The “Good Mom” Trap That’s Draining You (and how to get yourself back)

Scottie Durrett  0:00  
Scott, welcome to the momplex Podcast. I am your host. Scottie Durrett, my passion and purpose is to help other moms

Scottie Durrett  0:12  
just like me rediscover their joy and step into their confidence as their kids grow up. Join me as I share my own experiences, my own mistakes and aha moments as I navigate this incredible journey of motherhood while trying not to lose my identity. If you are a modern day mama who is ready to live for herself, not just for her kids, and knows that is the best possible gift you could give, then you are in the right place.

Scottie Durrett  0:38  
This is momplex. Hey, gorgeous, welcome back to momplex. I'm so happy to see you. I'm so happy to be here if you're watching me on YouTube, hi. I'm so excited to be in this space with you. If you're listening on Spotify or Apple and you are taking me on a walk or on a drive, I'm just delighted that we're together. Literally, you mean so much to me, and this space means so much to me, and I'm so grateful that you decided to hit play today. Today's a good one. We're talking about the good mom trap. This drained the crap out of me for years, and if it's draining you, I'm going to give you some tips on how to get your energy back. But before I get into all of that, let me just start by saying this, first of all, you make sense. You are wonderful. You're amazing. You're doing an awesome job, but, and you knew that a but was coming. If you're feeling exhausted, if you're feeling a little off, disconnected, bored, if you feel like you're just going through the motions, or if you are feeling like you're kind of in this purgatory where you're not quite where you were, but you're not quite where you want to be, like you're constantly giving your all and never quite getting anything, getting all your back, like you're not catching your breath. And a part of you is there's that voice inside your head thinking, like, why can't I figure this out? I'm smart. I'm doing all I'm doing all the right things. I'm a good person. I I feel like my days are pretty clean and crisp and well run. Why can't I feel like myself? Why can't I reach that quote goal me, the one that I've been trying to get, the one I've been trying to chase, the one I've been like, setting goals for and trying to manifest, right? There's nothing wrong with you. I'm going to help clear up some things, because

Scottie Durrett  2:28  
your brain and your body are doing exactly what they're wired to do. And once you understand this, everything will start to make a lot more sense, and you're going to feel, finally, you have a big puzzle piece missing. Okay, now I'm gonna say something that might surprise you. You don't actually have a time problem when it comes to taking care of yourself and finding time in your day to, you know, do all those things, you have permission problem. And it's not even a permission problem that's coming from your conscious mind. We're going to dig into it. It's actually coming from a place in your body. It's in your nervous system. And I know you are busy down to the minute dealing with life, your work, kids, your spouse, your partner, your if you're like me, you're sandwiched in between your kids and your in laws and your parents and the news and the stress of the world. I mean, honestly, I don't know, even if we try, does the pace actually ever slow down?

Scottie Durrett  3:26  
But if I called in and gave you a full day off, meaning I gave you a day off from your life, so no kids to worry about, no responsibilities. You didn't have to go into work, you didn't have to worry about your in laws, there was nothing expected of you. Would you take it? Could you enjoy it? Actually, if it's safe and comfortable to do so, close your eyes. Imagine you've been gifted a day off from life. What would you do? What's the first thing that pops in your head, with all that time off. Would you go lay in the grass? Would you go to the beach? Would you go to movies? Would you read a book? Would you listen to music? Would you go to a concert or a festival or a farmer's market? Would you crawl into your bed or take a bubble bath? Or would you run around the house and finally think, oh my gosh, I can get to the pantry. I can get to those thank you letters I can get to, you know, cleaning out my closet. I can finally, you know, write all those emails to my kids teachers or the recommendation letters, right? I guess my question is, could you enjoy it, or would you feel guilty? Would the shoulds come in? Would you feel restless and worried like you should be doing something else? And that is important for us to notice, because the problem isn't that you don't have enough time, it's where's the habit going? Where's the permission going? Look, I again, there's nothing wrong with you. You make sense. But it's really important for us to understand. What is happening? What is going on in that moment? If we were given a free hour, a free 30 minutes, a free day, whatever you're defaulting to, it's happening because your nervous system is used to it. So if you're given a day off and you can't actually enjoy it, you immediately go and expand your to do list, or you finally, you continue to stay busy. It's because your nervous system is used to being busy doing certain things, feeling productive and getting praise for that. Your nervous system equates being busy as being safe. So it will always tell you that that's the right thing to do, no matter how much you need the rest, how much you deserve the rest, how much your body is begging for it. You can't actually rest, because in your body, it feels off. It feels wrong. It feels unsafe to your system, that is your nervous system, so you're not doing anything wrong. There's nothing wrong with your life or your schedule or your kids. You're not somebody that can't form habits or create change. It's that somewhere along the way, you learned that being a good you being a good mom, a good human, a good girl, meant never needing a break, never slowing down. And now you're stuck in what's called the Virtual the virtue trap. I don't coin that. That's from the artist. The artist way by Julia Cameron, it's great. I'll link the book in the show notes. But this is where you feel normal, safe, good and like yourself. You were literally on the hamster wheel. That's where you feel like yourself. I see this everywhere. I lived this myself, and I've been doing a lot of healing work over the last seven years, and slowly over time, I've shown my nervous system that it's safe to slow down. But it's not something you can just flip a switch. You know, maybe the only moments you allow yourself are sitting in the car in the driveway for 510, 15 minutes, you know, before you walk in the door from the grocery store before you walk in the door from work, just to get a second of quiet before you walk into the chaos inside your house. Maybe you have to hide in the bathroom, scrolling on your phone just to feel like nobody needs you. Maybe you taking a shower and is the only way that you are ever going to feel like you get any quiet time, any alone time? I'm saying this with love, and I'm trying to put my phone on, do not disturb, right? We're allowed to put our phone on, do not disturb, by the way, that's what we'll get into that whole nother. That's a whole nother caveat, right? Now. It's something that our nervous system has told us this is how we perform well in this life, we have to answer the text message immediately when it comes in, we have to immediately check another thing off our to do list. If we have free time, we have to fill it. But what this leads to is, even though our nervous system is saying we feel safe, our body does start to break down, and then you end up snapping at your kids, not because you're a bad mom, but because you haven't had a second to just regroup, reconnect, be yourself, be a human. Your nervous system is what's running your life, and it is telling you we have to stay busy to be safe. But your mind and your body are saying, But wait. We want to change that. We are exhausted and we need a break. I lived this way for years, and I couldn't understand it. Right every end of the year I'd say, this is the year that I'm going to finally balance. I'm going to find that magical balance in mom life where I have enough time for me and I work out, and I sleep great, and I make real meals, and I wake up rested, and I feel like myself. I've always been chasing that feel like my self energy. But no matter how hard I tried or how much I tried to will myself, I always found myself back on the hamster wheel, back on that same routine, back in the virtue trap, where I was trapped and feeling stuck, that if I let myself slow down, I am a bad person. So the only way I stay virtuous, the only way I stay above, ahead of the game, above and beyond, the best mom ever, the best me ever, is that I never let myself have a break. And what did this lead to? A lot of resentment, a lot of blame. I blame the schedule. I blamed my kids. I blame my kids something rotten. I blame my husband. I blame society. I blamed that mom in the carpool line. I blamed teachers. I blame the person in the grocery I blame the traffic. I mean, I blamed everything. I blamed how busy my life was, but I was, took me a long time to be really honest that it was myself that was not learning how to give myself a break. Now notice how I said learning, I'm not about not giving I wanted to give myself a break, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't figure out how to do it. It's a learning just like your system has learned to that in order to be safe, you have to stay busy. We have to now teach our system, help our system learn that we can slow down and that is also safe. It's a learning and so I want to say that gently, because this isn't about blame or shame or telling you that you're doing something wrong or that you're fucking up or failing or being a bad mom or being a bad you. This is about awareness and understanding ourselves as human beings, understanding ourselves much larger than the few hats that we're wearing, more than just mom, more than just woman. This is about understanding ourselves as a human and the systems that are literally running our life and why we are the way that we are. So then we have a choice. Do we want to make some shifts, or do we not? That's always our prerogative, but I want to help us understand how we can live our life and how we can have a say in this human experience, so we don't feel so helpless, because this isn't just about time. There is actually a payoff to living in this virtue trap. You do get praise, there is a secondary gain. And as a mom, as a woman in a very thankless role, we don't get a lot of thanks, and we don't demand a lot of things. So when we get those secondary, you know, passive thanks, they really go a long way, right? When we hear that, wow, I don't know how you do it all. Gosh, you never stop. You have so much energy I could never do what you do. Gosh, you're the best mom. You never let anything fall off the cracks. You're at every practice and every game. You are a superwoman. You hear you're doing all the right things, but the payoff is you're never slowing down, you're never stopping you're never taking a break, and you're never giving yourself permission to rest. You're never giving yourself permission to do anything else. This is the polyvagal theory. This is what's all about our nervous system. And what does that mean? This is all about that our nervous system is truly what's running our life. It is what's determining our experiences. It's determining how we're showing up in our current relationships. It's determining the partners that we choose. It's determining how we respond and react to events in our life. It's talking about how we've had experiences of trauma in our life and how they're affecting us in our current day and our system. It doesn't speak actually our word language. We're going to get into that right even if I can tell myself right now, Scottie, I'm exhausted. I would like to rest today. My nervous system doesn't hear those words. It goes based off of feelings and experiences. So the only way to actually learn these new things, these changes, it's not by telling our system, it's by showing our system. And that was a massive aha for me. I love affirmations. I love positive thinking. I love positive talking. I think it's beautiful. It all goes together. I think what's more fascinating than everything, and what's more beautiful than everything is there isn't just one magic pill, right? If there was a magic pill, no one would ever be unhealthy, no one would ever need surgery or get sick, right? There is no magic pill, but what we learn it. The goal is to learn about ourselves, understand who we are as unique, beautiful individuals, and then learn that there are systems out there to help us

Scottie Durrett  13:26  
understand why we are the way we are. Help us understand how to make those changes and adjustments, understanding your nervous system, understanding your stress responses, understanding how your history is playing a part in your current

Scottie Durrett  13:41  
day reactions, and also understanding how important it is to mesh

Scottie Durrett  13:47  
that with movement and sleep and positive talking and environment and nature and sunlight and breath, work and all of those things. This is how we wrap ourselves. This is like the modern day swaddle blanket, but we have to get under the hood and understand what's really running the show in order for all those other modalities to actually work, right? Because a lot of times we just address the symptoms, but we're not really understanding, like, what is the root cause of those symptoms, right? Your nervous system, it feels like it's not ever present, right? We feel like our life is being run by our thoughts. Absolutely, our subconscious mind is in control of 95% of how we show up, but that's our subconscious mind. That means that only 5% of our life is being run by our conscious thoughts, meaning that so much about what we've experienced, how we filter the world, how we've experienced things, is playing a part in how we're showing up. So that's what I want to talk to you about today. It feels like you're doing all the right things. It feels like. Saying all the right things. You're checking all the right things off the to do list. But you're still confused why you can't make some shifts, right? It still feels confused why you're kind of caught in this hamster wheel of being the good girl, never letting yourself be letting never letting yourself off the hook, right? Because it feels like you're doing it right. And that feels safe, that feels normal, and this is where it goes a little bit deeper. But stay with me here, because this is what matters. Your nervous system is always scanning for one thing for you, safety, not happiness, not fulfillment, safety. And often safety is what is familiar. This is why change is so hard. So if you grew up seeing your mom doing everything for everybody, all of the time, who never took a break, who never rested, who never really complained, then that is your model. That is what you believe in. Your system is what is normal and safe. Or you learn that being quote good meant being helpful and easy and selfless and never having demands, then your body learned exhaustion equals safety, self sacrifice equals goodness. Taking Care of Yourself equals being risky, dangerous, unsafe. So even when you are consciously saying, oh my gosh, I need a break. I need some time alone. I am exhausted. I want to do something for me, your nervous system is saying, Nope, that is not safe. We have to keep going. We have to stay busy, because slowing down is not safe. We have something in polyvagal theory, they talk about we have this first line of defense. You can kind of call it your security system, your bouncer. They call it neuroception. And what it's doing is it's literally scanning your life every millisecond to determine, is what is in front of me happening, is it safe, dangerous or life threatening? That's it safe, dangerous or life threatening? I'm going to link a podcast in the show notes by Sarah Baldwin. She is an expert in polyvagal theory, and I love her podcast. It's called, you make sense, and it's been very, very informative and helpful, and she really breaks it down on a deeper level, and she's an expert in this area. I'm going to link her podcast in the show notes. I highly recommend, if this is interesting to you, to go listen to her podcast. I'm going to give it to you high level and how it's been helpful for me to understand and helpful for me to support my clients through right your neuroception is constantly scanning your nervous system. Just wants to know, am I about to be in something that is either safe, dangerous or life threatening? That's it. It does not always read the room in that moment. It's going to look at your past experiences, your history, your past traumas and conversations and moments and see if there's anything similar that has happened to you in the past that is similar to what is happening to you right now, and it'll try and find similarities to say, Ooh, this this happened in the past. So this is probably how it's going to feel to us right now in the present. So let's say maybe as a kid, you were in high school, and you came home after school and you were exhausted. You had two tests. You'd been at school since eight in the morning. You'd been running around all day, and instead of going straight to your room to do some homework, you decided to go into your family room and sit on your favorite sofa and put your feet up and just rest. And then maybe someone in your life, it could be your caregiver, your sibling, your friend, a babysitter, a teacher, somebody in your life called you lazy or ungrateful and told you that you were being a bad girl for resting and that you had so many responsibilities you didn't have time to take a break, and your system heard, ooh, resting makes me a bad girl, resting makes me bad. Being bad is not safe. Being bad is dangerous. This is not good. So that moment, that experience, now gets stored in your database, in your history. So as an adult, if you get home from a very long day of work, and the kitchen's a mess, and your kids have some homework, and you need to make dinner, but you were exhausted and you just want to put your feet up on the comfy SOPA for five minutes, your neuroception, your nervous system, is going to say, Wait, hey, remember when we were younger, we got in trouble for resting. This kind of feels like that, and I'm worried that we're going to get in trouble. This is going to make us a bad girl. If we rest, we are bad. And so in that moment, your nervous system is not going to let you rest. It's going to tell you that this is safe, this is dangerous, and that you cannot put your feet up. Yeah, so that's and I think that's what's so interesting. It's not even necessarily reading the room in that moment. It's almost bringing you back to that time when you were a child, and that child comes forward and is actually present in that moment, afraid, afraid to get in trouble, afraid to be bad, afraid to be let down. So your body's going to say, we are not going to let that happen again. We're going to shoot up from the sofa. We're going to pick up the kitchen, help our kids with homework, get through dinner, and you know what? I will crash on my bed later when

Scottie Durrett  20:30  
nobody is looking and everything else is taken care of, and only then will it be safe for me to rest. And this is why we can't just decide to change. This is why we can't just wake up on January 1 and decide to be a runner or decide to manifest the life of our dreams, right? It's a pattern that our whole system is wired into. It's not just

Scottie Durrett  20:54  
a mindset issue. Our nervous system, as I said before, also doesn't speak in our language, it has to be shown, not told. It's why, like in that moment when you're resting, this is, would have been the challenge for you in that moment as the adult, to show your nervous system in that moment. Yes, when we were a kid, we got in trouble for resting, but we're safe now. I'm in charge. I'm the adult now, and we're not in trouble. And I'm going to show my body that I am allowed to put my feet up and rest, and actually, everything's going to be okay, and the kids are going to be fine, the house is going to be fine, and I'm going to be safe. I'm just going to give myself five minutes to just sit here and I'm gonna show my body and show my nervous system that I am safe to rest, but that's a big move. That's a big maneuver, and that's not something that I think a lot of us are comfortable doing, but having this information, understanding how our system works. Now, the next time that happens, you have that inside information. You could think, Hmm, this could be an opportunity for me to show my nervous system that what I need is safe. And this is why I mean by the virtue trap. You're not just busy, you're attached. You are trapped to being this kind of person who handles it all. This is where you are virtuous. This is where you are stuck being the good girl. This is where you don't need help. This is where you keep going. You put yourself last, and that is like the right thing to do. That's what a good mom does. That's what a good girl does. Because that identity, that feels safe, that feels good to your nervous system, and you get praise for it. You get accolades and that secondary gain, and you feel better than other moms. You feel better than you did about yourself yesterday. You're never falling behind. You're living nothing falls through the cracks. You are untouchable, and it feels safe and good until it doesn't, because the cost is you don't just get tired, physically and emotionally. You also start to disappear. You start to go through the motions of your life. But you're not actually living it. You're not choosing to live it. You're just in response to it. But you're being a good you're being a good girl. So your your nervous system feels safe, right? You're managing everything. You're holding everything together. You're keeping everything running. But inside your heart, inside your soul, you feel disconnected. You feel flat and often bored and resentful and exhausted and confused because you're a very hard working, high achieving human that has accomplished a ton of shit. Why can't you let yourself rest? Why do you feel like you can't get off this hamster wheel? And then it comes the thought that no one wants to say out loud, is this just how my life is now? Will I never wake up and get off this hamster wheel and feel like myself again? I say this with a lot of love and compassion, and it's not that you're selfless or failing. It's just that somewhere along the way, you learn that it was safer to abandon yourself than it was for you to put yourself first, because when no one gives us a break, we start leaving ourselves. We get into the habit of not giving ourselves a break, and we cancel the things that we want to do. Maybe you want to take, you know, a pickleball. Maybe you want to pick up pickleball and but pickleball lessons only happen on Tuesday afternoons at 430 your daughter has swim lessons at 445 which means that in order for you to do pickleball, you would have to get her a ride to and from swim lessons, which means you wouldn't be the one picking her up. So even though you really are craving pickleball, you want the fresh air. You want to like connect with some adults. You've just been so interested in it. It's something you can't get off your mind. You've been so curious. And you love tennis, and you love being active, and you want. Do it. There's that part in your body that gets a little tense and afraid, and you think, I could never do that. I could never choose pickle ball over being there for my kid when she's at swim lessons. I'll just do this later. I'll just focus on me later. I'll just cancel this. I'm gonna push this off. I'll do this when she's driving or out of high school or in college or married, has her own kids, and then we tell ourselves stories that make it all okay, like this is just a busy season. This is just what good moms do. I don't want to be selfish. My mom was selfish. I don't want to be like my mom. But what if we started to show our nervous system that both can be true, that you are a good mom and it's safe to take care of yourself. Taking pickleball lessons is not selfish. Taking a walk alone is not selfish. Going to a movie by yourself is not selfish. Asking for help is not selfish, but your nervous system, it might tell you and feel like it is selfish, no matter how much you want it and how much you tell yourself this is what I want. You find. You keep stopping yourself, and you cannot explain why. It's like, almost like, a visceral, out of body reaction, and it goes back to that somewhere along the line, you learned that if I choose myself, I am selfish, I might be judged, I might disappoint somebody, I might not belong. People will get mad at me, people will leave me. People will talk bad about me. I will lose something, and we will do almost anything to avoid the feeling of being abandoned and have being judged and being disappointing to somebody. Our body and brain will do anything to avoid any feeling of feeling unsafe, if feeling like they're in a dangerous situation or that you might die, literally. So we stay trapped in the routine on the hamster wheel, in the version of ourselves that gets that external approval, even if it's slowly draining the energy and the zest out of us. The solution is, thankfully, we don't have to blow up our life. We don't have to start anew or wait until our kids are out of the house, or we don't have to disappear for a week or a month and suddenly become a totally different person. That's actually not the solution, which is such good news, it starts to happen in really small moments throughout the day where you start to just take these tiny, tiny little moments where you're showing your nervous system. It's safe for me to choose me. It's safe for me to hop off this hamster wheel, even if for one rotation, even if for five minutes, even if for 30 seconds, your nervous system doesn't trust big, dramatic change. It trusts small proof, right? Like this is why they just want to take like, little steps outside of your comfort zone, proof of you showing yourself, not just telling yourself that doing things you enjoy. You know, the pickleball lessons, picking up piano, laying outside in the grass, listening to your music, going to a movie, putting your feet up, that's safe, that you are safe. That is the way out of the virtue trap. It's not rebellion. It's not going to really disrupt anybody else's lives. It's more about reconnection to yourself, like starting to show yourself in small ways. I am allowed to matter here too. I'll give you a few things that I've been doing sitting outside for 10 minutes without a phone, just letting the sun bake all over myself. I love the way that feels I literally go out in my yard and I lay face down in the grass. Well, in California, we have turf, and I lay in the sun for 10 minutes with my dogs. It's putting your phone on Do Not Disturb and answering those text messages later. It's saying no to one thing today that drains you, and it's saying yes to one thing that you actually enjoy, even if it feels uncomfortable at first, it's something that you can tolerate. And Sarah Baldwin talks about that in the you make sense podcast, these tolerable steps. She doesn't say that they're easy. She calls them tolerable, which means that there are things that are going to be uncomfortable, but there's things that we can actually do, because what you're doing in those moments is you're teaching your system. This is safe. What I enjoy is important and is safe for me. And this is, you know, that this is what's been so helpful for me to understand. It isn't always

Scottie Durrett  29:59  
just getting a good. Night sleep and drinking water and taking a vacation, right? We have to see how our nervous system is actually helping us experience life, and is that draining us, or are there some shifts we could make to help us refuel? Right? Like, where are we not giving ourselves permission? That we could start to give ourselves little bits of permission, and over time, this is how things shift, not through forcing, not through guilt, not through pain, not through another thing on your to do list, but through choosing yourself in real, doable ways. So if you're listening to this and you're still with me, I just want to ask you to think about something. What is one thing that you have been wanting to try to pick up again, that you've been needing or craving or dreaming about, that you keep telling yourself, I don't have time for that right now. Because what if the truth is, it's not about time, it's about permission. I want you to think about that and send it to me, leave me a review, and drop that thing in the show notes I would love to know, or in the review bucket. I'm here to cheer you on. I went into our shed, and we have one of those, like electric keyboards that when you shift it to piano, it sounds like a real piano. I set it up in my living room. When I feel like it. 10 minutes a day, I go play the piano, not because I want to give a concert, not because I want to become the best 49 year old piano playing person that's ever lived, not because I have anything to prove to anybody. It's not because I want to become the best piano player or it needs to serve a purpose other than it just is fun for me. I just enjoy just enjoy it. It just makes me feel good. And in those 10 minutes, I tell myself, gosh, these 10 minutes I'm safe, that the world isn't falling apart. No one's getting mad at me. See, body, I'm safe. I'm enjoying this, and it's safe for me to do things that I enjoy. Those are a little tolerable step. So think about that. What is one thing that you've been wanting, needing, desiring, that you keep telling yourself you don't have time for that? Possibly you could try to shift and give yourself a little permission. Give yourself one small Yes, this week, just one. And just notice what happens. And while you're doing that, just think to yourself, I'm just showing my nervous system that I am safe, because you don't need to earn your way back to yourself. You just need to start choosing it in these little steps. This has been really impactful for me and my work, and it's actually really beautiful because it's a very manageable thing that you can start to do in the privacy of your own home, you know in a safe, safe place, right? You don't have to go out into the scary world to do it with strangers. You can do it in your own home, where you know you are already safe and just start being a little bit more brave with the permission you're giving yourself to do the things that you want to do each day. Your kids are going to love this. They're going to really get a valuable lesson. They're going to pick up on that. Because our nervous systems are actually they're mirror neurons. And so when you are doing things to show your nervous system that you're safe, you actually are like regulating your nervous system, and you're going to become a much more strong, tolerable nervous system who can then be an incredible support for your kids, and that's what they need. They can't self regulate, especially at young ages. They need an adult who has a regulated nervous system to come and help our kids regulate. How do we do that? By doing things that make us feel good, by doing things that help us remind like that we are allowed to be here, that we're allowed to be safe, that bring us joy, that help us get off the hamster wheel, that help us connect to ourselves and in those moments, this is how we regulate our nervous system. And then our kids nervous systems will actually mirror that, and they will become regulated because we are regulated. So if there is a part of you that wants to do something and that brain or that nervous system tells you that this is selfish, think to yourself, this is actually me being the best mom in the world. Thank you for joining me today. If this hit, please leave me a review that helps so much for me to reach other incredible women just like you, send it to a friend who could use this listen, because I promise you, you're not the only one feeling this way. That's it for today, Mom, I love you. Go be the bad ass mom that you are, but also go be you. Hey, Mama. Thank you so much for listening before you dive back into the beautiful chaos of your life. Please take this with you. You're doing better than you think. You are not alone, and you do not have to do this on autopilot. If this episode helped you in any way, please share it with a mom who needs to hear it, because we grow faster when we do it together, and if you have a second, leaving a five star review helps momplex reach more mamas who need this kind. Of real talk and support. If you want more support and guidance or just someone in your corner, be sure to visit scottyderette.com to learn more. Get in touch with me or dive deeper into this work until next time. Mom, Trust yourself, trust your gut. You already know what to do, and you are exactly the mama your kids need. I love you. I'll see you next time you.