The Mom Flow: 10 Mom-fessions + Pushing Back

Welcome to The Mom Flow, where I share things that are on my mind in the hopes of helping you connect to your Mom Flow. Thanks for being here! —Erin Sousa

The ‘wait until’ of it all

If you follow me on IG, you know I like to do what I call Petty Rants ™ – the TM is a tongue in cheek joke, btw. Seriously, it’s some of your fave content, and I defo could do a little ranting on the daily, so why not bring it here?! Something I’ve noticed that us moms do often when a mom is talking about her experience in a phase of motherhood, as an example, I was chatting about how I’m so sad that Lola’s daycare bestie went off to kindy, is respond with the ‘you just wait’ response. “You just wait until they are teen agers and…”, “you just wait until they first get bullied in elementary…”. I believe that moms do this as a way to share their own experience, but what it actually does is minimize what a mom is feeling or dealing with in the moment. I’m sure, not anyone’s intent! I’ve heard this my entire my motherhood journey and it’s always irked me. In turn, I’ve been so mindful to never so this myself to a fellow mama. ‘Hard’ isn’t a competition. Relating is great, so I want to always validate feelings and offer perhaps my own experience once the mom I’m speaking to feels heard and understood, bc OMG, this is such a challenging gig.

Monetization of motherhood

I’ve been planning my first IRL Mom Flow event that will be open to all, and it’s had me thinking a lot about what The Mom Flow really stands for and why I think this platform is an important one. Before I became a mom, I was taken with how it was portrayed on IG. It looked so fun, calm, pretty, and dare I say, easy. As long as you had all the things, the perfect onesies, expensive rockers, I could go on. Becoming a mom made me realize that WOW, it’s really not about the stuff. This shit is hard, messy, imperfect, emotional, relentless, thankless, lonely, (paired with truly so much beauty, love, pure joy). Somehow, online, motherhood shifted to the extreme monetization of motherhood, perpetuated by influencers who are selling more more more to be a ‘good mom’. It’s the subtle portrayal of perfection that has messed us up in sometimes profound ways. And I don’t forsake influencers in any way, because influencers are doing their job. They are a brand. Hey, I have brand deals myself! It’s our job to keep our own reactions in check. To be a savvy consumer. To take it for what it is. We can feel not good enough as moms which can be prime for buying more things. It’s hard for our minds to recognize that influencers are doing a job online, bc they feel familiar and personal to us. But what I shy away from and always have, simply put, bc it gives me the ick, is product pushing with the undertone of ‘buy this, bc it will make you a better mom’. I’ve often stopped myself to say “do I need this” or “what feeling I’m I trying to achieve with this”. At the end of the day, we need more real voices in the motherhood space. This can get challenging bc in order for someone to put a lot of time and effort into providing this kind of content, it takes time, and that means getting paid can be essential to doing it. The Mom Flow is here for it. I feel really vulnerable speaking on things I do sometimes, but I know it resonates with the hidden parts of us we may feel shame or guilt about. The times we say to ourself “I am a bad mom” or “I’m not enough” are loud, and we wonder if they could be true. Normalizing the convos we have here are important and that’s what I want to keep doing.

10 things I’m saying out loud

On that note, here are 10 random feelings/thoughts I’ve had about my motherhood experience this week (mom-fessions if you will):

1. Did my mom ever feel like this? She seemed to love it all, I must not be meant for this
2. If she screams when I brush her hair one more time, I’m going to lose it
3. There is nowhere I feel more comfortable than snuggling you to sleep in your bed but please go the f*ck to sleep
4. I wish I had another baby
5. I don’t have time to pick her up from daycare, I have to work!
6. Is it ok if I give her mac and cheese for dinner again?
7. If she doesn’t get into her jammies like I’ve asked 35 times…
8. I’m so excited for our special mom and Lola Saturday!
9. Can we please skip the bath again? I’m sure she’s fine
10. Will she have enough friends in preschool?

Major weekly meal hack

Oof, this week’s Mom Flow has been a bit heavy! Let’s lighten it up with a major meal planning/meal prep hack that saved our week. I’ve been on a journey to skip take out all except one day a week, and we’ve been keeping up to that! I’m so proud of myself, because it was such a crutch for me that was honestly so unhealthy and expensive. I picked up some organic chicken breast and greens on Monday to keep our dinner locked down all week. I think I spent about $40 on the chicken. The magic was in making 4-6 breaded chicken cutlets to have on hand for the week to make salads and wraps with on repeat! I made a salad dressing and honestly, it saved us so much time and money. This hack is one I will bring back often!

There’s more! Keep reading this week’s edition of The Mom Flow by Erin Sousa; subscribe for free to receive new posts and support her work, here!