working mom guilt
Ep 106: Rocking Life as a Work-Out-of-the-Home Mom with Kendra Hennessy
The one thing I don't talk about is being a work-out-of-the-home mom. I just never did that, so I don't want to teach what I don't confidently know. But! Today's a good day because my friend Kendra Hennessy has been in that position and is about to drop some serious truth bombs for you mamas!
This episode is going to bring you a lot of hope and inspiration no matter what type of mom you are! Whether you are a mom who works from home or outside the home, get ready for really good conversation around finding the balance and harmony between work and family.
Kendra and I talk about figuring out what fits your family best, discovering the values that are non negotiable, and finding ways to connect with each of your kids (because we all know, every kid is different and needs their mom in different ways!) There are fears, doubts, and misconceptions moms who work outside of the home face but at the end of the day we are all moms working to give our kids the best we can!
In This Episode Allie + Kendra Discuss:
The biggest doubts work outside the home moms face.
Understanding that chaos is routine out of control and how you can get it back in order.
How valuable quality time with your kids is (and not just quality time, but time spent doing things they love)
Why the "fringe moments" matter.
Made For This Mom
The Get Unstuck Masterclass
Kendra's Website
Kendra's Podcast: Mother Like A Boss
Ep 033: Cleaning Tips & Systems with Kendra Hennessy
Book: The Fringe Hours
Blog Post: 3 Unique Ways To Follow Through On Your New Year's Resolutions
Allie's Instagram
Made For This Mom is a beautiful, life-changing program that I co-created with Kendra. It deals with mindset, attitude and heart shifts for moms who are ready to uplevel their mental and emotional health.
If you want to get away from the whole "oh mom, life is so hard and so messy," and just that victim mentality. The, "I never get a moment to myself. My whole life is just such a crap show. I don't even know what selfcare is. I never get time to myself." That whole act, that whole lifestyle and start living your life as who you are meant to be, this program is meant for you. It will change your life.
This is a mindset program that helps you identify the source of the weight you're feeling and get this aerial view of your motherhood so you can become the confident, flourishing mom that you were meant to be.
It is a next level program. Made For This Mom. Doors are open now and I really want to see you in there!
I want Made for This mom!
Guys! It is finally May and I'm so excited because it's Mother's Day this month. It's the month of motherhood and that means in my life that I get to do a lot of work side-by-side with my business bestie, Kendra Hennessy of Mother Like A Boss.
We co-created an online program called Made For This Mom together a few years ago and every May we open the doors to that program. I'm so excited because this is just one of the reasons that I love May so much. This time of year honestly makes me super emotional because this program is so important, so close to my heart, and so different from the other courses that I've created.
It is a next level program. Made For This Mom. Doors are open now. Go to madeforthismom.com. Get all the deets. I really want to see you guys in there.
It comes with a student-only online community where Kendra and I regularly check in and can talk to you guys. You can ask questions and comment. It also comes with three live coaching calls with both Kendra and myself present and we literally are taking your questions, taking your specific life issues and talking with you, answering your questions, helping you, coaching you through things. So, three of those live calls plus the entire program, plus the student community. This is just invaluable.
I can't wait to see you guys in there. I'm so excited about this! Madeforthismom.com. The doors are closing super soon, so get over there.
ALLIE: Hey guys! Welcome back to The Purpose Show. I'm so happy today. Extra, extra happy because I'm sitting with my BFF and we're going to hang out and talk and you guys get to listen in. Kendra's here. She is one of my best friends in the whole world. She lives across the country, so I think that's a bummer. It's a bummer, but it says a lot about our friendship because I'm over here in sunny San Diego and you'll send me a picture with 8 ft. of snow.
KENDRA: It's the middle of January. And Allie will have an Instastory and they're gallivanting around southern California, and I just sent her a picture of us bundled up inside because we're inside the Polar Vortex, and she's like, "Oh I know! I totally feel you, friend. It was 50 degrees yesterday." Very different.
ALLIE: Kendra and I, she's been on the show before. I'll link to her initial episode because it was really good. She's the queen of simplifying your cleaning and your cleaning systems, your cleaning routine, how to clean. She taught me how to deal with urine, which I need to do a lot because I have a million boys.
KENDRA: I'm really good at teaching people how to deal with urine. I want that to be on my tombstone.
ALLIE: This episode is going to be so fun. I'm so excited! Kendra is the founder of Mother Like A Boss and her website is amazing. The way she does things is really similar to the way that I have my business laid out because we've been doing stuff together for a while.
I think you can see the influence that we've had on each other whenever we come together. We have a really good energy together and I love doing stuff with you. We also made a course together, Made For This Mom.
KENDRA: Which is incredible. I'm trying to say that with the most humble sound in my voice as well. I know when we talk about it we try to be very humble, but I really do think that I can say that because it's helped so many people. And I also think that both Allie and I know that that course came out of somewhere else. It came to us in an instant and we laid out everything for that course in a day because it just came to us from another place. We just knew that this is what we were supposed to talk about and it deviated from what we normally did because it's not about decluttering or minimalism or homemaking or cleaning. It's really about motherhood. It's about your relationships with yourself and the people in your life and getting back to a really solid place in your own life.
A lot of moms in there are like, "You know, I have my systems down. I'm running my home. I've decluttered and the everything there seems great, but why do I still feel this longing? Why do I still feel this emptiness inside?" And that's where Made For This Mom really has been able to fill that void.
ALLIE: Yeah, we launch it every May for Mother's Day, so coming up. Every time we do that, I always say that I'm so proud of that course. I think I really am the most proud of it because, not that the other stuff doesn't matter, but this is so much deeper and the kind of comments that we see coming out of that course…it's just better.
It's so amazing and so powerful. I love that we did that together. It was like we were just enlightened with it. It came out of us when we were together in San Diego. That was great. I love it.
So, tell everybody about your family and, you know, be better at it than I was at saying what you do.
KENDRA: Absolutely. As she said, I founded Mother Like A Boss. We actually just celebrated our three-year anniversary for the business, which was really incredible. And I wasn't even keeping track at all because, as you know, as you get older time sort of constricts and you're like, "Oh! It's been a year? It feels like 10 minutes."
Before that I owned a cleaning business, so that's really where my cleaning expertise comes in. I wasn't just somebody that liked to clean, I actually ran a business. I ran the numbers last year and I have about 22,000 hours of experience cleaning houses. That's not including my own, so I do have the expertise. I have learned a lot.
It was an 11-year process and I sucked at it at first. I really do tell people that for a reason because house cleaning isn't something much like anything else in motherhood. It's not something people are born with. People have tendencies towards organization or tendencies towards good habits. But at the end of the day, something like cleaning your house is not just innate. It's not like we're born knowing how to do it.
I ran that business. I loved it and I loved what I did, but I was exhausted. Cleaning people's houses every day is exhausting. From a business standpoint, I wanted something I could scale. I wanted something that would allow me to be home with my kids more. So, I went into the online space and thought there has to be a way that I can serve moms in a better way, not just with cleaning, but with home management in general.
Really what I talk about is modernizing homemaking. I sort of feel like I'm on this one-woman mission to modernize and put a fresh spin on homemaking because I think that it is one of the most important things that we can do these days and it's one of the most overlooked.
And that's really why Allie and I both not only get along so well, but have such a heart for each other is because we both have that same belief…if your home is in order, then you're going to radiate that love and joy to your children, to your husband, to the relationships in your life. And then they're going to take that and radiate it out.
I think now we live such busy, full, crazy lives that why wouldn't you want your home to be the safe haven?
I always say I want my home to be the hammock and the safety net that catches us in our lives, so that when the stresses of the outside world are crazy, I can come home and it's not another stressor. When I walk into my home I'm not like, "Oh, great, crap" and there's crap everywhere. And I have no systems. We wake up in the morning and we're run, run, run and rush, rush, rush, much the same way Allie talks about decluttering.
On the personal end, I've been married to my very tall husband, as Allie can tell you.
ALLIE: Yes! He's so tall and so loud.
KENDRA: He's tall and loud. Bless his sweet, sweet heart. He's one of the loudest people on the face of the earth. His whole family is. They just talk loud and he doesn't even realize it. What's funny is that he's not an ostentatious person at all. He's just loud in the way he talks.
ALLIE: It's literally his voice decibel. It's just funny. We joke about it all the time because when we were first hanging out as families…Brian…one of our pain points in our marriage is, I'm like, "What? Huh?" He's kind of a mumbler. He has a quiet voice. And Adam was like, "So how's it going?" And I was jarred. And I noticed it and Kendra was like, "Oh yeah, sorry." He's really loud. It's just funny.
KENDRA: He has a very rich timber.
ALLIE: Well said.
KENDRA: We've been married for, it's coming up on 12 years in a couple of months. We have a 12-year-old daughter, Ava, and a 6-year-old son, Everett. They are truly the light of my life. All three of them. I love them so much. I love being a mom. I love being a wife. I love being a business owner.
I think that if you're listening to Allie, you know Allie's the same way. And again, that's something that really created our friendship is while I love my family and I would do anything for them, my business is like a third child to me. My business is super important, running my business is important. I love being successful. I love making money. I love all the things about running a business. I love being a CEO.
Also we live in upstate New York where it's cold four months out of the year. Really cold, not like southern California, 50 degree cold. Like actually cold.
ALLIE: It sucks. I'm embarrassed that I've acclimated back to here because I travel so much that if I'm gone enough I'm like, "Oh, I'm actually not that cold and I don't need this giant puffy jacket on day 15 of being here." But then I get back and I'm like, "Oh it's so cold and then I look at my phone and it's like 61."
I don't even know where to start with you because I have so many things that I want to talk about, but I want to circle back to when you had your cleaning business. You have a podcast, an amazing podcast by the way, which we will link to. My podcast and yours is coming out at the same time, so if you're listening to this one you can go back and listen to hers.
You talk about being a work-outside-of-the-home mom. I know that you know how it is when you're audience is building and they want to know something from you and you want to help them, but there's certain things that you can figure out and help. But there's other things you just can't talk about because you've never done that. And being a work-outside-of-the-home mom is one of those things for me.
Now it's a little different. You start to travel, and speaking events, and I'm gone a lot more, but even then, my family usually comes too, so I just don't have that experience of you have a job. It's not necessarily something that you love and are super passionate about, but it pays the bills and you're working and you're gone all day and you're exhausted when you come home in the evening and you've got homework and family and cooking and all that. I've never done that.
I want to talk to you about all the things, but I really want to hone in on you blessing and speaking truth over the women that are listening that have a work-outside-of-the-home life like that. It's not their passion, it's their paycheck and they've got to do it, you know?
KENDRA: Yeah. I should start by saying I started out feeling like it was my passion. For me it was. I want to start out by saying that. I started my business when I was pregnant with Ava, so it was 13 years ago. I had gone to college and I dropped out of college in my last semester. Go me.
I had a panic attack. I did not want to do what I was going to school for. It was freaking me out that I was going to then be put into this job that I didn't want and I literally had an actual, physical panic attack and I was like, "I'm done. I'm just going to drop out. I'll figure it out later, but I'm not going to continue doing this."
And the long story made very short is that a friend of mine had a neighbor that had just moved here from 20 or 30 minutes away. She owned a cleaning business there and was going to be running it here and needed someone to help her. So I was like, "You know what? Well I just quit school so I should probably do something during the day, so I decided to work with her, loved it and then decided to do my own business.
Well while all that was happening, while dropping out of college, which broke my family's heart because I was really the first person to go to college. I had a scholarship so they did not expect that.
ALLIE: What were you going for?
KENDRA: What I went for the first two years for was secondary math education, so I was going to be a math teacher, which could not be any different than what I want to do.
ALLIE: When she first said that, I was like, "I don't know if we're going to be friends, how can you like math? But it's so funny because she has this numbers-based memory and she'll be like, "Hey, remember on January 2nd, 2016 when we were sitting at 45-degree angle and you said this, and then we started this part of the business and we made exactly this dollars and cents amount?" She'll remember things and it's kind of amazing in a business partner because I'm the opposite.
I come up with all of the creative ideas and I'm really good at writing our emails and stuff. She's like, "Okay, but we should probably plan on making money from this." And I'm like, "Oh yeah."
KENDRA: Yeah, you'll give me the information. Then you're like, "Can you just run the conversions real quick on that."
ALLIE: Yeah, we're a good team, but I think it's so funny because your personality is so…you're so bubbly, you're such an extrovert, you're so good with people and you're so good at speaking the truth, gently, but also not so much when it's needed. And you're just so good that it's so funny that you're such a logical numbers person too. It's a weird mix.
KENDRA: Yeah, I think that's why I decided not to become a math teacher because it was like, "I just don't think that I can do that for the rest of my life." So after two years in school of doing that, I was like, "Yeah, I don't want to do that."
Then I thought, "You know, maybe instead of doing math, I'll just do elementary education, teach 5th grade." I never wanted to be a kindergarten teacher. I just wanted to teach maybe fifth or sixth grade, so that's really what I went to school for. Which is interesting now because I am doing that, I'm teaching and I love to teach. I love helping people. I love the look in someone's eye when they get an "aha" or when they type it and they're like, "Oh my gosh! That just was so great!" I love helping people on a journey. I do it in a different way now.
When I dropped out of school and then was starting this new business, I also got myself pregnant. I should say I didn't get myself pregnant. Adam got me pregnant. That's really an odd thing to say. I love when people say "I got myself pregnant." Did you? Did you really get yourself pregnant?
ALLIE: But I also hate when couples are like, "We're pregnant!"
KENDRA: No, we're not pregnant. I was pregnant. He was not. I found out I was pregnant four months after we had gotten engaged. That was all happening at once. And to be honest, I'm glad it happened that way because it forced me to move forward. I didn't have a choice. I just kept moving forward.
Anyway, I was always a "working mom." And I say it in quotes because I think that all of us are working, but I mean the go outside the home every day, leave at 7:00 AM, go to a job - my business - and then come home. It's funny because I don't know any different and I've never known any different. I've only been a stay-at-home-mom two different times in my life and it was only for a few months at a time. So it was just a very different way of doing things.
And I think, like many other things in parenting, it's trial by fire where you see what works and see what doesn't. For me, what helped tremendously…and I know that not everyone is blessed to have family that they live around…but if you don't have family around, finding yourself a support system. Even if you have to pay them. Even if it's just a babysitter that comes in for a couple of hours at night or on the weekends, or a nanny or a mommy's helper, that kid next door who's 12 who's looking for a few extra dollars, having somebody come in to clean your home, even if it's once a month.
Here's the thing guys, people talk all the time about like, "Oh, I can't afford this. I can't afford that." But they'll go to Starbucks every day and get themselves a coffee. I'm like, if you just saved that money every single day, if you save that $5, you would have an extra $150 at the end of the month that you could have paid a house cleaner to come in and do a bunch of stuff for you or someone to help you with laundry once a week.
To me as a work-outside-of-the-home mom, it was about making my priorities crystal clear and nonnegotiable. Where when I was working, I was working, and when I was home, I was home and that was really difficult having a business because it wasn't like a job where I just left the job and came home. People were texting me or emailing me or whatever, so I really had to get crystal clear on what was important to me and how important it was to me to clean my house, to do my laundry, to cook for my family, to grocery shop.
Then I had to make routines around that. That's why I am so big on routines now is because routines help you to create freedom in your life so you're not coming home at 5:00 PM every night and starting from scratch every single day. And that is what a great majority of moms out there are doing. They start from scratch every day. And I know that you're big on routines too. It's exhausting. And that's why we're so big on routines because if you can make something rhythmic, make something the same every single day, even if it's just one small thing at a time, it's one less thing you have to put your mental energy into.
ALLIE: Absolutely. And I love that you described it as this is why routines are so freeing because the thing that just grates my nerves more than anything else that I hear is that, "I just can't do routines. It's too rigid for me. I'm too spontaneous."
I am so Type B and I love being spontaneous. Let's just take today for a quick example before we get back to the working mom thing. We're in launch mode right now in my business and you know how that goes and today, everything is done and we have a free day. I immediately was like, "Oh! I get to talk to my best friend on my podcast and then we're going to go and have a family day before baseball practice. It's going to be awesome."
But before…I was sitting outside this morning having my coffee on the porch while the kids played and literally just thinking about before, like I would have thought, "That would have been nice. Unfortunately, I'm eight loads behind on the laundry. The dishes are all crusty. I have no food prepped for dinner." These things are all done because it's rhythmatized and simplified. The load of laundry is finishing right now. I can hear it above me. There's food in the crock pot because I had it prepped before. Actually, Brian helped me with that, but we had the plan in place. The dishes are done. The house is picked up. Everything is running smoother because we're not, like you said, starting from scratch every day and now we're freed up to go and have that spontaneous family day. I didn't have this on my calendar. I didn't know this was going to happen. We can go because we've freed ourselves up with routine. I love that you worded it like that. Thank you because nobody that doesn't have routines thinks that it's going to be freeing; they think it's going to be rigid.
KENDRA: One of the most quoted Kendra Hennessey things, that I see people post is "chaos is a routine you've lost control of." People think that chaos is this same thing. Like, "Oh, I would like to be able to just wake up every day and just choose what I want to do." And I'm like, "Yeah, how's that working out for you right now? How is it working out when you wake up in the morning and it's chaos from morning until night?" That's a routine. Being chaotic every day is a routine. It's just one you lost control of. If your kids, if you and your kids can expect chaos every day, it's a routine because a routine is something that is based on expectation. Expecting something over and over, like waking up in the morning and brushing your teeth. That is something you just do because it's you have what you call anchors. I think the way you talk about anchors is genius. You're anchoring something to a time of day so you don't even have to think about it.
I said recently, I think it was in a workshop that I did, that when I worked at a pizzeria when I was a teenager, I would work on the weekends and I would 'open.' Well, we didn't walk in on a Saturday morning and go like, "Whoa, there's a bunch of stuff to do. Where do you want to start? What should we do today?" No, you have an opening list. You have a whole checklist of stuff to get done. Why? Because then it's done and as soon as you open those doors, you can just work the whole day, serve your customers and not have to worry about all the rest of the stuff getting done because it's already done and you know that the closing list will get done at the end of the day.
Just like Allie said, she got everything done. So now it's like, "Cool, we can go out and enjoy our day because I'll come home, dinner will be ready in the crock pot and laundry has already been done. Or maybe there'll be a load that was done in the dryer and I can come home and quickly put it away. That's what routines get you.
And it doesn't matter if you're staying home all day or working. That is a very common misconception. Your routines are just as important no matter what type of mom you are.
ALLIE: Absolutely. I love that so much and I think that it's important to say as well that like you mentioned it in the beginning, having a mommy's helper or whatever…we are not saying you're a mess. You need to get your ish together and you need to do it all. I'm the minimalist one. I have two girls that are in high school and they go to our church and they come twice a week and they fold all the laundry that I do on a rhythm in the mornings. I just put the hammer there and I'm like, "they'll deal with that," and they fold it and put it away. And it's amazing. You can delegate, that could be a rhythm, but you are keeping things running at least. You don't have to do every single thing.
If you don't have the budget…we've both been there, but if you can simplify. If you can afford to have a little mommy's helper come. I give them I think it's like $20 or something a week. They're so excited and they're saving it for their summer and all this stuff. But they love it. They're so happy to help. It helps me so much. That's saving me I don't know how much time, but I feel it and I feel that in my week that I don't have to do that. Find ways to delegate. Find ways to delegate to yourself. By rhythmatizing you're delegating those brain calories somewhere else where they matter more. Delegate to another person or your kids when they get older. People's kids don't do enough to help.
KENDRA: No, and that's something that gets talked about quite a bit in my business. And I've had a few people that don't agree with me. They're like, "I don't believe that kids should have to do chores." And I'm like, "Well, you do you. If you want to do everything for your kids and you think that that's the way that you want to run your house, I am not going to judge you for it. But I'm going to tell you right now in my house we're a team and I'm not anyone's servant.
ALLIE: You make a mess, you help pick up.
My son is 6. He can't mow the lawn. I can't be like, "Oh, we're just going to split everything 50/50." He's not old enough. Can you imagine Everett mowing the lawn?
KENDRA: He is the cutest thing. He doesn't do that. Adam does that because that's Adam's job to do, but you know what Everett can do? He can help fold clothes. He can put away his toys. He can put the dishes in the dishwasher after dinner. He can help set the table. He can clean up the table. He can do things.
And my 12-year-old is now as tall as I am, so she can do a lot of stuff around the house. She's been doing her own laundry for four years because I bought back my time.
I taught her to do her laundry while I still had my cleaning business. I should make that very clear. I was working eight hours a day, outside of the home, and I still taught Ava how to do her laundry because I was like, "I don't want to be spending time doing her laundry when I have all the other things that need to be done." At the time I had a 2-year-old; I didn't want to be also doing her laundry and I was like, "She can learn how to do it and then I will literally buy all of my time back. All of those years that I've bought back that I haven't touched her laundry.
I think we have gotten so far away from delegating to our kids. I mean that's a whole other discussion in and of itself. But your children aren't there to be served by you. You're all there to serve one another and the home. I view homemaking as a team effort. We're all here to serve our home because when we all help and we all have our own routines, we get to have days like Allie just said she gets to have where everyone goes out.
Because I know for a fact Allie's kids are helping do stuff too. And it's like, "If we all get our stuff done, guess what we get to do guys? We get to go out. We get to go to Legoland. We get to go to the park. We get to go swimming." I tell my kids in the summer, "Listen, if you guys want to leave, I get my work done from 9-12 in the summer. If you can get your work done from 9-12, guess what happens at 12? We go to grandma's to swim. We go to the lake. We go out to the park. But that stuff has to be done." And so, we all have our routines. We all have our marching orders. It's not a negative. No one's being punished. It's just a part of running a home. The same way you would run a business.
ALLIE: Yeah. And what a beautiful way to prepare them for the world. A light switch isn't going to flip on when they're 18, "Oh, I suddenly know how to fold my socks. I suddenly know how to make pancakes or oatmeal or whatever. I suddenly know how to pay bills." You have to teach them.
I think we all have families in our head that maybe freak us out a little bit about this topic. They are having them do too much or they're so strict that it's joy-sucking, and there's just this tension in the home of the kids are scared of the parents and there's so much responsibility and it's so strict. I can picture two friends that I grew up with that it was like that. They were so rigid and scared all the time and they were doing so much for their age that they weren't able to enjoy childhood. But you know, balancing that and teaching them to not be entitled that things are just done for you and your clothes just appear. I love that. I love the way you talk about that.
Okay, friends. I know I already told you in the beginning of this episode that Made For This Mom is here. It's open. It's May. It's one of my favorite times of the year. But as a piece of Made For This Mom, coming back around every May, there's also a free masterclass that Kendra Hennessy and I do together every year.
Anyone can come and sign up for this. This is something that we have gotten such incredible feedback on. People just freak out about it every year and they want it be something that we do more often, but because we have separate lives, separate businesses, and it takes two of us, we've just really dedicated this class to be a thing that happens that's a free event just once a year. So, this only comes around in May. Anybody can sign up, but the live spots are limited.
Go and sign up. If you are able to come to the live showtime, come a few minutes early and be ready so that you can snag your spot. If you can't come live, sign up anyway. We'll send you a replay link and you'll have a couple of days to watch it before it disappears for another year.
To sign up for this masterclass you need to go to alliecasazza.com/unstuck.
It's called The Get Unstuck Masterclass and that's exactly what we help you do.
There's typically four big myths that Kendra and I see popping up in you women in our businesses, because we work with women and mothers all day. We're women and mothers ourselves, so we also struggle with these myths. Kendra and I address each of these four core myths about motherhood head on.
It is a truth-bomb-dropping powerful masterclass that will literally have you moving around in your seat because you can't wait to take action on these things, shift your perspective, change your mindset, and start viewing and acting on your motherhood in a different way.
If you're going to spend an hour on the internet, this is the most intentional, the most beneficial place for you to do so. I promise…and I know that is a big promise to make…but I stand by it.
Alliecasazza.com/unstuck. It's free to come to this. You're going to love it.
However, this is a temporary thing. It's happening this week. You can go to the website and get all the details for the time and place and all that, but it's happening live and then you're only gonna have about two days to watch it before it will disappear from internet land until next May when we do it live again. This is a temporary thing.
Alliecasazza.com/unstuck. Go sign up.
ALLIE: I was wondering this morning when I was thinking about this episode, what do you think are the biggest doubts that work-outside-of-the-home moms deal with in themselves about themselves? About their lifestyle? I don't know if 'doubts' is the right word. Maybe what are the judgments? What are they dealing with inside of themselves?
KENDRA: I've said before that I never really felt guilty for working. I never really felt guilty about the fact that my daughter went to an in-home daycare for the first three years and then she went to a preschool-based daycare because I always looked at it and thought, I'm a better person for owning my business. And because we're a 2-family working home, we have more money to do different things, and I wanted to work and whatever.
But what I did feel guilty about was that I didn't feel guilty because people would ask me, "Oh, don't you feel guilty about sending your baby to a daycare?" And then I was like, "No, I didn't until now. Now I feel bad. Maybe I'm not a good mom. Maybe all these other people guilty and I don't, maybe I'm not a good mom." And I think the one thing that I hear work-outside-the-home moms say all the time is, "I am missing time with my children. Am I not a good mom because I'm not staying home? Are they as well taken care of where they are versus if they were at home?" I hear a lot of that.
And then also there's the home aspect, "I feel like I can't maintain my home as well as somebody that stays home." Just to let you all know, I have just as many stay-at-home moms as I do working moms in my course. It is not a stay-at-home mom issue or a working mom issue. I think we all need to realize that.
ALLIE: It's a task list issue.
KENDRA: It's funny because we all have the 'grass is greener thing' but it's not; the grass isn't greener on the other side. I think those issues really come up quite a bit for work-outside-the-home moms.
We were just talking beforehand about one of the big issues that comes up is not being able to spend enough time with your children. Feeling like you don't have that quality time. The typical thing I hear is, "We don't get home until 5:00 PM, and then I have to start dinner, there's homework to do, and then it's bath time/shower time. And then I also want to spend time with my husband." And you're trying to squeeze a lifetime's worth of stuff into four hours after you get home.
I try now to fit my quality time in with the other stuff I'm doing. There's a book on that about The Fringe Hours. Noticing those fringe moments. Those moments when I'm cooking dinner, having Everett sit down at the kitchen table and do his homework there, or color a picture, or help me cook dinner. Having Ava come with me to the grocery store or when I need to run an errand, saying, "Ava, you want to come with me?" And then talking about the insane dragon books that she won't ever stop talking about.
ALLIE: That's why she and Bella are cross-country besties and they love each other because they talk about dragons. Kendra and I check in on their texts. The apple ID is the same, so I can open up my phone check their texts and I do often. As a mom, you're like, what are they talking about? It's weird when your kids 'have a life.' I'm always a little 'bated breath.' And then I go on there and it's like, "Dragons are so awesome!" And Ava's like, "I know! Especially purple dragons. And ice wings," from the book they read or whenever. And Bella is like, "yeah, ice wings are like the best." And I'm just sitting there…like they're both dorks and it's amazing. I'm so glad.
KENDRA: It's amazing. So, I don't care at all about dragons, but I do care about my daughter, so I will listen to her drone on about dragons because that's what she loves.
So, finding that time to spend with them that's not just carved-out time. I think all of us are trying to fit the lives that we see other people living into our own life. And your routines should fit into your life, not the other way around. You don't need cookie cutter routines that then you try to squeeze your unique life into. So, we've really tried in our home now to do the quality time together in those 'fringe moments.'
Even my husband…he takes Everett to school every morning. Now our school is three minutes down the road. He leaves 15 minutes early because he drives him there and then they sit in the car together and they talk. I could just as easily drive him. I work at home. I just sit at home and I say goodbye to them. But that's their time together. It's their time to go to school and spend that time.
Someone else, they may be like, "It's only 15 minutes." Well yeah, but that's 15 solid minutes that they are only concentrating on each other. They don't have anything else to do. And to me it's all about quality over quantity. Find those moments that you can fit in there.
Another popular one which I know comes up I'm sure in your audience a lot is wanting to have a nighttime routine where they're getting cleaning done, but also wanting to spend time with their husband.
ALLIE: Why are these your choices?
KENDRA: Exactly. I don't understand. Why can't you do stuff together? Why can't you have your routines be like, okay, for 10 minutes we're just going to clean up the kitchen together and get that done, because many hands make less work. Do it together. Then you can go enjoy time together. Or I say split it down the middle and say like, okay, a few nights a week I'm going to really go all in and make sure there's a load of laundry in and get my evening routine done and then the other nights of the week I'm going to say, "I don't care. I'm going to sit down with my husband, watch a movie, talk, do whatever I want to do." It doesn't have to be all or nothing. We don't have to have this all or nothing mentality about everything we do in our lives.
ALLIE: I think that we also over analyze how much time things are going to take us.
In business we listen to a lot of the same podcasts. Our businesses are about our real life, our mom life. So a lot of the times I'll learn something about business and be thinking more about applying that to my mom life. And it was like that. There was this episode where this woman was talking about however much time you mentally give yourself for a task, that's how long it's going to take. If you give yourself an hour to write this email, guess what? It's gonna take you the full hour. But if you're like, alright, 20-minute timer and I'm writing this email, it's gonna take you 20 minutes.
And we do that with our tasks. "Oh well it's either time with my husband or cleaning up the kitchen." If you just both worked together for 10 minutes it would be done.
KENDRA: Yeah. It's called Parkinson's law and it is for real. I have done the same thing. How many times have you gone, "Oh, I'm just going to give myself until the end of the month to get this thing done?" If you just give yourself two days, it would have gotten done in two days.
ALLIE: I have seen that so much in my life. You know with the book stuff right now ? They're like, "Okay, how much time do you want for writing your book? We'll stretch it, we'll give you 18 months if you need it. You just seem really busy." And I'm like, "That is the opposite of what I like. Give me what's the bare minimum? Can I get this done in a month? Give me a three-month deadline." I know that however much I'm given, that's how much I'm going to take.
I think that's really powerful for us as mothers because we just over overthink. We overcomplicate. We give ourselves too much time. We make it seem way harder than it is. Just get in there make it fun, put in your Airpods and blast music and just get it done. It'll take you five minutes if you give yourself five minutes.
KENDRA: Yeah. Also, if you have children that are old enough to be eating their own food, they're also old enough to be cleaning up after themselves. I say this in my community all the time. When people ask about the after dinner, they're like, "It just sticks me. It seems like it's an hour to clean up after dinner." And I'm like, "Then you're doing something wrong because it does not need to be taking you that long." It probably means that you're the only one doing it and you're probably trying to multitask by doing other things at the same time. Trying to answer questions from your children, trying to get somebody in a bath and then coming back downstairs. Tag team that stuff. "Hey, guess what? You're going to do the dishes and you're going to do this and you're going to put the leftovers away." Everybody has a job.
Believe me in our home, we are not perfect. There are some days where I'm like, "This is not working out. Nothing's working out here." But when we sit down and have dinner together, cleanup takes no more than 10 minutes because everyone has a job and that's just the way it is. Adam will put the dishes in and I'll clean up the table. Ava will put stuff in…the leftovers or something. If four people were eating, why shouldn't four people be cleaning up. Obviously if you have small children, you know tiny children, I get that that's the season of your life.
But if you're in the season…I hear people say, "I have a four, a six and an eight-year-old." That's three extra people to be helping. It's going to take a little bit of time in the beginning to teach them how to do it, but again, you're buying back your time later because the time you invest right now into them helping is time you're getting yourself back in the future for the future. You could spend 10 minutes every night for three months doing it and you're going to net yourself back every single night for the rest of your life. It seems like a really good investment to me.
ALLIE: Yeah, for sure. I want to ask you when you get to a place in your family relationships, I'm thinking not so much with Adam, but with your kids, maybe in particular Ava, since she's a little older. When you get to a place where you feel like…I always describe it for lack of a better phrase, like when you just don't have their heart. Nothing really happened, nothing's really, really wrong, but you don't feel like if there was something bothering her that she wouldn't come to you. Maybe you've gotten a little too busy and you know that connection, there's a gap. What's your favorite thing to do with your kids when you feel that you've gotten to that point so you bridge that gap and fix it.
KENDRA: First of all, I love the way you say that because you have talked about Leland like that. Correct? Meeting his heart? Leland's my favorite kid. He's the best. He could care less about me at all. He literally could, that kid could not care less about my existence. And I think that's why I love him so much. He's just his own person.
ALLIE: That's the thing, he makes you want his love and attention. He's just so indifferent and then the most random things…I'm like…why do you care about that and not about me? He's hard to get.
KENDRA: He is. He is going to be really hard for some woman…that's going to be a hard nut to crack, for sure, but in a good way. Because when he finds someone, that's going to be the person.
But I love the way that you say that because it's so true. Sometimes you just feel like there's a 'block' up. Like there's a barricade. I do sometimes feel that way with Ava, one, because of her age. She's a little more independent now, which I love and hate at the same time. And two, because she is very introverted and always has been. She was never my super cuddly kid. She was never the kid that was like, "mommy, mommy, mommy. I need mommy all the time." She just wasn't like that.
And now it seems even more extreme because Everett would climb back up inside my uterus if he could. That kid is attached to my life. He just wants to be with me 24/7, like just all the time. So, now it seems even more extreme. I never have to get Everett's heart, ever. His heart is usually right in front of my face all the time, but Ava's…I feel like I do, now more than ever.
What I've noticed helps with me is getting out of the house because in the house she has her room that she can go to and I feel like it's almost like a retreat. I get it. I was 12 at one point too. I was the same way. "Leave me alone. I'm the oldest. I don't want to be around my siblings or my parents." But I feel like now getting out of the house really helps because for a lack of a better term, she has nowhere to go.
It's easier for us to relate to one another if I can take her to Chipotle, for a drive, or we can go somewhere. Meeting up with the girl scouts, even that 20-minute trip just together, it's so much easier for us to turn on music. We love that. We share that love for music and then it'll open her up because she's like, "Oh, do you know what this song is about? I looked it up and this is what they meant," and it gets a conversation going. But in the house, I noticed, I'll say, "Ava come downstairs and sit next to me." I'll talk to her. And she's like, "Umm hmm, can I go back upstairs?" For me getting out of the house has helped so much with our relationship because it's just one on one, it's just the two of us.
And also, she has a little brother and her little brother annoys her. And so, when she's downstairs, she just like, "Everett go away." And when we're not in the house I feel like she's more open to not be annoyed.
ALLIE: Yeah, I love that. That was a good answer.
Hudson is like Everett for me. I feel like you've seen this in action. I don't know if you guys have a dynamic like this, but Brian is Hudson in giant man form. He gets so irritated with Hudson and I'm like, "Do you realize that this is because he's you? You're irritated at your own self." Because Brian's love language is touch and mine is not. I don't want to be touched. It's so hard. We've had to come to the realization in our marriage that when we are having a disagreement and we're working through it, I have to put my hand on Brian's knee or at some point he just feels unloved and far from me and it's the worst thing. It's the worst thing. I'm like, "Ugg, fine!"
And Hudson is so touchy and it's irritating. The other day me and Brian were snuggling in the kitchen and he gave me a kiss and I'm in his arms and all-of-a-sudden I feel someone on my thigh and it's Hudson joining in. Then yesterday Bella came over and, she was like, "Thanks for taking me to lunch, mom. I had a really nice time." And she gave me a really long hug. All-of-a-sudden Hudson joins the group. If there's physical touch or love happening, Hudson's like, "Oh, I need in on this."
KENDRA: That is our exact dynamic. I just have two less children. It's the exact same dynamic.
ALLIE: It's easy to get to his heart. I know where he is at. He's very emotional and he always wants to be close to me. But the other kids all pretty much are a little more distant.
KENDRA: It is funny because all four of your kids…it's funny because I feel like I have the best relationship with Emmett. Emmett and I really bonded. We really bonded, and Emmett and Ava bonded so much. They had a great time. They had so much fun.
But it's the same with us. Adam's love language is touch as well and so is Everett's and it's really difficult sometimes to feel like I'm being smothered because I'm just like, "Oh my God, can you people stop touching me?" But I love that you said that about Brian because I've noticed the same thing where I need to recognize that just a gesture of an extra kiss, a hug, a back rub or something, means so much in the same way since I'm 'words of affirmation' in the same way that an extra, "Hey, I just want to let you know thank you for everything you do for us." I will live off that for the whole day. I'll be like, "Oh my God. Thank you!" Because that's how I receive love. It's the same with my kids, you know?
ALLIE: Yeah, I love that.
Okay, so what is going on in Mother Like A Boss world that you want to share with everybody. I know we've got our stuff going on this month, but I want to hear from you. What are you super excited about? Is there a behind-the-scenes you can give us or is there something already out that you want to share? What is getting you really excited about all the mom things you do?
KENDRA: I would say that because this is sort of 'the May" (if you're listening to it live) in May. June…I can't give too much information, but I will say that we're really going to be focusing on goals again. And I talk about goals in a very different way. I'm not all about, "Set your goal and then achieve it." That's boring and no one ever does it.
We're going to be really focusing on how can you make the rest of the year your best year ever and how can you start over. I love fresh starts, but I'm also a big believer that a fresh start can be this very moment. You don't have to wait until Monday. You don't have to wait for the New Year or the New Moon or whatever. A fresh start can be the moment you decide you're making a fresh start.
Instead of taking the summer off, we're really going to be diving in, in Mother Like A Boss, into how to really finish off the year strong. How to have a great summer and enjoy yourself while also not neglecting everything in your home and in your life and stuff like that.
ALLIE: I love that. Oh my gosh, you're going to have to share the link with me because last summer…June to me because we homeschool…break, right? Last summer on the podcast I did an episode called basically How To Revisit Your New Year Resolutions and check-in. Nobody does that. It was so good because nobody does that. But that's what I do in my personal life. Check in. Where am I at? I'm six months, I'm halfway through…I don't want to get to January again and be like, "Shoot, well here we go again, back to the same goal."
I think that you're taking that and really breaking it down and putting that into action for them. And that's amazing. I love that you shared that. I definitely want to share that and help get people in there. It's so helpful.
KENDRA: Yeah. Thank you. It's true. I think a lot of us we sort of "phone it in" at the second half of the year. I really do think that's a perfectionist thing. It's like, "Well, if I haven't gotten stuff done by now, we'll just wait until next year." As if those six months don't matter. It's really crazy.
I love that we can dive in and everyday figure out a new way to have a fresh start and start over again.
ALLIE: I love everything about you. I love everything that you talk about. I love the way you talk about it. I love that it's so different than the way that I talk about things.
Kendra will come to me guys and be like, "I just want you to know this idea that I just saw your post about is amazing and I like kind of hate you because it wasn't my idea. But I love it." And I'll be like, "What are you talking about? You just put out this video series. It's so amazing!" I just love that we can cheer each other on. Also we help each other out. We brainstorm together. We'll talk things out. "I've got this problem. Have you ever had this?" We just did that with webinars.
I just love you. You're so dear to me and I'm so excited that we got to do another episode on here together.
KENDRA: Thank you. I love you friend. Not to toot our own horns and say we're great or anything, but I also think that it warrants saying that the friendship that we have is the type of friendship that you guys can have with other moms. Even if you don't own a business, we don't compete with each other. We're not looking at it like, well look what she's doing and I can't have that. I look at everything that Allie does in her home and her life and I look at it from the lens if she can do it, so can I. If she can make this look easy, then that means that I can do it.
I think we need to bridge that gap in female friendships and you don't need to compete with your female friends. And if you have friends that are constantly competing with you in a negative way, it's probably time to find a new friend.
ALLIE: Yeah. And not being withholding either. If Kendra texts me or I text her like, "Hey, I saw this. How did you do that? How did you get that many people? Or how did you do that in your home?" Whatever it is. I'm not withholding, she's not withholding. We share with each other.
And that's what's so crazy to me about when we're doing… like the masterclass that we're going to do or I have a new challenge or video series or something and people are not sharing with their friends almost like they're embarrassed to say that they needed help with this. We all need help with this at different seasons.
There's other moms that are on your Facebook feed. Just because you're not an "influencer" doesn't mean you don't have influence. Share what you were finding. Share what you're learning and help other people rise up too and be better versions of themselves too. We're all trying to be better. There's no secrets there.
KENDRA: There was a woman in my group yesterday who posted this genius idea for dealing with kids cups and stuff throughout the day. And I was like, "Can I steal that and give you credit for it in my course because that's the most genius idea ever." Share with each other. That's how we grow is by sharing and not being judgmental of others, but instead saying, "Hey, this worked for me. I hope that it works for you."
ALLIE: Since we're sharing, can you share what the idea was?
KENDRA: Yes, it's a great idea and I'll have to go back and find her name because she was not somebody that I'm friends with. She was just in my free group. But she basically took a placemat from Walmart. She bought this big placemat and she made it into quadrants. She has four kids and she put their name and then she puts it on the counter and that's where their cup goes throughout the day so that it stays in one spot.
ALLIE: You're like, "Where's your cup?" And there's rotten milk in a sippy cup.
KENDA: Yeah. So that's where it stays and then when it's washed it goes there and it just sits there so that they know where their cup is. They get one cup throughout the day and then they can wash it out. And I was like, "That's such a genius idea. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for not just being, "Oh this is stupid. No one's going to care about this." Share with your friends. Share what's working for you.
ALLIE: I love that. Well thank you so much for sharing. We're going to link to everything but Motherlikeaboss.com you guys, it's so good. And she's got the setup where you can choose your own adventure. She has this vault with all these free goodies in there.
Made For This Mom is opening this month for enrollment. It only opens once a year. And we really want to see you in there.
We'll be talking about that and we'll see you guys at our masterclass. We're hanging out every May, Kendra and I, we really hang out and I love it.
KENDRA: Thank you. Love you friend!
ALLIE: Love you too. Thanks for being here!
I am always rooting for you, friend! See ya next time!
Tagged: working mom, working mom guilt, balance, quality time
Ep 083: Let's Talk About Working Mom Guilt
Working motherhood has so many different angles. And whether you work full time or part time, work outside of your home or from your home, working mom guilt is a real thing. We all struggle with it at one point or another. We don't want to miss the first moments of our kids lives or the activities they are involved in, we don't want them to think that all we do is sit on our computers or phones all day working, and we definitely don't want them to resent us for working. So how do we deal with our guilt? How do we balance work and life? How do we teach our kids to value good work ethic? (Because they will grow up and enter the workforce one day!)
If there is one thing I know, it is that being a working mom doesn't mean show up, be perfect at everything, have a super clean house, be an awesome cookie baker, come to every game, be super rich, run an amazing business or do amazing at your job. It means prioritize what matters, show up where you can, and find the balance in seasons. Show your kids what a healthy work life relationship really looks like, how grateful you are, how awesome you are, and what it looks like to thrive in these two roles of worker and mother. You're doing a great job, mama! Keep going for it!
The key to working mom guilt is recognizing what causes it for your specific situation.
The connection between how you talk about your work and how your kids will view your work. It is important that they see it as valuable and not something that takes mommy away.
How you can navigate technology with your kids, especially if your job requires you to be on your computer or phone most of the day.
Why it is ok to be tired, bring in help, and release yourself from the heavy expectations of being a working mom.
Stretched Too Thin by Jessica Turner
Hi, beautiful friend! I hope you are ready to be set free today! I have been sitting on this episode for a while. I have been seeing this topic come up a lot and just wondering how to communicate what I wanted to say.
I feel like working motherhood has so many different angles. There are different types of working moms. There are different lifestyles and schedules of working moms. Everybody has their own version of guilt surrounding motherhood and so I didn't want to just come on here and blab about my experience. I really wanted to make this useful for everyone or at least as many people as possible. I don't think anything is ever useful for everyone and someone will always hate anything and everything, but I really wanted to do well with this episode.
I had a meeting with my business manager, Hayley, and we were talking about something totally different and she just randomly said, "You know, I was thinking recently that you should do an episode about working mom guilt because I keep seeing it come up everywhere and there really isn't anything that's super helpful and I just think it could be really good."
And I do think there's plenty of things out there that are helpful. But you know, we haven't talked about that here. And I haven't talked about it on my blog. I've really never talked about it, and it's something that's been a big part of my life and my personal journey. So, as I prepared this episode, I jotted down a couple of highlights that I didn't want to forget to say that have to do with my struggle and my journey to working motherhood because it wasn't always this way for me.
And then I talked to another amazing mom on my team, Ashley. She's the one who does the show notes for episodes and she's amazing. She does my press. She's awesome. And she's an amazing working mom, and she kind of shared with me. I just kind of asked her like, "What's your experience with working mom guilt and can you talk to me about maybe a couple things that are hard for you?" She shared a few things with me and kind of helped form this episode. So, I feel good that this isn't just coming from me.
My hope is that this episode is helpful for all types of working moms, whether you work outside of the home, you work at home, you work full time or part time, or you switch between out of the home office and your home office, or you hate your job or you love your job. I hope you love your job. I just want this to be helpful in some way, even if it's small for all types of working moms. So that's my hope.
So having said that, I just want to share a little bit about my struggle as I went from a stay-at-home mom to work-at-home mom, and not even really just to work at home mom, but an entrepreneur, a business owner, and then that kind of just evolved into being a full-on CEO with a big team to run and this big company that, you know, it's just turning into this big thing that I never dreamed it would. It's really neat, but it's like every level comes with a different type of struggle, a different type of guilt. So, I just want to share a little bit about that.
When I became a mom, I was very surprised to find myself pregnant, not in the way of like, oh I'm shocked that I got pregnant, we weren't married or anything like that. We'd been married for about eight months. I was surprised because I was told that I would probably have a really difficult time having kids, if I could have them at all.
Brian and I met in junior high school and we got married a couple years after high school. We were really young and we weren't really jumping to start our family or anything. Birth control made me incredibly sick, like violently ill. I'm allergic to latex so you can figure that one out. So it kinda just felt like this struggle to prevent pregnancy. Young and dumb, and in love, and just kind of over it, I just kind of figured, you know, if birth control makes me violently puke, get hives and get nausea, and pretty much all methods of birth control make me so sick, and if I can't even really probably have kids, I'm just going to stop.
And then there was Bella, so I became a mom and I got my real estate license actually, shortly after Bella was born. You guys might know already; I've talked about this a little bit before but I had postpartum depression and I was just like a mess when Bella was a baby.
But towards her first birthday I got my real estate license and I started to work and I hated it. It was super boring for me. I just really didn't like it. I was driving to my first job. I was going to go and put a lockbox on this house. I was driving and I heard God say (one of two times that He has talked to me like almost audibly) and He just said, "This is not what I have for you. I want you to turn around and go back and be with your daughter." And so, I did. Super dramatic story, I know.
And then I was a stay-at-home mom from then on. I stayed at home with Bella. I stayed at home with Leland. I stayed at home with Hudson. Brian got a job at a big company and he was working. He was working his butt off. We were able to make ends meet barely, but we did.
There was a lot of good seasons in that job, like where he was able to work a lot of overtime and we had the money that we needed. We were able to pay our bills. I was a stay-at-home mom and that's where we felt good for years.
Then I had Emmett and we moved to the Midwest for his job and everything just kinda started to change. And if you've listened to episode six, you already know our money story, our business-starting story, and all that. I won't get into that. But basically, God just showed up and changed our life and lead us into this place where we didn't have any family. We had very little friends and we didn't really know anyone. We were kind of just brought out away from everyone so that He could change our lives and give us this message of, "Okay, it's time for you to do this now."
It was basically turning my little hobby blog into a business. I had had a lot of ideas for that, but really didn't feel like it was something that I needed to do, was supposed to do or really knew how to do. We just kinda got thrown into making this a big focus.
I worked my butt off and I learned. I had already kind of taught myself how to do some coding and I knew how to make websites. I knew how to blog. I'm a writer at heart, so I loved to write, and I was good at that part of it. I had a message that I was really passionate about with helping moms simplify. I just wasn't doing it as a business. My audience was asking me for that and asking me to create a course.
And so, I did. You guys know the story probably, and it all just kind of exploded. I mean I say that like it happened overnight and it didn't. I worked my butt off and it took a long time. But long story short, there I was a previously stay-at-home mom running a full-on business. Then I hired somebody to help me with email. I hired somebody to help me with images and graphics and design. Then I hired someone to take photos for me because I found that it is illegal to use other people's photos and I didn't know that before.
Then I hired a business manager and a project supervisor and CFOs because I'm not great with money, and all of these things started adding up. Now here I am, CEO of The Purpose Group, Incorporated, and it houses The Purpose Show podcast, the blog, the website, the courses and The Abundance Academy, which is the school where all my courses live. It's this big thing and it's crazy.
Through that process from going from stay-at-home mom to mom, business owner, work-at-home mom, (my office is at home and I typically work at home. I don't have an outside office) I have dealt with a lot of different types of mom guilt. And it was really unique for me, I feel like, because the process from actually exiting stay-at-home motherhood and getting into work-at-home motherhood was very abrupt for me.
It wasn't like, "Hey, I think we're going to talk about this. I think I am going to go to work. I think I'm going to get a job." It was just like, okay, everything is going terribly and something needs to change and we both really feel like God's pulling us over here, so let's go.
Then one thing led to another, led to another, led to another where it was like, not only am I now work-at-home mom, but I've got this big role and a lot of hours and a lot of time going into my business, all these things happening and all these people to manage. And now I'm the breadwinner, because Brian left his job and we did this full time, and oh my gosh, it's just a lot.
And what I want you to know, first of all, is that we all deal with mom guilt and I think that's okay. It's okay that it's there. But the key might be to recognize what's causing it for you. What is the guilt circling around? I don't want this episode to become Allie's story from stay-at-home mom to work-at-home mom, and my mom guilt, so I want to kind of exit that part. I'm just letting you know that I relate and kind of how my story went very briefly.
But I really want to get into this now and get into the mom guilt stuff. So, like I said, let's first start by, because you know me, I'm always trying to help you take action, what is the mom guilt circling around? Is there a key that you can recognize of something that's causing it?
For example, do you always have mom guilt around the fact that you sometimes miss your kid's baseball games for example? If so, how can you find a way to make it to the game? Is that even possible? Could you work out with your boss to get those nights off? Could you structure your schedule if you work at home to be done working by then?
If not, if it's not a possibility for you to make it, then can you have a conversation with your kid and just kind of talk it out with them? Be candid with them about it and explain it to them like, "This is what I'm doing, this is what's going on for me. I just wanted you to know that I love you. I care and I'm supportive. I'll always make it to your Monday night practice, I just can't make it to your Wednesday night games," or whatever it is. Talk to them about it. I think a lot of the time our kids care much less than we assume they do.
So often we can find or create solutions about our problems, the problem here being guilt, but we just don't. We let it feel hopeless and we do nothing so it becomes this lifelong struggle. We linger and sit in this mom guilt that could have been solved.
Don't think that mom guilt is just something that you can't do anything. I think it's normal. I think it's going to be there in some amount, and it's okay. It's just being a mom. But if you chronically have guilt around something kind of stop, step back and think about it, look into it a little deeper and ask yourself, what is this guilt circling around? What's it stemming from? And get specific and like, okay, it's because I always miss my daughter's swim meets. See if you can find or create a solution to that problem and then it will cure that guilt. Okay?
I also think, I mean I know this has been said before, but I want to say it to you again. You're providing for your family. You should be so proud of that. Step into that awesome role and feel good about what you're doing. You're doing something awesome. That is not a small deal. Try to come back to that pride place where it's like, look at what you're doing. That's so great.
I also think it's really important to note how you feel about your work, how you react to it, how you talk about it in front of your kids, how you treat it. That's how your kids are going to see it.
So, if you're coming at your work from a place of, you know, "Gosh, I'm just so sorry that I always have to do this, and oh my gosh, I just can't do it all," and you're yelling all the time, you're stressed, your burdened and you're treating it like that or talking about it like that, that's how your kids are going to see it and that's how they're going to see work in general especially if you have girls and they become mothers and they're working, so be grateful for it.
We'll talk about that more in a few minutes, but be grateful for your job. Be positive about it. Let your kids see how strong and amazing you are, that you have something else going on too. Not just being their mom. Not that there's anything wrong with that, like please don't message me, "I can't believe you said that." That's not what I mean; this is a working mom episode.
You have something else that you're doing. It's a big deal. It's good. You're amazing. So be grateful. Be Positive. Use positive words. Have a positive vibe and energy around your job because how you feel about your work, how you react to it, how you talk about it, how you treat it, is how your kids are going to see it. So, they won't know that it's negative, stressful, or there should be guilt around it unless you make them feel that way.
Also, next, let's talk about taking breaks. It's okay to take a break from work and prioritize your kids for five minutes. I think a lot of us tend to get into this "all or nothing mode" where we feel like, okay, right now I'm working so I'm going to have to finish this task completely. Then I can be with you guys, be with the kids. Nothing has to be "all or nothing" unless you make that choice to have it be that way.
I think one of the definitions of, especially if you work at home, one of the definitions of work at home motherhood is that you're going to be interrupted, and you have to get really flexible and really good at coming back to things, getting interrupted and doing one thing, then doing another and then coming back to the other thing. And women are great at that, so you can do this.
Break it up. Do some work, and if your kids are coming up to you and tapping on your leg, or asking for your time…Ashley, the girl that I told you about that's on my team, she was telling me that her son will come up and just close her laptop and it's kind of her sign of like, okay, you need me. Take five minutes and go on a walk with them, Build a castle out of blocks with your toddler. Have a dance party in the living room real quick. Get them a snack. Give them a kiss. And then get back to work. It's okay to break things up. Allow yourself to be flexible and do what you need in the moment.
There was one issue that Ashley brought up that I thought was great and it was really specific. I want to address it. She was talking about that torn, weird feeling that you can get because a lot of us who work are on our phones, tablets or computers pretty often. I have dealt with this for sure. I think that's why Ashley brought it up. I was like, "Yes! I need to talk about that."
My job is on my phone. In my business I have a lot of things delegated that I used to do that I don't do anymore, but my job description now is basically being a public figure. I write my emails because I love connecting with you guys and talking to you guys. I do Instagram stories and I record the podcast once a month, but day to day I'm responding to you guys on Instagram. I'm responding to your comments. I'm posting things. I'm checking in. Like it's my job to show up, and talk to you, be there and encourage you. Like that's my job, so I'm on my phone a lot.
It can kind of feel weird when you're doing that, because it's your work, and so your kids see devices and technology as normal, as almost like expected entertainment. They can throw a fit if you're on your stuff and you're trying to limit their technology, not wanting to hire Netflix to babysit them every day when you're working. They don't understand and you feel hypocritical. Like they're going to think, "Well, mommy's on her phone, why can't you be on your tablet though." And I just want to speak truth to that. If anyone is struggling with that, especially if you have toddlers, it can be really hard to communicate to them that that's different.
I just want to let you know…let that go. That's not a thing. It doesn't have to be a thing. It doesn't have to be something that you feel weird about. It's such a blessing to be able to do your work from your phone. I'm so thankful that I can take my kids to the park, let them run crazy, have fun and play while I sit on the bench and catch up on Instagram comments. Don't feel guilty about that. Don't feel weird about that.
We live in an awesome time where work can be done from anywhere. So if you see another mom judging you for being on your phone at the park, she doesn't even know. That's happened to me before, and I'm like, "Girl, you don't even know. I'm sitting here encouraging, inspiring and equipping other moms because it's my job. Because I worked my butt off to be able to work from this park bench. Don't you raise that eyebrow at me or I will rip it off."
But don't let that be a thing. Let that go. Of course, set boundaries and be intentional, but if you have to do your work and it's on your phone, let that be that way. Be grateful that you can do something like that on your phone so easily and it's just right there. It's something that you can do anywhere.
Also if you do have toddlers and they just don't understand…I was telling Ashley this…I did this with Emmett because he was the only one that was really, really little when I was growing the business and stuff. So, when he would come up to me and basically be asking to play a game on the tablet or borrow my phone because I was on my computer or whatever, say things like, "Mom's working. Emmett doesn't work. You silly boy. No, mom's working. You don't work. You do this." Show them a toy and just kind of explain, "I'm working. This isn't a free-for-all tech time. I'm working." I know that's really specific, but I know that I struggled with that and I always felt kind of weird.
Also in my job, I talk about being intentional with your phone time. I have to text my team and make sure things are going well and answer any questions. My text time is a lot more than other people. But my text time for pointless reasons, like just texting people because they have my number and they think they can ask me something, is almost nothing.
My Instagram time is my job. My texting time with my team is my job. So it's okay. Let that go. Don't let yourself feel weird about that. If it's actually your job, don't let it be an excuse, but you guys see what I'm saying.
Another thing is to realize that it's okay to bring in some help. You absolutely cannot do it all. And if you are doing it all, you won't be doing any of it very well. So what does this look like for you? Child care, having some help with your kids? Housekeeping help? Hiring a housekeeper? A meal delivery service so you're not having to prepare so many meals? Get creative and think through that.
And if finances are a problem, I mean do what you can. I know that every single time I've been kinda like, "Man, can we afford this? I'm just going to do it and just see how it works out because I just can't do it all. I need help." Every time I've delegated something, I have more energy and more time and I end up making more money because I feel better. I'm less stressed and I'm able to focus more on what I am doing.
So, every time I've hired a team member or every time I've delegated something like hiring my housekeeper or a personal assistant to help run errands and do returns and stuff like that for me, it's come back to me and then some because I'm less stressed, I'm more present. I spend more intentional time with my kids and my time with my kids isn't spent running around and cleaning and doing all that.
I'm delegating and exchanging for more time and energy and that always ends up being more revenue because I'm doing more of what I'm good at. I'm good at owning my business. Showing up for you guys. Inspiring you. Telling you about the courses and equipping you there. Showing up in the groups, being live and doing all those things. It always ends up being more worthwhile because I delegated the things and I was able to show up better at what I am doing.
Okay. When you're feeling mom guilt, if you feel like you just have guilty in general about working, one thing that really helped me is… and you guys. I'm sorry, this episode is kind of random. I literally just brain dumped what helped me and I'm just reading it to guys. I have bullet points, like here mention this, this, this and this, because it's just a mess. Working motherhood is messy, so I think it's kind of funny and ironic that this episode is random points too.
Anyway, when you have mom guilt about working, decide what's important to you and prioritize it. To you. Not to anyone else or everyone else, but to you. So, what breaks your heart to miss? Find a way not to miss it.
There's an example that Jessica Turner shares, which I love. She's an author. She wrote the book Stretched Too Thin. It's awesome and it's for working moms. I'll link to that for you guys. But Jessica Turner loves Halloween and every year she does themed family costumes and she puts a lot of effort, planning and time into that and that's really special to her. Like it would break her heart to miss that. So, she prioritizes it and makes it happen.
So, what's important to you? Is it important to you to throw an awesome super themed over the top Pinterest-y party for your daughter every year? Then do that. If it breaks your heart to miss that, then don't miss it. Prioritize it, but let other things go. Don't do anything out of obligation or "I just want to perform, I just want to be the best mom." No. What really breaks your heart to miss? Don't miss those things.
For me, around the holidays, it can be tempting for my business to get ultra busy because my business is for moms and during the holidays us moms have a lot of things going on, a lot of fun things that we're doing, and it can be really easy for me to come up with a lot of content and form my business around being really busy around the holidays.
But for me the holidays are really no fun if I am too busy. I already feel stretched way too thin. On my husband's side of the family there's some divorce and so the family is split and we're kind of like double doing family plans. It's just kind of a mess and I tend to kind of not enjoy the holidays. I've learned to really prioritize that time of year and make it enjoyable for me and my family.
So, if I were to miss going to the pumpkin patch multiple times during October, if I were to miss enjoying my family during Thanksgiving, if I were to miss baking cookies and going to see the dancing lights in our city that are famous around here, if I were to miss going to Legoland for the Christmas decorations, I would feel so sad.
Those are the things that would make me feel like, "Oh no!" But if I have to miss one of the kids' games…I'm bummed, and I feel like a crappy mom for a second. But then I think, "Wait, I'm running an awesome company. I have a purpose here. It's okay. They don't mind, I just talked to them." Work it out and move on. Find what breaks your heart and find a way not to miss those things and prioritize them. You can't not miss everything.
And that leads me to my next point which is that you have to understand that there will be seasons. Sometimes work will be busier and you are less present with your family and you are missing a little bit more than you normally do. Sometimes your home and your personal life will be busier and you need to dial down your efforts and your hours at work. This is the only work/life balance you're going to get because perfection doesn't exist. Work/life balance is a total lie. It's such BS and I'm so glad that multiple people have been speaking out about that lately because it is just fueling the working-mom guilt fire.
And this is such, such truth. And I really only tuned into this truth this year, in 2018. As a working mom, I have decided like, "Okay, we're going to go into a busier season as a family, and we're going to go ahead and sign up for these extracurricular homeschool activities. We're going to go ahead and say "yes" to these sports for these kids. 'No' to this one, and 'yes' to this one. But we are heading into a busier family season, so work needs to take a back burner."
I have been working a lot less hours in the last couple months because of my personal life. If you guys follow me on Instagram stories, you've seen that we have constant sports practices and games. The kids are in Spanish, piano, theater, guitar, baseball and softball. And we love doing that in seasons because our kids are homeschooled and I feel like it really helps us find the balance between them making friends, being out and about and busy interacting with other people, but we don't do that at the same time as, you know, a giant launch in the business that can take a lot of time and energy.
I will plan a really busy season of the business at the same time as we're dialing down at home. So, there's less extracurriculars or our schedules are a little less full. Or I'll work a deal out with Brian where it's like, "Okay, I need this busier season in the business, but there's also a busyness in our family. Do you want me to wait on this busy season in the business or do you want to take 75% of the busyness with our family so I can focus on the busy season in the business?" And we've done that before too.
We have a unique situation to where we're both home and we kind of share the load of everything, but we'll kind of work it out to where he'll take over most of the homeschooling and I kind of let go and I'll just do some things with Hudson who's in first grade and needs a little bit more care and attention but requires less time each day in school. I'll kind of just take over his stuff and Brian will take over the older kids and the bulk of the homeschooling. He'll take them to practices and stuff and I'll just show up at games. I'll spend the bulk of the day working on projects.
You have to just understand that there will be seasons and it's all give and take. If work is busier, that's okay. It's okay that you're missing more than usual. Just let it be a season. Sometimes home will be busier and you won't be killing it so much at work. And that's okay too.
I think it's also really important to focus on feeling satisfaction and joy in your work. Do you love what you do? I think this is so important for ditching mom guilt. So if you're listening to this right now and you're thinking, "No, I don't love what I do," then bring it to the Lord. Pray about it. Figure out a way to maybe go a different route. Maybe you should look for a different job. Maybe you should start being open to that opportunity.
But if you do love what you do, don't feel bad about that. That's so amazing. Step into that and let yourself feel it completely. What a gift that is, that you get to provide for your family and go to work and have a purpose and you love it. That's awesome. I think we let so many things steal our joy and we don't let ourselves really just get still and feel the joy in what we're doing. Even if you're not like super passionate about your job, but you like the environment at work and you're making good money, let yourself feel that joy.
One other thing that steals our joy is comparison. Comparing yourself to other people.
It's so hard not to do that, especially with social media, but remember that this is your life. Your story. And you're making yourself emotionally unhealthy if you compare yourself to other people. You are not them and you are not supposed to be them. You are you. You're living your story right now, so focus on that and understand that work is a part of that. At least for now.
I think just accepting that even can be so huge. And letting go…if you see an Instagram picture of a mom baking cookies with her toddler and you're at work sitting at your desk like, "Oh my gosh, I feel like the worst right now," that is so emotionally unhealthy for you and mentally unhealthy. Don't let that lie sink in there. That mom is doing something awesome and so are you. You're making money. You're providing. You're showing up in that way. And that is so awesome
Another thing that I notice is that a lot of women seem to think that it's not okay to be exhausted, like they need to be full of energy. This was one thing that was big for me. Ashley and I talked about it too when we were kind of talking out the points of this episode.
This was one thing that was particularly really hard for me to get over. I actually don't work that many hours. I used to, when I was starting the business. I used to work all the time, but now I really don't work that many hours. However, I'm an introvert and the hours that I do work are spent doing things like live streams, pouring my heart into an email. Talking into my microphone (like I am right now) sharing my heart with you, encouraging you in a podcast episode. Answering questions live on Instagram, writing content for Instagram or whatever it is. It's all extroverting, so the few hours that I do work, I'm exhausted when I'm done.
It took me forever to learn that it is okay to be tired. You're amazing. You're working and you're being a mom. The two hardest things in the world. I mean I'm going to drop a word here, so if you have kids around watch out, but honestly, how much more badass could you even be? Don't ever let anyone make you feel "less than" for working. And work-at-home moms, don't ever let anyone make you feel "less" for working from home. Like it's less legit than working outside of the house. That's total BS. Don't you take that! Don't you take that! You're amazing and you're doing a lot. It is okay to be tired. It is okay to rinse and stack the dishes and leave them for tomorrow because you worked all day and you are just freaking exhausted. It is okay.
I think another thing that I learned is that a lot of the judgment I was worried about…becoming a working mom, I realized that I am very concerned (or at least I used to be) about judgment from other people. It's what caused me to shrink back in doing what I do in my business and being a public figure. When I see people judging me, which people always do anyway, I used to shrink back and share less or be less vulnerable. And honestly, being a working mom has taught me to overcome this so much and I hope it does the same for you.
People will say things and people will be rude and that's fine, but usually when it comes to working mom guilt, most of our judgment actually comes from ourselves. It only freaks us out when we maybe see a glimpse of it from other people because it's just solidifying what we feel about ourselves and we need to deal with that.
Have you ever really heard another mom say, "Oh my gosh, she's such a terrible mom for working outside the home?" I haven't. I think if you will realize that you have expectations of yourself and you're the one making yourself feel judged. Deal with what you expect of yourself. Think about where it comes from, usually our childhood, and let go of it. It doesn't have to have power over you for one more day, so really think about it.
Is anyone really judging you? Maybe you're like, "Yeah, my mother-in-law or my dad is" or whatever, deal with that too. But a lot of the time, I think most of the judgment that we're feeling is actually coming from inside of ourselves.
And one last thing that I want to leave you with is this: the fact is when our kids grow up, it's very, very likely that they're going to work. Our daughters, our sons, it's really likely they're probably gonna work. So, it's so important that we model a healthy work life relationship for them and not act super guilty, stressed, burdened and victimized by our role of worker.
Remember that you're setting an example for them, that you're showing them what this life looks like. If you're a mom and you work, if you own a business or you have a job, you are their main example of that lifestyle. Whether you chose it or financially, you have to have that lifestyle, you're that example.
So, let's change the way we're treating our work. Let's change the way we're talking about our lifestyle. Let's change the way that we are treating our jobs and our roles. It doesn't mean show up, be perfect at everything, have a super clean house, be an awesome cookie baker, come to every game, be super rich, run an amazing business or do amazing at your job.
It means prioritize what matters. Show up well where you can show up. Find work/life balance in seasons, like taking turns with what's prioritized and what's not instead of trying to have everything prioritized perfectly balanced all the time, because that's never gonna happen.
Show them what a healthy work life relationship really looks like, how grateful you are, how awesome you are, and what it looks like to thrive in these two roles of worker and mother.
Tagged: section 3, working mom, mom, working, full time, guilt, full time job, working mom guilt