Why You Can’t Afford to Skip Self-Care as a Mom #226
Recently, I discussed with 4 mom friends the point of Mother’s Day.
Spoiler Alert: We all had differing opinions and none of us do the same things on Mother’s Day.
While some dislike its baggage and some of us loved a day of being treated like a queen, we did agree that moms could all use a lot more care and rest.
You deserve more than 1 day out of 365, mama.
Because caring for yourself isn’t an optional activity. At some point, your body or mind will make you take a break when you haven’t made space for rest, and usually at a fairly inopportune time.
Let’s discuss why caring for yourself matters (it’s not selfish!) and what real self care looks like.
Wanna rest and relax with me?
My weekend retreat for ADHD moms is an excellent way to take care of yourself. Plus we get to hang out! In real life! You’re invited!
“Be True To You”, the weekend retreat for ADHD Moms takes place October 11-13, 2024 in Houston, Texas.
You get to relax, turn off the hamster wheel of to-dos, and rest while I totally take care of YOU! This event is all-inclusive. That means that you don’t have to do *anything* once you check in. I’m taking care of your hotel, meals, and activities.
Plus you’ll be hanging out with an awesome group of moms who get you! Having friends who have or suspect ADHD and have been there, done that, and probably forgot to buy the T-shirt are wonderful, and the kind of friends who like you just as you are, that’s priceless.
Here's your official invitation to join a welcoming group of moms in person to rest, hang out together, build your support system, and learn to take care of yourself. Because you are worth it.
Early bird registration starts TODAY through May 30th, so grab your ticket here: patriciasung.com/retreat
And if you can’t make it this year, what will you do to take care of yourself?
Because you deserve care, my dear, no matter the day of the year.
Ready to get away?
Our annual ADHD Moms Luxury Weekend Retreat is coming up October 11-13, 2024 in Houston, Texas! Grab your all-inclusive Early Bird ticket now!
“This weekend was nothing short of a dream weekend come true! It was life changing to learn, to witness and experience the bonding amongst a group of women. I felt truly celebrated every moment. To bond with so many women neurodivergent mothers was truly a gift in itself.
Only a mother could have thought of that many ways to check off the boxes.
"✅treat,✅pause,✅relax"
🧘♂️🧘♂️🧘♂️” –ADHD Mama K.P.
I’ll take care of all the details - you simply show up and enjoy.
Because you deserve to take care of yourself too. Sign up here: patriciasung.com/retreat
Patricia Sung 00:00
I was recently sitting with some friends and we started discussing what is the point of Mother's Day, and there were some mixed opinions. Let’s discuss.
Patricia Sung 00:09
Are you overwhelmed by motherhood and barely keeping your head above water? Are you confused and frustrated by how all the other moms make it look so easy. You can figure out how to manage the chaos in your mind, your home, or your family. I get your mama, parenting with ADHD is hard. Here is your permission slip to let go of the Pinterest or the visions of organization and structure fit for everyone else. Let's do life like our brains do life creatively, lovingly and with all our might. When we embrace who we are and how our brains work, we can figure out how to live our lives successfully, and in turn, lead our families. Well, at the end of the day, we just want to be good moms. but spoiler alert, you are already a great mom. ADHD does not mean you're doomed to be a hot mess, mama. You can rewrite your story from shame spiral to success story. And I'll be right here beside you to cheer you on. Welcome to Motherhood in ADHD.
Patricia Sung 01:14
Before we have into this week's episode, let's read a review of the week. This one comes from WJ cook called ADHD mothers savior. Oh, that's so sweet. “Five stars. Really glad I found your podcast so relatable and helpful. I feel like you're talking directly to me and see exactly what I'm going through on my motherhood and soon to be ADHD diagnosed journey. Thank you.” You are so welcome, friend. And I am so proud of you for going through the diagnosis process and doing what is best fit for you.
Patricia Sung 01:45
If you mama have not yet rated the podcast, please head over in your app. Give me five stars on let me know what you think and what you need. Your words of encouragement mean so much. Hey, there successful mama, it's your friend Patricia Sung. I gotta say this discussion did not go where I thought it was going to go. Because there was such mixed reviews. One mom thought it was to get a break. Another thought it was for her family to get to celebrate her and another thought it was to have less responsibilities that day. And one friend was lamenting about how Father's Day is a day for her husband to go off and play golf and disappear. But yet Mother's Day is the day to go to brunch with her mother in law. So I went to where anyone does to research Google, like, how did Mother's Day even start and me honest, it was kind of a depressing story.
Patricia Sung 02:35
So if you want to fast forward like one minute while I tell it, go ahead. This lady named Anna Jarvis was a mom and she had lost nine of her 13 children before they reached adulthood. So this is like late 1800s, early 1900s. And she wanted to support other mothers and learning about hygiene and infant care. So she enlists her brother, who was a doctor to create this day where moms were helping other moms learn how to care for their infants and hope that other moms wouldn't experience the loss that she had. So her daughter also named Anna Jarvis then petitions to make this a national holiday with President Woodrow Wilson. And it did not go as she had hoped. Like she originally had a marketing background.
Patricia Sung 03:19
So she contacted different like flower companies trying to get people to help back her in this initiative. And then like within 20 years, this poor lady who was childless so she never had kids, she was doing this to honor her mother then got like, so mad about the whole thing. She denounced the whole holiday because it had turned into this like commercialized mess. And I was like, Does this not sound? Like, what? What on earth? Like, how does this thing that's supposed to be driven by helping moms and then memorialized by this lady who's trying to honor her mother, and her mother's hard work and dedication turned into this giant mess billing. Here we are in 2024. I got five moms around a table. And none of us are in consensus about what this holiday is about. And you know, a couple of weeks ago, my friend Liz Lewis had come to Successful Mama Meetups, and she was talking about her book and she was giving us like an early read.
Patricia Sung 04:19
And we were like getting our feedback on the book as she's going through the editing process. And the whole idea of Mother's day had come up during this conversation. And it was again, a mixed bag, because some moms love Mother's Day, and they love being treated and lavish by their family and other moms are like this holiday stinks. Like if you have a bad relationship or a non existent relationship or like whatever funky things going on with your mom. Like for me, my mom passed away a long time ago. My mother in law has Alzheimer's like it's just a weird holiday now. It was like how it is something that started so beautifully turned into a big mess. And like we've had fights in our house about what Mother's Day should be because I am an Enneagram one. And I'd be like, This is what I want for Mother's Day. And my family had their own idea of how they wanted to celebrate me. And so they were like, well, we don't want to give you a robot vacuum. We want to do this. And I'm like, but I really want the robot vacuum, like, I don't want to vacuum I want to robot vacuum.
Patricia Sung 05:15
And they're like, well, that's not fun for us. And so we went around for years, arguing about what Mother's Day should look like. And so the agreement we have come to is that my kids can do whatever they want to celebrate me on Mother's Day. And that is a day for them to celebrate me whatever they want to do. And what I want to do, I just do want a different day, I am not relegating my one day of relaxation to Mother's Day, that's not what that day is for. For me, I can go to the Korean Day Spa on Monday, I can go get a massage the week before I can go get a pedicure, I can take a weekend away, but it's not on the holiday, the holiday with my family, they get to honor me in the way they want. And I take care of me when I want which is not relegated to one singular day of the year because my husband's love language is gift giving. He's very good at it. And he wants it to be the gift that he thought of not the gift that I said I wanted. He's like, I don't want to give you a robot vacuum. And I'm like, that's really what I wanted. And he's like, that's, that's not, there's not a gift, like, okay, fine, we'll just buy the vacuum, he can buy whatever he wants, and I'm gonna get what I want, just not on Mother's Day. And like all that kind of came around.
Patricia Sung 06:21
Like, they get to honor me in the way that they want honor me on Mother's Day. And I'm going to make sure that I have my needs fulfilled on a different day as in like, I am not only allowed to have this worldly stuff on one day, I can have lobbyists have any day because caring for ourselves can't be stuck on one day a year. And that's it. So I looked up what's the definition of caring for something, the definition of caring is the provision of what is necessary for the health, welfare, maintenance and protection of someone or something, when I say that one more time, the provision of what is necessary for the health, welfare, maintenance and protection of someone or something. So when we say necessary, it is the provision of what is necessary for all these things. Something that is necessary is not a luxury, self care, not a luxury taking care of yourself as a luxury is literally in the definition it is the necessary things that are needed for health, welfare means protection, that means it's something that we will continually do. It's not like you care for your child once a quarter.
Patricia Sung 07:28
And like check back on a few months later, how you doing, kid, you're right. Okay, be back a few months later. That's not the kind of parent we want to be. That's not the kind of parent that we wanted, or even currently want. So caring for yourself needs to be more frequent things that are not cared for have problems. That means they're not up to where they need to be for health, for welfare, they're not maintained, they're not protected, they're not safe. And what happens when we don't take care of ourselves. Like we know the basics of like not getting enough sleep means that our brain is fuzzy the next day, or a body can't recuperate from all the stuff that dealt with today. We can't heal from germs and illness, we know that stress isn't good for our hearts. But it's also not good for our hormones. It's not good for sleep, we know that when we're not cared for.
Patricia Sung 08:14
We have more health issues, mental health issues, physical health issues, our relationships are affected, we also get grumpy, so we're not kind to our families and our partners and our kids running in this constant stressed out manner is like how we enter burnout, how we stay in the lows of depression, like we know all of this, and yet somehow we put ourselves on the back burner and think it's okay. I'll do that later. If you haven't yet. Go back and listen to Episode 224. A couple of weeks ago when we were talking with Tami about how we take care of ourselves guilt free, what can we do practical ways to start tuning into ourselves and taking care of ourselves. Because we talked about like how your needs don't go away.
Patricia Sung 08:54
Just because you stuffed them down doesn't mean that they go away, it just means they start squishing out in other places. That's why we started yelling at everybody at that time, because we ran out of capacity. That's why we hide in the bathroom and scroll on Instagram while our kids are doing homework or not doing homework because we're like, I can't do this anymore. Because we've stuffed our needs down so far, that now they start to ooze out in other places. If we haven't taken the time to care for ourselves, we still have to do it. And it just piles up just like you know, like when you don't take care of your car, or you haven't done that stuff around the house and all sudden you're like, ooh, now I
Patricia Sung 09:27
got a big problem because I ignored it the first time in the SU 37 time, like
Patricia Sung 09:32
taking care of yourself doesn't go away. So I encourage you in the wake of Mother's Day to like have these discussions with your family like what do you want Mother's Day to look like if it didn't go how you want it when you're in a place of calm. Now when you're annoyed? Can you have that discussion with your family of like what you'd like Mother's Day to look like or are there things that you can do this week that will take care of your needs that you thought were going to be met my mother's day that didn't work out? And if it did go well for you, hey, tell your family thank you hates. Thank you so much for what you did on Mother's Day, that really meant a lot to me. And how can you then take that philosophy of you deserving that beautiful care on Mother's Day to more than just Mother's Day, you don't have to have that one singular day that you're cared for.
Patricia Sung 10:20
You deserve care all the time. And if you need someone else's permission slip, which you don't, but I will give you mine, it is okay to take care of your basic functions, it is necessary for you to care for your health, your welfare, your maintenance, your protection, and that you deserve more than the bare minimum, what's something today that you can do that would care for you, no matter how small every little bit matters, it can be something little like buying your favorite brand of coffee instead of the generic one. Or sitting outside and watching the birds for a few minutes. Instead of beating yourself up about how you didn't clean up the kitchen yet, just sit there and enjoy outside for a minute. It can be something like having a dance party in your kitchen or calling a friend.
Patricia Sung 11:01
There are ways to incorporate care for yourself in little ways. And in many ways. The key is to think about what energizes you? What makes you feel better after you do it, that you don't need a ton of brain power. It's not like a really trying task, that when you're finished, you feel like your energy has been recharged, your capacity feels more full. What are those things that are going to take care of you. And if it's a really big way that you want to take care of yourself like man, I really need a break, then I would love for you to join my retreat in October. It is here in Houston, Texas on October 11 through 13th. To meet like the biggest like praise I could get back is that half the moms that went last year have already signed up for this year immediately. Right after they were there. At the end. I said if you want you can sign up again. Half the moms signed up not knowing when it was gonna be where it was going to be what was happening. It was that good. They knew I don't care. I'm coming. So you can go get your early bird ticket at patriciasung.com/retreat. I'm going to tell y'all about it right now. So if you want to hang tight, come on. It's gonna be awesome. Drumroll please. This year's theme is “Be True To You.” Who's invited? You are invited, my dear. You are invited. You are welcome to bring a friend. You're welcome to come by yourself. Most of the moms who come don't know anybody. And if they do know somebody, it's because they've been in my community before.
Patricia Sung 12:23
Like they're part of Successful Mama Meetups. So they've seen each other in our zoom rooms. But like most people come on their own. No friends, but you're welcome to bring a friend bring a friend or come just you. When is it? It is October 11 through 13th. It's the 3d weekend in October. Why? Because the mom said when I was like, Hey, what's your best advice for the mom that seemed welcoming. They were like come an extra day. That was her advice come an extra day. So I made it on the three day weekend so that if you want to stay an extra day you can. So you're going to arrive on Friday. We do stuff together on Saturday, Sunday, you check out when you want. So if you want you can stay an extra day, like you can come on Thursday or Wednesday. If you want. You can come stay Sunday Monday if you want. But I'm gonna take care of you Friday night all day Saturday, up through Sunday morning. Where is it going to be this year, it is at the Sam Houston Hotel. It's a historic boutique hotel, just 100 rooms downtown Houston, they're currently undergoing a renovation, it is going to be gorgeous by the time we are there.
Patricia Sung 13:22
I'm so excited. Like I have a soft spot for like historic updated buildings that like still have their like integrity to them, it is going to be so awesome. And I love that it's like a smaller venue and that will have more of a community feel because that's what the moms asked for last year. Like we want to feel more close. We want to have more hangout time we want to be more together and build that community. And it's balanced by you have your own room so you can take the space that you need to be by yourself and recharge if that's what you need. Or you're coming out the group. Alright, got the who, what, where, when and the why, why should you come because you deserve a break. You deserve space away from the incessant and constant responsibility that constantly ticks in your head. Everyone needs care. Everyone needs a break. And that includes you.
Patricia Sung 14:06
You need care, you need a break. You need people who understand you and get how you function and are going to smile and nod when you're like oh man, this thing's really hard. And they're like, Yep, I've been there. I hear you. That's not weird. I get it. These women who are coming on the retreat are wonderful. I am so proud of them. I love hanging out with them. We were still on a group text. Like, I count myself so lucky that like, this is my job. I get to hang out with you and have fun and take care of you and teach you all kinds of good stuff so that you can be the kind of person you want to be like, how cool is that? Okay, so here's what we're gonna do. You're gonna come by you said you come early if you want. But on Friday evening, you're gonna meet me at the hotel. We're gonna hang out meet with each other. We all have each other, meet each other. Yeah, meet each other. We're gonna meet each other. We're gonna have dinner.
Patricia Sung 14:56
You don't have to cook the dinner. You don't have to clean up the dinner. It's gonna be lovely. You You're going to relax. And after dinner, you can come back to the hotel, hang out with the other mamas. Or you can go back to your own room, you're gonna sleep peacefully in your own bed all by yourself, no feet kicking you, you're gonna revel in a whole bed just for you, with nobody bothering you. And just relax. On Saturday morning, I'm going to serve you breakfast, we're going to meet together. And we're going to talk about this theme of be true to you. We're going to learn about like, how do you tune into your intuition like that gut feeling that you've ignored for a long time? How do we tune into that so that you can trust yourself? This is so important for those of us with ADHD is a lot of times we've stopped listening to ourselves over the years when people told us Oh, you're too sensitive, or you're too much, or you're too talkative, or you're too this, you're too. And then we start ignoring ourselves. And I want you to be able to connect into like, who you are, what do you think? How do you feel about it? Because for some of us with ADHD, when we don't trust ourselves, it shows up as more anxieties, then we don't make decisions. we procrastinate on the decisions when we do a little more research before we make a decision, because we don't trust ourselves with the answer that we hear in our guts. So this will help you move into action and start moving forward.
Patricia Sung 16:04
Because when you take action, you can then gather the knowledge and understand like what's actually happening, and then make adjustments and move forward. Because we can plan till kingdom come. But until we actually make a move, we're not going to know whether or not that was a good idea. And on the flip side, a lot of us with ADHD are more impulsive. And we aren't always taking actions. But when we're just going and we don't think about our action ahead of time, because we just go go go, let's make it happen. All right, do this. Come on, let's go when we're moving, moving, moving, and we haven't tuned into ourselves, that guy comes and bites us in the butt sometimes.
Patricia Sung 16:35
So when we can tune into our gut our intuition and know like being true to who you are, what matters to you, how does this like align with you as a person and your values, when you can make those more aligned decisions, then all that action and that movement that you're taking is moving you in the direction that you want to move in, instead of just moving for moving sake, you are moving in the direction that you want to move in. So in the morning, we're gonna talk about how do we focus in listen to yourself, trust yourself, so that we can rewrite all that you're too this, you're to that but I'm gonna know, hone in so that you can trust yourself. And then we're gonna go to lunch, it's going to be delicious. Again, you're not cooking it, you're not cleaning it. You just get to eat, you get to hang out, you get to chit chat. And in the afternoon, I have a fun activity planned. It is a surprise.
Patricia Sung 17:19
I can't tell you all the things because you know, we got to have some interesting stuff coming right. There's also time for rest and relaxation. If you want to explore downtown, you want to go on a mural, walk a walk in the park, you want to hang out the new friends at the hotel, you want to take a nap. You have free time to do whatever you like that afternoon. And then we get together for dinner. After dinner again, you have the choice you want to come hang out and chit chat, come hang out and chit chat you want to go to sleep and be peaceful in your room by yourself. Go do that checkouts at noon, you get to sleep in if you want.
Patricia Sung 17:47
You can stay an extra day or two and just enjoy being by yourself. But I will take care of you from Friday dinner through till Sunday morning. When you get to sleep in. This is an all inclusive retreat. So I am taking care of your hotel, all of your meals, your activities. When you arrive, you don't have to do anything until checkout on Sunday morning. I cover it all the only additional purchases you need to make is figure out how you get to Houston. Once you're here. I got it covered all in your ticket. Early Bird tickets are on sale from now today until May 30.
Patricia Sung 18:24
You can go get your ticket at patriciasung.com/retreat. And I already have five moms signed up from last year. And I want to emphasize like this is not a large group. I'm not trying to tell you to come relax away at the weekend unwind with 100 people. No, that's too many. I know introvert me does not want to hang out with 100 people. Okay, this is a small group. That's what the moms from last year wanted more community more intimacy and relationships like more getting to know each other. So if you want to come please come get your ticket now. Because I cannot promise you if you wait till August to sign up that there will still be tickets there because they want this to be a small group.
Patricia Sung 18:58
So go grab your ticket, patriciasung.com/retreat, figure out how you're getting to downtown Houston. And then from there, relax. When you get here I will take care of everything. Because I want you to be able to show up really relaxed, really slow down your nervous system really hone in on like listening to you. And we can do that when we slow down and pause. You deserve this gift for yourself to take a break and work on your maintenance, your well-being your safety, your protection, your health, your welfare matters. And when you show your family that taking care of you matters. Not only do they take us from you, because yes our kids hear what we say but they really see what we do when they can see you taking a break for you and putting yourself on the priority list as a member of the family which you deserve.
Patricia Sung 19:51
To me. This also allows you to show them what it should look like when they're grownups. Hey, when you're a grown up, I want you to take care of you too. I want you to have space to rest. I want you to build really great friendships with people who get you, I want you to take care of you. That's important. That is a life skill that we want for ourselves. But we also want to demonstrate for our kids, so that they do that when they're grownups. This lie that self care is selfish is ridiculous. It is a bare minimum requirement of being a human. And I don't know about you, but I want my kids to know that this is important. There's many ways you can do it. One of them is my retreat, I want to hang out with you Come hang out with me. It's going to be fun. It's going to be relaxing, it's going to be awesome.
Patricia Sung 20:34
But if for some reason it doesn’t work out for you, I want you to know that today, you can do something just for you. Go back and listen to the beginning when I gave you a bunch of ideas of how are the little things that you can take care of you today or this weekend. But you deserve care just like every other thing and person on the planet. So go grab your early bird ticket mama before May 30. And if you can figure it out, you can listen to this until June it's cool still go sign up, the tickets are going to be there. So there's numbers that or we need to close in August. Be may as well grab your discount while you can hear in the early bird and come hang out. Take the time for you. I cannot wait to see you in Houston in October. I'll talk to you soon successful. For more resources, classes and community head over to my website. motherhoodinadhd.com.