Just make muffins.
Stay with me.
I wrote this in 2020 and the tip still holds, We actually all had Covid and we were in our 14-day quarantine at the time.
The days for Mommas in 2020 were longer than long. Some days you wake up and think, I just can’t today. I just need a damn break. Just ONE normal day. Am I right?
What I’m about to share is by no means to parent shame anyone but to be real. When you work in life-coaching and self-improvement, you learn very quickly that MOST if not all of our problems stem from our childhoods. This is when our subconscious mind and our solid belief system is built. We start to believe thoughts around energy, love, socializing, money, respect, relationships, education, boundaries, abuse and more. These years SHAPE US.
While blatant abuse and neglect clearly have a negative affect on ones life, what I’ve learned is many adults who struggle didn’t always experience blatant abuse or neglect. What they experienced was emotionally or physically checked out parents. They were there BUT they weren’t REALLY there. They had so many stresses and struggles going on in their own lives that they were “checked out” from truly parenting and connecting with their children. You will not BELIEVE what this can teach a child to believe about their WORTH. How they can feel like a burden or feel a need to over please to get attention. THIS TRANSLATES into big blocks in your life as an adult. I see it every day. I coach women who are working to break these beliefs. It doesn’t mean their parents were “bad parents”, it means they are human and they now have to address their truth.
As a parent raising children during a global pandemic, an insane political shit storm and an economic recession, with so many stressors physically and emotionally, it is EXPECTED that you will feel checked out at times. Overwhelmed. Not able to function at your highest level. But, extend that now over a year and what will this mean for our children’s beliefs around this year. Around how we react to stress?
So here’s my advice. Something that I’ve been using that has been helping.
On the days I truly just want to check out. Just make the muffins.
I have box muffins waiting in the cupboard for those days.
They’re so easy to make – not from scratch or special… literally just add water, oil, eggs, and blueberries. We turn on Christmas music, bake the muffins, and the 18 minutes it takes for them to cook I force myself to clean the kitchen… a quick twenty minute clean up. (Clutter adds stress, but we don’t have the energy to clean is a viscous cycle.)
The house smells delicious, the kids have some warm comfort food, and it usually gives me just enough of an energy and mood boost to feel like I can check back in. Be present and joyful. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes I still feel defeated and that’s ok. At least I made the muffins and cleaned a bit. At least the kids will remember that burst where Mom seemed fine and baked muffins. We are depositing 2020 into their memory banks, no matter what.
They’ll have memories of Mom making lots of muffins. Sweet fresh hot muffins. We all sit around the table and just BE. We talk about what we’re grateful for before we dig in. We’ll have those moments even on the days that I wanted to completely check out.
When they’re older I may tell them my trick – that some days Mom baked muffins because if she didn’t, she felt like she didn’t want to do ANYTHING. I’ll tell them that their simple joy of warm muffins and Christmas music was the highlight of my day. They’ll know that THEY were not a stressor of 2020, but instead a sweet gift.
I’m not here to Mom shame if you’re having hard hard days. I’m here to encourage and remind you, you’re not alone. Try it.
Just make the muffins.