F*ck It Mothering

Mother's Day can be a mixed bag of emotions & expectations, right? The media paints it as this carefree day where moms are pampered and appreciated, but the reality is...we still have to be moms. The baby still has blow out diapers, the older kids still fight, and your partner still can't read your mind.

But Mother's Day isn't the only time moms get disappointed by the reality of something they had fantasied was going to be so much fun:

• We dream up the BEST family vacation, but the reality is our family stress follows us to our destination
• We long for a family movie night until we're 30 minutes into everyone fighting over what we're watching and the teenager gives up and watches Netflix on her phone in her room
• We look forward to the weekend to reconnect with our busy teens just to sit at home alone because they went to their friend's house

In this episode, host Amanda Haro explains:

• How to let go of expectations so moms can enjoy authentic family moments
• How to allow your kids to be themselves & how to give them space to explore their friendships/chosen family & why this is crucial for their growth and development
• How to embrace change & let go of resistance in order to cultivate acceptance and happiness

Mentioned in this episode:

This week host Amanda Haro is joined by womb healer Carolina Sotomayor from the Make a Baby podcast.

Carolina shares her journey of navigating the loss of her father a month before her wedding, infertility, a turbulent relationship with her mother, and how she found healing for all of it through the ancient Japanese practice of reiki. She has since helped almost 100 women successfully treat their infertility with reiki.

Carolina's story is a true testament to not only this ancient healing practice but also to the power we all have inside of us to heal even the deepest wounds and to be the generational curse breaker of our families.

0:00 Intro

14:00 Taylor Swift, Eras Tour, Human Design

26:30:18 Carolina's story; physical abuse as a child; grief journey

28:42:16 Spirituality, religion, and learning how to become a medium

33:13:04 Infertility journey and conceiving after reiki

39:35:06 Postpartum depression and anxiety

45:06:00 Spirit babies, world religions, Mary Magdalene Manuscripts

50:35:00 Grief, anger, and getting Godsmacked

57:07:22 Sexual assault, abortion, and having a baby later

60:27:11 Healing relationship with abusive parent in adulthood

1:16:31:13 Lightening questions

Mentioned in this episode:

Welcome to the first of a new series on the F*ck It Mothering podcast: F*ck It Friday!

This week's episode is for all the dance moms, both new and seasoned!

Host Amanda Haro shares how she survived a 4 day comp with multiple dancers. She covers:

• Dance mom hacks to help with quick changes
• The best costume bag (not sponsored; this is an honest opinion)
• Sneaking snacks into convention centers & keeping everything accessible and organized once you're there
• How to prepare yourself for a dance comp
• The importance of making friends with your fellow dance moms. The kids are a team and so are the moms!

This week, host Amanda Haro is joined by one of her first clients, Megan. 

Megan shares her inspiring story of being mis-diagnosed with non epileptic seizures for four years. The doctors told her that the seizures were caused by stress, but they were actually triggered by any intense emotion (ever laughed so hard you seized?). 

Megan was having multiple seizures a day when she started working with Amanda and after 3 months of coaching together, she got them down to once a few weeks and sometimes even once a few months! 

She has since been properly diagnosed with narcolepsy type 1 and has medicine to help control the seizures, but coaching was what got her through it. 

And the coaching tools she learned has helped her to permanently reduce her stress as she navigates being an entrepreneur and mom of two. Since learning how to take care of herself and prioritize herself, she has become a more patient mom.

This week host Amanda Haro interviews healing energy coach Natalie Bedard about how meditation helped her navigate a death scare (which she received no diagnosis for) as a single mom of twin boys who were 4 years old at the time.

Chapters:

• 13:35 Coming out of the narration of perfection
• 16:32 Death scare, no diagnosis, how the medical system is failing us
• 28:00 Keeping stress low using meditation as a single mom of twin boys
• 30:35 Nat Nat guides Amanda through a live meditation
• 34:04 Therapy vs meditation / Women are socialized to take care of everyone else’s emotional needs but not their own / Befriending anger
• 37:40 Parenting is messy / “Not good enough” messaging moms receive
• 43:00 Taking radical responsibility for our emotions
• 43:42 Grief & our relationship with death
• 45:40 Learning how to meditate in the chaos of single motherhood with twin boys; “I am not my nervous system”
• 1:00:36 Understanding your emotional triggers, your nervous system, and doing the work so you can be the generational curse breaker
• 1:03:50 No one right way to do it & the true definition of empowerment
• 1:06:24 Navigating mom guilt
• 1:12:18 Finding the joy without toxic positivity
• 1:18:41 Lightning questions

This week, host Amanda Haro shares a simple yet effective tool to immediately begin relieving everyday mom stress by thinking a specific thought on purpose: "This is not a problem".

Your toddler is horizontal in aisle A5 of Target because you said 'no' to buying the bottle of Tums they were using as a rattle? This is not a problem.

Your teenager grew an attitude the size of Texas overnight? This is not a problem.

Your kids can't get through a 10 minute car ride without being psychos? This is not a problem.

We create suffering for ourselves when we resist our reality. And so by learning to accept what is, we immediately relieve ourselves of stress.

"Ummmmkay, great, Amanda, but all of those things actually are problems. They like really suck and make me stressed."

Yes, all these things suck. But they aren't actually problems.

A toddler emoting loudly in public is just what toddlers do.

Teenagers are assholes; it's just what they do.

Siblings fight all.the.time. Especially in the car. Again--it's just what they do.

And the problem with thinking of all these everyday things as problems is that our brain then tries to "fix" it. Which doesn't work, because what we're really doing is resisting reality. And so we end up in a hellish cycle of our kids being themselves, us trying to "fix" them, it not working, and us crying in frustration into our wine at night.

But this is a hellish cycle of our own making.

Tune in to this week's episode to learn how to break out of the shitty cycle for good.

Have you scoured the internet in search of *the* parenting hack that will solve the problem of your kids tantrums / pissy attitude / picky eating?

Have you implemented all that advice just to wind up still stressed / anxious / overwhelmed?

If you’ve been a part of the F*ck It Mothering community for awhile, you’ll notice a major difference between host Amanda Haro and “parenting experts” is that she does not give out parenting advice.

And she doesn’t give parenting advice because it’s not going to work.

At least, in the sense of reducing your stress.
Because taking a new action does not affect our feelings. Our thoughts create our feelings.

The reason none of the parenting advice out there hasn’t worked for you is not because you suck and your kids are awful. It’s just because no one is teaching you how to tackle the real problem: changing your thoughts.

As moms it is all too easy to get caught up in all the little details of our individual days. There is so much on a mom's plate that it demands all of our attention. But in the midst of all the diapers, playdates, school field trips, extracurriculars, and screen time limits is our singular precious life. And if we aren't intentional about zooming our perspective out to see the big picture, we wind up with an overflowing bucket of regret to contemplate on our death beds. Join life coach and mom of four, Amanda Haro, as she revisits a F*ck It Mothering Greatest Hit, "Standing Room Only Funeral". We'll talk about how to keep our brains focused on what truly matters in life and how to live with intention so moms can leave their kids with a beautiful legacy of a life well lived.

Topics covered in this episode by Amanda Haro, life coach for moms:

• Traveling with 4 kids as a single mom without being overwhelmed with stress
• Spring break family vacation in California
• Disneyland & California Adventure tips
• Believing in yourself
• Seeing and trusting the power of your story

Leave a review for this episode in Apple Podcasts & get entered to the F*ck It Mothering monthly book & Starbucks gift card raffle!

This week, Amanda Haro, burnout & confidence coach for moms, discusses how to not feel guilty asking for help. You'll learn:

• Why you feel guilty asking other people for help, especially from the lens of being a woman, and more specifically, being a mom
• How stay at home moms can stop feeling guilty asking their partners for help with the kids
• The difference between guilt and shame, and how to tell which you are feeling
• How to embrace community in motherhood and life

Topics covered this week by Amanda Haro, burnout & confidence life coach for moms:

Topics covered this week with host, Amanda Haro, life coach for moms:

With Christmas only 4 days away, it is more important for moms now more than ever to prioritize their self care. The social norm is for women to burn at both ends for the sake of creating Christmas magic for their kids. But just like it would make no sense to drive your car on fumes, it makes no sense to drive yourself on an empty emotional tank.

Join Amanda, burnout & confidence coach for moms, as she explains why self care during the holidays is so important for moms & how they can create the time to do it.

This week Amanda shares her story of going from a shy introvert who was too scared to take risks and go for what she wanted in life to being a confident woman who is unapologetically herself. And when she stepped into her full confidence, it made her a more present mom.

Sometimes the most wonderful time of the year can come with really painful emotions when we've lost loved ones. How do you get through the holidays when a loved one passed around Christmas? How can you keep from numbing out & shutting down? How can you still enjoy all the holiday traditions you love when all of it reminds you of what you've lost?

This week, Amanda offers insights on how to navigate the holidays when you're grieving, so that you can embrace the joy of the season while also holding space for the sadness of missing those who aren't with us anymore.

Do you find yourself snapping at your kids all the time? Do you hate it and want to stop but also can't seem to figure out how to stop snapping at your kids all the time?

This week, Amanda shares the reasons why moms end up snapping at their kids all the time and also gives specific tips for how to stop. We all talk about mom guilt as if it's about feeling guilty about one thing, but in reality, mom guilt comes from a multitude of sources. Snapping at the kids is definitely one of those mom guilt sources, so we are crossing that off the list starting today!

As the holiday season approaches, moms need to be intentional in self care more than ever to avoid Christmas burnout.

Traditions and family gatherings can be beautiful and fulfilling, but they can also be draining & stressful if we aren't being honest with what we have the capacity for this year.

In this episode, Amanda teaches moms how to evaluate their emotional capacity, how to set boundaries to honor it, & how to get rid of mom guilt when you just can't do all the things.

This week, Amanda talks about:

• How failure is the key to success, and the realities of what that looks like
• How motherhood actually primes us to be in the top tier of successful people
• Kid birthday parties, from Pinterest to a pizza and grocery store cake, and how all of it is perfect.

'I've got to be strong for the kids'

Whenever moms say this, it usually translates to: 'I can't let my kids see me cry / break down / be emotional'. And we think we're saving our kids from hurting along with us, but our job as moms is not to protect our kids from hurting. Our job is to teach them how to navigate life through both the ups and the downs. And we can't do that if they never see us struggle.

"Motherhood is so exhausting" --said every mom ever. And even people who aren't parents think that it's exhausting to raise tiny humans.

But on this week's episode, Amanda is sharing unique thought work and life coaching perspectives on the difference between being physically tired and being in a state of exhaustion. On top of being a life coach she's also a single mom to 4 girls aged 13-7, so she's had her fair share of seasons of exhaustion. But she found a way to break the cycle of exhaustion & is sharing her knowledge with you today. You'll want to listen to the end to get the 4 simple steps on how to not be exhausted all the time right now, in whatever phase of motherhood this episode finds you in.

Let's be real--sometimes kids say words that really f*cking hurt. Moms sacrifice so much for their families, so it's easy to think, "How can you treat me this way after all I've done for you?"

This week Amanda breaks down why words hurt sometimes & gives steps of what to do when moms find themselves thinking that their families don't appreciate all that they do.

Gentle parenting; authoritative parenting; permissive parenting; authoritarian parenting; attachment parenting; free-range parenting; helicopter parenting. In this information age there are a lot of different opinions on parenting. While none of them are "wrong" there's only one right style for you: your own unique brand.

This week Amanda talks about how to figure out what kind of mom you are without forcing yourself to fit into someone else's mold.

Have you ever looked at your kid & wondered how time has gone by so fast? Like, how can you be 13?! I swear I was just sending you to kindergarten yesterday.

This week Amanda is diving into how to appreciate each season of motherhood while also allowing the transition into the next season.

Spoiler alert: understanding evolutionary biology and diving into some thought work are the keys!

No mom escapes the ever present feelings of mom guilt. There are so many opinions out there & so many loud voices screaming if you bottle feed or co-sleep or give your kid a tablet that you're fucking your kid up.

But in this week's episode, Amanda offers her philosophy: every mom is already positioned to be the perfect mom for HER kid. There is no "right" way to mommy and precious few ways to do it wrong.

"These kids just don't respect me!" "I never have time to myself" "I'm always the one doing everything around here"

As women, we are socialized to put ourselves last in favor of taking care of everyone else first. But in this week's episode, Amanda argues: we may not have chosen our socialization, but that doesn't mean we have to remain victims to it. Motherhood does not have to feel like martyrdom.

This week I have a special BONUS episode for you over on The Intentional Soul podcast, "You Can Always Make A New Decision". Thomas Ross & I had such a great conversation on how it's never too late to take a new path in life or to start something new.

Words like 'divorce' and labels like 'single mom' have typically had negative connotations. In today's episode, Amanda offers a different perspective: what if there isn't a problem with getting divorced or being a single mom?

Mentioned in this episode:

My thoughts on why the Barbie movie is the perfect anthem for the feminist movement.

Have you seen the Barbie movie yet? What were your thoughts? Let me know in the review section, along with who your favorite Barbie was when you were a kid.

This week is all about body positivity. No more hot girl summers. Over here, we're celebrating our post mom bods by embracing our best fat girl summer! Learn thought work tools to love your body now, stop body shaming yourself, and going deeper in your self love journey.

Mentioned in this show:

As y'all know, I am the mother of 4 girls, all of whom dance (well, my 6 year old quit & now wants to come back to it, but we've all-in-all been a dance family). I was a very resistant dance mom, mostly because of the sigma associated with that title. People generally have the opinion that dance moms are overbearing psychopaths who are only proud when their daughters place first, who have a purse full of knives to stick in each other's backs. However, this is far from what my lived experience has been.

So this episode is a real look at what it's like to be a dance mom, my thoughts about my kids & extracurricular activities, and the growth I have seen in my kids (and myself) as a result of being in dance.

Is it expensive? Yes. But you know what--expensive is just a thought.

Is it worth it? Yes. For me, supporting my kids is always worth it, no matter if this ends up a life long passion or is just a season.

What are your thoughts on extracurriculars? Let me know! All thoughts are welcome here (because, there's no 'right' or 'wrong' way to do this motherhood thing).

Growing up as a girl, I was taught very specific ways to keep myself safe.

Don't dress "too" sexual, because you'll elicit unwanted attention from men.

Don't wear your hair in a ponytail, because it makes it easier for an attacker to grab you.

Don't go to a public bathroom alone.

If you have to walk to your car alone at night, make sure to spike your keys in between your fingers, so it'll hurt more if you need to punch an attacker.

The message girls get is: men can't control themselves, and if you catch their attention & they decide they want you, they'll take you. So you need to make sure to "do your part" and dress in a way so that you're not "trying" to attract them.

But now that I'm all grown up & I have 4 girls of my own, my thoughts on the way women should or should not dress are very different. I refuse to raise my girls in fear. I refuse to tell them that it's their job to hide their bodies in order to be a "smart girl". My opinion now is that women should pick out their outfits in the morning with no other reason than, "I want to wear this". If she feels cozy & confident in what she selected, then that makes it appropriate. It shouldn't be our job to morph ourselves into something we're not so that hopefully bad people won't do bad things to us. And you know what? If someone wants to hurt another person, they're going to do it, regardless of what the person is wearing. The way we keep women safe is through legislation, not by telling them they must make themselves small.

My daughters are allowed to wear crop tops, because I'm simply delighted that they feel confident in their bodies to wear them. I will not tell them the only way they will be safe is by making themselves small. May we raise confident, self motivated women who dress for themselves and live for themselves & may we fight for the legislation that will protect them & see that justice is served should they be harmed.

Merry Christmas in July! Cue the tacky Santa earrings & Hallmark movies.

I had to take a step back from my podcast the last couple months because shit got crazy in my personal life. My household got plague after plague, my oldest daughter had surgery, my sister & I were figuring out Father's Day without our dad, & my dog swallowed a fucking needle.

I seriously cannot make this stuff up.

But that's just life, right? It gets crazy & sometimes the crazy all happens in a silo.

So for my first episode back I just wanted to sit and have a coffee with you all. Just like 2 girlfriends who haven't seen each other in far too long getting caught up in a Starbucks.

I'm so happy to be back & I have so much kickass content planned for my f*ck it mamas.

My question for this week is: what's your favorite Christmas movie? Comment in my social thread to let me know & you'll be entered into my monthly book raffle for July.

In honor of Mother's Day, this week's episode is devoted to getting real about what we actually want.

No more main stream media bullshit, mamas. This is the year when we start doing what we want to do on Mother's Day, instead of what our mom or mother-in-law or children or husband wants us to do.

In this episode, I have included a 'No-No' list (ex: jewelry, eating out with our children, fucking teddy bears) & a 'What we actually fucking want' list (ex: sleep, orgasms, & to be left the fuck alone).

You're welcome.

Happy Mother's Day, you badass mamas. May your day actually be your day this year.

Are you tired of fighting with your kids? It gets you nowhere but frustration & stress & a lot of other negative feelings in your body.

Today, I have another option for you. An option that will prevent your kids' attempt to push your buttons from working, and will keep you cool and calm while your kid is being a psycho. This option will be the opposite of all the advice you've gotten thus far, though. Instead of an action that has you trying a new parenting technique or disciplinary action, this action will have you getting to the root of the problem, which lies inside of you.

Every parent needs to hear this message: thoughts are just our brains offering us stories. We get to choose whether we want to believe them or not, based on if those stories serve us or not. Every word that comes out of your kids' mouth is just a story their brain is offering them. If you stop jumping in the pool of emotion with them, stop believing their brains' stories, you will feel calm and in control whenever your kid is acting a fool.

In a life full of uncertainties, there is only 1 thing that is for certain: one day, it will end. Yet we resist this truth to such extremes that we refuse to think about the ending. But when we don't consider the ending, we rob ourselves of the authority of painting the picture of our lives. We let other's opinions, social expectations, and scarcity thinking paint it for us, leaving us with an overflowing bucket of regret to contemplate on our death beds.

I have chosen to live my life with the big picture goal of a standing room only funeral, just like my Grandma Toni had. She didn't have much to offer in a material sense, but that woman poured into every person who came along her path. And the result was too many people and not enough chairs at her funeral. Y'all, the people were spilling OUTSIDE the chapel!

What kind of picture are you painting right now? Do you like it? Why or why not? If there's something that you don't like, what's stopping you from grabbing the white paint & starting over?

Did you know that the average person makes 35,000 decisions in a day? I couldn’t find a number that is specific to moms, but I would wager that the amount of decisions we make in a day has to be double that. Because if a single person makes 35,000 decisions just about themselves, then we have to be blowing that out of the water, because we’re making decisions for ourselves, each of our kids, and if we’re in a heterosexual partnership, we’re also making their decisions. We probably make 35,000 decisions before our morning poop. But whatever the number is–it’s a lot.

Decision fatigue & choice overload are 2 HUGE components to why moms are so stressed out, overwhelmed, & burnt out all the time. Listen to the Katie special podcast for how you can recognize & get rid of decision fatigue in YOUR life. I swear, mama, this alone will alleviate so much of your daily stress.

And if you haven’t heard yet–I’m running a free coaching group this week called Burnout to F*ck It. We are meeting again Friday at 12pm CST & Saturday at 10am CST. IT’S NOT TOO LATE TO JOIN. 

Do something that is exclusively FOR YOU. I double dog dare ya.

Have you ever found yourself saying something along the lines of, “Ugh I wish I had a day to just do nothing”. Maybe you follow it up with whatever pleasure activity you would love to have the luxury of doing: read all day long; binge ‘Dead to Me’; sit on your porch and enjoy the sunshine; take a nap. But then you end it with, “But I can’t, because I’m a mom. The go-go-go doesn’t stop just because it’s Sunday!”

Guess what? You’re full of shit. I say that with all the love in the world, but your excuses are bullshit. You absolutely CAN have a lazy Sunday where you do whatever the fuck you want to do, even though you have kids & a to-do list the length of your arm. The secret is so simple, mama: say fuck it. Let go of the belief that you need the house to look a certain way for you to be “able” to relax. Let go of the belief that you first need to earn rest by being a productive boss. You’ve already been a productive boss all week, and the truth is you can’t earn rest. 

Listen to this week’s podcast to learn how to let go & fucking relax. I swear it’s life changing & you’ll actually feel rested going into Monday.

“I have no idea what I’m doing” – Every Mom Ever

We’ve all had this thought surface for us multiple times in our motherhood journeys. It creates feeling of overwhelm, stress, and even hopelessness. This thought causes us to look outside of ourselves for a solution to our stress; any expert who can tell us what to do with this baby/toddler/kindergartener/preteen/teenager/young adult. But it doesn’t matter how much advice we get, it never really feels better, right? And we think that the reason it never really feels better is because there’s something wrong with us: we’re weak, we’re too anxious, we’re too indecisive, we’re too all-of-the-things. 

But what if there’s nothing wrong with you? What if the problem wasn’t that you didn’t know what you were doing? What if the real problem was simply your belief that there was something wrong with you not knowing what you were doing?

Think about your first job. Whatever it was, you didn’t know wtf you were doing, right? But I’m guessing you figured it out. When you first started driving you didn’t know what you were doing, but you also figured that out (or you just ride public transit, no judgment). The human brain is pretty fucking remarkable at learning new things & adapting to new circumstances.

So in this episode, I’m challenging all my mamas to stop believing the worst of themselves. I’m challenging you to be ok with not knowing what you are doing. I’m challenging you to trust yourself, and sit in the knowing of, “I may not know what I’m doing right now, but I know that I will figure it out”.

This week, we're saying f*ck it to diet culture & unhealthy exercise mindset. Women learn to start hating their bodies around age 10. Women are brought up to restrict the food they eat, and tie their value to how many heads they can turn when they walk into a room. Women are brought up to not trust themselves when it comes to eating & to use exercise as punishment for "going crazy" and eating spaghetti. And when we become moms, we hate our bodies even more. Moms are often caught in the confusing tangle of being proud of making this tiny human that they love so much while also despising the look of their transformed bodies. 

Let's unpack the mindfuck that is a woman's relationship with her body, shall we? Because I for one think we have already given far too much of our lives obsessing over the food we eat & the numbers used to measure how much physical space we are occupying.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Women empowerment
• Self love
• Body image issues
• Moms and body shaming
• How to start loving your body
• How to tell if you are exercising from a clean headspace

What do you do on days when your kids give you the finger? Not literally give you the finger, but when they aren't following your manual, let's say. Most of us respond to days where the shit is hitting the fan by trying to control it and trying to make it what we originally wanted it to be. But the result is always the same when we choose this action, right? We end up becoming the stressed out, angry, yelling version of ourselves. Then we spend the rest of the day pissed off & also in a shame spiral for blowing a gasket.

In this week's episode, I am providing you an alternative way to look at "bad" mornings. Instead of immediately getting anxious that nothing is going the way you wanted it to & then wasting energy trying to force it to work, you need to say 'fuck it' and throw your plan out the window. When you stop looking at your kids' grumpy attitudes as a problem & stop taking their behavior personally, it frees you from being the victim of a chaotic morning. This week, I'm teaching my mamas the simple mindset pivot that empowers them to turn a bad morning into a good day.

This is definitely my most vulnerable episode to date, mamas. But I knew it was the perfect way to cap the February self love series, and I've made a commitment to showing up raw, real & authentic to you all.

So here it is, what I believe to be the pinnacle of the self love journey: purposefully learning how to love someone for the sake of love, instead of what they do for you. We think love is something that has to be given to us; that we must be chosen in order to be worthy of feeling it. But the truth is, love is just a sensation in our bodies that we create for ourselves. Our ability to feel love is not dependent on another person complying to our manual. It is not because they have already expressed their love for us. Our love is for us. We have to understand this if we are ever to step into a long lasting partnership with anyone.

My journey in self love has led me to this most unexpected chapter of choosing to keep my love for someone who (politely) rejected me to my face. Because I would never have been able to keep this love for this person if I didn't truly love myself first.

I hope this inspires all of you in the purposeful living of your one, wild life.

Show Notes:

I have a special BONUS episode for all of my beautiful mamas! I'm giving away a signed copy of the book "Love, Unpacked" for my February raffle, since it is the perfect companion to go with our self love series. I have the great honor of being friends with the author, so Andi hopped on a call with me to chat about the themes she covers in her book:

• Abandonment
• 'The Girlfriend's Guide to Never Being Too Much', written by men, for women
• The female orgasm & why it's impossible to achieve if the intellectual & emotional intimacy isn't there
• How women are socialized to be people pleasers
• The journey of owning your stories so you can heal
• The importance of learning to love yourself 

This episode is so juicy! I cannot wait to hear the discussions it drums up, so don't be shy in commenting or sliding in my DMs!

Do you ever find yourself yelling at your kids and partner: "No one in this family appreciates everything I do!" or "We're always doing what you want to do, but no one asks Mom what she wants to do!" or "I do everything for this family, yet no one even asks if I need anything!"

Every mom has found herself in these moments of frustration boiling over in hot, angry hurt. In most families, moms do the bulk of the heavy lifting, operating under the belief that she "must" be the one to bend all of her desires around her partner's desires & kids' desires. 

But--what if that belief is bullshit? What if moms do not have to wait until they snap in order to cry out for help? And what if that cry for help could look like a calm conversation instead of an uncontrollable outburst?

Women are raised to be pleasant people pleasers, which has us saying 'yes' to everyone except ourselves. But this is an unhealthy way of living for a multitude of reasons:

• It primes us to bottle up frustration at all the people "making" us do things
• It always ends in uncontrollable outbursts
• Most importantly-- it ruins the integrity we have with ourselves

Every time you say 'yes' to something you don't actually want to do, you are saying 'no' to yourself. Tune in to the 3rd part of the F*ck It Mothering self love series to learn how to start advocating for yourself with your toddler's favorite word: "NO".

Happy Valentine's Day, my beautiful mamas! 

What was your knee jerk response to that statement? Be honest & real, because the real answer is crucial to your journey to self-love. As Kara Lowentheil from the Unf*ck Your Brain podcast put it: Valentine's Day ends up being a reflection of what you think of yourself.

In this second episode of the F*ck It Mothering series on self love, we're talking about the importance of being your own Valentine this and every year, regardless of your current relationship status. We're also talking about how learning to love yourself actually encourages people to want to be around you, instead of pushing them away like most of us fear. We talk about why we shouldn't wait for someone else to love us, because we can't feel their love anyways. Love is a wonderful sensation that YOU feel, created by the thoughts you are thinking.

So if you want more love in your life & want to model true love for your kids, you need to listen to this episode.

F*ck It Mothering is doing a self love series for the month of February, because learning to love yourself is the key to unlocking deeper levels of love in all your other relationships.

This week: be your own BFF. Moms are so busy thinking of everyone else all the time, that we aren't thinking about ourselves let alone loving ourselves. But I believe self love is the secret to life (and have the result of an amazing life that I love to prove it!). Because only when we love ourselves are we finally free of needing everyone around us to be ok in order for us to feel ok.

And if you like this episode, please comment and share. If you do (and DM me a screenshot or tag me), you'll be entered into my monthly drawing to get a chance to win a Starbucks gift card along with one of my favorite motivational books.

In this episode, I dive into why we love our friends and gives steps on how to reframe shame thoughts into love thoughts. 

We all have a monster who lives in the back of our heads: shame. Shame comes in and whispers to moms, 'You're such a bad mom', whenever we do not live up to the unrealistic standard society has set for us. In this episode, moms will learn how to identify shame thoughts & how to break the cycle of shame by changing those thoughts. If you are tired of living in mom guilt, this episode is for you.