Photo: Brandi Rhodes
“I’ve had many career changes that weren’t really anticipated over the past year and it actually turned out to be a really great thing because through these changes I have had the ability to be like, ‘You know what? I’m prioritizing my daughter,’ " she tells PEOPLE.
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Brandi Rhodes
The athlete says Liberty has reached the age where she is becoming more active and enjoying their mother-daughter bonding experiences, including their frequent trips to Disney World. Though she’s excited about Liberty having similar interests as her, Rhodes admits she’s looking forward to witnessing her daughter have her own hobbies, specifically when it comes to wrestling.
Despite Liberty having two professional wrestlers as parents, Rhodes doesn’t want her little girl to follow in their footsteps, noting that she hopes Liberty sees “another direction” outside of the sport and can “forge her own path.”
“Of course if that’s something she ends up loving and being interested in, then of course we’ll go that direction and encourage her,” she says. “But I really want her to know that ‘Hey, just because this is what Mom and Dad did, maybe I don’t have to do that at all. Maybe I’m into ice skating, maybe I’m into soccer, maybe I want to cook.’ The world is literally her oyster.”
“That is 100 percent why I did everything the way that I did,” Rhodes adds of raising her daughter. “I wanted to have a child and in that period tell her to go explore. I don’t want her to feel confined in any type of way. I want to be able to support her however I need to.”
However, more time with her daughter has contributed to her anxiety as a new mom, expressing a constant fear of something happening to Liberty.
Rhodes previously opened up aboutexperiencing postpartum depressionas a new mom but now, she admits it’s postpartum anxiety that has lingered and been a journey to cope with.
“The fear and the everyday worry [about Liberty] doesn’t go away but the trickling effect of it does go away,” she tells PEOPLE. “Of course every once in a while I’ll have a thought or I’ll think of something going wrong, but I’m able to rationalize it now and take a deep breath and say, ‘Hey, these are all worries that are okay to have but the reality is she is safe and she’s okay.’ And that goes a long way.”
source: people.com
