Living Well with PMDD

Mother's Day Peace Challenge

• Season 1 • Episode 102

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If you struggle with Mother's Day, you're not alone. Today I'll share an idea I had about 10 years ago. It was nearing Mother's Day and I had a desire to show my kids that I appreciated them making me a mother. I chose to buy them each a book for Mother's Day. Listen in to hear my Mother's Day Peace Challenge inspired by that experience. Or watch here.

Take Aways

  • Review of my episode: A Tribute to My Mom: Things I Wish My Mom Had Known 50 Years Ago from May 6, 2024.
  • Many women have a hard time with Mother's Day.
  • An AI summary of why some women's don't like Mother's Day:  Some women don't like it because it's heavily commercialized, because it puts pressure on being perfect, it creates extra labor rather than a restful break, it triggers sadness because of strained relationships, personal loss, infertility, or the pressure to perform happily while you are struggling with motherhood.
  • A few quotes from women in this article.
  • When I've struggled with Mother's Day, it was because I felt inadequate, false guilt (or mom guilt), or because I was missing my mom.
  • One year, I got my kids gifts to celebrate Mother's Day to say: thank you for making me a mom and I am glad to be your mom.
  • Mother's Day Peace Challenge: Answer this question: What do you want this weekend to look like? Then comes the challenge:  Listen to what your heart or mind answers and if it feels good, do it! 
  • YOU ARE AMAZING. AS YOU ARE. RIGHT NOW. HUGS!


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Ep 102 Mother's Day Peace Challenge

[00:00:00] Hello, this is the Living Well with PMDD podcast. I'm your host, Heidi Bradford, certified life coach, mom of five, and PMDD survivor. Happy to have you here. This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered health advice.

Hello, hello. Today we are talking about Mother's Day and how to have a peaceful Mother's Day. I have a little challenge for you. In preparing for this episode, I looked back at previous episodes of my podcast. I thought I had done a Mother's Day episode where I already talked about the idea I have for you, but

it's not there. I did one episode in 2024 titled A Tribute to My Mom: Things I Wish My [00:01:00] Mom Had Known 50 Years Ago. It's probably episode 17. It was May 6th, 2024, if you do wanna go see it. Anyway, so I'm gonna give you an idea to help you have a good Mother's Day.

I wanna share the things that I shared on that podcast just really quickly in case you can internalize some of this. Maybe you're kind of missing the mark, in one of these areas. Her value is immeasurable. So these are things I wish my mom had known 50 years ago. Oh, and I brought pictures to show you.

So this is one picture of my mom. She passed away... Can you see that? She passed away last year, last February. And then this is a picture of my mom and dad.[00:02:00] 

I am the youngest of nine kids. My mom was 40 when she had me. Might be a different dynamic than you, but I loved it. Still love it. Things I would tell her. Your value is immeasurable. The impact you're having on the people around you is huge. It is enough. It's okay to not use all of your time and effort to try and make others happy.

What you have to give is enough. Sometimes you're doing a little too much. Keep valuing your listening skills and value listening to people. You can do less, and it doesn't mean that you are less. Your mom and dad are proud of you. Calling yourself stupid isn't helpful, and it is hurting you. You might have PMDD, so when you're having a hard time, try not to be so hard on [00:03:00] yourself. Those are things I wish my mom had known 50 years ago.

Then these are things that I would, what I would tell her.

Keep trusting yourself. Push for those things you really think are better your way. Thank you for the hours and hours and hours that you listened to me. You following the Spirit will make a positive difference in your children's lives and in many other people's lives.

You don't have to do as much as you do, but you can. You're a blessing... Oh, sorry. You are blessing people's lives in whatever good you choose to do. Those are from the notes from that episode. I wanted to share them here. That's back in 2024. I had another year with her at that point, then I had to say goodbye and let her go [00:04:00] to heaven and do the wonderful things she can do over there.

For today, so it's a common thing for women to struggle with Mother's Day, and when I say common, it doesn't mean every woman is gonna struggle with it. It doesn't mean that if you do struggle with it, you'll always struggle with it. It just means that it can happen, and it's common. From my experience, the times I struggled with Mother's Day, it was because I felt inadequate. I felt like I wasn't doing as much as I wanted to be doing. I had this vision, this idea of what I wanted to be doing as a mom, and I wasn't meeting that standard so I felt like, "Why are you recognizing me?" It almost highlighted the stuff I wasn't doing in my head. My kids, my husband, none of them did that. They always wanted to celebrate me and do nice things for [00:05:00] me on Mother's Day. But then I also thought about, in general, why would this be hard for women?

And these are what I came up with. They might feel uncomfortable being spotlighted for something so natural. Is that really a big accomplishment? And depending on who you are, you might see that differently. To me, it's a huge accomplishment. You built this life inside of you.

It took nine months to create, and planning and things before that, and diet changes and whatever you had to go through to get this baby here. But to some women, it's like, "Of course I'm a mom."

For others, they just don't like the spotlight at all, so they'd rather there not be a Mother's Day for that reason.

It could be that they have a poor relationship with their mom. They could be just showing false modesty. There's also the death of their mom. The death of a child that's not [00:06:00] there for Mother's Day. That is really sad. I also went online, and I looked up why some women don't like Mother's Day, and

these are a few things from an AI summary of that. So it's AI. Take it with a grain of salt, however you deal with AI.

In the summary it says that some women don't like it because it's heavily commercialized, because it puts pressure on being perfect, it creates extra labor rather than a restful break, it triggers sadness because of strained relationships, personal loss, infertility, or the pressure to perform happily while you are struggling with motherhood.

I can definitely relate to that last one. There have been times where being a mom has just been too much for me and I've really had a hard time. So [00:07:00] then you feel guilty, right? If you're not happily being a mom, you feel guilty. But learning that that is just false guilt, that that kind of guilt isn't from you doing anything bad. It's you not having the support you need or not feeling supported. I call it false guilt. Mom guilt, I've heard it called that as well.

I also wanted to share with you from an article titled Four Reasons People Hate Mother's Day and What to Do About It, and this is- @bahealing.com.

Um, I believe he's a therapist. Pretty sure. From this article, I thought the quotes, that he shared in there were revealing.

So I wanna share those quotes. And I do this so that we are aware of what another woman might be going through. Maybe she's single, maybe she's married without children, maybe she's married with children, maybe [00:08:00] she's divorced. We are around these women all the time, and we do have some power to influence the experience that they have.

So hopefully this part about why women don't like Mother's Day, it might be helpful to you in how you interact with them, and maybe even just nudge you to get somebody flowers.

Okay. So here are the quotes from the article Four Reasons People Hate Mother's Day and What To Do About It. "I hate Mother's Day because my mom's not here.

Mother's Day reminds me how much I miss her and makes me wish I could tell her one more time how much I love her." "Mother's Day is hard for me because I always wanted to be a mom, and I'm dealing with infertility." That's another situation. So that's two of the quotes. Third, "I feel sad seeing everyone's Facebook [00:09:00] posts saying they love their mom so much, and my mom was never there for me emotionally when I was a child.

We still don't have a good relationship." Fourth, "I am mad at her for not taking better care of me." And fifth, "I am a single mother, and no one supports me on Mother's Day or any other day of the year."

At the root of it, I think Mother's Day brings so much emotion, some happy, some fun, some sad, some reminiscence, um, creative energy, you know, and the things our kids create for us. I would write my mom a poem and put it in a card on Mother's Day. But then the sadness too when your mom's gone or if

you didn't feel loved. Everybody has a mom, and they may or may not know who she is. But we have a mom, and we have that desire to be loved, a desire to show love and [00:10:00] appreciation for this person that gave us this gift of life.

I also believe motherhood is sacred. It's an opportunity, and it doesn't only have to be by birth. You can be a mother, have a mother heart, and be a mother to people.

Okay, now my challenge to you so that you will have a peaceful Mother's Day, and before I say that, ... I know it's really close to Mother's Day. It's just in a few days. So if you're hearing this after Mother's Day, maybe this is something you, consider for the next 12 months. And 11 months from now, you think, "Oh yeah, what was that Mother's Day challenge that Heidi had?

I wanna do it this year."

My Mother's Day challenge to you is to ask yourself, "What do I want this weekend to look like? How do I want to celebrate Mother's Day? What would be fun for [00:11:00] me?"

That's really it. That's the prompt for you. The prompt is, what do you want this weekend to look like? But then the challenge is to follow your heart or your mind. Maybe you just get an idea, right? But what feels good? What would you like to do this Mother's Day weekend?

This is inspired because of an experience I had I think 10 years ago now, where I thought: I'm a mom because I gave birth to these children, and I want to show them that I am glad to be their mom.

I had this idea to give them a book, something that they were interested in. It was really fun for me. I wrapped these gifts for my kids, and they loved it, and I loved it. As you are thinking about what you might wanna do, I encourage you not [00:12:00] to pick it apart, not to be too judgy. We could look at my choice and say, "Oh, you wanna give gifts, and you have a problem with receiving. You have an issue with being okay with sitting around doing nothing while other people are pampering you, or while they're saying good things about you.

You must not be able to handle it. That's why you wanna give them gifts. It's to take the spotlight off of you. It's to..." whatever. We can do that, and we're not going to. We're gonna choose not to pick it apart. We're gonna just choose to enjoy the thing that we wanna do for Mother's Day.

If you love the traditions you have around Mother's Day, then all you decide is, "I'm gonna do the same thing we do every Mother's Day."

Because I had had experience in removing myself and in having some me time that day, a few years ago, I consciously decided, no, [00:13:00] being a mom, I wanna be with my kids.

I wanna be with my husband. That's how I wanna spend my Mother's Day. So that's been fun, too.

Growing up, Mother's Day, we would have both sets of grandparents over to our house, and we would have dinner with them. After eating, we would give gifts or cards to, um, my Grandma Huber and my Grandma Christensen and my mom.

It was such a wonderful just such wonderful memories for me. It's wonderful to think about , and I am so glad that my mom received Mother's Day well.

I'm sure she had some of the inadequate feelings on that day and maybe other days, but she still allowed us to give her- cards, to write poems for her that probably said things about her that she was like, "Oh, "No," "I'm not that good." But it [00:14:00] just makes for some really good memories.

That's my challenge to you. So consider what do you want this weekend to look like? That's the prompt, and the challenge is to actually allow yourself to follow your heart. Where is it gonna take you this weekend? And I love you. Thank you for what you do as a mother, and if you're a single woman thank you for the good you put out into the world and the positive influence, the wonderful, energetic vibes that you give off. It does make a difference. And we'll talk to you next week.

 I wanna add here a sales pitch to get on a call with me. One of the fastest ways to discover how to treat your unique to you PMDD is by talking with someone who understands PMDD, who has researched PMDD, and who has lived with PMDD, and that's me.

So sign up for a 20-minute call with me. It's [00:15:00] free right now. No preparation necessary, just show up, and you will leave with the next step you should take in treating your PMDD. To sign up, go to Heidi, H-E-I-D-I,

bradfordcoaching.com/free. I'm so looking forward to talking with you.

Thanks so much for listening to the Living Well with PMDD podcast. To learn more about life coaching with me, visit my website heidi, H-E-I-D-I, bradfordcoaching.com. Until next time, keep hoping, keep loving, and remember that you are not alone.