Finding Your Inner Peace

Finding inner peace as a mom is a journey shaped by the values you embrace. These intrinsic qualities are developed and nurtured over time, which can help you find peace and calm amid the chaos of motherhood. Here are my top 5 values to remember and cultivate through your experiences in life and motherhood. By embracing these values, you can find confidence and balance in your journey as a mom.

Self-insight

Embracing self-insight as a mother means looking within to understand the core of who you are. This journey starts with reflecting on your childhood–identifying what was great and what wasn’t. Even with the best of parents, no one’s upbringing is perfect, and as adults, we need to continue the work of self-growth. To be completely honest, we all have to work on something since no one is perfect. Self-insight involves recognizing both the traits we love about ourselves and the areas that need improvement. It’s a process that can be challenging to navigate alone and often requires interactions with others or therapy to fully unpack.

This internal awareness is crucial because it forms the foundation for making changes and managing the unexpected challenges of motherhood. This is how you will get through hard times. By understanding what drives you, what empowers you, and what your goals are, you can better prepare for and thrive during the difficult times.

Self-insight is a powerful tool that helps you maintain your identity beyond being a mother. It’s all too easy to lose yourself in the all-encompassing role of motherhood, especially if you've invested your entire identity in it. When things don’t go as planned, it’s natural to feel like a failure if your worth is solely tied to your role as a mom. But with a strong sense of self, you can recognize your needs, goals, and qualities outside of motherhood, helping you to avoid losing yourself in the process.

Even when you don’t feel like yourself, self-insight helps you recognize your needs and how to meet them. In some seasons, you will thrive with the help and resources you have, while in others, you will simply survive–and that’s normal. Self-insight equips you with the resilience to navigate these ups and downs with grace and self-compassion.

Humility

Humility involves recognizing that you are not perfect and that it’s okay to have both strengths and weaknesses. To have true self-insight, you must be humble and accept this reality. You can be humble and confident. This balanced perspective is key in motherhood since every mother learns and adapts on the go. Confidence is trusting yourself–“I trust that I know what I know, and I know what I don’t know.” Embracing the process of learning and understanding your reactions, like why your child’s behavior might upset you, is a vital part of growth. 

Societal standards often define perfection, but true perfection in motherhood is personal and subjective. It’s about how you feel as a mother and what makes you feel accomplished and fulfilled. By practicing humility, you can set your own standards of perfection, free from outside pressure. This mindset helps you focus on self-improvement and patience, leading to a more fulfilling and less stressful motherhood journey!

Vulnerability

Vulnerability can be particularly challenging, especially for those with Type A personalities. A common misconception is that vulnerability requires sharing every detail with everyone, but in reality, it means being honest with your emotions with yourself and trusted people. You can decide what, when, and with who you share.

Being vulnerable means accepting all your emotions, whether happiness, fear, joy, or excitement. While it can be scary to open up about your struggles, doing so often helps you to overcome them. Embracing your emotions allows you to process and understand your feelings so you can grow.

As mothers, we often fear vulnerability because we worry that no one else will understand our struggles. We might believe that everyone has their own issues, and our struggles seem insignificant in comparison. However, expressing your feelings, whether by talking about it or writing them down, can help you see your situation from a different perspective and find ways to shift your mindset for the better. By normalizing all your emotions, you set a powerful example for your child.

Flexibility

Learning to be flexible in motherhood is a powerful value. You cannot always control everything or expect things to go as planned. Life and children are unpredictable, and embracing flexibility can bring you peace as a mother. Accepting that some things are beyond your control allows you to navigate the challenges of parenting with a more relaxed and realistic approach.

Flexibility can also help in avoiding guilt. When you are more accepting of change, you can better handle situations that don’t go as planned. For example, if you plan to breastfeed but encounter difficulties, being flexible allows you to recognize that formula feeding might be the best decision for your family. With a flexible mindset, you can acknowledge and process the guilt but move forward. Assess the situation using the information and resources you have at the moment.

Self-trust

Trusting yourself as a mother can be difficult, especially with comparison, judgment, and information overload. It’s so important to trust your strengths and weaknesses—follow your parenting instincts. While the abundance of information available today is valuable, it can also be overwhelming. Remember that you are uniquely qualified to be your child’s mother, and no one else can fulfill that role as you can.

Trust yourself in this journey, knowing that making mistakes, learning, and feeling uncertain at times are all part of the process. Whenever doubt creeps in, remind yourself that you are worthy of this role and capable of figuring things out. If you need support, lean on your partner or someone you trust, but always keep faith in your abilities. You are the best mother for your child!

On The Podcast

On this show, I welcome guests to chat about parenting and parental health, especially maternal physical and mental health. Taking care of ourselves is just as important as caring for our children. On this episode, I welcome sisters Amy Kiefer and Krystle Howald, founders and creators of Expecting and Empowered. They join me to discuss:

• Why strength training is important in various stages of our life

• Mindset shifts and reframing to approaching strength training and working out during pregnancy and postpartum

• How to build strength training into our busy lives

Ask Dr. Mona

An opportunity for YOU to ask Dr. Mona your parenting questions!

Dr. Mona will answer these questions in a future Sunday Morning Q&A email. Chances are if you have a parenting concern or question, another parent can relate. So let's figure this out together!