Savoring the Sacred: Motherhood Through Every Season

In this deeply nourishing episode, I have a conversation with soul coach and mother of seven, Jenny Baer, to talk about the sacred, messy, and magical journey of motherhood. From toddlers to teenagers to adult children, Jenny shares the emotional shifts, spiritual insights, and practical tools that have helped her mother with more love and less regret.

What We Cover:

• How to move from clinging to savoring each season of motherhood
• Letting go of control and embracing trust in God and your children
• Raising children with purpose — not perfection
• Homeschooling, emotional resilience, and trusting your intuition
• Why traditions matter more than we think (and which ones to keep)
• The power of moms "moming" each other

Favorite Moments:

• Jenny’s analogy of birthing adult children — raw, real, and tear-worthy
• A touching story about how a lullaby she sang came back to her son in bootcamp
• Real talk about training vs. indoctrination
• Permission to nap (and why going horizontal might just save your day)

Connect with Jenny:

Follow her on Facebook: http://www.Facebook.com/jennybaercoach

Follow her on Instagram: http://instagram.com/glow.with.Jenny.baer

• 00:00 – Meet Jenny Baer: soul coach & mom of 7
• 03:08 – Identity loss & early motherhood
• 05:45 – Clinging vs. savoring
• 08:15 – Letting God lead in parenting
• 11:20 – Releasing control = more growth
• 14:55 – From mother to mentor
• 17:05 – Body cues: Am I holding on too tight?
• 20:20 – Why moms need support & rest
• 25:35 – Human design & body awareness
• 28:40 – Hormones & selective giving
• 30:50 – Being the mom you wish you had
• 34:40 – Sacred family traditions
• 38:10 – Healing through generational rituals
• 40:45 – Indoctrination vs. training
• 44:30 – A lullaby that echoed from bootcamp
• 47:25 – Media, masculinity & motherhood
• 51:00 – Parenting in evolving phases
• 53:30 – Savoring the small moments
• 56:45 – Final thoughts: Imperfect action & love

Transcript

Today is Jenny Bear. I am really excited to have Jenny. Her bio is amazing. She is a sole coach, meaning her deepest desire is to coach people and help them heal at the soul level, not just intellectual, physical, or emotional level. Jenny's journey began in 2008 after dealing with significant early adult onset depression. As a 26-year-old mother of three children under three years old, she's been in the trenches, Jenny's mind and body were falling apart. She decided to do something about it by changing her diet, adopting essential oils, fostering emotional healing, and ultimately embarking on her life's work of coaching other women through the process. Today, she is the mother of seven children, ranging in age from eight to adult. Jenny combines the modalities of supplements It's energy profiling, strengths coaching, human design, and her empathetic and intuitive gifts to help women learn and refine their own soul healing process by adopting a lifestyle that supports their healing process and begin to see their life mission and unique value. Wow. So glad you're here.

Thanks, Jackie. It's so fun to be here with you.

I love her. Today, our topic is about loving the process success of being a mom. I think ultimately, that's what it comes down to. Tell us about your moming experience.

Well, there's a lot of things that happen when you first become a mom. You lose your identity. You lose your sense of self because now you're suddenly in this world where you've never been there before. You're taking care of another being, and it just rocks your world, and you have a hard time finding your footing. But as you move along and you're using all these experiences and you're tapping into other mothers in this beautiful culture around you, you really start getting into your own groove and then pulling back in your own experiences. Your friends change a little bit, but women around you are always an essential part of staying vibrant in motherhood, having friends that you can talk to, go on walks with, mommy groups. They were my saving grace for a really, really long time. But what I really love, I'm totally open to diving into further, is how to fully live out each moment in your motherhood so that we can joyfully move to next phases and not be really wishing and regretting or wanting more from what used to be. When you're looking at those pictures, you look at them with fondness instead of tintes of regret.

Yeah, that's so important because it is hard to not miss the phases or look at them. I've seen memes or or social media posts that they're like, You'll never know when it's your last time doing this thing with your child. They're just so sad. It's like, Yeah, but... And that creates this feeling, not a joyful feeling. I came across an article, actually, a friend sent it to me from Ingrid Fatell Lee called Are You Clinging or Savoring? I loved it because it speaks to this so beautifully. But tell us your experiences about that and what you've done for yourself to be able to not regret, but appreciate, I guess?

Well, first, you have to have a lot of forgiveness in the process because you're going to get regret regardless. I think you're always going to say, I wish I had done blank better. But I have full faith that as a mom, I'm partnered with God on the raising of these children. My husband is there to protect and provide and partner with me, but his focus is a little bit more than an arm's length away from this actual mothering space, right? God's there with us, and he's always going to supplement and augment our spaces. And we have millions of mother moments, and sometimes we don't know which moment our kids will need to draw on when they're away from us, whether it's a temporary away from us or they're adults and they're leaving, and we just hope that they can figure it out now with whatever we've taught them. I have a couple of things that have been resources to me, and then I can share some examples. So I've really loved the Love and Logic book where you're giving your kids choices. It really helps when they're three years old and they want to do their own thing and you're like, it's this or this, and you give them two very good options.

They can choose one of those options versus my will versus your will. So many times it was letting my youngest children, because I didn't do this with my oldest, I was still dressing dolls at that point. You're going to wear this outfit because it's so cute. With your My youngest kids, five, six, and seven, you're like, Just get clothes on. I'm happy. That's all it takes. And so I have some younger children that will wear the most interesting combinations. But as I simply celebrate the combination situations, they get more and more refined. And so I actually have my youngest eight-year-old, and she has this fabulous sense of style. She's always putting together the cuteest outfits that I would have never come up with the combos because she learned to think creatively outside the box because I was withdrawing the control. So So that's one of the first things as a mom. We have one child, we can control their life. Two children, we can still control. Three children, suddenly you're like, I have no control. If you lean towards depression, anxiety like I did, you get cranky about it. And you're not a happy mom because you're trying to control and handle, and it stresses you out, stresses your muscles.

And when you start to go, Okay, never mind. I just got to let go and let God. It feels better. One of those examples is, I didn't put on my bio, but I homeschool. And people just like, their eyes roll back in their head. You homeschool, you run businesses, and you have seven kids. Oh, my gosh. Are you perfect? You're far from it. But what I have done is I've let God. So there were so There were so many times where God said, in 2020, he said, You got to get back to homeschooling. And I was like, Been there, done that. I'm on the public school train, and I really like it. Well, he says, Well, I can figure that out for you. And he, COVID happened. And I was like, Wait, now I have to do it. This This is real fun. There were a couple of times where I had some kids that were just really tough when it came to staying on task and not scrolling away and pretending that they were doing schoolwork, but they really weren't. And I would just get so frustrated. And there was one day I got really frustrated at the child.

And then in my prayers, I was frustrated with God. And he whisper, You were never meant to be in charge. You were only meant to be my hands. And I totally repented. I'm so sorry I took the reins. Here they are. I will simply be loving them. And I handed them back. And there were times I would homeschool and I would watch my youngest children just play or one child totally below and never do any schoolwork through her middle school years. And I just kept going, knock, knock, knock. Hey, God, I don't like this. Knock, knock, knock. They're not getting anything done. Knock, knock, knock. There's no schoolwork happening. I don't think they're learning anything. He just kept whispering to me, I've got this. Be quiet and know that I am God. I've got this. And I had to simply just relent. Okay, somehow you've got this. And then I learned a year later that everything that my littlest kids were doing was right in line with Thomas Jefferson education, just experiential learning. And they came out of it totally ready for the books when they were ready for the Books. They learned. They weren't learning the way I wanted them to learn, the control of me.

But they learned. So when you live fully every stage with the lessons you need to learn in each stage of a child's life, you can really release and go, That was amazing. I am so glad we can move on to the next stage. You're happy to let go of the crib. You're happy to give away the stroller. I love giving away my items rather than selling them because I'm just gifting my memories to the next person where they can make their own memories. But when you're getting ready to have adult kids leave, it is the most fascinating process. I have put together this analogy where when you're giving birth to a child, you have to first incubate for nine months. You're just gestating and you're getting ready, and then you birth. The birth is a big event, and then you can just wrap that baby in all that mothering love. I loved it. I loved having my newborns just cuddled into my chest. I just I wanted to lay with them all day long. And then I had all the sheds like, I got to get up and actually feed myself or do the dishes.

It's a threat. But when you're going into the adult years, that gestation period is a long time. It's called the adolescent years. And you just state and you nourish, and they push against your organs and it hurts. And you're like, I can't wait till you get out. And then there's that big moment where you birth them and they leave. And it rocks your soul because you're like, Wait, I can't wrap you up in my energy of love anymore. I actually have to just leave my arms and hands open and just say, Great, you're on your own. It's been so fun for me to be a coach, and my clientele just seems to get younger and younger sometimes. I mean, I've coached 18 to 84. It's been so fun to coach moms of all ages. But because I've had a significant amount of young adults, when my kids call home, I get to be coach mom. I get to be fully in my element of my best self for them because they're not in my house where I'm getting after them about getting their tours done. I'm just simply that mentor person for them. It has just been such a great experience.

I love, love, love adult kids. And I'm going to be an anomaly who says that because so many people are like, I love kids. When you give birth, everyone's there to give you advice. When you birth an adult child, everyone gives you a pat on the shoulder and says, Good luck.

That's interesting. Recognizing each of those stages and each of the changing to the next season, as it were, how do you know if you're holding on too tight? And how do you change that if you recognize that you are into making it more joyful and allowing and letting go of that control?

For me, I notice it in my body. It's a tightness of muscles. I also notice it in my mind as my way. I want it done this way. That's how I know I'm holding on too tight, that my opinion is stronger. And I've actually gone to God and said, I'm Sorry for being a pill. So every time I feel one of those two sensations, I'm like, oh, I need to repent for being a pill. And then I just step back and go, whatever works out is going to be great. I don't have to have my opinion heard. It's just me, mom. I'm iterating all of this.

Sorry. That makes a lot of sense. I think that we do. We feel it in our bodies. But I've also noticed that we sometimes just ignore that, especially with our bodies. We don't always, as moms, pay attention to those things. We blow it off, whether it's physical pain or emotional things, we also just shove down, push away, because we don't have time to deal with that stuff, or that's what we think, right? It's like, Okay, we'll deal with it later. I don't want to feel this because it feels negative. And so, yeah, that makes sense to me that we would feel that in our bodies. But then being able to do something about that where it's like, Okay, I surrender. That's the word that I'm learning lately, surrender.

I love that. Love, love that. The full on surrender. Something to awake into every one of us that I've just done with a lot of clients is, where are you Are you feeling this in your body? Where is that body sensation? And when you start going, Oh, yeah, I actually feel it in my body, it can be resolved. You can start getting, Yeah, this came from this moment, but does it trace back to other moments where you have felt this? And can we unravel that thread of stress in that one section? Then as a mom, we give so much in just selflessness to our families and everyone around us in those years, in those reproductive years. We just give Give, give, give, give. And we need someone to stop and go, Hey, what about you? We can't pour from an empty cup. Stop and do what you need to do for you. So right now, with kids, eight to adult, I had to stop and go, I need friends. It's been a minute where I was in the trenches of teenagers, and I'm still in the trenches of teenagers, but, Gosh, I need to come up for air.

I have to make it a priority to come up for air. And I have to send invitations out to my friends who are also in the middle of it. Hey, we need a girls night. We need an adult game night. We need to go for a walk. We need to get together. Someone says, Well, let's go for a hike, but take our kids with us. And I'm like, That's fine. Whatever it is. We have to pull out some stops for release, but we also need to stop and go, Wait, what about us? What's fascinating is I'm noticing that it's okay to give yourself permission to stop and take a nap during the day. There's a lot of go, go women, influencer There are women out there, and they're like, Never go horizontal during the day. Once you're vertical, stay vertical. And that is terrible advice for someone like me who's like, No way. I can do better if I go horizontal, even if it's just for a minute, and I don't even close my eyes, and then I can get up and I can be my best self at the end of the day instead of powering through.

And that doesn't help anybody. It just makes life a little more crazy and adversarial when you're trying to power And you're just like, no, you're past your limits. So you have to start noticing that, noticing how it feels in your body. We got together over human design, and that was one of the first things where you start going, wait, what is this feeling in my body? And how am I feeling this? And how am I feeling how my birth chart aligns with what I feel in my body? And then start unlocking some of those doors and saying, oh, that's okay. This is a special gift of mine. It's not a quirk. And I can love it instead of hate it. So So when you start loving on yourself, it's better. You're giving, giving, giving in these stages, right? And then you start hitting paramenopause. And this is the stage where everyone is really putting tons of research in. And estrogen is dropping, and you're like, I'm tired of giving. And every little bit of incremental estrogen drop, you start going, I really don't care anymore. Take care of yourself. Make your own dinners. Go to the grocery store.

You can drive. I don't have to do this. But then we move into menopause. And then When that space, it's like, I'm done giving. I'm going to be more selective on the gift, but we're also wiser. And at that point, we're also realizing we got to be careful with our bodies because we gave so much that now we're filling the wear and tear because we didn't stop earlier. So for you to have this podcast that's like, Hey, Mom, stop earlier. Pay attention earlier. Are you paying attention to your daughters? Are you giving them a minute? Are you nurturing them through the process? I I've loved reading the mother-daughter connection from Dr. Kashia Northrup. There's just so much wisdom in there. She's like, there's so much healing when a mom shows up at a birth for her daughter, and then it can just reconnect any severed ties because there's love there. For me, my mom connection was when I gave birth to my first baby. It was really rough with drug interactions that put me into postpartum psychosis, and I could not get my baby to latch. And I had all the lactation consultants come in.

And ultimately, my mom goes, Well, I don't like their methods. I'm going to show you what I do. And she did, and it worked. And I was like, This is fantastic, right? Mother wisdom versus expert wisdom. It will always win because mom knows you better than the rest of them do. Even though the joy of watching them become adults is watching them become a new person with pieces of their old child self. But they become this new person you get to know all over again. Outside of the house.

Yeah. I love that you have that example for yourself and that you just shared that that was possible for other people, right? Because maybe other people haven't had that a mother in their lives, but knowing that it's possible for them to be that for their daughters. So it sounds like you personally are working on that with your kids, being that mom for them.

Yeah. We tiptoe a little around their teenagers a little bit. Teenagers require some tiptoeing. I recently attended my first birth for a friend, and I was so excited. And it was intense, right? It was an unmedicated birth. She got to the hospital. She's like, Just give me the epidural. I was like, That's fine. You didn't want it before, but you can have it now. But she gave birth so fast. I was right there next to her the whole time. The staff asked me if I was a doula, and I said, No, but I've studied a whole bunch. And I was just there, and it was so beautiful because I wanted it to be that mother figure that she had missed her whole life. Her mom is just homeless on streets of LA right now. And so I could be there with her with this baby being born and just set the tone, celebrate, call in the angels, her angels, to say, be around her, help her, let her feel that mother energy from prior ancestors to help her. And it was just so beautiful. And she came out of it, and she just was amazed at how strong she was.

Yeah. I love that so much because we can be that for each other. That is Beautiful. In our last episode, we talked about moms moming together, their kids. But I love this, moms moming each other. That is beautiful. Thank you for sharing. That's awesome. I love that. I love that so much. Okay, so here's something that I think being in the position that you are with kids at home and kids out of the home, you have a different perspective of what routines and traditions would you never let go of is so valuable that you have seen the benefits of it and would want that for your kids growing up still?

So first, I would say what holiday matters most to you and make that a sacred holiday. My youngest was born right before Christmas, and so she was our baby Jesus that year. Christmas has never been the same. I had a moment where my oldest wanted to go visit her boyfriend over Christmas, and I staunchly said, no, I wasn't being stubborn. I wasn't being controlling. I was just, no, that is not happening. And I realized at that time, I had never vocalized to my children this belief. I don't even know if I'd vocalize it in my own head, but I made sure Everybody in the family knew unless you are married, serving God or serving your country, you better be home for Christmas. Those are your only three outs. And so she realized that there was no fighting this. But I did tell her later. I was like, Thanksgiving is not as sacred to our family. It's a fun day, but because of all the diet changes I've done over the years to accommodate inflammation and mental health in our family, it's a day where we always have a progressive dinner, but it's not sacred. You can always be gone for Thanksgiving.

I'm okay with that. That was the give and take. That was this option is not available, but you can do this option. That was really fun and good. When People get pushed out of shape or they say their family's toxic. Those are the words of today. The words of 50 years ago was pride and anger that would divide families. And I saw that divide my extended family as I was born into it years later. And my mom was determined that she was going to maintain relationships with this other side of the family, albeit secretly. And she did. For years, we would attend this, and it's crazy, but we always go to the middle of the desert in Utah, where there's a pile of rocks. And my great aunt would go with her family. They sheep herders. They would always celebrate Easter in this one area where they would always come back later in the year with their sheep. They kept the tradition going with their family and their extended family as their family got bigger. They always invited my mom. My parents always So when I was little, I went. When I was little, I went.

Because of that connection, I go. I don't like camping, and I don't like dry camping in a desert. But I will go religiously every year to this thing because my kids are incredible good friends with their third cousins, and I'm good friends with my second cousins, because of this tradition that has gone year after year after year.

Traditions are about people and connections and relying on each other, being able to look forward to something that is consistent, and you're making memories together. It's not just, Hey, this is sacred to me, so you are going to be here. It's, No, we're creating those connections that are going to last lifetimes and will continue. It can be taken seriously because it's something that is so beautiful and useful. I have heard about, I think it was a military thing where they talked about when they joined this certain regimen or whatever, they told stories of the past, stories of the history and the origin of this of this troop or whatever. And those specific soldiers were very loyal to each other and to the country. And it came from the history, the stories that where they were told that connected them to each other and continuing those traditions. So I firmly believe that what you're talking about is true, that there is the people connection and how we nurture and love each other through traditions is so powerful that we should be intentional about doing those kinds of things.

There's another aspect of traditions that I've gotten very passionate about, and it may not be popular, but I'm going to do it anyway. And that is to be a staunch daughter of God following all of his teachings. And so it is interwoven in my homeschool. What I will do is I will make sure that they are drilled into their heads. Are you keeping the Ten Commandments of God. Are you loving your neighbor? There was this really great quote that I came across literally this morning, and it says, Our children take their flight into the future with our thrust and aim. And even as we anxiously watch that the arrows in flight know all the evils that can deflect its course after it has left our hand. Nevertheless, we take courage in remembering that the most important mortal factor in determining that arrow's destination will be the stability, strength, and unwavering certainty of the holder of the bow. That's us. Are we unwavering? And can they rely back on that after their arrow has been hit and suffered a little bit?

So I have a serious question here. What is the difference between training and indoctrination? And is the difference bad, good? I don't know. I'm just asking Because I'm curious your opinion on that.

Well, aside from looking it up in the dictionary and getting an actual thing, I'm just going to give you my opinion of what I think the definition is. So I would say indoctrination is putting a lot of principles into a child's psyche, and those principles can be good or they can be erroneous. And that is a parent's job to decide on that. Indoctrination happens everywhere. I worked at Disney as a college student, and I was fully indoctrinated in the Disney culture. My son's in the Marines right now. He is fully indoctrinated in things that you were saying, history of the Marines. So if there's a purpose for it, though, the purpose of that indoctrination is to save your life in times of war. The purpose of my indoctrination at Disney was to fully embody in my entire body and persona the costume of being on stage. And I was just working the front desk. But I needed to understand what part of the storybook I was playing. And so there's times that that's totally fine. What was the first part? Indoctrination versus Training.

It's like, how do we know that we're training them versus indoctrinating them? Is there a difference? And how do you know if it's good or not? Because I know that indoctrination has a bad rap, I think, is the reason why I asked the question. And so it's like, yeah, how do you know when you're not manipulating them in a negative way? Maybe that's more the question.

Yeah. Manipulation comes out of control. Love is not manipulating. Love can't. And so if you're genuinely loving your child, and like I said, I've moved into control mode, and then God has said no. And I'm, oh, sorry. Let me back up. I think training is the application of principles. And that's where it actually becomes real to them, and it becomes muscles and memories that are helpful to them. Training is taking them to church. Training is showing them how to behave at church. But goodness, I took my babies on every outing when I needed to go out. Like I said, I had three under three at the age of 26. I couldn't stay home all day. That wasn't good for my psyche. So So I trained my children to behave in public. My youngest three, I didn't train because I had babysitter's at home and I could go run to the errands by myself. And that didn't go so well. So they're six, seven, eight years old, and I'm like, You're coming with me, and I'm going to whip the stick a little. No, yes, do this, don't do that, because they just hadn't learned. So that's where you need a child to learn and to learn how to talk to adults.

When they were little, by the time I had my third baby, I realized kids were so smart. They needed to be treated as little adults. And then they learned the languaging. They learned big words because I spoke with big words. And it was just so delightful to adults to hear that. They're smart. They're smart, but so is every other child. You're just teaching them how much smartness is allowed around you. I think the training is part of it. There was a beautiful letter I got back from my son from boot camp, and he's missing home. I trained my children to have clean language as much as possible, and he pushed those boundaries as he was a teenager and brought home some choice words that get repeated sometimes in our house. He's swimming in languaging that's far worse than anything I ever allowed at home, far worse than he ever spoke. He was just filling all of that. He was in bed one day. For all the millions of moments we try and teach and love our children, we also fail. So it's just total imperfect action. But he said, Mom, I was in bed and I had this memory so vivid come up.

Where you were singing a song in our old house, and you were singing a church song, a communion song, like Last Supper song, called There is a Greenhill Faraway. And you sing it like it was a lullaby. And it wrapped me up in so much safety and love. And I didn't want to wake up. And it was a real memory. I remember thinking as I was rocking one baby and he was in bed, I remember thinking, I don't want to sing lullibis about craddles falling from trees. I want to sing something that would matter. If there was ever a chance they could remember something, I want something that would matter. And I'm going to sing about Christ's crucifixion and resurrection. And so there was a period of time that is all I saw. And God brought that and amplified it out of my imperfect action to help him in that moment. And I'm so grateful.

Yeah. Those are the results of listening to promptings, but also recognizing how you want to train them, how you want to intentionally be their mom.

There's so much filth in the world. There's so much anti-dad in the world, and it's very quickly becoming an anti-mom world. You see that happening in legislature in California. An example of this is this K-pop show that's taking the world by storm. It's so funny. It's on Netflix. My kids had wanted to see it, and I was like, Okay, the name alone has my heckles up. K-pop and the Demon Hunter. I'm like, What? Apparently, I'm not the only parent that felt this way. Two, girls that are out to take care of the world of their own volition, moving far into this masculine energy. Not a fan. Then three, that the demons were the men. I was like, Again, not a fan. We need our men. They need to be partnered with us. We need them to be our protectors. So as this movie opens up, I was going to just observe and sit quietly. And after five minutes, I was like, I can't be quiet. At least my kids know my opinion loud enough. They're like, I know, Mom. I know. Just have patience. It's going to get better. And I was like, But... And I just listed all those examples.

This isn't okay. And I'm like, But Mom, it's going to get better. Okay, sure. By the end of the movie, I was very neutral about the movie, and I'm happy to have them play the good songs in my house. It's fine. I get the key pop. It's fine. But there's other movies that my kids called me to the carpet on when they were little. I really liked a movie in my young adult years, had the DVD. We watched it, and my kids were like, Why don't we have this? It has this and this and this bad thing in it. And of course, that was the timeline. They were really good about not swearing, right? And I was like, You're right. So I gave away the DVD. Mentioned this years later to my brother-in-law, and he's like, That's a great movie. And I'm like, And yet it is no longer in house. The beautiful thing about being a mom is your voice echoes in their head for years into adulthood. Do you remember? Does your mom replay in your head in your 20s and 30s? I would never say Blake, and then boom, it's right out of your mouth.

Yes. Yes and yes, for sure.

So that's what I love about it. I'm like, well, I'm going to say it anyway, because one day it will echo in their brains. And they'll remember, Mom's not a fan of this, and she was trying so hard to be aligned with God on that.

And I think recognizing that they go through seasons of sensitivity and being aware of those so that you can filter out some things that may be more destructive or damaging to some of their growth in that time is really valuable to being attuned to that.

Yeah. As they grow, you might find that they draw into mom. We always found that when they were being birthed into a new stage, much like my birth analogy earlier, they needed mom a ton. But if they've been in that stage for a year or two, they go play with dad. They expand in that stage with dad. And then, Oops, here comes another stage, and they're back to mom. And I love that give and take, that balance, because you do need both parents for that. And if both parents are already stressed out, grab a grandparent. My My kids gave a phone call today. Hey, can we stay and help grandpa mow the lawn? And it totally throws off my homeschool day, my whole schedule for today. And yet that's what they need. They need one more loving adult who will show them the ropes of what it's like to grow up, what it's like to take responsibility. And it doesn't have to be me. And that helps me out. And so I relinquish control. Yes, of course, you and help your grandfather, blah, blah, blah. That would be a great idea.

Yeah. I think it brings it full circle back to this idea of how do you really savor these moments, live them fully and to be present for your kids.

I make that a goal every day. In yoga, it's a practice, right? That's my life practice every day, to relax and savor today. And then I fully embrace it? There's days that are so busy. You don't feel like you're relaxed, but can you stop at the end of the day and savor? What happened? Not what missed, not what you didn't get done, but what happened? Did you take a minute to hug your kids and tell them they were important to you today? Did you apologize if you lost your garbage on them? Because we do. Did you just do your best and then let go of the rest. Did you appreciate them? Again, when they fly the coop and they call home or write home, time stands still. You don't have to do anything that was on your list because you're taking that minute with them. Each of my kids see that I've done that with their elder brother and sister, and I hope they know that I will do the same for them. My life will stand still for you for a minute. But am I making time today to make it stand still for them?

That's my goal, to sit down and have patience and laugh and it's okay, and talk through problems, talk through options. Recently, we went to visit our extended family, and one of the loving adults was done with the noise of all the cousins, Go outside. And my son, adamantly said, No, I am not going outside. Spoke right up against it, and I was like, I get why we all need to go outside, and let's teach you another option for that. I took him outside and I said, We're just going to sit here on the porch and listen to an audiobook together, just you and me. I know you don't want to run around and get a hotter playing outside. That's your real issue. But you don't yet have the words to say, I really don't want to go outside. Is there another option for me? And to say that nice and quiet to the adult in charge, couldn't do it. I was like, That's okay. That's why I'm here to help you navigate those moments. And so we had this really sweet moment, and that's probably going to be on our minds for a long time.

Just walking outside, mom's willing to leave the house with me when most adults usually stay inside and take those moments. So I try to embrace those moments, look for those moments, and they will come up in the norm. But the norm might also be, Come cook with me. Help me clean up. I tell my kids, God commanded that I should have you serve one another. So serve, you shall. That's not my mess. That's okay. Serve and clean it up anyway. And if we can do it with more of a smile, all the better. But again, we're moms, and we have lots of imperfect action in the process.

Thank you. I love this. I feel like there was so many beautiful examples and doable actions, which I think is so vital when you're in the thick of it, sometimes you just need somebody else to say, Yeah, and this worked for me. And you're like, Maybe I'll try that. And it can be a beautiful thing. It's that mom's mopping each other. And I believe that that is one of the purposes of this podcast.

My mantra these days is, Don't tell me I'm doing it wrong. Show me how to do it right.

Perfect. That's so great. Thank you so much, Jenny.

You're welcome.