Essentials of Self-Care for the Stepmom: 5 Tips Curated From My Biggest Idols!

I find myself constantly fan-girling my favourite authors and podcast hosts on my own podcast and in my blog posts about The Womanly Art of Raising Someone Else’s Kids. Every single day I read or hear something that I can’t wait to share with my stepmom audience, even though most of my idols don’t count blended family life among their top life challenges!

To address the exceptional challenge to our collective matriarchal poise brought about by the current global pandemic I thought I’d collect a few of my favourite self-care tips, borrowed and stolen from people who really know what they’re talking about and present them all together, with profound thanks to each of the icons who first brought them to my attention.

First of all, remember that your emotional stability is more important to how you and your kids get through this time (to say nothing of keeping your marriage from falling into the shredder) than what gets put on the dinner table or how tidy you can keep the living room. It’s time to seriously double down on the important stuff; what trendy people call “self-care” and what the rest of us know as “giving yourself permission to be tired and cranky and then getting a grip so you can go on with your day”!

Here are 5 incredibly quick and effective ways to dial down your stress level:

1. Everything I know about essential oils I learned from Tara Wagner of xotara.com. Tara works with female entrepreneurs on busting through limiting beliefs and I find that everything she says applies directly to stepmoms too! I’ve learned from her how to choose the right oils to get myself into the best mindset for facing any situation.
   
   If I need to just relax or release tension, my top choice is Lavender. It goes in through your nose and straight into your brain where it sweet-talks its way past the lobes of logic and reason to access the limbic system where it pulls the plug on the hamster wheel of stress and anxiety. Maybe it works so well for me because I adore the smell of Lavender so much, but is that a problem? My favourite thing is to rub a drop or two between my palms and run my hands through my hair. It works great without making your hair oily or anything!
2. Breathe. Breathing is right up there with biting on a bullet when it comes to managing pain (think childbirth) so it can do wonders for emotional regulation too if you know what to do. This particular exercise is one I learned from of my all-time favourite authors, Brené Brown. She describes how she does this with a pencil and paper while sitting at her desk. If you don’t have a desk to sit at, try drawing with your finger on the mirror in the bathroom where you’ve gone to have 2 minutes of undisturbed alone time.
   
   Make 4 dots in the shape of a square and slowly trace between the dots with a pencil or your finger, breathing alternately in or out while counting slowly to 4 between each dot. I’ll add that I think it works even better if you breathe exclusively through your nose. This is something I learned from a course in Bouteyko Breathing. Nose breathing automatically restricts the flow of oxygen so you don’t hyperventilate when you’re feeling emotional. Not only that, but building up a little extra carbon dioxide in your blood actually initiates an automatic relaxation response all over your body. Every little bit helps, right? Repeat this sequence of 4 dots a few times, or until someone else needs the bathroom.
3. ESR (emotional stress release) is a move that comes from the world of Touch for Health (and Brain Gym) which I learned from the amazing Heather Phillips. Heather taught me the art of “muscle testing” which has become a cornerstone of my alternative healthcare practice, allowing me to trust that part of each client that knows better than I do what they really need!
   
   Think about whatever is the most stressful feeling for you at this very moment — maybe resentment, frustration, aggravation or disappointment. Rate the intensity of that feeling from 1–10 for yourself and make a note of it somewhere.
   
   Cover your forehead very lightly with one hand, as if you were checking yourself for fever. Keeping that very light touch, close your eyes and play yourself a little mental movie clip of whatever is making you feel stressed. Run about 20 seconds of that movie for yourself and really get into the feeling. Try to visualize what’s bothering you via an active scene: the chaos in your kitchen, kids being noisy or disrespectful, partner pissing you off. Perhaps you’re stressing about your step kids coming to visit from their other home where there’s less attention to social distancing.
   
   Now, run that movie again. Look at it attentively, see the people involved, feel the feeling as intensely as you can. When you’ve done that, play the movie again but add an alternate ending; make it turn out exactly the way you want. See your kitchen all clean and tidied up, see the kids sweetly doing their homework or playing together without fighting. Go to town, it’s your fantasy! Just watch this part of the movie; the happy, desired outcome with everything just the way you want it to be.
   
   When you’re ready, open your eyes and take your hand away. Check in with yourself and rate your level of intensity around that emotion again now. It should be at least a little lower than before but if not, just do another round or two. I did this exercise on a Livestream in my Facebook group (The Spectacular Stepmom) and the ladies there were pretty impressed with what happened for them in under 2 minutes!
4. Don’t underestimate the value of making a schedule. I learned about why this is so important to kids from Kim John Payne, the author of the life changing book Simplicity Parenting. He explains that kids don’t have the same sense of what’s coming next that we have as adults. You can probably relate to how hard it’s been lately to keep track of which day of the week it is. We’er all feeling the subtle anxiety of not knowing how long it might be until things go back to something close to normal. Imagine feeling that kind of uncertainty all the time! Your step kids need to know things like how many more sleeps until they go to moms and other landmarks that help them relax (read - behave better!).
   
   Make a schedule with daily details and post it somewhere. Let the kids help you decide what goes where; schoolwork before or after lunch? Should “Outer Space Day” be Monday or Friday? Which night is pizza night? Of course you can change anything you like to take advantage of some nice weather or a burst of energy, but you’ll all feel like a heavy weight has been lifted when you know how many more minutes until it’s dad’s turn to play Legos.
5. Meditation doesn’t have to be long to be really effective! This exercise I learned from my friend Duda Baldwin, Buddhist teacher and life coach who was a guest in season 2 of my Essential Stepmom podcast. She teaches a delightful little meditation that you can do anywhere; with your eyes open, either alone or in company. Just look around you slowly and calmly name what you see with a single word, either a shape, colour or material:

“Chair “…”red”… “cloth”…”wood”…”phone”…”cup”…”wood”…”black”…”bowl”…”window”…”orange”.

Don’t be fooled by how simple this seems; it really serves an important purpose which is to break your pattern of thinking. It gets you out of your head for just 60 seconds or long enough to do a quick ‘refresh’ on whatever stress-inducing tab is open on the computer screen of your mind. This is so simple and so charming and, well, so much easier than you thought meditation was supposed to be!

The biggest challenge is to actually DO these things when you need them! I suggest keeping a quick reference list somewhere on your phone that you train yourself look at whenever you feel overwhelmed. Even better, experiment with setting alerts to remind yourself to take 2 minutes a few times a day and give yourself the grace of a new start.