Latest / The Parenting Podcast / Parenting Perspectives: Unpacking the Importance of Self-Care | Ep. 111

Transcript

Parenting Perspectives: Unpacking the Importance of Self-Care | Ep. 111 · The Parenting Podcast

• 0:06
  Welcome back to The Parenting Podcast, your trusted companion on the Winding Road of Parenthood.
• 0:13
  I'm Sheline your host, and today we're delving into an important topic no matter what your stage in parenting self care.
• 0:23
  Join us as we navigate the nuanced dance between nurturing ourselves and caring for our families.
• 0:30
  Exploring the distinctions between prioritizing healthy self care and the pitfalls of actual or perceived selfishness.
• 0:40
  Throughout our conversation, we'll draw from our own experiences and challenges as we uncover strategies for finding balance and understanding amidst the tapestry of regular, real family life.
• 0:53
  So, whether you're tackling household chores, commuting to work, or stealing a moment of quiet, I'm so glad you're here.
• 1:01
  Let's get started.
• 1:10
  Cheryl: How are y'all doing today?
• 1:12
  Christie: Good.
• 1:13
  Christie: Yeah,.
• 1:13
  Christie: Well, it's such a gorgeous day.
• 1:15
  Christie: I know.
• 1:15
  Christie: I think I'm solar powered because the sun comes out.
• 1:19
  Christie: I'm just like, Oh, life again.
• 1:21
  Christie: No, we're back.
• 1:22
  Cheryl: Just sunshine.
• 1:23
  Christie: Yes.
• 1:24
  Christie: And warm.
• 1:24
  Christie: And warm.
• 1:25
  Christie: Yes.
• 1:25
  Christie: Both, I mean, in
• 1:26
  Ellen: the middle of winter, that's like,
• 1:27
  Christie: thank you, thank you.
• 1:29
  Christie: I know.
• 1:29
  Christie: I went for a good walk yesterday, and the geese and ducks were out, and people were out.
• 1:35
  Christie: Yes.
• 1:35
  Christie: I was like, yes, let's just keep this up.
• 1:36
  Cheryl: Yeah.
• 1:37
  Cheryl: And it felt good.
• 1:38
  Cheryl: I actually went for a walk, and I got sweaty.
• 1:42
  Christie: Do you know?
• 1:43
  Cheryl: All right.
• 1:43
  Cheryl: So, you know, we've been doing this series on parental burnout.
• 1:46
  Cheryl: Yeah.
• 1:47
  Cheryl: And so, I have something here, and I feel like, oh.
• 1:52
  Cheryl: I haven't let y'all look at it.
• 1:53
  Cheryl: I feel like, like, you know, magicians when they call people up on the stage and they say, I haven't prepped you, right?
• 2:01
  Cheryl: Okay, so I haven't shown this to you and it's just a little something.
• 2:04
  Cheryl: It's some wall art and I haven't turned around to show it to you, um, I like bargains, Uhhuh, And so one of the things I like to do, I like to go to thrift stores and wander around and see are there any fun little finds And, Mm-Hmm.
• 2:17
  Cheryl: Yeah.
• 2:18
  Cheryl: well, I
• 2:18
  Ellen: don't like it, but that's fine.
• 2:20
  Ellen: I'm agreeing that you like it.
• 2:22
  Ellen: I,
• 2:22
  Christie: I, I do.
• 2:23
  Christie: I love a
• 2:23
  Cheryl: good mine and I've even
• 2:24
  Christie: run into it.
• 2:25
  Christie: Yeah.
• 2:26
  Christie: Each other.
• 2:26
  Christie: Yeah.
• 2:26
  Christie: That's funny.
• 2:26
  Christie: Just fun.
• 2:27
  Christie: And then I brag about how cheap I get stuff.
• 2:29
  Christie: Yes.
• 2:29
  Christie: Oh
• 2:30
  Carol: yeah.
• 2:30
  Carol: Okay, last week we were talking on the whole burnout thing, and one of the phrases we said is that we should be normalising imperfection
• 2:39
  Christie: Yeah.
• 2:39
  Christie: Yes.
• 2:40
  Cheryl: And so I'd been thinking about that, and so when I walked in, I saw this little wall art.
• 2:46
  Cheryl: at half price, from the
• 2:48
  Christie: thrift store, I guess.
• 2:49
  Cheryl: So I just grinned because this is exactly what we're talking about.
• 2:55
  Cheryl: Okay, so this is it.
• 2:56
  Cheryl: So one of you read out loud and talk about it.
• 2:59
  Christie: Beautiful things are never perfect.
• 3:03
  Christie: That's really good.
• 3:04
  Christie: I love it.
• 3:05
  Christie: Yeah, that is good.
• 3:07
  Christie: Yeah.
• 3:07
  Christie: Yeah.
• 3:08
  Christie: Yes.
• 3:08
  Christie: It's so good.
• 3:09
  Christie: And it's so, so true.
• 3:11
  Christie: Some of the beauty is found in the hard, hardships of getting there.
• 3:17
  Cheryl: Well, I mean, it really is true because since I got it, I've been having on the counter to look at it and see, Ellen, you're an artist.
• 3:25
  Cheryl: And not being an artist what I thought is that artists did everything perfectly.
• 3:30
  Cheryl: No.
• 3:30
  Cheryl: And so that would be mechanical reproduction off my computer.
• 3:38
  Cheryl: And so, personally, I love, uh, Impressionism.
• 3:42
  Cheryl: And Impressionism is anything but perfect.
• 3:44
  Cheryl: Right.
• 3:44
  Cheryl: It's the blend and the feel of things.
• 3:48
  Cheryl: And, I wish, This philosophy had been in my life.
• 3:53
  Cheryl: Yeah, particularly as a parent
• 3:54
  Christie: well And and the true art is not necessarily in the finished product either you're in the process of the mistakes and learning from that and Figuring out new things that you didn't know you could do.
• 4:06
  Christie: I'm not I'm not the artist, Ellen is, but I'm just in other things like making and trial and error is kind of a neat thing.
• 4:13
  Christie: For every line
• 4:14
  Ellen: you draw, that's adding to how much better you'll be for the next line.
• 4:19
  Ellen: But you have to make a lot of lines before you can draw something.
• 4:22
  Ellen: And I can remember just doing that.
• 4:24
  Ellen: An artist had told me just do.
• 4:26
  Ellen: Perfect lines and perfect circles for your morning exercise every day.
• 4:31
  Ellen: And it sounds simple, but it's not that simple.
• 4:34
  Cheryl: Right.
• 4:34
  Cheryl: And see, and I remember your notebooks when you were doing that.
• 4:37
  Cheryl: And, but I love how this applies to real life, you know, that we're just doing it over and over for the long haul.
• 4:45
  Cheryl: Not just right now.
• 4:47
  Cheryl: How can I do this perfectly?
• 4:49
  Cheryl: Right.
• 4:50
  Cheryl: But, it's a process.
• 4:52
  Cheryl: Yeah, it's a process, not an arrival.
• 4:55
  Cheryl: I thought, particularly in my parenting, in my young adult life, that it was arrival.
• 5:01
  Cheryl: Right.
• 5:02
  Cheryl: And I didn't know, like you're saying, art, it's this long process.
• 5:06
  Cheryl: Right.
• 5:06
  Cheryl: And
• 5:06
  Christie: there's
• 5:07
  Ellen: It's a start, but there's never a finished because it's still going back to the analogy of art.
• 5:12
  Ellen: You know, as an artist, you just keep growing and working and working until the day you die.
• 5:16
  Ellen: And in a sense of kind of, you're still parenting, you know, Cheryl, you and I are a little older.
• 5:20
  Ellen: We're still parents of our adult kids and they still think of us as their parents.
• 5:27
  Carol: As a person.
• 5:29
  Carol: Well, you know, I.
• 5:31
  Carol: I'm growing all the time and I want to be able to say I'm not the same person I was six months ago, right?
• 5:37
  Cheryl: You know, I want to continue to develop because I kind of have this picture It's okay to be imperfect and that it's all process, right?
• 5:46
  Cheryl: I just want that process to keep
• 5:48
  Christie: on going well, and when we're learning in front of our kids, they're learning.
• 5:51
  Christie: Yes Yeah, they're learning how to receive their own message own imperfections and how to process through that and overcome or not overcome and learn to compensate.
• 6:01
  Christie: And, you know, I think we talked about last week, maybe it was off Mike, but just every season your of life.
• 6:07
  Christie: You're learning right thing, regardless of if you're 20 or 70 or 90.
• 6:14
  Christie: So, we're still learning that season of life, so it's silly to think that we would have it all together when the first baby's put in our arms.
• 6:21
  Cheryl: That's very true.
• 6:22
  Cheryl: Or the last one leaves the door.
• 6:23
  Cheryl: Yes,
• 6:24
  Christie: yes.
• 6:24
  Christie: And I remember
• 6:25
  Ellen: my friends, a couple of them said to me, I can't believe that you post Um, and I'm going to show you some of that art because it's not very good.
• 6:31
  Christie: Let's talk about these friends.
• 6:33
  Christie: They didn't
• 6:33
  Ellen: say it that harshly, but that's what they were saying and I understood what they were saying.
• 6:37
  Ellen: I said, yeah, I'm doing it on purpose because I want to have my friends see how I'm improving.
• 6:42
  Ellen: Oh, I love that.
• 6:43
  Ellen: And that was being brave enough to put up, of course I knew that wasn't very good, but being brave enough to put that out there so that in another month they could see I was working on the same thing, but it's a, it's a month down the
• 6:55
  Christie: road.
• 6:56
  Christie: Right.
• 6:56
  Christie: Have you guys heard the talk about the guy who practiced failure?
• 7:00
  Christie: He set out with a hundred things to do in a year or something like this.
• 7:03
  Christie: I might be botching the story a little bit, but like one of them was to go and ask for a burger refill, like when he finished his food, he went up and asked if he could get a refill on his burger.
• 7:13
  Christie: Things that were ridiculous that he knew he would be rejected on, so that he could become accustomed to the rejection.
• 7:19
  Christie: Diffuse the fear of failing.
• 7:21
  Christie: I thought that was
• 7:22
  Cheryl: brilliant.
• 7:23
  Cheryl: And what I'm listening to you, Ellen, because I remember you told me that's what you're doing with her art and so much better and to watch you just personally in that, but the humility of that, being willing to embrace your imperfection and then working hard to grow, not to become perfect, but just to grow in all aspects, you know, and that permeates everything.
• 7:48
  Cheryl: You know, embrace our failures.
• 7:49
  Cheryl: I don't seek out failure.
• 7:51
  Cheryl: I'm not quite that mature, right?
• 7:52
  Christie: But it
• 7:54
  Ellen: also is a bridge to people.
• 7:56
  Ellen: Yes, because when people don't feel like You're trying to be perfect or they look at you like perfect because I can remember friends Especially when I was a lot younger thinking I did everything right and I said, well just ask my kids You know, but they looked on the outside and saw what they wanted to see Yeah.
• 8:13
  Ellen: And maybe I projected that too, because that's just kind of my personality.
• 8:16
  Ellen: Oh, everything's great.
• 8:17
  Ellen: Yeah.
• 8:17
  Ellen: You know, and so it comes across that way.
• 8:20
  Ellen: But it's important that people see who you really are so that they can be encouraged to here's my early art.
• 8:26
  Ellen: It's gotten better, but I have such a
• 8:28
  Christie: long way to go.
• 8:29
  Christie: Right.
• 8:29
  Christie: And a bridge, you say bridge to people, it's a bridge to our kids.
• 8:32
  Christie: Yeah.
• 8:33
  Christie: Very good.
• 8:34
  Christie: And I heard a mom recently say that she had picked up her phone while she was driving to maybe look at the map or something.
• 8:40
  Christie: And one of her kids piped up and said, Mommy, you're not supposed to look at your phone while you're driving.
• 8:45
  Christie: And she said, you are absolutely right.
• 8:47
  Christie: That was wrong of me.
• 8:48
  Christie: And I thought, what?
• 8:49
  Christie: A great thing to do to confess to your children.
• 8:52
  Christie: And she said, you can tell me that anytime you're welcome to to correct mommy on things like that anytime.
• 8:58
  Christie: And that's I think that opens a bridge with our kids
• 9:01
  Cheryl: of communication.
• 9:02
  Cheryl: Yeah.
• 9:02
  Cheryl: But like we said before, what is the root behind these wise things?
• 9:07
  Cheryl: It's humility, right?
• 9:08
  Cheryl: Being humble enough to Because the
• 9:10
  Ellen: flip side is most of us work out of pride, whether we want to admit it or not, or know that we do or
• 9:15
  Cheryl: not.
• 9:15
  Cheryl: So true.
• 9:16
  Cheryl: Okay, and this sort of blends into what I thought we could talk about today.
• 9:20
  Cheryl: Because we've been talking about the struggle of burnout and what we do, and we've touched on self care.
• 9:27
  Cheryl: And so I had a question that came to us, and I thought if we could kind of follow up on this.
• 9:33
  Cheryl: Um, and it was, okay, you've been talking about self care.
• 9:36
  Cheryl: So my question is, what is the difference from the me ism culture and what really good self care
• 9:45
  Ellen: is?
• 9:46
  Ellen: Yeah, because those lines can get really blurred.
• 9:49
  Ellen: They
• 9:49
  Cheryl: sure can.
• 9:49
  Cheryl: The whole selfie culture of me, I need this, you know, all of that.
• 9:55
  Cheryl: So what do y'all think?
• 9:56
  Cheryl: How can we look at a healthy Self care for the parents and our listeners and us, um, versus selfish
• 10:06
  Christie: meism, right?
• 10:07
  Christie: We'll talk about an imperfection or mistake I made.
• 10:10
  Christie: I definitely drifted to the end of martyred motherhood.
• 10:15
  Christie: It was better for me to never leave my children ever.
• 10:20
  Christie: Not that I didn't leave them, but I felt.
• 10:22
  Christie: the sense of abandonment every time I would leave them or every time I would do something for myself.
• 10:28
  Christie: And so it took a lot of, you know, mental work to get to a space to do anything.
• 10:34
  Christie: And then afterwards I felt so much guilt for it and I didn't understand that.
• 10:39
  Christie: The self care is not selfish mindset.
• 10:42
  Christie: It did all seem frivolous and self indulgent and self focus, even to the point of like exercise and things that were good for me that I knew were good, but it's
• 10:53
  Ellen: taking time away from what you perceive you should be doing.
• 10:56
  Ellen: Right.
• 10:57
  Ellen: I remember when I used to, um, My friends encouraged me to take a Mother's Day out, um, so I took every Thursday out and the church offered a Mother's Day out program and I would go back to the house and work until one of my older friends said, what are you doing?
• 11:12
  Ellen: That's your day.
• 11:13
  Ellen: You're supposed to go do something that you want to do.
• 11:16
  Ellen: Don't go back and clean your house.
• 11:17
  Ellen: Don't go back and do your chores or things like that.
• 11:20
  Ellen: Because I'm thinking, well, it's so much easier when the kids aren't around.
• 11:23
  Ellen: In that hour, I can get a million things done.
• 11:26
  Ellen: But she was right.
• 11:27
  Ellen: And then I had to start the practice of, it was a form of self care.
• 11:31
  Ellen: Making sure that I got with a friend.
• 11:33
  Ellen: Making sure that maybe I just went somewhere by myself that I enjoyed for peace and quiet.
• 11:38
  Ellen: Like
• 11:39
  Cheryl: thrift shopping.
• 11:40
  Cheryl: Yeah, right.
• 11:41
  Christie: Right.
• 11:41
  Cheryl: Well, any of those things.
• 11:43
  Cheryl: Yeah.
• 11:43
  Cheryl: You know, and I've talked about it before, and that several years ago, actually it was 2020 when we were isolated, um, a, um, an emotional health program came to me.
• 11:57
  Cheryl: And, um, It just opened a whole world to me, um, to be aware of myself as an individual.
• 12:06
  Cheryl: Separate, now I was already a, a empty nester, but I really struggled seeing myself, by myself, as an individual, separate from my children and, and separate from others.
• 12:21
  Cheryl: I'd never had any teaching on self awareness.
• 12:24
  Cheryl: And what I love that I came out of this.
• 12:27
  Cheryl: is what we're talking about self care being a holistic approach.
• 12:32
  Cheryl: And I know that spelled with an H, but I think it should be spelled with a W.
• 12:37
  Cheryl: Yes, that it's holistic about every area of my life.
• 12:41
  Cheryl: And so you mentioned Exercise and time and also just my own emotional development and awareness that that was a big role that just did not come into most of my adult life and certainly my parenting.
• 12:58
  Ellen: Well, it's so hard to do.
• 12:59
  Ellen: Guilt free me time, because I think many of us have kind of been trained to feel kind of bad if we do something for ourself, or I'm being selfish, I'm taking away time from my kids, I should do this for them, you know, and that is so unhealthy.
• 13:15
  Ellen: It would be like me saying, well, I'm not supposed to eat today, you know, because, um, you know, I have, I have to spend more time with my kids.
• 13:23
  Ellen: So I don't have time for lunch.
• 13:25
  Ellen: And then everybody pays because then I'm grumpy.
• 13:28
  Ellen: And the same thing happens with, if you don't do self care, eventually you're dying on the vine as the
• 13:34
  Christie: saying goes.
• 13:35
  Christie: Right.
• 13:35
  Christie: And then that's what leads to the burnout.
• 13:38
  Christie: And that's not benefiting anybody.
• 13:40
  Christie: I'll speak for myself.
• 13:41
  Christie: I was actually leading myself to the problem.
• 13:45
  Christie: That I thought self care was going to offer my kids instead of just caring for myself and so that I could, you know, like if you were to, um, have someone coming in to care for your children, you would want them to take good care of themselves before they came and you wouldn't want them to come stressed and burn out and exhausted and right, exactly.
• 14:06
  Christie: It makes sense when you put it on someone else, but I think it really comes down to value and worth for yourself.
• 14:12
  Christie: Self.
• 14:12
  Christie: Yeah.
• 14:12
  Christie: And understanding your own value.
• 14:15
  Cheryl: Oh, that's so good.
• 14:17
  Cheryl: I think
• 14:17
  Christie: This is really
• 14:18
  Cheryl: it because that was the bottom line for me, right?
• 14:22
  Cheryl: Is I did not value myself, right?
• 14:25
  Cheryl: Mm-Hmm.
• 14:26
  Cheryl: and I kind of lived a mirror life I got my self-worth.
• 14:32
  Cheryl: Mm-Hmm.
• 14:32
  Cheryl: from the mirror of what I got back from my children or other people, rather than cultivating the self-worth in me.
• 14:40
  Cheryl: That's God-given as his child.
• 14:43
  Christie: Wow.
• 14:44
  Christie: because I, I can relate and how much pressure that puts on our children.
• 14:49
  Christie: Right.
• 14:49
  Christie: Yeah.
• 14:50
  Christie: You know, I, I did the same and you know, their outfits being coordinated and their schoolwork being good.
• 14:57
  Christie: All the, all the The success you could see in my kids felt like a reflection of me.
• 15:02
  Christie: That's where I was getting so much validation.
• 15:05
  Christie: And they weren't free to just be kids.
• 15:08
  Christie: Yeah,
• 15:08
  Carol: in a lot of ways.
• 15:09
  Carol: And mine's even worse than that because it wasn't the matching outfit.
• 15:13
  Carol: It was, well, particularly.
• 15:16
  Carol: in my earlier widowed parenting years.
• 15:18
  Cheryl: And we were all hurting, okay, from the loss of Bill.
• 15:21
  Christie: Yeah
• 15:21
  Carol: But over the years, my kids came back and said, Mom, we didn't want to tell you because we didn't want you to feel bad about yourself.
• 15:31
  Carol: Like, And now as I got a little older, they were willing to maybe a little bit younger and they're younger.
• 15:38
  Carol: Some of their years to say, Mom, when you say that, that hurts my feelings or that makes me feel bad about myself or you're making me feel like I have to do it perfectly or whatever it was.
• 15:48
  Carol: They didn't want to say that because they knew I would take it personally because, oh, no, I would, I got myself worth too much out of what they thought.
• 15:57
  Carol: And so they were.
• 15:59
  Carol: It's not about caring for me.
• 16:00
  Carol: But what it did.
• 16:01
  Carol: But in an illegitimate way.
• 16:03
  Cheryl: exactly It wasn't a healthy environment.
• 16:05
  Cheryl: It wasn't healthy.
• 16:05
  Cheryl: Where they could share their hurts and pains with me, particularly when it was because of me, where we could grow.
• 16:11
  Cheryl: So it was, uh.
• 16:13
  Christie: Right.
• 16:14
  Christie: When that's really our responsibility to be caring for ourselves and receiving the love for ourselves and value for ourselves rather than our children needing to give that to us.
• 16:25
  Christie: Yeah.
• 16:26
  Cheryl: And that it's not a luxury, that it's a necessity.
• 16:29
  Cheryl: Yeah.
• 16:30
  Cheryl: in a practical way again.
• 16:31
  Cheryl: I'm always the always can kill you.
• 16:34
  Cheryl: Here's how I failed is I developed asthma with Jonathan, my last baby.
• 16:40
  Cheryl: And so I thought, Oh, I'll just do a little bit.
• 16:43
  Cheryl: I don't have time to really care myself.
• 16:46
  Cheryl: And so two of my daughters had serious asthma.
• 16:48
  Cheryl: And so I took care of them and I took care of everything.
• 16:50
  Cheryl: I did everything, And I ended up in the hospital because I didn't.
• 16:55
  Cheryl: Take care.
• 16:55
  Cheryl: I thought that self care was a luxury, right?
• 16:58
  Cheryl: And this is just a practical example.
• 17:00
  Cheryl: I end up in the hospital.
• 17:01
  Cheryl: Yeah.
• 17:02
  Cheryl: Um, and you kind of said, I need you to get away from your family so you can heal.
• 17:07
  Cheryl: Oh, really?
• 17:08
  Cheryl: Yeah.
• 17:09
  Christie: Tell me how that's gonna
• 17:10
  Cheryl: work.
• 17:11
  Cheryl: Yeah.
• 17:12
  Cheryl: So three days in the hospital.
• 17:14
  Cheryl: Yeah.
• 17:15
  Cheryl: Healing.
• 17:16
  Cheryl: Because I thought it looked selfish.
• 17:19
  Cheryl: So what about, talk to that me.
• 17:22
  Cheryl: Let's talk about what the difference is between selfish me behavior and good self care.
• 17:30
  Christie: Well, I can have a lot of compassion on the you from then and relate with her.
• 17:36
  Christie: And the compassion comes from knowing there's another extreme out there of, you know, we all have a person in our worlds that has no problem with self care.
• 17:46
  Christie: That they, you know, they are fully embracing self care and it, it, it does linger on the side Selfish behavior and all consumed with self.
• 17:56
  Christie: And so that feels like a real turn off.
• 18:00
  Christie: It doesn't sound like the kind of person I want to be.
• 18:02
  Christie: And so that side is.
• 18:04
  Christie: It's me time.
• 18:05
  Christie: Yes.
• 18:06
  Christie: Nobody can bother my me time.
• 18:07
  Christie: Right.
• 18:08
  Christie: Girl, you deserve it.
• 18:09
  Christie: Yeah.
• 18:09
  Christie: You take care of you
• 18:11
  Cheryl: and.
• 18:11
  Cheryl: Okay.
• 18:11
  Cheryl: So.
• 18:12
  Cheryl: Let's talk to me, back then.
• 18:15
  Cheryl: How would you help me, and thus our listening audience, how do they distinguish between selfish me ism, selfie life, and actually healthy self care?
• 18:28
  Ellen: I think that's a really hard one, because on the surface they can both look the same, and it's a matter of the heart.
• 18:35
  Ellen: Yeah.
• 18:35
  Ellen: You know, that's where it all stems from.
• 18:37
  Ellen: So tell me like what?
• 18:38
  Ellen: Well, you know, I could go into a room and say, this is my time.
• 18:43
  Ellen: Everyone leave me alone.
• 18:44
  Ellen: I'm going to do my thing, slam the door and I'm in there all about me.
• 18:49
  Ellen: As opposed to, I could say, I need to have some time to myself.
• 18:53
  Ellen: Cause I'm getting kind of cranky with everybody.
• 18:55
  Ellen: I'm feeling like I need a little more.
• 18:58
  Ellen: depth and I need a little, some introspection, some things just that will help me kind of center myself a little bit better, help me grow a little bit.
• 19:07
  Ellen: So I'm going to take the afternoon off and I'm going to just take care of what I feel is filling at this point to me.
• 19:15
  Cheryl: Right.
• 19:16
  Cheryl: So what you're saying is the difference between isolationism and solitude.
• 19:21
  Cheryl: Right.
• 19:21
  Cheryl: You know, let's talk about that because that has changed my life to learn that solitude is really healthy.
• 19:27
  Cheryl: Yes.
• 19:28
  Cheryl: Isolation is not.
• 19:29
  Christie: Right.
• 19:30
  Christie: I think the isolation and, and like you're talking about, Ellen, the rejection of our, of our families or the people needing us, there's a tone of angerness and bitterness there of an entitlement.
• 19:44
  Christie: Yeah.
• 19:44
  Christie: Like, I'm entitled to this, I deserve it, which is true, but the, the mentality, like you're saying, more Solitude is more reflective, more feeling, meeting a need that we have, more absorbent of being recharged and refueled so that we can go back and give more of ourselves.
• 20:06
  Cheryl: That's good, particularly entitlement.
• 20:09
  Cheryl: That is really selfish.
• 20:10
  Christie: Yeah, that's really good.
• 20:11
  Christie: And it is so, so.
• 20:13
  Christie: Tricky because like you said, they can look so much the same, you know, you can be, you can go to a movie and have lunch and get your nails done.
• 20:21
  Christie: And it all look, you know, super self serving.
• 20:25
  Christie: And you just left these kids at home, you know, how, how dare you, but then at the same time, it can be A breath of, you know, recentering yourself and reminding yourself that you're a human being that does like to get her nails done and that you do have value and that your thoughts on, you know, what movie to choose and you have interests and hobbies and things that are apart
• 20:49
  Ellen: from everyone else
• 20:50
  Christie: in your life, right?
• 20:51
  Christie: And I don't want Chick fil A for lunch.
• 20:53
  Ellen: Laughter
• 20:53
  Christie: I would like to have something a little
• 20:55
  Ellen: better than that.
• 20:56
  Ellen: I'd actually like to sit down and be
• 20:57
  Christie: waited on.
• 20:59
  Christie: Yes, yes.
• 21:00
  Cheryl: You know, listening to this wherever anybody is in their spiritual walk, okay, I think everybody would agree, Jesus was a kind, generous, non selfish person, all right, and if you look at His life,, he gave and gave and gave.
• 21:15
  Cheryl: But there are times when there are all these people, they're clamoring and clamoring.
• 21:19
  Cheryl: And numerous times in the Bible, he said, no, it's time for me to walk away.
• 21:24
  Cheryl: And he would go up in the hills and spend all night or days gone from serving everybody else, even his closest friends, even as we're not invited.
• 21:34
  Cheryl: So that's clearly very healthy.
• 21:36
  Cheryl: It's the why.
• 21:38
  Cheryl: I think that helps you know
• 21:40
  Ellen: what you should do.
• 21:41
  Ellen: And how you get there.
• 21:42
  Ellen: Because so many times, I get to getting some time away because now I'm angry.
• 21:48
  Ellen: I'm exhausted, I'm angry, I've had it and my husband will say, why don't you go get the day to yourself?
• 21:53
  Ellen: And the kids are quietly clapping in the background.
• 21:57
  Ellen: You know, it still was good and refreshing, but it was all the wrong way of going about it.
• 22:02
  Ellen: Because in the end it kind of makes everybody feel a little rejected.
• 22:05
  Ellen: Like, oh, we're driving mom crazy.
• 22:07
  Ellen: What's
• 22:08
  Christie: wrong with us that we're such a burden to bear?
• 22:10
  Christie: You know,
• 22:11
  Ellen: rather than understanding, oh, it's just me.
• 22:13
  Ellen: I mean, I would usually tell them, it's me guys, I'm just, I'm done.
• 22:16
  Christie: Well, and I think that.
• 22:18
  Christie: That's where it's important, and I don't think I did this very well with my girls, but to teach them, they need to take care of themselves as well.
• 22:25
  Christie: They need to, you know, sometimes, you know, one, one thing I remember my girls sharing a room, sometimes they just needed a quiet space, some more than others, and that was It's sometimes hard to find in our house.
• 22:36
  Ellen: And I think that's really important because it gives them a sense of
• 22:40
  Christie: refreshment.
• 22:41
  Christie: Right.
• 22:41
  Christie: And it helps them to empathize with you when.
• 22:45
  Christie: When parents needs some quiet time too, and there's, you know, that's just a physical or a personal need that everyone has, it's not that you're a burden to me, it's just that I'm a human.
• 22:56
  Christie: And
• 22:56
  Ellen: that's, that was a routine that we built in.
• 22:58
  Ellen: So it wasn't like, I can't do it anymore, I have to run away.
• 23:01
  Ellen: It's like, hey, we all need refreshing time.
• 23:04
  Ellen: Preventative care.
• 23:05
  Cheryl: Yes.
• 23:05
  Cheryl: Healthy.
• 23:07
  Cheryl: And see I'm, listening to this, thinking, uh, because it's self perpetuating.
• 23:12
  Cheryl: Yeah Okay, this unhealthy way that we did it in our family.
• 23:17
  Cheryl: Then, you know, I would watch, like it might be, I need time without my sister.
• 23:23
  Cheryl: Well, you love your sister.
• 23:24
  Cheryl: We're supposed to self sacrifice and give.
• 23:27
  Cheryl: As I begin to get healthier, realizing, a lot of this is it's guilt driven.
• 23:33
  Cheryl: When I'm locked into this thinking self care was selfish, it was a lot of guilt.
• 23:41
  Cheryl: And so not only did I heap it on myself to my detriment, but that's the culture in the family that you had to feel guilty if you ever did something that was actually self care, not selfish.
• 23:55
  Christie: Yeah, and then the other person can't.
• 23:56
  Christie: Receive it with freedom and love either because, you know, they're dragging their feet, giving it to you
• 24:02
  Cheryl: and it flowed over into our marriage because then you started the same guilt.
• 24:08
  Cheryl: Oh, we can't go out on a date because we're away from the kids or that's money that babysitters money.
• 24:14
  Cheryl: We could spend on the Children or whatever it is that I think it's That's why I started with holistic, that when I'm unhealthy, it spreads everywhere like a disease.
• 24:28
  Cheryl: But holistically, when we're getting healthy as a person, then it spread to my marriage.
• 24:34
  Cheryl: And then because we finally just said we got to get away and work on our marriage.
• 24:38
  Cheryl: Well, it's
• 24:39
  Ellen: an investment, and we all understand what an investment means.
• 24:44
  Ellen: When I have downtime or me time, that's an investment in me.
• 24:48
  Ellen: When I, when I go out with my husband and we take time to ourselves, it's an investment in each other on our marriage.
• 24:55
  Ellen: So everything we're doing.
• 24:56
  Ellen: Whether we want to or not, if you don't do it, you're still investing, but you're investing the wrong stuff.
• 25:02
  Cheryl: And then sometimes we're out and then we finally had to make a rule.
• 25:06
  Cheryl: We're not going to talk about the children.
• 25:08
  Cheryl: Yes, we always had that rule.
• 25:09
  Cheryl: Yeah.
• 25:09
  Cheryl: And then suddenly we go, whoops, we're talking about the children again.
• 25:12
  Cheryl: Let's stop.
• 25:12
  Cheryl: Yeah.
• 25:12
  Cheryl: We're going to talk about other things to develop us, to invest in us rather than them.
• 25:18
  Christie: That's so good.
• 25:19
  Christie: Yeah, I, I mean, in the last year, getting ready to launch my last kit, I'm, I'm learning all of my bad habits that I've had over the years, and these all are, you know, some of them, because I, I did have that mentality of guilt driven mothering and, um, So yeah, I, I think there's this extreme both ways and finding that middle ground of, of healthy mindset and consuming some time for yourself is, is where it's
• 25:50
  Cheryl: at.
• 25:50
  Cheryl: And this is great.
• 25:51
  Cheryl: And ladies, we have consumed all of our time already.
• 25:57
  Cheryl: So let's keep the mics going.
• 25:59
  Cheryl: Okay.
• 26:00
  Cheryl: Let's, let's continue on this subject and talk a little more because I think there's a lot more to expand on this.
• 26:06
  Cheryl: Right.
• 26:06
  Cheryl: We just.
• 26:07
  Cheryl: Touch the surface.
• 26:09
  Cheryl: Okay, so parents, hang in there.
• 26:11
  Cheryl: Keep loving.
• 26:13
  Cheryl: Keep persevering because it's worth it.
• 26:21
  Before we say goodbye, let's take a moment to reaffirm the vital role of self care in parenting.
• 26:28
  Remember, caring for ourselves isn't a luxury, it's a necessity for both effective parenting and personal well being.
• 26:37
  Let's embrace self care as an investment in ourselves and in our loved ones, ensuring we're equipped to support our families over the long haul.
• 26:47
  As we reflect on today's discussion, let me ask you, where is your specific struggle in self care?
• 26:57
  I'd love to hear about your thoughts.
• 26:59
  Reach out to us through our website, DM us, or text us at contact at theparentingpodcast.
• 27:06
  com.
• 27:07
  Join us next time as we continue this exploration investigating practical tips and strategies for maintaining balance and self care in our lives.
• 27:16
  And don't forget, TPP is always here.
• 27:19
  You are never alone on this parenting journey.
• 27:32
  Ellen: Laughter