Caring For Our Families

Today we have our last question to discuss in this series, and that is: How can we help our children learn to take care of their families?

This is such an incredible, heartfelt question – it shows the depth of love that we have for our children, the wish to teach them how to love and serve and connect with the people that they love, and the importance of building healthy foundations at home.

Isn’t it all of our desires to build home lives that feel safe, secure, and loving?

That’s the work that I do with my clients – I help them heal from their depression so that they can be the kind and loving mom they always thought they would be. Depression, along with many other challenges in life, can get in the way of us being who we want to be. We have an image in our mind of how we want to respond, but in the moment we act out of anger, disappointment, or fear. And while we will never get it perfectly 100% of the time, it’s also possible to learn to manage our emotions so we can respond how we want to more often than we currently are. (If you want more resources on this, scroll back a few posts to the first one I did in this series titled How do I teach my kids to manage their emotions? We dive deeper into this concept there.)

Let’s start this discussion by going back to the fact that we model what we know – what we are shown in our homes growing up is likely what we will do when we are starting our own homes some day. This, of course, is a general rule of thumb and not an all encompassing statement. It is possible for us to change what we have been taught, but it’s also why it’s so important to instill the foundation of faith in our homes. The trouble is that with the busyness of life, the standards of todays society, and the impact that technology has in our day to day life, it can be easy to forget to explain to our kids why we do things in certain ways. That, mixed with the fact that each kid has their own personality and view of life, we can’t predict (or blame ourselves) for how our children run their homes. This is only to say that we have a huge impact in how our kids experience home, and if we aren’t conscious of the impact we are having, it may not turn out how we would like it to. Let me also add here, that this is a huge part that faith plays in. Trusting that God will be with us and our kids as we learn to raise and care for our families. It isn’t only on our shoulders – we can lean back and trust that we are supported as well.

If we are modeling for the most part how we want our children to be, this doesn’t mean that we are always happy, loving and kind. It means that when something goes wrong, we take care of matters as well. Our kids aren’t always going to feel happy loving and kind with their spouses or children, and if we show them that a relationship is meant to have conflict, then they will also know that it makes the relationship stronger – it doesn’t break it. This requires us to be vulnerable and admit that we are human and make mistakes. It requires us to know how to repair and make matters right after a fight. It isn’t always an easy thing to do, but the more you do it the easier it becomes. I used to close myself off from my kids when something would happen, but now it is so much easier to open up to them when something goes wrong. We’re able to take care of matters, to have an open discussion with what happened and why, and we typically make a plan of action for next time – because you know there’s always going to be a next time.

The last thing I want to share here, is that we learn by doing. Which also means that we learn by failing. We could all take a mothering course and learn the ins and outs of what to do and what not to do – and we still would never get it right all the time. Life is a lesson in living – we learn how to care for the people that we love by not loving them correctly. When we do something that doesn’t feel right, it’s a signal to look at what happened and why. When we do something that does feel right, it’s a signal to do more of it. This is what we talked about in the emotions post, so again go read that if you want more here, but use your emotions as a guide.

You can teach your kids how to do everything perfectly, but then they’re going to have to go out on their own and figure it out themselves. Let them fail, even though it may be the hardest thing you will ever do. Let them fail, and let them learn, and keep that open dialogue with them so they have someone to turn to when they don’t know what else to do. Parenthood is one of the biggest growth curves on the planet, and having someone who’s been through it before is a huge asset when you’re going through it yourself.

Again, let’s wrap up what we talked about here – how do we teach our kids to care for their families?

1.       Model what we want them to learn.

2.       Know that we are not always going to get it perfect, and that isn’t a problem – showing them how to resolve issues is just as important as getting it right.

3.       Trusting that God is helping us, and allowing Him to support us.

4.       Know that they will fail as they learn to care for their families – and you can be there to support them along the way.

So go – teach your kids to care for their families, and teach yourself as well. It’s never too late to start new, no matter how old your kids are. If you’re alive, there’s still time.

Thank you for following along with these blog posts – it’s been so fun to share with you some of the tools and tricks that I’ve picked up along the way. I by no means claim to be an expert in all the things. I’m simply here to share what I know.

My goal is to post once a month here throughout 2024, so I’ll be back again in January with another post. I hope you have a peaceful Christmas and a happy new year.<3

Building A Life You Love

We all know that life comes with many different phases and stages – and oftentimes those phases and stages turn out to be something a little bit (or a lot a bit) different than we had originally anticipated. Like we talked about last week, it’s important to notice where you’re expecting perfection, or thinking it absolutely has to be a certain way – because when we expect it to be something that it isn’t, we create a lot of unnecessary suffering for ourselves.

But let’s dive into today’s question. It is:

Q: How should our children build a life that they love throughout many stages in life?

The first thing that comes to my mind is contentment. I did a whole podcast episode on this a while back because it’s such an important topic. And not contentment as in you should just be content with what you have and never feel discontent or have bigger dreams than your current reality. Some people live that way and feel it’s best, and I’m glad that they’ve found a way that works for them, but I have a little different relationship with contentment.

There’s being content with what you’ve been given, or what direction your life has taken, because to argue with reality by thinking it should have been different, gets you nowhere. But there’s also a lot that we can gain by looking at the areas that we are discontent. For me, my discontentment came up every postpartum. Postpartum was a time in my life where I was forced to slow down and really look at the life I was living. I often came up against hard emotions that I had been trying to run away from, or to sit with the fact that being a mother is actually not that glamorous at all. If you’re trying to gain your sense of satisfaction and accomplishment from all that you have to show for your work, being a stay at home mom isn’t the first option I would recommend.:) There’s nobody handing out gold stars or giving you a raise, unless you make it known that’s what you want. One of the reasons I was feeling discontent, is because I was believing that what I was doing wasn’t enough – not when it was measured up against the societal norm for girls my age. So looking at my areas of discontent helped me to see where my work was as I moved towards contentment. I had to let go of some beliefs like I should be doing more or I’m missing out on something better, and there were some changes I had to make as well – starting my business, moving to a new city, conversations to be had with my husband, etc. Feeling discontent, or not loving the life that you have, doesn’t need to mean that you’re an ungrateful brat. It simply means that there’s some digging to do so that you can find out what changes need to be made.

Another thing that comes to mind here, is living from your heart. If you want to live a life that you love, no matter what stage of life you are in, you have to come from your heart. That means knowing what’s in there, and being willing to share it with those around you. We know that it isn’t our life that creates our feelings – it’s our thoughts about our life that does. (You do know this, right?:) That means that no matter what you’re currently going through, you can love the life that you have if you want to. And the reason I add “if you want to”, is because there are times when we don’t love our life, and we don’t want to either. Maybe we recently suffered a hard loss. Got a terrible diagnosis. Can’t find a way to move forward with our spouse. There are a million and one reasons that we aren’t in a place to love the life that we currently have, and that’s okay. Pain is a part of life, and there’s no need to always look on the bright side or push our way past the pain faster than we’re able to. Living a life that you love means also accepting the trials and struggles that come with it – some are ones that we never would have chosen ourselves, but they are here nonetheless. Learning to be open about what we’re going through, using our struggles to connect with others, and becoming stronger as we move through them is one of the best learning grounds for living from your heart. Because you can’t have all good and none bad – we’re meant to have a contrast, so that we can appreciate all of it.

The last thing I’ll say here (because you know me, I have so much to say I could write a book. Oh yeah, that’s why I am.) is that comparison is the thief of joy. If you want to love your life, stop comparing your life to others. That’s one of the reasons that I don’t think I will be back on social media myself. I know there is a lot of good that can come from it, but I also know that you have to be very mindful and intentional with how you’re using it – and since the app itself is designed to have you be the opposite of those, I don’t know if it’s a worthy battle to be fighting. But with all of this “connection” that we have these days, we also have so many more ways to compare ourselves to others and ways to feel like we aren’t doing or being enough. The connection that we think we may be getting from our online situations may very well be only a sad substitute for the deeper connection that we’re actually craving. Each of us have to decide for ourselves, but those are some things to keep in mind for both yourself and your kids, as you think about how you’re living your life.

There’s only way I recommend comparing, and that is if you use it to inspire you. Not to make yourself feel better or worse about what you have, but simply to inspire the amount of ideas that you have circulating in your head about what’s possible. There are so many incredible people with so many incredible ideas about how to live, or what to try, or how to make your life better, but if you’re trying to fit them all into your one single life at the same time, it’s going to be pretty confusing and hard. Instead, choose one or two who you really admire, and then learn from them. Apply some of the things that they recommend, maybe ask for advice depending on your relationship to them, or simply allow their perspective to give you the perspective shift you’re needing in your life. We gain so much by working together, and learning from each other, rather than thinking it’s all a big competition and the one who does it by themselves gets the biggest star at the end of the road.

So if I were to boil it all down into a few bite sized pieces, here’s what I would recommend for building a life you love:

1.       Accept and be open about your struggles and trials.

2.       Learn from them and from your discontentment to create the changes you desire.

3.       Know what’s in your heart, and live from it. (Again, not expecting perfection here. Even 1% more than you did yesterday.)

4.       Be inspired by others, and limit the amount of input you’re taking in.

What are your thoughts on living a life that you love? Anything in particular that you’ve learned through your years?

We’ll be back again next week with our last question of the series.

Perfectionistic Fantasies

Let’s approach our next question in this series, which is:

Q: How can we guide our children to avoid the damage of a perfectionistic fantasy?

This is such an excellent question – but I think before we dive into answering it, we first have to discuss what a perfectionistic fantasy even is.

You know how you don’t like to do a yoga video when your kids are awake because they’re just going to interrupt you five minutes in and you won’t be able to finish it?

Or you hate reminding your husband to take out the trash, or to help with bedtime, because you think he should just know what to do and where to pitch in?

These are perfect examples of perfectionistic fantasies – you have an idea for how life should be, what someone else should do, and if it doesn’t go that way then you get mad, resentful, or just altogether give up.

We all have our own ways of where and how we expect perfection, the important thing is simply to be aware of your own. I used to never think of myself as a perfectionist because my house was a complete disaster. I thought that a perfectionist was someone who could never have a hair out of place, and kids were dressed perfectly – which, for sure some are like that. But I was a perfectionist in my own way – I expected myself to be able to handle all the things and never have a hard day. I expected myself to run a business and have a million kids and not even break a sweat. Perfectionistic fantasies are when we have an unrealistic expectation for ourselves and those around us, and there isn’t room for human error in the mix.

Because think about those two scenarios listed above. They could be where you’re currently at, but there is so much that you can do to work with them to get what you want. Let’s take the yoga example for starters – you can accept that kids interrupt, and that’s just part of it, and not be bothered by it. You can get creative with being a bridge while you’re in down dog, or just moving around their little bodies. You could invite them to set up their own mat and join you. You could keep a firm boundary that this is your time, and remove them from your mat no matter how many times that takes. But if you’re expecting them to just not interrupt you and then get frustrated and give up when they do, you don’t get your yoga time, and it’s more proof that life is harder to enjoy with kids. Which isn’t a very fun way to live, especially when you have many littles.

Or if we take the husband example, you can explain why it’s so important to you that he helps out. You could also recognize all the ways that he does help, just not in this certain way. You could have a discussion with him about where he wants to pitch in, what you would like, and finding common ground to work together. But again, none of those are going to happen if you simply get mad and ignore him for the rest of the evening. It’s pretty challenging to work with someone who’s giving you the cold shoulder, right?

So how do we help our children avoid perfectionistic fantasies, now that we know what they are? I think one of the best ways is just being real with our kids ourselves. Letting them see our imperfections and asking for forgiveness when we fail. Letting them know that not only is life not perfect (and never will be), but teaching them what to do with the mistakes, misunderstandings, and miscommunications.

These areas where we don’t excel or something doesn’t go smoothly are the best places for learning and growing – not a source of shame, guilt, or failure. When we attach that meaning to it, it perpetuates this idea that we should’ve gotten it right the first time, we should already know how to do it, or that there isn’t room for being a beginner. And there is absolutely nothing in life that comes without learning and growing. Sure, we all have our own strengths and areas that come more naturally to us, but we all have our weaknesses and areas that we can grow in. This isn’t a problem – it’s how life is meant to be. What it takes to admit our faults and not go into shame is being humble. Accepting that we aren’t super human and never will be – and then using these times to connect with and have compassion and understanding for those around us.

This isn’t an easy and quick fix, believe me. This is something that takes awareness and a commitment to continue, but the effect that it has in our life, our children’s, our friends, everyone around us.. is amazing to see. It gives everyone a little breath of fresh air, some permission to just be and not have everything all figured out. I don’t know about you, but that’s the kind of life I want to be a part of.

Thanks for joining me again this week, and I’ll be back in a week with our next topic: All about building a life that you love through the many different and varying stages.

How Do I Teach My Kids To Handle Their Emotions?

We all know the importance of our kids knowing they are safe, loved, and whole. And yet sometimes it can feel like we don’t know how to convey that to our kids – daily life gets in the way, we lose our patience, or don’t have the time to sit with each individual kid like we would like to. Especially when kids are gone to school all day, or when we have all the work around home that needs to be done, how do we build that relationship with them so we can help establish physical, spiritual, and emotional health?

I was recently approached by a reader, asking some really good thought-provoking questions, and I’d like to address them in the next several posts here. Because we also know the effect that the early years of our life affects who we become as adults; these years influence what we think about ourselves, what we believe we’re capable of, how we interact in all the relationships of our life, etc. but we don’t always know how to teach our kids these things. How can you teach someone something that you don’t know how to do yourself?

Now, as we begin this topic, I want you to watch for anytime that you start to tally all the ways that you failed, all the times that you did the opposite of what you wished, and you may be starting to feel heavy or weighed down. If you find yourself reacting this way, I want you to stop. There is a time and place for that, and it isn’t here while you’re reading it. I guarantee that there are many ways that you wished you would have done better in your years of motherhood – whether you’ve been a mom for five or forty-five years – and I’d actually be more worried if you didn’t think that you had failed at anything. But what I want you to be careful of here, is the difference between responsibility and shame. Most people aren’t able to look back at their past and take responsibility for their actions. To admit that they did, in fact, not do it perfectly, and to have compassion and understanding for themselves and how they responded at that time.

Instead, there’s the tendency to become defensive and deny their part in something, to blame the other person, or to go completely the opposite direction and think they’re a failure, completely worthless, and deserving of all of the shame and agony that comes with the effects of their behaviors. Recognize if you head in any of these directions, and then remember that they aren’t going to help you move forward. I also recommend that if it feels particularly heavy or like you can’t move forward from this (or anything), that you reach out to a professional for help. There are so many incredible mental health professionals who are able to walk you through hard times so that you can be more of who you want to be again.

The last thing I want to add here, is that we find the tools that we need at the time that we are supposed to. Again – it can be easy to think Oh, I wish I knew about this ten/fifteen/thirty years ago! Life would have been so much better, or gone so much easier.. Why didn’t I know about this then?! And while I get this, I also trust that we didn’t have these tools then because we weren’t meant to. For whatever reason, you were meant to have the experience you did, I was meant to have the experience that I did, and our kids theirs. We can learn so much from what we’ve been through, and having everything go perfect and smoothly would mean a loss in learning. So trust that you’re reading this right when you need to, and that is that. So with all of that being said, let’s dive into what we can teach our kids so that they can become more of the happy, healthy, and whole adults that we would like them to be.

Q: How can we teach our children to manage their emotions?

Our emotions are a huge factor in our life. They’re the reason we do, or don’t do, every single thing. We want to feel love, connected, safe, and happy – that drives our behaviors of talking with friends, doing fun projects together, or giving gifts. We also don’t want to feel hurt, sad, disappointed, or insecure – that causes us to be careful with our hearts, not dream as big, or avoid conversations where we might not know the other person that well.

However, we also know that life will never be bubble wrapped. We are meant to feel pain. It is in that pain that we learn so much more about ourselves and others than we could ever know if we were always and only happy. But how do we manage our emotions? There’s been a huge shift in the past handful of years, or even generations, with how we deal with emotions. Many of us have grown up in homes where feelings aren’t okay – they’re something to push away, be quiet about, or not acknowledge. Whether that was on purpose or not, most people got the impression that to be loud or out of line was not acceptable. And if we look at it from a parental aspect, that really makes sense – because what do you do if you have ten kids and they’re all expressing their emotions at once, while you’re trying to nurse the baby, make supper, and do the laundry all at the same time? When we’re really busy as parents and don’t have the time or the energy to spend with kids feelings, it makes sense that we’d rather they just be quiet and feel happy all the time. Much easier for us to get our things done and enjoy a peaceable life.

We’re learning though, that when we teach our children that way, it doesn’t help them deal with their feelings when they get older and are in their own relationships. Of course this isn’t true across the board – not everybody has problems with their emotions – but there are children who need different tools or more support to learn how to handle their feelings.

One of the best ways to teach kids to manage their emotions, is by knowing how to manage yours. I know, bummer, right? Maybe you thought you could skip this part of the work, and just go straight to helping your kids;) I promise you though, the more you aren’t afraid of your own feelings the easier it will be to help your kids deal with theirs. As you teach yourself and apply tools in those hard moments, you’re going to have the knowledge and words to explain to your kids what to do in theirs.

So how do you teach yourself, as well as your kids, how to manage your feelings? Let me break it down into a few simple steps:

1.       Know that life is 50/50. That means we will always have some positive and some negative feelings in our life – always. Maybe it won’t always be a perfectly even split, but when we are willing to have both positive and negative in our life, it’s going to take away the resistance to sometimes feeling angry, irritated, or sad.

2.       Be able to feel your feelings. Feelings are sensations that we feel in our body, not something that we think in our brains. When we can notice a feeling and allow it to be there, it’s going to move through us. Every single time. It’s when we think that we shouldn’t be feeling something, or we don’t want to feel something, that it gets clogged up in us. Practice noticing what you feel and where (for example I feel tightness in my throat, or I feel a thrumming in my belly and chest) and just let it be there. You can describe it as best you can – sometimes that will be really descriptive with a color, temperature, texture, etc, and sometimes it will be only with one word. That’s all okay. This is a muscle that you’re building the more that you practice being with your feelings – don’t expect yourself to be a pro right away or get it right every single time. Let it feel awkward and unsure as you get to know your feelings.

3.       Now if that last step didn’t scare you away, and you’re still here wanting to learn about managing yours and your kids emotions, let’s talk about what to do with the hard ones. Give yourself a pause. It’s usually the hard negative emotions that we’re more interested in learning to manage, like anger, rage, frustration, disappointment, grief, hurt, etc. One of the best things you can do, and you can teach your kids to do as well, is to take a moment to pause and to breathe when you notice a really strong feeling coming on. You never have to respond right away – I don’t care who you’re with or what situation you’re in. As long as everyone is physically safe in that moment, do what you can to take a moment away from the situation. Maybe you take a five minute rest in your bedroom. Maybe you hold up your finger to your kids, and you take three deep belly breaths. Wait until you feel yourself calm down enough to speak in a rational tone – and if you need several hours or days before you can do that, take that time as well. Most of us either react to, resist, or avoid these hard feelings, and it’s going to take some time and consistency to begin feeling that feeling and not responding in it, so take whatever you need to make that happen. I like to imagine my emotions on a scale of 1-10; anytime I’m feeling a feeling that is stronger than a five or a six, I don’t respond in because I know it won’t help anything. Of course this doesn’t mean that I’m perfect at it, but having a rule like that for myself helps me to stay in check with how I’m feeling and take responsibility for the effect I’m having in my relationships.

4.       Name it. It’s incredible what simply putting language to a feeling can do for a body. It acknowledges it, and that alone is everything. Often times I hear my clients say I have no idea what I’m feeling, why, or where it’s coming from. This just leads us to feel like we’re a big muddled mess inside, which does nothing for helping us sort the inner mess out. Take your best guess at what you might be feeling, and let it land. Trust the first thing that comes out of your mouth – that’s usually the thing. I’m feeling mad. I’m feeling really sad. I’m feeling hurt because I wish that they didn’t do that. None of your feelings are bigger than you – you always have power over your feelings because they are sensations created by what’s in your brain, and beginning to name them will help you to see that.

5.       Separate what you feel from what you do. (And have clear boundaries around the “do”.) Like I mentioned earlier, one of the reasons we think we shouldn’t feel things like anger or resentment is because of how we respond when we do. We yell, we slam doors, we snap at our husband, we treat our kids unkindly – all things that we can agree aren’t healthy or how we want to respond. Saying that it’s okay to feel angry however, doesn’t mean that we just let our kids yell at us or we get to treat our husband however we want to. Acknowledging that sometimes we feel upset and it isn’t okay to talk like that to your father is an excellent way to handle this mismatch. You never have to accept any behavior from anyone (yourself included) that doesn’t feel right – and holding strong to those boundaries is going to increase your ability to feel and deal with these harder emotions.

There’s so much more I could say on this topic, but at the risk of turning this one post into a whole book, I’ll leave it here. Start applying these tools for yourself, as well as your children, and see what you begin to takeaway from them. As always, if you have any questions or notice anything as you’re applying them, feel free to email me. You never know, you might just inspire another post!

Next week we’ll be diving into the question of what is a perfectionistic fantasy, and how to help our children (and again, ourselves;) avoid them. If this post impacted you in some way, feel free to share with a friend.

When You Really Don't Want To Be A Mom

A couple years ago, I was going through a writing course as I began to write my story. I have a folder full of stories that I wrote, and never shared with the world - they were just for me. For my own healing.

But as I go through them, I’ve realized that some of them need to be shared. Because when you are going through postpartum depression, you feel so alone in your pain.

You think there’s something wrong with you because you don’t feel the love and joy that you thought you would feel as a mom - and thinking that there’s something wrong with you leads you to that spin of not knowing what to change or if you even can. Which is a complete and total lie.

So this post is for you - the mom who doesn’t want to be a mom, and wants to know what to do to love her life again.

——

Sometimes I just really don’t want to be a mom.

And not like, I’m just tired of motherhood. But like I really don’t want to be a mom anymore.

I want to just rewind the years, and remake that decision somehow. To somehow not fall in love with my husband. To change the course of my life right in that moment – no wedding day, no babies.

This is something that I don’t share lightly.

Have I told anyone this?

I’ve said so to my husband, but I think he just brushes it off as me in the heat of the moment. The emotions rushing high, words said that aren’t meant.

And maybe this is just that thought error, the thought from my depression that seems to play on repeat. Like a stuck record. Life goes on, but then it comes back to this same thought again.

I really don’t want to be a mom.

I wonder, do any other moms feel this way?

Am I the only one?

I wonder if it’s because of my depression that I have these thoughts – are they normal or is this another relapse?

I’ve always thought that I’m not as happy as I should be in motherhood, partly because of the depression but partly because of these times when I just don’t want to be a mom.

When I feel like I could happily become a non-mom again and life would be amazing.

At which point I always feel the need to insert “but YES I LOVE my kids. I wouldn’t trade them for anything. I know if they weren’t here I would be pining for them.”

Why the need for the qualifiers?

I feel less than.

I feel that my love is somehow flawed. Not enough.

That I don’t love my kids as much as other moms love theirs.

And when I think these thoughts and feel these feelings, I proceed to prove them true.

I don’t act like a loving mom, snarling when the office door gets flung open in the middle of my writing.

I don’t treat my kids with patience or with love as they fight over legos.

I cut myself off from them, distancing myself in mind, in heart, in body.

I sulk in the kitchen, doing yet another mindless task. Blocking my heart from the pain that I’m creating for myself with these thoughts.

I resist the hurt. The hurt of denying myself the love of my children, the love of myself.

I use these thoughts against me, to spin in them and prove how bad of a mom I am.

Somehow it turns from I don’t want to be a mom, to I don’t deserve to be a mom.

To my kids would be better off without me.

The same story, told again and again.

Becoming an ingrained path in my brain, one that is so easy to follow.

So again, I remind myself – thoughts are simply sentences in your brain. Neither true nor false. Simply a sentence that your brain is offering you because it’s the easiest one. One that you can choose to believe or to let go of.

And with this reminder, I feel the load lift.

My shoulders feel lighter, removing the slump in them. The weight that was on my chest begins to lighten and I can breathe deeper again.

That fog that came over my brain begins to thin, and I begin to think clearly again.

Yes, sometimes I am a mom that doesn’t want to be a mom.

But can I love myself through these thoughts anyway?

Can I recognize that these thoughts are also just thoughts, and even though I sometimes choose to believe them, they don’t mean anything about me?

Can I see that I am still worthy of my love, of my children’s love?

——

Can you see that you are still worthy of your love, of your children’s love?

Accepting and receiving love is one of the most challenging things we do in our life - which, if you look at it logically seems kind of silly, no? Like who wouldn’t want more love in their life?

But the truth is that it can feel like a very scary and vulnerable place to be - especially for those of us with an insecure attachment style. It’s something that we want most, and yet we feel afraid to open ourselves up to it because of what might happen after.

The biggest thing that I want you to walk away from this blog post with, is knowing that you are not alone and that there are things you can do to become the mom you always thought you would be. This is what I help you do inside of Operation: Happy Mom, and you can join the group of incredible moms doing this work right here.

My Top Book Recommendations

Books are such a huge resource in healing.

These writers have so much to offer us in these pages – whether they’re a novel or self-help style, there is so much to be found in them.

Here’s a list of my top book recommendations:

Mental Health, Self Help, Healing

Breaking the Habit of Being You: Joe Dispenza

Dare to Lead: Brene Brown

Gifts of Imperfection: Brene Brown

Finding Your North Star: Martha Beck

Undoing Depression: Dr. Richard O’Connor

The Big Leap: Gay Hendricks

Do Less: Kate Northrup

Essentialism: Greg McKeown

Home Body: Rupi Kaur (Or any of her poetry books like Milk and Honey, The Sun and Her Flowers, etc.)

Birth

Birthing From Within: Pam England

Childbirth Without Fear: Grantly Dick-Read

Nurture: Erica Chidi

Postpartum

The Fourth Trimester: Kimberly Ann Johnson

The First Forty Days: Heng Ou

Sex and Healing

Come As You Are: Emily Nagoski

Wild Feminine: Tami Lynn Kent

Novels

The Language of Flowers: Vanessa Diffenbaugh

Educated: Tara Westover

Between Two Kingdoms: Suleika Jaouad

Nutrition

Heal Your Metabolism: Kate Deering

Real Food for Pregnancy: Lily Nichols

What are your favorite books?

The Story You Were Meant To Tell

This is the story you were meant to tell.

For whatever reason, this is what your life was supposed to look like.

I may not know the reason; you may not know the reason – we may never know the reason why.

But if you needed a different story, your life would’ve gone a different way.

If you were meant to tell a happy and joyful story of marriage and motherhood, that’s how your life would’ve gone.

This is true for me, it’s true for my clients, and it’s true for each of you.

Allow the pain, the disappointment, the loss – it’s all a part of it, and it’s all welcome here.

Yes, we can do the work of retelling our story, but most of us try to rush past this part where it hurts. We tell ourselves that everything’s fine, we’re over it, it doesn’t hurt anymore, but the truth is in the pudding. (Is that the saying? I’ll blame this one on my mom if it isn’t – she’s always mixing up sayings and creating her own even better ones like Up a creek without a ladder.) (Sorry for throwing you under the bus, Mom.:)

When you try to push past it without addressing it, it just comes with you wherever you go. That’s why they say that you can’t outrun your problems – because you can’t.

Next week I’ll address how to actually allow the pain and be with the feelings, but for now I want you to just sit with the truth of this statement:

This is the story that you were meant to tell.

It wasn’t supposed to go any different, otherwise it would’ve.

Take a deep breath and breathe that in, and feel your shoulders relax.

There’s no rush anywhere other than here.

Learning how to sit with our stories and our emotions is a big part of what we do in the first month of the Be Happy Again course. Pushing past our hurts is one way to go through life, and it does work to some extent: it gets you moving forward, and still living your life. But there comes a point when you’re tired of doing that and the effect it has on your life; you get tired of dealing with the same problems over and over again and feeling like you’re getting nowhere. You know there’s something more waiting for you, and you’re ready to finally be living the life that you dream of.

If you’re at that point, I want to invite you to join us in Be Happy Again. Together, we’ll look at where you think your life went wrong and why. I’ll teach you how to sit with the pain of those emotions so that you can finally move through them. On the other side of those emotions is a stronger, more you you.

It’s who my clients are becoming, and it’s who you can become too.

Be Happy Again: Podcast Launch

This podcast has been a year in the making, and several years in the dreaming, and now it's here.

And what a perfect day for it too: ten years ago today, my first daughter was born and I became a mom. There was so much pain and learning that first year, and each year after, and now I get to put a resource out into the world specifically for that mom who is struggling with postpartum depression for the very first time.

She may not even know that it’s what she has - all she knows is that motherhood sucks, and it is the furthest thing from what she thought it would be.

She probably thinks there’s something wrong with her for feeling this way, because nobody ever talks about it. She thinks that if she had known what was waiting for her, she for sure would never have gotten married in the first place - and all of the feelings of anger, rage, grief, and disconnect, trigger feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, guilt and shame.

Postpartum Depression feels like a big bundle of conglomeration and discombobulation - which can lead to unhealthy patterns in your marriage, in your motherhood, and ultimately it can lead to making choices that you will regret later: leaving your family, giving up your faith, or using birth control.

Be Happy Again is here to help you through that darkness so that we can minimize your pain and the hard effects of your depression.

To kick off the beginning of my podcast, there's three episodes waiting for you over there right now:

1. Welcome episode: Who I am, why I'm here, and who this podcast is for.

2. What is postpartum depression? The different levels of depression, and how to know if you have it.

3. Why is it worth it to heal? Going through postpartum depression can become who you are, and it feels scary to change. This episode shares what healing can bring to your life.

Be Happy Again is available on Apple Podcasts, with more places to come soon.

My hope for this podcast is that you will know that you are not alone, that there’s nothing wrong for feeling this way, and that you won’t always feel this way forever.

The love, the joy, and the contentment that you thought you would feel is possible for you too. Come with me.

If there's ever anything that you want me to talk about specifically on the podcast, or if there's something that you don't fully understand and would like me to dive into more, don't hesitate to reach out. I love hearing from you.

I’ll be back each Monday morning from here on out with a new podcast episode for you. Thank you for being here.<3

P.S. If you like what you hear on the podcast, make sure you share it with your family and friends as well. Life is so much harder when we’re all over in our own little bubbles, trying to pretend that we have it all together while we feel like we’re falling apart inside. It’s so much better together - bring the ones that you love in with you.

Believing Moms Summit: May 4-6, 2022

Have you heard about the summit that’s coming up? It’s going to be so good.

I know – do I say that about everything? But it will be – here, let me fill you in.

What it is, is three days chock full of incredible speakers: they are here to teach you their best stuff in their own area of expertise, designed to make your life as a mom of a big family a little bit easier and a lot more enjoyable.

On Day 1, we’ll have Brett Nikula teaching us how to Have A Happy Husband. (I know – I’m already signed up. Tell me everything.:) Brett is an LAMFT and Certified Life Coach that works with couples who want to stay connected but find themselves in conflict and disagreement. He teaches his clients the cause of their disconnect, as well as new skills to communicate that will allow them to have conversations from conflict that lead to connection.

Next, we’ll have Keilah Johnson teaching us how to Breastfeed Through Its Challenges. Keilah is a mother of 9 on a journey to become an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, and she guides moms with their breastfeeding goals and new role in motherhood. We all need a Keilah in our life.

Wrapping up Day 1 is Deanna Simonson, who will be telling us What Your Child Wants From You. Deanna is an expert in Love and Logic parenting methods, life coaching strategies, and public speaking. She is deeply passionate about helping people create vibrant, fulfilling relationships. If you’ve been just wishing that your teen could just tell you what’s on his mind, or that your toddler knew how to talk so you could just know what they want, wish no more – Deanna’s got you covered.

On Day 2, my very own mom (!!!), Angela Rintamaki, is kicking us off with a talk on Parenting Teenagers – you know, those years when your kids are becoming their own human beings, taking on more independence, and most likely driving you a little crazy? Angela is going to give us a slice of her wisdom and experience– and like she said on our info call when we were planning the summit, just when you think you’ve got it figured out, they throw you another curve ball. She’s going to teach us what curve balls we want to keep an eye out for.

Our second speaker for the day is Megan Hillukka, a bereaved mother who encourages and supports grieving mothers after they lose a child. She’s going to be teaching us how to Let Go of Suffering in Grief – a topic that is dear to her heart for sure. Even those of us who haven’t lost babies will have so much to learn from this one: not only by seeing inside someone else’s story and pain, but because grief is a human emotion that we all get to feel and probably most of us don’t enjoy. She’s going to help us work through it.

After Megan comes Morgan Kumpula, who will be talking about Supporting Your Body Through Pregnancy and Postpartum. Morgan is a perinatal and pediatric chiropractor, who’s mission is to empower mothers in making the best health decisions for themselves and their families. Because the truth is that your body goes through so many changes during the pregnancy/postpartum cycle, but that doesn’t need to mean that it wrecks your body – there is so much that we can do to help ourselves through it all.

Closing us out on Day 2, is my very own mother-in-law (!!!), Marjo Niemi, who’s going to be talking to us about Flower Therapy. She lost her last baby at 3 months old, and flowers were her therapy during this hard time – which is why Niemi Family Farm isn’t just a farm to her. It represents so much heart ache and love. Marjo’s going to be sharing her story, as well as teaching us how to bring some flower therapy into our own lives.

On our last day of speaking turns, Linnae Grangroth is going to start us off by teaching us how to Take Your Health Back: how easy it is to lose yourself in the busyness of raising a family, and how to feel comfortable in your own body again by taking small, simple steps to become a stronger, healthier and happier mom. This is going to be so good – whether you’re on your first kid and have the bulk of your childbearing years ahead of you, or if you’re in the thick of it – for teaching you actionable steps to put into place so you don’t need to forget who you are or how important your health is.

After Linnae is Karmen Edwards, a certified life coach who helps wives lead their marriage with love to create the marriage they always pictured it would be. She’s going to be talking about having Courage In Marriage. You know – that thing that many of us want to have more of, because it creates what we want, but isn’t always easy to have in the moment? You’ll learn how here.

Next, we’ve got Kara Johnson – mom to six, registered nurse, and entrepreneur. She’s going to be talking about God’s Grace Through Unwed Pregnancy, a topic that is near and dear to her heart. She’ll be sharing some of her own story and encouraging others that they can remain believing even through the guilt and shame of this trial. Keep your tissues handy.

Our fourth talk of the day will be held by Alexa Niemi, an Infant Sleep Consulting Professional. She’s going to be teaching us how to Optimize Your Baby’s Sleep, so that your whole family can get the sleep that you need and deserve. Want a good nights sleep – like now, not just in 20 years? This one’s for you.

The last talk of the summit will be held by me – I’m going to be speaking about those times When You Don’t Want To Be A Mom: When all you wish you could do is run away and hide, or that you never became a mom in the first place. I’m going to be teaching you why you sometimes respond this way, and how there’s actually nothing wrong with you that you do, as well as how to come out of these lows in a way that feels good and doesn’t prolong your pain and suffering.

Hooftah.

That’s a lot, no?

Each of these talks will be packed full of gems for you to walk away with, feeling better about yourself, your life, and the current struggles that you’re going through. To make this information more accessible to you, we’ll have the replays available for one week following the summit, so you can catch the ones that you missed, and rewatch the ones that were so good you need to take some more notes on. To join us for this summit, all you need to do is register here and you’re good to go!

For those of you that want lifetime access to these talks, you can snag the All-Access Pass right here. For only $19, you will be able to come back to these calls time and time again to get help right where you are, right when you need it.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions, and let all of your friends and family know - they won’t want to miss this.

See you soon!

How Do I Allow The Pain?

One of the most common questions I get is But how do I just allow the pain? Where do I begin to process grief or disappointment?

The best place to start is simply by asking yourself why you’re feeling this way. This will give you the thought creating your feeling. (Because remember? Your thoughts create your feelings – not anything outside of you.)

Then you get to sit with the truth of that statement in that moment.

You feel grief not because this thought is a fact of the universe, but only because you believe it to be true.

This doesn’t mean you need to immediately get rid of that thought or that thought isn’t valid just because it’s a thought. It means you are choosing to believe it, and it causes you to feel grief, and it’s okay to feel grief.

After you recognize the thought creating your feeling, it’s time to drop into your body and see what sensations the feeling of grief is creating for you. Our emotions aren’t meant to be figured out in our head like many of us try to do. This is our body’s job.

For me, grief feels like a dark cavern splitting down the middle of my chest, pulling my ribs apart. It hurts, it makes me want to cry, but when I can just allow it to be there, it can be okay that I’m feeling this way.

If you’re afraid of feeling these feelings because you’ve been feeling them for so long (and you think that if you allow yourself to feel them, you’ll get stuck in them and never get out), my guess is that you’ve mostly been resisting them instead of allowing them.

Resisting your emotions only makes them bigger and last longer.

Resisting sounds like: I shouldn’t be feeling this way. I don’t want to feel this way. And it can often lead to panic.

Instead, try to welcome them in. This may not be your favorite part of your life, but there’s room for them here. Kind of like that uncle that you don’t really like, but you’ll make a spot for him at the table if he comes to visit.

(I don’t know, do you have an uncle that you don’t like? I don’t, but this is the analogy that came to mind. I picture this overweight guy huffing and puffing up the steps to the house, sniffs as he pushes his glasses up his nose, and steps inside. He kind of stinks, like there’s just a bad odor coming out of his pores as he passes you. You groan because Oh man. This is seriously not my favorite visitor. But you don’t try to shove him out the door, and you decide to be loving to him because he also needs love. And at the same time, you’re pretty happy when he decides it’s time to go home again.:)

The better you get at allowing these emotions, the less scary they become and the less they take over your life and your relationships.

An important thing to keep in mind here, is that this is a practice that you’re building, and each day you’re getting stronger at it.

Don’t waste energy telling yourself that you aren’t doing it right or it isn’t working or you’re not going fast enough.

You’re doing it exactly right, and you’re on the way to become the mom that you want to be.

Can’t you feel it?

When you’re ready to pour some gasoline on the fire of the progress that you’re creating in your own life, that’s when it’s time to join my small group: Be Happy Again. This is where we put our brains together – yours and mine – and we create the life that you’ve been dreaming of.

Your dreams and perseverance + My coaching and teaching = Magic.

For those of you that are currently struggling with postpartum depression, our first step for you is to simply feel like yourself again. Once you’re at base level again, then we take it above and beyond, to something that you may not even be able to imagine right now.

And that’s okay, you don’t need to. We work through this together.<3

You Have Everything You Need

I’ve been through postpartum depression six times, with a potential Round #7 coming up.

I’m not dreading it this time though, like I have in the past; it always felt like this dark cloud that was looming on the horizon, drawing ever nearer.

I’m also not afraid of it – but not in the way that I was last time: Last postpartum I wasn’t afraid because I didn’t think that I would get it again. I was blissfully ignorant, expecting that postpartum to be magically perfect all of a sudden.

This time I’m not afraid of it because I know that if it comes, I’ll be ready for it – or as ready as one can be for feeling like kaka 90% of the time. I have my support in place: both internal and external.

I know that if it comes, it isn’t a sign that I’m truly broken or that this is the mom I’m meant to be. I know that there’s something for me to learn on a deeper level.

And in case you’re getting the wrong picture here, I’m also not just like Yay! I’m so excited that I get to go through PPD again! It’s for sure not my favorite part of life, and I’m not just happy it’s here. But like one of my recent emails about the stinky old uncle coming to visit, I’m okay that it’s here.

Plus, this time especially, there’s purpose in the pain.

As you know, I’ll be launching How To Heal this September. This is a 3-month course that will walk you through your postpartum depression to where you feel like yourself and can be happy again. I have most of the ground work laid out for the course now, but I will be going back through and revising it as I go through this postpartum.

Because I know that once you’re past it, you forget much of what it was actually like – similar to what we do with childbirth. Your brain glosses over it all, and yeah you remember that it was hard and it took a lot to get through it, but you also just don’t even want to go there. I want to create a resource while I’m in the hard, so that every mom from here on out doesn’t have to go through that hard alone.

I’ll also be launching my first guided postpartum journal with this group – everyone who joins will get a physical copy in their welcome package. That almost feels like a dream: I’ll actually be holding my first published book in my hands?!

Another thing that I’m doing to make sure this course is exactly what you need, is that I’ll be starting an Advanced Certification in Trauma Informed Coaching this May. This certification is with my coach that I’ve been working with for a year and a half now.

She is the coach who has literally changed my life. She’s taught me a level of safety with myself that I’ve never had before.

Yesterday I recorded an impromptu video for the coaches that are considering joining us in the certification (you can watch that here if you’re curious:), and I could’ve just bawled through the whole thing because of how grateful I am that she does this work. She didn’t write me off, thinking that I’m a failure or too complicated or messed up or that I just need to go see a therapist instead of work with her. She stuck with me, believing that I had everything that I needed in order to heal – which is one of the best gifts I’ve ever been given.

If any of this sounds like you, you should for sure join us this fall.

Remember that when you sign up by tonight at midnight, you’ll also get a free ticket to our next in person retreat as a special gift to you. Our retreats are a place to open up, meet friends, and to heal. Just like one mom said who was at our last weekend together:

“The retreat went above and beyond my expectations, and I actually was looking forward to it and thought it would be really good. It was like God knew what each of us needed that weekend and made sure we were all there right where we needed to be. The depth of conversation during our coaching sessions was so good, and even on the in between time, the conversation was also real and vulnerable. I feel like I gained 9 new friends, and am so thankful I was able to be there.

The in-person coaching, seeing others work through things, and feeling the energy in the room, it was powerful. It brought up things in my life that were long buried and that I didn’t expect, but yet it just felt so natural and right to work through the things that came up for me. It opened up a whole new level of understanding and confidence in myself.”

If you have any questions, email me and I’ll be happy to answer them.

Otherwise, join us in the small group this fall, and watch the trajectory of your life change forever. You can pay in full here, choose the monthly payment plan here.

Just like my coach didn’t give up on me, I haven’t given up on you.

Healing is possible.

Healing Isn't Selfish

Many of my clients come to the free call having never spent this amount of money on themselves before.

They worry that it’s selfish. They feel like they’re using money that would be better spent elsewhere.

But what you must know, is that spending money to heal, to feel better, to be yourself again, is the least selfish thing you can do.

I want you to think about how you are with your hubby, your kids, your friends, when you’re down in the dark hole of depression.

Think about what your relationships look like when you’re spinning in your head with anxiety and fighting off a panic attack.

In that moment, do you have much to give?

The truth about mental illness is that it keeps you focused on yourself; your own pain, your own suffering.

I don’t say this to give you more cause to beat yourself up – only to show you that by not healing and trying to avoid selfishness, you aren’t avoiding it at all.

Healing and focusing inward so that you can get clear on you, is exactly what gives you the space to share all of the love and goodness that is inside of you.

And if you just told me in your head that you don’t have love and goodness inside of you, that I don’t get it, I want to tell you that you’re wrong.

You’ve been living this way for so long that you forget who you truly are.

You’re grieving who you thought you would be – you became a mom because you wanted all of the love, all of the chaos, but now when you look inside of you, there’s nothing in there to give.

You fear that this nothingness is who you are. And if it’s who you are, then what’s the point? Why bother?

When what you believed to be true at your core is shaken, it makes sense that you want to give up.

I believed that I would be a happy and loving mom, and when it turned out that I wasn’t, I literally didn’t know what to do.

What I want you to do, is number one stop loathing yourself for being this way. It isn’t fun, it isn’t who you want to be, but the only way to get better is to let it be okay that this is where you are.

The second thing I want you to do, is to consider the possibility that doing whatever it takes for you to heal is the least selfish thing you can do.

Finding that love and that joy inside of you again is possible – I know this because it’s what I’ve been through myself, and it’s what I teach my clients to do as well.

If you’re ready to learn more about how to make this happen in your life, you can schedule a call here to get on the waitlist for the Fall 2022 group; I’ll be taking a small handful of you through my process to become the mom you always thought you would be.

Learning how to be happy again isn’t just for you – don’t let your brain fool you.

This work is for you, it’s for your husband, it’s for your kids, it’s for your friends, it’s for the people that you see in the grocery store.

Making peace with your dark helps you to spread your light.

A Life You Don't Want To Escape From

Imagine living a life that you don’t have to escape from. It’s so good, so full of all the things that you dreamed of, that you don’t even want to escape from it.

Sound amazing?

It is.

These are the kind of moments that I have about my life these days, and it all started a year ago. Well, longer ago than that, because it’s not like I can pinpoint one exact point where the change happened, but a year ago is where I started making real traction in my goals and dreams.

It’s when I went all in on making my life in Toronto the exact one that I wanted it to be.

Up until that point, I’d had one foot out the door pretty much the whole time I had been living there.

Toronto wasn’t where I wanted to live, and I felt like the only reason we were there was because of my husband’s job.

Sure, I didn’t completely hate my life 100% of the time. I had friends and family and things I liked to do.

But overall, there was a dissatisfaction with my life that wasn’t going away and I though it would be better elsewhere.

That spring, I decided that I was there because I wanted to be there. I realized that if I truly wanted to leave, I had options. I could go, if I wanted to.

This was when I signed up for yoga teacher training by my parents. (I didn’t end up going, but who I became in taking that strong of a stand for who I wanted to be changed everything.)

It’s when my husband finally got on board with selling our house; we finished all the work that needed to be done, listed, and sold it in just under a month.

This is when we moved into our RV for the summer – meaning Nic, myself, and our six kids lived in an RV with one bed and one fold out couch.

And it’s also when my hubby came up with the idea to move to Thunder Bay – we flew up here for the weekend and feel in love at first sight. I’ll never forget that feeling of I’m home when we landed.

This all happened because I decided to let go of my story that I couldn’t be happy in Toronto. It happened because in going all in, it freed up creative energy to see all of the options that were available to me.

Too many times we’re too stuck in our own pain and misery to see anything else. We’re too focused on how it isn’t possible to enjoy the life that we have, that we can’t see another way out of the dark hole that we’re in. Many times these are actual real physical things such as where you live, a physical illness or condition, or the fact that you can’t control the number of kids you have or how close they are together because of how you believe; but the more you focus on them, the more you miss out on what’s in front of you today.

Your life – today.

So what needs to change for you?

What do you believe is holding you back from being happy and having the life that you want to have?

If you were willing to see that you can be happy and have this circumstance in your life, what options would this open up for you?

Is this for me?

You’re pregnant again. You don’t feel super excited to have this baby.

There’s the fear of losing this one, with also a little bit of the relief that you wouldn’t have to have another baby so close, followed quickly by the guilt.

There’s the fear of the dark cloud that seems to come after each baby is born.

On your bad days, you have literally zero patience to be with your kids – your temper sometimes feels embarrassingly out of control.

You have no motivation to get things done around the house, and when you do accomplish something it’s by forcing yourself to get through it.

You feel like roommates with your husband – he doesn’t understand you.

You don’t feel in control of your kids, of your life. You’re only one second away from complete disaster – if that grip you have on everything were to loosen even a millimeter, it would be disaster.

You feel isolated. You don’t even want to visit with others.

On your good days, you feel somewhat normal and are able to get the things done that need to be.

But still, some days all you want to do is fall asleep and never wake up.

This is where many of my clients are when they start working with me.

At the end of working with me, this is where my clients find themselves instead:

They feel sincerely happy.

They wake up in the morning with energy for the day.

More often than not, they’re happy that their kids are getting up too.

They know how to enjoy their day again – spend time going to the park with their kids, sit down and read them a book before bedtime, or take the time mid day for some snuggles on the couch.

They have the motivation to do daily tasks. They no longer have to drag their bones through all of the chores; they want to get them done.

They are more open with their husband, with friends, with themselves.

They are more aware of how they’re feeling and what to do with it.

They feel full of life again.

It isn’t magic – although there is some magic in it – but to put it simply, I help them find the reason they aren’t doing the things they want to be doing, and teach them how to create the feelings needed to do them instead.

There is zero shame in being where you are, but I also want you to know that you don’t need to keep struggling this way.

Be Happy Again starts on January 12, 2022 and there’s room for you.

I’ll see you there.

Be Happy Again: January 2022

Sometimes life is hard. Like really hard.

We wonder why it’s happening to us, why we need to go through it.

It can be easy to think that we’re the only ones – everyone else is just living their happy and normal lives, while we’re over here by ourselves, not knowing what to do.

The thing is though, that this is a lie – one of the many lies that our brains tell us when we are going through postpartum depression.

You’re a terrible mom.

Your kids would be better off without you.

Nobody else feels this way.

When I first went through postpartum depression, I didn’t know that’s what it was. I thought it was just me – that there was something horribly wrong with me. I didn’t feel the love that I had always imagined I would feel; in its place was an emptiness that consumed the whole of me.

I thought maybe I had made a mistake in getting married and becoming a mom. The only problem was, that I couldn’t go back and erase that decision. I had to move forward somehow, but I didn’t even know where to start.

I talked to my mom and some of my friends about how I was feeling, but it never came with a solution. It seemed like this is just what my experience of motherhood would be – one where I didn’t want to be a mom, but just did the things anyway.

So I did. I kept putting one foot in front of the other, some days feeling okay with my life and some days even feeling like myself again, but that darkness was always there waiting for me.

It came with each baby, once again telling me that I don’t want to be a mom. That there’s no way I can be happy and be a mom for the rest of my life.

I loved that little baby like no other, but the rest of my life could just leave.

I felt ashamed of these thoughts and feelings – What kind of a mom am I to feel this way?

Which is exactly what the problem was: I attached these thoughts and feelings to who I was. I made them mean that I didn’t deserve these children and that I was ruining them by being in their life. I abandoned this part of me because it was the furthest thing from who I wanted to be. I tried to shove her in a corner so that I could just move forward with my life.

And if I know you, this is how you’ve tried to deal with it too. You hope that it will just go away on it’s own, or that it won’t come with the next baby. You don’t want to look in that dark corner, and you spiral out whenever you start to go down that path again.

If this is how you choose to live the rest of your days, I only want you to promise me one thing: That you will stop beating yourself up for it. I want you to be okay with the days that you aren’t okay – to be okay with the days that you hate being a mom – and still know that it’s worth it to stay.

When you choose to do this, it doesn’t mean that you will stay in that hole forever, even though it’s okay if you do. What happens instead is that you quit fighting against it, which will actually allow you to climb out of that hole quicker. You won’t attach so much meaning to when you are in the hole, which will allow you to truly enjoy the times when you do feel happy – instead of questioning the depth of your happiness, or simply waiting for the other shoe to drop.

And if you’re ready to take it one step further, then it’s time to face that corner. Not in a scary-bracing-for-battle way, but in an open and loving way.

It’s time to understand why you have postpartum depression and come to terms with this part of you.

If you would’ve told me back then that the only thing that’s gone wrong is that I’ve abandoned myself, I would’ve thought you were kookoo crazy.

I would’ve told you that no – if I were to live by my parents, this would be so much better. If my husband understood me, this would be so much easier. If I had kids that were further apart, I would enjoy my life so much more.

And maybe that’s true. But it also wasn’t my reality and left me in a place of helplessness because I’m can’t change other people.

I want you to instead, imagine what it would be like to go through postpartum depression without being scared.

What would it be like to stop wishing that your life was different than it is?

What would it be like to clearly explain to your husband how you’re feeling and to have his support?

What would it be like to no longer fear getting pregnant, because you know that you can handle this life that you have?

This is what we are working on in Be Happy Again- you will become the mom that you always dreamt you would be.

How will this happen, you ask? Maybe you’re looking around at your life right now, feeling like your life is the furthest thing from how you dreamt it would be, and you don’t even know where to start.

It’s okay.

I’ve got you.

We will spend four months working together to create the life that you’ve always dreamed of. We’ll meet twice a month, with weekly content, to help you apply the new tools that you’re learning:

1.       Heal Your Mind: Through coaching and writing, I will teach you how to understand, question, and let go of your depression. You will no longer believe that your depression is the truth of who you are. You’ll feel like yourself again.

2.       Heal Your Body: You need to feel safe in your body – to feel at home. Through meditation, yoga, and feeling your feels, you will be able to create that mind-body connection again. You will feel alive.

3.       Heal Your Soul: And last but not least, comes reconnecting with who you are. I’ll teach you how to hold stronger to your faith than to your doubts, and to decide who it is that you want to be. You will know how to just be happy.

Your past up until now is only one part of the story – you get to decide what the next chapter holds.

Are you ready to see what you’re capable of?

Join us - we’re waiting for you.

There is room for all of you here.

I'd like to share an email with you that I sent to the LLC last week. It's something that I've thought about doing a handful of times since I started my business, but as you'll read in the email, there were some fears that kept me from doing that. 

After having done it though, it feels like my business is taking off. This work is reaching the moms who want to learn to love their life again, even with postpartum depression. There was one mom who hosted a group of moms for lunch to watch my class from this week - this warmed my heart like no other.

Because at the core of why I do what I do, is for us to truly learn how to support each other on the way to heaven. Life can be hard, but it's so much easier to go through the hard when we are standing together. It's so much easier when you don't feel so alone, lost, and afraid. This is what you will get when you join us in Be Happy Again. 

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First of all, let me introduce myself. I’m Gloria Niemi – a life coach for believing moms with postpartum depression. I started my business several years ago, but it has been a dream of mine since I became a mom nine years ago. I had postpartum depression with my first daughter and I didn’t know that it’s what I had. I thought that something was wrong with me, or that I had made a huge mistake in becoming a mom. My faith was greatly tried during this time, I also had PPD to some extent after each baby, and I wished so much for a believing mental health professional to talk to.

I did see a few therapists, who helped with different things, but I always felt on guard when the topic of children or faith came up. I didn’t want them to question my faith when it already felt so weak.

I’m writing to you today because I’m not the only one. I’ve worked with many believing moms in the past couple of years, and these same issues keep coming up. They struggle with having patience with their kids, feeling resentful of their husbands, and not having purpose in their life. There are different levels of depression, and these moms tend to be on the milder side. I’ve also worked with several who have more moderate depression – they don’t know who they are, they struggle to find motivation for everyday tasks, they find themselves yelling often and feeling out of control, and they don’t want the life that they have.

The thing is, that these moms need help. They need to work through the things that they are struggling with so that they can remain in faith and be a happy, loving mom of a big family. They could go see an unbelieving therapist, but they also fear their faith being questioned. They want to keep their faith and love motherhood, but they don’t see how.

Simply put, that is why I do the work that I do. There is a huge outside influence in our lives these days, and so there also needs to be as strong of an influence from inside as well. I want to put the tools of how to manage your emotions, how to build a life that you love, and how to take care of you and your family, in the hands of those moms who are looking for this help.

I have a free class coming up on Tuesday, September 14th called How To Be Happy Again. I will be teaching what the different levels of depression are, and what to do to heal when you find yourself in each one. I’ll also be talking about what it’s like to heal without giving up your faith, because many believe the lie that you have to leave faith in order to be happy again.

I also have a group that will be starting the week following, for the moms who want to do this work in their life. I’ll be helping them apply what they learned in the free class so that they become the mom they always thought they would be.

I feel that this is important work to be doing, and that it is greatly needed right now. Of course I have fear that this will be taken the wrong way – that some will use it as a tool against faith, or that some might think I’m not believing correctly – and that has stopped me from reaching out sooner. But I have also seen the effect that this work has in my own life as well as my clients, and I know that there are other moms who will also benefit from it. I just pray that God would continue to guide me in this faith and show me the path for how this work can help us in our lives.

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I used to feel afraid to share this much about me and my life. I remember the first time that I let somebody read one of my blog post drafts, I thought I might throw up. Literally. (There is another phrase that comes to mind, but to keep potty talk out of here, I won't share it with you. I'll just let you imagine what it might be instead.;)

What would it be like for you to share your story? Does that sound crazy and totally not doable?

Or have you already started talking about what you've been through, and connecting with people because of it?

One of the common fears I hear about joining a group is not being very good at sharing their stuff with other people. And I get it, because it isn't always easy. But one of the biggest things that we are looking for in life, is connection. And connection doesn't come from having a perfect story tied up in a bow.

Connection comes from being willing to let others see our mess, no ribbon or bow in sight.

When you learn how to share your story in a place where you feel seen, heard, and known, it becomes so much easier to begin to open up in the other relationships in your life as well.

Come join us in Be Happy Again - there is space for all of you here.

Love,

Gloria

P.S. Need a payment plan option? You can get that here.

Still have questions or concerns? Hit reply to this email, or schedule a 30 minute call here. I opened up some spaces for Monday.<3

Will I ever be happy again?

I used to wonder if I would ever be happy again. Like truly, down-to-my-bones, happy.

I thought maybe it was just something that other people got to have; not me.

This led to a lot of comparing and despairing, self pity, and giving up without even trying. Or that’s not to say that I wasn’t trying, but it was a lot of hoping and trying without actually expecting things to change. Then when I would feel the same heavy feeling, I thought Of course. Here it is again. Why did I even think that I could change?

Opening up about these parts of my life to people I’ve never met before isn’t always easy. The old shame of You’re a terrible mom for feeling this way sometimes wants to sneak in again. The judgement that I shouldn’t feel this way. Other people will think something’s wrong with you, or pity you rears its head.

But I do it because I know that there are believing moms out there who feel the same way. Who have so much shame and judgement of what they’re going through, that it feels easier to stay silent and suffer alone. I do it because the more that I share, the more I get these words out of my head, the easier it is to let go of them and be more of who I want to be.

I do it because I hope that you will find yourself in my story, and know that it doesn’t have to be this way.

You don’t need to stay a depressed mom forever.

It is possible for you to be the happy and loving mom that you always thought you would be, and you don’t need to wait years for that to happen. You don’t need to wait until you’re done having babies in order to enjoy your life.

That is available to you right now. Today.

It’s okay if you have shame and fear and judgement and self loathing and all of the things – so will each and every mom that is in the group with you.

You will hear yourself in their stories as well, and see that you aren’t alone. You will slowly but surely start to see that there is nothing wrong with you, that you are not broken, and that you can Be Happy Again.

Whatever story your brain is telling you about why you can’t possibly join us in the group, know that it’s exactly that – a story. Not truth, not fact, not just how life is.

A story that is optional.

If you’d like to work through that story so that you can become the mom you always thought you would be, schedule a call with me here.

And if you’d like to let that thought go to the wayside completely, sign up for your spot in Be Happy Again right here. (Payment plan option here.)

You always get to decide what you believe to be true, not your brain.

You.

Love,

Gloria

P.S. Here’s what my client said about her experience in my last group:

              This six month deep dive into life coaching has changed me. I have learned so much! I’ve gained a huge toolbox to help me cope with the ups and especially the downs, of life. I’m much more comfortable accepting who I am, and loving myself. As a result, I have so much more love to give those around me. I will keep doing this work, reaching for the goals I want to keep setting; and feeling so much more equipped to do so!

This is the same client who, when I told her the price, said That’s a lot of money. When I asked her why she joined anyway, she said:

              I just decided that I was worth it! I thought my husband spends money to take care of himself, so it’s not wrong for me to do the same.

How right she is, and you can decide the same.

Leadership

I’ve never thought of myself as a leader.

The word leadership has never sparked anything inside of me – it just brought images to my mind of a stuffy boardroom with suits and ties, as they drone on and on about some chart of some sort.

But leading is so much more than that, as I’m coming to realize, and this quote sums it up perfectly:

              “Leadership is not about titles, status, and wielding power. A leader is anyone who takes responsibility for recognizing the potential in people and ideas, and has the courage to develop that potential.” -Brene Brown, Dare To Lead

This is what it means to lead.

It’s recognizing the struggles of young(er) (because I mean is thirty still young?;) believing moms, and figuring out what we can do to make them easier.

It’s understanding why we get postpartum depression, and learning how to move through it with less suffering.

It’s learning these things for myself, and then learning to teach them in a way that you can understand and apply in your life as well.

Is it easy?

In some ways, yes. The flow that I feel when I sit down to write these letters to you is easy. The flow that I feel when I’m coaching a client is easy.

And in some ways, no. Being one of the first to talk about hard things like depression, shame, resentment, rage isn’t always easy. Worrying about if I’m saying it right, or if you will understand, or if you’ll get the right impression, isn’t always easy.

That’s where courage comes in - and courage doesn’t always feel easy either. It’s doing the thing that I believe to be right, even when my brain is telling me it’s a terrible idea or people will think you’re believing incorrectly or whatever else it likes to spew at me.

It takes courage to stand strong for the end vision where believing moms can simply be happy in their life, and to keep taking steps in that direction, even when it feels hard.

Because the thing I keep coming back to, is there is another way.

You don’t need to keep crossing your fingers you get a longer break this time.

You don’t need to keep blowing up at your kids over nothing.

You don’t need to keep resenting your husband his long days at work.

It’s okay that this is how you feel right now, but it also doesn’t mean you need to stay there.

You can be a happy and loving mom of a big family.

You can learn to control your emotions so that you are raising your children more of how you want to.

You can open up to and love on your husband when he gets home from his long day of work.

This other way is exactly what I’ll be teaching you in the free class on Tuesday, called How To Be Happy Again.

I’ll show you why what you’re doing isn’t working, and what you need to do instead. I’ll show you why it’s different for believing moms, and why it’s so important to have the right support in place to do this work.

You’ll have a chance to share your story, to hear other mom’s stories who have been through the same thing as you, and to ask any questions that you have about postpartum depression, motherhood, and faith.

I’ll also be talking about my group that starts the week after, called Be Happy Again, where I will be teaching you to apply what you learned in the free class. This is where the follow through comes in – working through those stories that have been holding you back from becoming the mom that you want to be.

Because it’s one thing to know that there’s another way, and another thing to actually live that other way. That is what I want for each and every one of you.

If this is what you want too, sign up for the free class here, and the group here. (Payment plan here.)

Imagine being in a room with nine other moms who have been through exactly what you’ve been through. They get you on a whole other level than most are able to. You don’t need to explain what you mean, because they understand. They are able to hold space and love you, even when you’re at your darkest – because they have been there, too.

This won’t be a group where we all complain and leave the meeting feeling heavier than before it started. This is a group where we bring the hard things in our lives, acknowledge our pain, and find the way through it to the life that we want.

Your spot is waiting for you.

Loving Yourself Through It All

I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “love yourself”. But what does it even mean?

How do you actually love yourself – especially when you have so many years behind you without love?

Loving yourself means that you accept all of you – the good, the bad, the ugly. The ugly ugly. It means that you accept these parts of you instead of trying to push them away.

In my life, loving myself looks like accepting my postpartum depression. It’s choosing me, even when I’m at my lowest. It’s believing that I am the exact mom that my children need – me, exactly as I am.

In my client’s life, it looks like acknowledging feelings of jealousy and inadequacy. In another, it’s accepting who she is as a mom, even though it isn’t who she thought she’d be. It’s recognizing that these parts don’t define who they are.

Loving yourself doesn’t mean that you just let go of all expectations – which is some of our biggest resistance to the phrase. We think that if we just love ourselves, then everything will go right out the window.

The opposite happens though – when you stop resisting and telling yourself you shouldn’t be this way, that’s when you can move through it and become more of who you want to be. because these parts of us are here for us to learn from; they aren’t here by mistake.

This week, I want you to practice loving yourself when you feel messy. Instead of trying to push it away or sink deep down in the dark and forget about it all, do this instead:

1. Find your good reason for feeling how you feel. You have a good reason for everything you think and feel – find it before you try to change it or reframe it.

2. Be willing to hold yourself through any emotion. Your body is made to process it. just like going to the bathroom or feeling hungry – it isn’t something to be afraid of. The better you get at feeling your feels, the less scary they seem.

3. Let go of dirty pain. This is when you tell yourself you shouldn’t feel how you feel. This layers negative emotion on top of negative emotion. It doesn’t mean you’re a terrible human if you feel angry or hate. No, actually – it doesn’t.

4. Don’t abandon yourself. Be with you through whatever’s happening. One of my favorite ways to do this is to just put my hand on my heart, and breathe. Remind myself that I’ve got this. This is part of being a human.

5. When you’re ready, try again. Ask yourself what worked and what didn’t. If it’s important to you, find another way to try.

When you can learn the skill of loving yourself through any situation – even the deepest of the dark – there is nothing that can hold you back anymore.

Imagine with me for a moment – what would be possible in your life if you treated yourself with such care?

That, my friend, is what you were made for.

Going Deep

Many times, it feels easier to stay on the surface instead of going deep.

When we see an old friend, it feels safer to small chat than to ask how it’s going after their brother gave up his faith.

Or it feels easier to make small talk with your sister in law instead of addressing the tension you’ve felt with her lately.

This doesn’t mean something’s wrong with you or that you aren’t a deep person.

Of course your brain doesn’t want to go there.

Of course you feel the resistance, anxiety, or awkward.

We don’t always know what they’ll say, where the conversation will go, or how we will feel. Which, to our brain, is s.c.a.r.y.y.

It feels like there's so much out of our control.

We worry about what they’ll think, or maybe we even think They don’t want to go deep like I do.

But what if they do?

What if the only thing is that they don’t know how to?

I was listening to one of Brene Brown’s podcasts the other day, and she was talking about how necessary it is to learn how to Skill Up.

Most of us want to know how to talk about the harder things.

We want the connection that comes with it – we just don’t always know how.

Here are some of my favorite ways to let go of that resistance and have the heart-to-heart.

1. Be honest with yourself first. How am I feeling? What is true for me? What is important to discuss here? When you know where you’re starting from, it makes it easier to start. Simple but true.

2. Be willing to be vulnerable. I’ll go first. We all want them to go first – to say the hard thing, to open up the conversation. But what if you were willing to go first – every time?

3. You need to know you’re safe. If you don’t feel safe to share or be vulnerable, the conversation will not go how you imagine. Get clear on what unsafe feels like for you, and notice when it comes up. Sometimes it’s a signal from your body to not share, and you actually don’t want to share. But sometimes it’s simply a signal that your brain is afraid of what they might think of you. Learn what that feels like, and then question if you want to follow through anyway.

4. Notice when you’re layering over the truth with more fluff. Again – it’s just your brain trying to stay safe. It’s okay when it happens, but know that it isn’t creating connection.

5. Do it for you, not for their response. Some people will want that connection, and the truth of it is that some want it less. That’s okay – it doesn’t mean that you’re weak for needing it, or that they’re wrong for not wanting it. Do it because it’s important to you.

6. Detach your worth from it. Read above: When they don’t respond how you think they should, it means nothing about you. Hold yourself through all of it.

7. Let go of what they think. When you're wrapped up in what they think, you will feel anxious every time. The only person you're in charge of, is you.
   

8. Be willing to mess it up/not get it right/ let it be awkward. It’s totally fine. It can be messy and imperfect and feel dumb and foolish. Totally fine. Do it anyway.

What do you find hard about opening up and talking about what’s actually on your mind?