What does self-care as a parent actually mean?
What I am about to tell you is not easy.
My self-care as a parent, I thought was pretty good.
I meditated twice a day most days, practiced yoga almost daily and went for frequent walks during the week to clear my head.
Whenever time allowed, I went swimming to my local pool.
Having a good routine was crucial for me as I needed to balance a demanding full-time job while setting up my parenting business 6 years ago.
Looking back at how much I accomplished in a day, my head is now spinning.
Every minute was timed, usually with my phone timer: including lunch breaks at work with friends where I would jump up when the timer went and rush back to my desk.
Life was normal, I thought until March 2020.
What happened then, I don’t need to remind you of.
The sudden change in my daily routine was that I now not only had my demanding full-time job but an additional workload of:
Parenting solo during the day
Teaching my children
Cooking for them
Cleaning the house
Holding space for all their emotional needs
And: taking care of my own needs
2020 passed, we all thought life would go back to normal and boom: I burnt out by the end of January 2021.
It was absolutely horrendous to not have energy or passion for anything anymore.
The down-spiralling was the worst I had ever experienced.
What you don’t know is that I contemplated leaving here.
My life didn’t make sense anymore.
What I had worked for so hard, had all seemed to fall apart.
My only drive to get me out of this situation was to be a stronger mother to my children.
After hours of healing sessions and endless speculation over what I should do with my life, I managed to have some more stability.
The strength I started to feel, came from a place of inner knowing that everything always works out in the end.
Even now that I am in the middle of finding out whether this business is needed or not by parents, I know that whatever happens I feel looked after because I am being loved.
Loved by my children, friends, family and most of all by myself.
What I mean by that is that in all my despair of 2021, I learned to appreciate myself in ways I had never had access to before.
My findings were in my early childhood years and it allowed me to see, for the first time in my life, that the raging child inside me was trying to get me to listen,
The child that needed my attention the most - was my inner child.
You may have heard him or her trying to get you to listen when you want to keep yourself busy or distract yourself with all known means out there.
What I learned was to stop and listen.
Leaving the old behind and paying attention to this new found inner voice, I set out to help parents wherever I could.
New ways of parenting are not easily put into action.
What I am able to help parents with is a confidence that the new target of raising children has to be to live a life that is worth living and not one to be wished away.
My take on life is that we are here to help humanity evolve and we all find our individual way of how to contribute.
Would you agree?
The most important lesson I learned was that I needed to find a path to my self-worth that was so pure - nobody could sway me off.
You take the best direction from your inner compass and nobody else.
Parenting is no joke, but parenting yourself is the hardest thing.
Taking self-care seriously means to be truthful to yourself in a way that nobody else can give you advice on.
That’s what I believe it to be.
There is no formula of staying healthy other than to go within and being open to what comes up.
In my parenting courses, I am exploring this topic more and more over the last couple of years.
What would it take for you to say yes and have your inner child start talking to you?
I would love to hear from you.
Please feel free to email me at effortlessparenting@gmail.com
Taking parenting to a whole new level, my purpose is now clearer than ever before.
Parents need to heal their inner child before they can be calmer parents.
What this means is loving yourself as a parent: is more important than any other element in parenting.
With this I will start into the new year, aiming to help and support all parents who have had enough of trying to do it all.
Take good care of yourself in this new year and do something that brings you truly joy that is not a short term fix but a reconnecting with somebody you once knew and no longer hear.
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