Episode 347- 5 Things Moms in the Thick of it to Know
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[00:00:00] You are listening to episode 347 of the Peaceful Mind Podcast. Welcome to the Peaceful Mind Podcast, a place where you can move out of overwhelm and into a calm, confident motherhood with God at the center. I'm Danielle Thienel, certified life coach, Catholic mom, and creator of the Cyclone Mom Method. I help you create emotional steadiness and peace of mind from the inside out so you can experience more balance and more joy in your busy mom life.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, let's get started
Hello, hello. Welcome back, beautiful mamas. I'm so happy you are here. Thank you for choosing to spend your precious time with me, and I don't take that for granted, and so let me try and help you today. More peace of mind. I want [00:01:00] to talk to you today, and I'm specifically thinking about the mom who is right in the middle of it, the one whose days are so full that you feel like there's barely any room to breathe, let alone think.
And I'm thinking about the mom who is up before everyone and then still going long after everyone else is asleep. The one who loves her kids more than her own life and at the same time also can't remember the last time you felt like yourself, like a whole person if that makes any sense. And if you relate to any of that, this episode is for you.
And one of the reasons why I'm excited to bring this episode to you is because I am further down the road now. I-- the mom I just described, I'm [00:02:00] out of that season. My three children are grown, and there are some things that I can see so clearly now from where I am standing today, things that were almost impossible for me to see when I was in the thick of it the way that you are right now.
And listen, you might be hearing, listening to this episode right now while you're folding the laundry, driving to the third activity of the day. Maybe you're hiding in the pantry so you can have some minutes of quiet. Wherever you are, however divided your attention is, I want you to know that's okay.
This lives out there, right? You don't have to sit still. You don't have to take notes, right? Just let some things come in and pay, extra attention to some things. Let it settle in as we go, and you can always go back and re-listen. Now, I want to be really [00:03:00] careful here because I do not-- I'm not gonna be one of those older moms who wags her finger at you right now and tells you to cherish every moment.
Oh, boy, did that get under my skin when I was in the thick of it. Please hear me on this. I am not gonna say that. When you are exhausted and you're, like, all touched out from the kids, and we-- feeling really behind on all of it, "cherish every moment" is not helpful. It's just one more thing that we might add to our list to feel guilty about because we're not cherishing it, right?
So that is not what today's episode is. What I do wanna do is I wanna hand you over five things, five things I wish someone could have made me truly believe while I was still living those really tough years. Not to add any pressure to [00:04:00] you. Literally, I'm trying to take some things off of you, all right?
So let's get into it. For the five things, number one, the thing that feels enormous right now to you will not feel enormous forever. Okay? When you are in it, everything does feel permanent. The baby who will not sleep, and you're convinced you're never gonna sleep a full night again. The three-year-old who's testing every single limit that you've set.
The middle schooler who used to tell you everything and then now suddenly barely looks up. Or if you have a teenager who is pushing away so hard that some nights you're quietly wondering if you've lost her or him. When you are, like, literally in the thick of it, it all feels [00:05:00] so heavy, like it's never gonna change.
And here's what I can tell you to bring some more peace of mind to you, because I'm on the other side. So much of what felt like the end of the world back then, to me, turned into what we could call just a little footnote. As you're reading and going through a book, and there's just a little footnote about something a phase, some of the things I do barely remember now.
We wanna think about our seasons, they come and they pass, just like storms and bad weather come and pass. So the very thing I used to lie awake worrying that would like, I would make up the stuff that it was just gonna break my child forever, guess what? They grew right through it, the way that kids do.
And most of the time they do [00:06:00] not even remember it, or they don't remember it the way we do, how we've catastrophized it in our mind. Now, I am not saying that your hard things that you're going through right now do not matter. Yes, this too shall pass, but not to say that it doesn't matter.
It does. What you're going through, your challenges, your issues, the hard stuff, what you're in the thick of it, what is really like having you off balance, like it matters, and I wanna acknowledge, I get that it is real. I'm not here to try and have you like wave it away or positive think yourself out of it.
What I am saying is that it is most likely a phase. It could be looked at as just a season, not a life sentence. So let me just present this to you. Ask, what is the thing that feels the most permanent to you right [00:07:00] now? The thing you are so sure is never gonna change. I want you to hold it just a little more loosely today.
Can you lessen the grip? Not because it doesn't matter, but because you are allowed to trust that seasons move even while you're still like really tired inside your current one. And I like to be a reminder to you all that we do not have to solve our whole future today. You just have to get through this week, today, and you will, because if you look back, you always have.
In fact I wanna remind you of something the exhaustion may have made you forget, that this is not your first hard phase. Think about it for a second. I know this. I know this with all of my heart, that you have already walked through tough stuff, through seasons that you were absolutely kinda sure [00:08:00] "I'm not gonna survive this," and yet here you are.
You made it through every single one of them so far. Okay? And that is you. And whatever your current one is, you are going to walk through it too All right, the second thing I want to remind all you moms who are in the thick of it is that what your kids carry with them throughout their lives is not your personal performance, okay?
What they're gonna carry through is how you made them feel. And I'm also gonna have this caveat, right? We don't even have to-- we don't have to have even made them feel great all the time, okay? I want you to take some pressure off of yourself here, 'cause I know how much of it you are carrying And the pressure to make everything in your [00:09:00] children's life special and wonderful and easy and smooth, right?
The clean house, the Pinterest birthday, the perfectly balanced dinner that somebody still refuses to eat. The activities, the enrichment, the schedule, the sense that if you drop one ball, the whole thing falls apart, right? You're running yourself ragged trying to do all of it exactly right. And here's what I've learned from watching my own kids grow up.
They're not remembering whether the house was tidy. They're not gonna r- they don't even remember. We recently kinda did this with my son. We were going through, like trying to think of like what those themes were for each of his like birthdays, right? The one that we had at the glow-in-the-dark indoor golf park, and then we had one right at the, the bounce house place, and then we had one with together with [00:10:00] his friend and it was amazing how many he didn't remember.
And then when I brought him up and he was like, "Oh yeah," right? But what they are gonna remember is how it felt to be around you, whether they felt safe, right? That's that's something on the list at the end of the day when moms look back, "What did I do?" You can probably say, "Did I make my kids feel safe today?"
And check that off. On the hard days, they felt love. Whether home was like a soft place to land when school or the outside world wasn't. And think back to your own childhood for a second. What do you actually remember? I would guess it's probably not whether your mom kept a spotless kitchen, which, yeah, I can even think back at mine and I can say, yeah, it was pretty much.
But it is the feelings, like the smell in [00:11:00] the house, the way Mom looked at me. That's what your kids are recording right now in the ordinary moments, and you're not even-- the ones that you're not even trying hard in. And sometimes, even if it's not always, looking them in the eye, cuddling, ha- staying calm kind of things, they are going to think back at how we made them feel, even by just existing around them, right?
And s- and feeling our desires to show up as as their mom and do right by them. I want you to think back to your own childhood and what you actually remember, right? And it's almost never yes, we have those core memories of those big planned things, right? But I also believe that it's like the pancakes on a ra- a random [00:12:00] Saturday or the song you always sang to them in the car, the way you laugh together at something silly, right?
The completely ordinary Saturday morning. The small stuff you weren't even trying to make into a memory is the exact stuff that actually stays, which means the pressure for you to engineer perfect moments is not just exhausting, right? It's aimed at the wrong target entirely. And so I'm h- I hope that I'm here as a reminder to offer you such good news, mama, because it means you don't need one more perfect thing to pull off.
You don't have to cherish every moment for moments to count for you and your family. What matters is the warmth underneath the regular days, the-- our desire, right? Our desire, the way we keep showing up, that's the thing that lasts, and I already know [00:13:00] you're already doing it. Okay. Number three that I want moms who are in the thick of it to know or remember or to be reminded of is that taking care of yourself was never selfish.
And I wish that I had let myself believe it sooner, and the moms that I work with as their life coach, I am always, wishing that we didn't have to untangle this belief so much, but this is the one that I would go-- I would gently go back and shake myself over. For, for a lot of years, I did believe that the good mom is a go go, productive, empties herself out completely.
Is just... A- again, I'm-- and whenever I say this, I'm always have to bring the caveat. It is not that I don't believe that our children are never [00:14:00] first, or I- it's not that I don't believe that we do want to not concentrate on ourselves all the time, and it's not that I don't believe that w- our children deserve our time and attention, our focus while they are under our roofs and under our care, right?
What I just know is that we go to extremes on that at the detriment of ourselves, right? That pulling ourself-- that putting ourselves, like, dead last, right? It's not the proof that we love our kids enough. So sometimes I skip the rest, and I waved off the help. That was a big thing that I want-- would go back to my past self, and I would say, "Take on more help, especially when it's offered, and let go of the things that actually..."
I did let go of the things that actually filled me back up. And if [00:15:00] I'm honest I thought that I wore that sort of depletion like a badge of honor. Look how, awesome I'm doing by pouring all of my time and energy, and I'm the one doing all this stuff. So I want to tell you what all of that self-sacrifice actually earned me Not much, right?
'Cause my k- my kids do not need me running on empty. They didn't benefit one bit from those days of stress and overwhelm and running on empty, where I had nothing left to give, or that it had me being more harsh and yelling or just yeah, just not in a loving place. What they needed was the mom who was steadier, more patient, more present, and I'm so much more of all of that when I [00:16:00] care for myself exquisitely than when I'm scraping the very bottom of the barrel.
So I've said this in the last, episodes whenever I bring this, like I know then our brains could go and think of, "Oh, then I'm doing self-care, then I'm going away for a week at a spa," right? I'm not talking about that. I'm always talking about the small, ordinary things to add to our life that keep a, a focus on, that keep us human.
It could be just a little bit more sleep. It could be asking for help without apologizing for needing it. It could be 20 minutes in a day that is just solidly yours. It's a friendship that you actually make time for. It is definitely time with God that you prioritize, that fills you back up instead of s- just sitting on your list as one more thing that you're behind on.
So please don't wait as long as I did to believe this, and that is that taking [00:17:00] care of yourself is not you taking something away from your family. It is making sure there is still a you that is left that has something to give to them. And you are allowed, no matter how many children you have, no matter if you work outside the home, if you work just inside the home, if you h- whatever age your kids are, even when they're grown, you are allowed to be a whole person right now, not someday when the house is quiet.
Right now in the middle of all of it And I know that guilt will try and show up the second you try. That little voice that says you should be doing something for someone else, that this is indulgent, that you haven't earned it. And I want you to hear me, that guilt is not proof that you are doing something wrong.
It's just an old habit, right? It's an [00:18:00] old habit where your lower brain is going to just, try and, bring you back to the way, what it's, what it is gonna tell you is being virtuous. But you can just notice that brain talking to you. You can just notice the guilt. "Huh, it's interesting it's here."
You can thank it for trying to keep you on a certain easy path that you're used to. But I want you to take that 20 minutes for yourself anyway. All right. That was number three, taking care of yourself is never selfish. Okay? And you are allowed to believe that right now. Okay. Let's move on to number four.
Four of what I want to remind or to help you know, all you moms who are in the thick of it, and that is you are not responsible for how everything turns out. [00:19:00] I know how much weight you carry on your shoulders. There's some part of you that believes that if you just do enough and worry enough and plan enough and control enough, you can somehow guarantee that your kids will turn out okay.
And so you never really get to put that weight down. And what that looks like is managing everyone's feelings all day, solving every problem before they have to sit in it for a single hard moment. Maybe you're lying awake at night as if worry itself was like a really good strategy. You're trying to steer the outcomes of several lives.
But here is what becomes so clear from the other side, from my perspective. They're ... They, your [00:20:00] children, any- anybody else that we put our that we take responsibility for, they are their own people. They always were. I did my part. I did it with love, and then they went out, and then they make their own choices and live their own lives exactly the way that they were always going to
There was so much that I thought was mine to control that was never mine to control at all. And I want you to really hear the freedom in that. Not the fear, because if it does not at all rest on you, then you actually get to stop, like, white-knuckling it, trying to make things happen. So here's a question you can sit with in regards to not being responsible to how everything turns out [00:21:00] Where are you right now gripping the outcome so tightly that you have forgotten to actually enjoy the child right in front of you?
You can love them, you can guide them, you for sure can pray for them, and then we have to let them become who they are becoming. Our jobs as mothers was never to write the whole ending. It's not in motherhood job description. Our job is to love them well and to lead ourselves well in a way where we're an example and that's it.
That is enough. And there is such [00:22:00] respite, rest in remembering that you were never meant to be their everything. You are their mom, and that is a beautiful and important thing to be. But you're not the one holding the whole universe together. You get to do your part, and we do it with love, and then we have to trust that our children are held by someone far bigger than our worries about our childrens could ever be You can actually set the weight down there right at Jesus's feet.
It has always-- our worry and our control has always had a better place to rest than our own mom shoulders Okay, that brings us to number five. Okay? [00:23:00] Number five that I want you to know that when you moms who are in the thick of it, and that is that this season is not the whole story of your motherhood.
There is so much good still ahead. Okay? And again, I'm a little bit farther along for not all of you who are listening, but maybe most. Because when you are deep in the hardest years, it can start to feel like this is just what motherhood is now, and it's always gonna be this way forever, right? The noise, the mess, the constant needing, the touched out feeling at the end of every day.
And on the most exhausting nights a small little scared, fearful voice, it like whispers to you that you had better squeeze all of your joy in right now, 'cause surely it's gonna be all downhill from here. But I'm here to tell you that's simply not true. And motherhood does not end when your kids grow up.
It changes. [00:24:00] The relationship keeps going. In a lot of ways, it gets even richer. That's how I feel right now with my grown adult children. I genuinely love spending time with them. The con- the type of conversations that we have now that I never could have had with them when they were small, and I was, like, buried in it, it's like a whole new season I did not even know to so look forward to when I was standing where you are.
My perspective personally right now, it is so fun. I love this adult and I'm still mommying. I get... Like I'm doing air quotes right now, not that you can see me. But I did get a text from my son who's in college this morning, and he's, he had to go to the urgent care where he thinks he's sick.
Oh, this, the, the mothering still happens I am talking about for example, [00:25:00] like a grown child who just, who calls just to talk. I love it. And they FaceTime. That's the, the modern way. When you have a daughter or a son where they slowly become a friend, and holidays where all that hard work of the early years, they come back to you a bit.
And watching them turn into people that you actually admire and want to be around. I'm even seeking them. And I'm not telling you to have you wish wherever you are right now to wish those years away. I'm just telling you this perspective about there being more to the story of your motherhood yet that's awesome to come.
I'm telling you so that scared little voice you might have right now just loosens its grip a bit so that you can be in today and see the wonderfulness of today without bracing for some cliff that's not even there. [00:26:00] So you just don't have to grieve these years while you're still in, in the, the depths of it, the throes of it.
You don't have to cling to it either. Oh, no. Like maybe some of you love it and you're actually clinging to it, like wanting to keep them, babies forever. Believe me, there is good in front of you too, Mama. There's a lot of it. The season is precious and it's hard, and it's also not the last good season that you're gonna get So I hope that takes some of the pressure off today.
You are allowed to just be in this season that you're in and let's not mourn ones that are still coming. Let's be hopeful about them. Okay, so those are my my five. The things that may feel enormous to you right now will not feel [00:27:00] enormous forever. What your kids take with them is not how you are performing as a mom, but it's how you are making them feel.
And taking care of yourself isn't or wasn't ever selfish. You are not responsible for how it-- everything turns out for everybody. And the season that you're in is not the whole story of your motherhood. There's so much goodness to come. And notice that not one of those was me telling you to cherish every moment.
Every single one of the five was meant to lift something off of you today, not lay something else on. So if you take one thing with you today, let it be that you are carrying more than you actually need to, and you are allowed to set some of it down starting right now And lastly, I would not be carrying out my [00:28:00] mission to be a channel of peace for Christ if I didn't invite you to come on a free call and talk with me.
I offer a free coaching consultation because it's exactly the thing that somebody offered me back when I was sinking while in the thick of it with my kids. And because I accepted that invitation and learned about coaching and hired a coach and applied the coaching to my life, that I was able to turn things around and s- and start having the mom life and just overall life that I truly can say now that I am living my dream life.
So if this is something you want too, then you will find the link to be able to book a day and time f- to meet with me, and that's al- all that information is always in the show notes. All right. Thank you for being here today, mama. Please pass on this episode to someone else who may benefit from it and to help me in my mission.[00:29:00]
All right. Thank you again for being here, and until next week, may peace be with you always. Thank you for listening to the Peaceful Mind Podcast. If you've been feeling a quiet desire for more peace and steadiness in your motherhood, I invite you to take the next step of scheduling a free coaching consultation with me.
We'll meet over Zoom to explore options and possibilities of how having a personal life coach and mentor could help you experience the exact motherhood and life your heart desires. To talk through current options, schedule a free coaching consultation today. You'll find the link to schedule in the show notes.
It would be an honor to support you at any stage of your motherhood journey.
