But it’s so easy for us to say, “Let’s just live a simple life,” right? People talk so often about simplicity, and you’ve heard me talk about that in the form of decluttering. I think that when we have fewer things, it’s easier to manage the things that we have.

But I still have a lot of stuff, right? I have six kids, and we homeschool them, so I’m not living in like, I don’t know, a one-bedroom condo where each person has a dish and a fork. Have you seen some of those kind of minimalist YouTube channels, where really, they have very, very few things? I’m not even living like that.

So I don’t even know that I would say that I live a simple life. I really don’t. Our schedule isn’t simple. Our lifestyle isn’t simple. Again, our things, we have a lot of things. I have things very intentionally, and that to me is what true minimalism is, that you’ve just really thoughtfully considered why do we have these things, and I have the things that I want.

But a great example is I have a lot of books, so many books, and I’m okay with that. It doesn’t stress me out. But there is an example of where I’m not choosing simplicity. I’m choosing a lot of books.

And when we hear people talk about simplicity, which by the way I wanna say is usually ultra wealthy people with no kids or one or two kids. Just notice that. Just notice the people who are telling you how to live, ask yourself like, “Oh, what is their life like? How are they able to choose that?”

And I’m not putting that down. I’m just saying look at the cards people have. Okay? We all have different cards. And like one of the cards that I have is that my husband’s home all the time, and that enables us to do things that a lot of other families can’t do.

But one of the cards I have is no family help, either financially or with time. Like, they don’t live near us. They don’t help us in any of those ways that financially stable grandparents can. Okay? And that’s just, it’s neither good nor bad, it’s just those are my cards. So as you hear me talk about my life, think about that.

Think about the resources that we have, and there are some that we have that are amazing, and then there are some that we lack. And then from those resources, I’m gonna choose to have a calm life.

I mean, I keep calling everything that we do in our business calm, because that’s how I wanna show up. I wanna show up calmly in the middle of regular and real life, and I wanna teach all of you guys to do the same. I want you to know that it’s possible.

So everybody’s done with school now. Woo-hoo. We kind of stair-stepped it down. The kids wrapped up classes at different times, so it just, it felt like not a clean transition to the summer. But there was a Monday when was it this Monday? Oh my goodness, you guys, it was this Monday that I took the boys to Goodwill, which was on the calendar.

I told the boys I would take them to Goodwill one, one time each month for June, July, and August, and then I was gonna take the girls separately. If you’re on my email list, I sent out an email talking about this, and I put pictures of what we bought, which was really fun.

So it was the boys’ turn. I take them, and I know that when I take the boys to Goodwill, it’s gonna be a hot mess, 100%. I am fully prepared for a boy fighting in the car, full-on tears potentially from my six-year-old when I say, “No, you can’t roll down the window.”

Okay? He’s in that phase right now where we’re getting, like, big crocodile tears. I don’t know if you remember last year, it was Blaze. Last year it was Blaze, and now Blaze is a year older and it’s Peter. Peter is crocodile tears over just a lot of random things, right? Which is fine. It’s a normal developmental stage at this age.

But I know that is a possibility when I say, “We’re getting ready to go.” And then there’s the negotiations that happen over the things that they want, and sometimes they wanna stay for a long time. Sometimes they don’t wanna stay. I wanna stay longer, and they are annoyed when they’re like, “No, we, we picked our thing and we wanna go,” but I wanna stay and browse a little bit longer, so that’s always on the table. Those are the big things.

So I know all of this. I do not think that we are going to skip to the car, skip through Goodwill, be all smiles, no challenges, and then come home. I don’t expect that at all. But I like this tradition maybe, if I guess if you call it that, or this hobby that we have where I love taking the kids to Goodwill. It’s so fun. I love thrifting things.

I kinda feel like all toys end up in the trash anyway. Most toys. 90% of the toys that Americans buy will end up in a landfill at some point, which is horribly sad. I’m very sad about that, but it is true. Right? Even if you give it to someone else, and we like to do that, and even if you buy it used, we like to do that too, it’s still end game is it’s in the ground. All Fisher-Price toys, end game, in the ground.

So knowing that, I do like thrifting toys so that we’re not buying new toys. So whatever I buy them, I’m like, “Maybe it might last the summer. Maybe.” That’s how I think about it. I’m not looking for heirloom quality things. I’m just looking to be the next step of this thing’s life where it lives in our house for a little while.

So we go, and we actually found some really fun things. Blaze, though, chose. It looked like a Nerf gun. I don’t know. He held it up. It looked like a Nerf gun. I went, “Yeah, you can get that.” It was fine. Peter got this really cute plastic putt-putt golf thing. And then Forest, Forest, bless that child. He wanted. I think they’re called CamelPaks, where it’s like a backpack, but you put water in it.

And my mind is like, “This is probably gonna go poorly. This, how do you even clean that? They’re gonna fight over it. He’s gonna use it to squirt water.” I don’t even know if you can, but if you could, he would. So that’s the whole thing. But I think, “Sure, let’s roll the dice. Let’s see what happens, okay?”

But again, this is how I’m thinking about things. I’m not thinking, “Oh, this will be pleasant.” It’s just not the thought that I have, so when it goes poorly, I’m not surprised, and this is how I don’t lose my mind, you guys. I’m just kind of weighing the risks of things, and maybe it’s not weighing the risk. Maybe it’s weighing the risk against the sparkles, right?

So I think he could really like this. It could be fun. He could use it. He really likes being in the forest and playing outside and camping. He does actually a lot of outdoor physical things, so I’m weighing the chance that it ends up being really cool and he likes it a lot with all those other things I mentioned that could go wrong.

So we also found an unopened Spirograph kit. That was pretty cool. Although, also I fully know that the girls are gonna get that Spirograph and then be like, “The boys are not allowed to use it.” That’s how they, that’s how one of them talks. “No, Mom, the boys are not allowed to use this. You know that they won’t use it the right way, and they will break it, and they will lose the pieces.”

Which I always think is hilarious because my girls break things and lose pieces, too. But they just act like it’s only the boys. So I get it knowing it’s going to create some drama in my house. But again, I’m hoping that the fun that we get out of Spirographing is outweighs the chirping of the children.

We also got some cool puzzles and then we got Rack-O Jr., which I had never played. If you’ve played Rack-O, it’s this game where you organize cards by number. I really like that game, and so I thought, “I bet I will genuinely like Rack-O Jr.” And I do. And not only do I really like it has three levels, and you can play at different levels at the same time.

So little Peter can play at level one, Blaze can play at level two, and Forest and I play at level three. So if you’re looking for a board game, highly recommend Rack-O Jr. I’ll put a link in the show notes. We just picked it up at Goodwill, but all the pieces were there. It was amazing, and I really like it. We’ve been playing it and enjoying it. It doesn’t make me wanna claw my eyes out.

I will still play some board games with them that make me wanna claw my eyes out, but this is not one of them. I genuinely enjoy it. Will they lose the cards by the end of the summer? 100%. Yes, they will. They will lose them.

And it’ll be like one day when I’m tired, because it’s upstairs right now. I’ll be tired, and I don’t wanna deal with them, and they’ll say, “Mom, can we take Rack-O downstairs?” And I’ll say, “Fine,” not thinking about it clearly. Then it will be consumed by the basement of darkness, and the cards will just disappear. That will happen. I know this about myself, and it’s not ideal, but I’m okay with it.

And I want to pause here and just show you how I’m thinking about my life and myself. Because when I see the truth of how we live and the truth of living with children, which I like to call tiny dysregulated beings, okay?

I don’t have to get angry, and I don’t have to feel shame, and I don’t have to feel like a bad mom. We’re doing Good Mom Summer in catholicmom.com. It’s been amazing. It’s so powerful just watching moms have this light bulb moment of how they’re living motherhood and telling themselves that they’re bad moms while they’re doing it. It’s amazing.

I mean, it’s terrible that we’re doing that, but it’s amazing for us to have awareness about this and to change how we think about it. And so I could think I’m a bad mom because my kids fuss in the car or fuss in the store. They didn’t, by the way, in this trip. They did not fuss in the car or the store, which was amazing.

But I could think that about being tired one day and giving them a board game and it going downstairs and then losing the pieces, and I could just think, “Oh, that was totally my fault, and I should train them better, and I should be more on top of it,” or whatever. But I really just don’t. I just don’t do that.

I just can’t, I choose not to hold that bar for a lot of things, where I just think I’m a good mom because I take them to Goodwill and we smile and we laugh, and we find some fun things, and we use them for a summer, and then a lot of them get consumed. And I just think all of that’s okay.

Now, you get to have your own thresholds for purchasing things or organization. It’s not really about those activities. It’s that I’m intentionally living my motherhood and being nice to myself while I’m doing it, and I’m okay with feeling annoyance and frustration in my body. So I’m not saying that I don’t never feel those feelings. I feel those feelings every day.

I then don’t tell myself, though, that something’s wrong with the kids, with me, with our life. I just don’t take it to that place, and that’s why my thermometer doesn’t get to the top and blow out. Because if you just allow yourself to experience the frustration, I’ll just pick the girls in this paragraph. That’s annoying to me that they do that.

I’m like, “Girls, can’t you see how ridiculous you’re being? And let me go look at your room and see how you take care of things.” Like, this is what I’m thinking in my mind, and I could be upset about it, but I just don’t. I’m like, yeah, that’s how children are. They don’t see things clearly, and they mostly see themselves and what they want.

And I totally understand what they mean. It would be great if they never had to share anything with the boys. I get why they want that. I’m not upset that they want that. That to me seems like a natural inclination. But then it is my job to take our natural inclinations, some of which are not holy. And to reform them into girls who are kind and generous. Okay.

Oh, real quick circle back to the gun that Blaze bought. It was a gel bead gun, which I didn’t know what that was, and then when they discovered that it was a gel bead gun and actually came with the gel beads, which look like really tiny, tiny little plastic beads, but then apparently you put them in water and they expand.

And then my husband was like, he acted like it was a real gun, the level of safety requirements that he then wanted the boys to have around this thing, which again, looks like a Nerf gun, like it just looks like a toy.

So they haven’t even gotten to use it. There was a lot of strong feelings about that, and I said, “Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize what this was. I’m gonna back your dad up on this. You know, he’s gonna decide what the rules are.”

I think in the end we decided we would let them put up a target and wear safety glasses and shoot a target. I don’t know, he just seemed to think that the gel beads hurt a lot more than Nerf guns, to which I am like, “Then why are we selling this, like at a regular store?” Anyway, it doesn’t matter. So there were some thoughts and feelings about that.

Okay, next thing. I did the Summer of Kindness family meeting with my kids. So was it last episode? I think it was two episodes ago. I talked about how I wanted to have a Summer of Kindness with my kids, and I did a bunch of research, and I put together this family script, and there were eight different skills.

Like one of them, I would say catchphrases. Like one of them is right info, wrong tone, where you’re sharing something with someone and you’re correct, but you did it in a sharp or negative tone, and to soften your tone. So that’s just one example. And the meeting went really well, and it’s totally been working, you guys.

And the other day we were praying, and my six-year-old, sometimes at the end we say, “Hey, what do you wanna pray for?” And they often pray for someone who’s sick or hurt or pregnant or just people that they know that are kind of on their hearts, they’ll pray for them. But little Peter went, “I’m praying for the summer of kindness.” And I just about cried.

Now, there’s been still lots of sharpness, but there’s actually been more kindness than there was. Like I can tell you, I see a marked difference, and I have been kind of hamming up the idea of catching each other being kind, and I’m seeing that, too, where they will turn to each other and say, “Oh, that was really kind.”

And then of course I catch them doing that. “Oh, that’s amazing that you noticed that.” So I will link that up, too, because after I made it, I thought, “Oh, everyone should just have this for free.” So you can just download the thing I put together. This is not like a product that Sterling made. I wanna be clear about that. I just did the research on, I looked up what Dr. Becky said and Dr. Meg Meeker.

And Gottman Institute, who does a lot of marriage things. But I kind of wanted to back into, like, what are the skills that make a successful marriage, and like can we begin training that into children now? Anyway, so you can see that. It’s really great.

And so that’s what we’re doing all summer. I will report back probably like halfway through the summer and then at the end telling you how I feel like we’ve done. But we’re, you know, almost a week in, and I’ve been really pleased with how it’s going.

So then my ops person says, “Sterling, since you made that, it would be really great if you also made emotional regulation stories for each of those skills,” which again, I was not planning on doing. This was just something I was gonna do for my kids.

So I’ve been making these Calm Catholic Kid stories. If you guys don’t know what I’m talking about, go to calmcatholickids.com. They are adorable. So there’s these animals, and they basically, each story is around a skill, and either the mom or this wise owl teaches the kids these skills.

So I went ahead and I wrote and recorded eight new stories around these skills, and we’re gonna give those to everyone for free. So at least for the summer, I think for three months we’re just gonna make them free, and then we might make them a collection that you can buy starting in September.

But for the summer, I just thought, “I want every single Catholic family to be doing this Summer of Kindness thing, and then here are these stories that they can listen to.” The stories are pitched for, like, three to seven-year-olds, but I am really surprised at how my nine-year-old really wants to listen to them, and my 11-year-old gets sucked into them.

My 11-year-old is never choosing to do it on her own, but when someone else plays it, she ends up hanging around listening to them. So I think that will come next week. I recorded them, but my team has to do a couple things to make them ready for you guys, so I think that’s gonna come next week, but they are done.

So that’s been really fun. My boys have been listening to those stories, and I have… Which, first of all, surprised me, because I’m their mom. So even though I knew that your kids would love them, I did not actually think that my kids would love them. I thought that they would be kind of annoyed that it was me. Turns out that’s not the case, and they enjoy them, and they listen to them, and I’m hearing them talk about the catchphrases.

You know, of course, Dominic the dragon is loosely modeled on my nine-year-old, and so Dominic the dragon gets really angry, and then he breathes his fire out, and his catchphrase, everybody has a catchphrase, is to cool your fire. Cool your fire. And so he’s been saying that, which is really cute.

And Forest asked me, he said, “Oh, will you make one of these for me?” And I said, “Yeah, but it has to be around something that’s kind of challenging,” and I just let him think about it, and he wanted an elk. That was very important. He said, “Mom, I want an elk.” I said, “Okay.” And I said, “What is this elk struggling with?”

And he chose struggling to read, and I was really impressed that he had the self-awareness to pick that. And so Hubert, patron saint of hunters, Hubert the elk, is gonna struggle to read, so I’ll make a story about that at some point.

But he totally got the point of them, and that we can learn these skills, and I just think if we can teach these kids emotional regulation skills over and over and over again, by the way, from the time they’re three to 18, this is not a one-time thing or a while they’re little. Like, we’re gonna have to keep reinforcing emotional regulation skills.

But I just think it’s how you end up living a virtuous life, where you’re not at the mercy of everything that’s happening to you, where life can happen but you’re aware that you get to control the experience that’s happening in your mind and in your body.

So yeah, you can be frustrated about something. Benedict the bear is gonna be too hot in one of the upcoming stories. He’s too hot, and then he snaps at his cousin maybe? I forget who the other person is. And that’s a skill that we’re all experiencing right now, which is when we are hot and uncomfortable, we get a little short-tempered.

But it’s totally a choice, because you could just tell yourself in your mind, “Woo, we are hot right now, and that makes me feel frustrated, but I’m still gonna choose kindness. I’m gonna choose to speak kindly.” This is my own coaching because I’m a redhead and I really do not like being hot, so I really have to work hard at this. But I know that I want to, and then I do, and then I’m not snappy.

So the other big thing that’s happening in our family right now is that we are preparing for this, um, pilgrimage to France, and it’s not too late to sign up. We’ve opened up the age. We thought it was gonna be, like, teens, but really now we have several nine-year-olds and 10-year-olds going.

So if you are not going just because of the age but you really wanna go, please just reach out to me. I will get you the details. I believe everything’s at. Let me just check. CatholicMomcom.com/France. I’ll put it in the show notes.

But it’s just an amazing trip where you’re gonna be in these perfect places on the feast days. It’s just going to be so powerful. I mean, it feels like a once in a lifetime, like, the magic of these people coming together, Father Antoine, who’s French, Dr. Peter Howard, who’s just an expert in Marian apparitions. Like, it’s just gonna be so amazing.

And again, some of you have little kids. It is not your time. But some of you, so many of you have reached out to me and been like, “Oh, I’m thinking about it.” If that’s you, I just really want you to take it to the Lord. I just don’t think the Lord puts things like this on our hearts and bugs us about it if it’s not meant for us.

But we’re getting ready for France, and then my friend, I didn’t know this was happening, but my friend is teaching French over the summer. So I signed Rosemary up for her class, and I will put a link in the show notes to this class. She’s teaching, I think, just girls French over the summer, a 10-week course. It starts next week, and she gave me a coupon code.

So I’m not making any money off of this. It’s not a business thing. But I really love her. I really respect her. She’s a very amazing Catholic mom. I think her degree, her college degree, maybe her master’s degree is in French.

Anyway, she’s just great. And so Rosemary’s taking this class, and if you have a teenage daughter, whether she wants to go to France or not, if she wants to learn French, she can do that over the summer.

And I’m teaching in Catholic finishing school, and I kicked off that class this week too about teaching teenage girls how to learn new things. And it was so adorable. It was all these, you know, 13 to 19-year-old girls. They were so quiet. Nobody raised their hand. They just watched me, and they were smiling. I could tell they really enjoyed the class, but they were all so quiet.

And I’m gonna have to rethink my strategy because when I am in a room full of moms, enough of them will raise their hand and talk to me that the whole group benefits from that, and I’m not sure that the girls are gonna do that.

But I was teaching them how we learn new things and how you get your brain on board with doing that because, of course, it’s exciting to think about learning a new thing, but then when it comes to it, your brain will give you lots of reasons why you’re too busy and why you can’t or why you’re confused about how to start.

And so that’s what I’m teaching these girls. They’re all gonna learn something new or practice something new in a big way over the summer. So I kicked that off, and you know, I was doing this because I wanted my two girls to learn this skill, but I knew that they wouldn’t learn it from me.

So my girls were there, and kids are so funny. So my oldest, when I was done, I said, “Oh, how’d it go?” She was like, “I mean, it wasn’t anything I hadn’t heard before.” This is my melancholy child, and I love her so much. And then two hours later, she made the most amazing plan for what she wanted to learn and mapped it out for the summer, which she has never done.

And I wanted to rub it in her face so badly, and I did not. You guys would be proud of me. I just went, “Oh, good job.” But that child just. It’s very hard for her to think that I’m good at my job, which I think might just be all kids and their parents. And but I just watched as she really enjoyed that class and did exactly what I wanted the kids to do out of coming of that class. So that was really great.

So we’re having this, like, French-themed summer in the background, right? With the language and preparing for this trip, and I’ve never been to Europe, so I don’t know. I feel anxious about that, just what are all the things, and checking all the boxes. I don’t feel upset or scared, but just maybe focused is the word, where like, “Okay, I gotta go figure that out.”

So the last thing that’s happening right now in our family is we just have a couple schooling choices that are up in the air, and I think all of them are fine. So I am not stressed about what the kids will end up doing for school next year, but what I don’t like are there are a couple time-sensitive decisions that I need to make right now, and I’m feeling, like, pressure around those.

And, you know, the feelings that we have come from the thoughts that we’re having. So I’m not having the thought, “I need to pick the right one,” because I already know any of them could be made right. Does that make sense? Like, we could pick any of the choices, and they will be fine for the kids, and they will learn some things. So I don’t feel like there’s a right choice.

But the financial equation swings pretty differently either way. So we right now get $1,700 from Idaho State to homeschool our kids, to use for homeschooling materials, and we use them to buy ski passes, music lessons, and then I often buy presents with that money, like board games or Legos.

So it all has to be educational in some way, but I use that money for those things. And then some actual curriculum, but we’ve been homeschooling for a long time, so you don’t have to keep buying all the same things every year. We have kind of a bank of homeschooling things. But I do often use it for puzzles and board games and books and things like that.

Then there’s this other program that gives you $5,000, but you have to use it for English, math, science, history only, and it’s really mostly designed f- to hire tutors or to send your kids to private school.

And if we chose that, then in a way we would lose the money, the $1,700 for the ski passes and the board games, because we won’t be able to use the $5,000 on that, which sounds like a lot more money, but we could only use it for tutoring, and we haven’t actually been paying for that. We don’t have any, like, an English tutor or math tutor that comes to the house.

But my community has been talking about, hey, if we all choose that option, we could basically get together and create, like, a micro school, like a hybrid school where we bring in some teachers, we pay them, and they school all the kids, you know, one or two days a week somewhere, which sounds so lovely, but the level of organization that will require is actually a lot.

So I keep going, “Who’s gonna do that? Who’s gonna organize that?” Knowing that sometimes it ends up being me. And so that’s where I feel really sticky in my brain around this decision. I know we could go either way and it would be fine, but I don’t see it clearly. I don’t see very clearly which way to go, and I have to decide soon.

So I’ve been praying about it. My husband also just feels all these things that I just said, like, we kind of see the pros and cons of both ways, and we know that we don’t have a very clear option on the $5,000 tutor side. So it sounds great, but if it’s not a real option, then it isn’t great, actually. And we will have to decide before we know if we can pull that together.

Now, in the worst-case scenario, let’s say come the fall, I don’t find any tutors, you can just give that money back. There’s no consequence. Like, if I’ll just leave it in my account. We won’t spend it, and if we don’t spend it, we can just give it back. That’s pretty straightforward.

So I’m not worried that anything very bad is going to happen. I just don’t see this decision clearly, and I consider myself a person who makes decisions pretty well and quickly. I don’t like to leave decisions on an open loop. That’s really draining. If you guys leave a bunch of decisions open, it just weighs on you.

So I really like to close the loop, is how I say it. Like, I really wanna close the loop on that, and I say that to my husband and my kids and my friends. Another example was my daughter outgrew her bathing suit, and she wanted a bathing suit, and she kept asking me, and finally I said, “Oh, let’s put it on the calendar. I wanna close that loop. Like, I wanna stop thinking about it and talking about it. I just wanna pick one.”

I will link that, by the way, in the show notes, too. We found a really cute modest bathing suit. She has redhead skin like me, and so she wanted a long-sleeve bathing suit that covered her arms because she burns. But it’s like a dress. It’s super cute. So let me make a note of that dress. I’ll put that link there too. Oh, and then Rocco. That was the other thing. Rocco Junior.

Okay. There will be a lot of links because there’s a lot going on, but I hope you can see that in all of these things that are going on, I’m just handling it. I love that thought. I’m just handling it. I’m handling Summer, I’m handling six kids, I’m handling the logistics for them.

That, I think, is the thing that changes when you move from having lots of little kids to middles, is what I’ll say. The crying and the spilled water is less, but the logistics become more, and I don’t think it’s better or worse. I think that it feels like a lot. And then you get to choose how you wanna think about being a woman that manages a lot.

And I just wanna think, “I’m handling it. I’m doing a good job. I’m a good mom.” But it is not my summer schedule or my, like, well-behaved kids or, I don’t know, the things that we have planned that make me feel good in my body, because it’s chaos over here.

And kids are, bless them, frustrating. Their behavior is that of children and not adults, and it is frustrating to adults. I was doing a puzzle, and one of my kids walked over and just started, like, I don’t know, moving his body or something, and then his jacket, like, swept a bunch of pieces onto the floor.

And it was so annoying. I was just like, “Why? Why are you standing here?” I didn’t say any of this, but in my mind, I’m like, “Why are you standing here? Why? And why didn’t you notice your jacket? And why are those pieces on the floor now?” Like, all of that happened very quickly in my body. But I know he’s just a child, and it’s fine.

So I take a deep breath. Breathing is boring, but it’s very powerful. And I just went, “Oh, I noticed that those pieces fell on the floor. Can you grab them for me?” He was happy to do it. And then I said, “Could you take two steps back? I’d love to hear what you have to say, but I’d like you not to be next to this puzzle table.” That’s it.

So I just want everyone to know that I think motherhood just comes with this level of, like, annoyance or frustration or inefficiency. The inefficiency of children is, can be maddening, and I experience that in my body, and then I use my brain to talk to myself, to say, “Hey, I love you, and it’s gonna be okay, and this is not a problem.”

And I have a lot of things going on in my life right now. Some things feel uncertain and wobbly. Some things feel like I have a good plan, but I fully expect it not to go to plan, because when humans are involved, that is the case.

And there’s some things to look forward to. There’s some things I’m really struggling with my food right now. That was the other thing I wanted to mention. I’ve just been so great at that in the past, and recently I’ve just been struggling with not making a meal plan, not sticking to my meal plan, and overeating.

And I’m watching myself. I have some guesses for why that is, but I’m just struggling with that, and I’m trying to figure that out. And I wanted to share that too, because I feel like I actually feel really on top of a lot of things, but not that right now. And I know exactly what to do, so I’m not confused about that.

But I don’t know. That’s just like, of the plates that I’m managing, that’s one of the ones where I’m like, “Okay, I wanna figure that out,” ’cause I’m not managing that as well as I’d like. But given all of those things that I just said, I would say I’m gonna have a good summer. I’m gonna love me and be kind to me over the summer.

I’m gonna tell myself that I’m a good mom, and I’m gonna look for evidence that’s true. I’m gonna enjoy these kids. The kids are gonna drive me bananas also. I’m not gonna yell at them We’re gonna be bad at trying to be kind, and then sometimes we’ll get it right, and I’m gonna point that out to everyone

And I just think this is the beauty and the messiness of human life. And if we expected the beauty and the messiness the way that it is, I think. I think we would just enjoy our days so much more because we wouldn’t be telling ourselves that anything had gone wrong. We wouldn’t be in this weird resistance where we think like, “It shouldn’t be like this.” I’m like, “Of course it’s like this.”

And I want you to hear how, I don’t know, just like chill I am. And I’m very emotional, but I just manage those emotions so that my actions look calm. Do you see the difference? So I do feel like a lot of emotion in my body, but I listen to it and I pay attention to it, and then I talk to it. I like to talk to my brain like, “Ooh, okay. I see that we’re feeling a lot right now, but I think it’s gonna be okay. What do you need? I love you.”

And then I just take action from being grounded and not feeling out of control. All right. This was a long one today, but I just wanted to tell you everything specifically so you could just kind of see inside the brain of a mom that is doing a lot.

Like, I’ve got a lot going on, and I bet you do, too. And life doesn’t feel simple. But I don’t need it to feel simple. The way that I manage my thinking is simple, and that’s why I feel okay in my body, right? Like I feel the feelings come up and the process for managing my uncomfortable emotions is simple.

Like I pay attention to them, I breathe, I calm down, I check in like, “Is that even true? Do we wanna keep thinking this?” And I have lots of episodes on managing your thinking, if you wanna go listen to those. But to me, that’s the simple part is like, “Oh, I know how to handle this.”

And then there’s just a beautiful simplicity in that. And I think that that’s what we’re all really longing for. I think we want to have a very full life with a lot going on. I think most of us, at the end of the day, want to do most of the things that we’re doing. We just wanna do it from a place of peace.

All right, my friends. I love you. I’m praying for you. Please pray for me. Thank you so much for listening, and have a blessed day.