VOICE OVER: (00:01)
You’re listening to the Slumber Party podcast with your host, Amanda Jewson, a mom of two girls, a child and infant sleep expert and general sleep lover. If you’re a tired parent who is desperate for answers, or just someone who loves sleep, this podcast was created just for you. Each episode is packed full of tips and tricks to help you maintain your sanity as well as your social life during the early stages of Parenthood. So grab your headphones. It’s time to get comfy!
Amanda: (00:37)
I’m super excited about today’s episode, because if you have been following me for a minute, you know that I’m always talking about self-care, but I’m also really careful to talk about self-care because I think self-care has got a bad rap lately, and we might feel a lot of pressure around self care. So today I want to talk about actual, real, non-bullshit self-care. And I have the perfect guest to do just that. Uh, Kelly Newsome. George is a mama bonus mom, self-care educator, coach and obsessed with empowering mothers. It’s the perfect guest for us. She believes that a busy, chaotic motherhood is a perfect time to practice self care and she teaches moms care rituals that can help them feel ready for anything that life or their toddler throws at them. Kelly, I’m so excited to have you, I mean, we should have you in our pocket really with that. I just want to carry you around.
Kelly: (01:35)
Yes. Yes. It’s. It’s it’s I hear, I hear that from my clients a lot. In fact, I just created like a new coaching service to help them like send me messages all the time, because there’s so many times you just want to go back and forth with people. And, and that’s why the work that you do is so important too, because there are lots of questions and lots of things that moms want to talk about.
Amanda: (01:51)
Well, in a lot of ’em, I mean, we’re, we’re jumping into something kind of different, but I totally agree. I think that, we design our packages to be in constant communication with our moms, because you are.. The question that you answered the next day, something bad has already happened. You know what I mean?
Kelly: (02:13)
That’s right! there’s extra information.
Amanda: (02:14)
a hundred percent and you could just avoid that problem and we have time limits, we’re obviously not on around the clock, but it’s like, if your child isn’t napping and you say, okay, forget it. Let’s worry about this. The next day something has happened that we could have avoided. And it’s just so much easier and so much nicer for your client to be like, Oh, what do I do? Hold on. And you’re literally in their pocket. Yeah.
Kelly: (02:37)
Yeah. Yeah.
Amanda: (02:38)
So tell me about what you do. I’m, I’m dying to get into this because I feel like I said, we need one of you everywhere for every month.
Kelly: (02:46)
Your, your intro was, was really, I mean, it was really great. It was really accurate. I am a self care educator. I am a mom coach. I’m a mom of two bonus mom of three young adults. Some of my clients call me a mom whisper, which I really think is the best compliment anybody could ever give me. But how it looks on a day to day is that, you know, mothers, especially new moms are so busy taking care of all the things that they really, you know, they rarely take time to take care of themselves. So I teach those care rituals that fit into that real life space. And it really helps moms get back to being the calm mom and the whole woman that they dream of being. And that’s my goal is to help them remember, like there is calm, there is peace on the other side of this. And you know, there is kind of a redefining of who you are. But all of that can sound really good, but especially when you’re tired, it’s also just sounds like theory. And so that’s why I try to think of these very practical ways to talk about care because like you, I am very anti, the bubble bath, self care. I mean, I love a good, I love a good sea salt bath, but I am very, one of my missions really is to help women redefine what care is and to see what it really is and how it is so important to their lives, how it really is an essential life skill and not a treat.
Amanda: (04:05)
Yes.
Kelly: (04:06)
That’s one of the things that is so misunderstood. We think self care is, Oh, I get to treat myself. It’s like, no, no, no, you get to do this because you exist.
Amanda: (04:13)
Yes, yes.
Kelly: (04:14)
And so this is one of my biggest missions is you exist and you get to do this for yourself.
Amanda: (04:18)
We’re a part of a similar, how we met we’re a part of a similar coaching group. And, one of, you know, I’ve always thought this, but they have such a perfect word, is Rachel Rogers calls it sustenance. And yeah. And I just loved that because.
Kelly: (04:33)
She’s a friend of mine by the way.
Amanda: (04:34)
Oh, I love that. I love that. Yeah. She’s so wise in that sustenance and I just, really, I’ve really connected with that word. Um, and I am a former, workaholic busy, you know, my whole life I’ve been told, Oh you have such a great work ethic. Oh, you work so hard. Oh, you can do anything. And so then you really feed off of that. And I think, it took me literally, I want to say like two, three good years to unravel. Like we’ve all been brought up in this grind culture, grind it out, do everything that you possibly can to, work as much as you can in every waking hour. And I feel like what I, my mission is with my sleep work, and it sounds like your mission is, is like, it does not have to be that way. And it’s also not sustainable. You can’t, there’s an end point. Your body has a certain amount of hours in the day it can be awake. You know what I mean, before you don’t have anything left. And I feel like it’s not a treat. This is not an option. It’s not optional either.
Kelly: (05:53)
Nope. It is an essential life skill. And it’s, what’s interesting. That is that it’s probably the most important life skill you could ever have. And it’s the one that we do not learn in school. And so one of my goals is in adulthood, you know, especially in new motherhood, because you have this new baby and you have this recreation of yourself because we all have to kind of redefine who we are. There’s no going back to exactly who we were before. And it’s one of the best times to look at this because I mean, you might already can break you down, like really strip away the layers. It pulls out all the things that you thought you did, right. With like a therapy. And, and it, it really puts it out front and center. And it’s one of the best times to learn how to take care of, of you of this person who you are, you know, so one of the pillars of care that I talk about, especially when it comes to sleep is that chaos is the perfect place to practice. And what’s more chaotic than motherhood, I can’t think of anything. And I’ve done a lot of things in my life. I’ve had a number of careers. I’ve had a lot of experiences, but motherhood is, is absolutely… It can be very chaotic. It can feel really that way. And so when you realize that there’s this alternative view that you can reframe stress and that it doesn’t have to be, you know, something that you have to get rid of and shun right away, and you think, okay, this is actually the perfect place for me to practice taking care of myself. You don’t have to believe the whole, “Oh, you’ll never be able to take care of yourself again. ow that you’re a mom”, it’s the perfect place. It’s the perfect place for what actual care really is.
Amanda: (07:18)
And can we just…
Kelly: (07:18)
it’s not the perfect place for the cliche stuff. You know, it’s not for like going to, you know, away for the weekend with the girlfriends, going to the spa for six hours or that kind of thing, which again, not knocking it, there’s a place for that. But to think that that’s the only thing that care is. And that that’s what you have to do in order to, to feel the benefits of it. Total bullshit.
Amanda: (07:38)
I also like just to, not to place to fine a point on it, but that I feel like this, every season that I record my podcast, there was like a theme. And they feel like the theme of this season so far has been, these messages are bullshit. Like, “Oh, you’ll never be the same again. You’ll never sleep again.” And Oh, let me give you some advice. And then it’s like negative, negative, negative. I think that, it’s, it’s just wrong. And it’s also like disempowering for the mother to feel that way that, “Oh, you have this, these children…”, It’s a rebirth. I think, I think it’s a, for me personally, it was like, I did go to therapy. I had, I had all my issues gone. I’m using air quotes. I had, I was fine. And then you have children and, everything is there. Everything is still there. And it’s such an opportunity for growth. It’s, it’s a opportunity to really shine. And, and then also if you’re really lucky, you get to search showing your children how to care and teach them what you haven’t been taught. I feel like it’s such a, such an opportunity. And we don’t talk about that. We just talk about like, “Oh, good luck, motherhood is awful!”
Kelly: (09:05)
Right! Yeah, no, it’s really one of the best chances that we have to evolve into who we really want to be into the life that you actually want to have. You know, of course this isn’t true all the time, but for the majority of moms that I talk to and that I work with, you know, they had a baby to make life change. That was kind of the point. But then sometimes the change happens and it’s like, well, wait a minute. I don’t want that stuff. I just want this other stuff over there. And really in motherhood, it’s one of the best place to realize that you have to have the contrast. That’s why chaos is a perfect place to practice care or practice being calm without the contrast. You really can’t do the other thing. You have to be able to see both. So I think it’s, I think it’s very important to remember that.
Amanda: (09:42)
So what are some of the things that your moms will come to you? What are some of the common things that you’re seeing from your clients or thoughts or things that you’re helping them with,
Kelly: (09:55)
With regard to just how to take care of themselves?
Amanda: (09:56)
Or just in general, like why, why would someone hire you and what are they coming to you for? And care in general?
Kelly: (10:04)
Moms often come to me when they don’t have time to take care of themselves. That’s like the big thing, I don’t have time to do this. Um, a lot of moms will come to me, particularly for coaching work. If they feel like they are kind of in a space that feels quite lost, or like they just can’t manage what’s happening around, or they feel very overwhelmed or they know that there’s a direction that they want to go to. But there are things that are kind of getting in the way, um, that are often self care related. So sometimes a mom won’t even see that it’s really self care related, but she knows, okay, I won’t go in this direction in my life and I’m not quite getting there. And my kids are making it hard for me, but I love my kids, but I kinda want to be away from them. There’s this mix of feelings. And that can be really confusing when you’re a mom, because you do love these little people, but you also have this other part of yourself that you want to explore and you want to take care of. So I think that overwhelms a big one and feeling overwhelmed, feeling over-scheduled is something that a lot of moms will talk to me about, and because I have this background of all of these different maternal things, we, I use this blend of really intuitive healing work and brain science. And then all of the *inaudible* work that I do. And it kind of comes together in this nice, you know, big soup and, and we can just sort of, just apply these theories and these practices to all the different areas that moms are concerned with. So how does that look in real life? If a mom comes to me, for example, like I just had a mom today, in fact that I was talking to, and we were talking about the fact that she has exhausted all the time, that she’s just tired all the time and she doesn’t have a new baby. Her daughter is, I think like in the six or seven year old range, but she says, I’m just, I’m napping all the time. And I, you know, I don’t understand why and my husband doesn’t understand why. And one of the things that we talked about was the fact that because she is in a very stressful job and because she is now trying to figure out how to manage the virtual school for her daughter, and because everybody’s stuck in the house, that this is putting an extreme amount of stress on her nervous system. So this is just an example. And one of the things that a lot of us don’t understand is when our nervous system is overloaded with stress. You know, we think that either we’re like in this nice rest and digest phase, or we’re in fight or flight and we’re moving around. But what a lot of people don’t know is that if you can’t fight or flee your stress, you’ll, then you’ll kind of dip down into another layer. That’s the freeze state, and that’s another state that’s managed by your parasympathetic nervous system. And so if you’re really tired all the time, because you’re stressed and you’re fine that you have to nap and your body just doesn’t feel like it can keep going. That’s often your nervous system putting you down into a freeze state or what we would call a dorsal vagal state for anybody familiar with polyvagal theory and brain science work. And it goes there to help you conserve energy, like legit, your nervous system is like, things are really crazy. Shit’s hitting the fan. We need you to take a nap. And it becomes almost this overwhelming sense of like, I just can’t, I can’t do, like, I don’t want to get out of bed because your nervous system’s trying to protect you. So in the care context, I would work with her. I would work with a mom and say, this is not your fault. This is not you doing something wrong. This is not that you’re a hot mess, which I try to get away from, because we love to say I’m such a hot mess. And I like to say, but you know, you can also do this. You know, and having her kind of reframe that and say, Oh, my nervous system is really trying to protect me. My nervous is trying to help me survive this. And by the way, here are the five things that I can do to start to move back up that, it’s an autonomic nervous system kind of ladder. And to start to feel a little bit better. Now, these are ways that I can get a little bit more energy. These are ways that I can feel more safe than social, I call it safe and social. These are ways that I can start to just find more joy in my day. So it’s really giving moms hope and understanding that they have so much more power and control than they actually think, because nothing makes you feel less powerful, less in control when you have a tiny screaming baby who won’t sleep.
Amanda: (13:52)
Yeah. I mean, I, Oh my God, I’m getting like buzzy when you’re saying this stuff, because I feel like I hope to continue to share this message because thankfully I had a physician who was wonderful and would be like, I think this may, like, I, you know, I went through a whole host of stress symptoms, like, when I was teaching full time, I was just starting my business. And I thought I would just do my business on the side. And it was this thing that I love to do. And then it became like a full time thing. And I was also working full time and I had two kids under three. And, and, and, and, and, and I, my hair started to fall, fall out and I had a hole host….
Kelly: (14:38)
That’s a big one. Yeah.
Amanda: (14:40)
That’s a big one. And I had a whole host of other like weird, strange symptoms. And I remember I was like seeing, a doctor for all these things. And she was like, well, and she was so gentle. She’s like, you know, it could be that it could be stress. It could be, you know, stress and stress. And I was like, no way! And I feel like when you were in that mind frame, it is very hard to believe that your physical symptoms, your tiredness is related to your nervous system being like, I can’t do this anymore. And it sneaks up on you. We think of these… Like, for me, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m speaking completely personally here. I would think of like, having like a nervous breakdown is like going like, *screams* and then it was just like, you know, you, you shut down, but it, it creeps up slow, and I remember finally getting to an amazing woman speaking exactly your language. My therapist was amazing. Natasha Becker in Toronto, if you want to look her up, she’s amazing. She has a waitlist for days, but she’s worth away anyway. So she talked to me a lot about this, and, it really made a lot of sense to me about how I kept saying to her, I don’t, this came on all of a sudden this came on all of a sudden, and she goes, let’s talk about how you do life. This is not come on all of a sudden, so she’s like, take me through your day. And then I did. And she was like, so what do you do for yourself? Literally at the point I was seeing her, I was going, I was waking up at six o’clock getting ready, working a full day, doing calls on the way to work, doing calls the moment I got in my car, solo parenting cause my husband travels half the time going to bed at 10, I would get eight hours of sleep. That would be all I got. That was it. And she’s like, every week I said this, all, all I get, again, we have themes, right? I’ve said this. So I’m sorry if you’re listening to the story again, it got to the point where she was like, what are you doing for self care? And then she would talk to me about self -care and I’d be like, yeah, I just haven’t. And then it was like the fourth visit. And she was like, you can’t come back until you tell me what you’re doing. And I was like, Whoa. And then I did it. And then the changes happen. And this is what I, it is like my fight song, right? Like this is not, it’s not an option. It’s really not an option.
Kelly: (17:22)
Yeah. And a lot of, a lot of women do wait until, I mean, that’s, that’s how we’re trained. We wait until the very last moment. We wait until we’re literally on the verge of collapse or until we already have collapsed and you find yourself, you know, I found myself on the floor of my apartment in New York city just like laid out. You know, we often find ourselves in those situations and we wait and wait and wait, because our culture perpetuates this idea and it’s especially perpetuated to the mothers. It’s like once you pop out a kiddo, it’s that you all of a sudden, you have to be super woman and you have to do all of these things and here’s the extra jobs. And, and, you know, we don’t really understand that It doesn’t actually have to be that way because we’re rewarded. As you talked about, we were rewarded for staying up all night. We glorify the all-nighter. We are rewarded for, you know, all the things that moms do to put their kids first, we’re really rewarded for martyrdom. And this is one of the biggest things that I am so trying to reverse and change. And my work is, you know, this idea of, “Oh, she’s such a great mother cause she just put, puts everyone before herself.” And that is not my idea of great motherhood. It’s really, really not. And what I’ve seen. And even though I work mostly with moms from postpartum to pre-K because I have birth and postpartum specialty and I tend to stick within the early motherhood realm and that those transitions that happen there. But I do have clients who have teenagers or whose, whose kids had actually left and they’re empty-nesters. And some moms whose kids have left, the nest are still working with issues that were happening way before, because everything was about the child. Everything was about the child. And now they’re in this phase of rediscovering who I am, what do I do to take care of myself? Actually like I’ve never even really thought of that because everything was always so focused on the kiddos. And what that does is to go back to your earlier point is that leads to children who then don’t know what self care is and who then don’t have as a life skill. And who then have the same, it’s the same cycle. And one of my biggest goals is to have every little girl, especially in little boy, think that self care is totally normal. And just to, you know, my daughter will say like, mom I just need some self care. I just need to go into the care corner or that she, she doesn’t call it the.. I tried to call it the care corner in my office, but she’s like enough of the self care mom, I’m going to call it the calm corner. So she goes in the little calm corner and my son does this too. He’s three and she’s five. And to them, it’s really normal. And I want it to be normal for kids to know that they can have all of these feelings and I want it to be normal for them, that they can take time independently away from other people. And that they need to kind of notice when they’re going from what’s sometimes called the green zone to the red zone, and they can say, okay, this thing is coming up. It’s all fine. It’s all good. All feelings aloud, what we say in my house. But I know that I also want to take it down a notch. I know that I know that I need some time to myself. And so by doing that, I mean, modeling always is the best way that we can help our children. And when we teach our children’s total sacrifice and martyrdom, we’re really setting them up for that same pattern with their own kids. And not only with their own kids, but with their partners, with their colleagues, with society. So I say to any mom who wants to raise children who are not going to have partners that take advantage of them or bosses who take advantage of them, teach them how to restore themselves, teach them that napping is really good. That sleeping is really good. And that this contrast is really good because the truth is the more productive you want to be in, the more awake and energetic you want to be. You have to have the opposite.
Amanda: (20:55)
Yes!
(20:56)
You just have to it’s, it’s literally called an emotional resilience account. If there’s nothing in that account, you get withdrawn.
Amanda: (21:02)
Totally, There’s two things I’d want to. I was listening and I was thinking, are you familiar with the book: “Why we can’t sleep by ADA Calhoun?
Kelly: (21:12)
Yes.
Amanda: (21:12)
Okay. So this is like, that was like a huge aha moment for me. I am.. I am just on the end of that, but basically for those who are listening or watching and you want to look at it, um, her thesis is, children born generally between like seventies and eighties. We have, especially if you’re a woman, in this certain amount of pressure that other generations didn’t phase, in that our mothers didn’t necessarily have all of the opportunities we did. So we feel an enormous amount of responsibility to take them all. And that it’s, and also succeed and have money in the bank and make a million dollars. And, and like, these are all these, this checklist is the success checklist that my husband doesn’t have. And I’m like, Hey, what if I made more money than you? He’s like, sweet like that.
Kelly: (22:09)
Yeah. Great, great, awesome. Let’s do it.
Amanda: (22:12)
And then I think of, you know, so that’s just a side read. I would love for any one of my vintage to take a read of that because I thought it was so, um, I think it explains a really common phenomenon of our modern parenting or our modern womanhood essentially. And I loved the book. Then there’s also Glennon Doyle, you know, untamed two, hasn’t read this. But I love, you know, I’m going to butcher this quote, but you know, don’t do things for your children just so you can do them, but you should be doing things that you want your kids to do later on. And this is sort of how I live my life. So sometimes I have to make hard decisions, like, okay, I’m going to go away. I mean, not lately who’s doing anything lately, but I’m going to go away for a few days because I have this thing. And it sucks and I kind of feel bad, but I do. I want them to do this one day. Yeah. Okay. I’m going to do it and guess what? We’re all fine. No one, feels bad.
Kelly: (23:13)
Yeah, that’s right. And that’s one of the best things about taking care of yourself. I talked about, they have these content pillars and one of them is better care, better connection. You know, when you feel good, everyone else does feel better. And this is such a hard concept because again, we’re not taught this, we’re talking only to feeling good. Yep. We’re taught that. We need to, you know, we can’t feel good unless we have literally put in the work and then you can be happy and then you can, and it’s just not true. It’s just not true. You know, your care really is, has, has as positive correlation to how connected you are with everybody else. And I always say like, it’s your children, it’s your partner. It’s your colleagues. It’s your customers. It’s your barista. Everybody gets to benefit when you actually feel better. And you know, we all want this happiness. We want this peace. We want this kind of ideal. Yeah. But it’s like, well, then do the little thing that makes you happier. And that makes you feel more peaceful. And then like you take these baby steps to get there. You know, that’s, that’s really important. And sleep’s a really huge part of that. It’s kind of the, it’s the foundation for it.
Amanda: (24:11)
It really is. And you know, my clients well, a lot of the work is like, yes, it’s sleep work. And then a huge part of the work is validating whites, okay. To feel the way that they are feeling and validating why it’s okay, that they’re sleeping period. Like, Oh, I feel so bad. Like, is this for me? And when I say, okay, let’s pretend it just is for you. Why is that so bad? And if you are not well..
Kelly: (24:36)
That’s a good question!
Amanda: (24:36)
Your, your child is not, well, if you were suffering, you know, we talk about detachment in two meant, and you think about all of these like tired moms. And I do a program with a clinical psychologist, Tanya Cotler. And she talks about like how children attached to their parents. Right. And it’s literally constantly looking at their eyes all day. And there is a series of events. And if the, most of those events, you are looking resentful, tired, annoyed, angry, that may have bigger longterm affects than saying, “okay, we’re going to do this thing and I’m going to sleep and you’re going to sleep. And then I’m going to be my best version of myself.”
Kelly: (25:22)
Yeah. And it also, it goes back to the nervous system that we were talking about before. So one of the premises of having a properly functioning, autonomic nervous system is that you can actually help co-regulate your child’s nervous system. And that’s really what we’re talking about because this branch of the parasympathetic that helps you to feel safe and social with your kids and helps you rest and digest. It’s this nerve that it’s called the Vegas nerve that innervates the ventral vagus nerve innervates the muscles of the face. It innovates, you know, auditory apparatus and your vocal chords. And, and so all of these all these, these tools, these physical tools that we use in social engagement, they come from having a regulated nervous system. And when you’re eight, when you do feel regulated, when you have proper sleep, when you are feeling this in a safe and social state, then when you interact with your children, you do the things that children are asking you to do so that they feel safe because what you’re doing, and it’s at a level that’s actually below perception. You’re not even cognitively proceeding what’s happening here. The brilliant scientists who I had the blind luck of having as my thesis advisor in college, coined the term neuroception. And that means that our nervous systems are actually taking in this information from the environment all the time. And that means that when my nervous system is regulated, my child is neurosculpting. This nervous system is, neurosensing what my nervous system is doing. And that’s, you know, if, if I were to come into the podcast and just talk like this, it would be like, Whoa. You know, because I would have totally flat effect. I wouldn’t be using any prosody in my voice. Like these are all things that a properly tuned, nervous system, you know, tells people, it says, no we’re safe and we can engage in. And that’s exactly what happens with your kids too. You know? So it’s a, it’s a really important point that it’s not like we can just control our kids. Cause every mother knows you can’t do that. Lots of things you can’t control, but man, you can help them feel safer when you feel in a safe within yourself. And those are the things that self care and the proper rituals can help you feel.
Amanda: (27:21)
I am going to, I feel like just I, what I’m going to do is every sleep plan I create. I’m also going to link directly to this episode of the podcast, every one of my clients, because I am just shouting this to the rooftops and a lot of this, I love that you’re bringing the science behind what I, I feel like some of my clients, you know, very type A, very career driven will be like, okay, it feels a little woo woo, for me to you for you to just tell me when I feel good, my baby feels good. Like why? Well, this is why. And it’s hard. It’s, you know, I, this is the biggest takeaway from my whole thing, with my, my mental health journey and my journey to wellness was my therapist saying your children feel you. And I remember her saying, you know, how do your children respond when you’re anxious? And I said, and I believed, “Oh, I’m not anxious around them.” She’s like, Oh, okay. She’s like, you really believe that you’re they don’t feel that. And she’s like, I need you to know that they do, and this is why we’re going to work to get better. And it, I was very mad at her for telling me that, cause I was like, well, this just makes me more anxious, but it was a piece of learning I needed to, to change. Yeah. Yeah.
Kelly: (28:45)
And I think that’s important for a lot of us to hear because you know, anxiety, particularly perinatal anxiety is a very real thing. We hear a lot about perinatal depression or postpartum depression is kind of the old term forth PPD, but we don’t really hear as much about PPA and you’re starting to hear more about it now. And this is really important. These are very real experiences. I had these with my kids. Even as a professional in this field, I’m a trained birth doula, postpartum doula, all these things. And I still have this, you know, it’s not necessarily preventable when you have a certain amount of stress, especially in your life. And, um, it’s important to kind of be on the lookout for them. And to know that they can have a really big effect in your life. And if you have the support around you, that can help you get through those things. That’s important. But when you’re going through it, it’s really hard to see it is, you know, when you’re, when you’re in the middle of it, it’s hard to see. And then when somebody points it out to you, it’s very easy to feel guilty about it. You know, have I, am I ruining my kids? Am I being a bad mom? And one of the that I think it’s really important to remember is it, by the time that you recognize this, the fact that you’re even recognizing it and you’re being mindful about it is a great step for your kids. That’s a sign that you a really great mom. Yeah. That’s what that is to me. You know, because we’re not going to get rid of, especially in this world with everything that’s going on, we’re not going to get rid of depression and anxiety and motherhood, we’re not gonna get rid of sleep deprivation, motherhood. We’re just not, no, but we can add like a little sugar to those lemons, so to speak. And part of that is really remembering even the mindfulness about what’s happening here and the desire to change the fact that I’m listening to this podcast. Right. Right. Means that I’m actually a good mom. I’m actually doing something really good for my kids right now. And that’s a, that’s a very important point because you’re right. The guilt situation is, is that’s real. That’s real. And one of the biggest ways to cure mom guilt, I say that self care is the cure for guilt, not the cause of it because the more that you take care of yourself, and it really is the more that you actually take real care of yourself, the stronger your relationship is with yourself. And that’s all self care is, is building that relationship with who you are. Then you actually do end up, you feel less guilty. You just do it. It kind of starts to melt away because you start to realize who you truly are and the things that you’re giving to your kids and things that you’re giving to the world around you. It’s really powerful stuff.
Amanda: (31:00)
Okay. We, I feel like I could talk to you for four hours. I’m not kidding, I’m like temper.
Kelly: (31:08)
It’s such fun stuff. Right?!
(31:09)
It’s just, well, it is in, I feel like, so I try to keep this podcast down to the time of a crap nap. I feel like this is a great taster. Kelly, where can people find you? Well, first of all, let’s be clear, Kelly practices, what she preaches, we’re speaking from Stratford, Ontario, Canada, and she is calling in from Provence, France. So if you want to talk about practicing self care, Kelly moved herself to Provence. Cause she’s a genius, but beyond being in Provence,
Kelly: (31:43)
a little more complicated than that, but I did it, I did it at moving here. Yes.
Amanda: (31:49)
How can people find you?
Kelly: (31:51)
People can find me my website, ritualcare.com
Amanda: (31:55)
Great I’m going to put all these links in the show notes where people will be able to find you. This was such a great conversation, a huge giant thank you. I’m going to send people your way. This is, this is very exciting for me.
Kelly: (32:11)
Good. I’m so I’m so glad I want everyone who learns this to share it. I really believe like each one teach one. And the only way that we moms are going to start feeling better about taking care of ourselves is when we encourage each other to do it.
Amanda: (32:24)
Yes. Amen. Thank you so much, Kelly. Have a good one. Thank you.
Kelly: (32:28)
This was delightful! Bye.
Kelly: (32:31)
Bye.