Alli Worthington on Embracing Imperfect Motherhood
In this conversational interview, host Chrystal Hurst talks with author and entrepreneur Alli Worthington about the challenges of modern motherhood and how to navigate them with faith, research, and practical wisdom. Worthington shares why traditional parenting books often increase mom guilt, pointing to curated social‑media images as a major source of pressure. She describes her "marble jar" metaphor that highlighted the harmful countdown mindset and led her to reject perfectionism. The discussion moves into concrete self‑care practices—adequate sleep, hydration, daily movement, quiet prayer, nurturing friendships, and breathwork—as essential for emotional and spiritual health. Worthington emphasizes the danger of over‑functioning, which can stunt children’s grit, and advocates for intentional delegation and allowing kids to develop independence. She explores identity differentiation, encouraging mothers to cultivate interests, friendships, and a sense of self beyond parenting, and explains how balance shifts across seasons of a child’s life. Throughout, the tone is conversational, supportive, and faith‑informed, with a focus on actionable steps and reassurance that doing "enough" (about 50% of the time) is sufficient when paired with God’s grace. The interview also promotes Worthington’s book, "Remaining You While Raising Them," and an upcoming women’s retreat.
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If you've been with me for any length of time, watching the videos on YouTube, listening to the podcast on your favorite podcast player, definitely if you're a member of the Inner Circle, you have heard me talk about Allie Worthington, or you've heard from her yourself. Why? Because she has been a frequent guest and personal friend of mine. I think she is so wise, so smart, and so just amazing. And I love sharing her with my audience as much as I can, as often as I can. So I'm excited to have her here today. To talk not only about general encouragement for women, which she's always all about that, but specifically encouragement for moms. She, as she will tell you, is a mother of more than a few children, and she's learned a thing or two that not only lends to her wisdom she can put in a book, but wisdom she's going to share with us today. Welcome, Allie. Thanks for joining me today.
Thanks. Thanks for having me. That's great. Excited to be here.
Listen, you have written about a lot of things, and you are a woman who is multi-passionate and multi-talented, but you have landed on womanhood. Before we jump into that for our discussion today, and motherhood, the specific area that we're going to talk about today, I would love for those who don't already know you to get an Alli Worthington 101. Can you give us a little bit about who you are, what you do, and what you're all about?
Oh yeah, uh, wife, mom of 5 boys, step mom to a wonderful woman. I am an entrepreneur. I love building things. I'm an author. And let's see, if I was going to put it in 101 what I love— I love Jesus, I love movies, I love roller coasters, and I love dairy-free ice cream. That's what I love.
Now, what dairy-free ice cream are we into today? Like, is there a specific brand or something?
Well, it's 2023, so we are into Oatly. Uh, I can't believe it, but oat milk ice cream. Give me the chocolate stuff all day long. I haven't had real dairy in so long, I feel like oat milk ice cream is a good enough replacement. But I feel like somebody who could have dairy may have questions for me, let's put it that way.
Well, I'll tell you, oat milk is great. It tastes like the milk left over from the Lucky Charms cereal, which means it's like sweet. So I can't have it in my Starbucks coffee because then it's too sweet. Almond milk for Starbucks, but oat milk I've learned to love it. It's pretty good in everything else.
Yeah, I'll take it. I mean, you know, freeze that Lucky Charms milk and that's my ice cream.
Maybe if I'm a good mom, I can make my own ice cream from my leftover Lucky Charms milk. The things we learn to do. Oh no.
Okay. You know, as an author, we don't want to tempt fate with our books. So I always said I would never write a book on parenting. I'd never write a book on marriage. You write a book on parenting. 'One of your kids is gonna go to prison.' You write a book about marriage, your marriage is gonna blow up. But for the past 5 years, everybody's been like, 'When are you gonna write on motherhood? When are you gonna write on parenting? When are you gonna do this?' So I sent out a survey to people on my email list. Over 1,000 women answered back. And first question I asked was, 'What was the last book that you've read on motherhood, and was it beneficial?' Most of the women wrote back, couldn't give me anything on motherhood, 'cause there's nothing out there. They gave me a parenting book and they said things like, I wish I never read it. I felt worse after I read it than when I began. Or I put it away in the middle because it made me feel like a failure. And I was like, all right, that, that's a problem. We have books, we have podcasts, we have blog posts. We have all of this stuff for women telling us all the time, all these things we need to be doing. We need to be doing better. And don't do these things or your kids will be screwed up forever. Don't do this. You better do that. No wonder everybody's so miserable.
Right.
And then I wanted to find out, like, let's talk about mom guilt. I figured everyone was dealing with mom guilt all the time. That's easy. But what's causing it? It wasn't so much ourselves. It wasn't even so much our partners or our mother-in-law. What most women said was social media. Mm.
Yeah.
They see all these videos and images of families. They're all in matching outfits and even the dog is smiling. And meanwhile, your kid is crying. You've got another kid freaking out and the dog's throwing up on the carpet. Right? So, so we're getting all these messages that we're failing all the time. And then we open up our phones and we're inundated with pictures and videos. That's not people's real life. It's just curated images of perfection. It's no wonder women feel like we're dying on the vine. So what I wanted to do is I brought together mental health professionals to really speak into this book because this can't just be Allie's opinion. Yeah, I want I want biblical truth. I want mental health professionals. And then I did a ton of research, like, what actually matters? What matters long-term with your kids? What do kids need? How do we separate people's opinion, people's bad opinion, and all of this stuff coming at us so we can feel strong as mothers and not feel like we're just battling a war every day, like everybody else has the secret method and we're just— We're just kind of getting through on our own. I really wanted to give women something practical to take the pressure off.
What do you think, apart from the knowledge you give in the book, which I know that there's plenty of that in there, you're, you're always so good about practical wisdom. But what do you think flipped the switch for you? Because I think whether we talk about marriage, and yes, I'm with you, I'm avoiding marriage books too. Parenting, maybe marriage, I'm like, ah, but no, thank you. Yeah, the thing is, I think there comes a point, and maybe it's age, maybe it's, you know, um, an event, but there comes a point where I think for us girls, switches flip, because you're kind of like, you know what, I'm just not doing that anymore. Like, you know, I'm kind of done. Um, was there a point in your life where the reality of, I reject mom guilt, or I reject the messages that are coming at me that are telling me, giving me bars that I don't have to measure up to, um, even if there was still a struggle or a wrestle with practically dealing with it, you know, what, what moment in your life or what circumstance in your life do you remember the switch being flipped on for you?
Yeah, I had a marble jar. Did you ever go to a conference or see a very nice person explain that you should get a marble jar and fill it up with a certain number of marbles, and that's the number of weeks you had with your kid before they left for college?
All the stuff, pressure, ever.
Okay, so I got the marble jar, and every week I would take out a marble and I'd be like, "Lord, let me spend my time intentionally. Did I do things right? Did I do everything right?" And I'd take out that marble. And I had a good friend come to my house. She had grown children, and you know women with grown children, they have a different perspective, right? They sure do. Because they're smart, they've got all that wisdom. And she said, "What's the marble jar in your kitchen?" And I told her about how it was helping me be an intentional mother. And I gave her the whole spiel and I was so proud of myself. And she said, "Wow, that sounds like a recipe for depression." And I said, "It is. I hate it so much. I hate the marble jar. It makes me feel terrible." And she goes, "Yeah, I can see how for some moms that could be a great encourager, but it looks like something to just make moms feel bad." And I was like, "It does make me feel bad." And she would— and she sat me down because my kids were all young then. 3 of them are, you know, they're adults now. She said, you don't need to count down all of the weeks of their lives like you're going to lose them. There's stuff you're going to need to teach your children. Their brains won't even be developed to learn till they're in their mid-20s.
Correct.
Do you think when they turn 18, the magic switch is going to go off and that was your only chance to teach them? This is a completely unnatural way to think about parenting. And it was so liberating. And from then on, I called it my stupid marble jar and I let the boys play with the marbles. So that was my moment of something may be written in a book or taught from a stage, but it may not be beneficial to all people. And, and I think here, here's a go. I'm just going to be sassy now. I think that there are lots of industries that make a lot of money by making women feel like they're not good moms.
That is correct.
And yeah, and we got to be really intentional to eyeball that. There's, there's Instagram accounts, there's TikTok accounts, there's podcasts, there's books, there's do this, do that. If you don't do this, your kids are going to be screwed up forever. And we got to arm ourselves with wisdom. We gotta look at this from a biblical perspective. But also, what I did in this book is I looked at all the research that's been done for decades. What matters? What doesn't matter? And it was a counselor who told me a few years ago, she said, "While kids are in your house, they will never be more emotionally healthy than you are." Mm-hmm. So it's not so much what you are doing, it's who you are. So we have this motherhood culture of where we're just kind of putting our needs on the shelf, feeling burnout, leaving us feeling kind of depressed, sometimes a little bitter. When instead of doing more for our kids, what if we just worked on our emotional health, like our spiritual health, our mental health, our relationships, let the natural overflow of that be a home full of more happiness and peace and calm. Because I can't be a frazzled mess and expect my kids to be, to be fine. Right. But we, as women, we're not taking care of ourselves. We're just, we're on this treadmill trying to do all these things that everyone's convincing us that we have to do.
So let me ask you a question that I know somebody is thinking, because there is a level of sacrifice and surrender and selflessness with motherhood. So how do I know the difference between between the parts of motherhood that are hard and that are seasonal and that will only last a while, between the, I don't have to allow this because I'm gonna take care of me. Because one of the things I think women were, were kind of repel against when we start talking about taking care of yourself, um, really it's motherhood, but it's also like a whole Christian thing. When I talk about taking care of myself, it's that, well, that's, that could lend itself to me focusing on myself in a way that negates my children. So if, if I'm struggling with that because I want to be a good mom, but I hear what you're saying, but I know that there's a balance between the two. How do I tell the difference between focusing on myself so that there's overflow and the sacrifice that is needed for certain seasons of motherhood?
It comes down to this. If any mother is listening right now going, I don't want to be selfish, I want to make sure I'm a good mom. She's a good mom because bad moms don't sit around where they don't ask that question. They don't. I want— this will make you laugh. So I, I was going to a counselor, and at one time I went in, I was like, hey, if there's anything wrong with me that I can't see, can you just make sure— like, as a leader, I need to know, like, am I a narcissist? Am I this or that? And she just, she just bawled over laughing. She said, let me tell you something. The last thing a narcissist would ever do is go, "Can you just let me know if I'm a narcissist?" She was like, "No, you're fine. The fact you're asking this question, you're fine." And it's moms too. If you're saying, "I don't want to do too much because I don't want to all of a sudden become a selfish person and be a bad mom," you are fine. Bad moms don't ask that question. What moms have trouble with is we are actually over-functioning. We are doing too much for our children. It is hamstringing our children. Um, I have a quote in the book from the president of the, uh, College Counseling Center for college students, and he's saying kids who are coming into college right now haven't done things for themselves because their parents are over-functioning. They have anxiety. They're not able to do stuff because their mamas are doing too much. I've been guilty of that too.
Yeah.
So we are not at risk as moms— anybody here who's thinking this— we are not at risk of all of a sudden becoming selfish and abandoning our children and not doing enough. If anything, we can pull back a little bit, not serve 24 hours a day at our kids, make sure that we're also taking care of ourselves, and let kids grow a little grit. It's kind of like in a microcosm, you can think of it like chores. Yeah, we can, we can load the dishwasher forever, but at a certain age, really, shouldn't the kids be doing it? Maybe when the kids are loading the dishwasher, why not? Why not relax?
I feel like there's a part of me. I know I've overfunctioned as a mom. I just— the seasons came and they were settled in the season before my brain clicked in that they were in it. So like with my oldest daughter, I needed her help because she, you know, had 4 kids behind her. And so she did a lot. I mean, she is a boss now of like running her home, her kids and all that.
She is.
These poor boys, number one, they're boys and they're great, but they don't click in as fast to some of the things that I'd wanna teach 'em. And it was so much easier for me to have my two older girls do it. So if I have the habit, which I honestly still do, every Monday we have oatmeal, every Tuesday we have smoothies and some kind of bread. Every Wednesday there's eggs and bacon and some kind of bread. Thursday there's hot cereal. Cream of wheat or cream of rice, and on Fridays, pancakes. My boys are 20, 18, and 14. And one day, one of them got up and said— I think it was a Friday— and they were like, so are you gonna make pancakes? And like, they had woke up late, and, you know, I was already working. And I just looked at them and said, you make it. But I mean, like, you know, the time had passed for the transfer of power. It was just one day it clicked, like, why are you even asking me to do this? Like, you're grown. Pretty much read the instructions on the back like I would. But I just was so in the habit of all of the things. And I think that's one of the things that is a part of refuting the mom guilt feeling or the messaging is there is a vigilance that you have to have about what your kids are capable of and what you should be free to do, you know, like, yeah, you know. And so how do I stay aware? How do I notice that, uh, I'm not operating out of overflow, that my kids could or are capable of developing a little grit? Like, how do I recognize that there's a shift that needs to happen, um, inside of me and externally, outside of me, in my home, with my family, with my children?
Great question. I'm going to answer, but first I want to tell a little story. Remember when babies are little and we have to do tummy time. You know, tummy time, like, and the babies, it gets, it's to strengthen their back and the babies smack their little faces on the ground and they're angry and they cry and it's terrible. Tummy time is torture for kids and it's torture for adults, right? We hate it. We hate tummy time. But if we don't make them do tummy time, they're not gonna sit up, they're not gonna crawl. They'll end up like the people in WALL-E in the Axiom. They're just floating around in chairs 'cause they don't have any muscles. Essentially, we are always having to do tummy time stuff with our kids. It starts with something like that because if we don't make them strengthen up, get a little grit, they're just gonna be floppy their whole life. They're gonna be weak. So it's a combination. Like when we, when we notice in ourselves that we're feeling burnt out, a little resentful, a little bit bitter, that's when it's time to do a little tummy time exercise to go, you know what, I'm gonna make you gain a little strength in this. I can remember when I was 8 years old going to visit my Aunt Shirley at Christmas. I didn't know what was happening because I was 8 and, you know, we just don't have a concept for this. But I got there and Shirley and some other members of the family, they had been cooking for days. How did I know they had been cooking for days? Because they told everybody. And I remember thinking, they're not happy that they have been cooking. Like, they're not happy Christmas. And I didn't know what was going on, but I knew I didn't want that to happen to me when I was an adult. And what I learned later from talking to other family members is, is like, Shirley felt like that was her role and she didn't feel appreciated for it. And she didn't ask for the help she needed. She didn't feel like she had permission to get the help she needed. So she ended up being a little bit bitter every holiday after cooking for days. And that's kind of an example of what we do as mothers. We either don't feel like we have permission to get help, we don't ask for help, we overfunction, we do it on our own, and we end up feeling a little resentful in the meantime. And our kids pick up on that.
Yeah.
And so kind of my policy, and I feel like it's healthier, for us to do a little less, have everybody else get a little bit of grit in the family, do a little more so we can relax and have a good time. Because a happy mama will make everybody else happy. An unhappy mama will make everybody unhappy. So for me, it's kind of, how do I feel? Do I feel resentful?
Do—
like, is there like a seed of bitterness inside of me because I'm over-functioning? That's the check in my spirit. Where I go to the Lord and go, help me navigate through this. Help me, you know, help me fulfill my job as a mother to raise adults who are going to go out and function in the world and make their kids do tummy time, right? Make their kids get strong. Help, help me not love so much that I handicap my kids. Because if it was up to me, I'd keep them all in this little feathered nest and handicap them all. I mean, we all would. But it's our job to put great people out in the world and then to give us grandchildren. Praise the Lord that I can spoil. But that's it for me. It's that, it's that little, it's that little seed of resentment inside of me. That's when I know I'm doing too much and I need to ask for help or just raise the level of expectation in the family.
That's so good. When we talk about self-care, one of the things that I've found, um, whether we use the word self-care or— I know one of the things you're talking about too is not neglecting yourself. Um, sometimes we're so used to neglecting ourselves, we think it's the norm. Um, but the other part is, is when we think about self-care, we don't even know what that is. Sometimes the self-care eludes us because we don't know what makes us feel cared for, what we want, what we need. If somebody lets us loose on a Saturday, you know, let's say a husband is traveling a lot and weekend, he says, listen, I know you've been here with the kids, do whatever you want this weekend. And then I know that there are a lot of my friends who are like, that's great, yay, now what do I want to do? I don't know what to do with my time. So I'm thinking about the woman who's like, okay, you're right, I, I resonate with what you just said. I do feel the seed of resentment. Um, I don't want to be that person. I do need to stop neglecting myself and care for myself. I don't even know what I need. Where does she start? Where does that mom start to begin tapping into what will give her overflow if she doesn't know?
I think that self-care has kind of been hijacked by ideas of bubble bath and pedicure. That's not self-care.
Coffee and spa days. That's what, that's what we all think it is.
Yeah, exactly.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. And self-care looks different for every woman. One thing that I do with my coaching clients, is I will ask the question, I call it the magic question, "What do you need right now?" Because if you ask a woman, "What do you need?" most women, we're so used to not thinking for ourselves that we go, "I don't even know." Like you're saying, "I don't know where to start." But to say, "What do you need right now?" Sometimes it's a nap. Sometimes it's to call a girlfriend. Sometimes it's to go eat tacos. For me, I just want to go sit in a dark movie theater and watch a movie. And not have anybody speak to me. You know, don't touch me, don't speak to me, don't ask me for a snack, nothing. That's self-care for me. So really, it's figuring out what makes you feel alive. Do you need some quiet? Do you need time with the Lord? Do you just want to go for a walk? And not having to figure out what we need all the time, but what we need in this moment. That's really healthy self-care. That, if we can get in the habit every day of going, what do I need? And honoring that, that's a game changer for us. Because sometimes, like I said, sometimes it's a, it's a phone call with a girlfriend. I have two friends and they don't have time to get together. They, they're both busy, families, work, all of that. Every Tuesday night they make dinner at their homes together. So they have an iPad and AirPods set up. And they make dinner at the same time and they talk to each other. That's their catch-up time because they don't have the luxury of 30 minutes any other time. Yeah. In the book, I call it bundling friend time, bundling time with your friends, with doing the boring everyday stuff. Because here's what research shows. This is so fascinating. Even though we're in an epidemic of loneliness, the relationships that make us the happiest as women are our friendships. Mm-hmm. Now, our spouse, our family, our children, that gives us deep meaning and joy. But happy feelings, it's friendships because we're not tied by a job or tied by family. We're friends with people because we like them, because they make us happy.
Because they wanna be friends.
Yeah, exactly. So for us as moms, sometimes the best self-care is going, I just need to call my girlfriend.
Mm-hmm.
I just need to, I just need to go take a walk around the block and call my girlfriend and come back refreshed. It's not, Oh, I need a spa day or a vacation. If you can take a spa day or vacation, God bless you, go do it. But most of us can't, right? But we can get out of the house for 15 minutes and call a girlfriend and go, yeah, let me just vent, or let me tell you about my day. And sometimes that's the refresher we need, and it gets us back in touch with who we are as the women we are instead of just being the mom.
Yeah. That's so, so good. I know one of the things that keeps us connected to an identity, um, that is beyond just who we are, is our identity tied up in motherhood. Um, many people don't know who they are apart from being the mother to their children. Many women, um, because they spend so much time investing all of who they are in their children, which isn't a bad thing. It becomes a bad thing when the children move on with their lives and you realize you have none. You have no children in the home, and also you have no life because you didn't cultivate life. And we hear about this all the time with like marriage. One day the kids are going to leave, and you still got to look your husband in the face and, um, and like him. So you want to cultivate your relationship with your spouse along the way. But I don't think we talk enough about cultivating your relationship with yourself along the way. So what does it look like to have identity apart from motherhood? How can I know if my identity is tied up in mothering? And what do I do to bring a healthy independence in terms of my identity separate from motherhood?
There's this concept that experts use called differentiation. So when your kids are little, like, you're literally one person for a little while, and then you're kind of stuck together for a few months, and then they start walking. And then as your kids get older, you're differentiating. You are this person. I am me. We are different people, right? And it's healthy. You know, our kids go away to school if we send them to school, or, you know, they go do other activities. And it's important when our kids are away from us for us to remind ourselves we don't have to think about them all the time. That's why things like calling your girlfriend, reminding you who you are, developing hobbies, allowing yourself to spend time doing other things where you're literally taking your mind off your kids and investing something in you and not feeling guilty about it. Because again, this is where these thoughts of, well, I don't want to be a bad mom, come from. And I'm, I'm right here in everyone's ear going, if you have that concern, you are not at risk. You're not going to all of a sudden become selfish. You're not going to neglect. And it's, it's healthy to always remember that our job as a mom is to let them go out in the world, and then circle of life, they'll give us grandchildren to spoil.
I love that.
You must be, you must be loving the grandmother time.
So here's the deal. I am, but I'm still very much so parenting. And I think because I've been a mom as long as I've been an adult, um, and that's not the only reason. I mean, I know a lot of women that have always been mothers that are just like glad to continue the circle of life. I enjoy my grandchildren, but I also am very grateful for the freedom that has come with my children getting older. So there are times when my daughter will call and ask me to babysit, and I'm like, not tonight. She's like, what are you doing? What are you doing? And I'm like, nothing. You know, my youngest child is at football, and I'm gonna enjoy the empty house. Like, this is what I'm doing. Um, but I do— what I love more than anything, I, I— one of the things I do is I jump off the diving board in the deep end of the full, fully clothed, just to give— just to give them something to remember, right? My grandmother used to do that. Um, but I also love the perspective. I think that I've always had a different perspective than most of the moms that I was mothering with because I started first. And so they were kind of going there first, that my daughter was, you know, 5, 10 years beyond theirs. So I had a taste of that early on in my parenting journey because I had an older child. But I think that is like magnified now. I just— the beauty of grandparenting is you can just see, you see what is there that needs to be cultivated. You see what's there that's going to cause them a problem later on. You see what's there that is wonderful. And it gives me the gift of calming my daughter down, like, stop stressing, you know, it's just not, it's not. So the spoiling is there a little bit. I'm not quite major spoiler yet. But I think what is mostly there is freedom. Freedom to know that we're gonna do our part, but there's so many other things baked into our children's DNA from the get-go, and they just get better and better at being who they are. And we're just here to help. It's not up to us. Exactly. We're not fully responsible. Everything doesn't live or die with us. We give 'em a great environment, we give them the best of ourselves, and then let them blossom into who they're supposed to be. So there's a healthy amount of attachment, I think, to our children. But I think we don't talk enough, like you were saying, about the detachment. So the glory of grandchildren is I am detached. I'm not raising you actively. I'm involved with your life, but I don't take it personally when in your development process you make mistakes or you fumble or you have to learn, because I realize that that's just a part of the process.
And that's the thing about being a mom for a long time. I've been a mom for almost 25 years now. Yeah, I, I wanted to wait and write this book until I felt like I knew a few things, but I wanted to get all that research, you know, of here's what matters, here's what doesn't. And then get mental health professionals to speak into it, too, so I could give women something. Maybe they're 5 years into mothering, or maybe a mom wants to buy this for her daughter who has a young child. So we can kind of speak to the next generation of moms and go, Hey, it's gonna be okay. Not all that stuff matters. God knit your child together in the womb. He has the plan for your child. And if you do not grow your own wheat in the backyard organically and make that bread into a perfect sandwich for them every day, it is not gonna ruin your child's life. You know, like, these are lessons that we have and it's wisdom that we can pass down because there is There's whole industries designed to make women feel bad, like they're messing up every day, but they're gonna be just fine. In fact, I found some great research that says that moms only need to get it right 50% of the time to be great moms and to raise great kids. And I'm like, wow, with our 50% and God's 100%, our kids are gonna be just fine.
That's so good. Hey, are you enjoying this interview with Alli Worthington as much as I am? I I love Allie, and every time I talk to her, I'm simply amazed at her wisdom and her willingness to just shoot straight, because sometimes we just need somebody to shoot straight at us. I'm also excited about her book, Remaining You While Raising Them, because if you're a mom like me, you know what it's like to really invest all of who you are into all of who you want them to be, and sometimes forget what it is to really be you. So I want to encourage you, whether you're a mom or not, to be you. And if you don't even know what that means, that's okay. Sometimes what that means is you gotta get away in nature. You gotta hear the birds sing, find yourself some water, um, just get in fresh air, uh, listen for the voice of God, talk to God while you walk so that you can remember who you are when no one's looking. There's another way that you can set some time aside to focus on who you are and what God wants to do in your life. You're doing that by watching or listening to this episode of the podcast. But also, there's another opportunity that you have. One of those things that you can do is to come away with me. And I would love for you to make space in your life to come away to California with me in October of 2023. I'll be heading to California with a group of women who are committed to their faith. But also committed to seeing what God sees in them and looking with him towards their future. Sometimes you just need to get away. Fresh air, a little bird singing in the trees, and find yourself some water. We're gonna have some fun. We're gonna relax by the lake. We're gonna hear from women of faith who are going to encourage you in living your life well. And if this sounds like something you wanna do, I want to invite you. Invite you. You can simply go to thesistercircle.com/retreat to find out more. Now y'all, Allie is dropping all the gems, and I'm looking forward to hearing more from her. So let's get back to my conversation with Miss Allie Worthington. So we've talked a little bit about self-care, uh, outside of ourselves, it not being about a spa day or coffee. Um, yeah, but I know that self-care can be thought of in different lanes. Like it's not just physical, it's not just emotional, it's not just mental, it's not just spiritual. So yeah, how do I assess if I, I know that I have this seed of resentment, I feel that, or I just wanna ensure that I don't have that. And if I can look at what I enjoy as one way to kind of pull myself into the realm of self-care, how do I assess the various dimensions of who I am to know what kind of self-care I need beyond the things, as Marie Kondo would say, spark joy.
I actually went to, uh, professionals on this because again, I, I'm a mom, I'm an entrepreneur, but I wanted to make sure I really knew what I was talking about. And I said, what are the things that all women need? Give me something that we have to have to be healthy, but make it free and make it easy to do. Because I remember when my kids were all little, we— I didn't have any extra money to do anything. So if anyone was like, please do all these extra things, and spent— no thank you, I can't do it. So we came up with 6 things that can be added every day that are the most important self-care items. Number 1, sleep. When kids are little, that's going to be tough, right? But as kids get a little bit older, we really can't go under 7 hours. The science says you can't go under 7 hours. It makes you more prone to depression. It makes you more prone to anxiety. So sleep, getting enough water, moving your body every day. It can literally be taking a walk around the block, getting outside, quiet. Science shows what we've known as believers, prayer makes us happy. We gotta be quiet. We gotta get with the Lord every day. And then the last two things are, really powerful friends like I talked about. Not only does it help us with kind of remembering who we are when we get with our girlfriends, research has shown that women who have social networks of 2 or 3 people, not only are they happier, their kids are normally develop faster. Because you think about all the bad things that happen in life. When you have girlfriends to come along beside you, they're going to help you and you're going to have better resources. So friendship's really important. And then number 6, which I love, is learning breathwork, of just kind of learning to take some deep breaths because it will pull us out of fight or flight. Or when our kids do something crazy or dumb, and we kind of train ourselves to go, okay, before I freak out, I'm going to take some breaths. When my kids were younger, I did this thing for breathwork. And it was kind of breathwork and warning. So they'd do something crazy and I would count to 10 slowly while I took breaths. And they knew when mom counted to 10, they just needed to back off and get quiet and calm down. They didn't know what was going on, but it wasn't good. And there's a term for that. It's called regulating your emotions. So when you use breathwork or you have a tool, you can regulate your emotions. So we don't freak out on our kids when sometimes it's well-deserved, But what it does is it gives your kids a model of how they can regulate their emotions too, which I love. So real simple, make sure you're sleeping, get some water, go on— you know, I'm not telling people to work out every day. I'm not working out every day, but get a little movement, get some quiet time and get with the Lord. Make sure you make time for friends and then develop a practice of breathwork. That'll reregulate your system when we're so stressed. Because the thing about having kids is it's like Navy SEAL training of frustration, because however they can frustrate you, they're going to frustrate you. So the more tools that we can have to keep us out of that fight or flight response, the better.
No, and here it's such a nice term, breathwork. You know, here my kids see me doing that and there's no counting. It's just kind of me staring them down. And just taking deep breaths. I mean, it's just that look, right? It's just that mom look. Or another thing that I do is, because I want to make sure that I'm not fully raising my voice but I get my point across, is I talk in a very low, quiet, steady, scary, uh, to them, uh, level. Uh, we do so much to regulate our emotions, to calm down, to, to not damage them with words we can't take back, or overreact in a situation. And I think sometimes some of us may work over hard to not get angry, show anger, um, to let our children know that we are disappointed in them or hurt by what they're done or straight up mad. Um, do you think that level of control in sharing emotions with your kids is needed? Do you think it's healthy in some way, um, for them to see your emotions Um, what do you say about that? 'Cause I think a lot of us are stressed. I mean, I have a joke with my friends.
Yes.
Listen, I, I have, I have a few friends who are teachers and, you know, I would say, listen, I'm that mom. I'm gonna come up to the school. You're gonna know exactly what I think. I'm gonna be kind, but I'm gonna be straightforward. I said, and I always feel bad. Here go we, the mom guilt. Mom guilt.
Yeah.
I always feel bad because so many of the other moms seem to be so together. They, they just seem to be unshakable. Not bothered, super sweet all the time, just always there. And, and multiple teacher friends or administrative in the educational system have said, oh no, honey, they just go home and drink wine all day while their kids are at school. Like, that has— everybody's kids in the schools, every— everybody's frustrated about something. We just are handling it different ways. And so is it okay to have these feelings Are we supposed to not have them as moms? And when we do, what do we do with them and not feel guilty about whatever we need to do to handle it?
Well, here's the thing. God gave us the ability to have anger. He gave us the ability to be mad. Mad isn't bad. Mad is a natural reaction to injustice, to things that happen. If anybody hurts my kids, I'm going to go all mama bear and you better believe I'm going to be mad. The thing is, we don't want to sin in our anger. So we can be mad about something. We can let our kids know we're mad about something. We can express we're mad about something, but we don't want to go attack people, right? We don't want to burn the house down when we're mad. But if we try to suppress our emotions and pretend like everything is fine when we're not, we're going to be like my Aunt Shirley cooking that Christmas meal. And when everybody gets over, stuffing her feelings, but everybody knows something's wrong. Because when you raise kids in an environment where they know something's wrong with mom, but they can't quite put their finger on it, it just makes them feel unsafe. And kids that feel unsafe aren't gonna grow up and be emotionally healthy. So I think letting our emotions out and letting our kids know how we feel, I think it's really, really healthy, but we wanna be able to manage them. But the idea that we can just stuff our feelings down, it's not going to happen because eventually they're going to explode.
I love that so very much. Wonder Woman, it's one of my favorite shows growing up. And then the movie, of course, came out, which was great. Both of them. What character qualities in Wonder Woman provide problems or present problems to women that are looking at her or whatever they think a Wonder Woman should be.
Okay, I'm right there with you on Wonder Woman. I love her. I love the gold cuffs. When the movie came out and she went across no man's land and she took all the bullets for everybody, I was like, that's what women do every day for everybody. We are— we're taking the shots, protecting our families. I love it. But here's what I think. I think Wonder Woman would be a terrible mom. Because she would wake up fabulous. She'd never be angry. She'd never make mistakes. She wouldn't be able to empathize with her kids when her kids struggled because she didn't have any problems. And if you are raised by Wonder Woman, you go out in the world and you are weak. You don't know how to deal with people who make mistakes. You don't know how to forgive. You don't know how to manage relationships with other people because you've been raised by somebody who's essentially perfect. So we want to be super moms, we want to be wonder moms with our kids, we want to do everything right. But if we do everything right for our kids, we actually handicap them going out in the world, because how are they going to deal with real people? We already have college counselors going, hey, these kids have been over-parented. Like, these, these mamas are doing too much, and these kids aren't able to deal with the pressure of college. Like, we're already doing so much. Can you imagine if we did more? We would just be handicapping our kids to send them out in the world.
So good.
I mean, it's crazy to think about. It's such a, it's such a different mindset shift to go, okay, how do I balance not doing too much? How do I calm myself down if I take a minute for me with that fear of, oh no, I'm being selfish. Oh no, I'm not doing enough. When it's our job to, you know, whatever, whatever the age and stage is of tummy time, whether they are 6 months old or 16, we have to make sure that we're always strengthening them and building their muscles and building their emotional health too.
It's so very good. So very good. I, I know that with that introduction I gave you that people are wondering, okay, but Ali, this is great, all these tips for being a good mom and for parenting my children in a way that's going to have me healthy and set them up your good health. But I'm just trying to figure out, how are you doing all what you're doing? You've got 5 boys and you're an entrepreneur. Um, yeah, we know that your children are, you know, older now, but you've been doing some version of entrepreneurial work over the long haul as you've raised your children. How have you been able to manage it all? How have you been able to do that and still have overflow? What does balance look like for you?
Well, balance doesn't look like it's all balanced in a day. Balance is— it looks different in each season. When all the kids were little, when they were all under 10 and I was building my business, the baby used to come up to me, I'd have my laptop open on my desk, and he'd smack it closed or on my lap and go, no work, Mommy, no work, because I was working all the time. And so women have asked me, like, how did you not feel guilty back then when you were building your business? How did you not quit back then? And the truth was, I didn't have the financial privilege to tell myself that I could quit. I couldn't just go, oh, I feel guilty working too much, so I'm not gonna do it. I did not have the financial privilege to be able to do that, and I'm so glad that I didn't. I feel like the Lord had me in a position where I had to work hard so I couldn't give up, um, because it is a privilege for us as moms to be able to go, let me just work less because I feel bad about it. Because primarily we need to make sure we have a roof over our heads for our kids, you know. So if you ask me about balance back then, my 20s and early 30s is a blur of having babies and then building a business with a baby. I don't remember half of it. It was keeping those babies alive, loving them, and then working. Right? Like, that's it. And then you get to where they're a little older and the business is going and the kids go off to school and you're like, "Praise the Lord, the kids are at school all day and I'm going to get work done." And it gets a little easier. In high school it gets easier. You know, I got all these messages when they were younger of, "Enjoy them now. You know, just wait till they get older." And it's the worst thing you could ever tell a mother because I used to be like, "What is coming down the pike for me?" But I'll tell you, every age, every stage, enjoy more and more. And I think we scare young moms with the messages of, "You just wait. You enjoy them now." I mean, if I'm honest, if there is a mom listening with kids under 3, especially if she has multiple, it's real hard to enjoy the day-to-day. It is a grind. And we need to be honest about that. Is it precious and wonderful? And we look back on the pictures and go, "Oh, that's amazing. It's great." But I would not trade my 16-year-old for a 16-month-old right now, you know? And I think this idea of balance— some seasons it's gonna be all about the kids, some seasons it's gonna be a lot of work, some seasons it's gonna be a lot of everything. And you're like, "Lord, just get me through this season." But God has grace for that, and he'll get us through it, and he will get our kids through it. Like we talked about earlier, those kids, God designed them in the womb. We are not gonna make one little decision and mess them up. He has a plan. It's our job to be as happy and as healthy as we can be, you know, because if mama ain't happy, like we said, ain't nobody happy. It's our job to take care of us and to provide that kind of environment for them to thrive, because the Lord has great plans for our kids. That's what it comes down to. We don't have to be miserable in the meantime.
I love that. For the mother who's listening as we wrap up and she's like, this is all great, but I need some, some light or some hope right now that I'm, I'm heading in the right direction. Because as you said, so many of the seasons of motherhood are a grind. Um, while you're committed, it may not be as enjoyable as other seasons of Parenting. Um, how can a mother who's listening feel confident? Uh, I know that that's the goal here, is that women who read your book will learn the secrets of confident motherhood. But how can I be sure in the various seasons that I will encompass and engage with as my children get older that I'm doing a good job? Like, what light is there for me in the hard seasons, in the grind seasons, in the seasons where I hardly see my kid cuz they have a job and they have friends and they have a life. Um, what can I look at or look to, to know if I'm doing or have done a good job?
What we wanna do is we wanna think about our emotional health because the more we invest in our emotional health, our emotional health being our spiritual health, our mental health, in our relational health. The more we invest in that, the natural overflow is going to be a good relationship with our children. Because what is every mother afraid of? She's afraid, "I'll do a bad job and my kids will grow up and I won't see them anymore." You know why kids grow up and, and they don't go? It's because there's emotional unhealth and there's difficulties in the relationship. But if we are taking care of ourselves, we're going to be the kind of mom that at 16 our kids are like, "Yeah, maybe my mom isn't so bad." And at 26, the kids are like, "My mom's pretty great. Who knew?" Right? And we are continually working on ourselves. That's what matters. We can't base if we're a good mom on how our kids are behaving right now. Kids are gonna go through seasons where they're gonna be crazy. We can look at the trajectory of our kids and go, "Is it a little bit better than before? Great." Right? And we know that whatever happens, God is gonna get things through. God has a plan for our children. We're not gonna mess up that plan. I think that's the key thing to remember. God chose us to be parents, whether it's by birth, adoption, or marriage. He put that child in our lives. He has a plan for it, and we're not gonna mess it up. We stay close to the Lord with our spiritual health. We keep an eye on our mental health, make sure we're taking care of us, and have good friends around us with our relational health. It's going to come out in the wash. It's going to be fine. It's like that woman who came over to my house and saw that marble jar and said, oh honey, that looks awful. Sometimes we just need to be reminded by women who've gone before us that the Lord's going to take care of things and we aren't the be-all end-all.
We're just not that powerful. We're just not that powerful.
Praise the Lord that we aren't.
Listen, this is super helpful and I think the wisdom that you have put into remaining you while raising them is great because it'll be easily transferable, reviewable, readable again, but it overflows from you. It overflows, yes, from your research and yes, from your developed skill in writing, but so much of this I know flows from the lessons you've learned as an individual, as a mother, a 5 boys and of the things that you've seen happen over and over again so that you're like, okay, I got it. Like, I know how this goes.
Yeah.
So I'm so grateful, not only that you've put this wisdom in your book, but also that you've shared your wisdom with us today because sometimes again, we just need another woman to come alongside and charge us up, encourage us, and let us know we're headed in the right direction. I'm so grateful you joined me today. And I'm so grateful that you've shared your wisdom with us today.
Thanks for having me. This has been great.
