What Happens When We are Gentle With Ourselves?
Have you stopped to think of the amount of pressure mothers are under? There’s a lot of talk about gentle parenting methods and how beneficial it is to children.. which got me thinking, What happens when we are gentle with ourselves?
It may be a concept you’ve never fully stopped to think about, but our society has put so much pressure on us to reach goals and put out results that may very well be unattainable.
Every month I tell myself I’ll cross “X”amount of things off my list of to-dos and when they don’t happen I allow the guilt to set in and shame of not “getting things done”.
I spend a lot of time thinking of how different being a mom is today then when my mother or her mother were just beginning to have babies.
We have so many things available to us, everything is a click away, a drive away or an order away, you would think our lives would be more simple?
Yet, I see lots of moms, myself included left wondering by the end of the day “where has the time gone?” I need more time!!! I have errands to finish, dinner to prep and so forth.
So what can we do to get out of this hamster wheel of guilt?
Being gentle with ourselves can mean different things to different people. We have become slaves to being busy and our children are watching. Watching us constantly be in a rush to be somewhere, to have dinner ready or even obsessing over our weight.
When did we lose sight of what’s important in life? Does being busy or having the means to acquire an object mean more than sitting quietly with our children? Without having 15 distractions coming at us? Or having so many toys our homes look like a toy store?
There’s beauty in simplicity, there’s beauty in stillness, there’s beauty in knowing we don’t need things to be happy.
Give yourself a little grace. Say No to overbooking yourself and your family. We only have one life to live. 
I certainly don’t want to look back and regret not taking the time for myself and connecting with the small moments of life.
Let’s get off the Mom rat race and enjoy our lives like we’re meant to. One day, one smile, one giggle, one good book and a glass of wine at a time. Break the cycle of mom guilt and shame and let grace set in by nurturing our ideal happiness.
I hope this post turns that little light bulb on in your head and gets you thinking of ways you can be more gentle with yourself. If this helped you in any way, please let me know in the comments below, I would love to know more and connect with you.
Thanks for reading.
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Beautiful reminder in this mommy journey and thank you for sharing 😘
Thank you Natalie! I hope to inspire more women to take care of themselves as priority. We can only give what we have. Thanks for stopping in. ❤️
Ellen, this is so true! We never stop to think about how we need to be gentle with ourselves. We hear ourselves the most so it’s really important to slow down and use the right words– self care is key!!
Thank you for your thoughtful comment! Being more aware of our actions and things we say/think will help us along this motherhood journey.
I always tell my friends to go easy on themselves but I’m not sure if I follow my own advice! Thanks for the reminder!
Yes, we need to encourage other moms to not be so hard on themselves and just be happy.
I love this. I find I’m harder on myself than anyone else is. These are such great reminders to be gentle and how that can really affect everything.
We tend to take the blame and feel the guilt more often than anyone but reminding ourselves that we are just humans like everyone else and shatter this “super mom” imagine going around that people think we should be, we’ll be a lot happier and so will our families. Thank you for being an awesome mom!
This is such a great post, and so true. We need to allow ourselves time with ourselves and our families without those distractions you’re talking about!
Such a great reminder! It’s so much easier to be good to our kids when we are first good to ourselves.
I love this!! I have been struggling with this myself the couple months… Always much going on and no time to stop and “smell the roses.” Glad to know I’m not the only one who feels this way!!!
Aww Brittany (((HUGS))) motherhood is tough enough as is… we need to just accept that perfect isn’t real and just do our best. Thanks for stopping in. ♥
After reading this post, I feel like we’d be great friends. Moms need to take care of themselves too! I recently wrote a post on the same topic. It’s soooo important. Awesome job 💘