Odds are, you answered with a resounding “Yes!”. And it was so loud you started your kids, your dog, and your significant other. If you were in the library when you read that question, you probably got seriously “Shhhhhh’d!” with a severe dose of side–eye.

All kidding aside, women today have more on their plates than ever before.

Natural caregivers, who often place others’ needs before their own, have to make time for their careers, kids, friends, siblings, parents, and sometimes even their coworkers or neighbors.

Between running back and forth to and from soccer practice and school, work, responsibilities at home, and social commitments, there never seems to be enough time in the day.

One day morphs into the next, a week becomes a year, and you start to feel burned out, overwhelmed, exhausted, angry, and unable to care for anyone.

Today, women, especially moms, frequently neglect the one person in their lives that matters the most…themselves!

It is ironic that even though women are more naturally caring and nurturing than men, they seldom take the time to care for themselves.

That is a shame because self–care is really a simple practice that can lead to much–improved health and well–being in mind and body, emotions, and spirit.

Women often neglect caring for themselves, which leads to stress and poor lifestyle habits, which deliver a long list of poor health conditions. That poor health and well–being lead to more stress, and an endless cycle of adverse health feeds upon itself.

It also means women are often physically, mentally, and emotionally incapable of caring for their loved ones like they want to.

If this much too common condition of women ignoring the fact that they need to nurture themselves before they can care for anyone is so prevalent, what is the answer?

What convent, identifiable, and strategic steps can women take to feel less stress and feel better about themselves?

Is there anything that can help you discover spiritual and emotional fulfillment and enjoy mental and physical health while giving your loved one’s best–ever care and support?

There is!

• Join us for Self-Care September on Facebook in my FBGroup: Wellness Revitalized. This incredibly supportive community of women (mostly, some dads) are making the commitment to giving themselves permission to be healthy and well. They are breaking through the familiar self-created roadblocks to self-care and feeling good about themselves for putting themselves first without apologizing.

• Visit wellnessrevitalized.com for your complimentary copy of my new eBook: The (101) Self-Care Ideas You Need for Your Ultimate Health and Wellness Breakthrough.

You truly can create the best you that you have ever experienced when you know the specific actions you can take that lead to health and well-being in every aspect of your life.

You don’t need to be that stereotypical mom who is so busy that stress, anxiety, and self-doubt are frequent companions.You don’t need to feel frazzled and unfulfilled,you can feel calm and well and together, and when you care for yourself first, you are much better able to care for those you love.

DeNise Gore, Health Rejuvenation Expert, Certified Wellness Practitioner, and 3 time International Best Selling author, provides anti aging natural health solutions for the Women of   Generation X (’70s Babies/’80s Ladies) who are facing the reality of onset chronic disease, and other challenges of aging.

She believes in finding the root cause and providing natural   health solutions to combat, heal and prevent illness. While her   clients secretly worry more about their future health than they indicate, DeNise works with them to pivot away from traditional reactionary treatment and towards optimized disease prevention by the continuous monitoring of disease associated biomarkers for Hormones, Cholesterol, Inflammation,Nutrient Deficiencies, and Metabolism.

In addition to increasing their ownership of an active role in   managing their health; with care and compassion, DeNise coaches them to listen to their bodies and respond with   new choices;she empowers them to recognize their personal power within so that they are rejuvenated, refreshed and  revitalized.

Wellness Revitalized is shifting the paradigm of how The Women of Generation X choose to be in charge of their health and  longevity.

This pandemic thing sucks.  I already knew that this run up to the election was going to be difficult in this country, but I never thought we would be having a political war over wearing masks, whether science is real and whether we should hold physically-distant-but-in-person-school this fall.

I am exhausted.  Truly and utterly at my end.  I have a six month old.  She is a delight and by all measures a pretty easy baby.  I have had five so I have some experience with babies.  She is the light of my days and makes our lives better and sinks us into the moment instead of just swirling around upset at the state of the world.

But I had forgotten, somehow, that there is a major growth spurt at 6 months.  Perhaps I would have remembered if she had started this major suck-fest last week instead of 8 days after she turned 6 months old.  Maybe not though.  I don’t remember the expected 3 month growth spurt to be a big deal.  But then again it is hard to remember what was happening back in May.  It is hard to believe it is August except for the fact that the weather tells me that it is.

I am so tired.  I try to avoid social media (though it is my job so I can’t totally avoid it) because people are just crazy and I no longer have the brain power or the energy to explain to people that science is real, that masks are important and there are as many ways to homeschool as there are families doing it.  And this isn’t even touching the fact that Breanna Taylor’s killers haven’t been charged with anything yet, that there are riots in various cities and that there are unmarked paramilitary people kidnapping protesters.  And that’s not even touching politics.  

It is hard.  It is hard to stay positive.  It is hard to chop wood and carry water and keep my house clean.  Among all of this I am canning.  I am preserving the bounty of our garden into glass jars and storing them in the basement for this winter.  I have made pickles, and jams, marmalades, preserves, lacto-fermented pickles, barbecue sauce and salsa and I haven’t even bought extra tomatoes yet.  Meanwhile there is a shortage of canning supplies in the country, starting with vinegar and now going to jars and lids.  I am making broth from chicken and turkey necks, feet and bones as well as pork bones and sealing them in jars as the basis of so many meals this winter.  Because come what may we will need bone broth.

Also I need freezer space, because there is a freezer shortage thanks to this pandemic.  Thankfully there appears to be freezers starting to come up on Craigslist as people realize perhaps they don’t need as many as they thought they did or maybe they just need the money.  In any event we hope to get a freezer soon as there are more than 50 birds in my yard that will need to go to freezer camp soon.

The to-do list is never ending right now.  I had hoped that July would be more project building than canning but the cucumbers came in early and my family loves pickles and relish.  We took this weekend off from constantly trying to get projects done, but that doesn’t mean I feel any less behind.  We have so many half finished projects right now that it is slowly driving me mad, could we just get something finished and off the list without another trip to town (which is a half hour away)?

We have a long weekend coming up and a birthday.  Then two weeks later another birthday that may mean a week off I’m not sure the dates yet.  On the one hand it will be wonderful to get more things off the list (and some of those yummy chickens in the freezer) on the other hand I am in desperate need for rest.  

It is hot, so we need regular visits to water which is hard with the need to physically distance from other people and everyone wanting to do the same thing.  Everyone is home all the time and for the foreseeable future which means the moments of quiet time I could grab throughout the day are harder to find as everyone needs to be quieter when Dad is working and it’s a bit too hot for everyone to hide outside and besides I have been in the hot kitchen putting up the bounty.  

But I have to stop from time to time.  There is a small person who needs extra milk, and extra comfort this week as she realizes that her people can actually walk out of the room.  I would love to spend the day reading a book for pleasure.  But my house also needs to get cleaned and organized and have these half finished projects finished up so things could get put away.

So today I stole a few moments to write this before I help with reading practice and silver award.  Then it’s packing snacks, cooler, and swimsuits and getting ready to do the farmer’s market, library, and then hitting some water at the end.  Hopefully there will be enough breeze through the car windows since the a/c in the van needs to be checked and we just haven’t had time to mess with it yet.

Because as hot as the dog days of summer feel this year in Maine I know that winter is coming.  I keep telling the kids that we can resume Family Movie nights after the equinox when the days get shorter and we can’t be outside getting things done.  I am looking forward to that quieter time.  Even though my little one will be getting into more things and I will need to work harder to keep her safe.  But that seems to be the theme of 2020.  Working harder to keep everyone safe.

*** Read more real life, real talk parenting journeys in The Mommy Rebellion Book. ***

(Check out Part 1 HERE)

I knew that the way out would involve me finding a way to include myself in my circle of care. I could sense that if I felt more whole, more joyful, more creative, more energetic, more in alignment with my own destiny and self-actualization, I would be able to offer these qualities to my daughters, not only by having more to give them but by being a model. 

Amaya, my youngest daughter, brought me the deepest, most profound shift of all. She brought me the terrible gift of postpartum depression and anxiety. Terrible gift because it literally sucks balls. It was truly a dark night of the soul that took me to the depths of despair, but it also offered me the tremendous gift of profound transformation that would ultimately serve me immeasurably, not only in my own life but in service to the mothers that I mentor. 

When Amaya arrived on the scene, she made it clear that I needed to create a shift in my work that would allow me to be more present with my expanding family.

She gave me the gift of MotherFly, which is clearly the next step in my own destiny path because it offers me a way to go deeper with my work and midwife women and mothers without having to be on call all the time. 

In January of 2017, I founded MotherFly as a way to support the incredible transformation that takes place when a woman becomes a mother. 

Did you know there is actually a term for this transition. It is called Matresence, coined by Anthropologist Dana Raphael in 1973. We understand and acknowledge the transition of adolescence, and yet matrescene is apparently way more complex on all levels–hormonal, psychological, physical, and spiritual. 

So I started MotherFly with a mission is to provide workshops and programs for pregnant women and mothers that support their highest evolution in service to themselves, their children, and the world. 

About a month later I fell into a 3 year period of depression and anxiety. It was as if the Universe was mocking me. 

So you want to guide mothers through the thick of it? 

Take this! 

 Over many months it was my task and my healing to find each one, examine and re-examine it and decide if it still fit. I also had to search out and weave in new parts of myself, namely self-compassion. My inner critic kept asking, 

How could Corina- the calm, wise midwife who had so much awareness and so many tools- be so completely and utterly lost? 

A big part of my healing was finding a new level of compassion for myself. 

Much of my suffering was not from the feelings of fear and sadness and overwhelm themselves, as painful as they were. It was the added layers of guilt and shame and anger at myself for feeling the way I did that created true suffering and kept me stuck. I felt like I had so many tools, and yet none of them were working. 

It felt like somehow, with this last shift into being a mama of three, all of the pieces 

In June of 2018, I faced my last gates–the gates of Holy Terror and Humility. The holy terror was about my existential fear of death on every level. 

The death of my identity as a strong, wise, grounded person, the death of my faith as a spiritual warrior, and even my own physical death as I flirted with the idea of suicide. 

The humility was finding the courage to do what in Birthing From Within we call the “one forbidden thing.” This is the place in birth (or life) where the birthing woman has to let go of ideas about herself and how she should behave, or let go of the fear of being judged by others in order to do what it takes to bring her baby out. 

This could mean turning into a roaring lioness when she had imagined herself a calm and serene hypnobirther. Or maybe she planned a drug-free birth but decides, 

“Fuck this! I want an epidura!”. 

Whatever it is, this one thing is what frees her from the constraints of any former identity and allows her to transform into her next level of being so that she can bring her baby forth into the world. 

In my case, it was the decision to join the one out of six Americans who are taking psychiatric medication. This was something totally outside of my worldview, my identity and my beliefs. 

I was terrified. 

I decided to do ceremony around it. Gathering my sacred items for an altar, I went outside under the full moon in late June. 

I called in the four elements, as well as my own spiritual guides. With my Chinese herbs in one hand and my Lexapro in the other, I just prayed that these two would be real medicine for me. Because, aside from all my concerns about the side effects of taking meds, and the question of what did this mean about me, there was also the fear that it might not work at all. Many people have to go through trial and error with several meds before finding something that works. 

Thankfully, my therapist was right. 

Two weeks later I began to feel better. In a month’s time, all of my relationships began to shift. 

First and foremost I shifted my relationship with myself, learning self-love at an entirely new level. I fell in love with my children again and was finally able to enjoy and appreciate their beauty. My spiritual faith was reborn and I came back into connection with Spirit. My relationship with money shifted and I no longer lived inside of constant fear of scarcity. And I finally got clear about needing to leave my relationship, which was a huge piece of the puzzle and one that I could not have arrived at without the clarity that comes from doing deep, personal growth work and the support of powerful mentors. 

All of my tools were working again and I was feeling so good that I was able to wean myself off of the Lexapro. I’m thankful for its contribution to my healing and to shifting my rigid ideas about taking meds. I now know it’s another tool I can use if I need to but I prefer more holistic medicines. 

My experience with postpartum anxiety and depression truly deepened what I can offer to the pregnant women and mothers that I serve. My ultmate vision is the help midwife, along with many other mothers, the birth of a new archetype for motherhood. One that allows mothers to be fully human, to nourish dreams, to rest, to give and to receive. 

This new archetype is based in the feminine principles of relatedness, interconnection and a compassion that includes ourselves. It is a sharp pivot from the martyrdom of our great grandmothers and the perfectionistic supermom of our more recent lineage, up to and including ourselves. It is mother-authored, creative, and based in “systemic love, equity and inclusion.” 

I call it MotherFly. 

Like the transformation from a caterpillar to a butterfly the process of matrescene is profound and total. And yet, the MotherFly is not swallowed whole by motherhood. She continues to grow herself along with her children, cultivating her Mama Essence, and through it develops wings to fly. 

Learn more about Corina here:

FB at Bellymama Midwifery and MotherFly
IG @bellymamamidwifery and @motherflytribe

www.motherfly.mom

www.bellymamamidwifery.com

Corina Fitch is a Licensed Midwife, Certified Professional Midwife, and Registered NICU Nurse with 20 years of experience in the field of maternity and newborn care.

She is also a transformational facilitator and mother of 3 daughters.  Each one has brought deeper meaning to her work. After her first daughter was born, she became intensely focused on helping her clients bond with their babies in utero and cultivate self-care practices that would serve them well into their mothering.  After her 3rd daughter was born, she developed postpartum depression and anxiety, which further peaked her interest in nervous system regulation and maternal wellness. 

Out of this she birthed MotherFly, an organization whose mission is to catalyze human potential through the cultivation of maternal wellness.  MotherFly programs serve to support and empower pregnant women and mothers to actualize their full potential in the home and out in the world.

We’d love to hear from YOU. How are you feeling about your kids starting the school year?

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I wear many different hats in this life–midwife, mother, artist, transformational facilitator. But what I want to share specifically is my story of becoming a mother and learning to juggle all of these passions. 

I came to motherhood really through midwifery and had been practicing for about 7 years before I had my first baby. Despite having already assisted hundreds of mothers on their journey to motherhood, my journey was nothing like I expected. 

I had imagined all our culturally promoted romantic visions– images of mothers and infants smiling at each other, deeply in love, deeply fulfilled, the picture of happiness. I imagined the joy and contentment of my baby feeding at my breast, that exquisite and intimate connection. Yes, I knew there would be sleepless nights and dirty diapers, but somehow that’s not what I focused on. 

The first unexpected twist was that my relationship fell apart in the first trimester. 

I was going to be a single mother. 

I had wanted a baby badly for many years, but I never expected to do it alone. The first half of my pregnancy was rough, both emotionally and physically. I was exhausted all the time, heartbroken about the breakup, and had horrific all-day sickness! All I wanted to do was lie in bed or hug the toilet. 

But I managed to enjoy the second half and actually loved being pregnant. After the first trimester passed, I honestly never felt more beautiful, more radiant, more alive. One of my favorite delights was feeling this little spirit move around inside me! 

And then… 

The birth and initial postpartum period knocked me off my feet with their raw intensity and overwhelming physical and emotional demands. I was completely humbled by my own experience. 

Nehama’s birth took me so far from what I knew as a midwife and so deep inside of myself as a woman, that I emerged literally transformed. The day she was born I lost all sense of the world outside of my own body. Thoughts entered and left my mind just as quickly, leaving me in a sort of mindless void, filled only by my breath and the deep, bellowing moans that flowed out of my mouth. 

After about 36 hours of labor I hit my wall. I had been stuck at 6 cm for many hours with a premature urge to push that I could no longer fight. I was failing. I imagined my midwives, who were sitting and chatting quietly together on the couch, were plotting my transport. 

But that was all in my head! The reason I could no longer stop it was because it was finally time. After 3 hours of pushing, Nehama was in my arms, her soft, wet body against my warm, sweaty chest. I felt high on love (and oxytocin!) as I looked around the room at my mom, my sister and my midwives. 

I had made it to the other side. I was a mother! 

This initial bliss gave way to sleepless nights, sore, wounded nipples, and a tornado of emotions! I was overwhelmed by the love I felt for my daughter and the thought of being a mother to this tiny, perfect creature. I remember looking down at her a few days after the birth, flooded with hormones, and thinking to myself, 

“Oh my goodness, she is perfect…and I have so many flaws. What the hell am I going to do with her?” 

I was totally unprepared for this level of vulnerability. 

After my postpartum initiation things did get better. 

But for me motherhood has been by far the most challenging task I have ever undertaken, particularly because I really wanted to “get it right”. I wanted to be that parent that loves unconditionally, honors and acknowledges her child’s feelings and models emotional intelligence. I didn’t want to be like my parents and birth culture, whose practice was to disregarded or belittle emotions. And yet I found that I so often fell into those patterns. 

Motherhood has an uncanny way of reflecting back to me all those areas where I still need to grow myself and it up until recently, it has been the area of my life where my inner critic showed up most often. I feel so much more in my zone of greatness as a midwife. 

Nine years, a new relationship, and 2 kids later, the reality of juggling my career and calling as a midwife, which was already super demanding and required me to be on-call 24/7, with the demands of being the primary provider for my family and a mother to three daughters, shook me to my core. 

I was exhausted. I felt burnt out, depleted, cut off from my creativity and inspiration. And the worst thing was that no matter how much I tried to get it right, I felt like a failure. I would lie awake at night in tears, feeling like there was something wrong with me. Maybe I just wasn’t cut out for motherhood. 

It was doubly painful because my work was dedicated to helping other women navigate the journey to motherhood. 

How could I do this authentically, when I myself was a failure? 

Of course… 

There’s no turning back on motherhood. 

But I felt like the only way I could do it well was if I let go of being a midwife and intuitively I knew that would be the death of my spirit. Not to mention it was how I paid the bills! 

I was confronted with the challenge of how to hold it all with grace.

Stay tuned for Part Two, coming out next week!

In the meantime, learn more about Corina here:

FB at Bellymama Midwifery and MotherFly
IG @bellymamamidwifery and @motherflytribe

www.motherfly.mom

www.bellymamamidwifery.com

Corina Fitch is a Licensed Midwife, Certified Professional Midwife, and Registered NICU Nurse with 20 years of experience in the field of maternity and newborn care.

She is also a transformational facilitator and mother of 3 daughters.  Each one has brought deeper meaning to her work. After her first daughter was born, she became intensely focused on helping her clients bond with their babies in utero and cultivate self-care practices that would serve them well into their mothering.  After her 3rd daughter was born, she developed postpartum depression and anxiety, which further peaked her interest in nervous system regulation and maternal wellness. 

Out of this she birthed MotherFly, an organization whose mission is to catalyze human potential through the cultivation of maternal wellness.  MotherFly programs serve to support and empower pregnant women and mothers to actualize their full potential in the home and out in the world.

I wanted to come on and talk about time management, and doing all of the things in your life and in your business. So if you are not familiar with me yet, I am a mom of a toddler. As I’m recording this episode, he is three, and he keeps me on my toes. And my entrepreneurial journey started pretty much simultaneously with becoming a mom. I had been dabbling in network marketing during my pregnancy and prior to bringing my son into the world. Then, the second that he was born (and honestly before he was born), I knew that I was never going back to a regular job. 

I was never going back to the 9-5 lifestyle. 

And I knew before having him that that was draining me. It was not something that I was meant to do in the long term. Now, I was really good at my job (jobs I should say, because I skipped and jumped around a whole lot) in the years leading up to becoming a mom. 

I am a college dropout. And I had no clarity on what I was supposed to be doing in this world. I dropped out of college because I knew that I was uncertain on what my major should be on what my career path should be. And so after dropping out, I jumped from job to job I worked at a coffee shop I worked at quite a few doggy daycares and pet care facilities, even children daycares, (which was an interesting thing to observe how similar children and dogs are, but that’s beside the point). 

I had jumped around a bunch. And then I had my son. And I knew that everything was going to be different. Everything about my lifestyle, the way that I showed up in the world, and we talked recently on the podcast about redefining your identity. And this was honestly, like jumping in headfirst off the deep end because I was not prepared for how drastically my life was going to change. I honestly didn’t do a whole lot of research or learning when it came to how to be a mom, or how to raise a human. And there is no guidebook, right? There’s no dictionary where you can look everything up. There’s certainly a lot that you can learn from Google and from other moms, but everybody has a unique experience. And my experience was so unique in the sense that I took away all of my financial security at the same time as I became a mom. And that was so scary. It was so scary. I had no idea what was going to happen. Thankfully, I had a partner who was working full time and really supporting us as a family. But it was really tight, right? We were working really hard to make ends meet. And there was just a lot of uncertainty. And when you are suddenly responsible for a human being, you really step up to the plate, right? And if you’re a mom listening to this, you know what I’m talking about.

There is no magic token that you can just hand in and say, I’m done with this for a little bit. I’d like to take a break – because when you’re a mom, especially to a young child, you’re responsible for that human 24/7.

If you’re also growing a business, which is what I started doing, and as a new mom, it’s a lot It is a lot of work. It has a lot of energy and time. And this is why I wanted to come and talk today about time management and self-care because I consider myself a little bit of an expert in this. 

I’ll also admit to the fact that I am not perfect in this area, I am still learning and with every new evolution in motherhood in business, there are new things to learn and embody when it comes to time management and self care. When my son was an infant, it was really easy to grow my business and to spend hours and hours behind my computer. Because he napped a lot, and he was really easy to contain. He would play independently very easily…and then as he got older, and now he’s three. So you can only imagine if you know anything about children, that he is very busy all of the time and he needs mommy’s attention a lot of the time. And I’m so grateful that I took the leap of faith in myself and started a business at the same time as having him because it allows me that freedom and flexibility in my schedule now to set the tone, to define when I am working, and to have boundaries around when I am off in my business, when I’m not paying attention to what’s happening on social media, and I can really be present with him. 

So what I have learned with time management and self care is That you have to set the priority that you will take care of yourself. Number one thing when it comes to running a business, being a mom and being, you know, a wife, a partner, a friend, maybe you’re a dog mom, whatever your role is, there are situations where other people need things from us, right? They require our time and our energy. And if you’re a mom, that is particularly true.

The first thing that you have to understand and be able to prioritize is your own self care, your own well being. Because if you are not filling your cup up, you’ve probably seen this quote on Pinterest: If you’re not filling your cup up, you’re not going to have that overflow, to share with other people. And it can be a really tough place to be when you feel like you’ve stretched yourself thin when you reach a place of burnout, which is something that I have absolutely done in the last three years and learned the hard way, that if you don’t take care of yourself, it’s going to be really hard for you to take care of other people. And you’ll stop, you’ll start dropping balls and things will just feel chaotic. So the first priority that I had to make in the beginning stages of my business, was really setting boundaries around my time. And in those pockets of time – I want to talk a little bit about the actual time management strategy that I use in those pockets of time. Making sure that there is time and space for you time and space for nourishing yourself whether that’s drinking some water or going for a walk or taking a bath, (which is a pretty, you know, generic self care practice), you can do really anything that makes you feel good, I don’t want you to have this idea that you have to have the luxurious bubble bath to be practicing self care.

But there’s a lot of things that you can plug into those pockets of time.

So some of the strategies that I used and continue to use and play with in my business (I say “play with” because like I said before, this is flexible, this is something that you have to revisit). 

It’s always going to be changing. 

I changed my schedule and my Google Calendar, at least once a month, sometimes more than that.

But something that I really loved to do in the beginning, was to work from time blocks. 

So you may have heard of this before, but essentially what time blocking is, is chunking down your actions into set times. So let’s just say for example, that you are trying to grow your own audience on social media, you are working with some clients, you’re also a mom. And maybe you have pets at home too. That’s my situation most of the time. I am stretching myself between all of these things. So let’s say that that’s your situation. And throughout your day, we all have the same 24 hours in a day, right? We all have the same hours in a day as Beyonce. 

Let’s look at your daily schedule. So, time blocking allows you to identify when you are working on your business when you are plugged into and present with your real life in the day to day when you are taking care of yourself and all of the things in between.

Something that I do is for time blocking I use my Google Calendar – super simple, totally free, you create a Google account and open up the calendar app. 

And I blocked out the hours and the timeframes that I’m going to be spending and intentional focus on x, y, and z. So, for me right now, in this season of my life that looks like we’re waking up really early, I wake up between 4:30 and 5:30am. Every day, I’m never sleeping-in later than 5:30 in the morning, even on the weekends, which sounds crazy, but I am a morning person, I always have been. And so, that time in the morning, I blocked off time for myself. So my son sleeps in until about 6:30 or 7 (if I’m lucky, sometimes later if I’m really lucky). And that is my dedicated time to get things done that are important to me that day. 

So before I jump into the day, I already know what my priorities are. I typically sit down and this is a practice that I encourage you to prep, embody and practice yourself. I sit down at the beginning of every week, and I look at the week ahead. So on Sundays, I make the time to look at my calendar to see what calls I have to see if I have any meetings. I know my business activities ahead of time and what needs to be accomplished. And so I plug these into my week, looking at the week ahead. 

I know in the morning during that initial couple of hours, I am going to be eating my breakfast, I’m going to be drinking my coffee (because if you know me at all, you can know that I cannot survive without my coffee. I do have a slight addiction, just being transparent) and I tend to get work done in those morning hours. 

Now, this leads me to another point that is kind of a sidestep but super important to highlight the way that you work best is going to be different from somebody else. So if you’re listening to this and thinking “holy sh*t, there’s no way that I can get up at 5am and go to work”. That’s totally fine. I don’t want you to put pressure on yourself to be a morning person if you’re not, because what is important here is that you are aware of your energy throughout the day. So for me, I am a morning person, I have the most energy throughout the day before 10:11am and I very often start to lose my drive and my ambition to do things and check things off of my to do list around the afternoon (sometime after noon). I like to take a long lunch break and I like to just kind of chill out and allow myself to be in the afternoons which is why I work during those really early hours in the morning, because it sets me up for the flexibility throughout the day to do the things that I desire to do, and to plug in that self care, which I talked about already. 

So that’s what time blocking looks like for me, I block off the hours that I’m going to be working on my business, I block off the hours that I’m going to be intentional around myself care. I even go as far as to block off the hours in which I’m spending time outside and playing with my kid and really being present with him. Because I know for myself that I get easily distracted and sucked into my work. If I have my phone in my hand, it’s very easy for me to pick it up and get on social media and be completely zoned in on what’s happening on my screen, rather than paying attention to my kid who’s right in front of me. And that’s something that I continue to work on. For myself, that is a goal that I am working on improving my presence as a mom. And that is one of the strategies that I have. 

Time blocking helps so, so much and setting the tone for the day before the day even starts. So planning ahead, planning ahead, planning ahead, and I am somebody who, if you know me in real-life, in person, I am very disorganized, and I like to kind of fly by the seat of my pants. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t structure that keeps me on the right path. And I might stray away from it a little bit, sometimes a lot. But I always come back to my “truenorth” right. 

I know what works for me and my body and my energy and what also supports everybody else in my life. So time blocking is one of the best strategies that I have been able to use. And if you’ve never done this before, I would love for you to at the very least, open up Google, create a calendar for yourself and just pay attention to what you are currently doing throughout the day, and how you might shift that to better align with what feels good for you. 

That’s a really, really the important piece here is that your schedule your time management, the way that you show up as a mom, business owner, whatever your title or hat that you’re wearing, is that you are doing that in a way that feels good for you, so that you can show up and serve and be that supportive person and really fulfill who you were trying to be. We talked about that again in the redefining your identity episode, so go back and listen to that. This is kind of the action steps that you take, after you have looked at and defined who it is that you want to be. 

Now, the next time management strategy that I want to share with you, is kind of breaking it down to the hours within your day. Because it’s really good to have a time block and to have an intention on what you’re working on and what you’re putting your focus on. 

If you set just aside, let’s say two hours to work on your business, that is really vague. And what tends to happen and I know that this happens to me, (so don’t go try and say “Oh, no, that’s not me. That doesn’t happen.” I know it happens to you. Let’s be real here. This happens to all of us.) 

If you set aside two hours to “work on your business”… You’re going to slip into shiny object syndrome, you’re going to end up with 15 tabs open on your browser, and three of them are Facebook. And I know because that happens to me too.

So I want you to look at within your time blocks: what are those specific activities that you are doing? And how can you manage your time around those things? 

A tool that I use is the Pomodoro Technique. I might be mispronouncing that, but I will put a link in the show notes so that you can understand what I’m talking about here and have a better reference place. But essentially what the Pomodoro Technique is, is blocking off small increments of time, based on the way that humans work the best. So this is infusing a little bit of human psychology for you. And this is a proven method to help you stay in your best energy as you are completing the tasks on your to do list. 

Pomodoro is setting a timeframe. And for me what I do, and I think that this is in alignment with the actual technique, but I honestly haven’t given it too much thought is to set aside the 25 minutes of focused and intentional work on a specific activity. This is really helpful if you are working on your business or in your business. And if you are, let’s just say, planning your social media content – if you’re sitting down to plan your social media content, give yourself 25 minutes to get it done. 

Because what tends to happen is if we give ourselves a set amount of time, we will get it done and get that task done in that set amount of time.

So if you’re giving yourself two hours to write social media content for the week ahead you’ll take the full two hours, and you’ll probably get sidetracked and end up on Facebook or Instagram scrolling, right, let’s just be real. But if you give yourself 25 minutes to write the post for next week, chances are you’ll be able to get that done. And if you don’t get all of it done, that’s okay. You reset your timer for yourself using the Pomodoro Technique. 

And in between that next set of time, you’re taking some time for self care. So maybe you are getting up and going for a little walk. Maybe you’re just pacing your house, or filling your water back up, stretching/moving your body – doing something to shift gears so that your mind resets because if we get the tunnel vision of getting something done, we start to have our eyes glaze over, especially if we’re working on our computers and our energy begins to dip. 

This technique is really going to help you with keeping your energy high, keeping your self-care front and center throughout your day, and keeping you on track for accomplishing the things that you want to accomplish. 

So within your time blocks, you want to be thinking about what you can get done in that amount of time. So we’re using social media content as an example, because I know for me, that’s about how long it takes me to get content done for one account, and I help some entrepreneurs schedule their content out, and that is part of my workload. I have my account, and I have other accounts and it’s a little bit different between one account to the next. So like I said before, this is going to be very independent to how you work best and what works for you. But for me, social media content is easy to put together. It comes naturally to me and when I give myself a deadline, a set amount of time to get it done. 25 minutes is really all I need to get a week of content created and collected, you know – getting the photos, getting all of the things together, writing the copy and putting it into the scheduler is 25 minutes.

So if I am giving myself two hours to work on my business, and I’m only using 25 minutes for content creation, what else can I spend that time on?

You want to within your time blocks, think about the Pomodoro Technique, think about the individual activities that you are doing, and really get clear on what you’re doing in those pockets of time throughout your day.

For example, this podcast episode is going to take me about a half hour. I know that I have two hours before I have my next coaching call. So I’m recording this episode, and then I have very clear activities that are going to fill the gaps in these two hours, so that I am getting things done checking things off my to do list, which makes me feel really good, right. I have the time in between each of these activities to eat some breakfast and drink my coffee (or drink some water, which would probably be a better choice. So I’m going to hold myself accountable for that and drink some water after this episode). 

What I want you to understand is that managing your time is a really intentional practice. And it is exactly that it is a practice you have to practice at it to get better at it. And I see a lot of people get really frustrated that they don’t have the perfect schedule or they’re finding themselves sidetracked, shiny object syndrome is just taking over. 

The truth is that we all hit those obstacles – over and over and over and over again. So if you’re feeling frustrated, or the idea of this sounds overwhelming, I want you to really know that this takes practice, it takes refinement, and you’re going to have to create the wheel all over again, if something in your lifestyle changes. 

So going back to my motherhood story, when my son was an infant, I had so much more time to get things done in my business, I would work on my business six hours a day, usually, and that’s totally just guessing, but it was about six hours a day because he would nap so much more frequently. Now he is a toddler and he’s busy. So when he is awake, he requires a lot of my attention. And when he is sleeping, he is sleeping far less than he was when he was an infant. 

I am lucky if I get a two hour nap every day on the days that he is home now, I am really grateful that I have been able to send him to preschool three days a week. And that was a decision that I made for myself and my business. Because I knew that having him home 24/7 was going to take my energy away from my business. And I have very clear goals and a very clear vision on what I am creating with my business, which requires the time for me to be focused more throughout the day than I would be when he is home. On the days that he is home with me, I work maybe four hours a day, and two of those hours are him sleeping. 

You have to really understand that this is going to look very different for you in different stages of your life. This is also true if you are experiencing any health issues, or you’re going through something in your family, whatever is happening in your “real life” is going to affect how you show up and manage your time for your business. 

So be flexible. 

Give yourself grace around time management and know that it is going to continue to change. And one more tool that I just want to share with you, going back to the Pomodoro Technique is a platform called Toggl. And I will link that up in the show notes for you as well. 

This is what I use to track my time for clients when I’m working on client work. But I have also started using this in my own life and business. In addition to my calendar, I have reminders on my phone and timers and alarms. I have to use a lot of triggers and notifications to keep me on track because I get so zoned in on what I’m doing. 

If you’re going to practice the Pomodoro Technique, you could very easily use the alarm feature on your phone and just set a timer. Or, and or if you’re working on your computer, I use Toggl – you can open this up in your browser, and install it as a plug in for Chrome. And all you have to do is hit the little Toggl icon, and it will start timing you based on the activity that you are doing. 

Now, in the settings of toggle, something really cool that you can enable is the Pomodoro Technique. So what happens is you turn your timer on, and when you reach 25 minutes, you can change the time here. So if you find that 30 minutes works better for you or whatever it is, then you can shift to that setting.

When you turn it on, it starts timing you and when your time is up, it will ding and come up with a notification and tell you that it’s time to take a break. So if you’re finding yourself getting sucked in to your work, maybe you are working on the computer for extended periods of time throughout the day, this is a really great tool to just help you reconnect with your time management, and how you are strategizing your day to day so that you can feel your best. So that is another tool that I wanted to share with you. 

I want to quickly recap before I wrap this episode up. I know this has been a little bit of a longer episode, but I’m hoping that it’s helpful. What you want to be looking at for your time management and giving yourself the opportunity to feel your best in your day to day is to know yourself best. really be intentional and focused on when you feel good throughout the day, when you need more self care and making your self care a priority – every single day then I want you to be planning ahead. 

I like to do this on Sundays sitting down and looking at the week ahead. I also do this every month and every quarter for my business, sitting down and looking at what needs to be done in the week ahead. And then from there, time blocking and managing your calendar to reflect those tasks, those to do list. And within each of those activities, breaking down your time so that you are working in smaller intervals and being really intentional and focused on the task at hand.

When you bring all of these pieces together, and you take into consideration your real life in your day to day. I promise you that time management is going to get so much easier. And the more that you practice at this, the easier it will become when you have to pivot and re-define your time strategy and how you’re showing up in your day to day. 

I hope that this was a helpful episode for you. If you have any questions, please reach out to me, send me a DM on Instagram. My handle is @calandra.martin, I’ll link that in the show notes for you. And if you would love to hear more of these types of episodes that are a little bit off topic from branding and marketing, I would love to know what I can cover for you in future episodes.

So go ahead and send me a message. 

If you found this episode helpful – please, please please leave a rating and review on iTunes. It helps us grow the show and reach more people and really just gives me the confirmation that I am showing up to serve you in the best way possible. 

And stay tuned for some incredible interviews that we’re going to be releasing over the next couple of months. If you want to share This episode, I would love for you to share it on social media so that we can reach more entrepreneurs and ambitious magnetic bosses. 

Check out the full podcast episode HERE.

Here at Mommy Rebellion we believe that all mothering voices are important and we will continue to amplify all kinds of voices.  I am committed to the practice of Anti-Racism (it is not just a book you read and check off, it is an ongoing, lifelong process) and raising anti-racist children so to stay accountable and to share I will be posting monthly on my observations, learnings and new resources I have been discovering.

Last month I posted the beginnings of some resources I have found useful and I have created an Anti Racism Resource page here on Mommy Rebellion that I will continue to update as I find more resources, both as a white person who is learning and as a parent who is teaching my daughters.  I hope you will check back regularly to see how it has been updated, I will be pointing it out to you when I update my blog post.  I will also have a section for business owners, as I find resources and navigate making sure that my businesses work with BIPOC as I continue to grow.

So beyond checking out my new resources page which has had resources added to it, I have also joined a local Anti-Racism book club that is meeting virtually (which is actually easier for me these days especially with a nursing infant, even without being in a pandemic) for three weeks and then taking a week off.  The nice bit is you can go in and out as you need too, it is a safe place for white tears, and it is nice to be part of a community of other people committed to this group.  Our facilitator has training in this work and was nice enough to give us an idea of what is coming up so I already ordered our next book from Elizabeth of Akron;’s bookstore as I do not have any BIPOC book stores in my area. (We are doing Whistling Vivaldi next, which looks like the kind of book I will love to geek out about.)  I also enjoy knowing what is coming so I can plan my time accordingly as these books are not something I want to breeze through.

My almost 12 year old daughter has been asking all the heavy questions about why racism is, why white people think they are better than black people, so we are having lots of conversations.  Sometimes I am at a loss of how to answer her (especially if we are driving in the car when the conversation happens) but I am honest when I don’t know the answers and I always tell her to keep asking the questions, even if we may have to go and research it to find the answers.  These are good questions.

My 6 year old is just in the identification part.  Pointing out people of color and confirming if she got the color/race correct.  She doesn’t seem too fussed if it is someone who is Black or another race, she just wants to know.

We all rewatched Zootopia last night and I haven’t seen it in years.  I remembered that someone referenced it as a good starting place movie to talk about race so I watched it with new eyes this time around.  It was interesting seeing how the bunny was treated becoming a police bunny as well as of course the whole predator/prey issue.  I also thought the scene where the sheep was looking up something and the fox was petting her wool without asking was particularly poignant after having just listened to the hair section of So You Want to Talk About Race earlier that day.

This is an ongoing process.   I am working to make sure the toys and books we add to our lives for my 5 month old (wait — she’s that old already?) are representative of more than just the white default.  I am enjoying that our local library’s online summer reading program this year includes a woke reading challenge and it is about reading books from a lot of different perspectives, including, black, asian, hispanic, LGBTQ+ and more.  It is a nice way to keep track and make sure that all five of my girls are getting exposed to many different cultures.  I made dal for dinner last night and that allowed my hubby to talk about his trip to India last year and the other foods usually served with dal.

How are you dealing with this work?  Is it new to you and you are just starting to navigate it all, or is it something you have been working on for years?  What resources do you wish were available and please feel free to share any I haven’t found yet!

As a Mom it’s easy to lose ourselves. It’s worth it. Motherhood is the ultimate sacrifice and there is so much beauty in the experience and the lessons offered. However, if we find ourselves unhappy and sucked into this epidemic of self hatred that happens from trying to live up to the cultural ideal as a mom or in the way that week look and it’s causing us suffering then…. Its’ time to slow down and go within. It effects the way we parent and the example that we set for our children.

We hear about self care soooooo much it’s TRENDY. But I am not speaking about manis/pedis/makeup etc. I speak about deep self love. Deep connection to the part of us that we lost while focusing on our children. The part I believe we can reconnect to in a NEW way NOW and not have to wait for them to be all grown up. BE YOUR BEAUTIFUL SELF NOW. To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others, you need to accept yourself. And if we don’t spend time with yourselves how will we create or recreate this relationship to experience this!?!?! 

I speak about this in my I Love Me Yoga classes. I shared this quote recently. . . To Love Yourself RIGHT NOW Just as you are is to give yourself HEAVEN. Don’t WAIT until you DIE. If you wait you die now. IF YOU LOVE YOU LIVE NOW – Unknown 

Let’s start living more intentionally. Slowing down to pay attention to our inner dialogue. Journaling. Meditation. Yoga. Baths. Long walks alone with our thoughts. Time to reflect and choose differently. How we feel and how we see ourselves. Time to become our own best friends. 

I recorded a free Breathe in Love 5 Day Experience recently that I would love to share with you. 3 days of meditation and 2 days of yoga. Some of my favorite mantras/affirmations lately are… It’s OK to take time for ME. IT’s SAFE TO BE ME. I’m a better Mom when I take time for me. It’s ok to ask for help. Boundaries are healthy. It’s ok to say NO. 

What are some of your favorite things to say to yourself lately that may help other Mamas reading? 

This slowing down due to Covid and staying home has taught me to refocus on what’s important. To make more time for me and in return I am more present with my 5 year old son. He had a epic meltdown at Target recently and while we haven’t had a public display like this in awhile, I was the Mom I aspire to be in those moments. Letting him feel the feelings he needed to. The meltdown was due to saying NO to water balloons that he wanted so bad he even said he wouldn’t ever ask for sugar or toys ever again. However, he just had his birthday and we said YES on the daily to treats and gifts, etc. So this NO was hard. But because I have slowed down to take care of me it has allowed me to be more present with him in these moments. In full transparency, I am not always this calm and composed (yelling at home some days) it felt so good to hold space for him to feel his feelings until we could walk to the car. 

Was this blog post helpful? Did it inspire you to slow down and go inward? I hope so! Oprah says on the intro to her podcast that the greatest gift we can give ourselves is time. Time to cultivate a relationship with self and I couldn’t agree more. 

With Love,

Heather Nieves

Founder I Love Me Yoga

Women’s Empowerment Coach

www.heathernieves.com 

Facebook.com/ILoveMeYoga

Instagram.com/iamheathernieves 

Heather Nieves is the Founder of I Love Me Yoga and a Women’s Empowerment Coach living in South Carolina with her husband of 15 years, 5 year old son and shihtzu.

She teaches women to embrace their bodies and live #AuthenticAF through Meditation, Movement & Mirrorwork. Her favorite advice for Moms is “let your breath be your anchor” 

As I write this there are riots and protests and chaos.  I think, what can I possibly write that would be relevant to parents of your children at this time?  I am a white mother to a teenager.  I am privileged and unpacking all that is going on around me.  What do I do with the emotions and emotional exhaustion of recent days?  Once again, in my parenting journey, I come back to the same question:  How do I stay centered in the storm?

There is a beautiful quote by Margaret Atwood that I return to again and again.  She says, “God is not the voice in the whirlwind.  God is the whirlwind.  At the last judgement we will all be trees.”  

How can we stay centered in a storm? Are we bending or breaking?  What are the daily rituals that keep us and our family centered?  

My first whirlwind as a mother was our emergency birth and time in the NICU.  It both affirmed my faith in knowing that I was held and surrounded by angels and ripped away all sense of safety and order in my world.  

It was prayer and music that got me through.  Have you noticed that it is hard to stay stressed while singing?  You have to breathe deeply and regularly.  Singing triggers all kinds of comforting hormones.  

Babies are born into chaos.  Everything is new.  We are the guides that make it all understandable.  Babies and young children look for patterns of sound, our motion…we are born looking for ritual.  

How do we shape our days?  I still remember the song my mother sang to me in the morning when she came to get me from my crib.  “Good morning to you!  Good morning to you!  Good morning!  Good morning!  Good morning to you!”  This memory encouraged me to create songs for my day with my son and formed the base of my Mommy Jingles Musical Parenting Program.

Having songs for different parts of the day helped to calm and center me and helped my son Clayton understand the world.  These songs got me through postpartum anxiety and panic so that I could breathe deeply again.

My son is now a teenager and keeping centered is as important as ever.  In the quarantine and in these recent times of upheaval I find that I have abandoned the rituals that keep me centered.  My yoga practice and meditation have fallen by the wayside and I have become emotionally exhausted.

Today, I walked.  I walked for miles.  I stopped by a tall pine and I prayed.  I remembered that I am the connection between earth and sky.  I remembered my breath and I prayed for all that this hurting world is suffocating.  I cried and I listened and I went home to my family.

Today I leaned into the whirlwind and I did not break.  Today, that was enough.  What are the rituals that keep you centered?

• To learn about Amy’s Musical Parenting program please visit MommyJingles.com
• To download her free musical meditation, join her mailing list at AmyRobbinsWilson.com
• Listen to Amy’s Embodiment and Sacred Performance HERE

   

Amy Robbins-Wilson, MA opens transformational spaces with music.   Her voice has been described as “angelic”, “crystalline” and “a whisper to the soul.”  She uses her unique and extraordinary voice and the power of intention to open transformational space within which listeners experience a renewed sense of well-being.  As one listener commented about a session, “ I love how it both stills me and fills me.

Amy sang her first solo at the age of three and has been exploring the intersection of healing and music ever since.  She holds a BA in Empowerment Theater for Women from Bates College, a MA in Expressive Arts Therapies from Lesley University and a MA in Ritual Song and Chant Performance from The World Academy of Music and Dance in Limerick, Ireland.  She is a Reiki master, Awakener, and the creator of Angel Baby Remembrance Concerts for those who have lost a child.

She offers Angelsong Circles, meditative concerts and individual sessions for those seeking healing and a restored sense of peace in the world.

Amy is the author of the Mom’s Choice Award Winning book Transformational Mothering – A Prayerful Companion for New Mothers, transcriptionist of The Diary of Josephine Knight and creator of four solo albums of music: Circling, The Divine Hours of Motherhood (also awarded a Mom’s Choice Award), Lullaby and Goodnight (winner of the Kids Music Award) and Angel Baby Lullabies.

As the musical parenting expert on Lullaby-Link.com, Amy educates and encourages new parents in the best ways to connect, communicate and develop creative young minds with music. She created online musical parenting program for new moms called Mommy Jingles which empowers moms by showing them how to best use music with their babies.

Her lullaby Angels Watch Over My Baby was licensed by St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital for a national fundraising campaign  and she was recognized for her scholarship, leadership and public service by the Harry S. Truman Award. Her experiences as a NICU mom have made her a passionate supporter of Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals. She is thrilled that Johns Hopkins Hospital licensed her lullabies to use in their NICU.

Amy licenses music for film and tv and is a Meditation Guide at Ananda Yoga and Wellness in Belfast, Maine.  She makes her home with her husband Tim and their son.