A weekly email for working mothers with stories, encouragement, tools and reflections. Let's move from overwhelmed and surviving to intentional and thriving together.
Self-care is family care
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For a long time, I believed that being a good mother meant giving as much of myself as possible, especially my time. So when my kids were little, I stopped doing yoga. Not even intentionally and not because I didn’t love it. I did. It had been part of my life for years, something that grounded me and gave me a sense of myself outside of everything I was responsible for. But I couldn’t justify it anymore. I was already working, already away from them during the day. Taking more time, even an hour, felt selfish. It felt like I was choosing myself over them. So I stopped, and I didn’t question it. It felt like devotion. Like love. Like what I was supposed to do. What I didn’t see at the time was how slowly, almost invisibly, I was becoming depleted. I was giving all the time, all the energy, without anything that was mine filling me back up. At some point, after I had two little ones, I remember saying to my husband how stretched and exhausted I felt. He asked a simple question. “Would you want to go to a yoga class this weekend?” My first instinct was no. We have too much to do. I don’t want to be away from the kids. And then I went. Not because I was fully convinced. More like I was testing something. I remember driving there and feeling like I was getting away with something. Like I was playing hooky. I also missed them, even in that hour. The class itself didn’t fix everything. But I walked out with something else: A small shift, a sense of possibility. “Oh. I can do this. There she is. I remember her.” It wasn’t about the hour. It was about remembering that I existed inside my own life. Over time, that hour became something more. Not perfect, not always consistent, but something that was mine. Something that filled me back up. And that changed how I showed up everywhere else. I still miss my kids when I take time away sometimes. Both things can be true. And I’ve learned that holding that tension is part of this. Putting myself back into the equation doesn’t take away from them. It changes what I’m able to bring to them. What the research saysThere is a large body of research showing that parental well-being shapes children’s development through everyday interactions, including tone, responsiveness, and emotional availability. Research on parenting and emotional processes has found that a parent’s internal state influences how they respond to their child, which in turn shapes the child’s emotional experience over time (Dix, 1991). Similarly, Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child describes how children’s development is built through “serve and return” interactions, the back-and-forth moments of connection that are strongest when caregivers are emotionally available and attuned. This is not about being happy all the time or getting it right in every moment. Parents struggle. That’s part of being human, and part of being in relationship. What matters more is whether there is enough support and enough capacity to stay connected, and to come back into connection when things feel off. Because children don’t just experience what we do- they experience what it feels like to be with us. And when you look at the research this way, self-care starts to look different. It’s not something extra. It’s not something you earn once everything else is done. It’s part of the same system. When you are consistently depleted, it changes the quality of what you’re able to bring, even if you are giving a lot of time. And when you have even a little more capacity, it changes what those moments with your child can feel like. Simple takeaway:
Taking care of yourself is one of the ways you take care of your family.
Tip of the weekWhat would it look like to send yourself the signal that you matter inside your own life? Start small.
Treat it like it counts. Not as leftover time. As something that belongs to you. If you want to take it a step further:
Not because everything else is done. Because you are part of the equation too. And let me know how it goes! Talk soon, PS I’m continuing to think about what I shared last week, and how to create something that actually fits into real life.
You can just reply with the option or tell me what you’d actually want, I read every response. |
Dr. Anne Welsh
A weekly email for working mothers with stories, encouragement, tools and reflections. Let's move from overwhelmed and surviving to intentional and thriving together.
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