SAHM, Halsey's Miscarriage Trauma and The Hidden Costs of Women's Health

On this episode of Steel Roses, I open up about the intense anxiety and burnout I faced while juggling work and kids at home. I candidly share the harsh realities of workplace bias and its impact on my professional life. The stress-induced quick temper that strained my relationship with my children left me feeling like a bad mom, despite the support around me. Join me as I extend a heartfelt salute to stay-at-home moms and discuss my hopes for a less chaotic next summer, emphasizing the critical need for self-care moments, even if it's just the solace found in a quick errand run.

In another heartfelt segment, we delve into the harrowing experience of singer Halsey, who continued her tour while suffering a miscarriage due to endometriosis. The immense physical, emotional, and mental toll of such trauma, compounded by the pressure to perform, is a stark reminder of the disregard for women’s health in professional settings. Using Halsey's story as a lens, we examine the broader issues surrounding women's health and the silent suffering expected of them. This episode serves as a powerful call for greater respect and humane treatment for women, particularly in the face of medical emergencies.

Halsey Interview: https://pin.it/1GraSZ83u
Article: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/music-news/halsey-miscarriage-during-performance-1235967311/
Article: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/halsey-miscarriage-on-stage-b2592508.html

Chapters

• 0:00 Summer Burnout and Self-Care
• 11:18 Trauma of Miscarriage and Endometriosis

Transcript

Jenny Benitez: 0:00

Hello everybody, this is Steel Rose's podcast. This podcast was created for women, by women, to elevate women's voices. I'm excited it's the last week of summer. You've all been on this journey with me for the summer. I think I prepped you all up in, like June, about the anxiety I was feeling leading up to the summertime and how I was going to manage the kids being home. I will.

Jenny Benitez: 0:26

I'm big enough to admit that this was a failed social experiment. I will not be taking this risk again and to level set for anyone who's just listening to this particular episode, my kids got out of school in June. They were in half day camp for all of July and then the first week of August they started to be at home full time. And I work full time too. Outside of the podcast. I work a regular job and it's from home. So August I was really freaking out about because I knew it was a gap month and I didn't know what I was going to do. But I was like let me just give it a shot this year and see how I can make work. And let me tell you, this month has taught me a lot of things. Number one workplace bias is rampant, and by that I mean as soon as it became really evident that my kids were home and it was impacting me like it started impacting how I was perceived at work. I'm going to have to do cleanup now because of that. Um, not my kid's fault, but this is unfortunately the reality that we live in. Um then, uh, burnout, mom, burnout, holy hell.

Jenny Benitez: 1:45

I want to take a minute here to recognize all of the stay-at-home moms and just commend you on that journey that you've dedicated yourself to. That has to be the hardest job in the world is to be the stay at home mom, because this is a woman who's cooking, cleaning, caring for the kids, managing the household, making the appointments, dealing with you know, in some, some instance, finances as well. Like the the amount of pressure on a stay-at-home mom for all the things, and then, on top of it, even outside of the pressure, there is no true break. Um, I only had to experience having my kids home full time for four weeks and I was texting my stepdaughter last night and I told her I was like this base nearly broke me, like this. This experience like really got in my head pretty badly and I pride myself a lot on like being able to manage, like stress, and manage things and juggle and everything. But this was like being in the hot seat 24, seven and then when I layered in like the work stress, it was like blowing me away. Unfortunately, because of the burnout that I've been feeling, it's making me respond differently to my kids and it makes me feel like a bad mom Because I'm much quicker.

Jenny Benitez: 3:29

I'm much more triggered right now, like literally in this moment, I know I'm triggered. I woke up actually today's a great day, like I woke up great, got all my meditating done, getting to podcast today, which is always a light in my life and I'm spending the day with my kids. But underneath the undertone, I'm so burned out that immediately as soon as they start arguing, I'm triggered and I flip out right away, whereas normally you'd have a progression of like all right, guys, come on, cut it out, and then you kind of move on and move on and move on until you're actually fully triggered. I'm already fully triggered because I've been dealing with what I've been dealing with. So and it's not really their fault Like they're three healthy, smart kids, so they're just being themselves, and because of me and my stress level with everything else, it's making it a lot for me and it's making me react poorly and that's why I'll say it again Like I feel like a terrible mom. Everyone around me is giving me props and everyone around me saying like you're doing the best. You can just hang in there just a couple more days and obviously I'm going to. But I feel awful. I truly sincerely feel awful.

Jenny Benitez: 4:39

I feel like I'm doing a disservice to my kids and I feel like these are the memories that they're going to have. They're going to remember like the summer that mom was like losing her shit. Like I don't want them to have memories like that. I don't want them to think my, I'm like a mean mom and I'm always screaming at them, like I don't want them to grow up and go to therapy and be like mommy. Always, my mother always screamed at us. She always was screaming at us about different things and that's like the thing I don't want them to do. But nevertheless, I am doing the best that I can, but it's just, it is so much now. It's like for um, it's just, it's just a lot. And I was. I was saying I was trying to explain it to my husband the other day because he came home and he was like, oh, they were bad. Today I'm like they're not. They're not bad kids, they're good kids, but they're kids. And then when you're layering it into everything else, it's a lot. I hope that this situation isn't the same situation I'm in next summer. Prayers y'all. That podcast takes off, um. So I wanted to commend that.

Jenny Benitez: 5:48

I wanted to point out stay-at-home moms, but I also wanted to highlight the burnout thing for a moment because, um, you know, the month of august I've been telling you guys about various things, like you know, the the week that I like just kind of stepped out at night for like an hour or two and was like, let me just run errands, quote unquote. But I it really did a great service to my mental health to be able to remove myself from the house. Working from home and then being at home with the kids and not really getting any kind of break that really that combination is really what did me in, is really what did me in. If you are a full-time stay-at-home mom, try to find something that you can justify that you will be comfortable with for removing yourself from the house for an hour a week, even, because this couple of weeks was a flashback almost to when I was giving everything up and could, was only focused on the kids because they were so little and they needed so much of me. And it's a flashback of how dark those times were for me.

Jenny Benitez: 6:56

And I don't talk about it as much because I, because of, I guess, how we're wired as women, the memories have subdued quite a bit and they've gotten pushed to the back of my mind, but they're still there and I do reflect a lot on. I do reflect a lot on the times that I know that you know what we all make mistakes but that I reflect on and I think I think we all go through that. I think we all reflect on those moments, especially as women, because we're trying so hard to give all of ourselves to our kids and we're trying so hard to make sure that they have everything that we didn't have, that it does take a toll when you can't be 100%, can't be 100%. So it's hard. It really is. It's hard across the board. I think it's hard for all of us. I don't think it's just any one person over the other. I think we all struggle with this and we're all just doing the best that we can.

Jenny Benitez: 7:54

There shouldn't be any comparator to other people. Don't compare yourself to other women, other mothers. You're doing what you can to get through whatever you're getting through at the moment. But I do strongly recommend, especially with the school year starting in T minus like 10 days or eight days, whatever it is try to actually take advantage of those breaks with the kids in school. If your kids are going to preschool or daycare or whatever, whatever they're going to in the fall, even if it's just a half day and you only have a couple hours, take 30 minutes from those couple hours to do something for yourself. Literally like I never do it and I'm like terrible at it and I'm still like I have to tell you edge of my seat because I want to.

Jenny Benitez: 8:40

I have two vacation days left to take and I'm struggling with myself to take a full day off to pamper myself. I'm struggling, I want to do it so badly but in my head I'm like well, jenny, how could you justify taking a whole day to just do something for yourself? Like that's wasteful. You can't do that. You have all this other things. You have the fall series launching. You have your you know podcast guide that you need to fall series launching. You have your you know podcast guide that you need to take care of with customers. For that, like you need, like there's things. You have your regular daytime job, then you have girl girl scouts you have.

Jenny Benitez: 9:11

I'm like, yes, there's a million things on my plate, but I need to take a day for myself and release some stress and reset and I'm having a really hard time getting myself to actually put the time in to say like, all right, I'm taking this day for myself, I'll go and get a massage and go get my hair done, like I just need to do it. I just haven't gotten myself to do it yet, but now that I'm saying it out loud, I feel like I'll do it. Talking with you guys makes me feel like I'm going to do better things. I hope you all feel the same way when you listen, by the way, because reality wise, like when I get to talk with all of you and to share the experience, it does help in a lot of ways because I want you to hear that, yes, things you know from from the outside.

Jenny Benitez: 9:59

Looking in, like I've gotten a lot of compliments recently on the podcast and the trajectory of the podcast and how much it's grown since the beginning and where it is now and where it's going to be, and I've gotten these great collaboration offers and all these things, and on the surface level, it's like wow, she's really killing it. But, like, I want you all to know like this is difficult. This is not easy, this is hard to do because it does take a lot of work and it does take a lot of project management that I employ, like to make sure that I'm doing things in a timely, orderly fashion. So it does take a lot out of me. Oh, the kids are coming, it's happening. I already told them I was recording, but they're definitely coming down the stairs, um, so, so, um, okay, in any case, um, outside of the burnout and outside of everything else, um, it's been an interesting journey for the summer, but I, I am still excited, and my little little one who just ran past me, um, is also really excited for school to start. Every time I say I hope school, I can't wait for school to start, every time I say I hope school, I can't wait for school to start, she says me too, mommy, um, which is kind of hilarious because she's like my little mini me who's fighting with me. Um, all right, so that takes care of that.

Jenny Benitez: 11:18

Now I did want to kind of I wanted to bring something to all of your attention that I just saw come across my Pinterest feed. I'd like you to take a look at this because it sets the tone and it sort of not sets the tone, but it confirms, I think, the experience that a lot of us have when you are in certain positions, and maybe not just professionally. But I was scrolling through Pinterest and I saw this little interview clip pop up about Holsey. She's a singer if you're not familiar with her, and in this little interview clip she actually speaking out about miscarriage trauma. She hasn't. She's.

Jenny Benitez: 12:07

She's an endometriosis person as well, and she goes on in the interview to talk about how, while she was on tour, she found out she was pregnant, but because of endometriosis it causes infertility. There's a great deal of issues there when you're not treating it properly, and it caused her to have a miscarriage. Miscarriage is traumatic enough. I never had to experience the trauma of it. I have observed it in a lot of my relatives and friends who've gone through it. That is not to say I know anything about what that feels like. I can only surmise and my heart goes out to anybody who's going through that, because I can't even imagine what that would feel like.

Jenny Benitez: 13:02

But in the interview, halsey goes on to say that she was 20 years old, found out that she was pregnant while she was on tour and then, while also still on tour, she's supposed to go on and perform and she starts bleeding profusely and she's obviously miscarrying. In that moment. She was literally miscarrying in that moment. She was literally miscarrying in that moment and she said she was laying on a bed with a towel tucked in between her legs, leading profusely, with male managers surrounding her, basically just saying well, there's whatever billions of dollars on the line or there's X amount of people out there. You have a show to do. And she says they put an adult diaper on her and basically sent her out to do her show.

Jenny Benitez: 13:58

Um, and I can't even imagine what that would have been like for her to have to stand up and perform knowing that her body was going through what it was going through emotionally, physically, mentally. I can't even wrap my head around that. And she also notes that there's this feeling of almost like you're a robot or you're like a cow, you're just a carrier, and that you're not given the respect as a human being while you're pregnant and I've gone through that and I've talked a little bit about my pregnancy experiences and especially with the twin pregnancy and especially being overweight while pregnant that you're not treated humanely in some instances, especially when you're overweight she wasn't overweight, but that was my experience with it. And to have someone discount what you're physically going through, I mean she could have. Yes, there would have been chaos and lost dollars and you know things would have been difficult for her professionally if she had said in that moment you know, I'm having miscarriage, I cannot go on stage, there's an actual emergency here. But she would have also set an example to millions to say, like you know, I had to take care of my body. I just can't imagine what that would have been like to go through that. And now she's speaking out about it. And I think it's important to note here because how many of us go through our day-to-day lives with things that are difficult to deal with that we're basically told we'll just deal with it, cope. You need to cope, you need to deal with this.

Jenny Benitez: 15:58

The amount of pain I experience on a daily basis because of endometriosis is tremendous. I think I've talked with you guys before about well, actually, in the fall there's a fall episode coming where I discuss it a little bit in more detail. But at night, when I lay down, I have a practice of massaging my abdomen, and it goes from my lower abdomen all the way up to my sternum that I massage, and I massage at my stomach. My husband will help me massage my stomach. The reason I do this is because there's so much pain in there all day long that I don't realize how sore I am, because I'm just constantly in pain. And so at night I take a moment to try to relieve some of that. And it's successful, it works.

Jenny Benitez: 16:42

But I cry almost every single time because then I realized, my God, I've been sitting in pain all day and I didn't even realize that what would life be like not to feel pain? I have no idea, but I'm told to cope because I, you know, can't get the hysterectomy that I need and financially, unfortunately, I can't get the hysterectomy that I need. And you know it. Just, you just have to go on and continue on, because there's no like break for you. So it's just, it's just unfortunate, and unfortunate doesn't even cover it.

Jenny Benitez: 17:16

It's obscene that women are put into a position of needing to, of needing to put ourselves to the side, basically, in these medical emergent situations. It's crazy, it should. You know, and every time something like this happens, I do say to myself well, if a man was going through this, if this was a male related disease or a male related like situation, then there would be, there would be guardrails, and it wouldn't have been, you know, half the way it did with her. I mean it just, it's just a terrible thing. So I do, I want you guys to take a look at it. I'm gonna pin an article and I'll pin the interview into the description of this podcast episode. I want you, I do want you guys to look at it, because, whether you've had a miscarriage or not, this is important. This is a big deal and it's important to recognize, like, what this says about our well, that industry, like the entertainment industry. But what does it also say about to us, about it as a society? Like that, this is what we've pressured this, this poor woman, to go through and it's just, it's horrible, it really is. There is really no other way to say it besides like the fact that this is horrible, that she had to go through that and she had to stand up on stage while miscarrying, like I can't even imagine it. So, any case, I'll link all of that into the description of the podcast episode.

Jenny Benitez: 18:48

As you can hear, everyone's awake and moving so I have to hop off, but I greatly appreciate all of you for listening. Couple more what one? Two more weeks until the fall series starts. I hope you're subscribed. I hope everybody you know is subscribed. Fall series is launching September 8th. It's going to be amazing. Make sure that you're listening for September, october, november. It's going to be really great. I hope you all enjoy the last couple of weeks of summer and I'll catch you on the next one. Take care.