I don’t have much to say this month except that there’s only so much to say because my brain is mush. At least the internet understands the torture that is the month of May now. I’ve seen about a gazillion memes and videos on “Maycember” and the like. So now we all know and instead of attempting to be deep, I am just going to high five you from my whirring computer and say, let’s just be idle for a hot minute.

This is why our Hook theme this month in MommaStrong is not extra though provoking, at least we didn’t intend it to be. We will see what happens by Week 4. This month, Jya and I are going to be joining the 1990s golden era of Seventeen magazine, which contained the saucy section: “Why Me?” This section had “real girls” telling “real stories” of super embarrassing moments. 

My memory of this was that basically every single one of them involved a surprise period event and – being a late bloomer – I am happy to report that this entirely made concrete my fear of being a grown up woman. Jya’s memory of this section was that it always involved the phrase “in front of my crush!” She was right. And so was I. Surprise bloodbaths in white pants in front of your crush, to whom you probably just accidentally sent a note about how much you were crushing on him. We did forget about the horror of other bodily fluids and – gasp – exposed thongs.

Please enjoy these fine moments of Seventeen excellence and then join me for one final statement that we shall use to debrief why being a teen in the 90s was actually entirely fucked the fuck up:

First you need to know that I’m in my school’s marching band. Ok, so one time during a football game during whose halftime we performed, everything was going fine until I had to use the bathroom after we marched. The outfit we wear is totally complicated to get in and out of what with the tons of zippers and buttons and snaps and all, so one of my friends came with me to help me get everything undone and done up again. When we left the bathroom we walked around for a while and talked to some friends and after about 30 minutes went back to the bleachers to sit down –right before I sat down a really hot guy turned and said “Hey your fly is down. “But the worst part is I had my band pants on backwards so they were unzipped in the back and I was wearing a thong! So I’d been walking around with my bear butt hanging out!!
-Unzipped,Spokane, WA

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One morning when I was in seventh grade I woke up not really feeling too good but I really wanted to go to school that day because we were getting our class rings! So I sucked it up and went. That morning we had an assembly in our super-small gym so the class rings could be handed out. It was crowded but somehow I managed to snag a seat behind my crush. I just sat there the whole time and as it was getting towards the end of the assembly I was starting to get hot and my stomach started feeling Queasy and just as my class was getting up to receive our rings, I threw up all over my crush!!!

What happened next is pretty much a blur but, let’s put it this way; the next day I was feeling better and I walked into my class and the first thing he said to me was “don’t throw up on me” laughing the whole time! What a jerk. Like I didn’t feel bad enough about it without him teasing me. A few weeks later he decided he liked me but I wouldn’t go out with him because of that little incident!!
-*~tabbatha~* TN

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During lunch one day, my friends and I were fooling around in the lunch line. My friend, Emma, poked my stomach so hard that I wet my pants BIG TIME! My face was bright red, but no one knew that I wet myself. On the bus ride home, someone on the bus yelled, “EWW I SMELL VINEGAR!” Later that day, I told my friend, Emily, that I had an accident, and she fell on the floor laughing. Later we named the wetting of the pants “Niagara Falls”.
– Lauren 14, NJ

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One day in gym class I wore a pair of plaid pajama pants with my gym shorts underneath. My teacher came around to check to make sure we had our gym uniforms on. When he came to me he said “what’s that crap?” he was talking about my pants. To show him I had my gym shorts on I pulled my pj’s down a little, so I thought. It turns out I had shown him my lime green underwear. Boy did my face turn red.
Jeny, NYC

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This past Christmas break I was on a ski trip with my church and my crush was there. Well, we were skiing along and all of a sudden we came up to a really steep run that had an easier option for those who weren’t up to the task. Being the scarred cat that I am, I chose to take the easy way down. We were going along the trail but it was not quite as easy as I had figured. It had a bunch of moguls that I didn’t notice. So I’m skiing along not trying to fall and I inadvertently picked up a BUNCH of speed. All of a sudden I hit this one mogul wrong and my body and my legs fall backward, hitting my crush in the process. It hurt my back so bad but I thought that it had to have hurt my crush worse because it gave him a black eye. Turns out I didn’t hurt him that badly because when we got back from the ski trip he asked me out and we have been dating ever since.
~Anna, NC~

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I’m a freshman in highschool and so far my year has been OK with not too many embarrassing moments to speak of well, except for yesterday when I was in theology class. We always pass notes in that class because my teacher is totally clueless and lets us get away with anything.

My best friend sits behind this total hottie Chris that I’ve been crushing on all year and this one day she was bored so she made up a survey to take just for fun. Most of the questions weren’t that bad but some were a little more daring like she asked which guy I would have make out with if I had to…

Being the stupid me that I am…I wrote down CHRIS as the answer to that one and when I had finished responding to all her questions I threw the survey to her but I threw a little too hard and it landed right in CHRIS’ LAP! I watched him read it and when he came to that question he turned around and gave me a funny look. Then, after class he came up to me and said “I believe this paper belongs to you” and walked away. I’ve never been so mortified in all my life! But I guess it all turned out well in the end because he ended up asking me out! We’ll see how that goes this weekend!
– Anonymous

—

Ok, Courtney here again. I mean, WTF? Hahahah. It’s funny but it is also not funny, you know? The basic message now that I time travel back to those tender years was that if any degree of humanness shows up in your behavior, you better be damn grateful that the boy still likes you anyways. Goodness. I am 100% confident this current generation has equal parts – or more – pressure in this same way, however, there’s a special place in misogynistic history for Seventeen magazine in the 1990s. 

In any case, please join us for The Hook this month, in which Jya and I will be attempting to tell embarrassing stories. To your delight, most of these involve drinking and/or youthful ignorance. Definitely some bloodbaths and certainly crushes. We plan on keeping it light, because we know we all need it. Nothing to figure out here. 

OH YEAH, I forgot to tell you how The Hook works and how you can join us in it. It starts THIS MONDAY, JUNE 5th. If you are a current member, you can register by logging in to your account, clicking the “The Hook” link in the teal navigation menu and following the instructions there. If you are a new member, HELLO! Simply sign up and follow those directions above. 

After you register, all we encourage you to do is to listen to one short episode of our mini podcast each week, then comment or discuss as you like in our community. OH, and you try to show up for 5-15 minutes of exercise as often as possible during the month.

Ok, now go check your pants. Bye.

I don’t know if you’ve ever done the extremely dumb thing that I did recently: Read my journals from when I was 16, 17, and 18. I was assuming I’d find old thoughts and ideas that had evolved in my adult life into fully formed thoughts and ideas, or at the least that I’d not recognize “that girl then”.

Alas, I fully recognized myself and saw many many many many many of the same half cooked thoughts and ideas that I have today. Sure, I’ve experienced a ton of growth. I am more mature. All that is there, yes. BUT ALSO, whew, so much of the angst is the same. The road blocks and the insecurities, the same.

Perhaps this is normal. Perhaps this is the thing we realize even at the end of life. Perhaps it’s the way the world scoops us up in adulthood onto some conveyor belt of busydom, where the sort of stillness we need to transcend our adolescence doesn’t exist. I really don’t know the answer to that, but – after reading those journals – it became clear to me that I’m a bit stuck right now. Depressed? Weathered? Still hopeful? Yes. It all belongs when I consider the last 4 years.

Oh, the last 4 years. The birth of my third child, the onset of postpartum depression again, the abrupt unexpected end of a marriage, single parenting a newborn and two older kids, the pandemic, and now the burnout after the pandemic. I find myself in a spin cycle, wanting to hit reset and do over and omg someone give me some boots with some traction. The mud feels deep.

The mud is deep.

That is an exact sentence I found in my journals from an entry in which I was trying to make sense of being 16 year old dancer living on my own, desperate for a way to feel inspired AND secure. Reading that sentence reminded me that the work in my life 26 years later remains the same. I feel this way now, but I can promise you that I don’t want to spend the next two decades not dealing with it.

My work in recovery from substance abuse has taught me one main thing: Nothing changes if nothing changes. You can live your entire life in an optimistic feud over “I’ll do that tomorrow” and “Nevermind.” I sure did. But, I also actually did change, the sort of change the boomerangs you back to a recovery of your full, true self. I feel its presence every single day, etched inside me alongside awe and gratitude as well.

The key factor in that change was – plain and simple – ownership of my shit, without excuse or explanation. Just a full blown honest view of all that I had become when substances took hold of my life. The result of this honesty was something unexpected: Freedom. To love yourself and be loved through this experience changes you. As Beyonce says, Show me your scars and I won’t walk away.

I’m curious about what happens when I apply this ownership to my work here, in MommaStrong. I’ve been lackluster in spirit here, doing the tasks I need to do, putting out fires, doing what I’ve done before – but I’ve kept myself an arm’s length away. Why? It’s easy to label it burnout, but when I do what I know to do with the hefty excavator of honesty, I see that I never dealt with my own postpartum experience 4 years ago. Not in my body and not in my mind and not in my grind.

The result is that I feel like I need to stay on the down low, keep myself hidden until I can figure things out without anyone seeing. The consequence of hiding is that I also bury my light and my passion for my work in the world. And the reality is that my work demands (thankfully) the exact opposite or else it suffers. Of course it suffers.

Owning my shit like this has lit a spark of something I haven’t felt in quite a while: Agency. I like to think of it as that traction on those boots that I want in the deep mud right now. It’s the thing that grips so sturdily into the ground that even if the going gets tough, I can trust my feet.

I’m curious where others are. Am I the only one? Have you all had these boots all along?

This is where I get to invite you to the May Hook here in MommaStrong, which is focused this month on Baggage Claim: Owning Your Shit and Forgiving Yourself. It starts Monday, May 1st, which is basically like tomorrow holy cowabunga. And, in case you don’t know how a Hook works, if you are a current member, you can register by logging in to your account, clicking the “The Hook” link in the teal navigation menu and following the instructions there. If you are a new member, HELLO! Simply sign up for a membership for $5 and follow those directions above. 

After you register, all we encourage you to do is to listen to one short episode of our mini podcast each week, then comment or discuss as you like in our community. OH, and you try to show up for 5-15 minutes of exercise as often as possible during the month.

I’ll see you there, angst optional.

I was driving my younger kiddos to school the other day, the normal grind in the morning 2 hour commute, when a giant silver SUV started following me rather aggressively. I figured it was another tired mom like me, dealing with who knows what behind her and all around her. But, being in a school zone, I made the good and sober decision to just keep going the speed limit. AND OF COURSE, as the rules of road rage go, this made her irate, resulting in her lurching her vehicle back and forth behind me. I continued to hold to the speed limit. A few moments later, she squealed her car around mine and took off in the left lane, weaving around other cars and dashing for a free lane. 

And then … a red light ahead. As I began to stop with the other cars, I looked over in time to see us passing a giant silver SUV in the left lane. That giant silver SUV. 

As I sat there, waiting for the light to turn green and the demands of the day to continue to press on me, I had so much compassion for the driver of that car. So much. This adulting thing and this parenting thing and this driving thing and this morning thing can be rough on the soul. Sometimes I just want – no need – to have a free friggin’ lane and some green lights. YOU KNOW?

But, the truth was right there in front of me: This driver and I had traveled the exact same path and the exact same distance, but the experience we each had had getting there was so entirely different. It made me think about all the times that I’ve done the same thing, when weaving and darting and pressing forward felt like the best way to get “there”, all the while not knowing the toll it was taking. What is the point exactly, if we “arrive” in that state of being?

There are so many areas of my life in which I have been offered the opportunity to just let go and agree to a pace that is not my own. Those areas have brought to my life a sense of connection to the “stuff” that matters, an affinity to the good and the true. The other areas, of which there are plenty, I don’t have that. Instead, I feel like I’m constantly missing the bus to done-dom and enough-ism. In simple terms: I beat myself up daily about it all.

These things eat away at me, if I’m honest. The best way I can describe it is that feeling I get when I look at a picture of myself or I see myself on camera and there’s something about the image of me that I don’t like or that surprises me. In an instant, I am immediately ushered into a place where I make urgent irrational decisions about what I eat, how I sleep, what I wear, if I meditate, if I exfoliate, if I read “smart enough” novels, what I watch on Netflix, etc etc etc. It all feels urgent and it all says: FIX THIS NOW SO THAT YOU CAN BE LOVED AND SAFE.

I mean, I know that that is dramatic, but that’s how it feels deep down. Do I express that verbally or in a way anyone else would notice? Hell no. I stuff it into the depths of me, tuck it away, and then begin attempting to alter everything about me without anyone noticing. 

I wonder about this, what the collateral damage is. And I have a strong feeling that – and warning, I’m about to get morbid – when I get to the end of my life, this “if, then” tendency will be the thing I regret the most. As I watch people around me grapple with illness and aging, I feel an intense pull to want to learn how how to belong to myself and to my communities now, before I arrive. This is so that, in the end, I am not scrambling to find meaning, but instead can feel the residual effects that that meaning has had on my life for so long. I want belonging to be as familiar as my heart beat. My guess is that this only happens when I free this belonging from conditions. And, wow, being 42, I think I still feel that I have more control over the conditions than I truly do. 

So, in keeping with our willingness to dive into the deep end and get a little messy, this month in MommaStrong, we will be focusing our April Hook on finding belonging before we arrive. We’re calling it “Are We There Yet” because, oh yes, we all know that question oh so well. 

Wondering how The Hook works and how you can join us in it? It starts THIS MONDAY, APRIL 3rd. If you are a current member, you can register by logging in to your account, clicking the “The Hook” link in the teal navigation menu and following the instructions there. If you are a new member, HELLO! Simply sign up and follow those directions above. 

After you register, all we encourage you to do is to listen to one short episode of our mini podcast each week, then comment or discuss as you like in our community. OH, and you try to show up for 5-15 minutes of exercise as often as possible during the month.

And with that, I wish you a day of staying in your lane. Maybe.

For my whole life, I have dealt with being overstimulated by seemingly normal human experiences. I’ll never forget my childhood best friend taking me aside one day – we must have been 11 or 12 – to tell me that I was “sensitive”. It landed me in this spot we all know, so familiar in the skin we’re trying to stretch at that age. This spot tells us that something is wrong with us, we either need to buck up or start faking it.

And, so I did both of those things. Whenever something that would be overstimulating showed up for me, instead of holding back or resisting, I would just leap headfirst into it. Rip the bandaid off. I earned the thing that felt like the biggest prize of them all, the label “Fearless”.

I loved that label mostly because is transcended the truth of me. It took a big eraser to the reality that I was terrified, that I was held together by spit and sawdust. My inner world just floating out in to space like the credits in Star Wars. And, you know, the older I get, the more I discover that most of us felt like this. Most of us just put on our fun, fearless space suits and acted like we were going on a big ol’ adventure, when deep down, we were like, um, can someone just tuck me into bed and attach a sturdy tether to something bigger than what you’re currently offering?

So, yeah. I will say that along with this normal experience, I dealt with a few extra bonus rounds of humanness, OCD and sensory processing disorder and what I know today is ADHD. And I know I am not alone in this. I know that so many of us, as we trudge along into middle age, begin to discover that along with terror, maybe our brains worked differently and maybe our family systems in which we were raised were not perfect. Shocker, I know.

But, within and around that, I come back to the terror that I felt with overstimulation. The way it ushered in other questions about death and health and all the things that I figured were at the end of those Star Wars credits. I so desperately wanted someone to define them, to reduce one prickly prickle from life so I could just … take a deep breath. Be playful. Giggle. Stay curious.

Instead, the arrangement I had with overstimulation was that I would take the hit and pick up the pieces later. And most importantly, I would pick up the pieces without anyone seeing, without any help, without any dents in my space suit. This led to a lifetime of secrecy when it came to my sensitivity, which led to an adult life of seeking all the ways I could dull the stings and pings of life through substances. What will drown this all out the fastest? Yes, that. Yes, please. And, yes, I’ll have some more.

Obviously, the cost of this arrangement is clear. We know what inevitably happens with substance use disorder: Hurt people harm their lives and the people in them. And outside of that, as much as I figured substances would loosen me up, over time, the reality of not dealing with my terror led me to being a secretly tightly wound person. Like that scene in When Harry Met Sally when Sally is ordering (not that scene, ha) and she’s explaining how low maintenance she is but then she is asking for everything on the side in a particular order. THAT. And as time marched on and I birthed kids and faced sobriety and grown up life and trauma and blah blah blahhhhh, the cost of it all was a lack of access to joy.

Joy.

I don’t even mean happiness or fulfillment. I mean that feeling we all know so clearly. When a moment is absolutely not perfect, but something about it – maybe the flicker of the sun behind the cloud, or your kid saying the stupidest joke known to humankind – dives in extra deep into your bones and warms you up from that place right behind your sternum and shoots out of your heart, your eyes, your touch, everything. Joy. Playful. Curious. Expansive. Imperfect. Impermanent.

I wonder, often, how and if my kids see me experience joy these days. These days after the pandemic, after the fallout of another marriage, after the moves to new places, after bills and bills and bills and bills, after friendships ending, after all the things we grown ups experience that just tighten our hearts down with screws. And then all the ways my sensitive spirit no longer finds a way to come to the surface for a breath. Does that show up in my kids not witnessing me experiencing joy?

I think it must.

So, as much as I want to talk about what I will do to truly “be with” the truth of overstimulation in my life, first I want to come to terms with it. Find the nugget beneath the behavior change and move from that golden spot. That’s where, in the end, motivation lives and that’s where our lives change. Maybe it’s where joy is too. And, deep down, I am a joyful person. An extremely joyful, silly, curious, playful person. Retrieving that feels like an important – and possible – thing right now, today. Before my kids head off into the world as their own people and look back at what they learned. I want them to know my joy, that there was joy even in the mess.

Lucky for you, we can do this adventure together this month in our new Hook, which we’ve aptly called March Meltdown: Coming to terms with overstimulation. And in case you don’t know what the heck a Hook is, all you do is 1) register, 2) listen to one short episode of our mini podcast each week, and 3) you comment or discuss as you like in our community. OH, and 4) you try to show up for 5-15 minutes of exercise as often as possible during the month. 

The Hook starts on Monday, March 6th. If you are a current member, you can register by logging in to your account, clicking the “Hook” link in the teal navigation menu and following the instructions there. If you are a new member, HELLO! Simply sign up and follow those directions above.

I’ll see you there. Space suits not required.

Now that we’ve all made it through January, we can do what we do ever year and say to ourselves, harumph, nothing is going according to plan. As if the change of a single digit on our calendars ushers in some magical wand of control and newness. 

And as much as I am all for nixing any focus on resolutions, I am starting to become more and more tuned into what may be a human need to hit the refresh button and make positive changes. I want this, right now. Like, so badly that I I drove past the Container Store just yesterday and started salivating. All those containers to contain things that need containing. I just imagined taking my entire life, handing it over to the mad scientist in my head who then carefully systematizes the chaos in such a way that it then yields … something that works.

Something that works. Oh, something that works. In the end, this is what I want. I don’t want a new life or to be out of pain or to not experience discomfort or even to be extra healthy – certainly not to live my best life. I simply want something that works. I want dinners to get done before 9pm and dishes done before 1am and I want to not forget all the important things because I am so busy in all the unimportant-but-on-fire things. 

Maybe some people have this, but I don’t. Sometimes – ok, often – I feel like a little kid in a funny comedy show. They just keep putting shit in her hands and ask her to balance it all while on one foot, the audience laughing and gasping with each new thing. Oh isn’t she so cute, trying to do it all? Meanwhile, she’s up there, terrified and looking around for the actual grown up. 

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I show up and I do a lot and I do a lot of it well. I’m managing maybe? NO, I am not. I am juggling and putting out fires. And then, when I do have a moment where there is ease – a moment where it might be a great time to apply self-care or meditation or nourishing types of behavior – I instead dive head first into the quickest distraction from reality I can find. 

I thought at first that this was behavioral, in that finding a way to escape is actually a normal and even healthy part of being an adult and a parent. But, as I headed deeper into the guts of it, it became obvious that the roots are more layered for me and more, well, muddy. Underneath that normal human desire to distract myself is something else, a grubby grub that has yet to see the light. It’s not that I want to distract myself, it’s that I do not want to connect to anything right now. 

Ooooof. I don’t want to connect to myself. I don’t want to connect to people who need me. I don’t want to connect to my kids (ugh). I don’t want to connect to my feelings. I don’t want to connect to my work. I don’t want to connect even to stuff that brings me joy. 

I mean, who wants to admit this? It’s not graceful. Aren’t I supposed to be desperate to have alone time so I can hear myself think and can get grounded? And, I know, as a person in recovery from substance use disorder, that the opposite of addiction is connection. And a big part of healing is actually connecting, so yeah … time to raise a red flag for me. Time for me to say, hey there grubby grub, whatsa happenin? (I guess that’s how I talk to grubby grubs?)

And here is where a deep down deep deeeeeeeep feeling lives, one that just quietly lets me know that … yeah, um … well … I feel lonely. Not lonely like, I want to be loved and held and around other people, but lonely like I am struggling with what it is like to meet all the constant needs around me and not have another person (ahem adult) in the room to be like, whew, this shit is cray, you ok? Or maybe, to be more honest and raw, I’d like them to just simply say: I believe you. This is hard. 

I believe you. This is hard. 

Now that I’ve said it, I don’t think I need much more than saying it. It feels like the start of the refresh button I was looking for, or the resolution to what I labeled as a desire to distract and escape. Now I know it’s this other thing. I can work with that, in myself and probably also with professionals and definitely with people I keep near and dear. 

This February, in The Hook, we will be tackling this idea of a refresh button, something we are calling the desire to “Clear the Cache” to be technological and trendy. Also, it’s not pronounced “ca-shay”, a fact you’ll hear Jya and I grieve over if you listen to our weekly Hook podcasts. We also try to do what I’ve done here, which is find our way towards this desire for change in our life while also moving away from typical wellness dogma. It’s our experience that that dogma keeps us away from the grubby grubs and, well, you know we’re deep end divers here at MommaStrong. 

Ok, I think I feel tired now that I said all that. Maybe tender is a better word. But, I also feel like I’ve grabbed on to something that is not drenched in the speed of euphoric motivation, but instead just traveling at the speed of a seed.

OH YEAH, I forgot to tell you how The Hook works and how you can join us in it. It starts THIS MONDAY, FEBRUARY 6th. If you are a current member, you can register by logging in to your account, clicking the “The Hook” link in the teal navigation menu and following the instructions there. If you are a new member, HELLO! Simply sign up and follow those directions above. 

After you register, all we encourage you to do is to listen to one short episode of our mini podcast each week, then comment or discuss as you like in our community. OH, and you try to show up for 5-15 minutes of exercise as often as possible during the month.

Whew. That’s it. Nap time. 🙂

I did a brave thing recently. I got a massage. I know for most people this is not a brave thing, but it is for me. It’s been over ten years, a fact that is directly tied to the tentacles of trauma. Anyone who has experienced sexual assault knows that it’s no small feat to say yes to an experience in which you give over your body to a person you probably don’t know at all … in the dark … all while you are supposed to “relax”. Yeah, um, no thanks.

BUT I did this brave thing anyway because it’s time and I’m on an adventure of healing, so here we are. And, in keeping with my tendency to just jump straight into the deep end, I decided that my first massage ought to be an intense deep tissue abdominal massage. I know. Let’s start with the tender part of the body that the human brain is basically like, do not press hard here, AND the part of my body that has been most affected by birthing and raising children.  

Anyways. Start here, I did. I’ll save the details about the actual technique of this massage, about the incredible women who provided it, and the amazing clinic in which they work for a later date. I have some content planned for it, because that’s what it deserves. BUT, what I am here to share today is something that feels ooey gooey underneath it all. Like when you flip over a rock in the Spring and see an entire world of life underneath. This was that, for me.

The ooey gooey is that I haven’t done anything to really heal my body after the birth of my third kiddo three years ago. I don’t know exactly why, but as I peel it apart, it’s clear that it’s a perfect storm. I do know I had assumed that because I had been doing MommaStrong for close to a decade, that I should have had the entire thing figured out perfectly – that my body wouldn’t be affected THIS time, THAT way. I also know that the postpartum period with Wyatt was one of the hardest, most traumatic experiences of my life. I just instantly jettisoned out of the newborn world and into survival-I-got-this-keep-things-ok-for-everyone mode. I also entirely distanced myself from my body and from its needs.

That last part feels the truest. Beyond distancing – if I’m rigorously honest – I feel like I’ve been moderately self-destructive. It’s hard to admit this, but if I want to get better, I must just go to the “ugly” and say it, love it, hold it, and then lead it. I have left my body with very little resources to survive birthing and raising Wyatt, while raising two other amazing kids through all the precarious milestones of growing up, and while also trying to keep this business alive. I don’t eat enough, sleep enough, or drink enough water. I don’t sit still enough, listen to myself enough, play enough, stretch and release enough, read enough, etc. I have relied on caffeine, chocolate, and Netflix to be my main versions of self-care.

So, when these two women were working on my body – on my belly – I felt this incredibly intense and overwhelming sensation of resistance. Please do not let me feel what has been, what this belly represents. As they worked on my c-section incision and the web of scar tissue all around the area, it was like I could feel the way my incision felt four weeks after she was born and all the things that were going on at that time. I could feel the way my incision felt when my older girls were newborn too – the pain, the heaviness, the fear, the harms.

This is how I know it to be true that our bodies hold our stories until we are ready, if we are ever ready. It was bewildering to me that I had been able to ignore it for this long, but also totally obvious. I know how I feel on a day-to-day basis. I know what my body asks for, how it finds a way to keep me going even if on fumes. 

It’s time. This post is here to say this. My body is not healed. My belly is a mess. My pelvic floor, affected. My spirit, waiting. And the most humbling discovery of all is that THIS is exactly why I started MommaStrong so long ago: To be the starting seed of self-discovery and body autonomy after birth, through the extension of curiosity into the landscape of daily movement. And, most importantly, to not be alone in the whole process.

In essence, MommaStrong was supposed to be the nest we all need after giving birth and while in the acute caretaking period that is postpartum – a nest that most of us in this society are pushed out of far too early. I would also suggest that acute caretaking is something that returns here, there, and everywhere throughout our lives as parents, whether we have a kid with special needs, or we are arriving at the steps of teenager-dom, or we’re in “The Sandwich” of taking care of kids and ailing parents. All these moments are moments when we need a nest, a place to come home and regroup and gather resources and rest.

Over the past few years, as I have distanced myself from my body, I have also distanced myself from this purpose of MommaStrong. I have allowed it to grow and scale, none of which is bad, but it certainly became something that was unmanageable for a small business to hold.

I can’t help but think of all the ways business owners are encouraged to “think big” and “move boldly” and how connected that is to our society’s pressure on new moms to “bounce back” after birth. I wonder what happens when we skip the nest and/or decide that the nest is too small.  I can’t ignore how this has shown up in measurable ways in my own body.

As for the business, there have also been measurable effects, most of which the team and I are working on healing now. It’s been arduous, but also grounding. It’s become clear to all of us that the spirit of MommaStrong is alive and well, but just waiting for the walls around it to be right-sized. In fact, if we don’t – much like our bodies – things will start to fall apart.

I’ll be sharing more of my own personal story of healing and nesting over the next few months, with short video content from experiences I am having. But, today, I’d like to share some of the ways that we will be addressing this in our business, and I hope you know that these changes are about being a healthy business with a healed “belly”. About staying sustainable. About being true to who we are. About coming home.

Before I share a list of the upcoming changes (arriving in January and February), I want you to know that I know how hard change is right now. I hold that while also holding my leadership position here, a position that if I ignore will mean that things don’t heal. And we must. And we can. And I promise to be here, connected to you and to the change, as we get through it.

Here we go!

1. Community: After a lot of conversation and thinking and problem solving, we have decided that in February we will be moving off our current community platform, Mighty Networks, and instead utilizing a community feature directly in your membership, whether you access through the web or an app. This is EXCITING because now you won’t have to visit another place to engage with other members, it is literally right there in the same place you get your workouts. It is also a vastly simpler platform, that will feel a lot like a Facebook feed. You will have access to the same support you had before, from Stephanie to other experts, and to each other. BUT YES, we will lose some fancy features that you get in Mighty Networks. We’ll be discussing these changes over the next month – you have plenty of time to prepare. This is essential for right-sizing and with that said, we know it’s change and with even positive change, there can be loss. We are here for you.

1. Challenges: We are walking away from the word “Challenges” and are returning to a program we had way back in the day, called “The Hook”. The Hook will function like a monthly challenge does now. You will register and attempt individual/group goals. There will be a theme, etc. Everything will be the same, EXCEPT a couple of things:
   1. Our weekly podcasts will be accessible where you get your workouts and programs, in their own category, for both our app and the website. The great news in this change is that you can listen to the podcasts and turn off your phone (we will show you how to address that setting), etc.
   2. Once we move our community away from Mighty Networks, there will no longer be dedicated groups for challenge content. Instead, you will access everything in The Hook category in MommaStrong programs, and the accompanying community feature. 
   3. The first week of The Hook will be focused on setting up your goals and building reasonable expectations for the month (what gets you “hooked” into showing up for yourself, beyond just being dutiful to health/wellness).

1. FUEL: In February, we are going to be taking a step back from our FUEL program, but just in terms of trying to develop, sell, and market it. We are aware that many folks purchased the content to own without expiration and we will be honoring that promise by continuing to host the content and community in the current community in Mighty Networks. SO, yes, the MommaStrong general community will be leaving Mighty Networks, but the FUEL course and FUEL group will stay put.

1. Squad Leader Workouts: We will be ending our “squad leader” live workouts in order to honor our attempts to right size our services. We also hope to take what we learned from this offering and build something more sustainable in the future with your incredible squad leaders. I’d also like to take a second to acknowledge each of them – Becca, Madeline, Theresa, Kelsey – and their commitments to showing up over the past many months. I am deeply inspired by them and can’t wait to direct their energy to other parts of the company.

1. Workout page reorganization: In February, you will see some changes to the workout page, just namely in how we label and name the different categories. We are aware that the current set-up can be confusing for newbies and we are attempting to help the “start process” by making things more clear from the get-go. You will still have access to all of your current content, it will simply be slightly reorganized (for the better).

1. Nest: To bring this back to the focus of this post, we will be working very very very hard on rebuilding the nest that MommaStrong’s mission is and how we can make sure you feel surrounded, supported, cared for during the acute caretaking period(s) of your life. My intention here is to provide a sense of “home” that we all need more than ever, so that you feel showing up has more to do with care than it does another task or to-do.

OK, whew, that is it! And now a quick blip about the upcoming January Hook: “Right Sizing Matching our promises with our capacity.” The January Hook will start on January 9th, which we know is a week later than we normally do – BUT HOLY WINTER BREAK BATMAN – life is hard right now and starting on January 2nd sounds noble and also no. So, you will have a whole week to get yourself organized. We will have tiny reminders and info about some of the changes over the next week. Basically, we are gonna nest the eff out of the start of 2023. 

OH! And in case you don’t know what the heck The Hook is (formerly known as  “Challenges”), basically- you register, , you listen to one short episode of our mini podcast each week, and you comment or discuss as you like in our community. OH, and you try to show up for 5-15 minutes of exercise as often as possible during the month.

If you are a current member, you can register by logging in to your account, clicking the “Challenges” link in the teal navigation menu (we’re changing that title soon, yeah tech gremlins) and following the instructions there. If you are a new member, HELLO! Simply sign up and follow those directions above. 

See you next year ha omg.