#175 Our Lives Are Not Linear with Amy Taylor-Kabbaz

Welcome back mammas is, I wonder when you think about where you are in your life right now, motherhood relationships work. Do you feel like you're moving forward? Do you feel like you are where you should be? I ask this because so often in my own life and in all of the lives of the mothers and the women, I have spoken to.

We judge where we are. We think we need to be moving forward at all times. We look back at where we were this time last year, this time, last week. And we think we should be advanced from there. And that's because we are told a lie about what our lives look like. This is just one of the many lies. One of the many untruths that we are given as little girls and as women

and as human beings that make us constantly feel like we're not doing good enough. And one of those untruths is that our lives are meant to always be moving forward. Always improving, always getting better than it was yesterday that we are growing. Now I've made a career in the self development world. I published books all about growth.

I've created a business based on the idea of moving forward, letting go and becoming who you want to be. But one of the things I want to be really clear about today for you is that this is not a linear process. It isn't about waking up every day and doing better than you did yesterday.

And my goodness, we hear that a lot today. Live your best life, live your best self, all of these mantras and catchphrases that we've been given makes us feel like we're always meant to be getting better. I see this in the faces of the women that I speak to. They're on zoom. I see them in tears. When I talk about my precedents and forgiving themselves, where they are and how they're doing this.

I see this sense of relief wash over their faces when they realize that it's okay, that they are where they are. It's okay. They don't know all the answers yet. It's okay. That they've been trying to improve something in their lives for a long time. And they still don't feel like they're getting it right.

For example, anger, they really, really want to change the way that they are with their kids and their partner. But they keep having this sense of something bubbling up inside of them and they speak, like they don't want to speak, they feel anger. Like they've never felt before. And they promise themselves that tomorrow when I wake up, I'll do better tomorrow.

I will wake up and do better. And yet underneath there's no acknowledgement of what's really going on. Underneath. There is no insight into where the anger's coming from, how it's being processed, what to do with it. There's just an assumption that tomorrow I will do better. And when they can't or don't, then there is the self judgement.

So today I really want to share with you this understanding of our lives of time of growth and yes of matresence course, time is not linear when it comes to these things. It is not about improving and getting better every day. It is about taking stock of where you are and seeing that quite often, it is two steps back before it's three steps forward.

It's a dance, it's a dance between the light and the dark to dance between feeling like you've figured it out and being right back at the beginning. This is the gift of motherhood. This is the gift that comes from reflection on how we are learning and growing through motherhood. Because think about it just as you get that sleeping routine, right?

The baby will start teething just as you start getting a better routine to your day. Another one to week will come up. Just as you think that you can return to work and start carving out a career in time for yourself. Again, one of them gets sick and you can't send them to school or daycare. This isn't a negative focus of motherhood.

It's just the reality of it. And yet every time that happens, we tell ourselves we're back at the beginning, we're back to where we were. Why is this so hard? We pull ourselves down under the water, almost thinking it should be different than it is. What if we were to accept the dance, what if we were to accept the in and the out of flow work-life balance is not about having it balanced every single day.

It's about this realignment or this part of my life's a little bit out of alignment. Bring it back to. It's about acknowledging that there are seasons to our life. We're balanced looks really different than what we would like it to in a coaching call with a mama this week, we spoke about the goddess with the eight arms, or if you're unfamiliar with that, imagine an octopus.

And we are like that octopus. We are centered in the moon. It is our core and who we are. And yet we have these eight arms that move and reach and hold. There's an arm of motherhood and there's an arm of relationship. There's an arm of daughter, there's an arm of friend or sister. There's a career. arm there's a community, arm

and they can flail around and hold all the different things that they need to, as long as that center, that core sense of who you are is steady. That's what it needs to feel like for us. Instead of having this calm centered, always moving forward, always on top of everything, always balanced goals. Instead, can we see ourselves as this divine goddess able to move out eight limbs able to hold it all?

Because in the center we know who we are and some days, those arms will be flailing around like crazy. Some days it feels like there are too many. But that's okay. That's the season we're in right now, rather than resisting it, thinking it should be different telling ourselves to tomorrow I'll do better. Can we be okay with where we are knowing that when we step back and look at our lives as a whole, we will see that we will always moving forward.

It's micro steps backwards for huge steps forward in the end.

At the core of everything. I've learned about myself, how to forgive myself, how to be softer, how to allow the emotions that have been suppressed for so long. How to understand how I've changed through motherhood had to revalue myself. All of it needed to include this understanding that my life is not linear.

It doesn't need to be always moving forward. Sometimes it feels like I'm back where I began, but I never really am. As long as I can come back to that place within me, the very center, then those eight limbs those eight, arms the different roles and the different people that I am, and I need to be, can move and do what they need.

Because that is how I stay centered. That is how I continued to grow. Even if it does feel like sometimes it's two steps backwards before I move forward. I hope that lands for you today. Mama. I hope you can see where you might be holding yourself to this idea of always improving. Can you let it go. Can you be kind to yourself today?

And please remember if you need any extra practices around these ideas. If you want to start finding that calm center, no matter what, there are a collection of meditations specifically written for you and this season of motherhood on my website.