How to Stop Being Just a Mom

Mama are you tired of “working” seven days a week 24 hours a day. Feeling resentment and frustrated that your husband gets time off from his job? Well let me share with you what I just realized as I worked with my own life coach in my life. Hope this is helpful to you too.

Motherhood: Identity vs. Career

I have been viewing motherhood as part of my identity not as my career choice. Hear me out. So if mother is part of my identity I am always a mother. This makes it hard to take time off. How do you turn off who you are. So for me this shows up as checking in on my kids when I do take the rare girls day. Or I schedule my days full of appointments for kids and then clean up after they go to bed. Date night is awkward if we take talking about the kids off the table. It’s like I can’t function without my mama lenses on.

Functioning with my mama lenses always on, leaves me feeling exhausted and like I always need time away from my family. But what if I treated motherhood like a career instead. Before you think I crazy, hear me out please. What if scheduled mama events like a career person schedules work events. That means I get time off.

Regular Time Off as a Mama

It might look like this. Maybe I schedule myself to parent 40 hours a week. In this 40 hours, I might run kids to appointments, pay the bills, make and clean up meals, do laundry, play with my kids, clean my house, nurse the baby, etc. But this means I also schedule times when mom is off duty. I have permission to be a non-mama human. I might choose to scroll my phone, or watch a tv show without my kids, or work on a craft/hobby, or go out with girl friends. Some of this time might be having a conversation with your spouse, so you can get out of the house kid free to do “non-work” activities. But this might also look like scheduling down time during naps instead of speed cleaning. Or after the kids are in bed, you give yourself permission to be like you were before kids. What did you use to enjoy in the evenings or talk about with  your spouse and friends?

Mindset Shift

So maybe you want to look at your schedule with me this week and see how we might be able to get off “work” as a mom. And I know we are dealing with living little humans. It rarely goes as planned. It’s going to take some trial and error. But this mindset shift could change everything without changing the facts. For example, my family is going to the lake this weekend. Instead of me thinking about it as a busy day taking care of kids, packing and unpacking for the lake, etc. I am going to think of it as a day off at the lake with my family. It feels totally different in my body. Instead of feeling dread about the work it takes to make it happen, I’m feeling excitement.

I’d love to hear from you what things you can think about differently this week. I’d love to read about them in my e-mail at keira@keirabrowncoaching.com.

Until Next Time

-Keira

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