89. The MOM Guilt That Isn't Really Guilt - with Emily Rose MacDonald
The standard a good mom is held to was not written by mothers.
Most moms have heard the word "guilt" so many times it's lost meaning. It sits somewhere in the chest, heavy and familiar. But in episode 89 of Chill Like a Mother, Emily Rose MacDonald - host of The Sparkle Project podcast and certified motherhood studies practitioner - said something that reframed the whole conversation.
Mom guilt, she explained, is almost never just guilt. It's guilt plus shame. And those two things do very different things to a mom.
This post gets into what mom guilt actually is, where it comes from, and two specific things Emily named that may help when it shows up.
Mom guilt vs. shame: the distinction that changes everything
Guilt in its plain form is a signal. It shows up when something you did genuinely conflicts with your values. That looks like:
Coming in too hot with your kid
Forgetting something that mattered to them
Saying something you wish you could take back
Guilt points at a specific behavior. You look at it, decide whether you want to do something differently, and move on. That's guilt doing what it's supposed to do.
Toxic mom guilt works differently. Instead of pointing at the behavior, it points at you. The thought underneath sounds like:
"I am not enough."
"I am a bad mom."
"Nothing I do will ever be enough."
And it tends to attach itself to moments where nothing actually went wrong.
Kayla, a mom guilt therapist and Registered Social Worker trained in expressive arts therapy, says the sentence she hears most often in her counselling practice is some version of "it feels like it's never enough." Her response is usually a pause, and then a genuine question: can you actually do more right now? Because if the answer is no, that feeling is not pointing at a real moral problem. It's pointing at a standard that may not belong to you in the first place.
Emily put it this way: most of the time, moms are measuring themselves against societal standards without even knowing what their own actual beliefs are. The bar feels internal, but much of it came from somewhere else.
Why toxic mom guilt is a systemic problem - not a personal one
The "perfect mother myth" - the idea that a good mom is endlessly present, selfless, and sacrificing - was not invented by mothers. Emily, who studied motherhood formally, named it directly: moms are functioning inside systems that hold them to a standard of perfection no one can actually meet. Most of us have absorbed that standard so deeply we no longer recognize it as external.
There is another layer here that does not come up enough. Not all mom guilt looks the same. Some moms carry guilt about:
Working late
Letting the kids watch extra TV on a rough week
Missing a school event they wanted to attend
Other moms are working two jobs. Their ten-year-old is home alone after school because there is no other option. The PTA meeting was never a real choice to begin with. As Kayla said in the episode: "If I didn't have financial security, I wouldn't be worried if I was attending the PTA meetings because I literally couldn't."
When you look at the definition of "good mom" that many mothers hold themselves against, and realize it assumes a level of time, stability, and access that not every mother has, the standard starts to look a lot less like truth - and a lot more like something that was never built with most of us in mind.
How one mom chose herself during the hardest year
In the summer of 2024, Emily's marriage ended. By the end of that year, she and her ex were living separately, the kids splitting time 50/50.
Emily knew she needed to work on herself. Both families were present, both parents were showing up, and she gave herself permission to be the priority. In her own words, there was "way too much screen time." There are things from that year she says she would not have wanted someone else to know. She names both of those things honestly.
She also said this, and stood fully behind it:
"Thank God I was working on me. They have a mom who is showing up and loves herself and has a community of support and is emotionally fulfilled. I will stand 10 toes down on that. That is more important than them not having an ungodly amount of screen time on the weekends."
By the time we recorded this conversation, Emily was doing well. Looking at what actually came out of that year:
Her kids knew they were loved
They knew they could come to her with anything
She had a community of support and was emotionally fulfilled
She came through it well - and so did they
Emily acknowledged that there was a lot of room for guilt and shame in that story. She felt it. She chose to look at the whole picture instead of the parts a guilt spiral would have zeroed in on.
Two things that may help when toxic mom guilt shows up
Near the end of our conversation, I asked Emily - if someone is sitting with all of this and wants to know what to actually do with the guilt, what would you tell them? She named two specific things.
1. Learn the system that produces toxic mom guilt
Emily called this the most important starting point. Listening to podcasts, reading about motherhood and the cultural standards placed on mothers, having honest conversations with people you trust, working with a therapist - the point is to understand that mom guilt does not come from something being wrong with you. It comes from cultural conditioning that has been running in the background for a long time.
She described what happens when she brings something guilt-laden to her own therapist: "Sometimes she looks at me and says, 'What are you talking about?' And then I'm like, what am I talking about?"
When you understand the system producing the feeling, you have something to push back against. As Emily said: "Seeing it for what it is is crucial."
2. Thought reframing for mom guilt: find the thought underneath the feeling
Every wave of mom guilt has a specific thought underneath it. Emily described a mom she worked with who had both headphones in while doing the dishes - a signal she had set up with her kids that this was her time. Her son came over wanting to connect. She redirected him. He went back to what he was doing, completely unbothered.
She felt crushing guilt about it.
The thought underneath was something like: a good mom is available for connection every time her child wants it. When you pull that out and look at it directly, it tends to fall apart fast. It is not a standard you would hold a close friend to. It is not even possible. And it is not what actually happened - her son was fine, she was doing the dishes, and she was allowed to have a few minutes to herself.
Thought reframing is not about talking yourself into feeling okay about something that genuinely needs attention. It's about comparing the thought to what you actually believe - and catching the gap between those two things.
Emily was clear that this takes intentional practice at first. You interrupt the spiral, find the thought, and question it against what you actually believe. Over time, especially once you understand why these thoughts show up in the first place, it gets faster. As she put it: "When you understand the external, you can get to a place where it's like, I actually think that's kind of stupid that I thought that."
Mom guilt, taking care of yourself, and what that actually has to do with your kids
Late in our conversation, I described the relationship between a mom's wellbeing and her kids' wellbeing as a river - the water moves in both directions. When a mom is doing okay, whatever her baseline of okay looks like, it flows into the kids. Research supports this: when the primary parent is stable, kids tend to do better. And when kids feel connected and secure, that comes back.
The reason this matters for toxic mom guilt is that so much of it lives in the belief that taking care of yourself is something you do instead of taking care of your kids - that the two are competing. Emily pushed back on that framing directly. A lot of the things that fill you up as a mom and the things your kids actually need are, as she put it, "not competing with each other at all."
The mom guilt that shows up around taking time for yourself, resting, doing something that has nothing to do with the kids - some of it may be pointing at a false trade-off. For a lot of moms, being okay and being a good mom are the same river.
What to do with this
Some questions worth sitting with when toxic mom guilt shows up:
What is the specific thought underneath the feeling?
If a close friend described this exact situation, what would you actually say to her?
Can you genuinely do more right now - or is this attached to a standard you did not actually choose?
Journal prompts:
Write out the last time mom guilt hit hard. What was the thought underneath it? When you look at that thought honestly, does it reflect what you actually believe about what it means to be a good mother - or does it reflect something you absorbed along the way?
Kayla works one-on-one with moms in Leduc, Alberta and virtually across Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Ontario. If you want to go deeper on any of this with support, book a free consult at kaylahuszar.janeapp.com.
Emily Rose MacDonald is the host of The Sparkle Project podcast and co-founder of Mom Friends Collective - a community built around real connection for moms who are done doing it alone.
Emily Instagram: @honestlyemilyrose | YouTube: @thesparkleprojectpod
Which of these two things do you want to try first - and what's the thought you keep catching underneath your mom guilt? Drop it in the comments.
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