#38: Redefining Motherhood: Feminist Leadership, Villages, and Guilt-Free Living, ft. Tena Pick

In this heartfelt, humorous, and fiercely honest episode, we sit down with social entrepreneur and feminist leader Tena Pick — founder of Coro, a groundbreaking co-working and play space designed for modern parents and their kids. Tena opens up about her journey from gender development to motherhood, the creation of a values-driven business, and the emotional rollercoaster of parenting her four-year-old son, Leo.

With her signature wit and warmth, Tena shares reflections on feminist parenting, redefining success, managing mom guilt, building your village, and why we all need to get better at leisure without guilt. This episode is both a comfort and a challenge — to think, reflect, and imagine parenting with more curiosity and less judgment.

🧠 What You’ll Rethink After Listening

• That “me time” must be earned — instead, joy can and should be bite-sized and guilt-free.
• That villages just happen — you'll see how much intentional effort it takes to build one, and to be a good villager yourself.
• That parenting must look a certain way — Tena gently dismantles the “perfect parent” myth and offers a more curious, human approach.
• That leadership is about being available 24/7 — you’ll question toxic hustle culture and rethink what success looks like when you're raising both a business and a child.
• That judgment is inevitable — instead, Tena encourages replacing it with curiosity, especially among mothers.

💬 Notable Quotes

• “Mama runs Coro and Tatha cooks.” A proud parenting moment that upends gender norms—straight from the mouth of Tena’s four-year-old son.
• “We suck at leisure. And that’s a fact.” On the struggle to enjoy free time without guilt or productivity pressure.
• “Everyone wants a village, but not everyone is a good villager.” Tena’s mic-drop wisdom on the reciprocity required in building a strong support system.
• “A bad day does not make a bad parent.” A powerful reframe for guilt-ridden caregivers—zoom out and breathe.

• “Be curious, but not judgmental.” Tena’s parting advice on parenting, womanhood, and navigating difference with grace.
• “You are irreplaceable at home—but not irreplaceable anywhere else.” A reminder to realign our priorities without apology.

📚 Resources & Mentions

• 💻 Coro Bangalore – Coworking + Playspace for Parents (https://www.instagram.com/corospace)
• 📚 The Will to Change by bell hooks – for feminist parenting and love
• 📘 Untamed by Glennon Doyle – referenced in tone/themes
• 📈 UN Women – Gender & Unpaid Care Work
• 🎾 Shift Parenting Explained
• 🛋️ Fair Play by Eve Rodsky – resource on domestic labor division
• 📖 Tiny Joys & Bite-Sized Self-Care

👩‍⚕️About the Guest

Tena Pick is a gender and development specialist turned social entrepreneur. She is the founder of Coro, a beautifully designed hybrid space in Bangalore that blends co-working, childcare, and community for modern families. Tena is also a passionate advocate for feminist parenting, intersectional leadership, and reimagining how women live, work, and raise the next generation.

Her honesty about post-partum depression, parental guilt, societal pressure, and privilege makes her voice a vital one in the conversation on parenthood today. You can find her often leading with love — and probably eating banana bread with Leo after school.

📱 Follow Tena:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tenapick
• LinkedIn: 

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Edit with like rose colored glasses and Josh kind of has to
remind me you were miserable. Hello, beautiful people, and
welcome back to another episode of Parenthood.
I'm your host, Neha Garg, and this show is where we sit down

(00:21):
with royal parents and talk about what really happens behind
the Instagram stories. The honest, unfiltered and
tender realities of raising children while raising
ourselves. Today's episode is especially
close to my heart. I'm speaking with someone who
embodies so much of what parenthood stands for, realness,

(00:43):
reflection, and resilience. Tena Pic is a social
entrepreneur and the founder of Koro, a flexible design for
space that allows for child centred play and focused work.
It is a space that understands the needs of working families,
for infrastructure that supportswork life balance while also

(01:04):
being the village. She's a mother, a leader and
someone who brings a beautifullygrounded energy into every room
she walks into. She's mom to 4 1/2 year old Leo,
a curious, high energy little human, and partner to Joshua,
her best friend and Co adventurer for over 13 years.

(01:26):
Together they have navigated bigmoves, growing careers, and the
messy, miraculous Rd. of parenthood.
Tenor's story includes the joy of toddlerhood, but also the
shadow of postpartum depression and anxiety, something many
experience but few speak of openly.
Today, she's hitting her stride as a working mom and a woman

(01:49):
reclaiming her own rhythm. Tena, I'm so glad you're here.
Thank you for joining me on Parenthood.
This was like the most beautifulintroduction ever.
Thank you so much, Neha. My pleasure.
I'm glad you liked it. Let's start at the beginning.
Tena, the beginning of you. If you had to describe yourself

(02:09):
only three words or phrases thatcapture the essence of who you
are, what would they be and why?Entrepreneur because even when I
was like 6 or 7 years old, I wasmaking my grandparents eat at my
cafe and buy my newspaper and come support my many businesses.

(02:30):
So creation in some shape or form has always been been a big
part. I'm going to borrow a word that
I've recently been described as by someone who's very kind and
it's not necessarily a word I would have used to describe
myself before that. Brave because this really sweet

(02:51):
22 year old woman was like, you are so brave because you moved
across all these countries and across continents so young.
And you kind of, as you navigatelife, you forget that these big
steps actually are big steps. They just become kind of normal.
And the third word I'm going to use to describe myself because
it really became such a central part of my identity in the past

(03:12):
4 1/2 years is mum. No, I'm going to carry it here.
Feminist mum. 2 words. I'm cheating.
Beautiful, beautiful. And tell me Tena, what is your
family like? You said you know you are a
feminist mum, so tell us something about Leo.

(03:33):
What's he like these days? He's crazy.
I mean, in the best possible way.
He's unbelievably brave, unbelievably curious.
He's endless energy, like boundless energy.
Really kind. I think that his default is just
to be a really kind person. He's definitely, I don't want to

(03:55):
say bossy because that has negative connotations.
I'm going to say he's exhibitingleadership, young age, mostly
bossing us around at home, very,very curious about how things
work. Very much tinkering with his
hands, building stuff, building Legos, building everything and

(04:16):
just a really happy child. Wow, who does he think after you
or Joshua? Or is he a mix?
He's a mix of us. He's friendly as like Josh is.
He's super social. That's Josh.
He's like very extroverted, makes friends with everybody.
That's all. Josh is the stubbornest person I
have ever met. And Josh will tell you, I wonder

(04:38):
who he takes that after. So the stubbornness definitely
comes from my side. And that's about Joshua.
How did you 2 meet? How has your relationship
evolved over the year? So Josh is from Chennai
originally, but he was born and raised in Dubai and we met
during our masters in London. And so it's been a kind of an

(05:02):
international life, a love story.
I knew from the moment I saw himthat he's the father of my
children. And I was like, I have met the
love of my life and I called my mom and I was like, I've met the
love of my life. And my mom was like, OK, Tana,
you're crazy. You've met this guy once.
And but I was super convinced from the beginning.

(05:23):
And so then one year in London, we were pretty much studying
together, living together, partying together, everything.
And then I moved to Dubai after London and we got married a year
and a half into our relationship.
I was super young. I was 25 when I got married.
I've been married for 13 years, which is like crazy.

(05:43):
But the good thing about gettingmarried so young was that there
was no pressure on having a child immediately.
So we've only had Leo eight years into our marriage, which
was actually really cool. Then we lived in Dubai for six
years. We had the company together
called Sustainability Platform. We did a lot of impact
consulting and CSR consulting together.
And then seven years ago we moved to India.

(06:05):
And it's actually both of our it's his first time living in
India as well, because he grew up in the Middle East and then
studied in New York and then in London.
So that was a big step. But obviously the biggest
challenge to our relationships, forget about working together,
forget about the moves. It was the child.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, if I didn't
divorce him or him, me in the first year of Leo's life, we're

(06:27):
good. Because I don't think that
anything puts that much strain on a relationship as having a
newborn. You had just really have no idea
what you're getting yourself into once you have a kid.
And so it's been our past 13 years.
And I think that minus this first year of Laos life, which
was hard for multiple reasons, it was COVID and I had

(06:48):
postpartum depression and littlebabies are just difficult.
Anyhow, I think that we really are like hitting our stride.
And obviously in life, everything always happens at the
same time. Now, if your career picks up at
the same time that you have a small kid and you're moving and
then you're the parents are aging, like everything kind of
happens at the same time. So I would say that this is
obviously more like life admin oriented, period.

(07:14):
It's more life admin than romance.
But we still find those moments of like, Oh my God, I love you
so much. I'm so glad you're my husband.
You don't tell me, Tell me, Tana, you have called yourself
best friends and life partners in the truest sense.
What does that look like in yourdaily life?

(07:38):
Just unwavering true support. The only reason why I do any of
the things that I do, and I've been serial entrepreneur, which
only means that a lot of things have failed, so I've moved on to
other things. The only reason that I had that
kind of freedom to do things andexperiment is because every time

(07:58):
I ask Josh, but what do you think his response is?
Why not, right? And just like this absolute
support on the day-to-day basis with things like life admin, how
I said with equitably raising our son that it doesn't just
fall on my plate to understanding that it can't be
5050 at all stages of life, right?

(08:19):
Sometimes his career demands more of him.
Sometimes my life demands more of me.
So just adjusting to those changes in the dynamics as they
come up and while still being like, yeah, you know what, I do
want to go out for a drink with you on a Friday night because I
actually do enjoy your company. So I think that this like
partnership and really understanding that the changes

(08:41):
in life and in the absent flow of life are going to demand
different things from us at different moments, but being
able to create that resilience internally as a couple and
answer those challenges as they arise.
And he's been really insanely supportive.
I said I want to go back to cool.
I want to do my masters is like cool, go to your masters while

(09:02):
taking on like then more within the house.
And I hope that he would say thesame about me, because I think
that that's really is where that, like partners in the true
sense of the word, comes from. Yeah, beautiful, beautiful.
And, and let's go back to the beginning of your parenting
journey. Can you tell us a little about

(09:24):
your pregnancy and birth experience with Liv?
It took me a very long time to get pregnant.
A very long time to the point that we actually applied for
adoption and on my parents send a letter why we should adopt.
His mum wrote a letter. We met with a lawyer and upon
the day that we submitted all ofthe documents, I was feeling

(09:45):
kind of weird and I took a pregnancy test and I was
pregnant and that was so apparently the only thing was
that we had to remove that stress of Oh my God, I want to
get pregnant. And then it worked and that was
a Wednesday and on Friday the 1st lockdown started in India
because it was just this COVID hit.

(10:06):
So obviously it was like a really stressful time.
No one really knew what was happening.
What's COVID? I'm obviously not Indian, so I
was unsure if I was even going to be able to go to Croatia
while I was pregnant. I wasn't.
My parents haven't seen me pregnant, for instance, and they
won't because I'm done, because I'm done having kids.
So it was like a really stressful period.

(10:28):
And also the pregnancy was hard.I hated being pregnant, hated I
was puking from before I found out I was pregnant till 30
minutes before I had my C-section.
Like I was vomiting the entire time.
And it was COVID. So we're just sitting on the
couch and eating again, the ton of weight.
There was no like working out, none of that.
However, on the plus side, because all of the work moved

(10:50):
online, I was actually continuing to work pretty much
until I went into labor. So at least there was like that
distraction and so on. But a lot of the things that I
thought were going to be part ofmy pregnancy, like wearing cute
maternity clothes or having a baby shower, none of those
things happened because it was COVID and lockdown.
So my baby shower was online, and I spent the whole pregnancy

(11:12):
wearing Josh's, like, oversized T-shirts, none of my cute
maternity dresses. So anybody who has been pregnant
through COVID remembers how worked that whole period was and
just how different. And it took me a while to get
over the feeling of like I was robbed of certain experiences in
my pregnancy, even going to the doctor and Josh not being able

(11:34):
to go to the scan and, you know,all of those things.
Luckily, I gave birth in betweentwo waves, so Josh was allowed
to be in the birthing room with me.
But Leo being as stubborn as he is now, this is very on brand
for Leo. I was in labor with him for 36
hours. He just did not want to come
out. He just decided he's not coming

(11:56):
out. So the 36 hours of Labor ended
in an emergency C-section. It's very on brand for Leo when
he comes at his own pace and he does things when he.
So that was my pregnancy. Now I look back at it fondly.
And I think that we all kind of have pregnancy amnesia and look
at it with, like, rose colored glasses.

(12:17):
And Josh kind of has to remind me.
You were miserable and you were vomiting the whole time.
You did not have a good time. But I look back, I'm like, oh,
so sweet. And it was just lower me and he
was in my belly. But obviously, yeah.
I mean, it was a weird experience given COVID and being

(12:38):
away from my mom, all of those things that you would have
thought that you would have had this kind of support during
pregnancy and immediately in postpartum.
Yeah, yeah. And talking about postpartum,
you shared that it was really hard, marked depression and
anxiety. If you're comfortable, could you
take us into that space a little?

(12:59):
What was it like and how did youeventually find your way through
it? It was death.
I don't have a better word to describe it.
So if you ask any of my friends who kind of has the least
chances of being depressed or anxious, I'm known for like my
mental resilience, right? I've never had any mental health

(13:19):
issues such would. And so when I was pregnant and
when you're preparing for birth,I was preparing for all of those
things like I had a lactation consultant and you know, I had
pelvic floor therapist. I did not have a mental health
therapist or a psychologist number to dial, right?
Because it never even occurred to me.
This baby was so wanted. It took us so long to get

(13:42):
pregnant. I was so excited.
It never even occurred to me that, oh, this might happen,
right? And you know about baby Blues
and you know all of those things.
But it's like, OK, this is not something that's going to happen
to me because I'm in such a goodplace.
I have a supportive partner. I'm in a good financial
situation. Why would this happen to me?
And then Leo came and I died. It was as if this like thick,

(14:07):
thick fog just descended on me and every day was a struggle and
I just did not see the light at the end of the tunnel.
There was a lot of things that Ithink are quite normal grief
over losing your life and how itwas right from being this like
very active person with a big social life who does things all

(14:27):
the time to being trapped on thecouch under a baby that's
attached to your boob and cryingfor 12 hours a day is a shock.
But with me, it went more from like, oh, it's a shock to have a
newborn and baby Blues to just like full out depression and the
anxiety that came with it. I stopped sleeping.

(14:48):
So even when someone would take her away and they'd be like you
nap for two hours, I just could not.
It came to the point that I was having hallucinations and like
it was a really bad scene. So when I went to see my
gynecologist, I told her the baby is fine but I'm really not
doing well. And she said, OK, firstly in you
start therapy now today and if it doesn't work in three weeks,

(15:12):
you come back and I will give you Zoloft.
I will prescribe antidepressant to you.
And just knowing that someone istaking me seriously and that
there is a solution, like OK, I just have to try this one thing
and then there's medication and people are going to help me get
better. Then I went to the pediatrician
and I said how I'm struggling with breastfeeding and with
sleep and with all of those things.

(15:33):
And he was like, OK, give him a bottle.
And for someone to give me permission to be like, oh, OK, I
don't have to suffer through allof this.
Then I got into therapy. Then that evolved into couples
therapy as well, because I thinkthat's so important in those
early days of parenthood becauseyour relationship changes so
dramatically. And then I started talking about

(15:56):
it a lot about how much I'm struggling.
And then you realize that this is such a common experience.
It's just that no one really talks about it.
And you realize that it's not you.
You're not crazy. It's not going to be forever.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel.
It is a unifying experience thatso, so, so many women have.

(16:17):
But we just keep things in the dark.
But The thing is, shame and guilt die when you put light on
them, right? The biggest thing is the guilt.
Why do I feel like this? I do not deserve this baby.
And then people tell you, well, at least you're both healthy.
That's the bare minimum. That's the bare minimum.
Like being healthy in 2025 with all of these medical

(16:38):
advancements and everything else.
That's a given. I'm not being like, you know,
that some people have it worse. Some people always have it
worse. That does not mean that what
you're going through is not legitimate, right?
And the fact is that in India, the second mother gives birth,
she stops smattering. You have a check up when you're
pregnant Every three weeks. I gave birth and I asked my

(16:58):
gynecologist when do I see you again?
She said when you get pregnant again.
So there's like 0 care. Yeah.
And when do I come back from my pap smear?
And she's like, well, you're pregnant.
What does that even mean? Like where is the where is the
health care for the woman once she gives birth?
You're only interesting to doctors while you're pregnant.
You're only interesting to otherpeople as well while they're

(17:21):
pregnant. You're The Walking incubator.
Then you pop the baby out and ask you anymore.
It's just how's the baby? How did the baby sleep?
Who asked you? How did you sleep?
How are you doing? Right?
So really we need to change thatnarrative from because babies
are almost always OK, it's the parents mother that's suffering
through it, right? We really need to change the
narrative of who do you actuallylike come visit when you visit

(17:42):
the postpartum mom and who are you actually giving care to?
Because there is zero care for postpartum women in India.
And mind you, I live in an urban, I live in Bangalore, I
have access to private medical care, I have access to people
like like I said, lactation consultants and pelvic floor
rehab. And I still struggle to find

(18:03):
adequate health. So I really stutter to think
what it's like for women who aiddon't have supportive families
who are being told to pretty much suck it up because you have
a healthy child and that's it. Or B do not have the socio
economical opportunity to reach out to the kind of help and
support that they actually need to postpartum.
Yeah, yeah. And tell me what was it like for

(18:26):
Josh as your partner and Co parent?
Terrible. It was terrible for him, poor
thing. He went into like full on robot
mode where he was just taking care of everything.
And mind you, it's COVID, so there's no house health, there's
no many, there's no nothing. So he just went into like full
on robot mode, clean cook, cleancook, take the baby, change the
baby, make sure that I don't kill myself.

(18:47):
It was really hard. And This is why we kind of
insisted on transitioning into couples therapy to actually see
we cannot or you cannot ignore an equitable partners mental
health in the process as well, right?
And why I'm saying equitable because for a lot of suppose
this does not happen. This like load is not shared
equally. It was terrible for him,

(19:09):
especially because you married someone who is a shell of
themselves all of a sudden, right?
This, like, whole vibrant, everything that you would love
about me is reduced to a shell. Yeah.
And no one can tell you. Well, it's OK.
It's only going to last, you know, until the baby turns 3
months, and then she's going to be fine.
You don't know. You don't know how it's going to

(19:30):
be. Huh?
Yeah. And I really worried that the
change to me was permanent, but luckily it wasn't.
But you really can't see, like, where the end of that is, right?
So it was a super, super hard period for him.
Then we got smarter like I got anight nurse to help us actually.
So a little bit of load of him also was so he could focus more

(19:52):
on caregiving to me than to the baby because I'm European.
So I very much had the attitude of like, I don't need all of
this help. You know, things that at least
here are a lot better structured.
You can get access to help. Why would you be cleaning with
the three day old, right? But I was very mad.
I don't need any of those things.

(20:13):
And then. Obviously you couldn't really
have people in your house and soon.
So that was also the challenge where he just took over pretty
much running everything and managing everything, including
me, and I only had to manage myself and my mental health and
feeding the baby that was like my only child.
What's that up? Was there a moment that felt

(20:36):
like a turning point, or even a glimmer?
Or when things began to feel different?
Or was that was there a gradual journey?
There were a couple of strong ones, strong glimmers.
First was going back to work. I did my first workshop
postpartum when I was three months old and it was online.
So luckily, like COVID had its benefits.

(20:57):
I think for me, because I could work for longer than I could
come back to work sooner becauseit was a virtual workshop, that
was the moment when I was like, whoa, that part of me still
exists and I can still access it.
When Leo started sleeping through the night.
Obviously, I think that we absolutely underestimate how
insanely little sleep mothers run on.

(21:21):
And then look, I think I personally think that newborns
are very boring. They're like potatoes.
They don't do anything and you have to keep them alive.
They're a ton of work, but you get nothing back from them.
So when he started, like, you know, they start smiling and
they start recognizing you and you can do things with them.
And COVID restrictions lifted. So we could go to the park, we

(21:42):
could go to branch. So just pop him in the carrier.
We would go everywhere. And I was like, wait, I can
still have my life. It's just kind of even nicer
because I get to do it with him.So just getting out of the house
and honestly, I really think that if it wasn't COVID and it
was a more normal postpartum experience and I was out

(22:04):
immediately because obviously culturally we don't have the 40
days and all of that. And I was out immediate, I think
that would have made a massive difference.
Just being around people, fresh air, going for a walk, going for
a cup of coffee, changing out ofthe same pajama that I was in
for a week. Yeah.
You know, just little things that make you feel more human.

(22:24):
Yeah, yeah. And now you know, you've said
you're really hitting your stride.
I. Love toddler hood.
I love toddler hood. I would rather have an army of
toddlers than one newborn. Even though they're crazy.
Honestly I really would. Even though they're crazy and
they have 0 survival instincts and they're trying to like jump

(22:44):
off the highest point and they're messy and they're sticky
but they're so much fun. Like I love toddlers love and we
can have this like conversationsabout who's stronger, T Rex or
gorilla, and we can like do all of these things together.
It's so much fun. So I'm really, really enjoying
post 18 months I would say is when I really started enjoying

(23:07):
it. Yeah, yeah.
And what does it look like beinga working mother now?
What does that feel like in yourbody, in your day, in your mind?
So I would just like to point out that I don't believe that
there are mothers who are not working mothers.
All of mothers are working mothers.
The only difference is that somemothers work outside of the home

(23:27):
and some mothers work inside of the home.
So I just happen to be a mother who works outside of the home.
And mind you, I do very little work inside the home.
I don't clean. I don't do any of those.
Look, I do think that especiallywithin the Indian context, there
is a lot of baggage that comes around that because for a lot of

(23:48):
women, they're the 1st in their family who are working both
inside and outside of the house.So they're kind of breaking the
tradition and they're becoming those role models that they
didn't necessarily have. It's a little bit different for
me because my mom was a board member of one of the largest
Central European banks. Both of my grandmother's work
outside of the house there, it'sit's unprecedented not to work

(24:12):
right, But this is something that I have always seen and
there's no guilt associated withit.
For me, this was a very like, ofcourse, I'm going to keep on
working after I have level, right?
Because there was no like cultural pressure or expectation
that I wouldn't if I stopped working.
I think that would have been thestock, right?
Like me going back to work when I was three months old.

(24:35):
I did not shock anybody. So I think that I am in a little
bit of a unique position in thatsense.
However, what has shifted drastically is that I went from
doing workshops and doing genderand development work and working
from home a lot. Only when I traveled and I
traveled quite a bit for work, but I was at home, I was working
from home a lot and I was a lot more accessible.

(24:56):
And then Cora opens and I literally moved into Cora and
I'm here like seven days a week.So I think that that was a big
shift for Lao, this idea that Mama is not accessible
constantly. So he had a rough like 6 months,
but I will say what the last sixmonths used to it, but the fact

(25:18):
that I'm working has always beena very like and I've never felt
guilt around it. That's one thing that I have to
say. I felt guilty around a lot of
other things. And I think that a lot of
working moms do the same kind ofstupid math, which is like,
well, I've been at work so I'm not going to go to the gym
tonight because I've already been away from him, so I'm not
going to go to the gym. Sorry.

(25:38):
I've been working the whole week.
I barely spent, so I'm not goingto go see my friends on
Saturday, right? It's that like math that we do
the whole time I've done this thing so Oh no sorry, I can't go
get my nails done now because I've already been away from the
house for 7-8 hours, right? I've never met a single man who
does the same math and this is like, this is mom math.

(26:00):
So I'm trying to break away fromthat because I also know how
good it is for him to see a woman taking care of herself and
prioritizing herself. These are all very healthy
things for little children to see, especially because I am
modeling to him what to expect from a relationship with a
woman, and not just a romantic relationship, but a relationship
in general, right? So my guilt comes from those

(26:24):
things like, oh, I went to the gym yesterday.
Oh, I went for a yoga class. Oh no, I have not spent enough
time. But work itself, I can find.
I'm very passionate about the things that I do.
I especially the impact work that I've been doing for the
past 13 years. It's really such a big part of
me and I've never wanted to givethat up.

(26:44):
And I derive a lot of pleasure and satisfaction from it.
And it makes me better. Mom.
I'm a shit mom. When I'm at home for a full
week, like really bad because I don't want to play.
I'm tired. I'm just over the whole thing
but this makes me much better man because I'm I am much
happier and much more fulfilled and my cup is full so I actually

(27:06):
have something to like give backto the parent child
relationship. Beautiful, beautiful and tell us
a little about your work at 4 O and what it's been like building
and sustaining something so beautiful beautiful while also
thank. You.
Yeah, Koro is now. The child before before you say

(27:26):
something, I have to say that I when I first heard about it, I
was like, why is Tena not based in Delhi?
Why is she based in Bangalore? Welcome to Delhi Tanushree, my
Co founder. She's she's a Delhi girl.
So Delhi is definitely on our hit list.
Koro is now the child that demands most of my time, not

(27:48):
Koro is the child that demands the most out of me.
Built for what I needed, right? I needed a space where I can
hang out, be with my community, be close to my child, but still
pursue my own ambitions. And I love Bangalore.
But once I had left, I realized that Bangalore sucks for small

(28:09):
children. I would always ask, George, how
come we're the only people with a small baby out in the
restaurant? Because there's no changing
table. There's no high chair.
Like, forget about changing table in the men's bathroom.
There's no changing table in thewoman's bathroom either.
You never know if you're gonna, like, get any of the things that
you need for your kid and then you're stuck in traffic that you

(28:31):
can't take a stroller because there's no sidewalks, right?
The infrastructure to support family life is just not there
and there is an expectation thatsomebody, and if that somebody
is a mother, it's just gonna stay at home with the kids and
like just stop participating in life, right?
Because it's just too much effort to get anywhere with the
baby. Then you have all of these

(28:51):
amazing coffee shops that I alsolove working from, but Leo can
come there. Then you have all of these play
areas, which are great for the child, but they're terrible for
the parent. I leave with a headache.
The cough is not good, it's too loud, it's over stimulating.
He gets a meltdown when we leavebecause he's sugared up and over
stimulated. So I was like, what does this

(29:11):
actually look like? If we put all of this together?
I can't build sidewalks, but I can build a one stop shop where
you can spend your day from 9:00AM to 9:00 PM and not have to
think about is there a high chair?
Is there a changing table? Are there diapers?
Are there temples? We have it all.
We take away that entire part. At the same time, my friend
Bhavnam, who's an architect, started thinking about the same

(29:34):
problem from a design perspective.
And then Tanushree, our third friend, was like, my God, you 2
really need to talk to each other.
And so the idea kind of started developing and then when I came
back from Croatia last summer, Itold myself, listen, you can't
talk about ideas for two years. You have to either do it or drop
it. You can't keep on talking about

(29:55):
one day. It would be so cool if we did
these things. Then I started kind of looking
for real estate, looking for spaces.
And then I realized, OK, let's just buy the bullet.
Hopefully it doesn't just resonate with us 3, but with
more parents. And it's been 6 months now.
I was definitely. I always tell people if I knew

(30:15):
how much work this was going to be, I never would have done it.
It's a good thing when you go into something semi blind.
I come from a gender and development background to
building something brick and mortar.
That's a massive jump. And it's 3 businesses in one.
It's a Co working, it's a play area and it's a coffee shop.
Now it really is 3 businesses inone.
So I fully, I understand why no one has to, but also forget

(30:43):
about the long nights and the sleepless nights and all of
that. When you enter the space and
it's full of people and you can hear the kids laughing
downstairs and you can see people hanging out and making
new friendships. And you can see moms just kind
of hiding in the net pot and watching Netflix for two hours
while the kid is playing. Because sometimes that's exactly
what you need. And how you look at success, how

(31:07):
you look at productivity outcomes, all of those things
change after you have a child. So Cora is here really to be a
guilt free space that catches all of those things for you.
My most favorite thing is I cameup one day and one mom was in
our book, look, reading a book and she's like, haha, my husband
and son are playing downstairs and she just left and downstairs

(31:27):
and she came upstairs to read the book.
Fantastic use of the space. Like this is exactly what I
want. But you also have people who are
going back to work after maternity leaves.
We have quite a few members who have left corporate jobs and are
reimagining what careers actually look like for them
transferring into entrepreneurship.
We have a lot of creative parents.

(31:50):
We usually call them families who build and it doesn't matter
what it is. Maybe it's the next Unicorn,
maybe it's your family, but it'ssome you're building something
and this really like. It's a value driven space I
would say, which is also fantastic for kids because
they're surrounded by kids and parents who believe in play for
the sake of play, a process driven play, not outcome driven

(32:13):
play. I always say I do not want a
single STEM activity here because the kids are already
under so much pressure from sucha young age and I just want Cora
to be a yes space for them. We want them that when they come
here and they ask can I do this?Yes, you can.
Can I do this? Yes, you can, but we also
understand that not all kids areextroverted, not all kids are

(32:34):
high energy. So we have little reading nooks,
little pods where they can kind of catch a breath and just be
themselves. And I think that that's a really
beautiful use of the space. And Barna has designed the
playscape with so much intent and I think that that really is
the difference between coral andother children oriented spaces.

(32:55):
Yeah. Oh, the difference is massive.
Just I have not been to the place, but I have just seen the
pictures and videos and it's just so soothing and so
inviting. And so you want to be there in
the areas like you go there because you have no option but
to go there. But here, like I want to go

(33:16):
there, I want photo to come to me, you know?
We will. We will.
We will. Yeah.
And we've got a couple of comments, like, why is
everything so beige? Like, where are all the colors?
But the truth is, kids are messy, and they bring color.
But it doesn't mean that the environment itself has to be in,
like, primary colors and yellow and red and green.

(33:39):
But let the environment be soothing and then let the
creative mess happen within the environment.
The only time kids cry at Choro is when they have to leave,
which is like the best review I can possibly get.
Because we as a team can possibly get.
And no one cries because they'reover stimulated or because you
know there's too much going on. Which is exactly how we wanted
it to be. Beautiful and tell me Tana, what

(34:02):
does a typical day look like foryou right now if.
That's the thing. So I'm very lucky that Leo goes
to quite an alternative play based kindergarten Papagoya,
which is a full day. So drop off is between 8:30 and
10:00 and pick up is between 4:00 and 5:00 and that really
makes all of our lives easier. Leo is not an early riser, thank

(34:26):
God. Knock on everything.
So we usually wake up 73745 at breakfast, get ready, then Josh
and Leo drop me off, then Josh drops Leo off, then he goes to
the office. And then everyday in Coral looks
different. It's a lot of like, I mean, it's
a physical space, right? So a lot of things are like, oh,
the toilet needs to be fixed or oh, this needs to be fixed.

(34:48):
So it's a lot of OPS driven stuff, but it's also a lot of
meetings, a lot of brand reach outs.
This morning I was just chattingwith two members for an hour.
Just kind of, you know, having anice slow coffee morning.
Then there's usually an event either or for adults or for
children, or we're prepping for an event on the weekend.

(35:09):
Then we have Mondays. We do like a strategy for the
whole week as a whole team, and then the rest of the week really
depends on what's kind of happening.
Around 4:30, I go get Leo, and then I bring him back here.
Yeah. So pretty much every day after
school, he comes back to Coro. I take my laptop downstairs to
the cafe, He plays in the play area.

(35:32):
I wrap up my work. We have a baby Chino and a
banana bread. And then we go home at 6:00,
shower, plane, we go for a bike ride or we go for a night walk.
Leo has infinite energy, so he needs to be like taken for a run
or he goes to or we build Legos or we go for ice cream.

(35:54):
We do one thing usually and oncea week after school he's going
to have a play date in the park or at Coral with his school
buddies and then the week just goes to you turn around and it's
Thursday already and you don't even know how that has happened.
I usually go to bed by 10 and I read till 11 and then I pass

(36:14):
out. I have not seen the inside of
the gym since January that has. That part has just been
completely gone. I think you need to bring gym
into Coro now. So when we have a bigger space,
I call this Coro Medium. So Coro Small would be just the
Play Cafe and then Coro Large would be all of this plus a gym.

(36:37):
That's definitely on the cards because I need to go to the gym.
That's physical activity. Maybe I'll go for like a spin
class with a friend for a yoga class every now and then.
But my goal for the second-half of this year is to get into some
kind of movement routine. However, you nobody can have it

(36:59):
all at the same time. That's a myth.
Something simply have to slide. And at this point of my life,
this is the thing that has had to unfortunately gone on the
back burner. I do not allow myself to feel
guilty about that because I havea ton of stuff on my plate.
And if this turns into one more thing I have to tick off my
list, all of the joy of movementis going to go away and it just

(37:20):
becomes another chore. And that's not sustainable,
right? So I think that if you have a
lot on your plate and all parents do, you simply have to
show yourself some grace and be kind and gentle with yourself
and be like, of course, right now, look, I could get up at
6:00 AM, but I'm not going to because I prioritize sleep at
this point in my life, right. So to be a little bit kind to

(37:43):
yourself, I think that's a skillthat we can all learn and
practice that kindness a little bit more.
And then on the weekends, I mean, low is 4 1/2, which means
that every weekend is a kids birthday party.
Yeah, his social calendar is much better than my social
calendar. So it's a lot of birthday
parties. And Josh, Josh is an excellent

(38:05):
tennis player. And we were really looking for
like moments of connection that go away from work or discussing
low and stuff like that. So we started playing tennis
together. He's teaching me how to play
tennis. So he played tennis together
pretty much every Saturday. And that's it.
And then I'll repeat. And then, yeah, we do try to

(38:25):
like, see our friends. We have a very close couple
friends who we explore differentrestaurants once a month.
So these kind of like small fun things that we get to do that
don't take up. Yeah too much and all of our
life and just travels a lot for work.
So Monday to Friday, I'm kind ofmost weeks solo parenting.

(38:49):
So I don't parent on the weekendat all.
When Josh is here, I'm like, here's your child, I'll see you
on Sunday. I get up, really.
We go out and I'm like, he needsto go pee and I don't even move
a finger. And on weekends I don't parent.
And on Sundays, I'm a huge believer in shift parenting.

(39:12):
So Sunday, Leo and I always go on an adventure.
We go to theater or we go, we see, I don't know, a dessert on
Instagram. And then you know how Bangalore
is. You drive 6 hours to get one
thing. So we drive to get that Insta
dessert or something. And then when I come home, I
give layout to Josh and I go take a nap or go for a swim or
for whatever I want to do. And then in the evening we spend

(39:34):
a couple of hours together and everyone goes into the week
actually feeling relaxed and rejuvenated and not feeling like
no one has gotten any rest. So shift parenting is like my
biggest tip for sustainable parenting.
Beautiful. I'm taking it back with me.
Yeah, it's amazing. Tell me, Tena, what's something

(39:57):
about motherhood that has surprised you?
Either because it was hotter or it was more beautiful than it
was expected. The depth of love that you're
capable of feeling. I feel like all of the love that
I felt before was like swimming in a swimming pool, and now all
of a sudden you're in an ocean and you just see how much love

(40:21):
you can actually feel. That's just been like, it is
super scary at the same time, right?
Because you know that you wouldn't be able to survive
anything happening to this tiny human that's trying to jump off
the highest constantly, right? So it's a very scary feeling.

(40:41):
And I think it also really puts into perspective.
I looked at my parents and I waslike, wow, you love me so much.
You don't even know like what itfeels like until wow.
It's so crazy how much you love me.
That has been just wow, insane to me to realize how much love I
can actually hold. What's been hardest look

(41:06):
realistically post after my postpartum episode and
depression and everything. Leo is realistically a really
easy child. He eats well, he sleeps well.
He was potty trained in three days.
Like he's an easy kid. We didn't have a thing in touch
with any of those issues. And it's still hard, right?
Like it's just hard day-to-day. You come home and you're super

(41:28):
tired, but then then it's time to start your 5:00 to 9:00 and
the playing and the constant giving, constant giving, right?
And I still get a lot of FOMO. And I get quite jealous of
seeing how my friends who don't have kids live.
You know, when you get that message?

(41:49):
Oh, let's go to Watson's in 30 minutes on a Sunday afternoon,
right? Like, I can't do that and I
won't be able to do that for a long time.
So I still get four more and I'mlike, Oh my, what did you do
this Sunday or nothing? I slept and I watched Netflix.
I mean, I've been to two birthday parties.
I went to the pool, we baked thecake, we built Lego, and it's

(42:09):
still only 5:00 PM and it's still 3 hours till bedtime.
So I do still get quite jealous of that, but I always tell
myself my time will come again and he will grow up and I won't
be able to do those things again.
I thrive on being alone. I love alone time.
That obviously doesn't really happen as much as I would like

(42:31):
to, but that's why I have Quora as well, you know?
So it's kind of like I can get into that space.
But on the kind of balance of it, I do think that my life is
much richer for having Leo in it, and it's taught me so much
about myself and about parentingmyself and about just becoming a

(42:57):
more patient and more curious person.
Yeah. We should all be more like
toddlers and be more curious. Yeah.
And tell me Tana Leo is growing up watching 2 incredibly driven
parents. What do you hope he learns from
watching the way you and Joshua live, work and love?

(43:22):
Kindness is everything. I the only thing.
I want him to be the kind person.
I want him to understand that he's not more than anybody and
he's not less than anybody. Nothing else really matters.
I want him to be happy and kind.I do want him to obviously learn
the value of hard work and discipline, but I'm not a very

(43:45):
disciplined person, by the way. So I would like him to be more
disciplined than I am. But I also understand that I'm
raising him for a world that we don't know anything about.
It's an uncertain world. The jobs that we do now will not
exist by the time that he actually enters the job market.
The climate crisis is making theworld very unstable.
The political situation globallyis making the world very

(44:07):
unstable. So I'm not really focusing on
any hard skills or like the direction.
I'm focusing more on human skills that are going to be
relevant always. Kindness, tolerance, empathy,
openness to dialogue, openness to being wrong, openness to
learning. Everything else is going to come

(44:30):
when and how it has to come. Yeah, yeah.
And tell me, what's one small, perhaps ordinary moment from
your parenting journey that has ended up some teaching you
something really big? That's a very good question.
I feel like every day is a lesson.

(44:51):
Some lessons are good. Some lessons are not so good.
What I really like every time that I take a step back and I'm
like, whoa, you're so right, is when Lyle kind of corrects me,
when he parents me with the sametools that I'm parenting him
with, he's like, that wasn't very kind.
Can you try this in a kinder voice?

(45:13):
You haven't been very understanding.
Yeah. Yeah.
He constantly, like, tells me off, yeah, you did not show a
lot of respect to me today. I'm like, oh, my God, imagine I
spoke like this to my parents 30years ago.
Try this in a kinder voice. So I think that's really a lot

(45:34):
of times children kind of unmasked around how hypocritic
we can be, right? And we expect them to do things
because we say, but not because we do.
And they hold up a mirror to ourown behaviors, to our own
shortcomings, which we are telling them that they're bad

(45:55):
things and we don't want them tobehave like that.
But we keep doing that to me. Yeah, yeah.
And tell me, has parenting layout changed the way you lead
or work in your professional life?
I think that I'm a lot more understand.
So Coral team is a fully female team.

(46:18):
We are all women and almost everyone is a mum.
And I think that it made me rethink how I approach things
like professionalism. The myth of professionalism,
which means you're available thewhole time.
You pick up your phone at any given moment.
You work 9 hours. In India, no one works 9 hours.

(46:40):
Like the lack of work life balance in India blows my mind.
I'm Mediterranean. We are out of the office at 4:00
PM and having coffee by 4:30. This here, there's like no
concept of work life balance, but what we consider
professional is masculine, right?
It's assumes that somebody is doing everything else in your

(47:01):
life for the 8 or 9 or 10 hours that you're in the workplace.
Someone's cooking, someone's cleaning, someone's doing the
pickup, someone is sitting with a sick child.
But we use that same stick to measure professionalism to do it
for two women as well, even though women bear a
disproportionate amount of unpaid labor and caregiving.

(47:22):
Right. So you don't have to answer my
e-mail. Maybe it's gonna come at Friday
at 10:00 PM. You don't have to answer it this
Friday at 10:00 PM. This is my company.
It's not yours, right? I have to think about this 24
hours a day. You'll have much bigger issues
in your life. None of that nonsense.
These families, your, these companies, your family and all

(47:44):
of that. No, your family is your family.
You are irreplaceable at home, but you're not irreplaceable
anywhere else. We are all very much replaceable
everywhere else. So just being a little bit more
understanding of like the needs that working, working outside of
the house, moms and women in general have because you do not

(48:04):
have to be a mother to have caregiving responsibilities,
right? You might have sick parents or
ailing parents. There's a lot of caregiving that
happens. Unpaid labor in India is the
biggest discrepancy in the worldbefore between the amount of
unpaid labor that women do and men do.
What we value as labor, Whose labor counts, whose labor

(48:24):
doesn't count, those are all things that when you enter your
workplace, you don't leave all of those things behind, right?
We don't live in a vacuum. Context comes with you wherever
you go, right? So to expect this like Western
white man standard of how you'regoing to act in a workplace is
ridiculous. Yeah.
So I do think that a lot of thisand it comes not just from my

(48:47):
parenting journey. It really is rooted in my
family's parenting journey, right.
And I do hope, I mean, I'm not going to like now say all those
things. And then my team watches this
podcast and they're like none ofthis.
So they have to speak to the to the truth of that.
I can only speak about the intention behind this, but the

(49:09):
intention behind it is to is to be aware of the context, to be
aware of the package that we bring in, to be kinder to
ourselves and the people that wework with while maintaining
obviously standards. This is a business at the end of
the day. But business doesn't mean you
have to die, right? It doesn't mean it has to be cut
throat. There is a gentler way of being

(49:32):
ambitious and pursuing your goals while understanding.
Look, even me talking about all of these things right as a white
woman in India means that there is another woman taking care of
my child, my nanny, a brown woman, right?
There is always a race, the class, the cast issue behind it.
And to pretend that those thingsdon't exist and not to even try
to unpack them is is again hypocritical because I can tell

(49:55):
you all about like, you can alsohave it all and you can also do
all of those things, can you? Maybe not, right?
It's the context that matters somuch.
So a lot of these like insta feminist messages that we're
getting about girl bossing at all.
You can girl boss at all if you don't have massive massive
support and structure behind you, yes.
Yes, and tell me. I'm so interested in what you're

(50:18):
talking about. You know, the feminist mom lens.
What do you want Leo to see You not just as in as his mother,
but as a woman out in the world?I want him to understand the
intersectionality of it all and not use one brush to paint

(50:40):
everyone with and never to say things like, well, my mum did
it, so why can't she do it right?
To understand that with privilege comes responsibility.
There's no reason to apologize for who you are and who you were
born into. You didn't choose that.
So it's not necessary to apologize, but there is a

(51:00):
responsibility that comes with it.
I want him to examine and if there's anything that I want
anybody to learn from me, it's him, a specialist to examine the
life that we lead, the position that we're in, the powers that
surround us, right? Never accept the status quo,

(51:21):
challenge the status quo, question the status quo.
And that comes at the kind of a social cost.
But if you have the privilege, then do it.
Use it to challenge and, and, and question the status quo.
I also want him to, you know howwe always say, like you've seen
your mom be everything except relaxed.
I want him to see women at leisure.

(51:41):
I want him to hear, no, I'm not going to play with you right now
because I'm reading a book, but you're more than welcome to get
your own book and chill with me for an hour.
I want him to see. I was just talking to a friend
of mine who is traveling to Italy by herself and she was
like, not only is it great that my daughter sees me go to Italy
by myself, it's great that she sees her father stepping in

(52:04):
because in a lot of households we actually do not allow
husbands and fathers to step in fully.
Like, no, no, I will do it. I know better, right?
It's always like, I can't go because how is he going to
manage? He's a parent, right?
He should be able to manage. So I want him to see that in the
home. I want him to see Josh cooking
and cleaning. We can talk about theory as much

(52:26):
as we want. Unless we show it with a real
life example, it's not going to change.
Yeah. So somebody asked him, what do
mom and dad do? And mind you, my husband runs a
much bigger business than me with a lot more employees and a
lot more impact. And Lao was like, Mama runs Cora
and Tata Cooks, and I died. But my husband was so proud.

(52:46):
He's like, yeah, Tata Cooks. And Tata is a great cook, you
know? And it's these like, let's
disrupt what people, what children see as normal, right?
Yeah. And it all starts at home.
It all starts at home. So theory is just it's
secondary. It's secondary to what we
actually show them on the day-to-day basis.

(53:07):
Having guy friends, for instance, or having my husband
go out for dinner with his girlfriends, right.
Female friends that you don't have to only be talking to the
opposite sex when it's time to actually get married like you
can have. Women are interesting enough to
be your friends, right? Like these kind of things that
boy and he the second they startgoing to school and hanging

(53:32):
around with other kids, you're influenced like drops
significantly. So he's very much like into
dinosaurs and trucks, but he also always wears nail Polish
and he loves rings and jewelry. But even he who's been very
secure in his choices, he went to the store and he wanted to
buy a little purse with rings and he looked at me and he was

(53:53):
like, but is this for girls? You know, even though he's never
heard that at home. But now obviously there's just
so many other influences. And I think that I kind of act
as a buffer. He can hear 1000 things, but
hopefully what he will always hear is kind of me telling him
and his dad and his family telling him, you can be whatever
you want. You can wear whatever you want.

(54:15):
It doesn't matter, right? As long as there is that voice
that kind of validates his choices.
Not every hill has to be a hill to die on, but hopefully he is
going to hear that voice and remain secure in his choices.
Yeah, beautiful. And I'm very, you know,
something that you said, women at leisure.

(54:35):
I I want to talk about that. How do you carve time out just
for yourself or for joy that isn't linked to productivity?
Yeah, firstly I think we need tofocus on bite size joy.
If you are trying to chase this like hours and weekends and
whole weeks of leisure and joy, you're going to be disappointed

(54:59):
and then you're going to be like, oh you see, this didn't
work so I'm going to give up. So what are those bite size
moments of joy? My primary hobby is reading.
I read every day without fail, nothing related to work.
I read from ten 11:10 PM to 11:00 PMI love yoga.
I try to do one yoga Class A week.
I love group classes. I love that energy of being

(55:19):
around people. I love to cook, but not like
utilitarian cooking. Something has to happen for
dinner, but like leisurely dinner party cooking.
But it's really just as simple as 2 pages of a book and a hot
coffee in the morning for 30 minutes or stepping out for 10
minutes in the afternoon just toget some fresh air.

(55:41):
So I mean by like bite sized joy, right?
Because if you're only looking forward to your holiday in Sri
Lanka that comes once a year, that's no way to live
sustainably and joyfully. So what is it that you can do
every single day? Maybe it's like putting nail
Polish. I love when I look down and
like, oh, my nails are so beautiful.
You know, I'm click clicking on the computer.

(56:01):
I'm like, oh, it's so beautiful.It's those things, right?
It doesn't have to be this because there's no time for the
massive things. Yeah.
Yeah, and you know, I'm very interested in this that you
said. But tell me, if you had an extra
hour each day just for yourself,no expectations, no
responsibilities, how would you spend that hour?

(56:23):
Napping, Absolutely. Absolutely.
I love sleep. I would nap.
I would just nap. This is the thing, like I know
so many of my friends and women in general, when they get that
extra hour, first you're too excited because you have an

(56:43):
hour, so you waste half of it thinking about what you're going
to do. So you're going to watch what's
next. You're going to eat.
Then you only have 30 minutes. Then you panic because you
wasted so much. I'm in a decision paralysis.
Like, should I have ice cream orcake?
Should I watch this or that? Then you finally sit down and
then you're like, should I maybestill do laundry and one load,
One load only. I should do at least one thing.

(57:05):
There's one e-mail. Should I just respond to this
one e-mail? We suck at leisure.
We suck at leisure, and that's afact.
And it's a combination of gender, culture, late stage
capitalism, which convinces us that we need to deserve to live
on this planet. It's a mix of all of these
things. So get better at leisure, learn

(57:27):
how to be at leisure without anyoutcome at the end.
Yeah. Yeah, and bringing you back to
your parenting journey. Tana, can you think back to a
moment when you felt particularly challenged or
overwhelmed in your parenting journey?
How did you move through it? I recently have had a big issue

(57:52):
with my kidneys. I had massive kidney stones and
then I had to have stents and I was travelling to Croatia at the
same time alone with Lao. Every time when I'm sick or not
feeling 100% but you still have to parent.
Those have been like, for me, that's always the toughest, by
far the toughest because I feel like I'm failing him.

(58:13):
I feel like a terrible mom. Then I push myself too hard to
not fail him. Yeah, take him to the park while
I'm dying and I have stents in my kidneys.
And then obviously I regret thatbecause then my body just gives
in and it's like, what the hell just happened?
He was supposed to be resting. Same thing happened last year
when I had dengue. I knew he was being very

(58:33):
dramatic about it and he was telling everyone in school how
mama's not there and Mama doesn't play with him.
To the point that people thoughtthat Josh and I were getting a
divorce because where did Mama go?
But those moments where I feel I'm not 100% and when I'm unwell
and when I'm sick, I put so muchpressure on myself and really

(58:54):
guilt myself into being like, oh, you're not doing enough.
You're not doing enough as a mom.
You have to still play. You still have to take him to
the park. And learning to let go of that
control and be like, it's OK if you go to your aunts and
grandma's house for a day. It's OK if somebody else, it's
OK if I call my friend and be like, hey, can he come over and
play with your child today? This has been I think is always

(59:18):
the hardest. Is this letting go of control?
Yeah. And understanding that if you
want to have a village, then youalso need to use that village,
right? Yeah.
What's the point of village if you're going to be controlling
and micromanaging? I mean, like, no, no, I can do
it all by myself. You can't, right?
And so for me, that's always been the hardest moments where I
just have to let that go. Yeah, and tell me, what does

(59:42):
your village look like? You spoke about it.
I'm so proud of my village and I'm so proud of myself for
building my I've done a really good job building my village, so
I've made a lot of friends afterI had Leo.
I think that having a child is kind of like going to school.
You immediately meet a whole bunch of people, everyone who

(01:00:03):
kind of has kids around the sameage.
I was just really lucky that everyone that Leo likes hanging
out with, I really like their parents as well.
So you're very close knitted group of friends.
And even now, when I was sick and I came home from hospital, I
didn't have to cook for a week because there was just food and
cake coming and people were bringing their kids so that Leo
can play, so that I can take a nap.

(01:00:26):
But here's the thing, everyone wants a village or a community,
but not everyone is a good villager.
You cannot have a village if you're not willing to actively
participate in it, right? So everyone's like, I need
support. I'm alone.
But what are you doing to give support, right?
That we're all tired, we're all busy.
You can still check in on people.

(01:00:47):
You still show up for birthdays,you still show up for big
things, you still pick up and through a hard time, you don't
say, no, I'm too busy, right? So this has been, I think for
me, the biggest learning and my village, thank God and thank us
is everybody. It's so reciprocative, right?
Everyone is really participatingin it.

(01:01:08):
We're all really supportive of each other.
And I hope my friends would say the same thing about me.
But it is a give and take, right?
It's you can't just complain that you have no support if
you're not willing to provide the same level of support.
And we really have like an open door policy and kids pop in and
out and we have this like very hectic play dates with cake and

(01:01:30):
coffee and kids just jumping on top of each other and enough
stress that you can call and be like, Hey, is your nanny free?
My nanny's free. Let's have them meet in two
hours and let's have them just play.
I'll be like, hey, I'm having a really hard time in my
relationship or my marriage right now.
Come over, we'll sit on my couch, eat junk food and watch

(01:01:51):
Be the big things, right? It can really just be being
presents. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I have, I have asked you about a moment where you felt
overwhelmed and, you know, things that you that stress you
out. But tell me about things when
you feel deeply proud of yourself as a parent that yeah,
I did good. I am doing good.

(01:02:13):
Can I be honest? I'm quite proud of myself as a
mom. I'm think I'm doing a really
good now in 20 years time will be in therapy talking about me,
but that's inevitable. I mean, all of our kids will be
doing that. I think I'm a really good mom.
I think that I've hit my stride.Why I think I'm a good mom is

(01:02:33):
because we have fun. I have fun with him.
I asked him yesterday, what do you like?
Are you happy? And what do you like when we do?
And he started naming things andhe was like, we do so much,
Mama, You're like, you know, because I feel like when I'm
present, I'm present. Yeah, Yeah.
And we always talk about there'sso much pressure now on, like,

(01:02:57):
creating this magical childhood and creating core memories and
so on. But kids don't care about any of
those things. They just care about you being
there. And they don't need the unicorns
and the llamas and the parties and everything else.
It just needs time. And once I realized that and
just made sure that when I'm present, I'm present, Yeah, I

(01:03:17):
think I'm doing a pretty good job so far.
But look, look, I know what, like my parents blind spots
were, right? So This is why I'm careful of
not repeating certain things. And Josh is the same way.
But we don't know what our blindspots are, right?
So I know what he's not going tobe talking to his therapist
about, but I don't know what he is.

(01:03:39):
No, I tried to like in hindsight, of course, everything
is going to become clear, but I'm hoping that I'm like
becoming more aware of like and also who I was as a mom and who
he was as a kid two years ago isnot the same.
And the same thing is going to be true in two years.
The needs are going to change. So as long as I feel like you're

(01:04:02):
like adaptive, adaptable, and you change and you're willing to
change and you're willing to grow with them and respond to
their needs and respect their boundaries because they change a
lot. What they were comfortable with
six months ago is not what they're comfortable now.
Just they keep you on your toes.Yeah, yeah.
And tell me Tana, if you could go back in time and offer a word

(01:04:25):
of advice or comfort to your preparent self, what would you say?
You got this. Oh, I love it.
Even when you feel like you don't, which will be often, but
and also you never look at things.
And I think this is something that we should all do well to

(01:04:46):
remember. It's not looking at things on
day by day. You need to look at them through
a longer period of time, right? So they can be shit.
But the week or a month might begreat, but we get so bogged down
with the idea of this was a bad day, hence I'm a bad parent.
And then we drag that energy. But if you look at things even

(01:05:07):
like food, oh, he didn't eat well today.
Yeah, but yesterday he ate a ton, right?
But we forget that. And we're like, oh, I'm a
terrible man because today he didn't eat.
So look at things at the longer stretch of time because kids
just they change so much a day-to-day.
So a bad day does not make a badparent.
That's, that's, that's somethingthat's, you know, it can, it can

(01:05:29):
go on a placard and I think it should just hang it on their
desks when they are parenting. And and and finally, my last
question to you, if there is oneinsight or belief or a gentle
reminder that encapsulates what you believe in, who you are for

(01:05:51):
our listeners that you would want to leave them with, what
would it be? Curiosity.
Don't take things for granted. Don't take things.
But this is just the way things are.
This is how they always were. So this means this is how they
will always be. Remain curious about yourself,

(01:06:13):
about your child and the world around you.
Curious, but not judgmental. And that's a hard combo, yeah.
Yeah. How do you not be judgmental?
You know that trend on Instagram, we listen and we
don't judge. I'm like, I judge before I even
listen. And it's a work in progress.

(01:06:35):
But it's the intention that especially in the world of
mothering, yes, when you look atWhatsApp groups, when you look
at Instagram, the second someonedoes things a little bit
differently than us, mothers areeach other's worst enemies very
often, right? How can she feed like this?
How can she still call sleep? How can she still breastfeed?

(01:06:57):
How can she not breastfeed? Because we feel almost like it's
a personal attack. Maybe what I'm doing then is not
good enough. Maybe I'm doing something wrong,
right? So we're very judgmental about
how other people parent and how other, especially mom's mother.
Because the bar for a good father is in hell, right?
He takes, changes one diaper. He's an amazing dad.
But we're super judgmental abouthow moms actually parent.

(01:07:20):
Yeah. So this is where the be curious
but not judgmental comes in. I'm curious, why do you still go
sleep? Right.
But I don't judge you for it. Mind you, I still go sleep.
Well, I was sleep trained at sixmonths and he still sleeps in my
bed. So.
And if you ask me when he was like 6 months or one year, I was
like, absolutely not. That's four and a half.

(01:07:41):
Of course he's going to be in his own room.
He's not going to be like this in my bed.
But the curious part to me says,well, you know what, It's easier
for me if he's just sleeps with me.
Then I get up five times every night and go into his room and
have to then calm him down. I prioritize sleep at this point
in my life. So this is where we're at,
right? But every parent has a story

(01:08:01):
like that. So do curious and not
judgmental. And then really we will
understand that it's not a mom against mom.
It's mom's against patriarchal systems that make us feel like
we're not good enough continuously.
Beautiful, beautiful. Because if you think that you're
not good enough, what will you do?
You will buy, you will buy the product that ensures the sleep.

(01:08:24):
You will buy the product of the course that ensures your child
will eat. You will buy gym memberships,
You will buy everything, right? But if you are like, no, I think
that I'm doing good, then we're all happy.
Then you won't buy. So all of these are parts of a
bigger system. So not mom against mom, mom
again system. I think you have given us a
training and workshop this podcast.

(01:08:48):
I'm going to recommend this to everyone I know.
I mean, of course there's a selfish motive behind it, but I
think this episode is turned outso, so beautiful because of your
work at times through. Thank you.
Well, get in touch for a family's parenting checklist.

(01:09:09):
Thank you so much for your honest.
Thank you so much. And for bringing all of it here
so generously. Your story is the one that will
stay with me, and I know it willresonate so deeply with many of
our listeners too. Thank.
You so much, thank you for having me.
My pleasure and to everyone tuning in, thank you for

(01:09:30):
spending this hour with us. If Tenna's story moved you,
reminded you of your own, or simply made you feel a little
less alone, please take a momentto subscribe, rate, and share
parenthood with the people in your life.
Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other.
Bye bye.