Busy mamas need to stop neglecting this one relationship if they want to live a healthy life

Imagine your children are grown and you’re visiting your daughter or son. They’re parents now and you’re sitting in their kitchen. Your daughter or daughter-in-law is running around trying to pack lunches, make breakfast, gather everyone’s homework into their backpacks, looking for matching socks for each of your grandchildren. She looks frazzled and exhausted because she was up half the night with the baby. What would you want your daughter or daughter-in-law to know in this moment? Would you want her to keep pushing through or would you want her to stop and take some time for herself?

You’d want her to take the morning off to rest and recoup! You would insist that she let you help or you’d lecture your son about helping his wife! You would see how badly this mama, your daughter, needs to prioritize herself!

Now, let me ask you another question. Did that scene feel familiar? Do you treat yourself like this? Do you allow everyone else’s needs to overwhelm you until you’re exhausted, drained and barely surviving?

This is a very normal scenario for women to be in, but that doesn’t mean it’s OK or healthy. 

Sacrificing everything to make your family happy is generational trauma

If you related to that scenario I laid out, I want you to think back at your mom. Did she lead the same kind of life? Was she dropping everything to help everyone around her? Did she take time to care for herself?

If you can look back to your mother, grandmother, or beyond and see this same pattern, then you’re most likely suffering from generational trauma. Generational trauma happens when thoughts, feelings or behaviors have been passed down within a family.

Most women feel like they have to sacrifice everything to care for their families. We were taught that if our kids needed anything, then we had to give up what we wanted or needed to provide it for them. We were taught that our spouse’s needs or even wants, were more important than our own. 

This has left women and especially mothers, trying to take care of everyone while they’re withering away. We fix our kids 3+ meals a day, but we eat table scraps. We make sure our kids show up to school looking adorable but we haven’t showered for days. We devote our time to taking our kids to practices, friend’s houses and any other activity that fills their cup, but we don’t ever get to leave the house for our own enjoyment. This simply isn’t healthy.

The worst part is that we’ve glorified this unhealthy behavior! We’re told good moms sacrifice everything to give their children a better life! But eventually, those children leave the house and what’s left is an exhausted woman who has no idea what to do without her children around. She feels purposeless and lost. She doesn’t even remember who she is.

This is what we need to change. We need to flip the script and encourage mothers to care for themselves just as much as they care for their kids. Because the relationship we have for ourselves sets the tone for every other relationship in our lives.

The most important relationship you’ll ever have is with yourself

The most important and most broken relationship you’ll ever have is the relationship you have with yourself. The relationship you have with yourself sets the tone for every other relationship in your life.

For too long we’ve relied on other people to fill our cups, to make us feel loved, to validate us. But the truth is, that no one else can fill your cup in the way you need it filled. You are the only person who can love you in the ways you need it.

As much as we love our spouse, parents, siblings, friends and kids, they cannot love us in the ways that we need it. They can try, and they can do a decent job at it, but in the end, they’re going to fall short. They just can’t help it.

Instead of relying on everyone else to make you happy, you need to rely on yourself. Learning how to love and care for yourself is the best thing you can do to improve your relationship with yourself.

3 ways to improve your relationship with yourself

Women have traditionally been taught to be humble and quiet. It’s “unladylike” to brag about yourself or to point out your contributions. It’s time to get rid of that mindset!

You are amazing. You work your butt off. You deserve to be celebrated for your big and little contributions to the world! I want you to start doing these three activities on a daily (or hourly) basis. 

It’s not going to feel natural at first and that’s OK! Just keep practicing it until these three habits come naturally to you.

Be aware of your feelings

The first thing you must learn how to do is be aware of your feelings. To be honest, we usually know what we’re feeling but we struggle to communicate it. Are you mad your husband ate the lunch you prepped for the day? Don’t say “it’s fine.” tell him you’re frustrated! 

When we can identify and verbalize our feelings, we’re one step closer to being tru to ourselves. Hiding your feelings to save others from pain or annoyance doesn’t help them and it doesn’t help you. Own up to how you feel. You’re allowed to take up space in this world.

If you’re not ready to start telling others how you feel, at least take some time to write your feelings out. Writing down what we feel and why we feel that way is an incredibly powerful tool. Writing out our problems and feeling can help us work through them and even help us control our emotions better.

Don’t be afraid to journal that out for yourself. If you’re worried about people reading it, then keep your journal in a safe or even burn it after you’re done writing. No one needs to know what you’re really thinking, but you do deserve a safe space for your thoughts.

Speak highly of yourself

Mama, you must, must, must learn how to speak kindly to yourself! One of my goals for all of the mamas in my Macros Made Easy Program is for them to look in the mirror and have something good to say about themselves.

Too often we use the mirror to point out our flaws. Or we avoid it altogether because it brings such a negative energy to our lives. But you deserve to look in the mirror and feel love.

One of the reasons the relationship you have with yourself is so bad is that you don’t take the time to speak life into yourself. Instead of telling yourself about your flaws, what if you told yourself how amazing you are!

I also want to point out that changing this narrative is how you can break that generational cycle. You can teach your kids to see the best in themselves just by changing how you talk about yourself.

Constantly acknowledge your wins

Finally, I want you to acknowledge your wins! We spend far too much time looking at what we didn’t do and we don’t spend enough time focusing on what we did do.

In the Macros Made Easy Program, we practice this because it’s a skill that is so foreign to women! Every week when I meet with clients the first question I ask them is, “What is your win for the week?” and the new clients usually have the same response. “I don’t really feel like I have a win because I didn’t do XYZ.” 

As we talk through XY and Z, they slowly discover that they did do at least one thing well that week. And the moment they realize that they light up a little bit. They see that the effort they put in did have an impact even if it was small.

But those small wins add up over time. If you start to recognize those small wins, like planning your meals for the day or adding a veggie to every meal, you’ll start to see how powerful you really are.

We build confidence when we see ourselves succeed. If you want to love yourself or instill confidence in yourself, then you have to celebrate the small wins, just as if they were big ones.

If you take a moment each day to celebrate who you are and the work you’re doing, it will make a huge difference. And I’m going to push you to do one more thing as you’re celebrating your wins. Write them down. I cannot tell you how empowering it is to see a list of the things you’ve accomplished!

Mama, you deserve to love yourself. If you don’t love your body right now, then you can change that. In the Macros Made Easy program we’ll address the mindset work as we talked about here, that needs to be done to help you love yourself while we work on the physical aspects, like food and exercise. It will amaze you the transformation you can make when you combine the two. If you’re ready to improve the relationship you have with yourself, then let’s chat. Schedule a free discovery call today!

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