Parenting is hard, and parenting as a woman – due to deep seeded societal expectations – is even harder. Moms bear the burden of caring of boo boos. Moms bear the burden of making a million decisions – what’s for breakfast/lunch/dinner, what gift do we get for Susie’s birthday party, what activities and camps should the kids sign up for? Moms bear the burden of never having a moment alone to pee – even when we lock ourselves in the bathroom, little tiny fingers and toes still wiggle their way under the bathroom doors.

As a life coach for working moms (I’m in that boat, too) and a pediatrician (we take care of the kids’ health by checking in with moms, too!), I have found 3 strategies that work to lift off common burdens. Instead of celebrating Mother’s Day on just one day, let’s celebrate ourselves everyday by implementing our own version of these agile approaches.

3 strategies to make life easier for moms

Delegate

What can you do today to delegate? If you don’t know, I can help – I made this >>>list<<<< of common and easy to delegate tasks. Use it for inspiration. Pick one task to delegate to a program or subscription or friend or service. Like now. You have 10 minutes. Just one. Pick one. Off your plate.

• Order dinner from Uber Eats
• Upload a few research articles to chatGPT and ask it to create your abstract or slides
• Tell a coworker with overlapping responsibilities that you noticed they are really talented at xyz task and ask them to take it on
• Ask a friend to help you put up your wall art (don’t we all have this unfinished project?)
• Or, try delegating to the trash bin and just out right deleting a task

Communicate

Communicate your needs, because our minds are complex and no one can read them, except other busy moms, but most of them are too busy to translate your minds to the rest of the world. What are 3 things you want your partner to do that would help your day go smoother the most? Tell them.

• Pick up the groceries on their way home?
• Call the car shop, vet, or doctor’s office to schedule an appointment?
• Load/unload the dishwasher?
• Pack snacks?
• Play with or read to the kids?
• Handle bath and bedtime routines?

Tell them those three things and to be fair, ask them what three things they would find helpful for you to start or stop doing. You can ignore their answers for now – as Ruth Bader Ginsburg famously said, “In every good marriage, it helps sometimes to be a little bit deaf.” Don’t be attached to the outcome. The purpose of this exercise is not whether or not the person listens, but rather a practice in advocating for ourselves and in speaking up about our needs.

Self care

What’s one thing you can do today for you? Self care is not selfish. Taking care of a family is a lot of hard work, and we need to get rest to have the energy to tackle everyone’s needs (and saying no to some of those “needs” is a more advanced lesson in self care for a later day – let me know if you are interested in learning more!). Self care is not time consuming or complex. Self care can be:

• Laying down on the floor for 5 minutes
• Standing outside with your face in the sun for 5 minutes
• Doing a plank for 30 seconds
• Applying eye makeup and take a few cute selfies
• Putting on a jewelry you haven’t worn in a while
• Sipping on a cup of tea, gently inhaling the warm flavors and feeling the steam lightly touch your face
• Dancing to one song
• Texting “hey, how are you?” to a friend
• Writing a haiku (3-line poem with 5, 7, and 5 syllables)
• Writing an acrostic poem with your name

Time to take action

This is easy right? Delegate one task, communicate 3 needs, and do one quick self care activity. Shall we try to do one set of these each week? Everyday? Let’s make Mother’s Day last a little longer this year. If these ideas seem too simple, try them anyway. You can make it more advanced by delegating more tasks, communicating your needs to more people, and doing a more time-consuming self care activity. If they seem too difficult, then let’s explore this more…what’s stopping you? This is the work I do with my life coaching clients. What’s stopping you from living your best life? Together, we uncover barriers and work through ways to chip away at them, little by little, layer by layer, week by week.

If you want to brainstorm an action plan to feel lighter and live a more joyful mom life, let’s connect! Let’s have a 30 minutes chat to create some customized strategies for you. Fill out the form below and write “Mother’s Day” in the free text questions box. Happy Mother’s Day!