Motherhood and Self-Care: Balancing Responsibilities and Personal Growth
EP. 07
In this episode of The Mae B Mindful Podcast, host Hannah Mae delves into the profound lessons learned from 17 years of motherhood and spiritual growth. She discusses the importance of self-awareness, embracing our needs, and the courage required to ask for help. Through personal anecdotes and insightful reflections, Hannah explores how disregarding our needs can lead to long-term burdens and how nurturing a daily spiritual practice can transform our lives. Join us for an inspiring conversation on self-worth, personal growth, and the journey to becoming our own best friend.
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Episode Transcript:
Hello, this is The Mae B Mindful Podcast, and I am your host, Hannah Mae. I'm a mother of six, a conscious birth instructor and educator, a spiritual growth facilitator, and a certified hypnotist. This podcast is about inspiring hope, expanding awareness, and consciousness to revolutionize the way we live and experience our lives. You can expect thought-provoking episodes each week, spanning a range of topics drawn from both my own journey of transformation and healing, and my work with others. I hope you find this podcast to be informative, refreshing, illuminating, and instrumental in your own soul's evolution and growth. Let's jump right in!
Good morning, everybody! If it's morning, welcome back to The Mae B Mindful Podcast. I'm your host, Hannah. It's morning for me, and it's raining outside—it's just gorgeous. I'm really happy about this rain; it means my plants are growing, and I like it when nature handles that for me because then I don't have to water. It's one more thing I can check off my list that nature and God just kind of did for me, and I really appreciate that. Sometimes things just come easy like that, you know what I'm saying? So, you know, it freed me up to record you a little episode here.
This feels like a message from the future and an awareness I have now as a result of my—how many years has it been?—17 years of embarking upon family life. Lately, I notice that I am in proximity to, whether on a professional level, in recovery circles, or just friends, a lot of younger moms. Even though it's only a decade or so behind me in my journey, there's still an incredible amount of hours, time, and self that you give to that. There are so many opportunities for growth and learning, and we don't even know what we're learning at the time sometimes because you're doing so much. Sometimes these awarenesses don't land for decades later, I've noticed, and even then, it's not like it came full circle necessarily. It might feel like it's come full circle in the moment—I can have this epiphany—but I understand also that this awareness can deepen. It's like any scientific understanding; we're always growing, understanding more, looking at something from a different angle, and pressing into a new depth with it.
As a result of my journey, and this just sort of landed on me recently in a new way as it relates to family life, my relationship with my partner and children, and my journey through it all with myself as my own best friend really, I need to check in with myself to find out what my needs are and get them adequately met. That's something only I am responsible for because nobody else knows me like I know myself, right? Nobody else knows you like you know yourself. At any given time, unless you voice your need to somebody, you're the only one that can figure it out. If you're going to voice it to somebody, you have to figure out what it is first. I felt inspired to share this with a mom friend recently, and I thought, well, maybe I'll just talk to you guys about it too because it's pretty important. There are so many things on this journey when we're new in it and stepping into this new space that we don't know.
This isn't necessarily gender-specific, but I do think that women often get this idea that we are supposed to be a certain way, that we are supposed to...dot dot dot...that we're not supposed to ask for help is a really common one. People want to help us. People want to help moms. If you're in a healthy relationship with an available, present partner, they want to help you. Sometimes the issue is not that there's nobody there to help; it's that we don't accept help or ask for help, or we don't speak up or voice what our needs are.
Here's what really landed for me: anything that goes unaddressed, anything that we avoid and think that we've evaded, like we've just brushed it under the rug, like "I'll just discard self, I will just carry a burden unnecessarily for a long period of time," those things will eventually come out in the wash. I don't know how long that cycle is going to last and what that process is going to be, but there is a process and a cycle, and everything is going to come out in the wash. It just seems to be what happens. So, whatever you avoid and disregard in yourself is going to show up later. It might show up in the moment—it probably will show up in the moment in some way—but whatever isn't properly addressed is going to show up eventually.
For example, if you've not been honest about something that's really important to you because you don't feel like you have the right to be, or you feel uncomfortable about it, or you're worried about what somebody thinks, then that's a part of you that you have disregarded. That part of you doesn't want to be disregarded. In order for you to thrive—which you want to do, everybody wants to—you are going to have to be heard. You're going to have to listen to that part of you, so it's going to come and get your attention somehow. I don't really know how else to say it other than to say I believe we're designed to fully realize our importance in the grand scheme of things. Anything that you think you've supposedly evaded, swept under the rug, avoided in yourself, ignored, not spoken up about, disregarded, or not acknowledged—how many other ways can I say this?—is going to be housed in your psyche somewhere, in your spiritual, emotional, or physical body. It can be like a weight that sort of gnaws and agitates and over time can create wounding, even though it might seem small in the moment. It's not supposed to take up that space; we're supposed to be light, clear, and freed up, not held down, anchored, weighted, and wounded. That's not how we optimally thrive and function. These things are going to show up in the way and time that they need to, eventually, often in relationships, in order for you to resolve and address them.
It's kind of like there's this spiritual scoreboard, and it's not in a punitive way or a competitive sense. It's really just designed, I think, to help us understand that everything matters. Every act of love, no matter how small in the moment, towards ourselves and others, deeply matters and impacts, sending a rippling effect towards the whole and impacting the whole. Likewise, anything opposite of that becomes destructive to that life breath. I believe it's designed that way to help us understand that we matter. It's designed to help us understand our worth. It's like God trying to get our attention, saying, "Hey, you're important, okay? You're important, and you matter." This may not be everybody's lesson in the exact context and way that I'm speaking about it right now. Say, in a relationship, if you put your needs last—which is very easy to do as a mom and very easy to do when you're running a household—I would argue that on some level, this is what we all need to see. When we see ourselves in our true light and the expectation is high, we tend to want to meet that expectation. If that's how we're seen, then that's how we will act. Conversely, if it's really low and we don't think we're worthy or worth it, then we will keep acting accordingly, in alignment with that belief.
So, when we see ourselves as I believe God does, we will rise to that. What's the behavior that keeps snagging you? Because underneath that behavior, that's the clue. Underneath that behavior is a belief, and the belief is the thing that needs to change. When that changes, the behavior changes. If you've carried something alone that feels heavy and you've been burdened, you may have a wound as a result of the weight of that that needs to heal. There are times that we have to saddle up and do things on our own. As an example, my husband, who's very present and amazing and wonderful when he's home—even when he's not home—was traveling a good chunk of the time when my kids were all little. He would leave for months at a time sometimes. Even though I had a little help, I had four or five kids; they were all young, and there were many hours in a day when I was alone. This was a real endurance exercise on so many levels that I didn't even understand at the time.
What I found I had to do—this is where I really had to take responsibility for myself on a few different levels and take care because I needed some major refueling with this. You know, if you run a car on empty for too long, it's going to break down, it's going to have problems. If you don't address the issues that crop up as a result of poor maintenance, the life of your car and its function is going to suffer, right? So, for me, the practice I put into place at this time happened out of necessity. It happened very organically, and it happened out of necessity. I had to stop watching the show at night that I would check out with. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's a distraction. It might be a healthy distraction, but it's still a distraction, and it wasn't refueling me in the way that I was really needing.
At this time, I developed a spiritually nurturing practice. It was accessible and available to me at that time in the evenings. I was not yet able to rise early because my kids woke up before me, and I was not about to wake up before them since they had me awake all night anyway. I remember I could wake up and have between two and five kids asleep on my floor or in my bed. I used to put mattresses out and kind of trained them so they would stop waking me up and just come and get on the mattress and go to sleep when they wanted me in the middle of the night. So, for a good period of my life, that's what nights looked like for me, okay? In order for me to build this in, I found it had to happen at night. I'm sort of a night owl, so that worked for me. Now, I wake up early in the morning to do this before everybody else, and I've somehow turned into a morning person. I'm still a night person, so sometimes I burn the candles at both ends, but that's a miracle right there. I'm really grateful for that because it sets me off on the right foot. At this time, though, I had to really just put... I would get in my cozy bed, get something spiritual to read, get a journal, and really start to dip into a prayer and meditation practice, a more self-reflective practice where I would journal about what was coming up and take that into prayer. It was incredibly enriching and helpful, and it was the thing I looked forward to at the end of the day because I felt held, nurtured, loved, and cared for in that space.
This was also something that I had been working on developing and growing—a relationship with a spiritual connection—for a good period of time anyway, so this was already accessible to me. I needed to grow that; I needed to reconnect in that way at the end of the day because I felt kind of all over the place and exhausted. This actually helped give me a lot more energy. It also created a space for me to listen to myself, listen to what my needs were, and where I felt vulnerable or whatever. I had been spending my days sort of disregarding myself out of necessity's sake because there were a lot of other needs to listen to and meet. That's really beautiful work. It kind of brings a tear to my eye because I'm not in that work in the same way anymore. I'm really grateful that I'm out of it, actually, but it's so profound and powerful, and there's so much love in it. I'm in new big, beautiful work; it's just different.
When we respond to ourselves honestly and meet that need, whatever that is, we receive those benefits pretty immediately. It was a daily thing; it's not like I did it one day and then I was good for a week. No, I had to do it every day because a lot was being asked of me. I guess the overall message is: don't ignore yourself, don't disregard yourself. Pay attention. These things are important. Don't take on the things you don't have to, and then the things that you do have to and that you do want to do, do them honestly.
I think one of the main things to watch for in our jobs, vocations, and responsibilities is to check for what's motivated and inspired by love and could use more inspiration or motivation from love, and then what is an impulse-driven action. A lot of times we do things impulsively out of a belief that is not actually the correct loving right action because it ends up causing more problems than it does good. Yes, we have to show up in a certain way and be responsible adults, but check in and consider ourselves as an equal in the situation. There's a balance; there's always a balance with this stuff. We're only human, you know what I mean? We can only take so much before we crack and crumble. We need to give ourselves breaks when we can and accept help when we can, and ask for help because people want to help.
Do you know how many people... It's so funny. When I look back, there were so many people that said, "Can I help? Is there anything I can do? Please call me and let me know if there's anything I can ever do." I rarely called those people. I should have taken a list. It wasn't that I didn't believe them, that they wanted to help—they were sincere. It's just when it came down to it, I was uncomfortable asking. That's just based on a belief; it's just a fear. Stepping out of certain patterns takes courage, you know? It really does. It takes a lot of courage to ask for help sometimes or speak up. It takes so much courage to be honest if we're afraid of being...dot dot dot...whatever the fear is underneath it. It's always good, you know? The things we're afraid of have a gold mine of opportunity and freedom underneath them.
That's all I got today. I love you guys. Be well, soul seekers. Until next time. Thank you for tuning in to The Mae B Mindful Podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. Your feedback helps us grow and improve. For more information, resources, and exclusive content, visit our website at maebmindful.com.