Meet a Mom Who Dedicates Her Work to Your (Parenting) Relationship
Moving from partners to parents is one of the toughest identity transitions many young couples face. It can be tough to settle into this life-changing role together — especially when there’s suddenly a new person vying for all your attention, energy, love, devotion, and, of course, your time! There’s little to no opportunity to reflect early on; you just have to DO.
Christina Zach knows the ups and downs of parenting and redefining partnerships well. She’s a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist practicing in San Francisco, and she’s also a mom of a little one. On the Spright app, she leads a workshop called “Navigating Partnerships in Parenting” — sign up to join her!
Before her workshop kicks off on Friday (7/22), she shared some of her philosophy on managing the challenges of parenting and the way they shape relationships.
Heather Caplan: What inspired you to focus in on Infant-Parent psychotherapy specifically?
Christina Zach: I was raised by a work-at-home mom who had her own small family child care business, so from a young age I was deeply involved in caring about and for babies. During my first internship in graduate school I worked with survivors of interpersonal violence and felt firsthand the weight of intergenerational trauma. While I was so lucky to work with these clients, I also wished an earlier intervention had been available for them.
When I was in graduate school, a favorite professor of mine spoke about her work at the Infant-Parent program at UCSF, and I jumped at the chance to spend the year after I graduated training there. I worked with moms and babies who changed my thinking, and my heart, forever. I find the parallels between baby’s growth and parent’s growth to be fascinating, and as someone interested in the mind and emotions, I find working with people where that first begins, in our first relationships, to be incredibly powerful. Baby is learning to trust, and love and have empathy, and it is also an opportunity for parents to explore and repair those pieces in their own life. These first years as a parent can feel like a whirlwind, but that’s because EVERYthing is happening — the scale and scope of these years is profound! Also, I just love babies and new parents. Sometimes it’s that simple!
HC: Given your training and work experiences, was there anything that surprised you about your own early moments of parenthood?
CZ: My training and work experiences are separate, but not too distinct, from my own life. I do this work because I adore it and feel I can be most useful to the world in this specific space, and I have to say I felt pretty confident going into parenthood.
Spoiler alert! It is really challenging to be a parent!
Our babies are our greatest teachers (if we let them!). My daughter has brought me so many great lessons in slowing down (because she’s the queen of “stopping and smelling the flowers”), worrying less (she’s ingested so many germs and somehow only gotten stronger and cuter for it), and having hard conversations (asking for help isn’t always easy for a “helper.”) I find my relationship with my daughter helps inform my practice, and my work helps inspire my parenting in a way I’m very grateful for. All of our relationships are interwoven, really, and it helps me personally to continue to explore that. Becoming a mom broke that wide open for me. (When I’m awake and attentive enough to know it. More coffeeeee!)
HC: What’s your #1 tip to those who are about to become parents and are wondering how it’s going to change their relationships?
CZ: Practice kindness, forgiveness and self-care, over and over and over. Know that you’re both doing your best, and you can always talk about it and shift things when they don’t feel right. Parenting with your partner is one of the harder parts about starting a new family, and we all have to chart our own path based on our unique relationship and all of the other relationships in our lives.
It’s usually the unspoken things that build resentment or misunderstandings, so the more clearly you can state your thoughts and feelings, the better for everyone.
Know that you are doing hard work! And be open to, or ask for, more forgiveness. (That was more than one tip, but they are all interrelated!)
HC: Your website makes a powerful statement with this: “I also find value in a feminist perspective-looking at the social and systemic contexts that surround us and infuse us with ideologies that may not serve us.” What does being a feminist mom mean to you?
CZ: To me, being a feminist mom means always learning. It means thinking about the privileges my family has, and striving in whatever ways I can toward more balance in the world. It also means sorting through what is expected of me as a mom by my culture and communities, and finding a center in what I find meaningful in that and discarding the rest! Related to a previous question, I was surprised by the volume of noise around “parenting” in the media—I had to turn it down. Everywhere I looked, there was a shiny new way to judge myself or other moms and I didn’t find that to be healthy or productive at all.
Despite changes in women’s ability to work and mother since our parent’s generation and those before, there are still not many real structures in place to support that—we are all courageously making it up as we go. And expectations of what we are supposed achieve in both domains are higher than ever! All of this affects how I am as a feminist mom, and how I am able to see clients. Despite this, doing this work makes me heartened and hopeful for our future generations and excited about the new and different world my daughter and her friends will face.
Join Christina for workshops on the Spright app, or contact her directly through her site: www.christinazachtherapy.com .
