Sara Robinson - Self-Care for Moms: 150+ Real Ways to Care for Yourself While Caring for Everyone Else

Thank you for downloading this Simon & Schuster ebook.

Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.

To all the moms: you are amazing, even when you feel like youre struggling. This book is for you.

Self-care. Your friends talk about it. You see articles online. Its necessary. You know that, but its not always easy to make it happen. As a mom, you work hard to take care of so many things around you, including keeping people alive and helping them become good individuals who are ready to take on the world. Being a mom is exhausting, which makes taking care of yourself that much more important to your overall well-being. But its also really hard to make self-care happen. Whether its lack of time, busyness with kids, guilt over prioritizing yourself, or any other number of reasons, self-care for moms is easier said than done. But this book will change all that.

Throughout Self-Care for Moms, youll find more than 150 self-care activities, organized by the amount of time you need to complete them and ranging from 5 minutes to a day or more. Thats part of the beauty of this book. Once you start to think about self-care happening in shorter periods of time, and start implementing 5- and 15-minute activities, youll see how that can have a big impact on how you think and feel, which can have a huge effect on how you handle everything else in your life. Chances are, your family will notice, too, which can encourage you and others to make the time for longer self-care activities.

These self-care activities will help you find new ways of taking care of yourself, and give you ideas about how you can include your kids in your self-care too (sometimes!). Trying out these new activities and learning more about self-care will also bring awareness to what youre already doing for yourself. It will help you be more intentional about including self-care in your already-packed schedule and help you create momentum and get better at planning, following through, and even seizing spontaneous moments just for you. And if youre really not sure how to make time for yourself or how to stay motivated to do that, youll find a couple of chapters that help make these things easier as well.

This book was written for real moms: moms who are busy, moms with kids of varying ages, moms who sometimes struggle, moms who miss life pre-kids but wouldnt change a thing, and moms who know they need more self-care and want to feel better. Its for all moms, those who have the support of a partner and those who are doing it all solo. You can have more self-care in your life, starting with just 5 minutes at a time. The time to start is now!

Lets face it, self-care is a buzzword for moms, so much so that you may tune it out because you hear it so often! Who has the time and money for massages and spa days all the time? Fortunately, as nice as those activities are, thats not all that there is to self-care. In this part of the book, youll learn what self-care really is, and how to make it happen on a regular basis. I know its tempting to jump straight to the activities (they are great!), but start at the beginning and read these two chapters first to help set the stage for making self-care a reality for you.

This chapter will help you get ready to add more self-care into your life. Youll learn that self-care is more than the big, indulgent activities we tend to think about when we hear this term, and youll discover the six categories of self-care that are essential to your overall well-being. Youll learn (or remember!) why self-care is so important and why you need to make it a priority. Youll build some awareness of whats getting in the way of making self-care a regular habit, and youll find the inspiration you need to add more self-care into your life.

Self-care involves the activities, tasks, and practices that help you think and feel your best. And it can be such a loaded term for moms; maybe it makes you cringe because you know youre not doing enough. Or maybe the term brings up positive feelings, because you know youre doing a good job building self-care into your routine. You love self-care, you value it, and you want more of it! (Who doesnt?) Either way, self-care may sometimes feel difficult to prioritize, indulgent (like when you have an amazing massage or a deliciously decadent dessert), and tough to schedule. You are a mom, after all.

In fact, most of the objections to self-care come from feeling that theres not enough time, money, or both. We tend to think of self-care activities as time-consuming and/or expensive, but the reality is 1) you only need a minimum of 5 minutes at a time for self-care, and 2) self-care does not have to cost anything. Yes, you can choose activities or items that cost money, but as youll see in Part 2, there are many self-care activities that cost nothing. Its all about the intention behind the activity.

And as for the thought that self-care has to feel indulgent, that is nice, but there is much more to self-care than that. There are actually six main types of self-care to know about, and youll want to fit each type into your schedule.

Emotional self-care is about taking time for your emotions, participating in activities that create positive feelings, and also dealing with negative emotions. This means that part of self-care is dealing with the hard stuff. As a mom, you might not always be focused on your own emotions, because youre working hard to deal with everyone elses. But by ignoring your emotions or thinking that theyll handle themselves, you probably dont deal with #momlife as well as you should. Activities that fulfill your emotional self-care needs include taking the time to watch a movie you love, going for a walk outside, or possibly talking with a therapist.

Mental self-care is taking care of your state of mind, doing something intellectually stimulating, or working to create positive thoughts. If were not feeling stimulated or mentally engaged, it can be a recipe for disaster. You may find that youre more likely to take your frustrations out on your kids and those around you. As rewarding as being a mom is, thats not always enough mental stimulation, and you know that parenting can be mentally exhausting, and challenging. This is why mental self-care is a critical area of self-care to include in your regular routine. For example, journaling, reflecting on what youre grateful for, or doing a puzzle all help to take care of your mental state.

Physical self-care is all about taking care of your body and involves things like working out, drinking plenty of water, and making sure to take care of essential doctors appointments. This is a category that seems to be a challenge for moms because we often put ourselves last, and it can be hard to justify taking the time or spending the money for a gym membership or classes. But you need to prioritize your physical health, just like you do for the rest of your family.