Brave New Mom - the Book!

I am so thrilled to be in the final phases of editing my first BOOK which will be released in early 2021!

Brave New Mom is a “Survival Guide for Mindfully Navigating Postpartum Motherhood.” It is the book I needed when I was a new mom, feeling isolated and panicked at home during each of my maternity leaves and beyond. The book offers brief but powerful practices that help new moms settle their minds, honor their feelings, care for their selves, and open up to support. I have been working on it fervently in secret and in collaboration with the phenomenal Wise Ink Creative Publishing.

With the book will come a supportive, non-judgmental, and empowering community for moms at bravenewmom.org, launching soon!

Sign up below for our newsletter to receive updates and exciting news as we get closer to the book and web community launch. See you soon! - Jessie Everts, PhD LMFT

Photo: Wilfredo Lee/AP

Photo: Wilfredo Lee/AP

New Mom Big News!

So many amazing things are happening! Something I’ve been working on for months, a guide of therapeutic activities for new postpartum moms, came out on Happify and it looks amazing! Happify is an awesome website and app full of evidence-based wellness information and activities for anyone – I really encourage anyone who wants to be actively a little happier in their everyday life to visit/download!

Related, my book Brave New Mom, is in the capable hands of an editor and getting ready for publication in early 2021. I hear from so many new moms, “Nothing prepared me for [this whole experience of new motherhood]” – that is what this book is for! I want this to be a guide to your postpartum feelings; a recognition of the collective strength, bravery, and power of moms; and practical, actual things you can do to feel better about yourself and your ability to handle new motherhood and everything that comes with it. I am so excited for this idea to become a reality so I’m busy getting a beautiful book cover and webpage all set up for it, as well as all gathering up the other supports a new mom needs. The Happify postpartum track is a great starting place for anyone you know needs this book now, though it’s not quite ready yet!

I just couldn’t help myself from sharing some of the great news and let you in on what I’ve been working on. Also, if you haven’t already pointed a new mom in your life to this article about postpartum support during COVID-19, send it along!

There is also a new article about “growing your village” for new parents here on the Postpartum Support International site: https://www.postpartum.net/psi-blog/growing-your-village-a-guide-for-new-parents/

Jessie Everts, PhD LMFT

In honor of George Floyd

Empower Mental Health as an inclusive mental health organization mourns the loss of George Floyd by murder in our city of Minneapolis, supports protestors and the Black Lives Matter movement, and is committed to doing antiracist work, both personally and professionally.

I have found Resmaa Menakem’s Cultural Somatics e-course to be a critical starting place for anyone interested in recent events through the lens of racialized trauma.

Jessie Everts, PhD LMFT

To put this commitment into action, we are donating 25% of our revenue to local organizations impacted by unrest and working to change systems. This month’s donations are going to Reclaim the Block, Roots Community Birth Center, and Women for Political Change. You can donate directly to these organizations or use this link to donate to Empower Mental Health - the rest of your donation will go toward coaching and training through an antiracism lens:

Donate

Recovering from Life Burnout

Many of us – I’ll venture to say working mothers in particular – are feeling burnt out in one if not many of the roles we find ourselves switching wildly between these days – parent, worker, teacher, disciplinarian, compassion figure, cook, consumer, partner, housekeeper, functional adult. I will say that I have felt “burnt out” – feeling hopeless and ineffective in dealing with my work and just over it – in every one of these roles over the past week.

We are reaching our limits within these roles more frequently because they used to serve as breaks from one another – while I was at work I didn’t have to worry about what was for dinner, and when I was planning fun and educational activities for my kids I didn’t have to also think about when I was going to fit these into my work day. Breaks (mental or physical) and feelings of purpose or motivation toward a goal are what prevent burnout – and here we are without them, and without an end in sight.

Here’s how we can recover from burnout, if we’re already there:

1) Redefine “effectiveness” – forget about being able to complete one task by a deadline and before moving on to another. If you are living in the reality of multiple overlapping and critical roles, surviving through the day without anyone dying is effective. Avoid setting expectations about all of the things you “should” be able to accomplish in a work day (or a parenting day, or a home-school day), and instead set one small, achievable goal in each of the realms you have to function that day. Plan to get outside. Plan to make it to that one important zoom meeting. Plan to take a few minutes to shower, to read, or to have a dance party in your kitchen – something that brings you joy. Plan to eat a sandwich. If you don’t reach all those small, achievable goals, THAT’S OKAY. There were probably too many of them anyway. Give yourself credit for the things you did, and let the other things go. Finish the day with gratitude about what went well.

2) Build up your Life satisfaction – Identify what things you do in a day that make you feel energized and engaged. Do more of those things. See if there are ways to define your “effectiveness” by how much you do these things, instead of how much work you get done or how much math your kid learns. If you also happen to identify some things that drag down your morale, see if you can either do less of those things or pair them with a reward or something fun like listening to a podcast or music while you file reports, or taking that meeting on your phone outside. We might not be able to quit all the things we don’t want to do, but we can maybe shift our thinking so that we don’t spend so much of our mental energy (which is limited!) on them to the point that it’s all we think about.

3) Talk about Work-Life Integration – if you’re a working parent, this is the time to talk with your manager/supervisor about how to design a more sustainable work-life integration – let’s lose this idea of “work-life balance,” as if they are ever going to be totally separate things again. We need to be able to work within our life, and live as whole humans even in our work. Now is the time, because if your workplace is not willing to be flexible now, when we are ALL needing flexibility, it is not. the. place. for. you. (I offer workplace consultation on specifically fostering the needs of working parents, so a well-placed referral can certainly be made here!) As workplaces are thinking about what productivity looks like long-term, we working parents have to be in the equation. It is also a unique time to take a look at your own work-life integration and think about what you would like it to look like as opposed to what it does look like, and see if some of the changes can be made internally (in your own thinking or prioritization), as well as making some recommendations to your employer.

I’m with you in this, working parents, and cheering you on as we all try to figure out our own balance, roles, and ways of moving forward!

Jessie Everts, PhD LMFT

photo: Jayden Brand

photo: Jayden Brand

Collective Resilience in COVID-19

I am so impressed with the collective resilience I am seeing as we move through these uncharted waters of COVID-19 and safe-at-home evolutions. I am seeing people who live with anxiety using all of their skills to calm both themselves and others. I am seeing new and soon-to-be moms move through hard feelings about what they expected pregnancy or life with an infant to be and the reality it is turning into. I am seeing (and feeling) the multiple pressures on parents to work, parent, educate, and remain sane and productive – and we keep doing it, day after day, sometimes even finding the humor in it.

I am hearing almost everyone I talk to saying “Yes, this is hard for me and has totally turned my world upside down, but I know that it is worth it to protect others - and I know that so many have it so much worse than I do.” What an amazing mix of feelings to be able to hold all at one time. We are, as a society, putting our own (what we thought of as) basic needs on hold for the presumptive good of people more vulnerable, and all the while trying to keep perspective on our privilege in the face of total chaos and uncertainty.

Think about what power we all hold, if we can keep it as we move forward from this, to reassess what we “need” and to keep focused on our place in the world, without knowing what is to come. There is ambiguity in it, no question about that. But maybe there is beauty in the ambiguity, if we can find the meaning in what we are doing. It makes living this way a practice of letting go of the outcome, just doing our best, in solidarity with others.

Check out our two new virtual classes, “Mindful Meditation 101” and “Mindfulness for Moms”!

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COVID-19

Well our world has been completely rocked by COVID-19, the coronavirus, and all of our plans for 2020 are changed in an instant. We, like so many others, are on shelter-in-place status until further notice, which I find to be comforting (as well as frustrating and difficult and all of the other things). It’s nice to have certainty that we are where we should be, at home, in solidarity and protecting the more vulnerable among us.

My family and I had started keeping at home about a week early, thinking that this was coming and with encouragement from our workplaces. This means that we join the legions of parents trying to figure out how to work from home, parent, home school, and also maintain some sense of normalcy while also keeping our children apprised of the situation. This is a delicate balance. But it is one we can manage, and I feel grateful that we have the ability to do this, and the will to do it (as long as it is TEMPORARY)!

I have also been doing all of my therapy online, via telehealth, which has its own challenges of invasion of privacy, as I can now see inside my clients’ houses and lives in a way I couldn’t before; internet connectivity; figuring out where to look and how to manage the background noise of my own home, kids, and dog. But again, we can do this, and I have felt glad and grateful that this technology exists at a time when we suddenly and completely needed it. My clients have adapted and seen that it can be helpful to have a time and a place that they know they can talk with someone about their fears and struggles – and they ALL have them. We are all, every one of us, having fears and struggles with this. It is my hope, as I’ve worked on with all of my clients, that we can all also feel the gratitude and solidarity of this hard time; that we can recognize that we are doing this for each other. That is what will keep us going.

In that vein, I hosted a short Mindful Meditation 101 virtual class on Monday night that is now available as a recording. I think that it was helpful in creating a sense of calm and peace in these times where we are so desperately searching for them. I hope that the class will be helpful to you all, too, as you look for that sense of calm and peace, that you realize you can create them yourselves, right there in your own home.

Stay home and stay well,

Jessie

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Virtual Services that Empower

We feel very fortunate during this COVID-19 pandemic that all of our services are already available virtually! All of the following can be done virtually:

Clinical Supervision

Leadership Coaching

Training

Consultation

Telehealth Therapy (through Wild Tree Wellness)

We will also be having our first live training, Mindful Meditation 101, a great introduction to mindfulness/meditation practices that help us all hold on to our calm and peace during these turbulent times! The live-stream will happen next Monday, 3/30 at 7:45pm Central time.

We hope you will connect with us about any of these services, as we are offering reduced rates for many of them!

Stay Home and Stay Well!

Jessie

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