're kind of stuck until you get that safety, you feel a little stuck between wanting to do better for your kids and not wanting to lose your relationship with your parents.

Maria Mamamaria (25:56)

Yeah, that's a very tough one. A few things I wanna say. One is, I always say, if you have to choose, I hope you don't have to choose, but if you have to choose between the relation with your parents and the relation with your children, always choose your children. That's the one, like a no-brainer, but a lot of people struggle to try to combine and sometimes it's not possible. And sometimes you need to boundaries, you know? And it might sound harsh, but putting a boundary to somebody that is harmful to you or to your kids.

House Of Peregrine (26:11)

Yeah.

Maria Mamamaria (26:24)

It's a good action, know, it's a necessary action, it's a healthy action. The second is, I have seen in my own practice, but also with myself, that again, we are run by our nervous system. So whatever happened in the past in your family, if you come from a dysfunctional family and you're near your parents, your nervous system is in control. And sometimes you can't...

rationalize it. can do all the work that you do that sometimes your body is still reacting and it's kind of, know, your amygdala going into high alert because it's just trying to protect you. For me, it's very helpful to just observe it and say, okay, you know, I'm reacting to my parents because that's my body protecting me because something happened in the past and it's okay. I'm still having, you know, that's my first reaction. I always talk about first reaction and second.

House Of Peregrine (27:03)

Yeah.

Maria Mamamaria (27:19)

And my second reaction is my adult, reparented frontal cortex, part of me, the adult one, ⁓ the healed, the recovered one that says, it's okay, I don't need to scream at my parent, I don't need to be nasty, I don't need to be, I can be kind, I can be nice, I can be neutral sometimes, right? So I think that's quite important.

House Of Peregrine (27:39)

Mm-hmm.

Maria Mamamaria (27:41)

Yeah, again, being with back at your home, at your, house of your parents or one of the parents. I think it's a great test of your level of recovery, healing. I heard one say, somebody say, your family knows how to push your buttons because they put them there in the first place. I love that.

House Of Peregrine (28:02)

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, and that's the system your nervous system grew up in. And so even if you don't act that way when you're living in your new country, everything can work just fine. You go back into that system, your nervous system, it's native. That's its native tongue. And so that's what I see a lot of people in our community going through is like, everything's fine as long as we don't go back. ⁓ And that is a test, but also it's a challenge. And so

Maria Mamamaria (28:17)

Yes.

House Of Peregrine (28:31)

If you're just at the start of this journey or what is a first step? Is it noticing that your nervous system is reacting? Is that a good first step? And then maybe what, what, what, how do you talk to your partner or your kids about this or do you?

Maria Mamamaria (28:47)

⁓ Yeah, it really depends. think ⁓ every situation might be different. But one of the recommendations I generally have is, again, a lot of compassion and a lot of patience. Nothing again, you're competing against a archaic system of protection, you know, like where your preferred frontal cortex, it's very evolved, it's very powerful part of our brain, but it's competing against the other one. So it's a lot of

patience and compassion and awareness and get all the help that you can because I also think that the more hours you put, the more effort you put in into getting out all the pain because it's all about crying out, know, crying out, speaking it out, you know, kind of processing everything that happened to you with your parents and the better, you know, like then your life will

be much better because then you will be in a better place. You might not be in the profession that you don't want it to be at all in the first place. You will have better relationships because it all boils down. know, people become, I see it in a lot of coaching sessions, people become their little children around their parents, little children. It's like they're completely two different people. It's just because we all have our inner child inside. And when we're around our parents, we become that. So the second thing I wanted to say is,

It's about responsibility. Like our parents did. I work a lot on forgiving and moving on as well. Like my parents did the best that they could. All parents do the best they could. Like we also have to, I do a lot of work with my course around imagining how your parents were when they had you. How old were they? Like my mom was 21. Can you imagine? 21. 21. She couldn't finish university.

House Of Peregrine (30:32)

Yep. Yep.

Maria Mamamaria (30:35)

How would I be if I had two parents? I became a mother almost double that age of my second child. That's like all my life. Of course I'm gonna be a different parent. So putting ourselves in their shoes because they really, there was no therapy, there was no awareness, there was no internet, there was no information. There was nothing. They were operating in a vacuum, in a complete desert.

House Of Peregrine (30:58)

Yep.

Yes. Yep.

Maria Mamamaria (31:01)

And then take your own

responsibility. I can't blame my parents for everything. No, no, no, because that's victimized. Victims don't recover. Victims are stuck and you cannot grow if you're just thinking of yourself as a victim. So you can consider yourself a survivor if you really lived any kind of traumatic experience or dysfunctionality, but you can move on and then just focus on your children. Focus on the day to day to your children.

House Of Peregrine (31:27)

Yeah, and I like to say that you have to come into a new relationship with your parents. So this forgiveness of them doing their best and it's still not quite being what you need, by the way, that's gonna happen to my kids, I already know, like you can't be everything. So that recognition for yourself, being that good enough parent, ⁓ for me, that is a beautiful thing because it brings you into the next level of a relationship. It can bring you into a next relationship with your own parents that then starts

it can benefit your own children as well, assuming, you know, it could be bumpy, maybe it's not possible. But if it is possible, it starts that system healing or changing a little bit. ⁓ And that's important for your kids if you're going to keep a relationship with your parents, even long distance, which I think is most people's preference if it can be healthy. But then when you're in that with your children,

when you're abroad, you can kind of skip it. You can kind of skip it. And so do you see people?

think they've gone a lot of way in healing a lot of these things and they go back home and it goes right back. Do you see that happen? And so how do you help them navigate that? Because this is a big deal, people going home holidays, it causes a lot of stress.

Maria Mamamaria (32:33)

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

So ⁓ a few things that I've observed that help a lot is, ⁓ well, first of all, 100 % of the focus, if you look at our conversation, it's about self. It's about us, right? Like we can't change our parents and we can't prevent our kids from developing in many different ways, right? So it's all about us. So the focus that I do is mostly on the parents and forgetting about the, you know, the outcome, right?

House Of Peregrine (33:02)

Right.

Maria Mamamaria (33:10)

So when you come home, when you go back home, one of the things that I've seen very often is the expectations are always very high because we have something that in psychology we call false hope. always will, hope never dies, that our parents will be different, that they will see us, that they will do things differently. There's this expression in recovering the 12 step program that talks about, don't go to the hardware store to get milk. Like sometimes they can't give.

They can't say I love you or they can't give a hug or they can't revert back how you're feeling or they can't listen well, you know, or you don't feel this into ⁓ because they can't. They don't have that ability. They have never learned it. They never got it. It's extremely difficult to give something that you never got. So lower the expectations. It's very sad. And you have most of the times you go through a breathing process. Why do you accept that?

House Of Peregrine (34:00)

you

Maria Mamamaria (34:05)

That's why accepting is so difficult and you want to change because change almost excludes grieving and we will do anything that we can to avoid that grief process. But the only way that I found of healing is going through the pain. The only way out is through. lower the expectations. Sometimes it's about no damage control. know, don't make the problems bigger. You know, they can do whatever they want.

Stay on your lane, clean your house, I mean your body, yourself, know, like make sure that your house is in order.

Yeah, and sometimes create healthy boundaries wherever you can. So for example, I realized that I took for granted that I would invite myself to my father's house. I would say we're going from this to that date. And I would assume that I'm always invited and always able to go. And of course, my father is never going to say no, you're not, you know, like

we have plans or mean unless they really had plans. But sometimes it's okay to be close in other spaces, rent yourself a house somewhere else, go shorter periods of time. Like sometimes we just assume that our parents have moved on as well. Their house is their house, their lives are their lives, they're not parenting us anymore. Some of them might not be very comfortable with being grandparents either for some reason. Some are really, really up to the job and some...

are not very good with kids and they don't like kids. So how can you create a setting that is not a recipe for disaster? And that looks differently for different people. For me, it means that I have a cap of the amount of days that I can be in either my mother's or my dad's house because I have observed through the years that if I stay longer than that, they think that family and this ⁓

House Of Peregrine (35:40)

Yep. Yep.

Maria Mamamaria (36:07)

Family and fish only are fresh for three days. Of course, it rhymes in Dutch and not in English, but ⁓ I love that expression. So don't overdo it. And also think reversely to you. How would you be if suddenly four people came into your house for a whole week or two? That would destabilize anybody. It doesn't matter how healthy you are. It's a tough thing.

House Of Peregrine (36:37)

And it doesn't matter how much you love them. It's still really, really tough. And having those conversations, at least in my experience, it's really hard because they actually, everyone's learning their limits because no one in my family at least has lived abroad before. And so they're like, of course you can come for a month, stay forever. We want you to move back. So they don't feel, they want you to feel loved, right? And they want you to feel welcome.

Maria Mamamaria (36:38)

Exactly.

House Of Peregrine (37:04)

and so they go over their boundaries. And sometimes it takes, like you said, just observing, which is what I've tried to do. But also that, what you said before was really important. Some grandparents aren't up for having children that age, like they're not good with children, maybe they have health issues. And so accepting them as who they are now is actually a really good, you want them to accept you for who you are. So doing that in reverse is a really,

Maria Mamamaria (37:06)

Absolutely.

House Of Peregrine (37:34)

I don't know, maybe it's harder than we, because we're growing up too, right? We've never been this age before with our parents. And so I think that process is really, really ⁓ difficult because it's not spoken about a lot. But what you've highlighted I really like, which is not everyone is a grandparent the same way. Not everyone loves having house guests for two weeks or a month or more than three days. And so I love this idea that you're, again, attuning to the situation and setting it up for success. ⁓

And sometimes that means open communication. And some people can't do that. So you just have to kind of make adjustments.

Maria Mamamaria (38:10)

Absolutely. think,

well, you've touched upon one of the six don'ts of dysfunctional families, which I think every family has, which is don't talk. We don't know how to talk. We don't know how to do conflict resolution, how to discuss things in a nonviolent way. ⁓ Generally, we don't know how to identify our own boundaries. I've seen it as well a lot that parents are extremely

House Of Peregrine (38:20)

Mm.

Maria Mamamaria (38:38)

Volatile or unaware of their own boundaries that they want to give give give give give and then their crisis happens And then you I always think who is the most emotionally mature of the whole package? Generally between parents and kids. It's always the parents. It always has to be the parents You know, it shouldn't never be that the kid has to tell you what to do but between parents of our generation and us most of the time or grandparents Yeah between the grandparents and us

House Of Peregrine (39:02)

The grandparents. Yeah. Yeah.

Maria Mamamaria (39:07)

we are the ones that have had more access to all of this awareness. And you can practice. I had to train myself on nonviolent communication and I still mess up still sometimes because it's, the highways of my brain have been paved on not knowing how to talk. In my family, was never conflict resolution. We never really knew how to talk about these things. Nothing, from boundaries to... ⁓

finding compromises like compromises no no no no no that's never been discussed so so we have to be very patient

House Of Peregrine (39:40)

Yeah, yeah. want

you to go back and just go over the don'ts of a dysfunctional family.

Maria Mamamaria (39:47)

Yeah, so

there's, I mean, some of these are based on ⁓ different ⁓ philosophies, but these are the six that I have that I use in my own practice, but they're kind of my package. ⁓ Don't trust. So a lot of dysfunctional families have an erosion of trust of the adults. The adults are not trustworthy, either because of neglect or abuse. ⁓ So ⁓

House Of Peregrine (40:03)

Yeah, perfect.

Maria Mamamaria (40:17)

This is just the easiest to understand, right? So you can't trust your parents. But sometimes it's very subtle. Sometimes it's very insidious, right? So you tell something to your parent and then your parents start talking to these friends or her friends about you and you're like, you know, this was a secret. So it can be very big and it can be very small. Another one is don't feel. So the denial of emotions. Again,

most of people don't really know how to manage their own emotions and regulate their own emotions. So it could be looking like I will give you something to cry about or distraction, you know, here's the iPad, I'm crying, here's the lollipop, you know, I'm boom, slap in the face. So that is a denial of emotions, but it can also be denial of anger. So it can be denial of ⁓

anything really all the emotions the whole spectrum frustration you know a lot of parents can't deal with the frustration of their kids ⁓ or disappointment.

House Of Peregrine (41:15)

Yeah,

it goes both ways, right? If the parent gets dysregulated when the kids show emotion, even if the parent makes them feel bad for them, that can be dysfunctional. So it's weaponizing their empathy almost. Yeah, yeah. What's number three?

Maria Mamamaria (41:20)

It's very link.

well. Yes.

Absolutely, that's a very good point. ⁓ Number three

is don't tell, so secrecy. Everything that happens in the family stays in the family. Then don't talk, we already said that. ⁓ And the other one are don't ⁓ repair, so delusion of responsibility when the parents are not, again, this is one of the biggest, you will mess up, so how do you take responsibility and repair?

⁓ and the other one is, ⁓ don't see. So again, you don't see your children's needs. So most of the people again, that I work with don't like, I think it's incredible. This is also why I started the baby fair because most of the parents, most of the future parents don't understand their kids needs. They don't understand the need for, for example, connection.

for autonomy, the need for expression of the emotions, the need of boredom, we need to be bored, ⁓ or the need for ⁓ play. That's one of the most unspoken needs. So don't see, you don't see what's in front of you, this denial, not only of your own family history, this functionality, but also what's going on with your child in front of you. What are the needs of your child?

which always is related to your own needs. just don't, most of us also can't tell, you know, because we don't feel our bodies again. So this is how the story gets repeated, right?

House Of Peregrine (43:01)

Yep. And so I'm looking at time and we have to wrap up, but I really want what I've seen with international people who don't have a support system is they're trying to do this work and learn a new language and navigate a new culture and their kids are navigating a new culture. What advice do you give to where do we start? What are the practices we can put into place? Give us like three.

for international families who don't yet have maybe a nanny or friends that they can rely on. Because that's where it starts. And I think it's unhealthy for not only the family, the children, but also the place where they are to not be able to heal in the ways they need to to break cycles. It brings it to the place. And so give us some of your wisdom in this last bit of our interview with people without a support system.

Maria Mamamaria (43:58)

Yes.

⁓ Well, actually, this is the three things that I'm going to tell you are very much at the backbone of the baby fair that I'm also organizing in October, which is for future parents and parents to be. And it's a place, it's a one day event at equals where we will bring a lot of this is number one community. Again, we have to think about our nervous systems. We were not.

meant to be doing any of this in isolation in apartments where our kids are not seeing each other, where the parents are not talking to each other. I can't be entertaining two children every day without breaking down. It is normal to break down in those settings because nature didn't intend it to be. So especially when we are away from our own villages, from our own homes, we have to create community. This is anything that you can do to

House Of Peregrine (44:37)

Yep. Yep.

Yeah.

Maria Mamamaria (44:51)

And start with yourself. Like I am very active in creating community and it's very difficult to be very honest. You know, I'm very, very social. I've always done it, you know, as a child, I just knock on people's doors to meet new friends. I have no problem with doing that and still is very difficult because people are too busy, because people are living in different parts of the city. Because sometimes the kids are not even, you know, older enough to play with other kids or babies, especially in the first, you know, the first year is very difficult because you just don't meet people. Where do you meet people?

You don't go to playgrounds if you have a baby that doesn't walk. So that's one. Definitely community. Just do anything that you can to stop isolating yourself or to never isolate yourself. ⁓ Isolation is the root of ⁓ so much problems and so much difficulties. ⁓ So that's one. The second one I would say is do anything that you can. This is what I teach my students to get help, like getting help.

and asking for help is a super power. I could scream this out loud out of my window. ⁓ You will feel like a queen or a king or you know, it's amazing. Once you ask for help and get the point that none of this is meant to be done alone without help, put your money, like most experts have money. You choose where your money is going to. You know, like I chose the last four years not to buy any new clothes for me or my kids.

And I do have help every day at home. I have a cleaner and then I have a nanny and I don't have to worry about the mess in my house because also for my nervous system, it's important to have an organized house. But I don't have to worry about that. So I can use my time to play with my kids, to be with my kids, to be present, really, really, that already betters behavior. It improves behavior. It just changes everything because the more connected I am with my kids, the better everything goes. And the third, yeah.

House Of Peregrine (46:45)

Can I

say one thing? I realized somewhat early in my mothering journey that being a mother does not include taking care of the house. Like that is not part of being a mother. We assign it to that or to a stay at home parent. The house does not belong. That's not part of being a mother. And so what you've identified, I also identified early on, luckily, not early enough, but that being a mom really is about that attunement, being present.

Maria Mamamaria (46:54)

Exactly.

Okay. Yeah.

No. No.

House Of Peregrine (47:15)

That's what you're responsible for. Everything else is negotiable or hireable. ⁓ And again, that's, yeah.

Maria Mamamaria (47:16)

Yeah.

Yeah, and that is the most important. That's the most critical. Like

we have to think whatever we do to be there for our kids in the first few years will carry them for the rest of their lives. You know, it's an investment. Yeah.

House Of Peregrine (47:31)

It's an investment. It's an investment.

Yeah. that's that conversation with my partner was easier for me. But people will often say, ⁓ you're so lucky that your husband will pay for a nanny. I don't have a nanny anymore because my kids are older. But I find that's that's a barrier. So the right for mothers to not be responsible for everything is part of being a mother.

is a right I would give to people if I were, if I was talking about human rights, if I were, for children, it's to have a happy and relaxed mother and support it. Okay, now, oh, go ahead, yeah, I'm trying to.

Maria Mamamaria (48:03)

Yeah, absolutely. 100%. And just to... No, just to... Yeah, I'll

be very quick. I have a post coming up on this and I also suggest that people talk from the heart with their partners and say, this is what I need, this is what I did with my partner. I had given myself the no and then my coach said, write a letter to him saying, this is what you want to do the second time around differently than the first time around. And he said, yes. And it's changed completely.

But just very quickly, the last thing I would say, ⁓ work on yourself, heal yourself. Just everything at the end of the day is about you and your well-being. And if you put your well-being first, everything else will follow.

House Of Peregrine (48:45)

Yep. You're the heart of the house. There's no, the parents, the relationship, and as selfish as it may seem to work on yourself, it's actually the opposite, is what I would tell people. It's the opposite. It's the most you can give to your family to be regulated, to have a healed nervous system, and to continue to, like, you're their safety. ⁓ And so when I hear women talking about, or even men who are stay-at-home parents talking about it being selfish,

Maria Mamamaria (48:46)

Yes.

House Of Peregrine (49:13)

to take care of themselves. breaks my heart a little bit. Or we don't have the money for me to do that, which is, again, we're speaking a little bit. Not all expats have money. Like lot of people are moving on their own. But I think what you're speaking to is we need to invest in ourselves because we are that invest in our children. ⁓ And so that's a perspective I hope is getting more and more into the ethos. ⁓ But when my motherhood journey started 13 years ago, it was a very selfish act to have.

a nanny, especially when I didn't have a full-time job working outside the home. And I hope that's changing and I hope you're, I think you are doing a big part in changing that. So congratulations.

Maria Mamamaria (49:52)

Thank you. Yeah,

yeah, I hope so too. I think it's important. My life, my motherhood journey has changed dramatically from one child to another. And one of the main reasons has been asking for help and getting help because I can't do it all. It's just a matter of math. You just can't do it all. So you have to really ask yourself, what is the top priority? What is my top priority? You know, do I need more clothes? Do I need to have all the folds clotted perfectly? And you also, this is going back to the perfectionism.

House Of Peregrine (50:05)

Yeah.

Yep. And if you, yeah.

Maria Mamamaria (50:22)

The people I have, like the person that I have that helps me in the house sometimes doesn't fold clothes like I would love to. And I'm like, and I come from a family where my mom is completely OCD and organizes her clothes by color. So I'm already an improved version of that, but I don't care. I have trained myself to, when I see something that I don't like, if I have time, I will organize it. If not, it's going to stay like that. And I always think, I'm so proud of myself. Look at that.

the amazing job that I'm doing with my kids because they are being securely attached. And that's the biggest wealth that you can give to your kids is a secure attachment.

House Of Peregrine (50:59)

Yeah. Yep. And so would you say, this is how I framed it for myself. Their nervous system being healthy equals my nervous system being healthy, which is the biggest wealth we can give them. This is the biggest investment we can make into our kids is to give them a nervous, healthy system. As healthy as we can make their nervous system and their attachment, like you said, that is the investment you're making. It's not into yourself necessarily. And I think for international kids,

kids that are growing up where they're speaking another language, where they're outside their culture, where they don't have, their parents don't have support, it's even more important to make this a priority. And I would say, I would add, and I don't know if you agree with this, that it should be a priority for the companies or the countries that they're coming to to recognize this is good for the place too. To have regulated people in your city, coming to your city is again, wealth. Having regulated people in a city is the new wealth, I think.

Maria Mamamaria (51:48)

Absolutely.

It

is, but I'll start with saying I would turn it around. would say our nervous system informs their nervous system. So we always need to start with ours. And in particular, what we are learning with neurobiology is that their nervous system, their vagus nerve, for example, that regulates the emotions ⁓ is not fully formed when we are born. It's not fully formed until further than year one. So they need our nervous system to co-regulate. So never leave a child to...

cry on their own. need our nervous system. So the investment is in you again. And I mean, I can talk about your second part for hours, parts of our society actually ⁓ feed from unregulated, unhealthy, disconnected people. Because if you are disconnected, if you're not regulated, if you're sad, if you're

itchy inside and the society is telling you, have the answers, I have your solutions, eat these, buy these, click here, whatever, all outside. Somebody's benefiting from that. So again, yes and no. mean, I get it. get that, you know, a different type of society would benefit 100 % from all of us being, you know, there wouldn't be any wars, there wouldn't be any addiction problems. If all parents were

fully connected and helped and supported and understood and companies didn't put pressure on new parents. This is part of the seed funding I want to use from the baby fairies to start mobilizing because my background is in political change, course, and advocacy and legal changes. So I want to do that. want to do more, know, poking the status quo of what is happening. Where is the pyramid? The pyramid should be kids and

and caregivers in the beginning of life at the top. And now it's inverted.

House Of Peregrine (53:55)

Yeah, it's even seen as selfish or indulgent. If a mother says, it's almost, at least I felt like when I would do it, I was rebelling by saying, I need to take care of myself and that will protect my kids. And again, now research is getting better. You and others are changing the world. But I just remember having to be so strong and say, nope, I need to be cared for. For them, I need to be cared for.

Maria Mamamaria (53:57)

Yes.

House Of Peregrine (54:21)

And the hate was real for that.

Maria Mamamaria (54:24)

Yeah, I think that's changing. But of course, I always

am a child's advocate. I had, for example, I worked with a mother who hired me to connect with her son, and she didn't want to give up her full time job, which I didn't never said that she should. But she also wanted to do self care, which is also very important. But it's again, the math doesn't add up if you're you can do a lot of things with very little time and you still can connect with your child. But

you can't do it all at the same time. So that is also a reflection. This is why I took time off and I left the L.A. Foundation to give more space to my child. I never stopped working because I love making my own money, being independent, contributing. I love my work, my intellectual self. But I knew that I couldn't do both at the same time with the same results. Like somebody is losing out. But I do take an hour of self-care every single day. That meant I needed to work less.

House Of Peregrine (55:15)

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I changed industries as well because advertising is not set up for families, it turns out. So I totally get it. ⁓ OK, we've talked about a lot. Thank you for letting me open so many boxes with you because I know we we align on so many things and especially the advocacy for children and women, especially international families for me. But how do people reach you if they want you to coach them and to come to the baby fair? Tell us that and we'll put it in the in the show notes below.

Maria Mamamaria (55:43)

Yeah, so Mama

Maria Coach Instagram is the fastest route. Mama Maria Coach on Instagram. You can find me there.

House Of Peregrine (55:52)

and you coach individual families as well as do group classes, it sounds like.

Maria Mamamaria (55:56)

I have done work

with companies as well. So I come to companies and talk to them about either a parental burnout or aware parenting, how to connect with your children. So it really depends. I adapt to whatever the needs of the company. So I do individual, I do courses. So I'm going to be launching my course, FATFAM foundations in after the baby fair. The baby fair is the biggest thing that is coming up. We have a two for one ticket sale right now. So it's if you buy two is 30 per person, 30 euros.

for a full day and I think it's mostly gonna be expats. So I would encourage you, maybe you even wanna be there. ⁓ It's gonna be also.

House Of Peregrine (56:33)

Are you helping people with

teenagers? Because that's where I'm at.

Maria Mamamaria (56:37)

No, it's mostly

for smaller kids, but it's also a community, you know? So it's also about community and getting to know people as a first point of contact with the Netherlands too.

House Of Peregrine (56:41)

Yeah. Yeah.

Nice. Great. Okay, we'll put everything below and thanks so much for joining us and for your honesty and for ⁓ advocating for this group of people. I think it's beautiful, way needed, ⁓ and I'm just so happy we could speak today.

Maria Mamamaria (57:03)

Thank you so much

for the opportunity.

House Of Peregrine (57:05)

Thank you so much for everyone for joining us and please like and follow wherever you are listening. It helps us a whole bunch and we'll see you next time on the House of Peregrine