What if I told you that the same intentionality and planning that you put into nurturing your family can be applied to nourish your own life?
In this episode I’m talking to all the devoted mothers out there feeling depleted and yearning to rediscover their true selves amidst the chaos of motherhood. We delve into the struggle of juggling the infinite roles and responsibilities of motherhood, the guilt tied to self-care, and the importance of setting boundaries that prioritize and protect Mom. We wrap up by introducing the Resiliency System, a tool designed to shift our focus from measuring ourselves to taking care of ourselves in meaningful ways.
So, if you’re tired of juggling, seeking balance, and yearning to reconnect with your true self, this episode is your first step towards reclaiming your life. Join us in navigating this journey together!
What you will learn on this episode:
– The common struggle many mothers face when it comes to balancing their roles as moms with their own needs for self-care.
– The negative effects of constantly feeling overwhelmed and disconnected from our true selves, and the vicious cycle of over-commitment and attempts to prove our worthiness.
– How self-care can actually help us become better parents…
– How to prioritize self-care in our lives, and the importance of being kind and good to ourselves.
– How the Resiliency System helps us to prioritize and practice self-care skills in our day-to-day lives.
Let’s Connect!
I absolutely love to hear your thoughts and get your questions.
You can email me at: Leighagermann@gmail.com
I can’t wait to hear from you!
DISCLAIMER
This podcast is not intended to provide mental health treatment. Leigh Germann is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and not a doctor, psychiatrist or psychologist. She does not provide diagnosis nor offer therapy through the LeighGermann.com website or in the information offered on the website. It is important that you do not disregard professional medical or mental health advice or delay seeking professional medical or mental health treatment because of any information on the LeighGermann.com website including but not limited to blogs, newsletter, videos, podcasts, e-books, programs, webinars, courses and other services. Leigh Germann and offerings on LeighGermann.com are not providing legal or financial advice, business advice, psychotherapy, supervision, religious advice, or medical advice. The information contained on this Website has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.
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TRANSCRIPT
*This transcription below was provided for you or your convenience; please excuse any mistakes that the automated service made in translation.
Welcome to leadership parenting. I’m so happy to be with you today, as I’ve been meeting with women these last few weeks. I don’t know what it is, but everyone seems to really be struggling with energy, just being out of energy, and it seems to be a theme in almost all my sessions lately, more than usual. So I’m not sure if there’s an increase in what’s going on around us in our world. Maybe post COVID everything’s ramped back up again and everybody’s going fast, getting back to the routines, or maybe it’s just that I’ve been, you know, noticing this theme.
Really, i’m always looking for those themes and places where we can focus and focus on something and make a big impact, because I love it when that happens. We can make a small change and, you know, a deliberate change, and get a really big result. That kind of spreads And I’ve been thinking about that And it’s very similar to a place in my life that I’ve made another change and that is in my vegetable garden. So I live in Texas and I’ve tried to grow a vegetable garden before, but I have never been successful. I’ve tried a couple times and the plants just looked pitiful. Either nothing bloomed or produced, or the heat or the bugs or the squirrels would get whatever tiny crop I managed to grow.
But then I got really serious. When we did our backyard just in the last year I contacted a master gardener, one who lives and grows gardens here in Texas real gardens, and they call them kitchen gardens. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a kitchen garden. Go look it up. They’re just beautiful And they’re meant to be close to your home so that you can go out and, and you know, pull out things to use in your kitchen. So I saw this woman’s page online and I am obviously was scrolling through her photos of beautiful vegetables and flowers just exploding from her garden And I thought, oh, i don’t have a green thumb, i could never do this. But I contacted Crystal her name’s Crystal from Lettuce Grow Something. So if you’re in the Texas area, i highly recommend that. Crystal doesn’t know I’m saying this, but she’s amazing And she came to my house and she showed me a few basic things to do just a few, not a lot And then she did it with me And, my goodness, i have this amazing garden. It’s been a dream come true. This garden has just exploded. My kids and grandkids pick all sorts of things cherry tomatoes, carrots, beans, cucumbers, strawberries right out of the garden and just pop them in their mouths. And every day I look forward to going out and, you know, tending to this garden And it’s been kind of a miracle for me. But Crystal isn’t a miracle worker, she’s a gardener. She studied what plants need to grow and flourish And she, you know, didn’t work any magic. She just taught me the steps to make things grow.
In my specific circumstance, i needed a certain kind of soil that had the nutrients in it that native Texas soil just doesn’t have, and it was specific to my area and specifically to what I wanted to grow. So I needed the garden to be in the right place to get enough sun, but not the worst of the Texas sun. I needed a watering system that delivered water at the roots on a timer, because if I had to remember to do it each day at the same time and in the same amount, well, let’s just say that was probably part of my problem. And you know there are crops that grow better here, different varieties at different times of the season. In other words, i had to be more thoughtful, attentive and intentional in order to be successful with this garden, and this has gotten me thinking this week as I’ve been working with my tired moms.
There are steps to help us feel better, stronger ways to make small changes to get a really big result. That kind of spreads in our life and helps us feel more like ourselves. And feeling more like ourselves is actually a thing I hear that is missing from mama’s lives. In fact, i had a woman tell me the other day that she felt like a stranger had taken over her life, and she actually used the word alien. So I know that sounds a little dramatic but I’ll use it to kind of quote her. She was just absolutely shocked at the way she’s been kind of losing her cool, losing her temper. It just wasn’t in her nature and not anything close to the girl who really lived inside of her. And she said I feel like an aliens taken over my life, causing me to think things I never thought I’d think and say things I never thought I’d say and do things I never thought I do. It’s like a stranger I don’t recognize is running my life now.
And I met she’s not the only one I met with another woman recently who looks like she has it all together. You know, the kids in school are vibrant, they’re thriving, her marriage is doing well, she volunteers, she reaches out to neighbors and throws birthday parties for their friends and she watches others other moms, kids and she’s just kind of beloved in her community. But she’s tired And she’s starting to have trouble getting out of bed in the morning and not feeling fulfilled by all that stuff and kind of doubting herself. And another mom who’s so dedicated and tied up in that schedule with a newborn and a toddler, and another one that has two teenagers and she’s busier and more tired than she was when her kids were babies. And then even, at the opposite end of the spectrum, a mom I’m working with who’s kiddos about to leave home and launch into the world And there’s so much to do and then all of that emotional stuff she’s dealing with and how to kind of re refocus her life when her child leaves home.
All these moms have told me just recently that they’re tired. They’re on this hamster wheel some of them on it for a lot of years And they feel exhausted and kind of battle-worn And they have all the balls in the air but wonder how long they can keep juggling them. So I thought it would be helpful today to talk about this with you all because, just like my garden those steps that make things grow in the unforgiving Texas weather there are steps to helping us, as moms, get what we need. So we feel good and flourish too, even in what can seem like unforgiving schedules and demands upon us. So let me ask you have you ever felt like life is just going so fast and it’s kind of spinning faster than what you have a sense of control of managing, and have you ever felt like you’re a bit of a stranger to yourself, a bit alienated from who you are deep inside? If you have, then you are not alone. Most moms have been at this place at least once, if not frequently, and most of them won’t tell you their story because they’re too embarrassed to talk about the worries or the fears and the feelings of being overwhelmed. And you’re lucky if you have a friend that’ll talk about this with you, because I think it’s so real and the more we talk about it and help each other with it, the better.
As a therapist, i get to hear these stories a lot And I’ve seen kind of a pattern, kind of a painful formula And it goes like this Little self care plus crazy big expectations and responsibilities equal alien mom. This alien status is another way of describing a mom who feels disconnected from herself, like she’s kind of unrecognizable to who she used to be or who she wants to be, that there’s a big gap there, that there’s a difference, and a lot of times these moms kind of feel like something’s brewing inside right, like a volcano is boiling a little bit, ready to explode at any time. And when that volcano erupts outwardly it is not pretty. Their voice changes, they lose patience, they act in a way that often kind of hurts the feelings of their kids or their husbands Sometimes they’re friends and they just don’t feel like themselves. It feels alien, like an intruder has pushed real intentions and energy, creativity and joy to somewhere in the very back of her existence, far away from the woman who shows up in this survival response that we’d never choose willingly. So after a while these moms that I’m working with are starting to really question why is this happening? And the saddest thing I hear is maybe this is who I really am And that shame kind of starts to creep in. And some moms don’t explode outwardly, they more explode on the inside, where they feel kind of hopeless and afraid and oftentimes even feel unworthy And some moms that I work with kind of start experiencing symptoms of depression or even start to have some anxiety or some panic experiences, fill up health problems, withdraw from their friends, start to question their faith, start to wonder how their husband or their children would want to be around them, and often most moms I see just try to work harder at being kind of considered worthy, like that air quote worthiness, and end up over committing, creating this vicious circle trying to show up better, stronger, work harder when they’re so tired And there’s a lot of guilt there, a lot of sadness and frustration, and you know.
Then there’s this whole other layer of like. This is not what I want my kids to see. I want them to see, you know, a happy mom, a strong mom, a mom that’s fulfilled. I want them to have all this confidence in their mom, and so, like, there’s this other layer of guilt and they get harsh with themselves and do exactly the opposite of what they really need. In this way they’ve been taken over by that same alien process, not able to connect with who they really are.
Most women have had at least one or both of these kinds of volcanic experiences, either exploding outwardly or shutting down inwardly. And, by the way, if this sounds familiar at all, it’s because we describe these responses in our episode on the nervous system that all these responses are how our body tries to cope with overwhelm and being out of our window of tolerance, and once in a while it’s normal. But many of us feel this way more often than not And we’re very hard on ourselves. I often hear you know, i don’t know who I am anymore. I’m a shell of my former self. Sometimes I hear my kids would probably be more successful with a different mom. That one just kind of breaks my heart, because that is never true. It’s never true that your kids need a different mom. All of this just comes from depletion. It stinks, it sucks the life and joy from the role of mother and leaves moms lonely, hurt and not feeling like they can be successful, no matter how hard they keep trying. But I know who these moms really are, who you really are Good-hearted women who love their kids and their families And they want to be responsible and kind and say yes to way more than they physically or emotionally have the capacity for.
They’re smart, they’re capable, they’ve learned. There’s only so many hours in the day and they only have so much energy in those hours. So they carefully and committedly give their time and their energy away to the people and the causes they care about. And when they get close to being empty, they keep going and they keep giving And before they understand what’s happening, they’re lower than low, emptier than empty. And that’s when this appears. That’s when this alienation appears. And what’s really happening is that women just get depleted. And what depleted moms need is some TLC, right Tender Living Care. What we really need is sleep, some good, healthy food, some movement, some play, some joy in their life. They need boundaries to protect them. They need tools to better deal with the stress and fears in their life, and I’ve been trained in how to help women who are depleted.
I have a master’s degree, thousands of hours of education and certifications, but that’s not the only place where I’ve gained my qualification. I’m also a mom And I’ve felt that intruder sneak into my life and take over not just once but a couple of times, and I don’t think any of my kids would say they often saw me in the state, because I’m the kind of mom that erupts on the inside. Maybe it’s better for the kids that it happens that way, but it can’t be counted as a win because I was the one who got hurt in the explosion And it showed up for me in these kind of strange ways. For example, i had some mysterious illness throughout my early years of being a mom Kind of mid years I guess. after all, my kids were born And I was just running at a fast pace, i had this weird anemia that came out of the blue with like no apparent reason, thankfully, but it showed up and just knocked me down And chronic fatigue that made it hard for me to get up in the mornings to get my kids off to school and to kind of show up to my volunteer assignments. And then, a few years later, I had this weird inner ear issue that caused me to lose my balance and made it hard for me, like when I knelt down and tried to tie my shoe I would kind of tip over, like really strange stuff. And it was during this final kind of illness that I was reading anything I could to figure out what was wrong with me when I came across this question Is it possible that your physical symptoms represent something in your life that is out of balance?
And I kind of paused What I’d been to many doctors over those years. Not one of them had asked me a question like this. I had blood workup scans, you know exams, offered medications And no one asked me how much sleep I was getting, what kind of food I ate and when, and if I exercised regularly And if I took any time for my own rest or recovery as I cared for a house full of children. Was my life out of balance, i asked myself. I thought of the rigor of my days. I love being a mom, love being a wife, love being a friend serving. I love creating things that were special for my family. I mothered thick That’s how I used to say it. I like to mother thick, attending to what everyone needed with this kind of fierce dedication that brought me so much satisfaction and happiness In my professional life. I was devoted to my clients, committed to studying and researching, keeping my skills up to date. I had an awesome, rich life, but that wasn’t the question.
Is it possible that your physical symptoms represent something in your life that is out of balance? And I got really quiet inside. I knew what out of balance meant because I talked with my clients about it, but the women I saw in my office were depressed and anxious. That’s not me, i thought, but then that quiet voice got a little louder, isn’t it? The truth was that I was a worrier, and my worrying had been worse.
Falling asleep was difficult. I was waking up every morning with a little dark cloud over my head that I couldn’t seem to shake, and sometimes I felt sad, without knowing why. You know, i didn’t protect my sleep. I used the late, late hours of the evening after the kids went to bed to get things done. I woke up with my high school son at 5.30 in the morning most days of the week. I rarely got throughout the day without needing to lie down for a nap just to keep my eyes open, and I didn’t eat when I needed to or what I needed to. I didn’t really say no, and setting boundaries was something I thought I was good at. But as I thought deeply about that question, i could see areas where I hadn’t protected myself. I was over-committed, overstressed, under-supported and out of balance. How had I missed the fact that I had stopped paying attention to my own care? You know, as I was preparing for this episode, i was thinking about those feelings and I had an image come to mind And I’ll share it with you. It’s dramatic, but it really represents how I felt.
I felt like I was standing on top of a speeding train. You know, like in the movies when James Bond is fighting a guy on the top of the train as it’s hurtling across the countryside. That train was going so fast and it was kind of almost tipping off the tracks And I was losing my footing, my balance, and I felt like I had to be up there to keep the train going And I had to find a way to handle the speed to keep it on the tracks and keep everyone inside the train having a smooth ride, getting everything they needed. And there was a tunnel up ahead The one James Bond knows how to handle so that he doesn’t crash into the mountains as he’s standing on the train. And the train was going way too fast and if I hit that mountain the whole train would fall apart And everyone I loved, everything I cared about, was on the train and I couldn’t slow it down, much less stop it, without losing the momentum that everyone needed. So I faced the mountain head on, trapped. That’s how it felt. How did I even get up there? When did it all start moving so fast? Why was I on the top of the train and everyone else was inside and somehow I was in charge of keeping it all going at this pace? And when did I start to lose hold of me?
For me there wasn’t a defining moment. I rather happily and eagerly jumped into mom life And then it just kind of all took over. I didn’t intend to neglect my own needs. They just kind of slipped lower and lower on the priority list till I hardly remembered them at all. I was hitting the mountain, or hitting the wall as I often call it, and that’s how I describe this thing the syndrome or collection of feelings and fears and realizations that symbolize this depletion.
I often meet with women who are hitting the wall, and I can see it. Now. It doesn’t worry me because I understand it, it makes sense And I do think it helps that I’ve gone through it. And, of course, no two women have exactly the same experience, and I don’t mean to say that I know exactly what a woman is feeling or why it’s happening, but I am a researcher and I have witnessed thousands of women on similar speeding trains who at some point start to get tired, low energy, have some health challenges and begin to look around for answers. And this is an amazing group of women I’m so proud to know and proud to be one of, because they care and they’re committed and they’re wonderful. That’s how they get up there on top of that train.
You know, it started out slow, like a com ride in the countryside, but it picked up steam and all of a sudden it’s it got to be too much. There’s a way to slow down the train. It’s just an illusion that we’re trapped, And that is such good news. The good news is that, like almost any challenge we face, the remedy is far more powerful than the cause, and what I mean by that is that you don’t need equal time and equal numbers of things to reverse damage. If you haven’t exercised in three years. It doesn’t take three years of exercising to restore your strength. In fact, it takes far less than that. Even within a week, you’d start to see positive effects that build strength exponentially in a fraction of the time it took to lose it And all of our negative thinking. It takes only a single switch of focus into something positive and the effects of that are immediate upon our mood and our confidence.
Think of a dark room pitch black, all the lights sucked out of it, so dark you couldn’t see your hand in front of you. How much light does it take to see your hand, to reverse that overwhelming darkness? Just a pinpoint of light, just a sliver, and the darkness loses its dominance and there’s hope. I know that’s dramatic, but think of the feelings of overwhelming weariness that can suck the light from our lives. We don’t need to go back to the days before we had kids to find ourselves.
It’s not the loving and the giving to others that brings the heaviness and the darkness. It’s forgetting that we need some of it too. We don’t need all of it. We don’t need everyone to give us back what we’ve given to them. We just need a little bit of it ourselves, given to us from us, and we can learn to slow that train down. We all have to learn how to give to others without giving ourselves away. Being a good parent feels like it requires everything, but if we give everything and save nothing for ourselves, we’ll run out of gas, run out of charge, just plain run out, and then we’re vulnerable to depression, anxiety, to getting sick. That’s not a good way to live And I’ve learned this the hard way that if I didn’t slow down and take care of myself, not only would I be unwell and not able to do my job, i wasn’t able to be who I truly am destined to be.
So I had to listen and follow my own advice. That’s so much harder than giving advice. I learned I was just as important and just as valuable as the children I adored and the clients I was dedicated to helping, and I learned that the road to self-empowerment isn’t always easy. There are hard decisions to make and people you will have to say no to, and many times you may feel like you’re walking this road alone. You know this is a battle for sanity and wellness and a life of joy and peace, and for the most part it’s an internal battle, because unless you are on your own side in this challenge, it’s not going to happen. No one else can be responsible for your feelings and thoughts or your sleep and nutrition. No one else really knows how much energy and time you have available to give or how to give you the rest and the healing you need.
You know we love those stories, those movies, those plots where the heroes have superpowers and they ride in on white stallions and save the people from disaster. In our real worlds, it’s messier than that. We are the heroes to our family And I think we take on that role with so much courage and I’m grateful that we do. But we don’t have superpowers. We have to take time. We’re mere mortals. We have to take time to recharge and make difficult decisions how to take care of ourselves so we can keep saving our little corner of the world.
We want the people in our life to step forward and see that we’re in need and take care of us, but there’s no one else that can really do that for us except for us ourselves. We can have helpers, and it’s important that this is a conversation that you and your partner have together, because my guess is that if you’re running on fumes, so is your partner. This is what happens in our families, when we’re good hearted and we’re trying to do our best and we’re taking more on, and you know it’s not just that you get tired. Your partner is probably getting tired too, but there’s no one else that can do this for you except for you, and this actually is good news, because that’s enough. You have all the power and ability within you to create and maintain the life that you long for. You have the power to get off the speeding train and ride inside the car with your family at a pace that works for you, and I am really lucky that I got to see my way out of this cycle, as I learned to help other women take better care of themselves.
I knew the right answers, but I wasn’t very good at applying them in my own life, because most of us aren’t good at that. This sneaks up on us And it took growing more self-aware for me to understand that I was just as important as the women that I helped, and it took creativity and courage to act in my own behalf, because it’s easier sometimes to help other people than it is to help ourselves. And if that sounds familiar to you, then you’re in the same boat I was in And you know sometimes we draw this line between the worth of our children and our own worth, and it is easy to see the value in our kids and it triggers in us this kind of fierce protection that rises up and motivates us to care for them and plan for them and sign them up for things that will be enriching for them and kind of build our life around that, and it’s not that I want you to stop doing that. That’s our job to take really good care of our kids.
Something happens as we grow into women and it’s like we cross a line in which we can get excluded from the things that we feel so passionate about for our kids. Kindness, acceptance, gentleness, encouragement, nurturing, protection These are all really important for our kids, but so many times they’re withheld from ourselves. You deserve kindness, rest, play and yes, even limits and boundaries, and you deserve to take really good care of yourself. And as I watch women make room for their own self-care, i see their depression and anxiety start to melt away, and I’m now a believer of what I’m teaching, not just from textbooks, but from watching it happen in women’s lives right in front of me. And here’s the really cool thing As we take better care of ourselves, we feel stronger and more capable to be the kind of parent to our kids that we’ve always dreamed of being. We get more emotional control. That means we’re able to regulate our emotions better. We’ve been talking about this ways to understand what’s going on inside of us. Once we understand that our emotional control increases When we take care of ourselves, we can set better boundaries And I found that when I practiced the same kind of self-care, my own health improved, my worrying lessened and that little dark cloud didn’t appear as often.
And I had to make some really hard choices. I remember a period of time in a year where we chose not to have the kids do any activities because I had been so worn out by running to three different football practices a week that were three hours long while taking care of two baby girls and a husband who traveled like I needed a break, and sometimes that meant that our kids didn’t play a sport during one part of the season that year. Because I needed to rest, i needed to restore, and my resting and my restoration just meant I had all the normal things to do in taking care of kids. It meant that I was not gone three, four nights a week for hours at a time. I had to make some choices. Our family made some choices, some deliberate choices, and we sat down and had to get smarter. We had to get more clear about what our highest priorities were And we talked together as a family. I remember even bringing out a whiteboard and talking about this is the amount of time that we have to be able to do activities for all the kids And what’s of our highest priority, and how do we take turns, taking kind of that time to focus on something, and how do we make sure that mom doesn’t get run into the ground Like? we had conversations like that And it was good. It was good for our whole family and we supported each other in that.
And the amazing thing is that the world kept turning And even my kids got used to me taking care of myself more And I actually had more energy to play with them and show up with them the way that I wanted to, and it affected my marriage differently. We were able to spend more time, more quality time with each other And I was much more myself and not in that depleted state. You know that alien mom can turn into fun mom and healthy mom and happy mom. It just takes some courageous and determined self care and commitment and planning. And the irony is that if we give ourselves away in service to our family today, we truly leave nothing left for tomorrow, not for us and not for them. So we want to keep giving, we want to keep serving, but not to the point of losing ourselves.
There’s a much better way, and that’s why I’m here doing this podcast each week, to tell you that the better way is all about taking care of yourself in a thoughtful and responsible manner. It’s not selfishness or self indulgence. It needs to be anchored to your values, to making difficult choices of where and how to spend your time, and it’s not mystery or magic, like I thought it was in growing a beautiful garden. It can be broken down into steps that, when applied, they can help you put your life back into balance, with you at the center, calling the shots, making the decisions and reaping the benefits. And that’s important because it’s time to be kind and good to yourself and to add yourself to the list of priorities in your family. And I want to invite you to think about your life in a really benevolent way.
I want you to see any challenges you’re having, if you’re struggling, if you’re tired, if you’re frustrated, if you even just kind of feel like you don’t recognize yourself anymore. I want you to know that these are just indicator lights that you need something. They’re not something to be worried about. They’re just lights that you need something. It’s probably sleep, right, it’s always probably. I start with sleep. How much sleep are you getting, but it’s also maybe it’s about needing more connection. Maybe it’s needing some alone time. Maybe it’s needing some time to do the things that you’ve always been passionate about but you’re not having time now in your busy schedule to do. Maybe there’s some things you could say yes and no to that would help you feel less stressed, and we’re going to cover all of this. Anything that makes you feel not like yourself is something we can work with. So for today, just today, i want you to benevolently look at the speed of your train, look to see if you’re safely inside the train or trying to keep it all going at a breakneck speed, and just start to wonder a little and get curious. What would help me feel a little better, a little more stable, a little more like me? This is empowerment.
Listening to this podcast is a great place to start in learning the steps to empowering your life, and in the next few episodes we’ll talk more about the things you need to have in your life to be physically well, the things like sleep and nutrition and movement. They are also part of resilience, because without them, our body struggle and our brain struggle and anything we plan to be more resilient and proactive about gets undermined by the demands of a depleted body. So in this resilience system that I’ve created, i’ve laid out five areas in which we can take action to better care for ourselves, and every single episode fits into one of the pillars of the resiliency system, and this one that we’re talking about today falls into self care. We’re not talking about bubble baths and massages, although I love bubble baths and massages. We’re going to be talking about what you need to know to help your body work in the way that it protects you, so you can do what you want to do.
And I want you to have that knowledge that’s out there. There’s a lot of research, a lot of expert sets of knowledge, so I’m going to bring that to you in as compact a form as I possibly can, and as we do that, i want you to really focus on having that trust and that confidence in yourself, to deepen that relationship you have with your inner wisdom, that girl inside you that knows a lot more than we usually give her credit for. That’s the power that will ultimately keep you going when you unlock your own wisdom and start to trust yourself deeply and listen to what you really need, even listen to what your body is telling you you really need. So be benevolent, which means assuming your goodness at your core, and see anything that’s coming up for you, any volcanoes erupting inside or out, as signals that you need to pay attention to. So we’ll keep marching forward on these skills And hopefully we’re keeping our wellness at the top of our minds, because knowing is just the beginning.
It’s prioritizing and practicing these skills that really lift you and fill you up in your mom life. So thank you for being here And I hope you’ll keep coming back, and I hope you’ll go to the website leakermancom and take a look at the resiliency system that holds all these skills and become familiar with it. Try out the exercises we talk about. Share these ideas with your friends so you can support each other and help change the narrative from measuring ourselves according to output and clean houses and perfect kids to focusing on taking care of ourselves in deeply value, connected ways, so that we can live a life that models good, healthy care to our kids. I love this work and I wish I could see each of you and give you a hug and tell you that what you are doing is so meaningful and that I see you. I see how hard it is and I see your heart and I’m on your side Until next week. Take good and courageous care of yourselves.