Mindfulness and Self-Compassion with Sarah Harmon, CEO of The School of MOM

Kristin Revere and Sarah Harmon, CEO of The School of MOM touch on everything from mothering ourselves to the mental load in the latest episode of Ask the Doulas Podcast. Sarah also discusses mindfulness and self-compassion.  

Transcript

Kristin Revere and Sarah Harmon, CEO of The School of MOM touch on everything from mothering ourselves to the mental load in the latest episode of Ask the Doulas Podcast.  Sarah also discusses mindfulness and self-compassion.  

Hello, hello!  This is Kristin Revere with Ask the Doulas, and I am excited to chat with Sarah Harmon today.  

Sarah is the founder of The School of MOM, and our conversation is going to dive into mindfulness for new moms.  Welcome, Sarah! 

Hi!  Thanks for having me! 

I am so impressed by your background.  You’re a licensed mental health therapist, a mindfulness and yoga teacher, a wellness expert, and as I mentioned earlier, founder of The School of Mom and The Parent Wellness Group.  So I think our conversation is going to have so many layers, with your background.  Obviously, you are working with women in the childbearing years.  I’d love to hear your thoughts on how to bring mindfulness into their pregnancy practice, and in my opinion most importantly, the postnatal recovery phase. 

Yeah, I mean, it’s such an important topic.  I have a free offering.  It’s been a while since I’ve really talked about it, but it’s called What to Pack in Your Invisible Birth Bag.  

I love it! 

I think we focus so much on the external and the things, right?  When we talk about prenatal preparation, pregnancy, labor and delivery preparation, we talk about what to pack in the birth bag.  We talk about getting to the hospital and the symptoms and all these things, and we don’t talk about one of the most significant factors in the whole experience, which is what is going on in our minds and our bodies.  They’re connected. 

So the invisible birth bag – I actually would go as far as saying that it’s so much more important to focus on what’s happening inside of you as you come into labor and delivery because it’s the biggest tool in your toolbox.  So what I mean by that is, if I can teach women coming in – and partners, too – coming into the birth experience some really foundational tools – some of this might not be new for people, but it’s always good to hear it again.  It’s really the foundations of mindfulness.  Then a few – I would say kind of back pocket tools to just carry with you through pregnancy, labor, delivery, and beyond. 

So I would love to start with just my definition of mindfulness.  I think that a lot of people are very aware of mindfulness.  Some people might even have a mindfulness practice or have done a mindfulness workshop or they’ve done yoga.  My definition of mindfulness is present moment awareness with all events and experiences, both internal and external, and I’ll distinguish between those in a moment, with four key components.  The first is curiosity.  The second is discernment.  Acceptance, and then kindness and compassion.  And present moment awareness – the key part of that is actually coming into the present moment.  About 95% of our experience moving through life is unconscious.  We are very much moving on autopilot, and in many ways, that’s very efficient.  In many ways, it’s really not serving us because we’re stuck in some pretty unhelpful patterns sometimes.  So present moment awareness – we kind of have this programming that is driving the bus of our lives.  Present moment awareness is waking up to that.  It’s saying, okay, what’s happening in the current moment, and bringing some curiosity to that.  When I say all events and experiences, it’s really important to distinguish between the internal and the external because what is happening outside of us – let’s just say with a labor and delivery, right, what is happening outside of you could be the traffic on the way to the hospital, the fact that your midwife or doctor isn’t on call when you’re there.  Maybe your partner is late or traveling.  There’s a lot of factors.  I always joke when I teach about this.  My first labor and delivery, my husband was eating chicken fingers and watching a Patriots game. 

That’s not uncommon.  As a birth doula, I see lots of football. 

I so wish I had a doula.  I didn't even know that doulas were a thing.  This is what happens.  I think we’re much better at educating, but even nine years ago when I had my daughter, I didn't know how fruitful and actually vital a doula would have been.  So I wish I’d known.  I’m so grateful that you guys are out here educating.  Because he didn't know what was going on; I didn’t know what was going on.  But the internal experience is anything in your internal environment, your thoughts, sensations.  The sensations are, of course, connected to your emotions.  So being aware of those is so important because when we actually tune in to them, we often can uncover that what is happening inside of us is really a part of that programming, and it’s not actually rooted in truth.  So for example – I guess for you, Kristin, let’s talk about something common that comes up in your community, whether it’s someone who’s pregnant or in labor and delivery. 

One of the things that I think is really interesting is, what’s a big fear?  What is a fear, a thought, that you find a lot of women have in your community? 

Certainly, especially for first time parents, the fear that they may not be able to be the parent that they would like to be and feel intimidated by newborn care, especially.  And then I would say as far as fears in pregnancy, as a birth doula, I see clients certainly fearing interventions, things happening out of their control; certainly a surgical birth. 

Yeah; fear of interventions, surgical birth, things not going as they planned.  I mean, I just want to say it, people fear death.  The extreme is, I’m not going to make it.  I’m going to die in childbirth, or this is going to ruin my life, if we go to the extreme. 

Women are unfortunately dying in childbirth at alarming rates, especially women of color.  It is a concern, a very valid concern. 

It’s so funny – just to sidetrack – when I was in grad school about a decade ago – actually, it was longer than that; probably 15 years ago.  We’d been training for our licensure exam.  One of the anxiety modalities was to do the worst case scenario.  It was like, okay, let’s bring up the worst case scenario.  And I don’t know if you’ve heard of Lynn Lyons.  I think everyone should check her out.  She is my go-to anxiety resource.  I’ve heard her speak many times.  She works with parents and kids around anxiety.  And I completely changed how I work with anxiety because she really hit that modality on the head when she said, well, when you give anxiety a statistic like that, anxiety says, well, you’re saying there’s a chance.  If you throw out a percentage of “only so many women die in childbirth,” anxiety is like, okay, so I can, right?  So we need to focus more on the process of anxiety versus the content because there’s always going to be that statistic that says it’s possible. 

This is really important when we come back to mindfulness because we really want to be aware of – specifically right now, we’re talking about the thoughts that are associated with anxiety.  Am I going to have a surgical intervention?  Is my birth going to go the way that I want it to?  And then of course, when we have the children, am I going to raise kids in the way that I want?  Am I going to be a conscious parent?  All of these swirling fears that come.  And this is where it’s so important: anxiety is always going to find something to latch on to.  We sort of joke about it sometimes, even though it’s really not a fun experience.  During COVID, people were like, what did my anxiety even worry about before?  Well, anxiety always finds something because that’s what it does.  That’s its job.  Its job is to protect you.  

So being aware of it – when we bring awareness to it – my company is called The School of MOM.  Mothering Ourselves Mindfully is what it stands for.  And the “ourselves” is really an intentional word because this really speaks to the parts and the selves that we all are made up of.  We’re not just one self.  So your anxiety is there on purpose.  We need that survival mechanism.  We’ve needed it.  You and I wouldn't be having this conversation today if our ancestors didn't have some level of that survival mechanism.  And of course, it’s not always serving us.  So bringing awareness to these internal experiences – the experience right now of anxiety, and then really exploring, what is it – what is my experience of anxiety?  Because when I ask someone – okay, we share the same thoughts, the extreme one being, am I going to die?  Am I going to have to have a surgical intervention?  When we ask moms, okay, well, how do you feel anxiety?  Your experience might be different than the next person.  Someone might have a really upset stomach.  That’s what I have.  I’m running to the bathroom when I have anxiety.  When some people have anxiety, it’s a flushed face.  We all experience it differently.  So getting to know your unique experience, what’s happening in your body, in your mind, in the selves who exist in you – it’s so important.  Because then we actually can see them in a new light.  We can actually say, okay, this anxiety has a narrative.  It has a job.  And in The School of MOM, we work with bringing on new, more helpful selves.  And I say bringing online – I really want women to hear that we don’t need to bring on someone new.  It’s actually more about awakening what’s already here.  We want to tap into, just like we have built-in survival mechanisms like anxiety, we also have built-in mechanisms for thriving.  We have ease.  All of us have all of the emotions.  It’s just a matter of how safe they are to feel.  That’s really important.  

When we bring awareness to these thoughts and these feelings, especially coming in to labor and delivery, we actually can begin to discern.  There’s a great tool in the mindfulness space called the lesson of the second arrow.  I’m not sure if you’ve heard of this before, but the first arrow is the painful thing.  So in terms of an internal experience, the painful thing would be the thought or the sensation.  Literally, a painful sensation of heartburn or back pain or sciatica.  There’s so many discomfort moments in pregnancy.  And that is what it is.  But what happens is the second arrow, the third arrow, the fourth arrow – what I call the zipline that follows.  We kind of go down this dark rabbit hole of the subsequent thoughts that come in relationship to this first one.  So for example, am I going to have a surgical birth?  That is a question.  Okay, are you?  And if we really look at it, we say, well, maybe.  Let’s talk about the plan around that and really stay with that question.  How does it feel in your body?  That’s a different experience than, am I going to have a surgical birth; oh, my goodness, if I have a surgical birth, then the recovery is going to be so bad, or what if the baby’s not okay; does this mean that I failed?  And you can see the zipline.  This is the second, third, fourth, fifth arrow.  And the arrow is kind of an old way of thinking about this, but it’s essentially the sharpness, the pain, going into the same spot.  We’re compounding the pain of that first question, which is a hard one.  You don’t maybe want that.  And bringing awareness to this – we start to get to know ourselves, the selves that come online while we’re completely unconscious.  They’re really driving the bus because they want to keep us safe, and on some level, that has led us to where we are today, even if it’s not maybe here for our thriving.  We’re here.  We’re alive.  So we want to bring awareness to that, and then we want to discern, hmm, what would be a more helpful and true response here?  And this is where in The School of MOM we really focus on that mothering, the mothering of ourselves mindfully.  This is all about self-compassion and discerning intentional action and really awakening in us the two sides of compassion, one being the tender side, this very nurturing, motherly side, which I just want to say, is not innate for so many women.  It was not innate for me.  I’m learning how to mother my child as I’m learning how to mother myself.  This is one of the biggest gifts our kids can give us.  So I’m learning how to have this kind, soft, nurturing with my kid and with myself.  And then there’s fierce self-compassion, which is this more assertive mama bear aspect.  Bringing those parts of ourselves online kind of naturally through becoming a mother, but the invitation that I want to offer up to everyone is that you get to be the subject of this practice, of this learning evolution, just as much as your kid is.  

So I know I’ve talked a lot there, but yeah, that’s a quick nugget of mothering ourselves mindful, especially as it pertains to pregnancy and labor and delivery. 

Absolutely, and I agree with you, Sarah, in that birth is as mental as it is physical.  At Gold Coast Doulas, we offer HypnoBirthing classes, so it does incorporate some elements of mindfulness and positive affirmations and partner involvement and fully understanding not only what the body is doing, but how the mind and body can work together.  But to take it a step further and focus on parenting the way you do, and reducing fear in pregnancy – and I do feel like the pandemic has instilled so much more fear surrounding pregnancy, labor, and delivery, especially for those moms that delivered in that two-year period and are now having more children – they still have that fear to work out. 

Yeah.  I mean, it lives in the body, right?  It lives in the body.  And I think this is why having a doula is – I mean, you could talk about this all day, every day, about why having a doula is so important because what we need when it comes to working with the trauma, the anxiety that lives in our body, is we need to teach and communicate safety.  Our body is stuck in that state.  And having a regulated nervous system in the room throughout the process that you can co-regulate to is vital.  It’s that resource of safety.  For some of us, and a lot of the moms I work with in The School of MOM – my history, my story is that I’m estranged from my mom.  And it’s one of the main reasons why The School of MOM exists because I was really forced into the deep end of learning how to mother myself in the absence of a healthy mother and the absence of a healthy mother model.  Looking around in my life, it was like, is there any model of compassion and embodiment in my life?  No.  And a lot of the women I work with, we feel the same way.  Of course, we are having to be something that we have no blueprint for.  Even looking around us, who are these regulates humans that we’re trying to model?  So having a doula, having that resource, that attuned and grounded resource in the room, is so important.  I’ve only had two birth experiences with my two girls, but I will tell you that it didn't come from a lot of the staff.  Some of the nurses are incredible, but my first birth, I had a pretty traumatic first birth.  I had an episiotomy.  I had a vacuum.  I had no drugs throughout the whole process.  It was very intense.  And my midwife kind of got pushed to the side at one point because the OB took over.  And it was really, looking back on it – when I was in it, of course, you’re so in the intensity of the moment.  But looking back on it, my midwife was such a source of groundedness and it’s going to be okay and let’s focus on what is here, versus the fear of what could happen or what might happen that is so pervasive.  

Absolutely, and midwives do have that mindset of creating calmness.  But that is a lot to process the second time around, and obviously, you have all of the tools as a professional, but I love that you created The School of MOM to help other moms and create community.  So for our listeners that are interested in all of the different options between The Parent Wellness Group and The School of MOM – I know that you create community and also have different programs.  So I would love to hear more. 

Yeah, and I just want to say, I’m a student.  I’m a forever student of what I teach, because as you said, I’m a professional.  I teach this stuff.  I know about the nervous system and mindfulness, and knowing it and living it and practicing it are two totally different things.  I really encourage people to get support because we’re not meant to do any of this alone, and so for me, coming into my second birth – yeah, it was very challenging because I had the history of the first one.  But I will say that my mindfulness practice, my self-compassion practice, my mothering ourselves mindfully practice that I teach – being a student of that is, hands down, the most impactful thing that I’ve ever done, in both experiences, really, but in my parenting, as well. 

So yeah, I’d love to share a little bit about The School of MOM.  It’s been through many iterations.  I actually started it in COVID on Mother’s Day in 2020.  And right now, we are – I’m actually writing a book that’s going to come out in the fall of 2026.  So I’m a little bit closed for some business that I’m normally open for with The School of MOM, but we have a podcast – which you’re going to be on!  I’m so excited!  People can check out The School of MOM Podcast.  That has a lot of resources in there.  And then actually, we’re actively enrolling for our waitlist for The School of MOM to open up.  Everyone will start with our foundational program, which I started in May of 2020.  It’s Mothering Ourselves Mindfully, and it is really this foundational teaching.  I teach the foundations of Mothering Ourselves Mindfully, but the big piece, too, is the community and really connecting with women who are on this shared journey of tending to and healing themselves so that they can be those models and resources for their kids.  

You can get on the waitlist now, and we also have some programs like a little bit more of an intimate small group and a one-on-one program that I’m enrolling for right now.  We do some retreats here and there, and I take on a few one-on-one clients.  So I just encourage people to reach out to me, hello@theschoolofmom.com, or check out our website.  We’re on Instagram @the.schoolof mom.  We’re kind of at this really exciting time, coming up on the six year mark, similar to a kid who’s really coming into their own.  I feel like that transition from 5 to 6 is a big one for our kids, and I’ve been really feeling that in my business.  The School of MOM really is evolving how it’s meant to evolve, and I really encourage people to check us out. 

I love it, and I’ll have to have you back on when you do your book tour! 

Yes, I’m so excited!  I was writing it right up until this conversation.  As a mom, it’s kind of like fitting it in the cracks wherever you can. 

I understand!  That’s how my book evolved, as well.  Those little windows of time to write are so essential.  So Sarah, any final tips for our listeners? 

You know, I’d love to just offer our MOM ritual.  You hear these conversations, and then it’s like, so what do I do?  So I just would love for people to remember the MOM acronym – we love acronyms in mindfulness and in psychology.  As a therapist and mindfulness teacher, I’m extra in love with them.  M is, take a moment to meet yourself.  Meet yourself, your mind, your body, in the moment with some curiosity.  O is observing.  What’s here?  Allowing your experience to be what it is.  It’s right.  All parts of you are welcome here.  And then the M is how can I mother myself?  Is there a need I can meet?  Meeting the need to mother yourself.  

And I just want to say that just doing the M and the O, just meeting yourself in the moment with curiosity, observing what’s here – that is, in and of itself, a mothering yourself practice.  Oftentimes, all our kids want is just for us to be with them.  They just want presence.  If you get to the M and you’re like, I don’t know what I need; how am I supposed to mother myself?  That is just an invitation to allow that to be and to continue to come back to this really compassionate and intentional presence with yourself. 

I love it.  Thank you for sharing the practice! 

You’re welcome!  Thank you for having me! 

Have a beautiful day, and we’ll have you back on soon! 

IMPORTANT LINKS

The School of MOM 

Birth and postpartum support from Gold Coast Doulas

Becoming A Mother course

Buy our book, Supported