Sheltering in place during this pandemic is especially hard for mothers who are introverts, especially when your kids are very small. You just.want.to.be.alone, but that space and quiet is really hard to come by. In this Summer Break re-run episode, I share a bit of my own story, finding my way as an introvert and a stay-at-home mother. I also offe…

This summer break-re-release is an episode where I break down the philosophy behind the KonMari method, and how to apply it to more than just your house. After you listen, I want you to review what is - or was - in your life pre-Covid, and what you WANT in your life now. There is so much we want but still can’t have. But what are you actually relie…

Being turned on means to be ready. Not, in this case, for sexy stuff, but to be ready to invite life in. Do you feel open to that invitation? Or are you instead worn out, exhausted, and touched out? Motherhood - life - doesn’t have to feel this way. But if you are waiting for someone to swoop in and fix it, you might be waiting a long time. This we…

In this summer break re-release, I get personal about how I tended to myself in a particularly hard season; what worked for me, where I set boundaries, what I did to nourish myself. I hope you will hear some ideas here that you can implement in your own life. Ideas that make you think, "Huh, I hadn’t thought of that as self-care!” But it is. It tot…

How do you talk to your kids about the hard stuff? Illness, death, violence? Racism? If you feel completely unprepared for these conversations, this episode should help. While there is no one script to cover all the different conversations, there are some general guidelines that will help you feel more confident and brave, no matter what the topic.…

Do you feel like a good parent every day? Or do you snap and get frustrated, say things you regret, and wish you had different kids?: Welcome to being human during a pandemic, so give yourself some grace. You don’t have to be stuck here. Doing your own personal work - increasing your awareness, mindfulness, and self-care - can change everything abo…

Uma Girish believes that this pandemic is here to teach us something important. Uma is an author, speaker and life purpose coach, and she believes that you are here, at this moment in time, on purpose. What can you learn from this experience? How can you support and usher your kids through it so that it has greater meaning than just being paused? W…

“I need help following through on doing things that are good for me,” is what she said to me, but what she really needed was: permission to be ok with choosing her self-care time over chores identifying some hidden inequality in her partnership that she could address unearthing and questioning her expectations of herself and her definition of “good…

Last month, life shifted for everyone. I expect you are feeling the deep impact of that right now. I’m personally writing this five weeks into sheltering at home, a month into school closures and my partner working at home, and no end in sight. Every woman I’ve come in contact with is feeling the strain of this massive shift in our time, income, an…

Today’s guest is a song doula. You’ve probably never heard of that. I hadn’t either! Chelsea is a singer and songwriter who works with women to begin to write their own songs, But that process, as she will describe in this interview, is so much more than learning how to place the chorus and the verses or how to set a story to music, it is about lea…

We are in a period of time like none any of us have experienced before. It feels overwhelming, scary, and stressful. There are so many decisions we are trying to make every day, in an environment where we have never made decisions like these before. So how the heck we figure out what we should do when we are uncertain? When everyone has an opinion …

By Dona Bumgarner

Do you know what you need most in each season? Does winter feel different to you than other seasons? Winter is so much harder for me than any other time of year, which requires some major commitment to my self-care. Which, as I confess in this episode, I've not been doing. What you’ll hear in this episode how I have to care for myself differently i…

Guest Melissa Camara Wilkins, award-winning blogger, speaker, author of Permission Granted: Be Who You Were Made to Be and Let Go of The Rest, talks with me about the ways we can give ourselves more permission to be our whole selves, and what that can do to expand our way of living. What you’ll hear in this episode Why the discomfort of showing up …

Sometimes what you need to pull yourself out of a funk is cozy slippers, hot tea, and deep conversation. Other times, what you need is permission to slam your body into another strong woman while roller skating. When Erika Tebbens found herself drowning in motherhood after moving across the country to a new community, the way she found herself agai…

It is so easy to make friends when you are 4, or 8. Right? “Hey, do you want to play with me? Yet it feels so hard when you are 33, or 48. “Um, hi, I think you might be cool and I’d kind of like to know you.” AWKWARD. This episode is all about making it feel a little easier to make those first connections with new people. Because what I’ve discover…

Does your home feel chaotic, overwhelming, and like there’s constantly too many small things to keep track of, so you aren’t making any progress on any big goals or dreams? Yvonne Marcus teaches Agile project management methods to moms, so they can more efficiently run their homes. In this episode, she tells us all about what that means, the basics…

How do you feel about weekends? At various points in my parenting journey, I have dreaded them, looked forward to them, and felt entirely undone by them. A friend of mine admitted recently that she’s been watching the clock on Sunday afternoon, counting down until bedtime, because in the morning she can send her kids back to school. And she feels k…

How often have you wished you could just do something without being afraid? I know in my own life, fear is often the root of why I hold myself back, why I do not take that action or say the things I want to say. Enter Kate Swoboda, who has literally written the book on this topic. Kate is author of The Courage Habit,creator of YourCourageousLife.co…

I’ve heard over and over from clients that they are in a season where sex feels not much fun. They are tired, touched out, and have no energy to give their partners. They miss it, but they also don’t really want to do it. That’s totally normal. In this conversation with Leah Carey, we discuss some of the ways that you can get really clear about wha…

How many times throughout your day do you take an action without really thinking about it? So many times, right? The reality, for any busy and engaged mom, is that is really noisy in your head. Some of that noise is helpful, keeping the show running, but some of it is less helpful, and it is running you. Your thoughts influence how you feel, and ho…

Every mom I know stresses about food an their family. Most of us are the primary food-producers and we're thinking about food and nutrition and how to get vegetables into our kid’s mouths more than we’d really like to admit. And it’s stressful, right? Enter Amy Vig, who is mom, podcaster, and Natural Foods Chef. She turns parents into kitchen ninja…

This week’s episode is a battle cry for independence. For your independence from feeling like you are trapped in a life that never quite makes sense. Like you are messing up, no matter what you do. Like it is always hard and frustrating. Like you are never quite getting the support and recognition that feels reasonable. Does that feel like your lif…

What do you do when there’s something you know you are meant to create, but you don’t have any idea how to make that thing happen? That was the question Cathy Krizik was facing. Cathy is the author of 52 reasons for Hope: Finding Inspiration in Times of Trouble. She knew she wanted more fulfillment in her life, and she had a glimmer of a dream to w…

We’ve all done it. We’ve passed judgment on some mom for something she’s done (or not done). For being on her phone while she’s at the park with her kids. For going back to work “so soon” after giving birth. For extended breastfeeding - or not. For sleep training - or not. For making handmade organic baby food - or not. And have you ever worried ab…

What’s your money story? We all have one. You’re bad with money. You’re a good saver. Money is bad, money is good. For most women, our relationship with money is one of our most fraught relationships, second perhaps only to the complexity of your relationship with your mother. But dealing with money is necessary, and learning to have a clear and gr…

I have become someone who folds and rolls her underwear and tucks them into a tiny box inside the drawer. I used to be someone who just stuffed them all in a drawer and shoved it shut, until recently the shoving had become rather forceful, because the drawer was overfull. So I KonMari’ed my dresser, and while folding and rolling my underwear while …

You know yourself - don’t you? What I’m learning from my clients (and about myself) is that so many of us really don’t. Or we know what’s on the surface, but not what’s underneath. And like a duck swimming along, there may be a lot of calm on the surface, and a LOT going on underneath. But getting to know yourself better - your motivations, feeling…

What does it feel like when you are not taking up the space ion the world that you deserve? The truth is, even those of us who believe strongly in equality for women, in parenting, in relationships (and that’s me), still let ourselves be small. We don’t insist. We don’t speak out. We don’t get pissed off and say, “No. I deserve this.” And I’ll be h…

Did you know that there’s bacteria in dirt that can elevate your mood? I didn’t either, but the spring after my ex and I separated, I would come home from work and head straight out into the garden to get my hands into the dirt. I didn’t know why it helped me feel better, I just knew that the feeling of my hands in dirt and on plants was soothing t…

If your experience of motherhood feels often harder than you expected or imagined it would be, you aren’t alone. If you have been feeling like you lost track of your real self somewhere in the midst of laundry and homework and doctors appointments, you aren’t alone there, either. Obviously this is not an episode on now to nurture yourself in busine…

Have you ever seen your introverted personality as holding you back, especially in a job or how you run your business? Well, this episode is for you, then. My guest, Nicole Burgess, is a licensed psychotherapist, host of the podcast Soulfilled Sisterhood, and empowerment mentor for introverted professional women. She helps women remove their good g…

In this week’s podcast I’m talking about how getting really clear about your priorities can help you feel more in control and successful in your life, too. I’ll share how you can figure out the things you want to prioritize, if you aren’t really sure right now, and I give lots of examples from my own life about how I shift priorities on the fly whe…

The work that fits your life best before you have babies is not likely going to be the same as the work that fits best after. Nor is is likely to look like the work that fits best when you kids get older, or after they move out. That doesn’t mean it has to be a different business altogether, but what you and your family needs in those seasons is go…

Are you one of those people who sets New Year's Resolutions but quit them (or forgotten them) by the end of January? Have you set goals and then not made any progress toward them, and you aren't sure why they feel so hard? You aren't alone! Achieving goals can feel really hard, but that's because most of us are approaching them all wrong. In this e…

Who you are is shaped by your culture, your history, your heritage, as well as what you are doing in your life in the present. And our lives, and our businesses, are so much more interesting, rich, and meaningful if we bring all of that history to light and include it in our story. Is who you are fully part of the story you tell of yourself? This w…

In this first episode of Season 3, where I’ll be talking about how we nurture the work we do in the world, I’m talking about a whole new way of structuring a life and a business, and braiding the two of them together. Whether you are just starting a business or have an established company that just isn’t working quite right for the rest of your lif…

Do you have things that you want to do, but they just never seem to happen? You put them off, you forget about them, you have a bunch of excuses? In this episode, I’m going to dig into resistance - the name for why you do that. Why do you resist the things you think you really want to do? It turns out there’s probably a really good reason, but unti…

We all know what stress feels like - the tight jaw, the racing heartbeat, the spinning thoughts. We’ve all probably experienced the side effects - insomnia, headaches, or fatigue, just to mention a few. But out stress doesn’t just effect us. It impacts the time we spend with our children and it also impacts our children. In this episode: How to rec…

Stay-at-home moms who are also introverts face a particular challenge - it can be extremely hard to find any quiet when you live with young kids - and we need quiet. If you find yourself often thinking “I wish my kids would just be quiet, stop talking to me, and stop touching me,” you may be struggling with a need for extra introvert-specific self-…

My guest this week, Mary Baird-Wilcock of the Simplifiers Podcast, did an experiment with her social media business channels in July. She stopped using them, all but Instagram. What she discovered from this experiment, was that in being really intentional with how and where she spent her time on social media, she had deeper, more personal connectio…

As we settle into back-to-school season, I’m struggling in the morning. I’m struggling to get up on time, to get us both fed, to not yell in frustration, and to get us to school on time (I’ll admit here that I’m flat out failing on that one). Are you struggling, too? This episode will help. This week I dive into morning routines - why you need one …

This week I continue the conversation with Brodie Welch about why self-care is not selfish. If you haven't listened to Episode 22, jump back and listen to that before you start this one! In this conversation, you'll hear: The deep value of learning in community, and also recognizing that you are a unique individual. How being honest about your stru…

In over 13 years of clinical practice, Brodie Welch has seen that the people who are willing to move differently, breathe differently, eat differently, interpret life differently, and make time for self-care are the people who really end up feeling dramatically different: healthy, confident, joyful, and free. This week, Brodie speaks to me about wh…

In this episode I get personal about how I’ve been tending to myself in my recent hard season; what’s working for me, where I’ve set boundaries, what I do to nourish myself. I hope you will hear some ideas here that you can implement in your own life. Ideas that make you think, "Huh, I hadn’t thought of that as self-care!” But it is. It totally is.…

This is the power of telling our true stories, and this is much of what I talk to my guest Kristin Tweedale about this week. Kristin is better known as rukristin on the web, where she is known as a feminist scrapbooker, author of 100 Days Of All About Me, and founder of the Awesome Ladies Project and the Crafty Ass Female podcast. Kristin knows tha…

My guest on the show this week is Christy Tending. Christy is a self-care mentor, activist, writer, and mama who helps rebellious humans become fierce self-advocates and cultivate spirited (and spiritual) lives. She's been a social justice activist for nearly 20 years, and continues to engage with climate justice and Indigenous rights activism. She…

In this week’s episode of Nurturing Habit, I talked with Caryn Gillen. Caryn is a weight loss coach for powerhouse women who are ready to end the struggle with food and their weight. But why I really invited her to talk with me for this series on self care is because what she teaches about so much MORE than food and weight. It is about how you can …

In this episode, I got to talk with Tara Whitney, who is an accomplished family photographer. What’s magical about her style of photography is that she deeply sees her clients. You can see that in the photos, and you can hear it in how her clients talk about the experience of being photographed by her. She sees their inherent beauty and individuali…