A Letter To Generation Z Moms

Dear Mothers

As a Health Coach, I will work (and currently work) with a lot of women- many and most of them mothers like you and me. I've come to realize that today we feel unnecessary stress over parenting.  I don’t mean the kind of stress if your child gets sick, financial stress, or the fear of something happening to them- I call this the “natural stress”.  I’m talking about the “OMG we are ruining our children and their WHOLE generation!!!” stress.

This I believe, is largely due to the enormous amounts of information we receive in the form of (I’m sure well-intentioned) articles, Facebook posts, even books about what we, as apparently a whole generation, are doing WRONG.

You know, the ones that say we:

Are spoiling them
Make them feel entitled
Protect them too much
Over schedule them
Solve their problems 
Make them the center of our lives
..or make them feel “special”…

I’m not here to talk about my parenting style or defend one thing over the other, but I want to make YOU, fellow mothers of my generation, feel good on this Mother’s Day week, and perhaps ease some of that stress that can be a heavy burden to your health.

Think about it… did our parents and grandparents do better than we do? We don’t have ANY issues? Wow!...
Oh no that’s right, it’s the French kids that are perfect!

Call me crazy but…I think if we LOVE our children.  RESPECT them.  TAKE CARE of them and DO OUR BEST every day, our children will be fine, actually they will be GREAT.

Will they have to deal with this or that? I am sure they will. But so have I.  And my mother for that matter.

Lastly... remember every younger generation has been criticized by the ones who came before it... and vice versa. Did you know the Baby Boomers are actually the “entitled generation”??

What??... I rest my case.

With Love,
Marisa

Gratitude: Post-Thanksgiving.

So you’re probably thinking I’m late on this gratitude post, Thanksgiving is over…. but  no, I just think “why be thankful only on Thanksgiving day?”

Gratitude is the root for peace, love, and true joy. It is incredibly important to our mental and even physical well-being. Think about it: instead of focusing on what’s causing you pain, sadness, anger and complain, focus on appreciating what you have, even that pain and its importance to your growth!  This way you succeed in ridding your body and mind of negative emotions, replacing them with positive ones.

“Expectation is the Mother of all Frustration.”

Great gratitude comes ultimately from a place of great humility. Replacing expectation with awe, we see the world through childlike eyes. Everything is a gift, everything is alive; everything is thrilling! We let the quality of life fill us up instead of the quantity.

Gratitude as a health aspect is rooted in Eastern philosophies, but the idea is recently being incorporated into Western medicine.

A study by the Mayo Clinic cites these health benefits of positive thinking:

• Decreased negative stress
• Greater resistance to catching the common cold
• A sense of well-being and improved health
• Reduced risk of coronary artery disease
• Easier breathing with certain lung diseases, such as emphysema
• Improved coping ability for women with high-risk pregnancies
• Better coping skills during hardships

How to incorporate GRATITUDE into your daily life:

1. During a yoga or meditation practice: start your practice with an intention of gratitude.  Take a few breaths focusing on all you are grateful for.  During practice, be grateful for being able to breathe, move, think- the simple things in life that so many may not have.

2. During a difficult situation: If you find yourself entrenched in negative thinking, try to replace those stressful thoughts with thoughts of gratitude for yourself and others. For example, if you get caught in the rain, try not to focus on the fact that you’re wet, uncomfortable, stuck in traffic, (and probably late!), but rather focus on the benefits that rain brings to the Earth.

3. Journaling: Try journaling three or five small things for which you are grateful for, every morning after waking, or every evening before falling asleep.

4. Family dinner table conversation: Start your meal with going around as a family and each saying what they are grateful for from today. This is a great way to teach children early on to focus on those positive moments and be thankful.  Young children might need help with this one at the beginning as they don’t necessarily know to be grateful for the food they have in front of them or their school, friends, etc… but it is a great conversation to start!

Dig deep for gratitude and you will find peace. It’s always right in front of us, but we can’t always see it through the dust of daily life that makes it look ordinary and unimportant.

I’ll leave you with this gratitude poem by yoga teacher Jeanie Manchester:

I am grateful for my limits

that teach me patience and pace

I am grateful for challenge, defeat, and loss

They teach me hope is not a light at the end of the dark tunnel

It’s the ember burning within me that I forgot to fan

I am grateful to my teachers

for introducing me to myself

I am grateful for my past

that has delivered me to my present

I am grateful for all I have found and all I have lost

Both remind me I can live with and without

I am grateful for silence and for laughter

And for my ears that can hear both

I am grateful to my heart

that beats and breaks and heals

I am grateful for the fullness of my life

For the brief, heartbreaking, heartwarming fullness of life.