why personal growth matters for mothers
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| image by Jennifer Gutzmer |
Speaking of processing and inputs, I have been slooowly journaling through an ecourse called Vibrant Living Strategies, by Lisa Grace Byrne, which I came across because it was part of an ebook bundle I purchased a while back. I was worried there might be too much touchy feely nonsense in the course, but it's actually helping me create concrete and achievable strategies to live my life with more purpose and joy.
Yeah, I'm sorry about that last sentence, but it's true and I can't seem to rewrite it any better, so that's what we get today.
Let me try a new one: This course is like having a really smart and savvy personal cheerleader come hang out at your house for a while. (Better?)
Here's a snippet of the course description:
The Vibrant Living Strategies for Moms is a guided workshop that does exactly that [help you get clear on the direction you're headed]. This guided, 12-day online course will guide you to reflect inward to help you navigate the terrain of your life on your own terms as well as support you with tools to manage your own self growth while still maintaining and raising a family.
The Vibrant Living Strategies workshop was created with the intent to help mothers dig deeper into a set of interviews that Lisa conducted on the combined topics of motherhood, ambition, passion, and purpose (called the MAPP Gathering). The wonderful thing (or one of them) about these interviews is that they are FREE!
From the MAPP Gathering welcome page:
What if you could join a conversation with other women about navigating motherhood while keeping a strong sense of self, honoring your passion and ambitions, and finding your own sweet spot as you carve out the life you most want to be living?
Sound cool? It is!
These interviews have impacted me in several ways:
1) They have helped me acknowledge the tension between the fact that I truly am living my dream life and the opposing fact that this same life is so hard sometimes I want to drive my car into a tree just for a little break.
2) They have made me feel more connected to mothers as a collective because I was reminded that we all wrestle with many of the same basic things (like regular showering).
3) Lastly, the interviews have renewed my inspiration to make personal growth (and true self-care) an important priority.
Regarding this last point, I remember a quote from Lisa's interview with Brene Brown that stopped me in my tracks:
"Who you are, where you are in your journey (personally and/or professionally), is a far better predictor of how your kids will turn out than anything you know about parenting."What this means is the work I put into figuring myself out and then filling myself up is actually awesome for my kids.
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I'm not talking about weekend spa days or even pursuing a full-time career outside the home (although that may be your path). I'm talking about finding what stretches and lights me up and working it into my life on some level - even if that just means a tiny bit of whatever I love to do (like writing) right now, while knowing I can put more time and energy into my passion as my children grow and detach themselves from my legs. But this process of "working on myself" shows my kids that they can honor wherever they are at in life, but still move forward with intention and purpose. How I handle my life's limitations and opportunities affects the kind of people my kids will turn out to be more deeply than whether I read them all the best books, or whether I decide to use time-outs or positive reinforcement or just ground them withinaninchoftheirlives.
What about you? Any rabbit trails of inspiration to share?
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