About this Episode

Mom guilt sucks. I can remember so many moments when my mom guilt was so debilitating that no matter how badly I needed some time alone, or a new pair of pants, or literally anything that only benefitted me — I couldn't do it. Now, you might not have had such an extreme outlook on motherhood as I did, but I bet you suffer from your own version of mom guilt whenever you try to choose yourself or give yourself grace for being human.

Left unchecked, mom guilt can weed its way through every area of your life, stealing your health, happiness, and well-being. In this week's podcast episode, I'm sharing 3 ways that you can combat mom guilt. These are tried and true tips that have helped me and dozens of my clients overcome mom guilt in many areas of our lives.\

In this episode, you’ll hear:

Why mom guilt is more dangerous than we think—and why joking about it or normalizing it is actually making things worse
How to trace your mom guilt back to its source (hint: you weren't born with it—someone gave it to you)
The power of creating a personal response to your "put yourself last" voice that actually hits differently than generic affirmations
Why feeling guilty when you take care of yourself doesn't mean you're doing something wrong—and what it actually means
Three tools to calm your nervous system so mom guilt doesn't talk you out of your self-care before you even get started

Episode Resources

When you’re ready, here’s how I can help you.

Free 4B Self-Care Framework© Guide: A great way to get started on your self-care journey, this guide provides an easy-to-use framework that makes self-care actually supportive rather than another burden on your to-do list. Get the Guide
Rituals that Replenish: Instant Access Workshop: This DIY 3-hour workshop (1 hour per week) will help you get to know your true wants and needs and will help you develop the habit of practicing one self-care ritual in your daily life. Learn More
The No Longer Last Journey®: Live Coaching Program: This 12-month program includes monthly coaching & community calls, classes, reflection guides, and weekly self-care reminders to help you overcome obstacles, improve your self-worth, and make self-care a sustainable and supportive part of your life. Learn More

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Hey, I am Mia. Hemstad I'm a wife. I'm a mom

of two kids, and I'm a trauma-informed self-care coach. I also live with diagnosed PTSD and depression. I started sharing my mental wellness journey online in 2017 when I was diagnosed with postpartum depression and anxiety. And since then I've heard from hundreds of women who all struggle with the same thing, putting ourselves last.

This is a struggle that's. Keeping so many women burned out and unhappy through no fault of our own. By the way, I've been working on my own healing as an abuse survivor since 2013, but when I became a mom, I really started to do the inner work of figuring out why I was putting myself last, and how to start prioritizing myself for the first time in my life.

This podcast is about sharing. All of those lessons with you. So if you're interested in hearing honest stories, life advice, and inspiration that encourages you to make your health, happiness, and wellbeing a priority, then definitely stick around. [00:01:00] Welcome to your no longer last journey.

Hey guys. Welcome back to the podcast. Thanks for spending time with me. It is a Sunday here in Portugal. The sky is blue and the sun is shining, and I feel very, very happy and grateful to be here. And grateful that you're tuning in. I have been recently getting back into posting more, putting myself out there more after taking a break as of last September, just slowing things down, focusing on my sleep issues.

And it's interesting how much self uh, social media can really be like a mental game, like with numbers and things like that, and comparing yourself to others. I just wanna like take a moment to just even celebrate the fact that I have the privilege of showing up here and having the resources, the camera, the audio equipment, the laptop, something to say and for you to hit play and spend your time with me is really an honor and I don't wanna lose sight of that as I go into this new chapter [00:02:00] of putting myself out there again.

I'm really, really excited. Um, I'm assuming if you clicked on this episode, it's because you struggle with mom guilt, and I'm really excited to dig into this topic today. I do have an episode on it that I did last year. To be honest, I don't even remember what I said in the last episode, but I just knew that this topic is so prevalent and so needed that I'm like, let me just give my take on it as of this moment in 2026.

Um, but before I dive into that, , let me remind you of two really important dates. So April 4th. At 12:00 PM Eastern Time, I'm gonna be teaching a free one hour workshop. This is on my weekly wellness check-in. This is my 15 minute journaling practice that I do almost every single week to help me prioritize my health, happiness, and wellbeing.

I have been using this myself since 2019. And using it with my coaching clients since 2020. And so we have years and years of experience now with this personally and with others, and I have seen it change people's lives. It really is a concrete, doable way to [00:03:00] show up for yourself and make sure that you don't wake up a year from now and realize you're totally burned out.

You don't know where the time went. You don't know what happened to your self-care, but you just. Feel lost. And this 15 minute practice is how I protect myself and my clients from falling back into that rhythm. 'cause it's so easy to put ourselves last. So show up to that workshop. It's April 4th, 12:00 PM Eastern is completely free, and a link to sign up to that is in the description.

The second date is the. Enrollment opening for my coaching program. So the no longer Last Journey coaching program is my 12 month program that includes classes, reflection guides, um, monthly coaching and journaling together. And also a private community that's not on Facebook. Where you can ask me questions, get support from other coaching members, and also get weekly accountability from me, which is a piece of my program I'm really proud of.

I regularly check in with you and encourage you to see how you're doing on your self-care goals and your self-care intention. So that program is opening Sunday, [00:04:00] April 5th, that week. Fifth through the 11th. Um, and there will be a special discount and a bonus offered only that week. So if you're on my email list, if you're on the wait list, you will hear about all of these special things.

Again, link is in the description to make sure you sign up so you can get notified of that. All right. Okay, so if you've been tuning into the last couple of episodes, a few episodes back, I talked about burnout and breaking out of the burnout cycle and giving you some tools to start that process.

And then last episode we talked about feeling disconnected from yourself. I talked about how when you become a mom, you become a new person and you have to rediscover who this person is and also reconnect with parts of you. Both of those things can be true. At the same time though, I remember thinking, should I just talk about rediscovering yourself a new version of yourself or reconnecting with the old version?

I think there. Two versions of you now. There's like the old version of you and then there's like the mother version of you and they need to find a way to coexist. And I gave tips to help you, you know, figure out what recharges your batteries again, what replenishes you, because some things that really did it for you before may [00:05:00] not be possible now, and this new version of your life were just may not be doing it for you.

So last episode was about that, if you're interested, go back to that. But today we're continuing in the theme of just like, okay Mia, how do I take care of myself and the next. Logical step was like, I need to talk about mom guilt. Because you can make the commitment to escape burnout and you can make a plan and you can start this process of experimenting to rediscover what fills you up.

But what can then get in the way? 'cause there's a million obstacles that get in the way, right. Is this. Feeling of guilt that washes over us and can sometimes be completely debilitating. It can paralyze us from taking any action. It can make us feel really bad. So like, let's say you really wanted to go to a dance class and you felt so guilty about taking the time away from your family and spending the money on the dance class that it made you, you felt so bad about it that.

Even though it was like fun, like you aren't gonna go do it again because the mom guilt has now squelched and squashed any ounce of joy that you could have gotten from that [00:06:00] class, right? So it's mom guilt is very dangerous. Like you could do all this work to go and do the thing that you wanna do, whether it's like exercise for 15 minutes or like go have dinner with your girlfriend.

But if the mom guilt is left unchecked, if the mom guilt is not taken care of, if you just try to ignore it, it just continues to grow to the point where it can prevent you from doing things on a regular basis. And we don't want you to just practice self-care when you're already burned out or to start taking care of yourself when you're already depressed.

We want this to be a consistent and sustainable part of your life. So addressing mom guilt is a huge part of that. I think it's something that we, we joke about, we laugh about, we normalize, but it's actually really dangerous and it should not go unchecked. And so I'm gonna be teaching you three ways that you can fight against mom guilt and really address it so that it can have less power over you, and so that you can have more agency and control of your life and feel good when you make an effort to take care of yourself and feel proud of that.

And feel good about that without mom guilt, stealing the joy from that process. Right? And [00:07:00] so the first thing I wanted to share with you is to question or challenge your mom guilt. Like too often we let this negative voice, I call it the put yourself last voice. So mom, guilt for me is a persona. It's my put myself last voice and she loves to tell me.

That I have too much to do, that I don't deserve this, that I shouldn't spend money on myself, that I should only do X, Y, z if my family also benefits and they're also there to enjoy it and yada yada I have learned to not let that voice go in check. That voice does not get to relive rent free in my head.

That voice does not get to tell me what to do. That voice does not get to dictate what I do with my life, how I spend my money, how I spend my time, how I spend my energy, and that voice does not have my best interest. In mind and what is for my best interest is also in the best interest of my family. So I do not let that voice go unchecked.

So how do you question or challenge your mom guilt or your put yourself last voice? You need to ask it some [00:08:00] firm questions. Number one, where did it come from? Did this mom guilt come from maybe your mother? Your mother-in-law? Your father, your father-in-law religion, church. There are some messages I heard from the pulpit that are so traumatic, I'm not even gonna repeat it.

Um, did you learn it from other authority figures in your life? You know, did you learn it from your grandparents? The aunties at the baby shower who all gave you unsolicited advice about how you should take care of yourself or not take care of yourself in order to be a good mother. There's a lot of places and spaces, including societal messaging.

Right. What TV shows are you witnessing? Commercials, just overall messaging, even messaging in the workplace, messaging from coworkers. Where did the voice, the mom guilt come from? Because behind the guilt, the feeling of guilt. Which, let me just define this for a second, mom. Guilt is the feeling of [00:09:00] being bad, of having done something wrong for taking care of yourself or doing something for yourself.

Spending money, time, or energy on yourself that does not directly benefit your children, your spouse, your partner, or anybody else. It's something that just benefits you and you feel bad about it. That's how I would define mom guilt. And it's not just the feeling, the feeling is fueled by a voice. It's fueled by the put yourself last voice.

So it's really important that you figure out who is speaking to you, whose voice is that? Where did that come from? Because you were not born thinking that you don't deserve fun and joy, love and care to have your basic needs met, to have your dreams and goals achieved. You weren't born that way. And I can see this even in my daughter, how like.

Wildly expressive and demanding. She is if she wants something, she makes it known. She makes it known loud and clear, [00:10:00] and she repeats herself until she gets it or until you give her a reason why she can't. She's so unashamed and unapologetic in speaking her needs. My son too, but I'm mentioning my daughter because.

Right as since she's a girl, it's easy for me to like see myself in her and be like, whoa, when did, when did that version of me die? So it's really important that you figure out where this voice came from. I know for me it's a combination of influences for a lot of my clients, it's a combination of influences and it is so powerful when you take the time and the space to actually sit with that question and figure out who is fueling.

This, put yourself lost voice that is dumping gas on the fire of your mom. Guilt that is making it worse. And sometimes you'll realize that the person who gave you that voice. Is still in your life and it's a really powerful moment and it's a difficult moment. And [00:11:00] it's a moment when then you get to decide, okay, I need to limit how much I interact with this person, or I need to set a boundary with how they talk to me.

So many things can be done to help minimize this voice and reduce this power over you, but until you figure out where it's coming from, girl, it's gonna keep running the show. this is also part of why I have to regularly unfollow people on social media. Lots of different podcasts and influencers, I just know don't listen to anymore.

Um, because I realized they were making me feel mom guilt. And so, yeah, when you figure out where it's coming from, it enables you to take that next step of like, where do I trim away or reduce, or limit or completely delete these influences from my life that are hurting me? Another question you can ask your mom guilt is, is it really bad or selfish for me to be taking care of my physical, emotional, and mental health?

Is it, is self neglect really a good thing? Because if I look at what has occurred from my self neglect, [00:12:00] it has only resulted in pain and hardship for my family. It did no good for anybody. Was I living in alignment with the way I was told to live? Yeah, I was hitting the nail on the head. Um, when it came to following.

Those voices, but who is it really serving? It wasn't serving me and it was definitely not serving my family. Another question you can ask is, where did I learn that caring for myself as an individual was supposed to die the moment I became a mother? Who told you that you were no longer an individual?

Being a mother is interesting 'cause a lot of people talk about like, we get to be off the clock like. In our jobs, and you know, when you're a teacher, you sign out when, if you're a marketing director, you sign out if you even are a doctor. There are times when you get to sign out, check out, clock out.

Being a mother is different and that it's an identity. It is. It's absolutely an identity, but we need to remember that all the responsibilities and tasks that go along with being [00:13:00] a mother. Are things that we still need to clock out from. Like I'm still a mother to my two kids. When I clock out and I do something for me to rest, reset, recharge, I'm still a mother no matter what.

It's who I am, but we have to separate the role and identity of motherhood from the responsibilities that come with parenthood. They're not one and the same. We get to take a step back from our responsibilities. I'm not saying that there isn't. A logistical weave of magic that needs to happen when we take a step back from our responsibilities.

But I just want you to know that just because you became a mother doesn't mean that you need to wear the hat of your responsibilities every moment of every day and never get to clock out. And never get to take a break. That fuels burnout. That fuels mom guilt that tells you you are not a good mom if you take a break.

And that is so untrue. And again, figure out where that. Boys came from and asked that question, when did I adopt this belief that like I no longer am an individual? Because while I am a mother, I am still Mia. And Mia. Loves to [00:14:00] dance, loves to go on adventures, loves to go hiking and go to the beach.

Loves to read, loves to journal, loves to explore, loves to connect with people. And I'm allowed to do that even though I'm now a mother, right? And then also ask the mothers who do live by this, do you admire them? Do you wanna swap places with them? Would you trade lives with them? Are you like, yeah, that mom who's so self-sacrificing and never takes care of herself and feels super guilty when she does anything for herself.

Yeah, I wanna be her. Because that's what you're emulating by allowing mom guilt to run. The show to live rent free in your head, dictating your actions, your behaviors, your choices, keeping you stuck in patterns that make you feel awful. Challenge that voice. Don't let it just live rent free. Don't let it just live without consequence, wreaking havoc on your life.

It really is something that you adopted over time you were not born with. And the same way that you adopted [00:15:00] it, you can learn to let go of it. It's not easy, but it can be done because the same way that your mind was programmed and conditioned, you can decondition and deprogram. I have done it and I have seen many of my coaching clients do it.

It is possible and it is a lot of work. I'm not gonna say it isn't. It is a lot of work, but it's some of the most worthwhile work you're gonna do in your life. Okay. Number two, create a response that resonates. Okay? This is the same thing as saying, create an affirmation. Create a mantra, but it's super important that you define a response to that.

Put yourself last voice, that mom guilt, that really resonates with you, which means it feels true. It feels like it's connected to maybe whoever is, whoever has put that voice in your head, I could come up with so many examples, but there's one example that I really love from a client who I remember when she shared this, it was like in real time we were journaling and identifying self-care that was struggling and identifying [00:16:00] why.

And she was really struggling to take a shower. On a regular basis. And I was asking her, why do you think that is? And she was like, well, I grew up in a house with a lot of siblings. And so we were always told like, don't take too long in the shower. Other people need to shower. Don't waste water, don't waste hot water.

You know, the cost of it, the time whatever. And even though she's grown women and lives on her own, she realized, oh my gosh, that's where it came from. And I don't have anyone else waiting to shower and I'm the one who pays the water bill. So why am I. Pushing myself to take these short, fast showers. And the reason why short, fast showers were also a problem for this particular person is because she was experiencing chronic and extreme fatigue.

And I also have gone through this, and when you have the added burden of not only do I need to shower, but it needs to be fast, when you have fatigue, it can feel. Horrible because you, when you have fatigue, you have to move slowly. Everything is hard. Everything is difficult. [00:17:00] Everything is heavy. And taking a shower is already difficult.

When I went through a lot of fatigue. There was a time I had a bathtub and it was amazing. That's literally how I took all my showers, was sitting in a bathtub. That's just to give you context, I could only lay down, right? And taking a shower, standing up, having to soap your body, it's a whole thing.

Okay? So having to take a fast shower was just like, I can't do it. And now I realize why I'm not showering as often. And then when I asked her, okay, so the put yourself last voice is telling you you can't shower unless you take a fast shower. But that's not true anymore. And you now know that that came from your parents who don't live with you anymore.

What do you wanna say to that? Put yourself last voice. What do you wanna say to that voice that makes you feel guilty? If you wanna take a long shower, if you wanna take your time, she was like, I wanna say that I'm an adult and I make the rules. I'm an adult now and I [00:18:00] make the rules. And when she said that.

I saw everyone nodding, like it hit everyone like in a good way, and that's what I mean by creating a response that resonates. I really don't want you to just pick some random affirmation that doesn't even feel like it's speaking to the problem that caused this in the first place. It really needs to be a process of identifying what am I struggling with?

Why am I struggling with it? What is my, put yourself last voice telling me around this? Where did it come from and what do I wanna say? So when you hear your mom or your dad saying like, hurry up, take a fast shower. You're wasting water, you're running the heat too long in your head. You can say, um, I'm an adult now and I make the rules.

Or I'm an adult now and I pay the bills. I'm an adult now and you don't get to tell me how long my shower is. Okay, that's gonna resonate so much more and combat that mom guilt so much more than some random affirmation that's like, I am worthy of a long shower [00:19:00] and like if I am worthy of fill in the blank works for you, fantastic.

But what I'm trying to communicate to you is that the best affirmations are the ones that come from this process of identifying where this came from in the first place. Because like I said, you didn't. You weren't born with this guilt, you were programmed into this guilt by somebody outside of you. Um, and you need to respond to that voice in a way that makes sense, that really speaks to the issue and where it came from.

So I do wanna give you a few examples though, in case they resonate or jog your mind for, like, inspire you to come up with something for yourself. One of my favorite responses to mom guilt for me is this guilt is misplaced and it's not mine to carry. It recognizes that a lot of this guilt has come from other people, patriarchy, my parents religion, and it's like, this isn't mine.

I don't have anything to feel bad about. This is misplaced. Oh, I'm not gonna carry this. I'm not gonna hold this in my chest and make it me feel heavy all day. [00:20:00] And I literally will visualize placing the guilt into a trash bag, putting it into a dumpster, and setting it on fire like a blaze in my mind.

There goes. Burning to ash, the crappy things that tell me I'm not good enough, I'm not worthy, I'm not allowed. I don't have permission on fire. You don't have to have as violent of a metaphor or analogy or a visualization. It works for me. Do what works for you. The next one I have is I have done nothing wrong.

Taking care of myself is a good thing. Remember, guilt is a feeling we have when we've done something wrong. Taking care of yourself is not wrong, so reminding yourself, oh, I'm feeling guilty, but I've done nothing wrong. Taking care of myself is a good thing. Next is. Taking care of myself is my responsibility, and I am being responsible by doing this.

Because a lot of times that voice says to us, Ugh, you're spending this money. You're not doing the laundry right now. You're being irresponsible. You have things to do. Oh, wait, when did we decide? That taking care of ourselves was irresponsible, and doing the [00:21:00] laundry is the only responsible thing. No. Doing laundry is responsible and taking care of yourself is responsible.

They're all responsible. So when your brain tries to tell you that taking care of yourself is irresponsible, you a mind that put yourself last voice, no. Taking care of myself is responsible and it's also my responsibility. Nobody else can do this but me. The next affirmation that I love is neglecting myself, is participating in my own oppression.

Remember that a lot of people benefit systems, structures power, that loves for women to be burned out and exhausted. 'cause women who are burned out and exhausted, we don't. Advocate for policy change. We don't push for more more paid leave, more affordable childcare better playgrounds, better public spaces, and third spaces for us to meet and greet and play and live in better libraries like we, they, like people in power want us to be burned out and drowning so that we don't have the capacity [00:22:00] to collaborate, organize, and make change.

So remember that when you are neglecting yourself, you are participating in your own oppression and refuse to do that. The last idea I have for you here is I want my kids to see their mom take care of herself. That's a simple one that I think really anyone can use because at the end of the day, do you really want your kids to grow up and assimilate a.

I hope that's the right word, but like connect parenthood with self neglect. Like, oh, I'm a parent now, so I need to be exhausted and burned out and miserable all the time. 'cause that's what parents are because I know that, that's what I thought. I thought, I'm a mom now. So being miserable, resentful, and completely exhausted on the brink of a breakdown is my destiny.

That's what it is. And it, it is what it is. No. I want my kids to see a mom who takes care of herself, and if that's the only reason that I can find to overcome mom guilt and take care of myself, then I'll do it. Because even if I feel still a little bit bad about it, I'm like, no. This is about modeling what I want my kids to see as [00:23:00] acceptable and good and important for them to try to come up with a response that really resonates with you.

And hopefully those could provide some inspiration. Okay. Number three, feel the discomfort and do your self care. Anyway, this is a huge part of the no longer last journey that I remind my clients of every single month. You're not going to identify where your mom guilt came from and identify a response that really speaks to it, that resonates with you, and then it's gonna go away forever.

This is a practice that you have to do over time. This is a process, and I will say that there are certain things that used to feel so. Guilty about, so guilty to the point where like I would stop doing the thing, like taking myself to coffee alone. I love doing that, and now I just do it. No problem. I used to be like, no, I have to wait until Sunday after church.

So that. My husband, myself, and the kids can all go to the coffee shop and [00:24:00] all get a coffee and a tree and a drink and enjoy it together. Because if I'm gonna spend money, it should be on for all the family to benefit. It can't just be for me. And if I hire childcare, I should really be working or doing chores or running errands.

I shouldn't go to the coffee shop while the babysitter's here. Like it was a whole thing. No. I probably take myself to a coffee solo once a week, sometimes more often, and it is amazing. And so I share this 'cause I want you to know that something that is truly ridden with mom guilt and debilitating and difficult, can really become easy if you practice it over time.

And I wanna set expectations here. 'cause I don't want you to think that you're gonna repeat affirmations three times. Hoorah, hoorah, and it's gonna go away. Mom guilt is something that, again, has been programmed into you probably over decades at this point. And so you have to be patient with how long it's gonna take to deprogram and decondition your mind from self neglect version of you to self-care version of you.

So part of this process is, okay, [00:25:00] Mia, so like, I'm trying to take care of myself. I feel really guilty. How do I move through this discomfort? Essentially you're gonna have to learn what practices help to regulate your nervous system. What practices help to condition your nervous system to tolerate the discomfort, rather than feeling like, oh my God, I'm a bad person.

I'm gonna die. This is terrible. You have to figure out ways to calm your nervous system. I'm remember that just because this feels stressful doesn't mean it's. Your safety is threatened. Doesn't mean that you're a bad person, doesn't mean that you're a bad mother. Um, and there's a lot of different ways to help your nervous system calm down in those moments.

Like when I'm sitting in my car. About to go into a massage, which is still something that makes me feel very uncomfortable, like reminding myself that I'm allowed to spend this money and spend this time to take care of my body in this way. Another thing that still gets me super riled up is, buying myself clothes.

Oh my goodness. It's very, very difficult. So, I have a few things that I love to do and I'm just gonna share them with [00:26:00] you as a menu of options to regulate your nervous system. Calm yourself down when you're feeling like, oh my gosh, because I don't want you to cancel those plans. I don't want you to cancel that appointment.

I don't want you to cancel childcare. I don't want you to cancel the date. Like I want you to find ways to calm your nervous system down and take care of yourself anyway. So one of my favorite, most successful ones is just deep breathing. I'm not talking about breath work. That's like the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and then the 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, whatever.

I don't like to count, actually, I just wanna breathe in. As long as I can through my nose and exhale as long as I can out my mouth and just make each one as long as you can. And I do that probably five to 10 times. I don't really like to count. I don't know why it like stresses me out to have to keep track of what number I'm on.

I just do it until I feel calm. I keep my eyes closed. I put my hands on my chest, sometimes on my stomach just to feel the physicality of that breathing, and it helps to calm me down. And usually while I'm doing that, I'm saying some sort of affirmation [00:27:00] that responds to what I'm dealing with. Like usually it's like this guilt is not mine to carry, you know, this guilt is misplaced, it's not mine to carry.

Taking care of myself is the most responsible thing I can do. So try that. Also repeating affirmations to yourself. Just cover that. Journaling about how you're feeling and encouraging yourself on the page. Sometimes I have to do this when I'm gonna buy myself new clothes. I'm not even kidding you. I journal about how the reason why this feels really unsafe and irresponsible is 'cause there was a time.

Throughout most of my childhood where I was responsible for buying my own clothes, even though I had no real way to make money. So I just always struggled with, um, having clothes that fit me or clothes that felt represented my style or clothes that I liked. And so it feels really difficult still to buy myself clothes.

And that's really hard because it's really upsetting for me because I work really hard and I make good money. Now I'm an adult and yet I still struggle with this. So, journaling about where that came from and then encouraging myself on the page like. You're a grown woman now. You deserve to look good and feel [00:28:00] good.

You deserve to buy clothes that fit you and that make you feel beautiful. You're no longer that kid that is digging clothes out of the bottom of a giveaway trash bag, hoping that something in there is gonna fit you at some point. You're not there anymore, girl, it's gonna be okay. So I bet you you have an experience from your childhood that's also like.

Fueling this mom guilt and adding gas to this fire, right? Making it worse. Journaling sometimes with those more complex situations enables you to really like tie all those pieces together. And then encourage yourself on the page. Another thing I love is butterfly tapping. I don't do it nearly enough, but it's where you cross your arms over.

So like your right hand is touching your left shoulder and your left hand is touching your right shoulder, and you just go back and forth breathing, tapping each one.

And what this does is it activates your parasympathetic nervous system, which is basically your rest and digest state. So it helps to move you out of fight, flight, fawn, freeze, and into [00:29:00] rest and digest. It's a great tool to use to calm down and breathe. Another thing that's underrated that we need to do more of as women and support each other is reaching out to someone who knows how to encourage you to take care of yourself and reminds you that your needs matter.

Now, I know that not everybody has a friend like this. It's taken me a decade of searching to find a friend like this. But again, this is what my coaching program space is for my private community space is for, because not everybody has this privilege.

You can always reach out to me and know that I will always hype you up and be in your corner to encourage you to take care of yourself. The bottom line here though, is. Don't expect yourself to feel no guilt. Know that you're gonna feel uncomfortable, and it's really important. I just wanna wrap up by saying this.

It's really important that you know this because I think a lot of people think that when they feel activated, anxious, nervous, overwhelmed, guilty, they go, oh, I'm feeling a negative feeling, so I must be doing something wrong, and I just need to stop this. I need to not do this 'cause it makes me feel bad, but I need you to sit [00:30:00] with the fact that maybe it feels bad because you've been conditioned and programmed to neglect yourself.

Because a lot of people benefit when you do that. And I'm not just saying this as a talking point that I heard from a feminist podcast. I am saying this because I have worked in policy work for six years and I have seen how. The government, state and federal doesn't have to spend our tax dollars on things that would benefit us as mothers and as parents if we don't demand it.

And I will tell you what, moms are not gonna be able to organize and demand anything if we are drowning in our own homes, barely trying to survive. Okay. So I just wanna remind you that just because you feel bad doesn't mean it is bad. Doesn't mean you should run away, cancel, decline, forget about it. It actually might be a sign that you need to regulate.

Calm down and find a way [00:31:00] to take care of yourself anyway. And come back to equilibrium, feeling grounded, reconnecting with yourself. 'cause let me tell you, when I felt really bad about going to dance. Class, spending money and time away from my family, my kiddos, when they were young to go dance, I would sit in that car feeling awful, breathe regularly, calm down, go in, enjoy the heck outta that dance class because I have put my mom guilt in its place in the dumpster on fire, and then get in my car all sweaty and feeling like I did it.

I feel reconnected. I feel recalibrated. I feel calm. I feel confident. I feel empowered because mom, guilt did not take this away from me. Don't let mom guilt take any more from you. It's already taken too much from you. It's already stolen. So many precious moments, opportunities, experiences, because it is depleting you of your power and of your energy and of your agency.

This is your life. You have control. I know a lot of things are outside of control, but there are certain things that you can control and do you really wanna give it away [00:32:00] to that voice inside of your head that was planted by auntie so-and-so at that one party that told you something? No, let put her in her place.

Don't let her run the show. Don't let those voices live. Run free. Question them, challenge them. Tell them to scram. So those are my three tips for you. I hope they resonated. Leave me a comment if any one of them were your favorite. And as I close up, I just wanna remind you again. Saturday, April 4th is the free weekly Wellness check-in workshop.

It's so good learning a practice that's gonna help you bring everything I've talked about into a 15 minute weekly practice. And then enrollment is opening for my coaching program that no longer last journey. This is your opportunity to get a big discount and a bonus if you enroll the week of the 5th of April through the 11th.

So don't say I didn't told you. Sign up at the links in the description and I will see you next time. Thank you so much for spending time with me. Bye.

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