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I help moms MASTER this formula.
No, I’m not promoting alcohol, retail, or food therapy here, but can we get honest for a minute?
I was on a play date at a friend’s house not too long ago. She lives in a dreamy neighborhood where the lawns and driveways go on for days. We could walk to any number of swanky eateries and boutiques and pretend to be cool, but with six kids in tow, who were we kidding? So we just posted up in her backyard where at least no one would give us the stank face.
We sipped homemade Bellini’s, cranked some good tunes, and let the kids run wild and free. Life was good. On this particular day, I peeled myself up to check on my little one as usual, but when I came back my mom friends had disappeared. “WTF”…I thought! Until suddenly I heard my name.
“Pssst…Tamika come here,” I heard whispered from a distance. I walked around the garage to find four J-Crew clad soccer moms huddled in a tight circle. They were holding something strange I couldn’t quite make out what…wait a minute. They were smoking a joint! I roll with lots of mom cliques and this was the last one I would’ve expected to catch smoking a joint on a play date.
I felt both extreme judgment and liberation at the same time. I thought to myself “How could they….and why can’t I?”
This is probably sounding like a PSA for drinking and pot smoking, but trust me I’m going somewhere with this.
Here’s what I learned that day: Motherhood is challenging. But we make it 10X harder by trying to be something we’re not. Especially single moms trying to cover the tracks of failed relationships. And I just really appreciated the unexpected, unconcerned, imperfect nature of these moms that day. I felt permission to let go and be more honest. I didn’t join them, but I experienced a high nonetheless.
Maybe you’re in a relationship that feels wrong. Maybe you’re tolerating way too much at work. Maybe your kids are driving you to insanity and you really just need a break.
Complete the following sentence:
Put this statement on mental repeat, post it on your dashboard, say it even if you don’t believe it. Trust me. This works.
“Whereever you are in this moment is exactly where you’re supposed to be…no matter how things may seem to appear.”
My therapist gave it to me years ago in our final session. Sweet gesture, huh? I still look at it every day and hit mental reset before nose diving down the rabbit hole of self-criticism and regret.
Do you have a mantra, a scripture, a saying you’ve always loved? Okay, great! I want you to stop everything, go write it down, print it out, whatever, but take it to your dashboard this second.
Then can you do me a favor?
Head on over to Instagram then post a picture of it with #singlemamalama, pretty please. Let’s start a dashboard revolution. Changing mama’s lives one dashboard at a time.
Wine, pot, now I’m suggesting reading while driving. This is working out to be a real recipe for disaster, let me bring this back a bit.
Well, three years ago, I was thrown a curve ball that nearly took me out. I was seven months pregnant, holding down the fort with my 3-year old at home, while my husband was overseas on a contracted job. I learned in my unstable, hormonal, hot mess of a state that he had stopped over for a weekend rendezvous with a 24 year-old Spanish flight attendant en route home. I was devastated.
This story runs way deeper than what I’ll share now, and you can
if you want to know MORE, but here’s what happened in a nutshell.
After years of working on things, I knew that staying in my marriage meant living in a perpetual state of distrust and contempt. The affair was the final straw, so I chose me and took a bold step into the scary world of single motherhood.
Initially, I lost everything. My marriage. My house. Friends. But over the past three years, I’ve gained success, love, and a relationship with my kids that I could have never imagined possible.
If you’re a single mom or as I like to say “married but damn near single,”
Not only will I offer the tried and true steps that I took towards my recovery, but I also bring years of experience as a clinical therapist.
I graduated from UCLA top of my class with a Masters degree in Social Welfare and went on to become an LCSW. Turns out…I’m a darn good listener and have made an amazing career out of it. I’m also a certified grief recovery specialist and love helping people unpack the good stuff that is often been buried by a history of losses.
There’s lots more to me, that I share on SML TV Click here to subscribe.
It’s some FREEkin hilarious stuff.
I traded in perfection for action a few years back, which landed me on a stage in front of 1,000 people doing something I would have NEVER done before. I’m Beyonce and my partner in crime (who is about to deliver twins any day!) is Lady Gaga. What a hot mess huh? It’s so good to get out your comfort zone sometimes.
