Parent Like It’s Your Job: Companion Episode

PARENT LIKE IT’S YOUR JOB: COMPANION PODCAST Shannon was my third guest as a launched my Abundant Parent workshops.  (Catch my other blog post with her workshop and links!) I struggled with self-care well before I was a mom, but becoming a mom didn’t make that need for self-love go away, it only exaggerated it! Catch the Companion Podcast Here: Podcast: Play in new window Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Google Podcasts | Spotify | RSS Self-love and self-care was not always a priority in my life.  Many of you who follow my posts have heard me talk about my childhood and learning from a young age to put my own needs second to those of my single-mom who fought cancer much of my childhood.  But in this simple act of empathy and compassion for the enormity of her struggles, it set the president for my becoming a wife and mother who put myself last.  That all changed when I went through my divorce.  I knew, that in order to maintain this pace of being a single mom while simultaneously modeling for my daughters a mother with self-respect, self-care would have to play a MUCH bigger part of my daily grind.  The biggest obstacle to overcome in my choice to improve my efforts of self-care was my own lack of self-love.   This was partially an energetic inheritance from my mom who also struggled with self acceptance and love, but there is so much more to this as a girl growing up in our times, isn’t it? There was the confusing sexualizing of my gender from very young ages. I should preface what I am about to say by sharing that I had not met my biological father until I was 18 and hadn’t had consistent male role models in my childhood. When I was not yet 12, I hadn’t even started my period yes, I was being pursued and oggled by men easily 2 or 3 times my age.  I know this is common for many women I spoken to about this. With no understanding of a healthy male role model, it left me with the conclusion that women’s value was based on their sexual appeal and of course with that, their looks.  Perhaps what I craved was the approval of that male role model in my life, but without that, I came to seek the approval of other men. Now, I was also very shy, so I was not pursuing sex at this age, but as I filled in with my womanly curves and understandings of men over the course of the next 10 years, I would continue to measure my worth by the attention I could receive.   The other message I was always receiving from my mom was how smart I was, and how my mind was my greatest asset, but when I would catch wind of the gossip my male peers would chatter I received messages like “She has big tits but she’s dumber than a box or rocks.” and such. Dumb seems harsh, but I was very trusting and left myself very vulnerable.  And so I would not only see my value in what I could visually and physically do for men,