Ep311 Why Rest Cannot Wait for a Special Occasion

Ep311 Why Rest Cannot Wait for a Special Occasion

Vanessa: [00:00:00] You know that feeling when you finally stop running, even for just a second, and you realize how tired you actually were? Last week, I felt that, and it taught me something that I wanna share with you today, not about the podcast, but about what we do to ourselves when we never let ourselves stop. Here we go.

You're listening to the Free to Be Mindful podcast, where busy moms get practical tips and real-talk conversations to find calm, joy, and a little more breathing room in everyday life. I'm Vanessa, licensed therapist, mom coach, and a mom to a tween and toddler. Each week, we get honest about motherhood and mindset, helping you live with more presence, less pressure, without losing your... well, you know. Here we go.

Hello, and welcome to episode 311 of Free to Be Mindful podcast. I hope that you're feeling good, looking good, and doing better in this world than you were yesterday. 

So if you're listening to this in real time, yesterday was Mother's Day, and if you're anything like the moms that [00:01:00] I know and the mom that I am, yesterday was a lot because it was beautiful in some moments, full in others, and maybe somewhere underneath all of it, maybe it was a little heavier than you expected.

Today, I wanna talk about that, and I wanna connect it to something that I experienced this past week, and I think it may really resonate with you.

So if you were with me for episode 310, you know I made the decision of changing the podcast to every other week. So that last week there was no new episode, just a full week of not having to produce anything. And it felt so good, I've gotta tell you. And that moment when I was like, "Oh, I don't have to rush and record," something in me shifted. It was like a moment of relief.

Now, I wanna be transparent with you and let you know that it's not because I don't wanna be here. I absolutely do. I love recording this podcast. But it was just having that moment to breathe a little bit, it made me stop and ask myself, What is this actually telling you? And it was telling me that it had me running.

And if we're really honest with [00:02:00] ourselves as women, and especially as moms, you know that some of the times we kind of fill our own plates. It's almost like we do it to ourselves. A lot of the time we do this without anybody even asking us to. We say yes, we take on more, we carry the weight of everything, the whole world it seems like, and everyone around us, and we just keep it moving because what options do we have? That's just what we do. Until it seems like something finally gives us permission to stop, or we finally give it to ourselves, and then we actually feel what it is to breathe.

And that feeling, that breathing room, is not a luxury. What I want us to understand is that it's pieces of information. It's your mind and your body saying, " Girl, this is what you need." And you don't need just a vacation, although trust me, that'd be nice. And you don't just need this feeling on special days, but on the regular, in the in-between moments of everyday life.

Because I want you to think about this. The walk that you take by yourself. That quiet moment in the [00:03:00] morning before everyone else wakes up. The few minutes that you sit in your car before you walk into the house. All of those things aren't just small moments. They're actually moments that you give your mind, where your mind finally gets to empty out.

And sometimes it's where the best ideas come from, where you work through things that you've been carrying for days, maybe even years. Where you remember who you are outside of every role that you play every day. And sometimes we don't protect these moments the way that we should, and today I want to talk about why that needs to change.

I'll tell you that I remember as a kid, my mom waking up at like six o'clock in the morning, every single morning, to cook us rice and beans so that when we got home from school, we had a hot meal waiting for us when she was at work. And that was her love, obviously speaking, right? That was her love language.

And I say this next part with no judgment at all. But I want to say this that for today's day and age, making time for herself, [00:04:00] for my mom, that was never part of her framework. That wasn't the message that her generation received. What she knew was that you pour into your family fully because that's what love looks like, and that's what a good mother looks like. And yes, she lived that every single day, and she did it with everything that she had.

What we have now is the understanding that making space for yourself, for ourselves, is actually what allows you to keep going in the world that we live in today without losing yourself in the process.

And because we have that understanding, now we get to make choices that my mom didn't know were available to her. Life is just different now, and we know what it costs us when we never stop. And that's what actually led me to a decision that I had been putting off for a full year. Not the podcast decision... this next decision that I had living in the back of my mind, and every single time it came up, I just found a, an excuse, right? A reason to just [00:05:00] put it aside. And that decision was to hire an organizer for my home.

And when I tell you, guilt was the first thing I felt. Underneath that guilt, though, was also a voice that, one that says, um, " We don't do that. We handle our own things. You don't bring a stranger into your house for that. You just figure it out on your own because that's just what you do." And that voice, I understand now where it comes from, right? I understand that it comes from watching women before us do everything themselves and doing it with so much love and so much strength. But that voice is also the thing that keeps us from choosing differently when we actually have the option to do different.

What finally shifted for me was this year, was recognizing that I couldn't take it on by myself anymore. And more importantly, I didn't have to. That option stayed in my head for a full year, and this time I'm saying yes. And saying yes wasn't giving up. It was [00:06:00] just me getting clear that I had this resource available to me, and I was allowed to use it so that I could have a little bit more peace in my day and peace in my home.

And that resource is going to look different for every one of us, right? Maybe it's a cleaning service. Maybe it's a meal subscription so that you're not figuring out dinner at 4:00 every single afternoon. Maybe it's a babysitter so that you have a few hours that actually belong to you. The point isn't the specific thing. The point is releasing the guilt, that voice that says that you should just handle it because everyone else before you did.

And the reason why that's so important is that choosing support isn't a betrayal for where you came from. It's actually honoring yourself with the options that perhaps your mom didn't have.

And I think about that all in connection to Mother's Day, and what I notice is that we put so much weight into this one day, right? We wait for our partners, for our kids, for the people around us to make us feel seen, and special, and taken [00:07:00] care of. And sometimes it's wonderful. And then sometimes it's like a quiet gap between what we hope the day would feel like and then what it actually was. And either way, the morning right after, we're back to doing everything just like it was last Monday, just like it will be the following Monday. Everything just starts over.

And what keeps coming back to me is that when we compress everything we need- the rest, the space, the feeling of being held into one day it's a tall order. We're asking for that one day to carry more than it possibly can. Because truly, amigas, one day, even a really good one day, one Mother's Day, cannot hold everything that we've been carrying for the other three hundred and sixty-four days.

The relief I felt from this one week of breathing room, of giving myself a break from the podcast, and even of hiring that organizer, that peace that I felt when someone finally came into my home to help me, that's what I want woven into, for me and [00:08:00] for you, into every single week, right? Not just saved up for one single occasion.

Small moments carved into ordinary days, like the hard Tuesdays, the weeks where nothing is special and everything still needs to get done, that's where the real restoration actually happens.

So let me give you something practical that you can walk away with because that's always my goal in the podcast, right? And none of this is complicated, I promise.

The first is protecting your mental break, whatever that looks like for you. A walk, a drive with the music that you actually like, 10 minutes outside between things. These are the moments where your mind finally gets to decompress and where it gets to reset, where your creativity actually lives. And I know it feels like you don't have time for them, but what I want you to consider is that you don't have time to not have them.

The second is using your resources without apologizing for it. And I know sometimes that it's harder than it actually sounds, especially when you were raised with women in your family that do everything themselves.

But choosing [00:09:00] support like an organizer, a cleaning person, a meal service, whatever it looks like for you, whatever's going to give you back time and energy in your day, that's you understanding what you need and deciding that you and your family are worth that investment. Your mother poured everything into her family with what she had, I'm sure, and you get to pour into yourself too. And that makes everything and everyone around you feel much more sustainable and much happier.

The third is treating your own time like it's a non-negotiable because it is. One pocket a day, even a small one, that belongs to you before everyone else wakes up, after everyone else goes to bed. One real lunch break, one Saturday morning hour that you actually protect. Guard it the way that you guard all of your other commitments because you are just as important as everyone else on your calendar.

When we wait for Mother's Day to feel taken care of, what we're actually doing is telling ourselves [00:10:00] that rest has to be earned, that we need a special occasion to justify it, that someone else has to give us permission before we are allowed to stop.

And what I want to leave with you today, is that you don't need the occasion. You don't need the permission. You get to decide the regular days to include moments in that are yours. And that asking for help and using your resources and protecting your time is not a departure from how you love your people, it's how you love them for the long haul, without disappearing in the process.

And if you're at a place where you want support in figuring out what this looks like in your specific life with the mental load that you're carrying and the guilt that comes up each and every time you try to choose yourself, that version of you that exists underneath all of the roles, that's exactly the work that I do with moms in private one-on-one coaching. And if this resonated with you and if your values align with my messaging, know that I'm available for that and you can visit [00:11:00] amigamoms.com.

Before we close, I wanna give you that moment that you probably need. You don't need to do anything differently right now. I just want you to notice. Think about yesterday. Think about what you were hoping to feel. Not the gift, not the plan, just what you were quietly hoping for underneath it all. What was it?

And now ask yourself, what is one thing that you can create this week that gives you even a little bit of that feeling? Not for the next Mother's Day, not for when things slow down or vacation, but this week.

Maybe it's that walk that you actually take. Maybe it's finally saying yes to the help that you've been putting off. Maybe it's just one hour, maybe it's just five minutes, that you decide that belongs to you and you don't have to give an explanation to anyone.

Name it, that one thing. Name it right now. Because you matter on the ordinary days, not just on the days that include maybe flowers and brunch. And the smallest decision to act like it is [00:12:00] where everything starts to change.

If this landed for you today, please send it to a mom who needs to hear it. Maybe it's the friend who has been waiting for that one special day to finally exhale, or the amiga who carries everything and hasn't let herself ask for help, or the woman in your life who needs someone to tell her that she doesn't have to do it all alone.

And if you've been listening for a while and you haven't left a review yet, today's a great day to do that. It genuinely helps more moms find this community, and it takes about 30 seconds. Everything is linked below in the show notes.

And my friends, remember always that in a world where you're free to be anything, you're always free to be mindful.

Thanks so much for listening, and I'll see you in two weeks 

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