One of the biggest barriers we hear among thousands of women who join in our free classes each year when it comes to taking time out for their own self-care or spending money on joining our paid programs is Mom guilt!

 We understand! Most of us at The Sisters Enchanted are moms and feel this mom guilt thing for sure. But I’m here to tell you today to show you that the stories we tell ourselves about what we should and should not afford and gift ourselves as moms are all wrong and self-care can actually help turbo boost our feelings about motherhood, and our relationships with our children and husbands, wives, partners and to everything and everyone we hold important to us.  

 What is Mom Guilt?

 Mom guilt is the name given to the feelings of guilt around anything to do with your kids; being the perfect mom, making mistakes and not being enough for your children and family.

 Of course, all of us moms what to be the very best mom we can, but mom guilt can cause us an unrecognizable and unachievable ideal of what a perfect mom is and cause us to feel guilt for ever putting ourselves first. It can cause guilt about having to be a working mom and guilt when it comes to taking time out for yourself, doing the things you love, looking after yourself and spending money on yourself.

 Where does Mom Guilt Come From?

 Mom guilt comes from inherited ideas and stories about how women are the ones responsible for their children having the perfect childhood. These days, we are bombarded with pressures of what the perfect family and perfect mom looks like in films, TV, commercials, family and friends, society and, of course, social media. Although we may know that nearly all of these are rose tinted images viewed from the lens of the Instagram filter, we still beat ourselves up every time we fall short of them, which is everyday for almost all of us!  This causes us stress and spoils our experiences and memories of this precious time in our life.

 And guess what, when we are feeling stressed, insecure, disappointed and guilty we cannot act as our best selves and our best moms, and our families and children suffer the consequences. That’s right! Mom guilt is a self-perpetuating ever-growing cycle!

Our Top Five Tips to Overcome Mom Guilt

      1. Journal to change your story about the source

 Journaling is a great way to learn about yourself, your beliefs, and the stories you tell yourself. Start a journal and take note of the things that cause you to feel guilt or shame. Becoming aware of these areas where you feel the most mom guilt can help you take practical action to address these ideas and beliefs and change your story to something more self-supportive and positive for you and your family.

 Challenging your negative beliefs is an essential part of changing your story. Look at the ideas and beliefs you have listed in your journal and challenge yourself to find the evidence to support them. Often, you’ll find that there is none. Then reframe your beliefs about your failings into positive statements about your achievements. This will give you a more realistic perspective about yourself and your family and help you to change the story you tell yourself from mom guilt to mom celebration!

       2. Prioritize Self-Care

If you know us at all you will know that self-care is central to everything we do and believe in at TSE. So much so, our founder and director, Sara Walka, has written a book on it.

Check Out: Magical Self Care

You know what they say about putting your oxygen mask on first on an airplane. Helping yourself before helping others isn’t selfish — it is common sense and important to boot. Establishing a regular self-care routine WILL reduce your stress and boost your confidence and self-worth. This will make you a better mom! It will enable you to be more present and patient with your kids, leading to fewer feelings of mom guilt.

 So, if your mom guilt is stopping you from self-care, take it from us – you WILL be a better mom if you look after yourself and make self-care a priority in your daily life.

      3. Make Time for Self- Care

 OK, we hear you saying it’s all very well to talk about all this self-care but how on earth would you ever find the time to fit it all in! We have felt the same, trust me. We know that feeling  that there is no time for yourself because you’re filled with satisfying other commitments for everyone else. But it is important to make that time, to have a full and enriched life so you can teach your kids what that looks like and how they can get it themselves. Isn’t a life centered around self-care and making time for themselves what we want for our kids?! Well then, we have to model it. Part of what we look at when we talk about time is understanding what it is you want and why you want it. Then you can work on making the time for yourself to make those things happen. You can hear more about this and all things self-care in our podcast here.

https://thesistersenchanted.com/episode-030-how-to-find-time-for-yourself/

      4. Show yourself some self-compassion

Brené Brown says the antidote to guilt and shame is empathy and compassion.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/brene-brown-self-criticism-compassion_n_4848895

 We all too often find it easy to be compassionate to others yet struggle with self-compassion. You can give yourself this goodness when you learn to change your stories about motherhood, unrealistic expectations and guilt and through self-care.

      5. Share with Others

I remember a time when I had a tiny, premature baby with a complicated medical and feeding regime yet got into such a huge stress because it was my turn to host the mom and baby group and my home was a tip. I was up till 3am tidying, cleaning and making cookies. Of course, I was too tired to enjoy the group and all I remember is us saying how each other’s homes were tidy, ours were a mess and then agreeing we should not tidy up anymore and should just let us all see each other as real life for us really was.

 We never did that, I left the group. It was causing me more stress and more mom guilt.

 What is important however, is to surround yourself with people who will hold you accountable for taking care of yourself. For making cookies because you fancy them, not because others will judge you for having a shop bought pack. People who cheer lead you when you do something to enhance YOU and YOUR LIFE and who will support you when life is challenging.

 We all need to be part of a community that really care and we are not ashamed to say this time and time again that our TSE community are a super wonderful magical bunch of women who love nothing more than to celebrate each other’s wins and help each other out when the going gets a little tougher. If you are part of our community, you will get what I mean right! If you are not, then come join us, or find another group of like minded people to take your hand and lead you into a life of magic and self-care.

Invest in YOU

 Our cart for Holistic Witchery is currently open.  This is a wonderful opportunity to invest in YOU and your self-care.

 The guilt of spending money and investing in ourselves is one of the biggest barriers to joining our Holistic Witchery community we hear from women who really want a part of it.

We totally understand this. Most of Team TSE are parents and totally get this worry! We also totally get that we are all worth investment – YOU are  worth the investment!

 If you think Holistic Witchery  is a good fit for you then you deserve to gift this to  yourself. 

We also know that many of our students have told us they feel they have become even better parents  through Holistic Witchery. We have ideas and activities scattered through the units designed to  share with your whole family, including activities  especially designed to share with children. Holistic Witchery is very much designed bring intuition, joy, 

magic and intentional living to your entire life and especially to your family and home. 

So, you are not just investing in yourself, you are investing in your family and in your children also!