🦋 💜 🌿
How are you doing?
I’m okay, still a mom to a baby juggling her business and all the life things, too.
Lately things have been a bit intense. Last week I found myself rage screaming in a parking lot.
What happened?
I was supposed to have a dental appointment. Actually, I was supposed to have an appointment three weeks ago but a day before the appointment, they called to reschedule it. My hygenist quit a while ago so that would be why. Really wish they would have told me that earlier, though, because getting a new appointment can take six months. Plus I had already paid for childcare.
Anyway I rescheduled the appointment. I was lucky to find anything sooner than six months away, but I had to go to a different building.
The day that I showed up to my new appointment, I was on time. But the receptionist told me that I had gone to the wrong location.
They told me to hurry and drive to the right office.
So there I go rushing to the appointment.
It’s raining and I’m looking at the clock, trying to figure out weird turns and have to go back a few times.
I did nothing wrong but a jaywalking pedestrian almost flung themselves in front of my car. Thank god I did not hit them, but that was stressful!
Even with all that, as I approach the front door, I figure I’m good, since I got there in under fifteen minutes.
But when I walk in, at eleven minutes past the appointed hour, they say I am too late. Their cut off is ten minutes.
I don’t blame them, but when they ask me if I want to reschedule, I say no. I just want to leave.
In that moment, I was so frustrated and upset.
It’s a lot to get to an appointment right now.
I’m breastfeeding and my baby won’t take a bottle, plus he relies on me to nap.
I’m fine as long as I don’t have to leave the house to do things, or if I have approx 4 hour window to arrive!
It’s hard managing all the details of being a parent to a baby. It’s hard functioning when my sleep is interrupted all the time.
And meanwhile life goes on and there is still work to be done, and laundry to be cleaned and food to be cooked and babygates to be purchased and businesses to grow.
It was the second day I had paid someone $22 an hour to watch my baby, whom I adore and don’t want to leave behind, to get my teeth cleaned, which I don’t really want to do.
And when that didn’t work out again…it was just a lot.
IT’S JUST A LOT, SOMETIMES.
So I was really frustrated. In the parking lot, I just couldn’t get into my car silently. I breathed and I let it bubble out in a noise. I screamed. Really loud.
And I’m pretty sure the dental receptionists behind two closed heavy doors could probably hear me.
Kindof embarassing.
But you know what? I’m just a human being. I’m just ONE human being. And I am doing the very best I can.
And sometimes I feel like a freaking mess. How beautiful is this mess, though? A lot beautiful.
There’s so many things I am doing right, I just want to give myself a shout out. I am taking care of my body which is still ravaged by the forceps birth trauma I went through. I am cooking almost every meal me and everyone else in my family eats (due to food allergies and to save money). I’m writing pages and pages. I’m reading books including Charles Dickens. I’m growing one of my businesses, and have rapidly expanded the excitement of our customers including through our email list, website and social media presence.
But yeah I still struggle!!
HERE IS WHAT HELPS
A few years ago I had a practice of recording myself pep talks on my phone. Little audio love notes from me to me.
I still have them. I still listen.
Sure, I could not have anticipated the exact scenarios that I go through as a mom, but the person who recorded these pep talks was still me.
And I like to hear the ME-ness in my voice, the vibration of having a firm foundation and grip on my sanity (lol).
When it comes to giving myself self compassion and being a best friend to myself, sometimes when I am in the thick of it, I find it difficult to know HOW to do that.
The answer is just to try. Then I let the process unfold.
I started giving myself new peptalks. I use a voice recording app or a transcription app (I like OTTER.AI).
I started recording that first peptalk from me as a mom and I felt like that the first pep talk really sucked.
I was like, “I am too tired to give a good peptalk. This is all I have got. I’m trying, I guess.”
It began with a lot of rambles about how I was feeling, and everything that was hard. But eventually, there were some insightful things in what I said.
Over the course of a few days I revisited it. I listened, and I scanned the transcript, highlighted some words.
Then I was inspired by a writing prompt. Hannah bay posted this on substack,
“If your life were a movie, what would the audience be screaming at the screen for you to do right now?”
I wrote my answer out. I started with those words I had said in my peptalk and expanded it. I wrote my answer in Obsidian again.
I reflected on it, and connected to some related resources. The theme of changing my high expecations of myself came up, for instance, and I had some tapping scripts around that topic I could use.
Then I took everything I had written and wrote it out again with MORE peptalk energy. I took the time to make it pretty, and put it in a little notebook I have been using lately so it would be easy to revisit.
This is what it looks like:
This is what I am all about. This is how I DO life:
It’s all about being a cheerleader for myself, a best friend. The kind that knows what it like to be a mom and be sobbing because sometimes it is just a lot. Who hears that and thinks, “Damn, girl, I’ve been there.” Same with the parking lot screams. Same with everything.
She gets it. She knows. And she still loves the heck out of me.
She is still my ride or die. She will always be there in the hospital with me, even when I am unconscious, she will be squeezing my hand.
That’s the kind of energy I’m all about bringing into my life and encouraging other people to have in theirs.
And this is the beauty of finding ways to capture your voice, whether it is in audio form or in the written word; you can channel best friend energy, take that peptalk and insight, and revisit that loving message for yourself later.
It can work for you forever. It can be there when you need it on the day when everything feels just a little too much. It’s crystalized. It’s safe.
Hopefully this speaks to you, and I’m not the only freak screaming when life goes bananas.
ALSO, believe it or not, I have room in my life for ONE coaching client, if you want a writing coach and emotionally intelligent buddy to talk to you regularly, hold your hand and help you write, I can be that. Whether it is peptalks, writing for your business website, a book, or anything nonfiction, I’m here for it.
Contact me here if you are interested in that.
“Working with Sofia has been an absolute game-changer for my process as a writer. I began working with Sofia as a personal writing coach with the goal of breaking through creative blocks and further defining the scope of my work and my writing style.
Through weekly Voxer exchanges, Sofia was able to compassionately witness and reflect back some of the themes in my thought process and help me better hone in on my “why” as a writer — and as a person.
Her style of relating is personable and reflective and, each week, she provided excellent tips, resources, and wisdom that helped me dive deeper into my own process of self-discovery and emergence.
Sofia is also a wonderful editor, who is highly experienced in critiquing a variety of text types and I benefited from her developmental editing throughout the process of undergoing coaching with her.
Overall, my experience of coaching with Sofia has helped me become more authentic, strategic, and soul-led in my life as a creator and writer, and I would highly recommend her as a writing and personal development coach for anyone looking to deepen, expand, or sharpen their practice as a writer/creator.”
~ Heidi Joy, writer and content creator
Read more about working with me, Sofia here.
Have a good weekend!
