Life Hack for Better Sleep
The thing about sleep is you know you need it.
Science actually proves the human body requires sleep to grow and heal. Sleep allows your brain to process what you’ve learned. The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke says:
“Sleep affects almost every type of tissue and system in the body – from the brain, heart, and lungs to metabolism, immune function, mood, and disease resistance. Research shows that a chronic lack of sleep, or getting poor quality sleep, increases the risk of disorders including high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, depression, and obesity.”
Any mom who has survived sleep deprivation knows how important sleep is. It’s a lifeline and a requirement to function correctly the next day. Those early days with a newborn are often remembered fondly - those first smiles, the smell of a baby’s head, or the cute footed pajamas - but in the back of your mind, hidden beneath the momnesia that convinces you “it wasn’t so bad”, you also recall the brain fog that comes from lack of sleep. It was on those sleep-deprived mornings that you poured breastmilk into your coffee instead of creamer or went to work with two different shoes.
Fast forward to the time the same child was so sick you stayed awake most of the night to make sure they were breathing. When they are so congested that the only way they could stay asleep was to sit upright leaning against your chest while you sit upright in the rocking chair. You might have managed a few winks, but any time they moved, you woke up. Then the next morning, you were running on fumes and irritable, and easily confused. Words escaped you when you reached for them. You weren’t as sharp in your meetings and no amount of caffeine was enough.
Good ole sleep deprivation. We as moms know it well.
Life with a newborn or having a sick child certainly is the more extreme reason for being sleep deprived, but not getting enough sleep or consistently getting low-quality sleep can be just as detrimental. Waking up frequently throughout the night, regular insomnia or just trying to survive on fewer hours per night than your body truly needs can take its toll.
Are you getting enough sleep?
According to the Mayo Clinic, most adults need 7 or more hours of sleep each night. While this varies from person to person, adults actually need 7 to 9 hours of sleep but many moms I know are getting far less. There are people who believe they can train themselves to require less, but that is simply a myth.
There is so much pulling you away from getting good quality sleep. Stress and anxiety are at the forefront, but the pace of information flooding your brain each day between social media and work is intense. Multi-tasking and jumping back and forth between mom responsibilities and your career alone are enough to keep your brain in overdrive. The nonstop expectations to produce and accomplish are affecting your ability to fully shut off at night. So you wake before you are ready and stay up too late binging Netflix just to get a sense of relaxation and rest. Are you truly sleeping well, though?
You know sleep is important, but you might also struggle to actually sleep when you’ve laid your head on the pillow. Whether it’s waking up too frequently, tossing and turning, or full-on insomnia robbing us of good quality sleep, you may be at a loss to know HOW to get good rest.
We can know it’s important all the live-long day but sometimes life makes it seem impossible.
I have a solution for you.
It’s a very simple gratitude practice that I promise is actually easy, too. This is a tried and true recipe for a good night’s rest. It works without fail, every time I do it. I’ve had multiple clients use this practice and report back with extremely positive results:
Less tossing and turning
Good quality and solid sleep
Waking up feeling fully rested
Reduced insomnia
Remembering more of their dreams
The entire goal is to get into the frequency of gratitude and love as you fall asleep. This is different than the Gratitude Journaling activity I’ve talked about many times. It’s not about a specific number of people you list or how many items you check off your list. It’s just about putting your body, mind, and spirit in a place of feeling gratitude as you enter your sleep state.
Gratitude Practice for Good Sleep:
Spend a few minutes thinking about all the ways you can be grateful for the day you just experienced just before you drift off to sleep.
Thank the people in your life for showing up the way they did.
Thank God for the abundance you had showered on you throughout the day.
Thank the Universe for all the pleasant exchanges you had with strangers.
Express gratitude for all the ways you felt loved.
Thank Source for each person in your life and what you admire about them.
Be thankful for the beautiful places you got to be today.
Thank God for all the things you have today that you use to pray for.
Thank yourself for the good sleep you are about to have.
Set the intention to have restful sleep and to wake up feeling energized. Be grateful - in advance - for the good night’s rest that you are about to have.
When you wake up in the morning, make note of your sleep. Do you feel more rested? Take a minute to express some gratitude (and be amazed) that this shit really does work.
I would love to hear how this works for you! Comment below or send me a DM on Instagram!
To learn more about my Gratitude Journaling method mentioned above, download your Free Journal Prompts Here.
How to take better photos
Who are these naturally photogenic people and how do I become one of them?
I tend to be the one person in a group with my eyes closed or making some weird face.
For years, I hid behind the camera taking the pictures so I wasn’t in them. I felt too fat or not cute enough, my clothes made me look frumpy, I stood weird, my hair wasn’t done or my makeup was too light. You name it .. I had an excuse for why I shouldn’t be in the photo or why that one of me you just took was terrible.
Now that my girls are grown, though, I love looking back at old photos and seeing what I looked like then, but there are so few pics of me to choose from. My second daughter looks JUST LIKE me twenty years ago and I love to see the similarities. Also, I would literally pay money to be as skinny as I was back then when I thought I was too fat. Seriously, younger me was kind of a dumbass.
Still to this day, I truly do not enjoy seeing photos of myself which is probably surprising if you follow me on Instagram where my page is basically just photos of me. Why? Because I’m selling a product and that product is me - a whole, healthy and happy human being helping others to become the same. In all my analytics, photos of me perform better than stock photos or even those of my dogs. At the end of the day, I’m using social media as a tool and Instagram is visual. I’m creating the picture of what I’m offering through my writing, online courses and coaching packages. That meant I needed to get comfortable being in front of the camera.
This took practice and oh my goodness so many retakes. I googled “how to pose in photographs” because I’m special like that. I copied other people and tried to stand how they did. Most of the time, that looked pretty dumb when I did it. I practice posing in the mirror daily. I take photos, delete and repeat. I learned new apps.
I’ve learned a few tips along the way:
Learn your “good side” - practice with selfies so you can see what you’re doing.
Stick your chin out to the point that it feels weird.
Tilt your head slightly - rarely does straight on work well.
Shift your body to the side - it’s more flattering.
Hold your arms out - not resting against your body.
Presets are your friend - it takes the guesswork out of editing and makes your photos look better.
Lightroom is easy to learn and makes applying those presets pretty simple.
Do something, hold something, sit and stand - change it up and you’ll find what works for you.
iPhone users - Portrait mode / Studio light is your new best friend.
So regardless of what you do for a living or how active you are on social media, being in photos is still important. Knowing how to take good photos is a learned skill, so practice often. My advice? Just do it - be in the photos! Moms, your kids want to look back and see YOU in their photos, too. They see you every day and the way we look changes over time. Being able to see you in photos as they remember you is such a gift to them.
Am I a pushover parent? Grief sometimes wins.
Mourning the loss of a loved one, the end of your marriage or even the loss of a friendship all carry similarities of grief. Each is as unique as the person you’ve lost, but all grief carries the same traits. I devoted an entire chapter of my book, So You’re Divorced, So What?, to this concept. I walked through the stages of grief and offered my suggestions on how to move through them, but one important thing to consider is this: You don’t get over grief, you get through it. It’s not something that you deal with once and never to feel that loss again. It’s not linear and it never really makes sense. It’s fluid and flows like the waves in the ocean. Sometimes gentle and other times viscous and brutal. Each and every person will grieve their loss differently than the next.
I’ve shared before how difficult it’s been for me to attempt to guide my son through the loss of his friend at 7 years old to brain cancer, but honestly, in all my parenting years, this has been the challenge that keeps on giving. How do you do that exactly? Each year that passes, we process a little more and in different ways. Today marks the anniversary of the day Brock left us. This year, he stayed home from school and last year he was ready to be with other friends. Again, not linear. Today, he has spent the morning watching a sweet Christmas movie, he took a break from reality in some video games, went outside to shoot his pellet gun and we built a fort for the little girls in this house to enjoy this afternoon. He’s such a sweet boy. Kind, thoughtful and still missing his friend and struggling how to process the sad.
I typically try to follow my kids lead. I give them more grace than others think is necessary. It may appear that they rule the roost or call the shots, but like I tell them, I’m the one steering this ship. They may have more leniency with me than other moms allow for backtalk and general disrespect, but here’s what I know. There is no manual with parenting. Sure, I’ve read my share of parenting books from experts, but at the end of the day, no book, advice or even the child before them could ever adequately prepare me for parenting the child in front of me in that moment. What works for one of my children, doesn’t necessarily work for the next. So, I take all the advice in, absorb all the information I can and then take my kids’ lead on what they need from me.
I did read in a parenting book about divorce long ago that children will act out more with mom than anyone else because they know to the core of their being that unconditional love resides with their mom. They know without being told that no matter what they say or do, Mom will always love them. She is their safe space to release the emotions that are scary or don’t make sense. Have you heard it said that kids don’t say “I’ve had a rough day”, but instead they ask “will you play with me?” I don’t know how much I’ve actually believed this, but in the past two decades of parenting, I have done my best to remind myself of that in moments when they are having an outburst, even when it looks like I’m being soft or too lax to others watching me. It has given me the chance for an extra breath and take pause before reacting. The other day, I called my youngest daughter on it in a moment of exceptional sassiness. I asked her why she was so rude to me and not other people. She actually said, “because you’re my mom. I know you still love me.”
When it comes to helping my son navigate this grief process, that has meant that some days, I allow him to avoid his feelings altogether. Other times, I prod gently to encourage him to feel the sadness in tiny bits at a time. When we first told him about his friend going to heaven, his first words were “so, they didn’t find a cure?” It broke my heart - a child’s innocence and belief in the impossible shattered in an instant. When we pushed a little too hard to talk about it, he would come back with “It’s just too sad.” So, on the anniversaries and important days, I let him get lost in video games or stay home from school. I follow his lead. Even if this means he is taking advantage of the situation to avoid school that he hates. I’ll give him this pass because, you know what? His friend died and I can’t bring him back or take away his sadness no matter how many times I pray to God to let have his sadness instead. I can handle so much heartbreak and pain. I won’t break. I know I can survive it, but watching him hurt is worse than all the pain I’ve endured before now.
If you’ve navigated this territory and have any advice, please comment below. I’m sure I speak for others who are reading when I say, we are all ears. I may coach women how to grieve the loss of their divorce, but I feel out of my territory with this one, still, four years later.
How I handled Coparenting with Covid
Coparenting together from two different houses can be a challenge in and of itself, but what do you do when covid hits one house and not the other? Let me tell you a tale of our experience …
It all started on a Tuesday with a request from the littles’ dad who wanted to take my son hunting Wednesday morning before school. This is a whole thing in Texas during hunting season & my son equally loves hunting and hockey. Normally, I would have insisted that this father/son bonding wait until the weekend, but I decided to practice what I preach and pick my battles. Instead of putting my foot down out of principle, I told him instead: I will take your lead on this one. I really do think it’s important in this coparenting relationship for us both to allow the other parent room to call the shots from time to time. But I digress.
Fast forward to the next day when Dad starts running a fever and goes to get his previously scheduled covid test (he had a weekend trip planned and everyone agreed to testing prior to getting together). Covid Positive.
Well, damn. After we all saw him Tuesday evening and my son spent the morning in a deer stand with him. So now my son has been exposed, the question becomes does he stay there or come home and possibly expose us all, if we weren’t already?
Here’s what I have learned:
No one really knows about this virus - even doctors disagree
Positive test results only after fever started for the two adults
10 days - is the quarantine wait after symptoms begin and/or exposure
Symptoms vary from person to person - cough, fever, congestion, chills, aches, headache, etc.
3 days - how long you need to be fever free to be deemed not contagious
Our Thanksgiving break from school didn’t go as planned. My daughter stayed with me and neither of us ever got sick. We isolated to minimize the risk to other people and thankfully, we stayed healthy. My son quarantined at Dad’s house and did show very minor symptoms, but never ran a full blown fever. The adults were hit much harder and now we are awaiting retesting results.
I will venture to guess that our experience isn’t all that rare. Did you see my “I’m so sad” post awhile back? It was beyond difficult for me to be away from my son when he had the potential of being very sick. The fear of the unknown was in full swing for me. I am so grateful that he wasn’t. I have never spent more than a week away from my littles since my divorce, so 14 days seemed like an eternity.
I missed my son like crazy. My daughter was so sad to not see her brother and her dad for so long - especially when we live so close. My son was devastated to miss his hockey tournament and even missed being here with us when given the chance to play video games nonstop for days on end. Their dad missed his baby girl and her sweet hugs.
We managed to do a few things that helped ease the angst and separation a bit:
We did a driveway visit several times where my son would sit at his bedroom window and we’d talk to him on the phone. As his voice came through the car speakers (thank you bluetooth), it was almost like a drive-in movie. Who am I kidding? It was not at all the same thing.
We dropped off treats every couple days to the Covid House. Meds with Pedialyte and Gatorade one day, Lemon pie or his XBOX another day. Kindness always wins and, for me, it was easier to wait when I can do something to help and didn’t feel quite so helpless.
FaceTime is a godsend when you can’t be in person. It’s not quite the same, but it does help to be able to see each other’s faces. We spent most of Thanksgiving video chatting with everyone we couldn’t be with. It did help a tiny bit.
I learned to vary my questions and use them sparingly. It gets old to answer “How are you feeling?” every single day for two weeks. Offers to help are better received than asking over and over again for an update that takes days for the status to change. Patience is not my virtue, but it was much needed while we waited.
All in all, I’m very grateful it wasn’t worse and that there is light at the end of the tunnel. I am eager to get back to our “normal” life where we share kids who bounce back and forth between two houses - together. Who knew I’d ever say THAT?