This Mother's Day, let's celebrate not just the act of mothering, but the continuous transformation it beckons in us and the legacy it leaves in our children.
About Tabitha Tabitha MacDonald is an intuitive transformation coach dedicated to helping people overcome their pain as fast as possible so that they can have the love, freedom and purpose they truly desire.
This Mother's Day, let's celebrate not just the act of mothering, but the continuous transformation it beckons in us and the legacy it leaves in our children.
About Tabitha Tabitha MacDonald is an intuitive transformation coach dedicated to helping people overcome their pain as fast as possible so that they can have the love, freedom and purpose they truly desire.
Hello everyone and happy Mother's Day. My name is Tabitha McDonald. I am an intuitive coach. Welcome to the Mindful Love Podcast. Today I wanted to do a short mini episode to all of the mothers out there, just letting you know how, what a hard job it is. I know, I see you and it gets easier. And if you're in one of those easy times, take a deep breath and enjoy it.
Speaker 1:
My journey of motherhood was definitely not easy. I remember, you know, talking to my I was talking to my son last night about his birth and he was my second child and I said, oh my gosh, your birth was so easy and so amazing because I had a toddler at home. And I'll just tell the story because it's funny. My daughter's birth was very traumatic. It was like nine hours of back labor and I had just come home from like wellness school, right. So I'm like, no, we're going to hypnobirth and do the tub and we're going to use the essential oils and I'm doing it my way. Nowhere in like hippie land did I prepare for the extraordinary pain of back labor. And I remember the nurse finally running down the hall and she was like and I remember the nurse finally running down the hall and she was like you're scaring the other patients and we need you to consider medical options. I said okay, okay, I'll do it, I'll do it. I got the epidural. Oh my gosh, it was a game changer for me. But because I went into my firstborn, my daughter's birth, with this like stuck mindset, I created a lot of pain for me and a lot of stress for my unborn child, and then go to second child and I said I'm going to go in with an open mind. I have my little plan. I would like to have a redo, but I also know I'm not going to put myself through that kind of stress again. And so as soon as the first contraction hit, I looked at the nurse. I'm like give it to me, I'm ready. Yeah, go ahead, give me the epidural.
Speaker 1:
And my ex-husband and I were sitting in the room and we popped a movie on and I was so excited because you know, when you have a toddler at home, you don't always have time to watch movies through to completion, right, like it's always interrupted, there's like a hundred like pauses get up, get a snack, you know whatever. And so I'm watching this movie. It's like 10 minutes in and the nurse comes in and she goes oh, you're at 10. Like it's time to push. And I just looked at her and I said, no, no, I just started this movie. No, no, I just want to finish. Can we just finish the movie? And she goes um, no, no, the baby's coming right now. And it was just the smoothest, easiest birth and he's still, to this day, super chill and just like very easy and relaxed human being, and I just think it's funny how the birth experiences really matched their personalities and just their relationship to life.
Speaker 1:
So there's a couple of things that helped me along the way through motherhood and I would say one of the greatest gifts I ever received on Mother's Day was a book called Buddhism for Mothers and my friend Brooke gave it to me and our kids were little and I struggled with motherhood because I wanted to be so good at it, because I didn't feel like I had a great example of what a healthy mother looked like and I was like I'm going to be the change my kids are going to be, so have the most normal, leave it to be for life. I am so excited, like um, and the book was amazing. It's called Buddhism for Mothers. I don't remember the author, but she goes. Anytime you're having a bad day, just open the book and it'll be exactly what you need to hear. And I remember having a bad day. I think it was like one of my husband and I were really struggling and I was just like feeling like a failure at everything.
Speaker 1:
Motherhood. And the book said your children picked you for a reason. Anchor in on that. And then I started crying because I was like why on earth would my children have picked me to be their mother? Like I felt so unworthy of that kind of unconditional love. And it really came down to I felt unworthy of that kind of unconditional love and that was what I was struggling with. Did I know that? You know, 18 years ago, no, I had no clue. Now, after I've done a lot of my inner work, I know where a lot of my limiting beliefs and pain points are. I'm familiar with what my baggage is. Now I know the pain that I was experiencing was. I'm just not worthy of this much unconditional love and sometimes that just hurt to like even accept it and to like really embrace it. So Buddhism for Mothers highly recommend it.
Speaker 1:
You know, get your girlfriends a copy the next book that one of my clients had recommended to me. I was really struggling with my son and his teachers were complaining about his behavior and I remember somebody was like he must be bipolar. I'm like he's five, he's five years old, he's not bipolar. And I was right. She recommended a book by Dr Green called the Explosive Child and it talks about how some kids are not born with this skill to experience certain intense emotions. And one of his was surprise, like he did not like surprise. And so, you know, a couple months leading up to Christmas, a couple months leading up to his birthday, he would start stressing out and acting out and it would really bother me because I was like wait, I want to make Christmas a magical experience and you're ruining that for me, right? I was like wait, I want to make Christmas a magical experience and you're ruining that for me, right? It was like it was about my experience and after I read this it became very clear why he was struggling with that. So we changed how we did surprises. I didn't do them anymore for him because it wasn't about me, it was for him anyways, and if this was an emotion he was uncomfortable feeling. You know, doing it on these two big events or holidays wasn't really the best time to teach him how to do it, so we did it in smaller ways, but the book is just packed full of awesome tips on how to help your kid learn how to feel feelings that they're uncomfortable feeling and so it's not like let's just remove all of the feelings. It had all of the tools to teach them how to navigate it. I wish I had it before then, but it's Dr Green's book, the Explosive Child. I can't recommend it enough.
Speaker 1:
The other book that I read was Brene Brown's the Gift of Imperfect Parenting. This was like literally came to me at the perfect time, because she really talked about you know, the same principle of why your kids pick you, the journey you're on together, right Like you're on a journey of growth together. A lot of people think we have to be perfect at life in order to have kids. No, it's. You're going to. They're going to bring out your insecurities, your limiting beliefs. They're going to bring out your garbage. They're going to pull it up for you.
Speaker 1:
And this book really helped me, especially in the middle school years, because one of the studies that they did was they said the problem in middle school was that kids were really struggling with their parents not seeing them as the individualized version of themselves, but only as the version that they wanted them to be, and that was a game changer for me. Especially navigating the complexities of raising a teenage girl, I always had to step back and go. Is this because I want her to be the version of her that I see for her? Or is this because, like, am I, like you know, in alignment with her as an individual and teaching her how to be the authority in her life? And so it really helped me shift my thinking. And I remember in the teenage years when she became the kind of like cliche monster teenager that she was and I love her and she knows I love her, so I love you, my dear. But when she became that, it helped me navigate it because I was like, oh, we're not in that nurture phase anymore. Now I'm in leadership training. I need to teach her how to think for herself, how to know how to make decisions and how to be the leader of her own life. That's going to help her, you know, overcome codependent tendencies and really to grow into a strong, formidable woman. And so that book really helped set me up in in that phase of parenting.
Speaker 1:
The other thing that really helped me in that phase of parenting was the Enneagram. I had her take the Enneagram. I don't remember I think she was like 15, 14, whenever I discovered it and I became the biggest nerd on the planet about the Enneagram. So it must've been about five years ago, um, and when she took it and she, she became I, she tested at the nine. I like read the nine description and I'm like, oh my God, this is so you like. And now whenever she's struggling, she'll call me. She's 19 now and of course she's struggling, she's 19. She's supposed to. She'll call. And because I have that frame of reference of how her personality operates in the world, I can really use it to help her understand why she's experiencing what she's doing or why she is behaving the way she's behaving. Because the Enneagram is a really good guide to human personality and behavior and so most of the time we are almost blind to the behaviors that are keeping us stuck. The Enneagram is like this little beautiful manual on how to identify what those behaviors are that you're not really examining because they just feel like there's no option.
Speaker 1:
I love the Enneagram for parenting. We don't want to type our kids because really, like we can a little bit, but we don't. It's their journey of personal discovery. So I love that my daughter went and took the Enneagram test herself and came back and she was like, yeah, this sounds like me. And then she actually had all of her girlfriends take it at the time as well and I remember them all walking in one day and they would be like hi, my name is and I'm an eight, and hi, my name is and I'm a seven. And I was just laughing because I thought what a gift that all of these kids are going to come in with is understanding of how their personality works at 15 or 16. And what a powerful tool for them as they're moving forward in life. I mean, I didn't find it till I was in my 40s. Had I had that tool sooner, I think my journey might have been a little bit easier.
Speaker 1:
Um, the last thing that I did with my kids was we were really in the thick of trauma and the teenage years and we just had like really big traumas in our family and I needed to make sense of it. So I had our human design readings done with a human design reader. Her name is Kathy Rivers. She's out of Washington. She's amazing, very grounded, very methodical in her approach to reading human design, which I really needed and appreciated at the time. I'll put a link to her services in the show notes show notes.
Speaker 1:
But she really told me my kids' soul's journey, like why they came to this lifetime and what my soul relationship was with them. And it was the most powerful, transformative experience, because the teenage years are hard and I really needed something different to help parent my kids, and that's why I decided to look at their soul's path and change my approach to looking at why did they come here and how can I help them get there. And I learned lots of really interesting things about them and why they do things the way they do, including how they eat the kinds of foods that best support their bodies. I mean, I learned so much and it made so much sense. Everything just started clicking.
Speaker 1:
And then having the three of our charts read together gave me the added benefit of seeing how we were interrelationally connected, so how our souls came together to say let's have this great storyline in this lifetime. Here's how you're going to help me, here's how I'm going to help you. And I would say, having her do the reading for me was priceless because it was validating. It was like you just explained the relationship with my kids. And so now when my daughter's struggling, I can kind of remember back to that reading and go oh yeah, that's right, she came here to learn to feel deep emotions. She's in it, she's in her lesson right now, so I can't rob the lesson from her by trying to take her feelings away. What I do need to do is teach her how to navigate them in a way that feels healthy and that will help her along her soul's path.
Speaker 1:
And that is, like to me, parenting gold. Right, because you have like this manual to the experience they came here to have and I love the level of trust that we have with one another. And I think if you have a 19-year-old daughter and you guys have a very open, loving and trusting relationship, like you're doing a good job, you're doing a good job anyways, right, like I mean, I'm not saying that that's the only good job, because I'm kind of a you know, I'm a non-traditional parent and I will just say that everybody's doing the best they can with what they have, and that also came from Brene Brown. But it feels good to me when my daughter comes to me and she's like I'm so grateful that I have someone I can talk to honestly and openly about what I'm going through in life, and I trust you. I trust that you're not going to be like in your own agenda, um, and that you're, you know, I can talk to you about what I'm going through.
Speaker 1:
Now it's not always like that, cause, you know, sometimes I get my coach hat on and then I have to like actually go. Oh my gosh, I'm sorry, sweetheart, did you want me to wear my coach hat or my mom hat right now? Are we like just completely going to have a complain fest and I'm just here to listen and support Uh-huh, or did you want me to help you through this? Like you're going to have to let me know at the beginning, and so sometimes she'll be like no, this is just me complaining, I don't want you to try to fix it for me and I'm like, okay, great, that makes it easier. Now we just get to have fun.
Speaker 1:
So, um, you know, and with my son's journey, like, he has like this beautiful, quiet, strength and energy about him, and I love knowing his path, because our relationship has caused me the most pain, not him, our relationship, and that's because he brought up a lot of my baggage for me and because of that I got to have the experience of cleaning it and I'm like so grateful to him for that. And when she was reading our charts and she said, oh, you guys have this really powerful soul contract, it made sense why he challenged me so much when we were younger, like when he was younger, it was that point of like kind of like growth. It was just growth, growth, growth. I really had to learn to deal with my fear of rejection, how to stay strong and, in the end result, how to stay strong and in the end result and how to still energy, energetically connect with my children. And you know, I used the Byron Katie's judge, your neighbor worksheet a lot and, man, it was usually never about him, it was always about my own garbage. And I'm so grateful that I had those tools as I was going through that experience to help me through it.
Speaker 1:
And you know, now my son and I have a really unique and loving relationship. I feel like we talk about a lot of things and we have such a different relationship than my daughter and I and I absolutely love both of them so much for the uniqueness that our relationships are, and so that's just what I wanted to share with you today on Mother's Day, and to just thank all of you beautiful humans who stepped into the brave journey of having children and raising them. In today's world. It is a tough job, and you know.
Speaker 1:
One last thing I want to say is when I was going through my journey and I really wanted to take my kids to therapy and counseling and there was all this resistance and I was like but I need them to feel better, so I can feel better about all of the mistakes I made, and I just heard this quiet voice inside that said do your work and it will impact them too.
Speaker 1:
And so as I really deeply unpacked my baggage over the last few years and processed through it and worked through it, my kids, because of epigenetics and entered the law of energy, have shifted as well.
Speaker 1:
Our relationship shifted, their own perspective of the world has shifted, and so whenever parents come to me, I'm like the best way to start helping your kids is to work on yourself, because that will flow through to them. And I can't really explain the science of it right now because I have to go celebrate all of the mothers coming into my massage clinic today, but I you know I'll unpack this more in another episode, but I just want to say that it works when we do our own work and our children feel the long-term benefits and effects of that. And you won't know it in the moment, long-term benefits and effects of that. And you won't know it in the moment, but I'll tell you as someone like really further, like far along on that journey, it does work and it works in the most miraculous and beautiful ways. So, with that note, happy Mother's Day to all of you. You're all doing a great job. It's an interesting journey on the road to motherhood and the the humans we become through parenting. So I love you all. Happy, happy Mother's Day to you.