Building Rhythms of Self-Care Into Our Parenting with Nicole Barlow

How do you define self-care? Are you establishing a routine of self-care that supports you to meet your kid's needs? Nicole Barlow joins the podcast to discuss how we think about self-care, why it's crucial, and how to create rhythms of self-care in our homes. She is a certified wellness coach, TBRI® Practitioner, and parent trainer for foster and adoptive parents.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Re-define self-care
• Why is self-care crucial for parents and caregivers?
• Why do so many of us resist or neglect self-care?
• What are some of the benefits of a well-rounded approach to self-care that might move the needle for someone who says, “I’m too busy…” or “Self-care is selfish, etc.”
• What are some of the indicators we might identify in our lives that say we should focus on our wellbeing more intently? 
• Framing a holistic approach to self-care:
  • Physical wellness
    • Emotional & Mental wellness
• Spiritual wellness
• Where does one start if we’ve never established regular self-care routines?
• How can we build from that starting place into overall rhythms of self-care?
• Where do practices like meal planning, budgeting, and home management fit into the picture?
• What about socialization, building a support network, engaging in respite, etc.?
• What do you recommend to parents and caregivers who look up one day and find themselves isolated or without a solid support network? 
• Where do they start building or re-building that for themselves? 
• Practical advice to start and maintain a self-care routine
  • Walk every day
    • Boost the benefit by walking with a friend
    • Boost the benefit by engaging in quiet time, self-reflection, prayer, etc.
  • Engage in strength training
    • Building muscle aids the body in processing stress
  • Eat whole foods
    • Nourishing your body aids in regulating and processing stress

Transcript

Please pardon any errors, this is an automated transcript.

Welcome to the Creating a Family podcast. I'm Tracy Whitney. I am the content
manager for Creating a Family and many of you have already heard the news that our
executive director Don Davenport is retiring this year. I've been co -hosting with her
often on this spring and learning the ropes because eventually I will step into the
role of the regular podcast host. Today I'm podcasting solo but don't worry,
Don isn't gone yet and you'll have plenty of other opportunities to hear from her
before she does retire. Today I'm excited to talk to Nicole Barlow on the topic
that I am probably most passionate about in our work here at Creating a Family and
that's self -care for parents and caregivers. Nicole is a certified wellness coach,
a TBRI practitioner, and a parent trainer who equips foster and adoptive parents to
care well for their bodies, minds and spirits so that they can show up well for
the kids that they're caring for. She's a fellow mom of six, five of hers are
through foster care adoption, and so she brings her real life experiences and
practical tools to help the families that we're supporting on this podcast navigate
trauma, regulate their nervous systems and build lasting connections with their kids.
She's also the host, excuse me, of a podcast called Foster Parent Well. So Nicole,
welcome to the Creating a Family podcast. I'm real excited to tackle this topic
today. Thank you. I'm excited to be here. Sometimes the idea of self -care in
today's culture can be a little bit muddy and sometimes it includes or doesn't
include things like regular exercise or fancy coffee dates or a spa day or a Manny
Petty with your girlfriends. But in
as something where it's like you get an extra dessert or you get, you know,
time with your friends and that can be self -care. But a lot of the things that
are deemed self -care actually are really kind of self -indulgence. And pampering.
And pampering. I mean, which is great, right? Right, right. But the definition of
self -care is actually doing things, taking action to improve your health.
And a lot of times the things that we're doing and calling it self -care, you know,
binge watching TV, eating a pan of brownies are actually contrary to what true self
-care should be. So why is self -care so crucial to this demographic of people that
we're talking to today, the adoptive, foster, or relative caregiving community. Yeah,
so a lot of times we're dealing with a lot more stress in our homes. We're dealing
with a lot more chaos. We're taking on a lot more things. And just like trauma and
stress affects our kids, trauma and stress affects us. And so if we're not taking
care of our bodies, if we're not doing the things that we need to do to make sure
that our needs are met, we are not gonna be able to show up for our kids the way
that we need to. In fact, it is kind of contrary, the two sides are kind of
contrary to one another in that we are expected to show up calm and regulated and
steady, but the stress and the chaos of our environment can actually cause us to
not be able to do those things. And so we have to figure out how to make the two
things work together, and the in -between piece really is self -care. I love that. So
that working definition, one of the words that you used in that working definition
was health. And I think sometimes we get really stuck on the word health.
Would you be able to expand a little bit on what kind of health you're talking
about when you talk about self -care is taking care of your health. - Yeah, it's
really all aspects of our health. All of it comes together. We wanna take a very
holistic approach to what health looks like. You're making sure that our physical
needs get met. Much like we would do for our kids, like if we think about our
kids, we're going to make sure that their physical needs are being met, that they're
getting food, water, the right kind of nutrition that they're not just eating candy
all day, right? We're making sure that they're getting sleep. But we're also making
sure that their environment is conducive to them having some downtime,
to their veins being able to settle. We're making sure that they have relational
connection with other people. And we're also making sure that whatever spiritual
practices that you put in place in your home, you know that our kids have that as
well. And so the same is true for us. We want to work through all of those
different aspects for us to make sure that our needs are being met, that our mental
health is where it needs to be, that our relational health is where it needs to
be. We need people pouring into us, just like our kids need people pouring into
them. And our kids are not able to meet that need for us, that relational need,
right? So we need to make sure that we have people pouring into us. But we also
need to make and one of the things that I have noticed is that physical well -being
is the one that's usually the most lacking for parents.
They know that they need community, they feel that pull for community. But we think
nothing about skipping meals until the middle of the afternoon and then just grabbing
a processed food snack to kind of ease that before dinner. Because we're so busy
meeting our kids' needs, we kind of neglect ourselves in that process. Yeah,
that resonates. It's definitely one of those areas that most of the moms I know and
not as moms of kids with a history of trauma or prenatal exposure or other
challenges. But any mom I know, they put themselves on the burner way back at the
back of the stove. Why do you think so many of us resist that necessity or neglect
our self -care? Why do we resist that? Well, there's a couple of reasons. And I
think the first one really is about We have so many needs in our homes.
We have so much going on. We are so busy. And in our house,
we have a lot of kids. And one of the phrases that we've used quite often is the
squeaky wheel gets the grease, right? Like the loudest need is often the one that
we meet first. And so a lot of times we're meeting the needs of our kids because
we can kind of calm that for a little while in us. So we may not see the need,
we may not really see that it's there, but it is. - Yeah,
yep. - And it's quietly like building up in the background. And so that's one of
the reasons I think a lot of times we're just so focused on our kids' needs and
their needs can be so loud that we go to meet those first. And we think we don't
have time for the other things. But the other part of this, Tracy, is that I
really think as parents, we prefer to work on what our kids need to fix.
We prefer to work on their healing, to work on their things, versus really looking
at ourselves. Are we, you know, making sure that our past wounds are healed.
Are we making sure that our physical needs are being met? Are we, you know, making
sure that we can stay calm and regulated in those moments where our kids need us
to be? - Yeah, that self -reflection and that honest self -assessment can be very
daunting when you're already kind of depleted from taking care of everyone else's
needs. - Plus, I would much rather be the helper than the one being helped. - Yes.
- And I think a lot of foster parents are like that. It's one of the reasons why
we have so many struggles reaching out for other people to help us with tangible
needs. But in the same manner, we don't wanna look at the needs in ourselves.
We don't wanna look at ourselves as deficient in any way. Right. And as adults,
we've gotten pretty adept most of the time at delayed gratification,
delayed satisfaction over accomplishments and things like that. So it becomes just
this habitual thing where we're putting aside our needs. I'll take care of it later.
I can wait when maybe our my three -year -old can't wait or my 13 -year -old can't
wait. But that waiting, it feels like can come back to bite us later.
And it sounds like that's what you're saying. Yes. I mean, it definitely will come
back to bite you every single time. I know for me, like I put off, we adopted a
sibling group of five. And so we took five at once, which is daunting, right?
because you're trying to get everybody adjusted at the same time and we had fostered
for a long time and I was already training foster parents and so I thought I kind
of knew what I was doing. I was trauma informed but I was meeting all of their
needs, trying to meet all of their needs over and over and over again and
neglecting myself and I got to a point where I couldn't meet their needs anymore. I
knew what to do. I knew how to do it. But my body just couldn't do it.
I wasn't able to connect. I wasn't able to be calm and steady and regulated all
the time. I wasn't able to be consistent because I had neglected myself for so
long. And I think that that's really common amongst parents. I also think,
especially for It's in faith communities. There is a big stigma around looking at
ourselves. Like it's supposed to be you die to self, you serve others, all of that
kind of stuff. And so it can get very muddy when we're looking at the culture's
term of self -care in what is self -indulgence, right?
And so it has framed all of self -care as kind of self -indulgent versus self
-sacrificial. And the way that I want parents to really see self -care is that this
is a way that you're sacrificing for your kids. This is the way that you are going
to be able to show up for them on a regular basis. This is the hard work that it
takes to be what they need. - That's such an excellent point. And I appreciate what
you say about, you know, the messaging that we get maybe in faith communities, but
I think the foster and adoptive community, you could probably ask any foster or
adoptive mom you know, and she will have heard at least once or twice. Oh, you're
such a saint. - Yes. - Oh, you're such good people for doing this work. And while
we don't always want to receive that message, often that message can prevent us from
taking care of our own needs because taking care of self doesn't feel consistent
with, "Oh, you're such a saint." And it's not just in the faith community is what
I'm saying, but yeah, that's such a great point. - Yeah, I agree. And I think that
putting us up on a pedestal like that can be so damaging in in lots of areas, but
it does make me feel like I have to live up to everybody else's standards.
And so I agree. I mean, I think that's part of the reason why we strive to not
only, you know, be sacrificial. I mean, we want to serve others. We have a heart
to serve. It's why most of us got into this to again with, but when people put
you up on that pedestal that you are this servant, that you are this person that
is an angel, that is a hero, all the terms, right? It puts even more pressure on
us to actually live up to that expectation, which we can't, by the way. - No one
can, no one can.
Let me take a minute to interrupt this conversation and remind you that Creating a
Family also offers these podcasts on YouTube. If you go to the Creating a Family
channel and subscribe today, you'll be able to watch the videos of these
conversations and participate in that way. Thanks for joining us over there. We hope
you enjoy it.
So what are some of the benefits of a well -rounded approach to self -care that
would kind of move the needle for someone who would say to you, "I'm too busy for
self -care," or, "Self -care is selfish." What would be some of the benefits that you
would tell them about? Well, I think there's obviously some physical benefits. I
mean, the stress over time, prolonged stress, is going to affect your physical
wellness. It is. My husband had a heart pack two years ago. I mean, like it is my
blood pressure was high. I gained like 50 pounds. I mean, it is going to impact
your physical health and your ability to be there and show up for your kids.
But the other part of it is about regulation. We need to be the steady,
regulated one for our kids. We need to be able to show up and be consistent.
And if our body is in fight or flight because we are not taking care of it Then
we're not going to be able to show up for them and be connected So we're actually
going to see more Disregulation in our household not just from us But everybody
because we as the parents are the ones that set the piece for the household So if
our bodies are in turmoil if our bodies are Disregulated dysregulated and invite or
flight, even if we're able to mask it, right? Like even if it's not coming out and
us yelling or something like that, but it's just the anxiousness inside of us, it's
going to create an environment of anxiousness in our house and our kids are not
gonna have that felt safety that they need. And so I think one of the best
benefits that I saw when I started working on my health was the piece in my house.
It wasn't even that I changed tangible things, it was just I was calm and regulated
and so the rest of my house felt that and it made them feel safer and more
regulated. So physically you're looking at better energy levels and better physical
regulation. Emotionally you're looking at more peace in the home and clarity in the
interactions that you have to have even when they're hard. Emotionally, obviously,
that regulation piece is key to having successful conversations and helping your kids
grow. I think another benefit that I love to point out to parents is the role
modeling of caring for themselves well. We want our kids to thrive and to succeed
and we want our kids to learn how to take care of themselves well. But if they
don't see that model, then they're never gonna learn it because we could preach all
the day long, but our words don't matter if our actions aren't following it.
- Exactly, exactly. They are watching what we're doing and they feel our energy,
right? Like have you ever seen like an anxious person pick up a baby, they may be
saying all the right things in the right tone, but the anxiety within them is going
to make that anxiety kick up in that child. And so it's the same way with older
kids too, our anxiety is going to do that, even if we're able to mask it on the
outside. But the other part is if you think about our kids, when our kids are in
fight or flight, their upper brains don't work. Their executive function is off their
ability to think logically and make decisions. All of that stuff is off our kids.
We know that if they go all day without eating, it's it's a surefire thing that
they're going to have a meltdown, right? But the same thing is true for us. So if
we're not taking care of our needs, then our brain is not going to function the
way that it's meant to. We're not going to be able to think clearly. We're not
going to be able to make good logical decisions and that decision fatigue actually
creeps into a lot of the reason why people don't implement self -care, because they
get into these situations and they just can't see how to implement new habits. And
it sounds to me like you're saying also specifically say for the foster community,
when We are at that level of depletion and we can't make wise,
well -founded decisions. That might be contributing factors to instability in a
placement. So many times we hear about instability in a foster placement as something
that is behaviorally related, something the child is doing. But I'm hearing you say
that lack of self -care and a holistic approach to our self -care can be something
that would be another factor that maybe we haven't identified as related to
instability in a placement. - Absolutely, because if there are behaviors but you're
taking care of yourself. Now, I mean, there are certain levels of behaviors that may
be unsafe for the home. So I'm not talking about those environments. But When there
are behaviors in the beginning, you may be able to deal with them, but over time
it's going to wear on you if you're not managing that stress within your own body.
If you're not taking care of yourself, then your ability to handle those situations
are going to deplete over time, and it's going to start to affect you more.
And so you're more likely to disrupt, you're more likely to not be able to carry
out that placement long term if you're not taking care of yourself because over time
it's just going to the way that it's affecting your body is going to change. Yeah
those cumulative effects can be so detrimental not just for us but then for the
children in our care as well. Yeah and so we're creating instability in them right
and even without trying like we're trying to create an environment of connection and
stability. But if we're panicking on the inside constantly because our physical needs
aren't being met, then we're not creating that felt safety for them. So we're not
actually helping them heal, which is the one thing we really wanna do most of the
time. - Right, that's why we started doing what we're doing. - Absolutely. - Love the
opportunity to help a child heal. So what are some of the indicators in our life
that would tell us maybe we should be focusing on our self -care a little bit more
like symptoms or yellow flags some people call them what would you be looking for
what should we be looking for? Well first of all I say I think everybody should
make sure that they're implementing self -care habits from the beginning before they
even get placement because if you're feeling the symptoms, it's going to be much
harder to implement, because again, once those symptoms kick in, that decision fatigue
is going to kick in, and it's going to be harder to implement at that point. But
I think that you can notice when some of those yellow flags are creeping in,
things like fatigue, if you're having to take a nap every day, unless you have
newborns or you have kids that don't sleep at night, right? There's an exception
there. But that is not normal. And I think we've, we've kind of normalized moms
being tired all the time just because they have a lot on their plate. But you
guys, if you are taking care of your body, if you're strengthening your body, you
can have a lot on your plate and still feel energized throughout the day. You may
be exhausted at the end of the day, right? Like you may be my head hits the
Hello, and I'm done. You will be. We'll say it that way. You will be. Busted at
the end of the day. You will be. But throughout the day, you shouldn't have to
take a nap every single day. If you're irritable, if you're easy to snap at your
kids, if you see that you are starting to struggle to connect with your kids,
or even you're struggling to have the desire to want to connect with your kids,
I think that is even past the yellow flag. I think we're running into red flag
category at that point in that you're not taking care of yourself enough in order
to be able to manage whatever's happening throughout the day. And I will say some
situations are gonna require more self -care than others.
They may require more breaks. It may require more time away,
more walks, more nutrition, more all of the things than others.
Sometimes it's just harder, right? Some situations are just harder. - Yeah, whether
it's a season that you're going through with a particular child or welcoming a new
child that has some pretty complex medical issues or complex history of trauma.
When those complexities increase, then our self -care and attention to our internal
state needs to also increase. - Absolutely, absolutely.
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comment. Subscribe to the channel if you really like what you're hearing. And now
back to our show. So let's get into the framework of your holistic approach.
You talked at the beginning about physical wellness, emotional and mental wellness and
spiritual wellness. Can you kind of break down each one for us and give us an idea
of maybe where's a good place to start or how you get people started?
- Yeah, so we really, when I work with parents, foster and adoptive parents and
kinship parents are actually the easiest to work with. Once you get them past a
certain point because they already know the tools, we're already doing these things
for our kids. So we know how to empower our kids to do well.
And so you already, you know, most parents already have the tools. So when we're
looking at physical wellness, you know, culture is going to say, Hey, if you've
gained a little weight, or, you know, you need to work on your health, you want to
eat less, and you want to work out more. And we're actually going to flip that.
We wanna move, we wanna move our bodies strategically, we wanna build muscle, we
want gentle movement like walking, but we want to do less of it.
We don't wanna do long runs or long cardio workouts that are really gonna stress
out our bodies. We also want to make sure that we're eating at regular intervals.
So I tell my clients to make sure they're eating every three hours. And we do
something called macro counting, where we're tracking the amount of protein and carbs
and fats that we're eating, not counting calories. We're not, the goal is not to
eat under what our goal is. The goal is to eat what our goal says.
So if our goal is to eat 20 grams of protein, I want my clients to at least hit
that number every single day. Because that's how you're going to fuel your body. And
so you want to make sure that you're eating at those regular intervals that you are
eating enough of the right foods, but you're also eating mainly whole foods.
Because a lot of the processed foods that we're eating are actually causing
inflammation and stress within our bodies. And so that's making our bodies go into
fight, flight, or freeze before we even do anything else, right, just by what we're
putting in, if we're putting in stuff, extra additives, seed oil type stuff, that is
going to make our bodies go into fight, flight, or freeze. And when we're talking
about physical wellness, we also want to talk about water, making sure that we're
getting hydration, making sure we're getting sleep, that sort of thing. It's nothing
huge, right? Like there's no big like revelation that here's this one thing that you
can do to change everything. It's the normal habits that we know we should be doing
anyway, but we're just resistant or sometimes we feel stuck and we can't get into
them. And you know, as a TBRI practitioner that we're told when we are welcoming
children into our home, feed them every two to three hours, focus on high lean
proteins, hydrate them every two to three hours, get them the water bottles and all
the things that help them, you know, want to drink more water and focus on their
sleep. And it's all the things that we, like you said earlier, are doing for our
kids to help them heal and to help them thrive. And adapting this mentality and
building these rhythms of self care mean doing those same things for ourselves.
For us. Because our our bodies are dealing if you're parenting kids with previous
trauma history, you are experiencing trauma. Right. You are experiencing stress.
And so your brain, even though it's more mature, and so you may be able to mask
it better. Your brain works exactly the same way as your child's does.
And so if you're not getting those same things, then your body is going to be
prone to go into that fight, flight, or freeze state. - So let's tackle the
emotional and mental wellness part of your framework. - Yeah, so again, this is the
same as it is for our kids. And this is why I mean, this demographic of people is
really primed to take care of their health if they can make that shift. Because we
know our kids need connection in order to heal and stay regulated. And so do we.
And so we have to find community within the foster care and adoption community,
I would say, in order to find the support and empathy that we need.
People outside of that community, a lot of times just don't understand our parenting
styles. They don't understand what's going on in our homes. And so when we say,
"Hey, this is what happened today in my house," you get this blank stare because
people just don't have any kind of frame of reference for what's really going on in
our homes, right? And that kind of resistance doesn't give us the reciprocity that
we need out of relationship to be able to feel safe. So we need relationships where
we can say hard things. And maybe that parent hasn't experienced the exact same
thing we've experienced, but they have an understanding of the background and where
it comes from. And so we're getting some sort of reciprocity, some sort of feedback
that allows us to feel safe and connected with other individuals. - And at this
point, I'm gonna put a big plug in for the various community groups that creating a
family offers. First of all, we have a very large online community on Facebook,
facebook .com /groups /creatingafamily,
but we also have specific virtual meetings that occur across the month for post
-adoptive and foster families, but also we also just recently launched online kinship
groups for those who are raising grandchildren, nieces and nephews, et cetera.
If people are interested in those resources, they can always reach out creating a
family .org to figure out which group is the right one for them to plug into and
find that community. Those are the places I hang out when I'm looking for connection
in community. So I'm excited to be able to plug those for this conversation. Can we
talk a little bit about spiritual wellness? And certainly not everyone in our
audience is practicing of a particular faith, but the elements of spirituality
definitely still contribute to our wellness. And I'd like to hear how you tackle
that with families. Yeah, I think for, you know, some of us got into this space
because of our spiritual background or our faith. And I think when that especially
when that is the case, I think we have to make sure that we're staying connected
in that area. So whatever that means, whether it's prayer, whether it's a gratitude
journal, even if you're not practicing a certain faith, gratitude journals are huge
just to kind of connect with the things that you can be grateful for and to step
outside of ourselves. I think if we get too focused on our our pain,
what we are experiencing, right? Then we get a very negative mental state and
practicing gratitude, things like that, singing praise and worship, or even just
singing regular songs that humming that vocalization can really regulate our system.
It triggers that vagus nerve, right? To kind of go into a state where it's calming
for our bodies and our internal systems. So all of that kind of stuff can be very
regulating. It can really help us stay grounded as we are dealing with some hard
things. If we are constantly just in the chaos and not taking time away to reflect
and to really ground ourselves, it can be challenging to stay in that.
we all need to kind of step back and look at the bigger picture sometimes. I love
that. And the gratitude journal can be as simple as a sentence or two in an actual
handwritten journal. I heard of a great implementation of gratitude recently where
there's a jar on the table and everyone in the family is free to take a slip of
paper, write one or two things they're grateful for and stick it in the jar. And
if you have a day in the context of that family where you were having a hard time
finding something to be grateful for, you were also invited to reach into the jar
and pull something out and read it out loud. In the act of not just writing it
when you are grateful, but the act of saying something out loud when you're
struggling to be grateful, just kind of rewires your brain for a different
perspective than you walked up to that jar having. And I thought that was a really
unique and creative way for that parent, not just to exercise daily the muscle of
gratitude for themselves, but then also modeling and teaching that very practically to
their children. I was very impressed by that. - Yeah, I often think our kids A lot
of times are so much more emotionally mature than their peer counterparts,
even if their brains aren't there yet, right? But they have the language. A lot of
times they have the skill set to be able to work through things that I didn't
learn growing up, that nobody told me how to express my emotions or how to express
gratitude, how to breathe through different things. My kids know how their brains
work. So they can say, oops, my brain, my lid is flipped, you know, whatever it
is, my kids can give you that terminology and tell you what's physically happening
in their bodies at the moment, which I think is so neat. Yeah, building that
emotional intelligence, modeling it and then building it in our kids, it yields such
great benefits, not just for the individual, but I've seen in our home that it
builds our family unit or our feed.
wellness that is so appealing to me is we all need that anchoring into something
bigger than ourselves. Whether it's a specific faith practice or a religion or,
again, that gratitude practice, if we're anchoring ourselves and then teaching our
children to anchor themselves, it ends up being a very beautiful bonding experience
for our families and just creates that network of safety that they can fall back
into. Yeah, that one of the things that I do in moments that are really hard.
So during meltdowns or whatever is for me, we come from a Christian faith background
and so I'll turn on worship music because in the moment it takes me outside of
that hard moment. It helps me realize in that moment that the world is not actually
falling because of this moment, right? Like it takes me outside of that moment to
look at the bigger picture. Yep. Yep. I love that. So if you're not somebody who's
ever regularly practiced self -care rhythms of any kind, give us a starting point.
How do you get started? Yeah, start very small. One habit at a time. I generally
tell people to start with water. So for a week, just make sure that you drink half
of your body weight and ounces in water. That's it. That's all I want you to do
for a week, right? And then once you get that habit down, then we're going to add
another habit. So maybe the next week, we add in walking. So take 10, 15, 20
minutes, go for a walk. At some point in the day, some of my clients that are
super, super busy. They even split it up throughout the day. So they'll do 10
minutes in the morning, 10 minutes at night. But just adding in one habit at a
time. There are some of my clients that are not as, they're not in a moment where
things are so stressful or busy. And so maybe we add two or three habits in at a
time, but don't add in more than you can handle. And then I always tell clients to
stall where they stall. So if you're doing right like if you add in water and then
you add in walking and then you add in nutrition but your nutrition is really kind
of struggling. I want you to stop there until you get that under control before you
add in more things. I think the popular term for it now is called habit stacking.
Yes. And it sounds to me like you're saying Stacking those habits, it's like that
cumulative effect. You find success with the water, so then you're gonna find
success. You'll have that confidence that will then want you to find success with,
say, the movement. - Yes, well, and part of that habit stacking too, and this is a
great tip, is like true habit stacking is about taking a habit that you already
have, right? So I drink my coffee every single morning. "While my coffee is brewing,
I drink a glass of water." So I'm adding in the water with something that I'm
already doing. I already do coffee. So now I'm going to attach drinking a glass of
water to me drinking my coffee. I'm gonna make sure that that gets done at the
same time. So it's taking that one habit that I already have that is already a
part of my day and attaching something else to it that I want to add in. - That's
fantastic. What a great, simple tip to start with. So when we've established one or
two of these healthier habits, how do we kind of start looking at it as an overall
rhythm of self -care for our home? - Yeah, I think there's a couple of ways. I
think if you are able, if you are able. In the same way that we look at those
rhythms for our kids. So we plan out time for them to eat. We plan out their day.
We plan out time for them to move. We wanna do the same for us. We wanna set
ourselves up for success. So a couple of the ways that I do that is I always look
at my week ahead. Generally on a Sunday, I'll throw a couple of chicken breasts
into the crock pot and just have some shredded chicken on hand 'cause protein is
usually the hardest to make sure that you are prepared with. And so I'll make sure
that I get that out of the way that I can add that shredded chicken to a
tortilla. I can add it to a salad. I can add it to some pasta, whatever, right?
It's easy for me to add in to anything. So I'll set myself up for success in
that, but I'm going to plan out where my workouts, where my walking, where my other
habits are going to fit in through the week. Because for me, every week looks a
little different. And so really planning that stuff out ahead of time. And sometimes,
as we all know, sometimes everything works as planned. And sometimes it doesn't,
right? Like I had a child melting down this morning. And I had to cut my workout
a little short. It didn't mean that I didn't do it, it just meant that it looked
a little different. And so I think giving ourselves grace in that, but really
planning things out ahead of time. But the other part of this is there are a lot
of parents, I think, especially in our space that are already in that yellow flag,
red flag, burnout zone. And if you're there, decision fatigue may paralyze you.
It may be really, really hard to add in habits because your executive function part
of your brain is not working. And in that case, a lot of my clients that come to
me are in that space. And the reason that they need a coach, they need somebody to
walk with them is because they're in that decision fatigue space, they need somebody
to kind of hold their hand through the process. And so maybe that's a coach, maybe
that's just a friend who is walking through this with you and can kind of hold you
accountable and somebody that can help you think through how to fit things into your
day. Okay, wow. So accountability, I heard in there.
I heard mindfulness about your schedule and your routine and paying attention to your
family's overall rhythms. I'm a big planner. So at the end of every week,
I write out the family calendar for the next week. And I learned the hard way that
I couldn't write the calendar out for the whole month because it would short circuit
and fry some of my family members' brains who are more immediate thinkers than I
am. And so I found a calendar that works just for a week. And I keep the monthly
calendar private. And then I look at, you know, what we can add or not add or say
no thank you to that would interrupt a flow that works for whoever's living at home
at the time. Like right now we have two kids living at home. When all six kids
were living at home, obviously our flow was very different. Right. So that
mindfulness, so you're talking about mindfulness, you're talking about accountability,
and I appreciate the added conversation about grace. That is a challenge that I find
many, many, many of our families who listen to our podcast regularly. Giving their
kids grace is something they've accomplished very well, and I love seeing and hearing
the gracious, compassionate, tender ways they respond to their kids. But I think
sometimes we forget to offer ourselves that same level of grace and self -compassion.
Absolutely. I will say, though, like, I think it's a delicate balance, because I
think we want to give ourselves grace, but we also really have to make this a
priority. These are not things that are going to happen on their own. And so, if
we have to say no. You just mentioned, like sometimes you have to say no to
things. This has to be a top priority. It just does. I mean,
if we are managing this stress in our home, if we're managing trauma in our home,
then we have to be able to support our bodies through that or we're not going to
be able to do it well. So we may have to say no to some other commitments so
that we can make this a priority.
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And again, tell a friend about the courses after you've taken one or two that you
particularly enjoy. Thanks so much, and let's get back to the interview.
So where do practices like meal planning, budgeting, home management, and all those,
some people would call them drudgeries of life, but the realities of life, where can
those fit into our building of rhythms of self -care? Well, I mean, I think it's
part of our self -care. In the way that we create structure for our kids and it's
part of what helps them feel safe, I think those things help us feel safe. When we
have a week that's planned out, when we have a structure to our day, when we have
some routines that we do on a normal basis, it helps our body feel safe.
So maybe it doesn't happen at the exact same time every day, but we have a general
flow of things that we do every single day or most days,
and our self -care fits in that. I mean, I think that our self -care habits are
part of that flow, but they are also the flow itself, like creating that structure,
budgets, meal planning, all of that kind of stuff can help our bodies kind of relax
and feel safe. - And how about socialization or engaging with respite care or
engaging with your support network? How do you fit those things into a healthy
rhythm of self -care in your home? - Yeah, well, it's part of creating rest.
It's part of creating connection time with other people. That is part of the self
-care. I think, you know, we get too limited on what self -care is and we have to
look at it more holistically. So we have to be fitting those things in all the
time. And it may vary on how often you have to do it based off of the season
that you're in. We talked about that a little bit before. But like, for example, my
husband takes my kids to his in -laws, usually once a quarter they live out of
state and he leaves me at home. And that is my time to relax.
And there have been a couple of times where they haven't taken the trip at a
certain season, but I really needed it. And so I went to a hotel for a night or
two just to kind of get that break. There was a season where I needed to do that
every single month because I needed that mental break every single month.
I don't need it every single month right now, but I still need that, that respite
even though we don't have formal respite care anymore. I still need that, that rest
or that break. So we have to build that in to our our self -care plan.
We have to build in our time with community. So maybe it's an online community like
you were talking about. So every, you know, Monday night, you do the support group
or whatever it is, right? But you build that into your self -care plan because that
connection with other people is just as important as your workout in the morning.
all of those things kind of feed into your well -being. Yeah,
and when we're not intentional, like you were talking about, we can easily get so
focused on creating that for our kids that we forget to be intentional to create it
for ourselves. And then we look up and find that we don't have it when we really
need it. And that slow fade of saying yes to all the needs and forgetting that our
needs should be included in that. It makes it harder to pull that back and say,
okay, it's time to re -anchor, refocus, and get back to the healthy rhythm that we
were enjoying before. What do you recommend for parents or caregivers who look up
one day and find themselves in that spot, whether it's that they don't have a solid
support network or they've just let all of the elements of their self care that
they did, like their meal planning or their budgeting or their grocery pickup, all
those, they look up and all of those things are out of balance or have disappeared
from the landscape of their family rhythm. - Yeah, I mean, that's one of the reasons
why I take regular time away. The first, I always take at least two nights. the
first night I rest and kind of decompress and the second night is my planning.
The second night is I kind of evaluate where are we? What do we need to shift?
What is working? What is not working? And sometimes that's a parenting strategy.
Sometimes that's my self -care stuff. Sometimes that's planning time for me just to
get things in order, right? But it's that regular time for me to kind of plan
ahead. And I think we all need to set aside times to evaluate how things are going
and where things are. But again, if you're in a season where you are depleted,
where you are burnt out and your brain just can't process through that, you have to
seek help. You have to seek somebody from the outside that can walk through that
with you. So when you say seek help. You've mentioned earlier that you do parent
coaching. Yeah. Would that also include, you know, your therapist or? Yes.
So you could talk to your therapist about that. Do you find that a lot of families
who come to you have not taken advantage of therapeutic services before?
I think most of the parents that have come to me are in therapy. Okay.
Okay. That's - That's good to hear, that's comforting to hear. - Because I think I
see a lot of parents, the parents that come to me, especially that come to me for
health and wellness services are in pretty extreme situations, a lot of them,
right? And so they understand the importance of therapy for their kids and for
themselves. But in the general foster care and adoption community,
I don't see parents investing in themselves as a whole at all, whether it's therapy
or wellness or, you know, any of those things just because so much focus is put on
the kids. That's why it's one of my soapboxes that I, I mean, I have two,
a daughter and a daughter in law who just recently became parents and I've already
started talking to them, make sure you're taking care of yourself, drink more water,
get more sleep, let me babysit and you take a night out, get up, get a break,
do what you need to do to take care of yourself. Because my grandfather used to
say happy moms make happy babies. Yes, and it's true. Yes, not just of babies.
I see it even in my teenagers. Yes, well, I think all the way around like week,
we've got to stop looking at investing in ourselves as being selfish or whatever,
investing in ourselves is really about our kids. That is how we show up for our
kids. That is how we are steady for our kids. It's really how we invest in them.
So let's talk the practicals then. Give me, you know, your top three, four, five
practical tips that would help one of our listeners get started today? Walking is my
number one. That is my non -negotiable every single day. It completely shifted
everything for me. If you are not walking every single day, that is your first and
only goal, is to put that into your routine because I think it is so,
so crucial for mental health, for emotional health, for physical health. I mean, just
all the things that touches on all the spots. And if you walk with a friend, then
you get that relational pardon at the same time. For me, it's also my spiritual
time. That's my prayer time. That's my, you know, kind of quiet moments where I can
kind of reflect. So walking is, is the one. I will also say most people don't
think about strength training and how that relates to parenting,
but building muscle actually helps us process stress. The bigger our muscles are,
the more muscle we have built up, the more resilient the rest of our bodies are,
the more stress that we are able to process in our bodies. So strength training is
another huge one. And the last one going to say because people don't often think
about it and especially for us as parents that are sometimes dealing with picky
eaters and that kind of stuff is making sure that we're eating whole foods. Whole
foods are usually your one ingredient foods. We want to focus on whole food
nutrition because it is going to help our body not be so inflamed,
it's going to help us nourish and fuel our body the right way. And if we're
putting in junk, then we are actually causing stress on our body.
And I don't know about you, Tracy, but I don't need any more stress. I have plenty
as it is. Well, thank you, - Nicole, for your time and your wisdom and your
expertise, I'm so grateful for your commitment to helping foster adoptive and kinship
families find wellness and build rhythms of self -care in their homes.
And I hope that families find this information from today's conversation very helpful.
- Thank you.