Introduction to Mama Therapy | Thriving not simply surviving.

Although I love small talk...this is not the place for that. It's real talk, real life, real solutions, real laughs (hopefully) and share-worthy wisdom; something we all could use in a world like this. So let's dive in!

So what is Mama Therapy exactly anyways?

Well, I discovered very early on in my professional career as a wife and a mom that life can be pretty effing hard sometimes. But throughout that journey I also realized, that we can do hard things! Yet, “hard” can have such a negative connotation to it. Sometimes people feel that by saying ‘Life is hard’ it means that either:

A. You are failing at life. And the word failure seems to somehow depreciate you as a human and your worth or…

B. You are unappreciative and ungrateful and that you should change your perspective or…

C. You are simply not doing it right.

But I disagree with all of that. I agree with Frank A. Clark when he said, “If you find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn't lead anywhere.” So the hardest part of encountering difficult times in life is realizing that these challenges are simply here to teach us how to grow and expand our awareness. Once we are able to accept this we can navigate the hard times with much more ease.

Does this sound super-wise? Well I f*cking hope so. This kind of optimism and enlightenment didn't come easy. I've been that mom who has just wanted to run away and hide in a closet with a big box of wine. Or that wife who has silently screamed to herself, "Why did I ever think marriage was a good idea?" But you know what the most important thing I've learned thus far in life? I've learned that we can be many things. We can have days filled with optimism, enlightenment, and happiness or days filled with excessive closet-wine-drinking urges, moments filled with doubt, despair, heartache, tears, sadness, anger and exhaustion fueling them all. We can be all these things and without any judgment, guilt or shame, we can still look in the mirror and say, "I'm am really f*cking awesome....period".

But like my husband always says, you need the right tool for the right job. So, for those not-so-awesome moments I set out to find some wellness tools to shorten the 'not awesome' moments and quickly return to the somewhat-awesome or super-awesome moments. So I gathered a collection of skills and actions - things to help promote a healthy mind, body and soul. These tools are now my form of Mama Therapy which allows me to THRIVE and not simply survive in this lifetime.

But how did I get here? Well, let me tell ya, it didn't happen overnight.

Confucius said, “We have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we only have one.” And for me, there was nothing like an unexpected rendezvous with a near death experience to kickstart that ‘second life’. So thankfully I didn't die - I'm alive (obvi) but unfortunately my new 'lease on life' did not give me a cute package full of happiness and perma-smiles and magical butterflies. No, it came big crappy dose of ‘guilt’ that I simply wasn’t living life the way I “should” be. I did now have an overwhelming feeling of gratitude for life but I also felt that because I wasn't instantly transformed by this experience, it meant that I had somehow failed my near-death-experience test and perhaps it was wasted on me. Thanks for nothing death! But somewhere in the cloudy aftermath I realized that sometimes you just gotta do the work and that 'happiness' should be a verb not a noun. It's a choice. Happiness, contentment and gratitude are choices we make. Some lessons are not about the outcome but about the process of getting there. So I now understood the magnitude of “we only have one life to live” but now the question was: “How do I start living like that? And what is my process of happiness?”

Well insert here the lovely quote, “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear”. And all sorts of wellness tools started to fall in my lap. About a decade ago I had embraced meditation as my cure for anxiety but now I wanted a more holistic approach beyond sitting like a pretzel for a few minutes a day.

I learned a few facts that really shook things up. If someone told you that you could choose your thoughts like you were sitting at an all you can eat rotating sushi -bar, would you believe them? Well, I would’ve said ‘they must be high’. But I’m here to tell you, totally not-high, that indeed you can. We have about 6,000 new ‘thought-worms’ a day, about 80% of which are negative and 95% are repetitive. That’s an astonishing and depressing fact. But when you switch to the glass half full perspective and if 20% of our thoughts are positive that still leaves us with about 75 positive thoughts an hour. That’s enough to keep a person happy, don’t you think? Yet, in this modern world, most of us are still in search of happiness. So what is the key? Perhaps the fact that our positive thoughts are not the repetitive thoughts and that it takes conscious effort to select positive thinking. But re-training our brain and thought pattern is not without flaw, it takes practice. Wellness is a practice and a journey. Vince Lombardi once said, “The greatest accomplishment is not in never falling, but rising again after you fall.”

So even when we are on the best wellness paths with great intentions it is still possible to experience ‘FML' days. But it’s on those days that we can ask ourselves questions in order to discover what it is we need to learn.

For example, the days when you feel like you might be the lead character of a next new Netlfix documentary called “Homicidal Housewife”, perhaps you need to take a moment and ask yourself, “Why do I feel stabbing my husband in the eye with my toddlers pink scissors? Does being angry benefit me? How can I learn to calm myself in moments of rage and grow from this?

Or the days when your children are driving you to brink of insanity and your reactions are at a maturity level that even your 4 year old has surpassed…those are the days you need to ask yourself, “What am I lacking in life? Compassion for others or myself? Or do I need to learn how to carve out some time for self-care so that when my toddler decides to act out I don’t engage in a battle of who can look like the bigger lunatic?”

So what’s the most important tool in my Mama Therapy toolbox? A mirror. Because on those days if you feel murderous or lunatic-ish or insert your “negative adjective here”, you can take a good look in that mirror and say to yourself, “What do I need? How can I achieve that? And is it possible to do that with a glass of wine in hand?” Okay kidding about the wine part (kind of). And on those days you can come here, to Mama Therapy, and peruse through my toolbox (okay that sounded naughty but it's not – get your mind out of the gutter!)

So I’m sure you can tell by now that I’m the kind of person who’s always liked to talk. Small talk, deep conversation-talk, or going-crazy-talking-to-myself kind of talk. Before, I would talk about martini recipes, fix-it-yourself tips, popsicle stick crafts activities or paint colors. But now, I feel like I have a real purpose in life. Something more important to talk about other than the debate of satin or eggshell finish paint. And I have found the perfect platform for it. This is somewhere that people have the option of escaping and ‘leaving the conversation’ if they so choose or diving deep into the “crazy wellness pit” with me if that’s what feels good. But don’t get me wrong, I’m sure I am still gonna talk about martinis and popsicle sticks somewhere along the lines - but it will be the best “feel good“ martini or popsicle stick conversation you’ll ever have…I promise.

So I hope you have drank a big cup of the Mama Therapy Kool-Aide and chosen to join me on the journey of ‘thriving not simply surviving” and I’m now giving you permission to fill that cup back up with green tea or red wine…both which are delicious and full of antioxidants.

See… you are already learning some new wellness tools here…aaaaaaand you’re welcome.

I hope to see you around!