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What I'd Tell A Younger Me About Self Care {Episode 186}
730 Plays2 years ago
If you've listened to the podcast for more than a couple episodes, you already know that Audrey and I are HUGE proponents of self care. But what does that term even mean? How did we learn to prioritize caring for ourselves before all these little ones and how can you learn to do the same?
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Don't miss these episodes mentioned today:
Episode 51: The Myth of Balance
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsor Thanks
00:00:07
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Outnumbered the Podcast. I'm Audrey. And I'm Bonnie. We are experienced moms to a combined total of 19 children. In our weekly episodes, we explore relatable topics using our perspectives of humor and chaos. Tune in for advice and encouragement to gain more joy in your parenting journey.
00:00:33
Speaker
We are so grateful to Magic Spoon for sponsoring this episode. You guys, I have to say that I have been a cereal fan since I was a very small child. And then growing up, I didn't eat it for breakfast. I started eating it as an afternoon or a midnight snack. It's one of my favorite things. However, when I learned to read a nutrition label, I learned that it was not good for me, like in the least. Enter Magic Spoon. You guys, this cereal is amazing. So in the variety pack, there's four flavors. There's cocoa, fruity, frosted, and peanut butter.
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Advice to Younger Selves: Self-Care Focus
00:01:52
Speaker
Welcome back, friends. We are here with another episode of Outnumber the Podcast talking about what we would tell our younger selves.
00:01:59
Speaker
We love this whole series because sometimes it just takes a little bit of time and a little bit of maturity and a little bit of lowering our expectations before we realize just how we want to react to specific circumstances in our life. And today we're talking about self-care. You guys know we have like a rallying cry surrounding self-care, right? And that we just want to be able to teach every mom everywhere how to take better care of herself so that she can be the best mom ever. So I'm excited.
00:02:26
Speaker
Yeah, this series is basically us sitting on a park bench with a young mom and telling her, hey, you got this. Yeah, we did it. You can do it. Okay. So I have to tell you this funny conversation that my daughter, my teenage daughter relayed to me about a conversation she was having with her three year old brother. So she's, it was her day to cook breakfast. She cooks on the weekends cause she works during the week and she says,
00:02:50
Speaker
So buddy, what do you like for breakfast? What do you want me to cook? And he's saying all this slew of things that he would love for her to cook. And she was laughing and she finally says, well, is there anything you don't like? Is there any kind of food you don't like? And he says, um, moldy.
00:03:11
Speaker
And when she got done laughing, she says, well, that's good. That's good. Don't eat moldy food. But is there any other kind of food that you don't like? And he says, um, rotten. So then she says, but for breakfast. And he says, I just like good food. Just don't give me anything with maggots in it.
00:03:39
Speaker
Kids are so cute. At least he knows what he wants, and he is not picky. Gotta love that. Okay, so I'm diving into self-care, you guys. We have to say that our self-care today looks a little bit different than what it did 10 to 20 years ago. Audrey and I both believe that we are better at it, but also that what we consider to be self-care is a little bit more refined, we might say, a little bit wiser than what we thought it was at 25, even 30 years old, right?
00:04:08
Speaker
Yes, that is the first thing we want to talk about is what is self-care? So I would tell a younger me, what is self-care? Self-care is caring for your body physically, caring for your self mentally, caring for yourself spiritually, and caring for yourself emotionally. All those different areas, you've got to cover them, you've got to hit them, you've got to keep yourself nourished.
00:04:33
Speaker
So, like, if you just focus on one of those areas and call that self-care and neglect some of the others, you're going to end up not a well-rounded, well-cared-for person. And so, like, if I focus on physical exercise, that's self-care for me. I've got to do that. I've got to do that. And then I neglect, you know, maybe I physically exercise to the point of mental exhaustion. You know, that's not doing myself
Understanding Self-Care vs. Indulgence
00:04:59
Speaker
any good. But just focus on
00:05:03
Speaker
all the parts of you that need cared for. The reason that we feel like we're being neglected is because we have, we're caring for so many little ones in so many different ways. We're caring for them physically. We're caring for them mentally. We're caring, we're looking out for their emotional needs. We're thinking about their spiritual care and all that. And we're like guiding them. And so it's very easy to like feel not neglected ourselves. And yeah, we'll talk about this more, but physical, but self-care is you.
00:05:32
Speaker
caring for yourself in those four areas. Yes, so good. I think that in my younger years, I would be so desperate for time alone or time doing something that I wanted to do that very often I got a little bit
00:05:46
Speaker
off track when it came to self-care and I would just take off and go do something that was maybe a little bit more on the fun side of things than actual care. So if you maybe feel like you're a little bit lost or you're not really sure how to define this, look at what you do for your children. What you do for your children every single day is care for them. Are you doing those same things for yourself?
00:06:08
Speaker
Are you ensuring that you're getting enough sleep? Are you feeding yourself three nutritious meals? At least snacks are good too. Are you dressing yourself in clothes that make you feel put together and like a decent human being? Are you brushing your hair? Are you brushing your teeth, right? We start real basic. And then what do you teach your children? Are you teaching them to care for themselves spiritually and emotionally? Are you doing the same thing for you? So that's a really great place to start if you're not even sure what self-care looks like, right?
00:06:33
Speaker
I also want to add here a few things that self-care is not. And it doesn't mean that all of these are necessarily bad, but very often we just define it incorrectly. So self-care is not self-indulgence, okay? So like going crazy because your children are driving you nuts and hiding in your room with a bag of Oreos and Netflix is not self-care.
00:06:54
Speaker
It might be fun. I'm not saying you can't ever do it. It's just don't tell yourself, well, I'm taking a self-care afternoon by doing this. You're just being a little self-indulgent, and that's okay sometimes. Just important to define those two things, right? It's not laziness. It's not pampering yourself.
00:07:10
Speaker
It's not a neglect of duties. Although, like I said, sometimes when you care for yourself, you are going to let some things go so that you can better feel human. Sometimes we do need to step away from those duties as long as we're not just looking for a distraction, a buffering.
00:07:27
Speaker
Yes, that is so true. And also I want to add for myself, I've had to redefine self-care as being alone. That is not self-care. So if I wait for time when I'm totally alone to be able to focus on myself and care for myself, man, I'm going to be out of luck six days out of seven. There just isn't going to be alone time. And so at first, you know, I thought, well, I just can't do self-care because I'm never by myself.
00:07:57
Speaker
So, I think I talked about this a little bit on our episode that we did on the Family Brand podcast when we were guests on Melissa's podcast there. But if I define self-care as a half an hour bubble bath with candlelight and all that with no interruptions, well, then I just am not getting self-care because that is not ever going to happen. A two-hour uninterrupted bubble bath just doesn't exist, right? I mean, in our place, in our position we are right now.
00:08:26
Speaker
It's also good to look at your expectation of what is self-care and is that realistic for where you are and who you are right now. On that episode, I talked about exercising with a toddler, hanging off one leg because that's what self-care has to be for me today is yoga with a child using me as a jungle gym while I'm doing down dog or whatever.
00:08:52
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great concept. And sometimes you just have to get real creative, right? Like, oh, I have not cared for myself spiritually in a long time. I would prefer it to be alone in a room, communing with God at five o'clock in the morning, but right now I have a nursing baby or I'm pregnant or I'm exhausted all the time. That's not gonna happen. So instead I'm gonna carve out five minutes here or there or 20 minutes here or there. We just have to use our creativity. Yes. All right, the second thing we wanna talk about is,
00:09:23
Speaker
You have to keep, okay, so in order to fully embrace caring for yourself first, you have to have a very firm sense of identity.
Maintaining Identity and Anticipating Triggers
00:09:32
Speaker
Who are you? And Bonnie and I are kind of, um, we focus on this one because we've seen other women who've preceded us that have lost their sense of self, their sense of identity, and they have become mom. And then when they become empty nesters and there's no more,
00:09:48
Speaker
you know, the mom jobs left, then they've lost who they are. And some discover themselves again, some don't. And it's kind of a sad thing to see. And so Bonnie and I know that both of us have really focused on who we are and what that means and not losing our sense of self.
00:10:06
Speaker
Mom is part of who we are, but it's not the only thing we are. Motherhood requires huge amounts of service. And so, you know, I talked about caring for your kids mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally, but you have to be in good shape to do this. Think about if you were outsourcing the care of your child to somebody. For some reason, let's say, you know, you're going on vacation for a month. You would want somebody who is in a really good
00:10:33
Speaker
shape physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally, to be there to care for your kids. So don't deprive yourself, I would tell my younger self, don't deprive yourself of that kind of person for your kid's sake. Yes, such a great, great concept. Okay, so I want to just discuss our identities here for a second. I really do feel like there's kind of
00:10:55
Speaker
Two different aspects of this that we're talking about. On the one side, it's your innate worthiness and identity. And you don't get that from the world. You don't even get that from yourself. You get that from God and the knowledge that you are his daughter. That's it. Nothing else can change that, right? Nothing changes that worthiness. And then there's also an identity of who you are based kind of on your personality and your experiences in the world, right? So I think understanding of both of these is important. I would definitely start with that intrinsic identity of
00:11:22
Speaker
I am a worthy daughter of God who will be worthy and a good person no matter how many times I yell at my kids. And then also, who else am I? Am I a runner? Am I a crafter? And not necessarily just the things you do, but am I outgoing? Am I good at making friends? What are some of your talents and personality traits that can help you remember who you are
00:11:46
Speaker
That can help you find the best way for your own self-care, right? If you're a natural introvert, you're not going to want to tell yourself, well, I just need friend time. That's what's going to give me self-care. That might not be. You obviously probably already know what those things are, but I like kind of differentiating those two aspects of identity.
00:12:03
Speaker
Yes, that is such a good differentiation to make, like those two parts of yourself that both need care and discovering and nurturing, right? So we talk a lot on this podcast about how to get to know your kids better, like learn their love language, learn their learning styles, we've talked about that in all our homeschool episodes, learn their introvert, extrovert, their personality types, all these different parts, aspects of your kids.
00:12:33
Speaker
We talk about that because we want to be better, be able to parent them better, be able to care for them better. Well, do you know all those things about yourself? And if you don't, get started learning more about yourself because then you know how to care for yourself better. Like, you know, Bonnie, you just said, if you think, you know, self-care, taking care of myself means hanging out with my friends, but really, you're an introvert.
00:12:57
Speaker
Well, that's not the best way to care for yourself, right? Or, you know, you think if you're an extrovert and you're thinking self-care looks like alone time, well, that's not the best way to care for yourself. So get to know yourself better in every one of these aspects. Like if you know yourself from, you know, say the big five personality types, then go discover a different method and find out where you are on that rubrics.
00:13:24
Speaker
There's as many out there as there are, you know, ways of different kinds of people. There's as many different things to discover and different aspects of yourself. And so you can't care for something, a child that you don't know anything about, the neighbor kid. Maybe you don't know what kind of allergies they have. How would you know how to feed them, right? Same thing applies to yourself. If you don't know yourself, how are you going to care for yourself? So absolutely start there.
00:13:52
Speaker
Yeah, and that could be a really fun exercise to just ask yourself, what fills me up? What makes me excited? What makes me happy? And on that note, our next step, the third step, is understanding what maybe your weak points are. Where do you struggle the most, right? So for example, when I am short on self-care, I know that I get impatient. I get irritated. I yell. I end up sometimes with kind of a who cares attitude.
00:14:20
Speaker
And I tend to be more likely to be self-indulgent in those moments and give up on the true self-care because I've just like, who cares, whatever. And interestingly enough, it's because I haven't taken care of myself first, but then I just kind of throw my hands up in the air and go eat the Oreos. You're stuck on Oreos today. I don't even really like Oreos, but it's just a good example. I'm cool with it. Keep up with the Oreos.
00:14:47
Speaker
No, this is totally yeah, so like I was just talking about, you know getting getting to know the different interesting sides of the show But don't just gloss over and put on rose-colored glasses. Like you've got to know what are your triggers? What stages of life or what trials are hardest on you? Is it lack of sleep? Is it when your husband is out of town? Is there other? you know survival time things we have an episode on survival times episode 20 and
00:15:11
Speaker
It's like, what is it? Know when you're getting into the red zone and recognize that. At least maybe you can't stop yourself into that descent of the Oreo world. The Oreo world. The black and white. You can't stop yourself into the black and white zone.
00:15:35
Speaker
But you can at least recognize that that's where you are, that you're in a bad place and that you need care. Okay. That's step one. Recognize that. Yeah. And it's important to realize that we're not saying that if you practice good self-care, you will never have a meltdown and you will never get upset at your children and you will never lose your patients. That's just not realistic. But you need to know what the hardest times are for you or like hardest phases of parenting. Three-year-olds are just really hard for me.
00:16:05
Speaker
and to kind of up myself care there. So I'm less likely to lose control. I will eventually because I'm human and that's totally normal. I'm not gonna beat myself up for that, but I am gonna be a little bit more compassionate with myself and think, gee, I totally lost it on that kid. What's going on with me? Did I miss something? Did I miss studying the Bible today maybe? Did I miss, did I not get enough sleep? What's going on, right? How can I help myself? And if it's nothing, maybe it's just time for some thought work or reconnecting with that child, figuring out what went wrong.
00:16:36
Speaker
Um, and then I always like to plan ahead to be very watchful for my emotional health, especially when I know one of these triggers is coming up. So I recently had almost two week period with my husband out of town. Um, and not just out of town across the world. So we couldn't even talk most days, you know, cause he's going to bed when I'm getting up. That's so irritating, but I knew ahead of time, this was going to be a hard phase.
00:16:56
Speaker
I didn't know that our house was going to flood right before he left town, but that's neither here nor there. I knew I had to plan ahead and I planned a night out with some friends. I planned to have a sitter come over a couple of times. I told my big kids I was going to be leaning on them a little bit harder, maybe a little bit more nature time for you or time for journaling.
00:17:14
Speaker
maybe a phone call to someone you really connect with. Don't wait until you've totally lost your mind or you're in that really tough spot to think, oh shoot, I need some more self-care, what do I do now, right? Sometimes it's too late. Yeah, that is such a good point. Plan ahead. Good tip. Okay, the next part that we want to move on to is just to
00:17:37
Speaker
tell our younger selves very gently, very kindly, your children need a healthy, happy mom.
Mom's Well-Being and Evolving Self-Care Needs
00:17:45
Speaker
And my husband was commenting the other day, you know, when mommy doesn't feel good, the kids pick up on it. Even if you haven't shared with them what's going on, you know, they just, they just sense it. There's, there's a disturbance in the force and mommy is the force and they're like, they're feeling it. And it puts them off too. So then like, when you're not caring for yourself,
00:18:06
Speaker
You're actually making your job harder than you because your kids are picking up on that and they're being more difficult or just out of source. They don't feel good because they know you don't feel good. You can't give your kids what you don't have.
00:18:21
Speaker
You can't pour out of an empty cup is what I think we've used that illustration before on this podcast. You've got to keep yourself filled up so you have something to give. If you've listened to the podcast for more than about three episodes, you know we've probably talked about this ad nauseam, but we just really feel that it's something that's so easy to overlook when your kids are screaming at you and needing you all day long.
00:18:45
Speaker
Um, you really do no one any favors by running yourself ragged. Sometimes we think because motherhood is service oriented, we think service is good. So I'm just going to keep pouring and pouring and pouring and pouring, um, along the lines of that illustration. I've also heard that instead of filling your cup up to the top, you know, I'm a visual person, so I got to think in metaphors.
00:19:03
Speaker
If you fill up your cup from the top and then pour out of it, you're still left with an empty cup. What if we wait until our cup is overflowing and then whatever comes out, all that extra gets poured into our children. And I really like that analogy a lot better because we're never left with half a cup. We can always be full. Now, that being said, there are definitely phases of time where that's not the case, like with a new baby. I just have to say, late pregnancy, new baby, there's just a lot of empty cups going around.
00:19:29
Speaker
And that's just a survival time. We talk a lot about that in that episode as well. But not only do you deserve to be cared for and all the rest of the times, but you're teaching your children how to care for themselves when they grow up. You're teaching your sons how to care for themselves and to watch out for their wives when they go through the motherhood phases. You're teaching your daughters how to do the same. What a wonderful lesson to teach that, hey, you know, sometimes mom needs to step away and take care of her first. Yeah.
00:19:55
Speaker
That is so true. I talk often about our 20-year vision. So when you're in a bad spot, what do you want your kids to do? What do you want your daughters to do? Your sons to do? If they're in the future feeling the same way that you
00:20:11
Speaker
Feeling now and oftentimes I've used that to help myself like I can't you know be in such a low spot or whatever I cannot figure out what to do for myself So I have put myself in the shoes of my child 20 years in the future What would you want your child to do if they were in this spot? You would definitely want them to
00:20:28
Speaker
call the neighbor to come over and sit with your kid for 20 minutes so you could go take a walk or take a bath or shower or brush your teeth or whatever you needed for those 20 minutes eat a meal without somebody touching you you would definitely want your child to do that so why is it so hard for us to make that call and do it for ourselves right
00:20:46
Speaker
Yeah, I love that. Yeah, I love that. And somehow, well, not somehow, we know it's a lot easier to be empathetic with our children than with ourselves. For some reason, we're just really, really hard on ourselves. But yeah, think, what would your mother want you to do right now? How would she recommend you take care of yourself, right? Yes. All right. Moving on to another point here. I haven't been numbering them, but oh, well, this is number five. Self-care involves a high level of fulfillment.
00:21:16
Speaker
it might require you to dig around some and figure out what you need. So if always in the past, you know, something has worked for you and it's not working now, that's okay. Keep trying, try something different. You are not a static person who is the same that you were 10 years ago, five years ago, and that you will be in 10 years, five years. You're changing, you're moving, you're developing, and that's wonderful, that's a great thing.
00:21:45
Speaker
And so it means you're, what you need for self care is changing too. And so it's not like once you've got it figured out, okay, you're good to go. Just go do that thing. But keep, keep moving with it. Keep being open to change about what self care is going to look like.
00:22:01
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, totally. You know, you think about somebody who has a career track, let's say they're an engineer, and they enter the industry at a really low level, right? Maybe they're just, I don't know, an assistant or something. We would not expect them to maintain the same role and be happy with it 20 years down the line. So as we grow and progress as mothers, the same thing happens for us. Although Audrey and I can be the first to tell you that as long as you have babies, there's a certain amount of tasks that stay the same.
00:22:28
Speaker
for a long time. We've been doing diapers for a long time. Well, we, I can't say we anymore. Audrey's done, rude. We've been pregnant and dealing with these tantrums and issues for a long time. Have we gotten wiser and better at managing the chaos of motherhood? I hope so, because otherwise we'd be struggling just as much as before, actually probably more. But the point being, we are, like you said, we're not static beings. We're constantly developing and we're growing wiser and more mature and sometimes,
00:22:58
Speaker
we will probably get to a point where what we're currently doing is not enough to help us feel fulfilled, right? Very often for a lot of moms, this comes when there's a big life change. Like all of a sudden your youngest is out of diapers, for example, or all of a sudden your youngest is in school full-time, or all of a sudden something changes and maybe your load is lightened a little bit or your perspective changes a little bit. And you start thinking,
00:23:22
Speaker
Is this all there is? Is there something else that I need to make myself feel fulfilled emotionally and mentally? Audrey and I can say that we've found a lot of this fulfillment through just raising our family because there's been a lot of work. Through homeschooling has been a big one as well because that takes a lot of mental and emotional strength as well. But we've also felt the need to contribute to the world through podcasts.
00:23:44
Speaker
through businesses, through service, other opportunities. No one can tell you what that's going to be for you. But if you start feeling that call, like, I kind of need something, be open to that. Yes, definitely. And it's hard to, we have an episode called The Myth of
Deep Self-Care: Spiritual and Emotional Growth
00:24:03
Speaker
Balance. And so I just say, go listen to that one right now. Because, yeah, that's really appropriate here.
00:24:10
Speaker
Okay, we also want to say, don't forget like the bigger, deeper forms of self-care. The things that, like the bigger life questions. Thought work is something we talk about and Bonnie and I try to practice a lot. Spiritual education and growth connection, connection with a spiritual being. Big goals and plans. Tapping into the larger why. Why are we here as humans? Like the big questions.
00:24:37
Speaker
Sometimes, sometimes this is like a form of self-care for us because like you mentioned, you know, having kids in diapers for 20 years, that is, it doesn't feel very much like you're caring for yourself when you're still changing diapers 20 years later. Like it feels like you're, you're snagged, you're stagnant and you haven't grown.
00:25:00
Speaker
You're still here changing diapers. But that doesn't mean that while you're changing the diaper, you can't be thinking about some of those bigger questions. And because we are created by a creator who wants us to be thinking about these things, that is definitely a self-care.
00:25:16
Speaker
Thing for us to be working on that spiritual growth that the thought work the bigger the bigger goals and plans and ideas It's important to realize that there's a time in a season for everything, right? You're probably not gonna be deep delving into the deep Philosophical why of your life when you've got four kids under the age of five and you're drowning in poop Bottles and who knows what else?
00:25:38
Speaker
That's okay. That is kind of a survival period. Make sure you still make time for something spiritual, something larger than you. But then as life starts to get a little bit easier, you can dive even deeper into that. And that has brought us so much more fulfillment than just being caught up in the busyness of day-to-day. And maybe you're not even a particularly spiritual person, but I guarantee there's something you can tap into. Maybe it's a love of nature, the universe, or
00:26:04
Speaker
or just serving other human beings that's going to pull you out of the stress of your day to day and make you feel connected to something larger. That is so, so, so powerful. And in the end, our families feel like they're everything right now, right? And they take up most of our time and energy and thoughts. But one day, our kids are going to go out and hopefully create amazing lives for themselves. And then what will we be left with? Will we like the person that we're left behind with?
00:26:34
Speaker
Will we like the hobbies and the pursuits that we've created for ourselves, the talents that we've developed? How can we continue to develop these even while our children are home in the off hours or the extra time we have?
00:26:48
Speaker
Yeah. I read a quote the other day. It said, um, when you, when you do a good deed, so you were talking about service, but when you do a good deed, um, it makes you feel good. It makes the person on the receiving end feel good. And it makes anyone observing also have a rush of that, that feel good. So, um, you know, there's, it's just like, it's wired into us, um, that, that form of.
00:27:15
Speaker
taking care of others is also like taking care of ourselves and helping others feel good. And even others watching as well, like it's kind of wired into us. Okay. I think the last thing that I would tell younger me about self-care is that sometimes you will wake up feeling miserable and with dread in your gut, sometimes you will have
Finding Joy in Motherhood
00:27:39
Speaker
bad days. Sometimes there will be hurt and pain and sorrow, but it's not normal.
00:27:45
Speaker
for it to go on for an extended period of time. Like life can be hard, life is hard, but look for the joy and like seek out the joy. You should and can find it. There's a difference between, let me get my words right here.
00:28:04
Speaker
There's a difference between joy and happiness, and you can have joy even when you're really, really sad in the midst of grief. Like, self-care doesn't mean you're gonna be happy all the time, but I would like to tell my younger self to start looking for joy sooner than I was able to find joy. Yes, I love that. You know, how many times have you looked back at pictures or videos of your children from years past
00:28:32
Speaker
and just been overwhelmed with love for that tiny little human. And I've often wondered, why do I feel so happy in seeing this little human? And I know I didn't feel that way all the time when I was raising that little human, because you get distracted by the messes and the noise and the frustrations of that little human. And only with perspective can you look back and see
00:28:54
Speaker
He was beautiful and an adorable little thing and was trying his best and nothing but empathy and love and joy for that phase of life. Whereas when you're in it, it's different, right? So that's our challenge is can you step back and see just a little bit of that today? Can you offer yourself the gift of that perspective right now? And can you just stand back and go, life is hard, but life is also really, really good. And if you're not feeling
00:29:21
Speaker
a lot of good. It should be fairly balanced, right? That good and bad. If you're not, maybe there's some other reason. Maybe there's a mental health issue or a chemical imbalance. Maybe there is something larger at play that you need to address. But I encourage you to get some help there or figure out what that is because no one deserves to take care of their beautiful children and be miserable, right? But it is okay to wake up sometimes and think, oh, I don't really want to do this today.
00:29:48
Speaker
normal and I don't think I know a single person that doesn't wake up like that sometimes regardless of their family or their situation or their job or whatever else they're doing everybody has hard days the trick is to find the joy even amidst those yes absolutely maybe someday I'll be able to share part of the reason why I started this podcast but it is the story of a friend of mine who wasn't able to
00:30:18
Speaker
find that joy and like what I would tell a younger me and like a younger version of my friend is is please find find the joy you need to you need to do it for yourself you need to care for yourself for you and for your children's sake and and it's really really vital that you that you take care of yourself so you can be in good condition to take care of your kids
00:30:49
Speaker
As a final thought, please go back to the beginning if you missed it. Our second step in caring for yourself was having a very firm sense of your identity. You cannot care for yourself without knowing that you are worthy of care, right? You are worthy of care. And if you don't feel that intrinsically, ask around, find a place to find it. We would recommend prayer, meditation, scriptures, but it's there and that will inspire you to keep going no matter how hard life gets. So we love you friends. We hope this was helpful and that you can find some more joy even in your hard days.
00:31:20
Speaker
That's it for this week's episode. You guys take care of yourself. I'm Audrey. I'm Bonnie, and we're Outnumbered. Thanks for listening, friends. Click the link in the show notes to subscribe to our email and never miss another episode. Show us some love by leaving a review on iTunes or sharing the podcast with a friend. Thanks for all your support. We'll talk to you next week.