Dear Mama,

     It's okay to ask for help. Let me paint a picture of a girl for you. It’s a beautiful fall morning, and the fog is like icing on the grass before her. The autumn dawn vapor is so tantalizing that it creeps into her beautifully curled and washed hair. Every inch of her bouncing curls becomes engulfed with wiry frizz as she glances in the mirror and rolls her eyes. Luckily, she remembered her ponytail holders – they are gently wrapped around her wrist. She throws her hair in the quintessential “mom bun” and says, “Let’s do this, World.” She is fierce; she has it all together on the outside; she’s on top of the world at work. She is managing grocery shopping, cooking dinner, feeding the animals, raising kids, and…well, you get the point. She is doing all the things, but for some reason, in today’s society, it’s not okay for her to feel overwhelmed and stressed while screeching her Subaru’s brakes and screaming, “Please, can a Mama get some help?!?!”

 

Dads – this is not a knock to all of the amazing work you do. Actually, many of you dads are moms, too. This message is for you as well. We see you working. We know you’re our biggest cheerleader. I don’t mean the help you give us on a daily basis, Dad. I mean that type of spiritual, mental, and emotional help that we can only get from within. If you are an amazing dad in a mom role, please change Dear Mama to Dear Daddy and pretend the “mom bun” is a ferocious “man bun.”

Please pardon this interruption. To my new readers, allow me to introduce myself. I’m Kayse, and I come from a small southern town that literally embodies everything you hear about Mayberry. Okay, maybe we do have more than one stop light. I am married to an amazing husband and father who has a deep spiritual connection with children. It’s fascinating and really the main reason I fell in love with him. He’s a high school principal, my best friend, and my epic dance partner. We live a semi-slow life on our new country land of nearly nine acres and are raising our squad of three (almost four) boys to the best of our abilities. Please, for the love of all that is good, don’t ask me, “So, when are you going to try for a girl?” I will sarcastically respond, “We did. We tried for a girl. We tried for a girl a lot. We have four boys because God knew there was only enough room for one queen in this house.” I’m joking. Well, sort of.

To be honest, my life is measured in moments, and I can’t wait to share each of those amazing moments with my readers. I feel I was born to write, and I’m so glad you’re reading. Speaking of writing, let’s get back to that. I’m a former teacher who only recently said goodbye to my four walls and classroom to live this dream – this blogging dream where I say, “Is this really my life? Do I live in a fairytale?” Yes, that one. My main mission over the next few years is to bring you along on this journey of my life through educational blogging, lifestyle blogging, and trying to keep my head above water as I raise four kids. I loved teaching so much, but I felt like I was meant for more. I was spinning my wheels and quite frankly, I was all up in my feelings about not being one hella good mom. The only thing that gave me comfort was finding balance.

Dear Mama,

    We have got to find a balance between work and life. Those two worlds are so far from one another that we cannot for any reason mesh them together. Our work does not define us. Our work is NOT who we are. WE ARE WHO WE ARE. Right now, please write down five things that bring you joy. No, no, no – they cannot involve work, and they cannot involve the obvious things like friends and family….. oh, and dogs. Can’t forget dogs or kittens for that matter.

While you’re writing, I’ll share with you my five things:

1. Concerts
2. Hiking
3. My Subaru Outback
4. Writing
5. Being a badass.
   

See Mama, that wasn’t so hard…or was it? There was a time not too long ago when I couldn’t write down five things that brought me joy. Damn, that’s sad. I had forgotten who I was at my core. I had become all the “mom” things so much that I no longer knew who Kayse was. Kayse was rockin’ her two jobs, “mom bun”, and baseball practice – but she wasn’t standing with her head held high and her confidence radiating to others. It was time for a change.  Mama, it IS time for a change. I believe in the power of the mind, body, and spirit. When those three things work together in our lives, they can bring power to your heart that is so magnetic everything will stick to you. (Not like lint because that’s just nasty.)  

Mama, it’s okay to ask for help. It’s okay to be an independent woman but still need help from your mind, your body, and your spirit. An occasional babysitter or Grandma day is fabulous, but living your life day in and day out without a powerful center of gravity can be debilitating and can send you into a spiraling depression. It’s ok to feel sad, but it’s not ok to live there; depression is real and needs to be addressed. I’ve been there. I’ve been so anxious about the mom role that I couldn’t sleep at night. I’ve been so depressed for no apparent reason that I couldn’t get the hamster wheel to stop turning. I never felt satisfied with what life offered me, even though I had it all together on the outside. I was in a dark place. I didn’t understand how to turn my gears together so they moved and operated like a well-oiled machine. Once I figured it out, my life changed. Doors began to open and all the little voices inside my head (oh, and let’s not forget those of the haters that surrounded me) began to shut up. Why? Because I shut them up. It was empowering. Now, it’s your turn to calm the noise.

Mind

How can we work on our mind so we can combine the three components to an amazing and fulfilled life? It’s actually easier than you might think. We must sharpen the saw. Although I love to write, I had never been much of a reader because who has time for that, right? WRONG! I really began focusing my mind on books and podcasts. I talk briefly about those in my blog, “15 Things that Happened when I Quit Teaching,” but I want to go into more detail about this during this post.  I’m a multitasker and just couldn’t find the time to read. As I was finishing up my Education Specialist Degree, I was required to read Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Thank you, Mr. Covey – thank you for kicking my ass into gear. I appreciate that. I listened to his Morgan Freeman-esque voice for eight hours in a matter of two days. Not because I had to, but because I was in a trance. If you’re new to Audible, I can share two books with you for free, and it may be just the thing you need to find substance on who you are again. 

I encourage you to listen to as many Audible books as humanly possible over the next six months. Mold your life and your mind into the person you want to be. My top self-help books in my Audible playlist are

1. You are a Badass (hence #5 on my things that bring me joy.)
2. You are a Badass at Making Money
3. Girl, Wash Your Face
4. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F
5. The Power of Now
6. The 8th Habit

All of these books will begin to take hold of your mind. They will start shifting your focus off of the negative and on to the positive. Mind shifts are real, and they require a lot of work. Do you want to exercise more? Do you want to lose weight? Are you struggling with feeling like you’re good enough? Do you want to start your own business but just don’t know where to find the strength? It’s all in your mind. You have the power to do every single thing (and more) I listed above. You have to find the strength within to push through and persevere.

Body

Are you taking care of your body? Are you respecting your body enough to make it feel like a million bucks? I don’t mean you have to be super skinny or super in shape, I just mean, are you treating your body like the kind person it is? I was binge drinking, binge eating, and stuffing my face full of carbs and sweets. I seriously thought drinking and eating sweets were a safe way to deal with depression. I classified my daily walks as “exercise.” Okay, technically by definition they are exercise, but I quickly realized my body needed more. It needed more than just a slow walk while listening to a podcast to feel empowered. I needed to ask my body for help while still showing myself grace.

Let’s get real for a second – working out is freakin’ hard. Being sore and working a job while raising a family felt impossible. When you're young, being so sore you can’t squat to pee is totally fine. When you’re 30 years old, it feels like you’re being tortured. It sucks. Icy Hot and heating pads become your friend and you really think it just isn’t worth it – at least I did, until I decided it was worth it. I WAS WORTH IT! Once those first two weeks went by, I’m happy to report I was able to sit on a toilet with only mild to moderate pain, and I began to love the feeling of pushing my muscles. I felt brave, strong, and sexy. I no longer wanted to be stick thin I just wanted to be STRONG! I found comfort in working out from home while I watched BeachBody on Demand. Once I saw my body changing, I decided I needed to hone in on my diet. I’ll get to all of that in a separate blog post soon.

Spirit

Ahhh. It doesn’t matter to me what religion you come from or how you were raised. I believe we all radiate within us a certain spiritual feeling that cannot be denied. It’s important to me to find my inner peace through powerful practice. I watched an episode of ABC’s Shark Tank and stumbled upon an app called Simple Habit. I was amazed at how easy it was to fix my mind and spirit all with just five minutes a day. Then I began reading another app for my morning devotion and lastly, I began reading my daily horoscope. Find your spirit, connect with the universe, and ask yourself for a helping hand in times of need.

The morning devotion app I use can be found in the Apple App store. It used to be ad free, but now it does have an ad that pops up at an inopportune time every morning and evening when I log in to the app. It drives me bananas, but I just have to remember I’m doing this for my spiritual journey…and ads suck. The devotion app is quick and very straightforward. It takes minutes to read. I always found when I tried longer devotions, I’d make up longer excuses. I need quick devotions to keep me grounded.

I believe that we can really radiate our inner beings if we connect with the universe. Whoa, how crazy did I just sound there? When I began reading my daily horoscope, I seriously would think to myself, “Is someone listening to me? Did they hear my conversations?” Although that could definitely be a possibility in today’s cyberness, I think that the writers of those horoscopes are very knowledgeable about how the universe works and how it pulls on our emotions. Just read a few for yourself and see if you can relate them to your life in some sort of powerful way.

Dear Mama,

    Although you may be a fierce and a hard-working independent woman, it’s okay to ask for help. Sometimes the most powerful help we can give ourselves comes from within. Dig deep. Connect your mind, body, and spirit and watch the world around you fall into place. Your happiness depends on it.

P.S.  Have you ever thought about selling your teaching resources online? Listen, I’ll be the first to admit that I thought selling my resources online was a big joke. It seemed like a total waste of my time. In case you haven’t figured it out yet, there’s an art to creating teaching resources and selling them online. Over the last five years, I’ve tried and tested as many secret formulas as possible and finally found the perfect equation. My teaching resources are now wildly profitable and I want yours to be too. To help you get started or to improve selling your teaching resources online, get started with our free workbook.