Valentine’s Day

by | Feb 5, 2019 | Parenting, Truth-Telling

So here we are. It’s February and that lovely day is happening on the 14th.

For me personally I try to avoid the day completely but I do like practices of gratitude it can provide.

How do you feel about Valentine’s Day?

I think maybe this is just another holiday for mom’s to compare themselves over. Like who sent the most perfect “handmade” valentine’s to school this year? Who made the best cupcakes/chocolate etc.

I actually try to avoid valentine’s day on social media because it is one of those gag worthy who has the better spouse kind of day. Almost like mother’s day because rarely is it children that are the driving force behind how you get treated that day.

For me personally I try to avoid the day completely. My kid’s don’t go to school and it’s not a big day for me and my hubby, as we try to make time for each other multiple times during the year, when we can’t manage to get weekly dates in (which only happen because we have a 12 year old who will babysit during the day and because we are usually running errands on said date).

This year I am thinking about sending a love note to each of my business clients as a thank you for letting me support them. That seems like a fun Valentine thing to do that is completely platonic and not at all really wrapped up in the commercialism of the day.

I suppose I should ask my kids if they want to do something for V day, before the day arrives and they ask me what we are doing and I’m like maybe heart shaped pancakes?

Because I need another holiday surrounded by sugar like I need extra holes in my head. And I get the archaeological reason behind holidays and sugar, and it means we actually survived the winter, but these days we have way too much sugar and I see my daughter’s acne blow up every time we have a sugar filled party.

So no, I don’t want to do that. But I do like practices of gratitude. Hence the idea of sending Valentines to my clients. To express my gratitude. I like to encourage that in my kids too. I am just not sure that Valentine’s is really the best way to do that.

My girls were at my friend’s house a few weeks ago and they were all making Valentine’s and hiding them throughout the house (I think the hiding had a lot to do with the game). My 7 year old made one for the 7 year old boy and said she loved him…. and embarrassment ensured when he read it aloud to the whole group of kids. At this age I know her “I love you” has to do with the fact that they are good friends who play together about once a week and he is almost like a brother to her. But she also knows enough to be worried about everyone else’s reaction when he read it aloud.

Sigh.

I wish her innocence could have lasted longer. You know like the belief in the tooth fairy.

So here we are. It’s February and that lovely day is happening on the 14th.  I am doing a big workshop that I have never done before so I guess some good is happening that day. But I could really do without the Hallmark drippy-ness. And all the candy in the stores. It seems like it has been going constantly since Halloween, candy, candy everywhere.

I haven’t even followed any of the links as to why conversation hearts aren’t available this year. I never liked them anyway.

Chase Young is the founder of The Mommy Rebellion a place for judgment-free parenting.  She’s created a place to get tips, tools and support for what it is truly like to be a mother, stories from the trenches that show you you’re not alone.  Tips that real mothers use.  Tools to give to yourself and to your parenting friends to feel more focused, have more patience and energy, and feel less tired and snappy .  
You can follow Chase here on this blog, sign up for her newsletter here and follow her on Facebook and Instagram.

The Tummy Bug

by | Jan 29, 2019 | Parenting, Truth-Telling

I forgot what a pain in the ass getting puke out of carpet was.

And then the tummy bug did what it loves to do, it tore through our house.

We all get it. No matter how much we wash our hands, wash our kids hands, use chemicals to keep our house clean (or use vinegar or just try to make a pathway through our house) it always happens. And this is the time of year in the Northern Hemisphere it tends to happen. The tummy bug, the flu (though actually the real flu is about your lungs not your gastrointestinal track), the puking virus, the roto virus, whatever you call it is bound to hit your house at some point.

It came to visit us at the end of my 7 year old’s birthday. Her party had been canceled due to what was suppose to be two feet of snow (we got more like a foot) and we had stayed home. That night she and the sister she sleeps with woke me up puking. They both managed to miss the toilet. I forgot what a pain in the ass getting puke out of carpet was.

So I ended up sitting up most of the night with the girls. Rob had work the next morning, so I had the night shift. We watched the Great British Bake Off and then Extraordinary homes and I kept dozing between having to get up every half hour to empty the buckets they had puked into. Like clockwork every half hour even though they were down to just sipping water and their dinner was long gone in the upstairs carpet… they would puke and I would get up and empty their bowls. And then sit back down on the couch with them and doze off again.

I lasted until 4 am and then they were both asleep and hadn’t popped in a while so I snuck up to bed for a while. My hubby was working from home that day due to the snow so he took over and let me sleep until about 9:30. And then the tummy bug did what it loves to do, it tore through our house.

By Tuesday my hubby was up in bed with his own puke bowl, and my 12 year old was doing her best to help out because while I never puked or got diarrhea I was so exhausted and tired from looking after everyone else that I wasn’t much help. My 5 year old came down with it about the same time as her Dad and I was up with her the next night. By Wednesday when my hubby tried to go into work (and got sent home after half a day anyway) it was getting pretty bad and we were out of any kind of food my family would actually want to eat. We also live 15 minutes away from the closest grocery store of any size, my hubby did stop and buy bread and eggs at the local general store where everything is local and/or organic.

Late Wednesday my eldest finally succumbed losing her dinner on the carpet in the hall as well. I got up and cleaned that up but unfortunately she was on her own with the tv remote that night. She said she dozed off because she would wake up and it would be a new episode of whatever she was watching. I felt bad but hadn’t had a full night’s sleep since Saturday and was running on fumes.

I kept my girls home Thursday from normal Girl Scout activities because I didn’t want them sharing these lovely germs and by Friday night we all went to the grocery store together to resupply.

One of the things that this bout of the tummy virus reminded me was that I need to create a box that only gets open when we are sick and has the crackers, gluten free crackers, maybe some juice and ginger ale, packaged bone broth and other things you really want when you are sick. Because if I keep then in the general pantry then my family will find it and eat it all and it won’t be there when we need it.

So tell me what would you put in your food for when you are sick box? I would love some more ideas as I build this box. Also has the tummy bug hit your house yet?

Chase Young is the founder of The Mommy Rebellion a place for judgment-free parenting.  She’s created a place to get tips, tools and support for what it is truly like to be a mother, stories from the trenches that show you you’re not alone.  Tips that real mothers use.  Tools to give to yourself and to your parenting friends to feel more focused, have more patience and energy, and feel less tired and snappy .  
You can follow Chase here on this blog, sign up for her newsletter here and follow her on Facebook and Instagram.

The Catalyst Moment that Helped Me Quit my Job to Start Anew

by | Jan 24, 2019 | Mental Health, Parenting, Self-Care, Truth-Telling, working

 Megan Day, MSc, CLC, and founder of Rooted & Vibrant, shares her journey of how she made the decision to resign from her 10 year career in healthcare to start her own business and explore her calling.

The moment that I decided I would help people was when I realized I had finally learned to help myself.

My second daughter was a challenging baby, she had colic for the first 5 months and screamed every night until 11pm, at which time she crashed from exhaustion and slept beside me, nursing every few hours. I ended up going through a bout of postpartum depression a few months later.

I am typically a very sociable person. I took my first daughter to many, many mom and baby programs and I had made a few close mommy friends. With my second daughter, when I was going through postpartum depression, I found myself avoiding people. Some days I didn’t have the energy for small talk. I was burnt out from taking care of a baby and a toddler. I didn’t have much else to give. On top of that, I was hiding my pain and struggle from those close to me, other than my poor husband who took the brunt of my troubles. I didn’t want them to think I was weak or a bad mom. I can honestly say it was the toughest year of my life.

The end of my maternity leave was coming near and I had a decision to make about my career. I felt stuck and I felt ashamed for not being grateful for my career BUT that year had changed me and I knew that I had to do things differently going forward if I wanted to continue to stay well and live a happier life. I was terrified of going back to that dark place. I didn’t want to be a miserable person, wife or mom. I learned that I was the only one that could make those changes, no one else could do it for me.

I didn’t let the strong pull of my familiar job get in the way of me rising to my dreams. I had worked 10 years in healthcare as a genetic counselor. I was good at my job and at one time it had defined me. You see, people were always impressed by my job title. Genetic counselors are studious and smart, two traits that I really wanted people to think I had. On top of that, I was sure that my colleagues would think I was insane to quit. I wasn’t insane, but I had changed. I had had a wake up call, an awakening and I’m so grateful for it.

Postpartum depression had me crying in the kitchen while my husband and kids were laughing and playing in the next room. Feelings of overwhelm and sometimes outbursts of downright rage would take hold of me. I wasn’t risking going back to that.

I had gotten therapy but knew that this was my chance to set up my life differently and make my wellness a priority. So I worked with a coach myself and I quit my full time job.

I used savings to get my coaching certification, I learned meditation and I coached my own practice clients during my daughter’s naps and in the evenings. Slowly, slowly, I worked at it, all while trying to hold myself and my family as a priority. I’ve met a network of female entrepreneurs around me in my first year of business who are inspiring and authentic.

Not every day is perfect but I am stronger than ever. You might say, I rose out of the ashes like a Phoenix. (I love that visual!).

What I believe about my work above all is: that it is important. Let me elaborate. I believe that many moms are not living out their true potential because they are afraid to fail, afraid to look like a weirdo, afraid that they are not good enough, afraid that they are unworthy, don’t think they have any options, and on and on. I was one of these moms.

This coaching thing is important. It unlocks the potential in women who may have otherwise continued to play small. It supports women to make choices that honour their own values and needs. The world needs more of these women stepping up in a powerful way and running the show!

When people ask me what I do I say “I’m a coach who works with moms”. This does NOT do it justice. If you get to the heart of what I really do and why, you’ll find that much of what I do is draw out the genius in others. The moms that I work with are already “successful” by most traditional definitions of the word but they don’t feel it. They are stuck between their dedication to their kids and their ambition to accomplish the dream they have in their soul. I see them and I see their potential. I uncover that dream and lovingly nudge them to discover their power to execute it.

My journey to this place has been painful and challenging at times. My daughters, husband and close family and friends have supported me along the way and have dotted my path with moments of joy. Everyday I have to continue to make choices that will keep me strong and sane. I hold tightly to the person that I have become. I honor the person that I used to be and I keep pushing forward because I believe that a healthy mom supports a healthy family and healthy families are the cornerstone of a healthy community. This is how we heal the world ladies, one mom, one family, one community at a time.

Megan Day, MSc, CLC, is a Certified Life Coach, Meditation Instructor and the founder of Rooted & Vibrant. Her mission is to empower women to find their life’s work and to help ambitious moms create fulfilling lives.
In 2017, Megan made the decision to resign from her 10 year career in healthcare to start her own business and explore her calling. She values family, community, connection and adult conversation. She has found her life purpose in helping other moms find theirs.

7 Rules You Must Follow When Building New Habits

by | Jan 17, 2019 | Parenting, Tips and Techniques, Truth-Telling

Today the amazing Melissa Beasley shares her journey of momprenuership and passes along the tips she’s learned along the way.

Dear reader,

My business coach often says that entrepreneurship is the graduate school of personal growth. Building a business tends to bring you face to face with some of your deepest fears, insecurities, and limitations. Looking them in the face can be overwhelming at best, and debilitating at its worst. For my sweet mamas, add the fact that motherhood is a catalyst that brings out any and all flaws and fears that you might be able to avoid in business growth and you have a recipe for potential disaster. Yet, momprenuers seem to be on the rise because moms (and women in general) are amazing creatures of strength, fortitude, grace and magic. If you’re on this path let me start by telling you that you have my utmost respect and admiration. I know from personal experience how grueling this journey is and anyone who even attempts it deserves a giant, shining, gold star.
Now, dear one, I want to warn you of one of the biggest pitfalls you might face on this path and I’m going to do it through a story about gardening.

Imagine for a minute that you have inherited a beautiful country cottage that sits on sprawling gardens. Gardening is a passion of yours and you can’t wait to get in there and cultivate the grounds to bring out the best in nature’s beauty. As you drive along the winding country road you’re already thinking through what kinds of plants you want to buy as you wonder what kind of soil you’ll see. You get excited imagining what kinds of plants are already there waiting for you. You round the corner and your heart sinks and a sense of shock stops your thoughts with the screech of a halted record. The grounds have apparently been abandoned and neglected for what looks like decades. Everything is completely overgrown with vines, weeds and grass. You’re not even sure where the gardens end the yard begins.

You take a deep breath, approach a section of garden and gingerly start poking through the thick overgrowth. You feel a thrill of excitement as you notice some beautiful roses and irises still growing strong despite the suffocating weeds. You also groan as you look through the many vines growing over the garden; you know from experience how pernicious some of these species are and they’ve had ages to establish deep roots. Clearing them out is not going to be easy. The reality of the work ahead of you sinks in; this is going to take a long time.

This is a perfect analogy for what happens again and again as people begin a personal growth journey. You have limiting beliefs, traumas, fears and insecurities that have been silently growing and suffocating your dreams and strengths for years, maybe even decades. Then you started a business, or had children, or sought help changing some unhealthy habits and were brought face to face with those weeds. That moment of realization is often earth shattering. “You mean I have all this muck just sitting inside me holding me back and making me miserable!?!? Oh hell no, that’s going away right now!” So you start furiously tearing at weeds only to exhaust yourself after making a small amount of progress, which leaves you feeling discouraged and hopeless.

But there is a better solution. When you come face to face with a giant mess and are tempted to go to war against it, stop, take a deep breath, and follow these rules.

1. Realize this is not a new mess

This mess has been here for a long time. It didn’t suddenly show up right when you saw it. When you first glimpse your mess a part of you will think “Eww, gross!! Get it out now!!!” But calm down, it’s been there a while and it hasn’t killed you yet. Yes it’s gross, of course you want it to go away, but you can’t clear it all right this second and trying will only hurt you more.

2. This mess took time to make and it will take time to clean up

This ties in with rule #1 and serves as another reminder that you can’t clear all of this out right away. The longer those vines have been growing, the longer they will take to clear out. The sooner you can be okay with allowing part of the mess to still be there as you clear other parts of it out, the less stressful this process will be.

3. You have to get to the roots, but not right away

I know, I know, you’re thinking I’m crazy because everyone knows that you should go straight for the roots of a problem right? Well, not always. Take our weeds and vines for example. When you have a thick overgrowth of vines you often can’t even get to the roots; you’ll have to do some trimming back first. Sometimes when you’re doing personal growth and emotional healing you first have to chip away at the surface symptoms and heal those before you can even see the root issues. So if you’ve been working on it for a couple of years and it still hasn’t healed, don’t be discouraged. You are still doing good work, and you’ll get to the root when you’re ready. However, if you stop after trimming back the surface symptoms, those problems will keep growing back again and again. So, be okay with trimming back the surface issues at first, but don’t give up until you’ve gotten those roots out.

4. Make a plan

You can’t just tear out weeds at random and hope to have any lasting effect. Figure out what the most critical place to start is. What issue is choking the most life out of you right now? What is having the biggest negative impact on your life? Write down the top two that come to mind and start working on those.

You can also find areas that are simple fixes and clear them out to give yourself some breathing room. Are there items on your to-do list that you can accomplish in 10-30min and they would be done for good? Make a list of those things and start crossing them off. It will give you some emotional breathing room so you can have more energy to focus on the big issues.

As other issues come to mind write them down and then leave them. Tell yourself that those items will be addressed after you have handled what’s on your list right now. You’re not ignoring them, you are simply choosing where to focus your energy. I like to keep post-it note pads around the house and when something comes to mind to distract me I write it down and stick it to the wall. At the end of the day I collect all my post-it notes and transfer them onto my master list. Knowing that things aren’t slipping through the cracks is a huge relief for my overthinking brain.

Follow the plan. Don’t give up. It can be tempting to start a task, then tell yourself you should pick a different one instead because that one will work faster. This is not a fast process. The best way trough this process is to make a plan and stick to that plan.

5. Sometimes clearing one issue causes others to clear up as well

Be encouraged by the fact that clearing up one issue often has a positive impact on other areas of your life. Don’t be surprised to find that working on one or two issues actually resolves a set of minor issues that you never even realized were related to it.

6. Remember the roses inside the weeds

As you free them from the tangle of vines you’ll be able to start cultivating them so they can grow and shine as they were intended. Your strengths have been suffocated by fears and limiting beliefs, and as you free them you’ll be given the chance to grow and improve those strengths so you can bring your gifts into the world.

7. Get help

I can’t stress this enough. You don’t want to go through this process alone. You want an expert who has walked this path and understand the struggles that you are going to face. You want someone who knows the obstacles and knows how to overcome them so you can decrease how long this process takes. Helping people like you navigate your tangled mess is a passion of mine. I love watching the tangled darkness clear away as you begin to shine a light on your strengths and breathe new life into your dreams.

Let me walk this path with you, contact me at Melissa@loveessentialskincare.com to set up an appointment today.

Melissa is a natural skin care formulator, the founder of Love-Essential Skin Care, and the mother of two amazing boys.

To learn more about Melissa and her work, please visit her website HERE.

Teenage Girls

by | Jan 15, 2019 | Parenting, Teenagers, Truth-Telling

Teenage girls just show up overnight in secret while you were sleeping.

I was once a teenager too and hopefully when your teenage time passes our relationship will still be intact.

Chase Young is the founder of The Mommy Rebellion a place for judgment-free parenting.  She’s created a place to get tips, tools and support for what it is truly like to be a mother, stories from the trenches that show you you’re not alone.  Tips that real mothers use.  Tools to give to yourself and to your parenting friends to feel more focused, have more patience and energy, and feel less tired and snappy .  
You can follow Chase here on this blog, sign up for her newsletter here and follow her on Facebook and Instagram.

Intentional New Year’s

by | Jan 8, 2019 | Affirmations, Grounding, Journal Writing, Parenting, Self-Care, Tips and Techniques

Did you get any dreaming time during the holidays?

Did you get any time to process 2018 and think about what you might want to invite into 2019?

So we have made it to the first full week of the New Year. The kids are back in school, we are back to work and our life is suppose to just fall back into normal right?

Well it doesn’t usually feel that way for me. Besides the fact that we homeschool, and my hubby is back at work, the transition from the Winter Holidays into the let’s face it, the often disgusting next few months is a hard one.

We live in Maine, so there is snow coming, and this year we have had snow and cold weather since before Thanksgiving, so I don’t know about you but I am feel the end of February, beginning of March tiredness of winter, and we are still just getting ready for a lot more.

The house feels like it needs another deep cleaning even though I did one before the holidays, now that we have all spent over a week here, it feels like a lot of pick up needs to happen again, AND there are new things to put away and organize from gift giving.

So how do we do all this and not get depressed or feel put upon? How do we even begin to think about New Year’s Resolutions (and in my opinion the top of our lists as mothers should simply be GETTING MORE SLEEP – and to hell with anything else)? I mean are you even on board with packing lunches and resuming all the kid activities?

Did you get any dreaming time during the holidays?

Did you get any time to process 2018 and think about what you might want to invite into 2019?

Nope?

I mean we are mothers right, and unless you designed some time (and maybe even if you did) it didn’t happen and now here it is the 8th of January and what the hell?

So here is my invitation to you. Have your favorite drink. Coffee, tea, water, wine, beer I don’t care, but grab something that tastes good to drink and if you need to go lock yourself in the bathroom to do this I am certainly not one to judge!

But take a few moments to just breathe. Don’t do anything. Don’t rush or think about the next thing. And if you can’t keep your mind from racing then grab pen and paper or the note feature on your phone and just jot down everything going on in your brain until you can let it all go.

Now listen. Can you hear anything? If you are lucky enough to have silence, just soak it in. And if you can hear the kids watching TV in the next room that’s fine too.

Now if there is something you want to bring into 2019 it might make itself known now. And if it doesn’t then let’s just repeat this again tomorrow.

A few minutes alone. It can be in the bathroom or while taking a shower, or hiding in the car or pretending to still be asleep. But try and grab a few minutes every day and see what happens.

I think that’s a big enough resolution for us. What about you?

Chase Young is the founder of The Mommy Rebellion a place for judgment-free parenting.  She’s created a place to get tips, tools and support for what it is truly like to be a mother, stories from the trenches that show you you’re not alone.  Tips that real mothers use.  Tools to give to yourself and to your parenting friends to feel more focused, have more patience and energy, and feel less tired and snappy .  
You can follow Chase here on this blog, sign up for her newsletter here and follow her on Facebook and Instagram.