Mama Self-Care

Last fall I was asked to talk to a group of young moms about the importance of self-care.  I met with them last Tuesday but it in an effort to prepare for my little chat I did some soul searching and a lot of reading... these are some of the thoughts I shared.    

 Do you ever think back to before you were married or before you had kids and think…oh my goodness what the heck did I do with all my time?  I am so lucky and blessed with my life right now, but I find myself at least a couple of times a week thinking, holy cow I wish I would have enjoyed that a little more!  

So I’ve been reading a ton on self-care.  Let's be honest most women and especially moms aren't real great at this.   Mommy guilt anyone?  Whether you’re a stay at home mom, you work fulltime, you have 10 kids or one, stopping to think about ourselves literally goes against everything we’ve ever been taught! 

I read this awesome article  recently that used an analogy and I thought it was brilliant!  You know when you’re in an airplane and the flight attendant does their little pre-flight speal?  What do they tell you?  They always say if we should loose oxygen during flight, make sure that you adjust your oxygen mask before assisting children or anyone else!  Why is that?  Oh yeah that’s right because if you don’t have oxygen and pass out you’ll be pretty worthless to the person next to you who may need your assistance.  How similar to real life is this?  If you aren’t taking care of yourself, how are you possibly going to be able to care for someone else?  I’m not suggesting all day spa vacations but simply to think about how you care for others and then start doing a little more of that for yourself. 

How many of you rock an un-showered top knot and leave your house in yoga pants multiple times a week.  Yep raising my hand high here, but stop for a second and think about it from this perspective.  Do you let your little ones run off to school in the same clothes as yesterday without combing their hair?  Or how about all of a sudden it’s 2PM and all you’ve had is your morning coffee and maybe a couple dry cheerios that you found stuck to your yoga pants?  Yep, you know that feeling, raging headache and then you blame it on too much or too little caffeine and not enough water.  Well I bet that you would never send your little ones to school with just a sip of juice/milk in the morning.  Stop and remember these things.  Then remember what you would do for your children or your husband or your friend if they were tired, hungry, unshowered and do that! 

The point of my examples is by no means to make you feel guilty in fact a high five to all of you for running this race called motherhood but let’s be gentle with ourselves, let’s figure out what makes us the best versions of ourselves so that we can be the best version for everyone else!