SOUL CARE FOR MOMS: SOUL CARE SERIES PART 4 OF 4 | EP 35

[DAWN GABRIEL]
Please note that this episode contains some content of sensitive nature, which may be triggering to some. I am going to talk about infant loss and miscarriage. So just know that I will talk about resources with that as well and just wanted to give you a heads up before you start listening that this contain some sensitive content. And I will include some resources in my show notes if that is something you want to look into, thank you for listening.

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Hi, I’m Dawn Gabriel, host of Faith Fringes Podcast, recording live from Castle Rock Colorado, not only where I love to live, but I also work as the owner of a counseling center in the historic downtown. This podcast is a place to explore more than the traditional norms of the Christian culture. For those desiring deeper connection with God and engaging their spirituality in new ways, this will be a safe place to allow doubt, questions and curiosity, without judgment. We will be creating intentional space to listen in on other’s faith journeys, whether that is deconstruction or reconstruction, with the hope of traveling alongside you on your own spiritual path. If you’re interested in getting even more out of this podcast, grab my free email course Spiritual Reflections on my websitefaithfringes.com. Welcome to the podcast.

Hello and welcome back spiritual explorers. This is Dawn Gabriel, your host with episode 35, soul care for moms. This episode comes right at a perfect time. It goes live the day before Thanksgiving, and I’m sure a lot of moms, not to be stereotyping, but a lot of moms out there are prepping for a huge cooking day of staying in the kitchen and cooking. Or there have been years, I don’t know if you’re like me there’s there was one year I was like, I can’t do this. I ordered the whole Thanksgiving meal from our local grocery store. so however you are preparing for Thanksgiving I do just want to shout out and say, I see you and I hope you get some rest and I hope the food turns out well and that you can enjoy family and friends during this Thanksgiving.

Well, today is going to be a solo episode of just me talking about, as you know the thing I’m passionate about is soul care. For those of you who haven’t listened some past episodes, I’m not going to go into a lot. What is soul care because I already recorded a whole episode on that. So jump back to episode 32, and that is all about what soul care is. In fact, this is part of a series. This is part four in my four-part series of soul care. The reason I am doing the soul care for moms is because actually being a mom is what made me dive into, I need a deeper level of care for myself because I was running a business. I had two small kids. This is about a few years, like four or five years ago. I realized I can’t do everything.

I can’t do everything at the same level I’m doing and I kind of lost myself in working and just being a mom. I just felt like there has more to me and I totally kind of lost track of my own spirituality and connecting with God on the level I wanted to, which was an important value to me, but it just kind of went by the wayside as I was trying to focus on my business and focus on being the perfect mom, which spoiler alert, there’s no such thing as the perfect mom. In fact, it made me a worse mom trying to be perfect.

So I will be sharing some stories today with you about how moms can really do soul care and, but real quick, the difference between self-care and soul care is self-care is more of when you are focusing on things that you can do. You have a hundred percent control over, like I am going to go to sleep early and set my alarm and get up early. I’m going to get seven hours of sleep. Although, let me take that back a minute with kids, you can’t always control the seven-hour sleep or eight-hour sleep. So maybe I should say more things like I’m going to try to work out three times a week. I’m going to read a book that I really want. Those are things like self-care. I’m going to put boundaries on my relationships and my commitments. So that’s all self-care where you can kind of set your own. It’s like up to you.

Now soul care in a short version is more when we engage in the spiritual realm and there’s this other, I feel like God is in charge. For me when I’m thinking soul care and spirituality I am connecting with God. Others might call, might be saying the divine or the universe. That is fine, however you want to integrate spirituality. For me, I will be using God terminology. So that is what soul care is. It’s this whole other entity of spirituality. So I think as moms that is so needed because you are pouring out so much, I call it kind of the wiping stage. You’re wiping tables, you’re wiping noses, you’re wiping butts. You feel like you get so lost in the mundane and the chaos and the selfless acts that you’re doing that sometimes we forget to really connect deeply with more of like a purpose. And soul care is how I have kind of come out of that chaotic phase.

So I do want to share the first story of when I started researching soul care. I actually went to a care day at Potters In, and this was only a couple years after my mother had passed away and I was walking through the mountains. We had already met as a group, and then they give you time to be by yourself. To me, my hiking is always transformational and always like connecting with nature and connected with God. It’s easier on a trail. So I was walking through the mountains or the Hills in the place that I was doing the soul care day. I was kind of wrestling with my own struggles of how I viewed myself as a mother.

And of course, as I’m diving into that it really brought up that I was missing my own mom and a lot of questions were swirling around, like questions that I had already kind of settled on, but they came up again like, God, why did my mom have to die? Why was she taken so early? Does God really answer prayers we all prayed for to get better and heal from cancer, but she didn’t? So even though I had kind of wrestled with that before it kind of came up again and I was just kind of sitting in those feelings of sadness and missing her and just really, yes, sadness was the biggest one.

As I was like, I came across a prayer labyrinth. I don’t know if you guys know what that is, but it’s kind of like an ancient way of mindfulness walking and it’s a group of rocks and it looks like a maze usually in a circle. It kind of helps people who want to slow down and meditate and a lot of times you kind of say a prayer when you enter and then you go deeper in and you kind of hopefully find an answer or more peace when you get to the center. Then on the way out, you kind of see if you can integrate that answer or the piece into your life.

So I knew, I’d used prayer Labyrinth before. So as I walked up to this prayer Labyrinth, I looked beside me and there were purple flowers. And for some reason, I felt my mom, her presence. Her favorite color was purple and these flowers were beautiful and there were no other flowers around. I just felt my mom’s presence. As I walked into the labyrinth, I felt her walking beside me and I start to cry. Then in the middle of the labyrinth, there was these little logs that you could just sit down. I sat down and I felt my mom on one side and I felt Jesus on the other. I could feel my mom hugging me and I could feel Jesus to sitting there also just everybody just so present.

I said, “Mom, this is so hard. Parenting is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. You left when I was a new parent. I was only a two year parent, like parent for two years. I have so many questions. I wish you were here. How did you do it with all five of us?” Then I started crying more and saying, “I’m so sorry for not being closer to you as a teen.” I mean, saying a lot of things that I didn’t realize needed to come out and saying, I feel like a failure mom. I just feel like I’m messing up with my kids. Anyway, it was a very emotional moment and I felt my mom say, “Oh, Dawn, I loved you no matter what. Even as we fought, I knew who you really were and loved you so much. I think you’re doing a great job as a mom. It is hard, but you’re doing a great job.”

Then I also felt out Jesus there too putting His arms around me, hugging me, saying, “Lean on me. I’m here for you too, in the hard parenting moments. You’re doing the best you can and you are so loved.” To this day, I still feel so much peace when I bring that up. Of course, I ugly cried for like the next 20 minutes. I could not stop crying. As I started walking back down the hill, part of me, there was a little piece of me going, wait a minute. Is this real? I felt like my Christianity, the way I was brought up, it didn’t allow for visions and didn’t allow for those kind of interactions and then I remember saying to myself, “I don’t care if, what anybody thinks this is so real to me.”

I really do feel like it was a God moment and I felt like I connected deeply with my mom and with God. So that’s when I was like, wow, this is such an exponential thing. I need more of this. That’s when I realized, I want to dive into more experiences of spirituality like this and not the way I thought of spirituality. So that actually, that incident right there started some deeper soul care research and experiential research where I dove in and tried to experience it. So that whole thing was based on me being a mom because I feel like, honestly, that is one of my personal hardest things. Like it’s also one of the best things. But if you’re real, and I hope you are, if you’re real about being a mom, there’s nothing that brings you to flat on your face faster than your kids. Especially if you have a strong willed kid or a strong personality child or even from what I hear other children who maybe have a disability or are struggling with some other things like you just take it so personally it’s an extension of yourself.

That’s, what’s so hard about being a mom. Or a parent. I should say a parent. This can go for dads too. I’m just only speaking from my own experience, but it is so hard when you take you take everything on that your child is doing as your own fault or your own extension of yourself. And part of it is learning to separate that and saying, no, they have their own little personality and they have their own way of doing things. And for me, that is what I had to do. That is what soul care was, for me is learning to trust on a spiritual level, trust God that He loves my children more than I do, which is hard to imagine, but He does and that nothing I can do can get in the way of what God’s plan is for my kids and that I don’t have to be perfect.

But I needed to rest and deep knowing of who God thinks I am and who God thinks my kids are and that deep knowing and safety of that has let me release some of the pressure on myself and the pressure on my kids. It’s also helped me refuel and replenish in such a deep way that it makes me a better mom. Does that mean I’m perfect? Heck no. Does that mean I get it right? No. In fact, just this morning, my son and I had a drag out fight on the way to getting ready for school. I remember being like, oh great, I’m going to be recording on soul care for moms. I totally screwed it up. So it’s still an issue, but a constant coming back apologizing to your kids, apologizing and repairing that relationship and getting in front of God and saying, I can’t do this on my own. I need supernatural help to do this because it’s hard. It’s so hard.

So I feel like soul care for moms is so important because number one, it is grounding. We need something to ground on. I think a lot of times moms are the one who are grounding the family with the schedule or the management of the house and keeping things going. I’m talking a deeper grounding, like grounding on some deeper truth, something that’s solid and not changing. And even if you need to deconstruct your faith, that’s okay. You can still do that. I feel like it’s super safe to deconstruct your faith, maybe get a spiritual director or a therapist, or just even know that you can do that. That God is okay with questions. He’s okay with doubts. He’s okay with emotions. I just feel like motherhood has brought up a lot of that stuff in me to deconstruct and to really also need God too, like all of the above.

So anyway, grounding is so needed for moms. Again, I should say dad’s parenting anyone. And then with parenting, it’s the hardest thing ever. You have to know yourself because your own issues will come out. Your kids will bring it out. If you haven’t discovered that, then I’m not sure, I don’t know, I question that. Like every mom I know, or every parent I know says yes, the kids bring out stuff whether they’re being more like you and you can see yourself in them or you see your partner and spouse in them, it still it brings out your own stuff, your own insecurity. It brings out your own wounds, your own past. It makes you deal with it.

So for example, I wanted to kind of, another reason how I got into this is when I was pregnant with my oldest. I can’t remember, I don’t think I’ve shared this story on my podcast. I’ve shared it on some other people’s podcast, but when I was pregnant with my first child, I started experiencing panic attacks every single day and they were terrifying. So for me, panic attack was feeling like I was going to pass out or I might die. I was sweating. I felt really trapped and closed in. I felt nauseous. I felt dizzy. You just feel like you can’t escape and your heart’s racing. So I was having those daily and some of it was around medical concerns. I had some medical phobias and other was concerns that I was going to miscarry and lose my son. I know that some of you, this might be bringing up and triggering some things because yes, there’s so much there that I just said.

And part of it was my I didn’t realize at the time, but what was triggered me is when I was three years old, my mom was pregnant with my sister and she lost my sister after 45 minutes of birth. That has been shaping my parents, that shaped my life. I was the oldest of six and Brina was the second. So I remember, it was one of my first memories coming out, running out of the house I was staying at and so excited to see my mom and dad and new sister and there was no baby. I asked where is she and my parents unknowingly said, God took her to be with Him in heaven. I didn’t realize, but that stuck with me as a way of God takes babies.

So when I was pregnant with Joshua, my oldest, that fear that, I mean, it doesn’t make sense as a 37 year old, but this was part of my trauma I didn’t know I had to deal with. So I held onto that as God’s going to take this baby. That’s what He does. I didn’t like, so again, talk about deconstructing. God and I fought for eight months straight. I had fear. I had guilt because was doubting God. I dealt with so much. God and I fought for eight months. Well, I fought with God. He kindly and graciously just was constant and was there and allowed it. We had a lot of talks and finally, around eight or nine months, I was able to have some peace and realize that I can trust God no matter what happened.

I know for some of you, the story hasn’t turned out that way, and I want to just acknowledge that. I’m so sorry. It is a season of grief. It could be a season of grief right now for you. I think how people respond to death and loss and grief and pain, I think the moms who have lost babies, whether it’s infant loss or infertility or a miscarriage, I don’t think they are given enough voice to grieve. I feel like they sweep it, like society sweeps it under the rug too much, and that the mom needs time to go through that process and just be acknowledged. So it is very close to my heart because of my mom and my sister. I didn’t realize how that would affect me as becoming a mom and how that affected my spirituality and my belief in God and what happens when God, when bad things happen, what do I do?

So I feel like that also started my journey. So right from pregnancy, I feel like my kids were bringing up spiritual stuff for me that I had to face. I had to, and I feel like they still do that. It hasn’t stopped. So I have experienced it since conception, all the way till now. I don’t think it’ll finish, but that is, I just want to say that is why I am so passionate about soul care for moms. We can’t do this on our own. We need to connect. God has been so instrumental in that He is there no matter what, and there is no judgment. I think a lot of people feel there can be judgment, but I want to present a God who is comfort and compassionate in the midst of our pain, in the midst are moments that we don’t understand why things are happening.

So yes, and I do feel like this podcast, I didn’t mean for it to get so heavy, but I’m sure it is. It’s bringing up stuff for people. If that is bringing stuff up for you and you feel like you still need to deal with it, I would suggest reaching out for a therapist, someone who specializes in that. If you are in Castle Rock or anywhere in Colorado, and you’re listening to this, I do have a couple therapists on my team who specialize in pregnancy, infant loss anxiety or depression during pregnancy and after birth. You can definitely look up my counseling center. It’s authenticconnectionscounseling.com. If you’re outside of Colorado, definitely look up counseling centers who focus or a therapist who focuses on infant loss.

It’s called perinatal or pregnancy and postpartum. Any of those words you’d want to put into a Google search and find someone who specializes in that. Another really good resource is the Wave of Life. It was founded in 2003. You could check that out. They will have a lot, I’m sure they will have a lot of resources on their website. So again, I’m so sorry if this is triggering people. I didn’t mean to do that. I just wanted to share that being a parent is hard and we need to dive deeper into that. That has been part of my story and there’s been other stories like when I was pregnant with my second son. At this time, I had worked, I had done some EMDR, which is some trauma therapy that helped me get ready to have my second son where I didn’t have the anxiety like I did with my first pregnancy.

So there is hope you can get help. Therapy is super helpful for that. And for me, my therapy was integrated with spirituality and soul care and that’s what I wanted. So that is how it helped me get better and that I am so passionate about it. So let’s look at what can soul care look like for moms. So I’ll just share what has been important to me, and it might change and be different for you, but here’s just some of my ideas. I love podcasts. So I go for a walk, whether it’s with my dog or myself and I listen to a podcast that is going to fuel me up, an audio book. Also you can do this while doing laundry or dishes. But somewhere where you can have some time tune the little ones out. Hiking and walking, even just 20 minutes a day is going to help you slow down, being in nature, just sitting outside, feeling the breeze, engaging the five senses while you’re in nature, helping you slow down.

Again, we’re not talking a day, a day would be great. Even an hour would be great, but if you only have 15 or 20 minutes do that. Some apps I like, one is called Soul Space App. Another is Pause, and that is by John Eldridge. So both of those are really short, three to five minutes, sometimes seven minutes, but that’s an app that can re-ground you. A soul care day and you can get it. Soul care retreat, where you can take a few days and I will be, I’m actually going to be hosting some of these soul care days and soul care retreats. If you’re interested, just shoot me an email. Also finding a spiritual director, a therapist who can integrate spirituality and has practice doing just doing that.

Also authentic community people who can have these soul conversations with you. Find a few of their moms that are willing to talk about this stuff and get together once a month or once a week or whatever you can. Find a babysitter to babysit all the kids at the same time. So you can actually have adult conversations and really engage in your own journey. In fact, I have, my spiritual reflections workbook is a free eight-week email course that is another way you can jump in and engage on your own spiritual journey. It helps you kind of reflect on where you came from, what you need. You can get that at faithfringes.com and you’ll see it right there, a free eight-week email course called Spiritual Reflections.

Another thing that will work, Lectio Divina, you can Google that, look it up. It’s an ancient way of reading the scriptures. The daily examine is another favorite way. This one is a way to just ask yourself, where did I experience God today and where didn’t I experience God today. So those two simple questions, just spending time, it’s a great family question, too. We sometimes do it around the table. We ask our kids where have you experienced God? and where haven’t you today, just to get them thinking on spiritual levels. But it’s also good for you to do. It’s so funny, by the way, when you ask the kids how they experience God. It’s a lot different than adults. It’s a cool question. Yoga is a way to slow your body down and maybe engage spiritually.

So those are just some ideas for you to start looking at soul care and start looking towards spirituality. I’d love to hear from you and hear what you are thinking. I would love to hear more of how you get to integrate soul care and spirituality into your journey of motherhood. I’d love to hear more. So feel free to email me, dawn@faithfringes.com. If you’re interested, if you’re in Colorado and you’re interested in a soul care day for moms or a soul care retreat for moms reach out to me. I’m just launching my retreat and my soul care day phase. and I would love to find out if you have a group of moms you’d want to do that with, and I can taper that to your group, taper that to friends, or you can just have a couple friends and I will figure out and grab a few more people and would love to host a care day for you where I do some guided spiritual exercises, but also you have some time to refuel. And I can do it during the school hours. I just did one yesterday and it was wonderful. So again, reach out to me.

Thank you for listening. I appreciate the time you take, I really value the time you take to listen to this podcast. If you like it, please share it with your friends, share it on social media and tell them about it. Also the best thing you can do is just go online, go onto Apple Podcasts and rate and review it. That is the best way you can share it because that will get it out to other people because they’ll notice it and Apple starts to say, oh, we need to share this with other people too. So thank you again. Enjoy your Thanksgiving. Take care.

Thank you for listening today at Faith Fringes Podcast. If you want to explore more of your own faith journey, I offer my free eight-week email course called Spiritual Reflections, where you take a deeper dive into your own story included as a journaling workbook that has guided exercises. So if you want to explore more of what you were brought up to believe, or even look at where you may have been disillusioned or hurt, but yet still deep down you desire to authentically connect with God, then this course is for you. Just go to faithfringes.com to sign up.

Also, I love hearing from my listeners, drop me an email and tell me what’s on your mind. You can reach me at dawn@faithfringes.com.

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