Brittni (00:01.314)

Hello, mama. How are you today? Welcome into the Resting in Motherhood podcast. I’m so excited to just sit down and chat with you today, as always. And again, as always, I will start by sharing how I’m currently finding rest in motherhood. So I think I’ve shared this on the podcast. If I haven’t shared it on the podcast, I’ve shared it in my weekly newsletter.

which as a reminder, if you don’t know, I do send out a weekly newsletter every Thursday with usually kind of like a motherhood wisdom nugget or, well, I always send the motherhood wisdom nugget or kind of like a behind the scenes of what’s going on in my life. And then I also share like a sleep or parenting tip once a week as well within that newsletter. So highly recommend.

subscribing to my newsletter, which will be linked below in the show notes if you have not already subscribed. But I can’t remember again if I’ve shared it here or if I’ve shared it in my newsletter or maybe both, but I love, love, love fall. I just really see it as a time to kind of reset, slow down, kind of turn inward.

and really kind of get ready as we enter winter. So kind of cozying down and all of that. I’m obsessed with fall. It’s funny, I used to be a lover of summer and spring. I love spring too, but like spring and summer used to be like my favorite. And as I’ve gotten older, there’s just something magical about fall, about the slowing down. I love the lighting. Like I’m looking outside my window right now and the lighting is absolutely beautiful.

There’s just something really glorious about it and I can’t tell you exactly what it is. But I also think it’s like the inner student in me, kind of that newness and that freshness, you know, of like a new quote unquote school year, even though I’m not starting school. But so how I’m currently finding rest right now in this season, this actual season, I know I often talk about seasons of motherhood, but in this season of fall is I’m really just slowing down and I’m also looking at

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looking at it as a time to kind of like purge, get rid of stuff that’s no longer serving us. I’m really going through Laila’s clothes and donating the things that no longer fit her. I’m going through, because if you have been following along a while, you’ll know that she goes to a forest school, which means that we have lots of outdoor gear for every season.

and she’s growing so she’s outgrowing a lot of that stuff so I’ve been like getting all of her winter boots together to sell and yeah all of that stuff so we’re purging the clothes we’re purging toys that she no longer plays with I’ve been purging clothes that just no longer fit into my life and where I’m at right now and I’m also like I’ve been rearranging and redecorating and so I’m really just kind of

turning inward into our bubble and getting rid of the stuff that no longer serves us to open up space to just be. So that is how I’m currently finding rest in motherhood. And I would like you to take a second to ask yourself how you’re currently finding rest in motherhood or how you could be currently finding rest in motherhood.

One of the things that’s been really powerful for me in motherhood is just taking some time for reflection to check in because I think we’re often so busy taking care of our little ones and running a house and maybe running a business or working or whatever the case may be. And we

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Forget that we need taking care of too. We forget that we need to check in with us too. So I hope that every single week when you listen, when you sit down and listen with me, you take the time after I’ve shared what I’m, how I’m currently finding rest to check in with yourself and see like, am I giving myself rest? Am I tuning into my needs? Am I, am I currently like really burnt out and I’m showing that by being really impatient with my little one.

If that’s the case, what is that telling you? It’s telling you that you need to fill your own cup in some way, whatever way that may be. And that actually, this all kind of flows in perfectly, which I did not plan it that way, to what I want to chat about today, which is this concept of giving ourselves permission in motherhood to do nothing. And I don’t really know when I kind of slipped into that role.

because I, if you are into human design, I am a generator. And I’m actually, I will be doing a podcast episode on human design and motherhood, but just kind of a little tidbit about what a generator is, is we are like the, my business coach describes it as like the energizer bunnies of society. Like give us the task and we’ll go, go, go, go, go. And we’ll do, do, do, do. And

That’s what generators are. They’re kind of this life force of society, of like getting things done, doing the tasks. We’re workers and we want the task. And so I’ve always kind of been this person who I used to be uncomfortable with the nothing, right? Like, especially in motherhood, I don’t know what it is about that, but like,

There’s always something to be done, right? Like there could be something for my business. There could be something around the house. It’s always something. But somewhere along the line, and I would say it probably started happening after my divorce when I was left with free time. And if you haven’t listened to earlier episodes in the podcast, I recommend we are almost at exactly, actually we’ve passed it now when this episode goes live. I was gonna say.

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We’re almost at a year of the Resting in Motherhood podcast launch. So I recommend going back a full year. And a lot of those beginning episodes are more about kind of how I found my footing post-divorce and like great, great lessons, like dropping balls and learning how to really take care of myself again in motherhood. So I would say it came from that, but somewhere along the line, I have gotten really comfortable with

giving myself permission to do nothing. And what this permission to do nothing actually means for me is I might, like it doesn’t mean just sitting on the couch all day, right? But it means like, okay, we’ve had like a busy morning and now I’m gonna take some downtime and I’m gonna sit on the couch and read my book or I’m gonna journal or I’m going to do a little afternoon meditation, right?

doing nothing like that. Or sometimes it’s, let’s watch a TV show, right, with Lila. Or let’s sit on the couch and watch a movie. And sometimes when I’m feeling really tired, depending on where I am at in my cycle, it might be a two movie kind of afternoon, like on a lazy Sunday afternoon, which is not the norm. But again, giving ourselves permission to kind of do these things. And the reason this topic came up,

was because I was chatting with one of my dear friends. We’re friends through Lila’s school. Her little daughter goes with Lila. And we were just chatting and she said something along the lines of, I wish I could give myself permission to do nothing. Or it was something like, I wish I could feel comfortable doing nothing. And it struck me that I think a lot of us have this mentality of like,

I have to do, do, do. I can’t just sit, right? It’s like, okay, if I’m at home, I’m either entertaining my child or playing with them, or I’m doing something around the house, or I’m working if you work or own a business or whatever the case may be, we’re always doing, doing, doing, doing, And it’s exhausting. And then we get to these moments where we’re like, I just want them to go to sleep so I can have a moment to myself, so I can do nothing. But what if we gave ourself permission during the day?

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to do nothing sometimes. And again, this doesn’t mean that we’re just like, I’m gonna wake up and do nothing all day long. But it’s finding those pockets within the day to give yourself permission to truly do nothing. Now granted, this is gonna be very age dependent and temperament dependent on your child, right? Now, if you’re coming to me listening and you have like a newborn and only one child, so they’re your first, let’s say.

I would be taking advantage of all of those naps, whether they be contact naps or independent naps, and choosing some of those, like at least, okay, let’s say you have a newborn who’s napping five times a day. I would be taking two to three naps a day, not you taking the nap, but hey, if you want to take two to three naps a day, do it, girlfriend. But I would be taking two to three naps a day to do…

nothing. So maybe like I said, maybe that’s watching your favorite series while your little one naps in your arms. Or maybe they’re napping in their own sleep space and you’re watching your favorite series. Maybe it’s listening to a podcast. Maybe it’s reading a book. Whatever the case may be, though that’s how I would kind of find those pockets to do nothing in the early days. And then for the other naps, again, if you want to just take that time to rest on the couch, amazing, especially if you’re recently postpartum.

Or maybe you’re using a couple, if you’re doing contact naps, maybe you’re baby wearing for one nap to go on a walk. And then maybe you’re baby wearing for another nap while you clean or meal prep, whatever the case may be. Giving ourselves permission to do nothing does not mean that we’re doing nothing all day long. It just means that we’re finding those pockets within our day to give ourselves time to rest and recuperate. Because I think, just like I said just a little bit ago,

We kind of get this mentality of like, I’m on all day long. And then it’s like, especially with a toddler, if you have a toddler, I’m sure you relate to this a lot where you’re like, especially a toddler who’s not napping anymore, where you’re like, my gosh, I just want it to be bedtime so I can like just sit in silence and stare at a wall, right? Like, or just like doom scroll or whatever the case may be. We just want that time. And when we give ourselves that

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that time, that permission to do nothing during the day, then we’re not so anxiously awaiting bedtime. And we’re also maybe not losing our cool at bedtime if they’re taking a long time to fall asleep, right? Now again, finding these pockets to do nothing is going to be very unique for each of us, depending on kind of like what our lifestyle looks like, how many children we have, how old our children are. And so if you are

like how do I find time to do nothing or how like my life feels currently overwhelming.

or my life feels currently overwhelming, that would be an invitation to come work with me in like a VIP setting so we can really look at your life and figure out how can we help you thrive and get to a place where things do feel sustainable. You are finding those moments of rest while also still meeting your little one’s needs. I will link my VIP package offerings below in the show notes so you can have a look at that. But again,

So let’s say like if you have two toddlers or one toddler and a baby, maybe one of those pockets of doing nothing is maybe you’re doing a contact nap with your littler one and then you have your toddler playing quietly next to you while you read a book or listen to a podcast, right? Finding those times. And I think a lot of this also requires giving ourselves permission to not play a fun director all day long with our little ones, right? So

being comfortable with saying like, I’m gonna sit down and again, this will be very age dependent, but I’m going to sit down and read my book. This is how I started with independent play with Lila around the two and a half year mark. Like real independent play where I was able to like do some stuff while she was playing.

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I would just tell her like, I’m going to sit down on the couch and read my book for 10 minutes. And we had a toddler timer. So I would literally turn the timer on for 10 minutes so that she could see. And in the beginning, it felt really uncomfortable to her because she was used to mom giving her 110 % attention if she, if I wasn’t cleaning or organizing or whatever I needed to do. Right. And so at first it was like lots of tears. And so I would just say, I know you want my attention. I know you want to play with me.

I will play with you when the timer is done and when I’m done reading. You can sit next to me and read your book, you can play. And eventually she would sit next to me and get bored enough and then wander off to play. And then those 10 minutes became 15 minutes and then 20 minutes and so on. And so I think part of this also is giving yourself permission to not feel like you need to entertain your child all day long. Independent play is very important for children.

Boredom is great for children. It’s where their imagination thrives and play is how children learn. And it’s not true play if it’s parent led, meaning that like if we’re like, let’s play this and then I’m gonna be this and you’re gonna be this and then it’s not coming from our child’s imagination. Now, if they’re imaginary playing and they invite us into their world, that is different. But I think oftentimes we’re like, okay, let’s do this and this and this and then we’re the director of play.

Am I saying that you should not play with your children? Absolutely not. Play with your children. But give yourself permission to find those pockets in the day to do nothing. Whether that be while they’re awake or whether it be during a nap or whether it be maybe they go to daycare and you have maybe once a week you could sneak out of work if you work outside of the home. Maybe you could sneak out of work like 30 minutes early and go do something for yourself before you pick your little one up, right?

we can all get creative to find these pockets and then we need to give ourselves permission to actually do nothing in these pockets. And one of the things that I really struggled with when I was kind of finding this permission is the whole screens thing because I was pretty strict about no screens. and then I don’t know, maybe around two and a half, three, we started using the screen more because we have

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a cabin up in the mountains and it became really hard to do a two and a half drive, two and a half hour drive with Lila. And so I would let her watch a movie. And then we never got to like a place where we were watching one show a day or anything like that. And if you are, that is fine. We all have to do what works for us. But then I just started noticing like even with those movies on the way to the cabin, then it was like meltdown city after the drive. And so I kind of cut.

screen time, cold turkey, we stopped it. And only last year did I start doing like a Friday night movie night. And now sometimes, like I said, maybe on a Sunday, I’m like, hey, let’s watch a movie this afternoon. I feel like just vegging out. Maybe it’s, hey, let’s watch, she likes like the, I think it’s called like the, I can’t remember, All American Bake Off or something. We were watching it with my mom. Like something like that, right?

Like just I’m like, hey, let’s sit down and watch an episode again. It’s not every day, but it’s giving myself permission. Like this one episode is not going to ruin her brain. I am not sitting her in front of a TV for eight hours a day. I’m giving myself just a moment to just relax, right? Or, or I am reading or maybe like we’re going outside and she’s playing and I lay a blanket in the grass and I just lay there and it’s finding those pockets to feel comfortable with doing nothing.

And actually one thing that I was just talking about with inside. One thing that I was just talking about inside the Confident Moms Collective, which is my membership community, and if you are not in there yet, get your booty in there. We are waiting for you with open arms. I will link the Confident Moms Collective again in the show notes, but I just released my self care tip for the week and my self care tip for the week was for the mamas.

who when you find yourself with a free moment, a child free moment, whether that be they’re sleeping like an independent nap or after bedtime, or if they’re with a different caregiver, right? And you find yourself with this free time and you know you’re gonna have the free time, lightly plan out that free time. This does not mean, okay, I am gonna clean the whole time. I mean, if you wanna do that, great. It doesn’t mean that the…

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Planning it doesn’t mean that you have to be doing something productive. It could also be something very restorative and restful, right? But what that means is like, okay, I know I’m gonna have two hours tomorrow. How do I wanna spend those two hours? Maybe you write down a list of things that like you need to get done and you say, okay, I’m gonna spend an hour trying to tackle this list. And then the second hour, I’m going to go on a walk, read my book, take a nap.

watch my favorite series, Whatever, journal, whatever the case may be, if you take the time to plan out that free time, what happens is when the time comes, you’re not met with like this decision paralysis. Because especially for us moms who don’t get a lot of free time, whether that be like we’re stay at home moms and we don’t have childcare or maybe it’s all of our childcare hours are spent with us working.

So if you find that time, we’re often met with this like, my gosh, have, there’s so much that I could do. I don’t know what to do, right? And then it’s overwhelming. And so oftentimes then what we do is we sit on our phones and we doom scroll, or we just kind of like sit on the couch and we’re like, I could do this. And then I could do this. And we like sit there daydreaming about all that we could do because there’s so many things that we could do.

And then we look at the clock and we’re like, my gosh, the two hours are over. And I didn’t do any of the things that I wanted to do because I was met with that decision paralysis and I just couldn’t decide. And this has happened to me a lot. It just happened to one of my dear friends. Her boys just started like a homeschool enrichment program and she was left for the first time ever with like six hours. And she told me, she’s like, I didn’t know what to do. I had like,

all of these things that I wanted to do. And so I was like, I’ll just sit on the couch and I’ll think about it. And she’s like, and then three hours went by and I had doom scrolled and I had been on my phone. And so we all do it, right? Because we’re like, what do I do? So if you take that time or take some time before you get that free time to plan out like, okay, this is how I want to spend the time. And maybe sometimes that free time is doing things that are just productive.

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And maybe other times it’s taking that whole window of free time to yourself and doing nothing, giving yourself the permission to do nothing. And that’s a game changer, right? When we open up that space, when we tell ourselves like, my worth is not based on my productivity. My worth as a mother is not based on how much I did today. That’s a game changer.

Because your worth is not based on your productivity. Your worth is not based on how much you got done in the day. You are allowed to rest. You are allowed to find that open, free time. I was just talking to a girlfriend and she was talking to me. I have not read the book, but she was talking to me about the book Hunt, Gather, Parent. And she said something amazing in it, which I can’t remember exactly what it was and I probably shouldn’t be.

quoting something that I don’t know specifically, so don’t quote me on this, but something like how many free hours hunter and gatherers had during the day where they were not hunting and gathering or cooking or cleaning and they were just relaxing. It was astounding compared to the amount of free time that we get today, meaning that they had a lot more free time. And here they were foraging and hunting and gathering and.

and prepping their meals, right? And all of this stuff. And they still had more free time than us. More time to rest and relax and restore. And as humans, really take, like, I’m really, would say motherhood has changed me so much. But one of the things that’s really done is made me look at my humanity and who I am as a human and who I am spiritually and who we are collectively as humans and

how we have changed so much from where we started. Obviously, I’m not saying like everything in this world is bad, our whole way of life is bad, but I am saying that a lot of us are living, I mean, most of us are living out of alignment with like how we’re supposed to be. We’re supposed to be much more slow paced. We’re supposed to find the rest. We’re supposed to not be inundated with

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social media and news and all of this stuff and so we’re all kind of living these like crazy chaotic lives and it’s something that motherhood has really helped me kind of like get back to the basics. Who am I as a human? What serves me best? Slow time, being restorative, filling my own cup.

tuning out the noise. Now tuning out the noise doesn’t really have anything to do with today’s topic, but it kind of does because if we’re constantly seeing these moms, and I’ve talked about this a lot on the podcast, but if we’re seeing these moms on social media who are doing all the things, right? Like all the, look at how beautiful my house is. I got my fall decorations up. That’s a good one for right now. And I made these cookies this weekend and here’s the Pinterest craft we did and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

It’s gonna feel really hard to give ourselves permission to rest if we’re constantly trying to play catch up or keep up with the Joneses, right? It’s just really hard. So that’s one of the biggest gifts motherhood has given me is this ability to really like reconnect with who I am, like on a deeper level. Like, yes, I’m a human, but like what…

What does that mean? I need that rest. I need time for calmness. I need time for stillness because that then allows me to show up better in the other areas of my life. So give yourself permission to do nothing at some point this week or even better at some point today. And again, it doesn’t have to be like a four hour chunk. It could be 20 minutes to start with. It could be 10 minutes to start with.

Whatever the case may be, I really want to encourage you to give yourself permission to do nothing. And to go a little bit further than that, I want you to, if you’re going to have free time without your little one sometime coming up and you know that time is coming, take a little bit of time to plan out how you want to spend that time. And also,

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Let’s say you plan it out and then the time comes and you’re like, I was gonna get all of this done, but I just feel like sitting on the couch and watching my favorite TV show. If that is what is going to be the most restorative to you, do that. The plan is not the law, right? But it just helps you take advantage of the time. And opposite, let’s say you’re like, I’m gonna have this free time, I’m gonna go read my book. And then it comes time to read your book and you’re like,

actually, you know what sounds even better to me right now, I want to get a workout in or I want to go on a walk or I want to do the dishes, right? But if we have that planned time, just like I talked about them, we’re not met with that decision paralysis. But again, give yourself to have that human autonomy to decide actually, that’s not going to serve me best in this moment, but I’m glad I planned it so that now I can really know like, okay, I don’t want to do that, but I do want to do this. And lastly,

Again, these moments of slowness do not need to happen. These moments to do nothing don’t always need to happen when you’re without your child. And if you are surprised with a time of, my gosh, like let’s say you have a partner and they’re like, I wanna take our little one to do this while you can rest. What a dream. And you don’t have time to plan it, take 10 minutes at the beginning of that time and say, okay.

What feels really good to me right now? Am I feeling something more restorative or am I feeling like I want to get something done? Or do I want to split the time, right? Or if you have like a family member who surprises you and is like, I would love to take the little one to go do something so you can get something done or take care of yourself. Take just a few minutes instead of with that decision paralysis, like really tune in. What’s going to best serve me in this moment?

And I would love it if you would shoot me a DM on Instagram or shoot me an email and my email address is britney, B-R-I-T-T-N-I at restinginmotherhood.com. And let me know how giving yourself permission to do nothing has worked out for you or how planning your solo time has worked out for you. I would love to hear that.

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and I am wishing you a beautiful, beautiful day and I will see you next week.