Category: Mom guilt

Mama Maker: Talla, Honoring Grief with the Gift of Life

Posted in Food allergies, Gratitude, Grief, Mom guilt, Mompreneur, SiblingsTagged , , , , Leave a comment

Talla Kuperman lived more life in her first five years as an Iranian refugee, and again when she lost her brother to cancer at age 30, than many do in a lifetime. And yet, she radiates joy and immediate warmth—both of which are propelling her entrepreneurial journey as the founder of Love Talla fine jewelry fingerprint pendants—as I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know as my first client, friend in my new neighborhood and fellow food allergy mama.

“I was born into the war and the revolution had already been happening for so long, so that was normal life to me, you know,” she says. “I have memories where we were asleep in our apartment in Tehran and all of a sudden, the sirens would start wailing throughout the capital of the city, and if you looked out the window whoever was awake at that time, or whatever lights were on, would immediately be shut down.”

“My mom would scoop me up and scoop my brother up–we lived in a high rise apartment at the top floor– so she would run us downstairs and into the bottom floor, where it’s the safest if a building gets bombed or comes crumbling down, and she would hide us under the stairs and that’s where we would wait until it was safe again to come out.”

Talla recalls memories of driving by friends’ homes in piles of rubble, and hiding her mother’s precious ring at the airport as her family carried suitcases full of the belongings they were allowed to take out of the country as they boarded a plane for Switzerland.

“I remember walking up to like what we would consider TSA,” she says. “One of the guards took my doll out of my hand and ripped her head open to look inside of her body to make sure I wasn’t taking anything. I remember being so traumatized by it, because I’m like, ‘he killed my doll!’ But luckily, he did not see the ring that I was hiding in my hand so that was a good thing.”

“Still to this day, every time I see that ring in her jewelry box, I remember that night when we left Iran.”

Talla’s family made their way to safe haven upon arrival at the embassy in Switzerland, where they were placed in shared housing with fellow refugees. Her attitude towards the experience is a good reminder of the resilience that kids display in even the most trying of circumstances.

“For me and my brother it was incredibly fun because we got to live in basically a big house with 50 other people and a ton of other kids, and we got to spend the night with our parents every night in the same twin or full sized bed–it was tiny but for us that was so much fun because, what kid doesn’t want to sleep with their parents every night?”

“I think about it from my parents’ point of view, and it just blows my mind, the bravery that they had to escape that kind of a situation and get their children to a country where they can actually have a life.”

Eventually, a two-week hotel stay awaiting approval to join family members that would accept full financial responsibility for her family in the United States turned into three years. In the meantime, Talla found warmth and beauty in Switzerland as she “acclimated really quickly.”

“I remember my mom taking me to the grocery store so that she could ask me questions in Farsi and I could translate for her to the employees,” she says. “I just I never really felt that different. I remember falling in love with my teacher, because I just thought she was so beautiful. I’d never seen blond hair and blue eyes and she was so sweet.”

Talla arrived stateside in time for her ninth birthday, when her family was able to settle in to San Diego after a temporary stay with family in Los Angeles.

“My dad was educated in Santa Barbara, but he was in love with San Diego and he always talked about San Diego as heaven on earth,” she says. “The beaches and the people; it was like a fairy tale in my mind. My mother had another brother who lived in in San Diego in North County in Escondido and so after we wore out our welcome in LA, we moved into his house and then eventually he helped us get on our feet and get our own place.”

Fast forward to her twenties, Talla outgrew her surroundings and traveled the world after getting a degree in biochemistry.

“I told my mom I needed to find myself but all I really found was more partying and more fun and more adventures,” which continued into her next decade as a bachelorette in LA and her “really wonderful career in insurance, which is an incredibly well kept secret, as far as careers go for young people who are willing to work hard—there’s a lot of entertaining.”

Talla started her next decade near her brother’s side as his cancer battle continued for five months beyond her 30th birthday.

“It was a rollercoaster,” she recalls. “One month, he would be so sick and I would be so worried about him and I had all sorts of anxiety and depression over it, because he and I were incredibly close—he was my best friend. Then the next month, we would get news that his tumors had shrunk and he was doing incredible and he was responding to the new chemo treatments.”

“For the people who have been through something like that, you hold on to every shred of hope—one positive thing that the doctors deliver to you—so that we don’t crumble into an absolute mess,” she says. “You can’t really feel joy when you’re in that situation. There’s always this hole in your heart.”

Five years later Talla met her husband Zach in an elaborate setup at a friend’s dinner party. The southern gentleman impressed her with phone calls in the era of text messages and dating apps. They returned to his hometown of Austin shortly after they had their daughter Lexi.

“I remember from all of the times that we talked about his childhood he had this like ideal all-American, homegrown childhood,” she says. “I had a great childhood, I don’t want to minimize my childhood, but it was nothing like his and it was definitely not all-American in any way, shape or form. I love the stories that I would hear from him and I really wanted to provide that to my child.”

Talla’s idyllic vision for her baby was tempered by something else that bonds us together as mothers, which is being traumatically flung into the world of food allergies that doctors initially missed or dismissed.

“Every kid has their thing, and my kid has severe food allergies,” she says, describing the first clues that something was wrong in the first month. “She wasn’t gaining weight and she was a very emaciated looking, eczema baby. I remember talking to the pediatrician about it, and she was like ‘no, this is normal, don’t worry about it, just breastfeed her.’”

“I started cutting out dairy from my diet, but every morning I was eating like piles of almonds and lots of eggs and really nutritious food because I knew I was then going to pass it on to her through my breast milk,” she says. “I wanted that chubby Gerber baby, and so I was just trying my hardest to do that, not realizing that I am eating everything she’s allergic to, I’m touching everything she’s allergic to and then touching her body, and this poor child has like hives up the wazoo.”

Talla introduced scrambled eggs at 6 months old, like many parents do, to which her daughter hesitated. So she tried again a month later at a restaurant.

“My baby started to turn purple,” she recalls watching her daughter’s skin change color. “Within 10 seconds, it was like purple, white, pink blotches, purple, white, pink blotches and around her lips, she started to turn blue.”

Like any of us facing our first allergic reaction as a newcomer, Talla assumed they should rush home to Benadryl and it wasn’t until later that she realized, “in hindsight, what I should have done was rushed her to the hospital.”

“For how allergic Lexi is to the foods that she’s allergic to, seeing the allergist once every eight months to challenge her with the food was not going to cut it for us,” she says, referring to typical food allergy protocol of “challenging” a specific allergen in the form of a muffin or some other small dose and hoping a reaction doesn’t occur over the course of hours sitting in an allergist’s office with your small child.

“We wanted to get her to a point where she could eventually live a normal life as an older kid,” she says. “People don’t think that you can treat a food allergy. What they say is just avoid it. Well, first of all, that’s not a solution. At some point, something’s going to happen.”

Fortunately, the pandemic brought its first of two silver linings for Talla and her family. Originally, she was placed on a 2.5 year-long waitlist for a tolerance induction program at the Southern California Food Allergy Institute, but with people in lockdown and not traveling, she got a call to start the program within a week’s time.

“We threw her on a plane and went to Socal Food Allergy and started our little adventure in using immunotherapy with food to treat her for her various anaphylaxis food allergies,” she says.

The other silver lining also comes in yellow gold and rose gold. While the pandemic stirred up Talla’s grief watching families lose loved ones without being able to hold their hands in the hospital, she was inspired to create a way to stay close to those we love, even when they’re no longer within reach. Love Talla launched with great success shortly after her 40th birthday, thanks in part to Mother’s Day and the many milestones since.

As we’ve all grieved loss in different forms these past few months, Talla’s shining tribute to her brother and his legacy to “love her life” has inspired many. Not to mention it’s also been “an emotional roller coaster, but it has been worth it. It’s worth every single tear,” she recently told the Austin-American Statesman.

Next up, Talla is ushering the return of best friend necklaces, as profiled recently along with jewelry heavyweights like Kendra Scott, in the Wall Street Journal.

The world is just starting to see how much she sparkles.

Mama Shaker: April, Finding Flow on the Other Side of Disruption

Posted in Career, Family time, Mom guilt, Mompreneur, Podcasts, Time management, Work from home, working momTagged , , , , Leave a comment

April Beach grew up tumbling around the waves of California and Hawaii long before she established the rhythm of entrepreneurial life as a mom of three boys.

“I learned how to stay calm in really scary situations,” she says, a skill which helped propel the growth of her companies while her kids were still babies.

“Frankly, then it was like survival,” April recalls. “I would literally have 20 minutes to work and then I would have to go breastfeed, and then 15 minutes to work and then break up a fight, or three minutes to work and somebody fell down the stairs.”

Fire drill scenarios are never out of the realm of possibility when managing a house of (now) teenage boys, food allergies, multiple businesses and a podcast.

“I’ve always designed my companies in a way that I could be the mom that I wanted to be,” says April. “I don’t believe anybody makes a better leader than a woman. We have the ability to see things in a different way, with a deeper purpose.”

This means embracing disruption, instead of constantly bracing for “if I was going to be interrupted,” and instead preparing for “when I was going to be interrupted, I knew exactly what I had to come back and do.”

As April’s kids become increasingly independent, she now structures her week to match her energy output.

“Every day is different, but it’s strategically different for a reason,” she says. “My business work, or content creation, or anything I need to do that is original thought or laying out any sort of plans or roadmaps is always Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday–what I call messy day.”

April reserves the end of the week for her clients and what she describes as “brain work,” where she can be “totally 100% focused on building their business, their offers, their marketing, all the things that they need,” followed by a weekend to recuperate.

“I am a big advocate of what I call burning the picket fence—burning what society says is right and wrong, and how we parent, and how we make money, and how we work, or how we don’t work,” she says.

In fact, April welcomed cameras into her home to provide a behind-the-scenes look at how she and her family Burn the Picket Fence. In one episode, the tears that follow a call from her son’s school about food allergy protocol in the middle of the workday hits painfully close to home.

“We are worthy of the walk that we’re supposed to walk, even when we don’t feel like it because we don’t always feel like it,” she says. “We are worthy of that walk that was only designed for us. Nobody else can take that walk but us.”

Burning the picket fence also gives us permission to surrender to what we need instead of sustaining a pace merely because we can.

“I always wanted to do ‘all the things’ and frankly I did a really great job at doing it all, and now I’m realizing that I don’t want that anymore,” she says.

“I believe I’m soul-tied to the ocean and it’s just always been a part of who I am,” she says. “The hardest and the best lessons I’ve ever learned have been taught to me from the ocean. But now getting in that same flow state, I’ve had to learn how to tap into that being in different parts of the country.”

“Right now I need the ocean,” April says, after living in Colorado for 20 years. “I definitely think I’m ready for my beach house. I have to get back to that. It’s like going home.”

Mama Shaker: Gladys, Summoning Our Superpowers

Posted in Career, Childcare, Family time, Mom guilt, Mompreneur, Return to work, Work from home, working mom, Workplace cultureTagged , , , , Leave a comment

Gladys Simen is known as the “motivation whisperer” among friends and colleagues–something we could all use right now. She’s recognized her own courage to propel forward through any circumstances, whether that’s starting over in five different countries or navigating the compounding responsibilities of working motherhood.

“I came to a country that was not originally mine with no support system and it stretched me and I didn’t break,” she recalls.

For Gladys, it took a pandemic and racial tension reaching a tipping point to finally recognize her superpowers: being brave and “super acutely aware of things.”

“There’s a lot of things that changed in the world,” she says, reflecting on 2020. “It hit me hard–harder than I thought it would–because I’m parenting Black kids, so I had to start thinking about what am I leaving for them not to have the same struggle.”

“Every parent, no matter what color you are or race or creed or whatever, you want the best for your children,” she says. “I want my kids to look at me and say ‘you contributed to this being a better place.'”

Another superpower Gladys had to get comfortable with is being a role model. She’s quick to point out that it took courage to recognize her influence beyond her own children, and recalls a time when she hesitated to assert herself publicly.

“I discovered that having an edge is not a bad thing,” she says. “I realized that using my voice brings me more support than I thought. People come and say, actually I like the new Gladys better.”

Now, she’s expanding the use of her forces for good to help people define post-pandemic life on their own terms at www.mylifecouch.com.

“I won’t be shocked or surprised if people now realize maybe that life is not about racing to have a title anymore,” she says. “It could be just being present or enjoying what you’re doing. I’m trying to create that platform for other people, because that’s what fuels me.”

Gladys is particularly passionate about the intersection of career and motherhood, having been through her own transformation after her first and second experiences returning to work after having a baby. She encourages new moms to focus on everything gained in the process, especially during a particularly rough day (or year).

“You’re more powerful than you think because you have that tiny human being that you created and you have gone through a crash course of any leadership thing that people can teach you,” she says.

It’s one of the reasons that Gladys gets so frustrated when people in the workplace don’t recognize–over even go so far to discount–the superpowers that only motherhood can teach you.

“Becoming a mom is juggling so many things at once and still showing up,” she points out. “I think boards of directors or companies need more moms because you know how to make things work with very little.”

Gladys wants to flip the script on how we often react when presented with a list of qualifications in a job description or career development plan.

“You should be coming with a badge, ‘I’m a mother. I tick all those boxes.'”

She’s also learned that it takes a lot of courage to say no and stay true to what provides meaning in your current situation.

“Every single day you wake up, there’s an opportunity to do something different, better, greater, bigger,” she says. “There’s no right or wrong answer.”

Gladys gained the 20/20 vision we were all hoping for—and in some cases may need to do a double take to realize is within us.

“I’m having so much fun building amazing human beings and satisfying their curiosity,” she says. “This is the amazing age where they will never be six and three again, where they’re just exploring and seeing the world through their eyes. It’s magnificent. It’s success for me right now.”

Even though Gladys had to adjust to lockdowns and virtual school while juggling her full-time technology role, she loves that her children have so much more access to her.

“They know that I’m their best friend because we can go and jump in a mud puddle because we want to,” she says. “These are the moments that I was not able to give them before.”

“I usually say the superpower’s inside you and you don’t realize it until it is time.”

Mama Maker: Lisa, Growing Stronger with Grief

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Lisa Herrington emerged from the most unfathomable experience a parent can have by choosing connection over confinement, ultimately helping others do the same.

“I was pretty quiet for like those first six or seven months because I didn’t know if I was going to survive it,” she says. “You suddenly feel like you’re completely alone and nobody understands what you’re going through, and I was so scared of the emotions that I was feeling.”

The life that Lisa and her husband had envisioned before they went to the hospital to deliver twins looked tragically different as they cradled one of their babies for the last time and left the other in the care of the NICU for six weeks.

“I couldn’t really separate the grief and the postpartum,” she says. “I had a child that was also living through this with me and I think that’s what changed it for me; this moment of ‘this is his story too’ and this story cannot end sad. It’s going to take a lot to fight out of this, but he’s worth it. My family’s worth it.”

Walking into a room filled with parents and a vivacious moderator who had been through similar experiences gave Lisa the courage to step out of her solitude.

“I remember thinking that things happen to good people—we’re all good people in here,” she realized in that moment. “I saw this person who had climbed out of a place where I was. I was like, I’m going to get there.”

And get there she did. Lisa went on to moderate the group and comfort parents in the NICU.

“You probably want to punch me in the face right now and that’s okay,” she would tell them. “You can be mad. I understand there might be a time months or years down the road where you’ll appreciate knowing that you’re not alone in this.”

Lisa was also determined to strengthen her marriage in therapy after reading that 80 percent of couples who lose a child don’t make it.

“Grief can sometimes be selfish where it’s all about you, it’s all about your feelings, all about your emotions and how sad you are and how life is so unfair,” she says.

With the combination of exercise, therapy and anti-depressants, she was able to “stop this wheel turning in my head of the guilt” and continue her “self exploration of what worked in terms of surviving grief as hard as I was grieving.”

Lisa finally reached a point where she was able to reconnect with people outside of her circle of grieving parents, and close friends and family.

“I think the hardest part in the beginning is the loneliness and that’s sort of a catch-22 because you also need that space,” she says. “I am a huge extrovert. I was just too nervous about what I was feeling to have a lot of people in our life.”

She also returned to her fitness studio, FIT House Davis even though she would “leave sobbing” at first, overwhelmed with memories of being pregnant.

“You have to just know that the first time you do things after a loss—any type of loss—they’re going to feel a lot different than they did before the loss,” she says. “You’re going to feel very vulnerable and that’s where you have to make this decision of ‘I’m going to sit in those feelings and I’m going to work through those feelings,’ because it’s worth it to me that this stays in my life.”

Over the course of the last 8 years, Lisa’s family grew by two more boys and a girl, all of which help keep the memory of Brady alive.

“A lot of people said to me, ‘I’m so surprised you got pregnant again so fast. Weren’t you scared?’ Yeah, of course, I was so scared,” she says. “If you live in the negativity of ‘bad things are going to happen,’ that is not living.”

“Finding the joy in every single day knowing that we’re not necessarily guaranteed tomorrow, or really appreciating the good when it’s happening instead of fearing what may happen, that’s where I found this balance in between the joy and the grief, being present and focusing on the good, and knowing that the sad will always be a part of our lives.”

She started to share her experience in social media, before it became more commonplace on Instagram, or more recently by Chrissy Teigen on Medium and Meghan Markle in the New York Times.

“When tough situations happen in life, it’s okay to be mad, it’s okay to cry, it’s okay to be sad,” she says. “But you also have to find the joy in the situation and the appreciation of there’s a future ahead of us, always. No matter how bad it feels, there’s guaranteed good in the future as long as you choose to move forward.”

This fall, Lisa published her first book, Your Amazing Itty Bitty® Grief Book: 15 Chapters on How to Support Family and Friends on Their Journey, inspired by the conversations she’s had with her kids or those looking for guidance.

“I never thought I’d feel comfortable in the chapter that included losing a child but I do,” says Lisa. “Sometimes you have to go through some really tough stuff to find some of the beautiful things in your life that you may not have had, including a perspective that’s completely different.”

“I feel like I had an open wound and it’s always going to be a wound, but it’s much softer now,” she says.

“And I know we survived it. And now we share our story in hopes it will help others realize life still holds so much beauty after loss.”

Mama Shaker: Rhonda, Adjusting Expectations of What’s Enough

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Running a startup and raising twin 5th graders through a season of wildfires, literally and figuratively, requires Rhonda Collins to be more compassionate about what’s possible in a 24-hour period.

“I end up feeling the way I know a lot of working moms feel,” she says. “If I never slept, if I didn’t have a family and didn’t have anything else to do, there would still not be enough time in the day for me to do everything.”

It’s why Rhonda recently began starting her days by asking herself what the single most important thing is for her business and her family, rather than a to-do list.

“Sometimes it’s two things, or maybe it’s three things, but it’s not 137 things anymore,” she says.

“I feel like that’s all I can do,” she says, adding that she ends the day reminding herself she did her best. “These times are just super challenging.”

Rhonda’s instincts to pare things down to the essentials are what led her down an entrepreneurial path after “an incredibly satisfying career that really fed me” as a social change documentary filmmaker.

“I had my twins a little bit later in life, and so I had a long stretch of living fairly minimally,” she says, recalling the visceral reaction she had to the growing pile of brightly colored toys and baby gear that began accumulating in her living room.

“I was faced with having two small children and having to figure out, ‘I gotta sell this stuff, or I’ve got to give it away,'” she says.

Rhonda’s realization other parents shared the same challenge was the impetus to create ToyCycle, specifically as a service that places value on the time spent with our kids instead of sorting through an excess of outgrown toys and baby goods.

“I did not wait this long to have children so that I could then just work my ass off all day long, every day of the week and never see them, never actually have quality time with them,” she says.

Interestingly enough, 2020 dished up an abundance of time that would normally be limited with tweens or teenagers.

“I see them in the morning and then I go up and I check on what’s going on, and they show me an assignment they’re working on,” Rhonda says about their co-located work and school schedules. “Then we eat lunch together and they bring me down a smoothie that they just made.”

“I feel like we are much more bonded and together than we ever have been,” she says.

On Fridays they have movie nights huddled in a chair with popcorn. She also carves out one-on-one time, as challenging as it can be with twins.

“I feel best about myself and about my life when I just step out of my business self and say what I want and need to do,” Rhonda says. “Right now, it’s been time with my kids.”

“I feel connected, like life feels like it’s supposed to feel,” she says. “If I forget that for a few days, I just keep reminding myself of that.”

“Let’s just read together, let’s spend some time together, let’s hang out,” she says about her new definition of accomplishment. “That’s it.”

When Our Presence Leads to Progress

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Leanne Sherred wants to reassure busy parents that the conversations we have with our children throughout the course of a day–even while negotiating meals and bedtime–are incredibly powerful for speech and language development.

“You can put language across every area of the day,” she says. “All those routines that are already going to happen in a very busy, crazy, hectic day–you’re still going to get up in the morning, eat breakfast, brush your teeth–all of those are opportunities for interacting with your kiddo, modeling language.”

It can be hard to recognize the silver lining of so much time together at home, but it’s presenting a unique opportunity for parental involvement.

“A lot of times when kids get speech therapy from school, parents barely have any idea what’s being worked on, or how it’s being addressed,” she says.

As the president and founder of Expressable, Leanne flipped the old model of speech therapy on its head. Instead of parents sitting in the waiting room while their kids meet with their therapist once a week, she and her husband launched a virtual option for families to participate together from home.

“One of my professors at Northwestern who taught early intervention made sure that if we walked away from our graduate career with anything in our minds it was that parent engagement is one of–if not the–most powerful tools that we have as clinicians,” she says.

Working directly with families is what led Leanne to choose speech therapy as a profession instead of becoming a dialect coach, after a childhood of easily picking up voices and accents.

“This realm where you’re having a huge impact on the lives of individuals and the lives of families spoke to me,” she says.

Even in this incredibly stressful season of parenthood, our children are changing and growing right before us. To the untrained eye, it can be hard to understand what’s going on behind the scenes to make all these milestones possible.

“As a therapist, I like to really think about the small wins,” she says, noting all of the skills that have to be in place before a word is even spoken. “They had to pay attention to you. They have to have memory for that. They have to have joint attention. They have to be turn-taking to an extent.”

It’s a reminder that all of this time we’re spending with our kids adds up. We may get frustrated, we may lose our patience, but the progress is there when we pause to recognize it.

“There’s nothing I love more than helping a parent use a strategy,” she says. “Then the kid says a word, or maybe for the first time ever puts two words together,” she says.

“It is really powerful for the parents to be the ones who made the success happen.”

Mama Shaker: Rachael, Growing Closer When Things Fall Apart

Posted in Childhood development, Couple time, Family time, Mom guilt, Mompreneur, Self-careTagged , , , , Leave a comment

In the course of a year, Rachael Cunningham and her husband were dealt with what felt like an impossible hand as they navigated job loss, the death of a parent, and their autistic daughter’s depression. The compounding stress and grief could have created an impermeable divide between them, but instead they became even stronger.

“That year was so incredibly hard,” she says. “We both stepped back and said either we can let this drive us apart or we can really lean into each other and grow together–and that’s what we did.”

In a season where everything feels increasingly hard–and no doubt even harder because of exhaustion and overwhelm–relief comes in the small actions between us that make a big impact.

“Very intentionally, every day I was like, ‘How can I support my husband through this?’” she remembers asking herself. “How can I lean on him during this difficult time?”

“Going through that myself really caused me to notice and be aware of how many marriages really need to have some encouragement and the know-how to get through the tough times in life,” she says, which inspired her to work with couples directly as a relationship coach.

“We realized when we lean into each other, not only does our marriage benefit, but our kids benefit from it, and we’re able to think more clearly,” Rachael says, noting that when her daughter is “in a low spot now I don’t feel like my whole world is falling apart.”

“Kids learn through example so much more than you teaching them with your words,” she says. “What they see lightens their burden in life as well.”

As we encounter challenges daily about how to educate and entertain our children, we don’t need to feel discouraged if we’re not naturally in sync with our partner.

“We think we have to be on the same page all the time in order to have a happy relationship,” Rachael says. “The truth is we actually need to be honoring our own self and respecting our own issues in our own way of showing up in a relationship.”

She says we can “look internally” and make the decision to “show up as a partner that listens and that empathizes and sees my partner’s point of view, even if I don’t understand it.”

“Then you’re able to really start to communicate and hopefully have some really good discussions where you can see eye to eye,” she says. “When trying so hard to change them into our viewpoint, that’s when the disconnection happens.”

It’s also why Rachael chooses to make peace with things she cannot change about her husband. Rather than getting frustrated that he doesn’t notice when the dishwasher needs to be emptied, she realized it was more effective to just ask him to unload it.

“It’s okay that I remind people to do things,” she says as an example of how we can be easier on ourselves to make our marriages more peaceful.

“It opens our mind to wisdom quicker when we accept ourselves instead of beating ourselves up,” she says. “The same goes with our spouses; if we can stop criticizing and start accepting more, our connection is going to grow.”

Acceptance creates a trickle-down effect as parents too, when we’re struggling to get our kids engaged in virtual learning or fretting about screen time.

“What worked for me was saying ‘what do you want to learn about right now?’ and really diving into it; letting them lead the way,” says Rachael. “My oldest fell in love with grammar, so I got her a grammar bible and she devoured the whole thing on her own. My middle child loved computers, so we got him a bunch of stuff and he built his own computer.”

She acknowledges that while curriculum may be limiting, we can still follow cues of what our kids take interest in. At our house, that means incorporating LEGO projects whenever we can—or alternating silly YouTube videos with read-along stories.

“Usually when we beat ourselves up as moms that turns into lashing out at our kids at some point,” she says. “If you are giving your kids extra screen time right now, give yourself some grace. Nobody has ever gone through what we’re going through right now. If your kids are in their rooms all the time; of course, try to engage them and think about things that that will pull them out and take care of their mental health.”

Whether we want to change the dynamic in our marriage or with our kids, Rachael believes we need to start with ourselves.

“Working with couples in childbirth really made me aware of the strength of a woman, and how important it is to take care of yourself–before your marriage or your children,” says the former doula. “As I was talking to people about self care, I noticed that most of the time, their relationships would start to come up and their issues in their marriages.”

“You have to really go into your own thoughts and say, ‘Why am I afraid to communicate this need?” she says. “Start there and be self aware; are you afraid that they’re going to react in a certain way or they’re not going to understand you?”

It comes back to acceptance and being “okay with whatever the outcome,” she says. “If they don’t understand me, that’s okay. It just means we need to dive a little deeper.”

And when we look back at this year that challenged all of us, we’ll feel that much more equipped for what the future holds.

“That’s one of the beautiful things of the more difficult things you get through in life,” she says. “The more free you are as your marriage goes on, because you’re like, ‘Look, we can handle this. We handled that year, we can handle this year.’”

Mama Shaker: Louise, Acknowledging What We Want and Daring to Make it Happen

Posted in Career, Family time, Mom guilt, Mompreneur, Return to work, Time management, working mom, Workplace cultureTagged , , , Leave a comment

Louise Heite had a hunch that juggling two kids under three, a job that required round-the-clock conference calls, and a husband who traveled internationally half the month wasn’t sustainable. After moving her family to New York, she began pursuing a new path that led to empowering other women to course-correct their lives too.

“There’s so much energy and so much desire that’s locked up for me to find my own path and make my own dreams come true,” she realized during a new moon meditation.

Louise had recently traded her corporate gig for full-time motherhood, which left her feeling like, “I need something that really feeds my soul.” She knew that she wasn’t alone in trying to find a happy medium as a parent that’s “present while also fulfilling my own dreams.”

“I think what a lot of us mothers these days have to deal with is, first of all, finding a balance between career and also being present with your kids,” she says, so “you don’t reflect back in like 10 or 20 years from now and think ‘they grew up so quickly.’”

Whether it’s rethinking where we live or carving out more flexibility in work hours, Louise believes what’s holding us back is speaking up. She says it can be difficult for women to look inwards, “open that jar and basically then be confident in their own ability to pursue whatever dream that’s in there.”

“Sometimes we get stuck in our own heads,” she says, acknowledging that she often has to coach herself through fear. “It’s a practice what I preach type of approach whenever something negative—or a limiting belief—is coming out.”

In her executive coaching practice, Louise channels her experience leading corporate teams to help women define their own paths to success.

“Ultimately, it’s confidence and self worth, and striking a balance,” she says. “I work with new moms and it’s a little bit of redefining their identity as a mother because often we can no longer commit to the long hours of working that we’ve been doing before kids, yet we feel like we have to do the same amount of hours because otherwise we’re not going to be good enough.”

Focusing on what we need to do our best work–and then asking for it–often leads to a win-win. Parting ways is far from being the only answer to burnout.

“As a woman having worked in corporate environments and then also working for myself, I just don’t believe anymore in the 9-to-5 concept of the world,” she says. “I don’t think this is how we function—that our optimized work is done between the hours of 9:00 and 5:00. So even just flexibility, knowing when you’re most productive and really optimizing those hours is something that I highly recommend.”

Louise points out that “we often live in a space where we think we can do it all, and if we cannot do it all, that we’re a failure,” which was exactly what I experienced as a new mother. Fortunately, it led to connecting with other moms by sharing their stories, realizing there are many different definitions of success, and then making changes so I could strike a better balance.

“It’s about knowing what you really want and thinking about that for a moment,” she says. “There are obviously different paths that we can take after kids and knowing what you want to fulfill—I think it’s a big one.”

While 2020 continues to throw us all for a loop, it’s creating endless opportunities to make peace with change and explore what really matters to our families and ourselves.

“We often go back to the normal or the comfort of what we know because that’s where our worth comes from,” says Louise, cautioning against chasing an old definition of success “only to figure out afterwards that it actually no longer works for us, or that it’s draining us.”

“If you’re not happy somewhere, or not happy with a certain situation, there’s only one person that can change,” she says.

“You can really, truly create what it is that you want to create,” she says. “But you have to dare to make the ask and be open and vulnerable.”

“It can still be a no, but at least you’ve asked.”

Mama Shaker: Eirene, Reclaiming Time for Us

Posted in Childhood development, Couple time, Depression, Family time, Mom guilt, Mompreneur, Parenting coach, postpartum, Self-care, Sleep, Time management, working momTagged , , , , , Leave a comment

The world looked very different when Eirene Heidelberger and I originally spoke, but her mission to help women put the “me” back in “mommy” is more critical than ever for overwhelmed parents.

“Creating happy mommy time is finding the confidence and joy in yourself and recognizing I am a person,” she says. “I need to reignite what turns me on and what makes me happy.”

As the Get it Together Mom, she believes we unintentionally put ourselves on “Mommy Island” by doing so much for everyone else, that it becomes easy to forget about our own needs. This cycle of relentless giving can feel like “Groundhog Day.”

“When mommy gets off ‘Mommy Island,’ and she goes and fulfills her needs, she can come back to ‘Groundhog Day,'” Eirene says. “She has been renewed; she’s less beaten down because she has done something that has reignited her own self.”

I decided to experiment with this myself last weekend, as the weight of the world was starting to deplete my energy. So I let my kids entertain each other, while I supervised from a comfortable spot that allowed me to relax and only referee if necessary. Taking small breaks like this gave me more fuel to get back on the Ferris Wheel, so I was less likely to implode.

For Eirene, mornings are “personal armor” to build a foundation of me time and avoid feeling “like your child is sucking the life out of you.”

Plus, she believes her three sons deserve a peaceful start too, noting “it’s important for the boys to have to wake up on their own, rather than being roused by a blaring alarm clock. It’s the same process for them.”

While our morning routines no longer lead to rushing out the door, we can take the opportunity to set the right tone for the day.

“When your children have healthy sleep habits and there’s respectful boundaries, then everyone has their own me time,” she says.

Eirene believes sleep is the basis for a harmonious family life and lays the groundwork for her next tip: a schedule can make transitions (and me time) more predictable and cut down on power struggles.

“Those two pieces of the parenting puzzle go hand in hand all day long to create really easy flow of life and that’s what I’m all about,” she says.

While attempting a detailed schedule may feel daunting, one place to start is the evening. With less pressure to squeeze time in with our kids outside of work hours, why not pull dinner and bedtime forward? Even if it’s fifteen minutes at a time, suddenly an extra hour to recover from the day makes a big difference.

“Your time together is even more impactful because your children are rested,” she says. “Mom and dad know when they can fit their needs in around their child.”

Eirene also believes that transitions are really helpful for kids, so they know what to expect throughout their day. Ultimately, that means less battles and negotiations.

“A parent who is competent, happy and starts to give their children what I call the five-to-one transition,” she says, helps kids “know exactly what is heading their way.”

Earlier bedtimes are just one way we can find time to return to the things we used to love doing. Eirene has lots of other suggestions on her podcast and soon-to-be released book.

“What do you miss from your pre-baby life? What can we do to get you back to that?”

Eirene encourages both parents to answer these questions and suddenly, “they start talking.”

“I always say to parents, you chose to have a family and now what are you going to do to have the best time raising your family?”

Even if it feels like a tough time to change routines, the whole family will benefit from parents carving out time for simple pleasures.

Mama Shaker: Shannon, Choosing to Be Present Instead of Perfect

Posted in Anxiety, Childhood development, Family time, Mom guilt, Self-care, Siblings, working mom, Working outTagged , , , , , Leave a comment

Former competitive gymnast Shannon Stearn is learning how to calm her inner critic and be mindful as she and her two sons grow—while coaching others to do the same.

“For the past 40 years I’ve always talked to myself pretty negatively,” she says. “I’ve been a really hard critic. I’m very much a perfectionist, which made me really successful as an athlete; but, as a person, especially as a mom, there’s a lot to criticize.”

As a gymnast, Shannon was under extreme pressure to maintain a certain weight and constantly felt like she wasn’t good enough. The self-criticism followed her through school and even into a lighthearted form of athleticism as an acrobat in the circus.

“I didn’t want to just perform and have fun,” she recalls. “I wanted to be the best.”

“I’ve always been a really introspective person and I have had a lot of things I’ve had to work through with my own issues from parenting and the way I grew up,” she says.

When Shannon started her family, and all these memories came flooding back in the reflection of her boys, her perspective began to shift.

“I never will be the best mother or wife,” she realized. “So how do I be okay with where I am? Not just okay, but how do I thrive?”

“It just made me think there has to be a different way, especially for moms—we have so much else to take care of, how do we also take care of ourselves in a way that isn’t completely punitive?” she thought.

As founder of Savage Wellness, Shannon empowers her clients to grow stronger, both physically and mentally—no matter what their inner critics say—by helping “make it something where we get to feel proud every step of the way, and focus on every small choice that we’re making because it’s so hard to even make the small choices.”

With her two boys, Shannon now finds it liberating to release the urge to control every outcome.

“Initially it was kind of hard for me to let go of that control,” she says. “What’s kind of fun is watching how they teach me about myself now and give me these little challenges that help me grow as a person.”

Shannon is witnessing her 7-year-old “becoming his own person; he has his own thoughts and ideas, and wants and needs.” So she’s “transitioning into parent now that listens to my child and what he wants, and helps him make a decision versus just telling him what I think is the right thing to do.”

Plus, there’s an emerging dynamic when the two brothers (4 and 7 years old) are together that Shannon says requires a new parenting style for “this third child centered our lives.”

Since her older son’s disposition is so similar to hers, Shannon is working through some of the challenges she faced in childhood, while encouraging his growing independence.

“As he’s becoming more autonomous, and I have to let go, it’s really kind of freeing for me to to learn to trust him,” she says, acknowledging that it’s not easy. “I’m really focused on creating that trusting relationship and letting him feel confident as a person and not just somebody who’s being bossed around.”

Mindfulness is something that Shannon practices with her son when he’s feeling upset or being hard on himself. Together they take deep breaths and do meditation.

“My hope is that he can grow up feeling a lot more peace within himself.”

“I see this little mirror of myself,” she says. “I’m parenting myself through all these challenges that I struggled with and didn’t really come to an understanding of that I needed until I was 35.”

“Here’s my chance to really be able to nurture those things and those frustrations I’ve had with myself,” she says.