4 Ways to Replace Mom Guilt with Self Love

Valentine’s Day is less than a week away, and therefore the”official” week of love has already started. There is lots romance all around, which is super duper fun and I’m definitely here for it. BUT beyond the conventional romance-which I love-the most important love is self love. If we don’t love ourselves, we can’t love others for sure. In fact, I wrote a blog post about this exact thing around this time last year-check it out. However, a segment of self love that often goes unrecognized and unacknowledged is mom guilt-and how we need to replace it with self love.

I am very much guilty of mom guilt. Having experienced it first hand and it is brutal. First, we don’t know what we’re doing-and because of that we don’t trust ourselves in simply knowing what our child needs. To add to that, we feel so pressurized to get it right and have this pinterest-ready, instagrammable life that if something doesn’t go as planned, there is an unending battle of “should’ve, could’ve, or would’ve” done something better. Plus, there is an argument for everything from the best feeding method to whether or not we should leave our kids for too long or craving some alone time. The mom guilt list is endless, and it’ll keep creeping up in different ways. So this blog post is a guide/reminder to myself and to my fellow moms on how we can replace our mom guilt with self love this Valentines Day and beyond.

Follow Your Dreams-Before we had our kids, we had our own aspirations for the kind of life we’d wanted for ourselves. When kids come in the picture, that often takes a backseat. Even for myself, this blog page wasn’t high on my priority list after Aisha was born. It took me a few months to get back into it and find my footing, and that’s ok temporarily. However, giving up our dreams totally for the sake of our kids is not self love at all. 1. We’re letting go of something we love, 2. our children are always watching us, so if they see us, as parents, giving up our dreams, then they’d feel that is the way to live their lives. However, if we follow our dreams, they’ll see that want to do the same thing in their lives. As a mom, I wouldn’t advise Aisha any other way-except to follow her hopes and dreams.

Spend Time Alone-In the beginning, I felt obligated to spend every waking moment with Aisha and be a “good mom” constantly engaging with her, being a super fun and creative individual. However, what I learned was that depriving myself of alone time in an effort to be the best mom to Aisha was counterintuitive. I found myself become more impatient and exhausted rather than being my best self around her. However, I discovered that by factoring in my alone time and take the time to recharge and do me for a bit; I am able to be much more present with Aisha. PLUS, Aisha sees mama wants time alone-and she has learned to enjoy being alone as well. Self love at its best!

Less Negative Self Talk-That “should’ve”, “could’ve”,”would’ve” talk that we keep having with ourselves-it needs to stop. As mamas, we’re doing the very best we can. Deep down we know that and our kids know that. In fact in our kids’ eyes nobody can do it better. So we have to show ourselves grace when things don’t go as planned and simply go with the flow. It’s much much easier said than done I know-but it is a fantastic reminder so many ways to do the same thing, and every child is different and that we’re doing our best.

Self Care-Honestly, self-care encompasses all of the above. However, self-care also includes all the small practices we can do just to look out for ourselves-drinking enough water, mentally checking in for 5-10 minutes a day, working out a few times a week. Whatever you can do to take care of you, mama, is self care and self love.

 

So this Valentine’s Day, let’s make efforts to let go of our mommy guilt and move towards some self love this year. 🙂