Take care of yourself. Find time for yourself. Give yourself grace.

Somewhere along the line you’re taught that moms should wear their exhaustion, depletion, hustle, and selflessness as a badge of honor. You start believing that your needs don't matter as much anymore since you have kids.

It's harder now to speak up for yourself and protect your boundaries and energy. Self-care feels non-existent. You're under-slept and overloaded, and most days you feel touched out, fried, irritable, and not yourself.

You beat yourself up about how you’re handling motherhood. You feel badly doing things for yourself, needing time alone, missing parts of your pre-baby life. You lose sight of who you are outside of being a mom, or you stop nurturing your other passions.

And you try to be a perfect mom – to do it all, make it look easy, never ask for help.

You may have forgotten but I’m here to remind you… 

In motherhood there's already so many things that can lead to unspoken shame – your parenting style, changing body, decision whether to return to a job, ability to juggle all the household duties and roles, you name it.

Then as a stay at home mom,  there's a whole other realm of difficulty because your nervous system is working on overdrive to process all the extra stimuli that are now the norm of this 24/7 mom gig (that's really exhausting already); it's way harder to get alone time to recharge; and days seem to run into nights, with no clocking out and no time off.

So what might shame-free motherhood look like for an SAHM?

It's ditching the “shoulds” and seeing that there’s not one right way to be a mom. It’s understanding that your health and happiness matter, and that running yourself ragged isn’t something to be celebrated. It’s asking for help and support when you need it. It's consistently practicing self-care (even when it feels like you have no time). It's communicating your boundaries to others, guilt-free. It’s knowing that needing breaks from momming doesn’t make you a bad mom. It’s throwing out the constant I’m-not-enough thoughts and comparisons. It’s ditching the hustle for perfection and seeing that you’re enough just as you are right now.

I loved my kids, I loved being a mom, I loved being home with them, I loved so much about it…and, some days were really freaking hard. I was living small, putting everyone and everything else before me, not feeling like myself.

Days often felt…
Overwhelming, like I was chasing my tail trying to keep up. Monotonous and understimulating, so I felt a sense of boredom and underachievement. Guilt and shame that I wanted more, that I couldn’t just accept how life was and move on. Self-abandoning, like I was losing connection to myself and to other things I loved outside of momming. Isolating and lonely without much social connection or adult interaction.

Life didn't feel easeful, relaxed, and aligned. But I knew it was possible to create that while still taking care of my littles. So I started making small changes everyday, continuing to show up for myself and remind myself I matter. I shifted my energy, my daily practices, my mindset, my whole way of being. 

I took my power back and decided I wasn’t available to feel like a victim in my own life anymore. I stopped compromising my health and happiness, made time for myself, and spoke up about my needs. I unsubscribed from hot mess mom culture, realizing my overwhelm and burnout was often a choice. I let go of the shame of wanting more, of putting myself first sometimes, of getting help when I wanted it. I chose to see myself as the badass mom I was, to view myself more front and center and less like an afterthought, and to celebrate my little wins every single day. 

my wolfpack