Katherine Wintsch - 19 Mar

To my husband, Richard.

While many have been able to see a light within me that I couldnt see myself, you were the first to recognize that I couldnt see it. Thank you for encouraging me to develop the love, respect, and self-compassion I needed to thrive and help others do the same. We make one heck of a team.

Copyright 2019 by Katherine Wintsch

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Welcome to an exciting journey of personal growth and development. Throughout this book youll be prompted to answer thought-provoking questions about your past, present, and future. Feel free to write your answers directly in the book or visit slaylikeamother.com to download a PDF version of the exercises.

The dragon raging inside you has a name, and its self-doubt.
Youre the only one who can see it, so youre the only one who can slay it.

You have two choices. You either learn to slay this beast, or it will slowly and silently slay you.

If you dont rise up and take back your life and sanity, the constant battle and fighting will wear you down and wear you out. And you, your family, and the world will miss out on the best of you.

You already have all the tools, resources, and weapons you need within you to slay this dragon. You just dont know it because youve been denying the dragons existence for entirely too long.

I slayed my dragon, and my life dramatically improved.
Now, Ive dedicated my life to helping other women do the same. You can do this. I will help you.

Lets go slay some dragons!

INTRODUCTION

Are you tired of working your ass off and still feeling like you should be doing more?

Does the negative voice in your head constantly mouth off to the tune When are you going to get your act together, lady? Do other mothers seem to glide through life on ice skates while you tuck your muffin top into your pants and pray youll make it through Tuesday without losing your ever-loving mind?

If so, you picked up the right book.

The time has come to embark on the next chapter of your lifeaway from the illusion that youre never doing enough and toward the deeply held belief that youve always been more than enough. Navigating this messy world as a human, woman, and mother is not easy. Thats a fact. However, much to your horror but soon your relief, I have ten years of research and twenty years of personal experiences (ahem, mistakes) that indicate you might be making life a lot harder than it has to be. Yes, I just said that, and its time for you to believe it.

Its easy to blame your micromanaging boss, the hyperactive PTA president, your sons teenage antics, or your partners missing sensitivity chip for the stress and pressure thats been building for years, but theyre not the root cause. The demands of a busy life are taxing, but they dont exhaust your soul. Its the warped belief that you can and should be doing more thats keeping you down.

How do I know? Because I was a card-carrying member of that club for years. From the time I was a teenager to well after I gave birth, I suffered at the hands of my own unrealistic expectations, inability to say no, and relentless pursuit of making my life appear as though it was under control. To glance at the trappings of success in my lifethe titles, the trophies, the Today show appearancesyou might assume I was always free from the nagging doubts and fears that torment so many women, especially mothers, around the world. But theres more to my story than superficial achievements. If you look beneath the surface and beyond the optical delusions that blindly impress most people, youll find a very different narrative, one Im not embarrassed but proud to share with you in hopes it sparks your own heroic journey toward eradicating whats holding you back.

I spent two decades collecting external signs of success, not because I wanted to fill the empty spaces on my bookshelf, but because I needed to fill a hole inside me. (Spoiler alert: theres a difference.) My emptiness stemmed from feeling less than for the majority of my life. And while my world looked firmly pressed and buttoned-up on the outside, I was always running, always chasing, rarely satisfied, and I never felt good enough. But I silenced my struggles and, as a result, handed my strength and self-worth to a dragon that raged inside me.

Perhaps youve done the same.

WHATS IN A DRAGON?

I like to refer to our self-defeating tendencies as our dragons for two reasons. First, when youre fighting against your own self-doubt, it feels like a never-ending, always exhausting battle is being waged inside you. Operating from a deficit in the self-love department forces you to feel as if you must fight, protect, battle, defend, and claw your way to the top of other peoples opinions, and you become tired because of it. Second, self-doubt is a beast. It feels bigger, bolder, and braver than your fragile ego, and its weapon of choice is to inhale everything youre doing wrong and nothing youre doing right and blow it back in your face.

The time has come to slay whats holding you back, because while questioning whether youre smart enough, pretty enough, nice enough, or mom enough on a daily basis probably feels normal to you, its not healthy. Once you find the courage to kick your dragon to the curb, youll find freedom in the fact that life doesnt have to be this hard. Soon, youll see that dealing with the chaos around you becomes light-years easier when youre not fighting chaos within you.