Making and Keeping of a Friend: Part 1

I mean, making friends, it's not that hard, right? I mean, come on, we've had friends since we were little. We grew up with friends, we went to school with friends. We got older with friends. But something happens when you're a mom. All of a sudden, friendships are hard. How do you make friends? How do you keep friends? How do you nurture these friendships when you're up to here in motherhood? Well, sister, if that is you, then this is the coaching series for you. Welcome to Mom Master University. And in this coaching series, we're talking about the making and keeping of a friend. And welcome to part one, where we talk about why we isolate. I believe this is going to be so much revelation for you. I believe it's going to nurture you right where you're at. So stay tuned. It's coming up right now. Welcome to Mom Mastery University. The education every mom should have had, but mom didn't. I'm Hannah Keeley, America's number one mom coach. And class is now in session. Welcome to Mom Master University. I am Hannah Keeley. I'm your coach throughout this entire series called the Making and Keeping of a Friend. You know, friendships don't seem to be that challenging, right? We grew up with them. We have our whole list of friends. Friends we know who to call to share news. But I don't know about you, something seems to change when you become a mom. And friendships, they just become more work. I don't know about you, but. But if this feels like a place where you, you resonate, where you feel like, you know, it is challenging. Like, I don't know who my real friends are. I don't know who I can go to. Some fall off and there's new people that I know. I got friends out there. I just haven't met them yet. I. All the gray areas, that's what we're going to talk about today. But before we even go into how to make a friend and how to keep that friend, we got to talk about the real story here. Because there's always a story that is overt, right? And then there's a story that's covert. There's always something that's implicit, that's underneath. And you know me by now. I always go to the deeper issue. And the deeper issue here is the first place we're going to go to. That is the truth of why we tend to isolate as moms. What happens? Why were friendships so easy when we're in grade school, when we're in high school, when we're Going through college or our career and. But you know, when life happens and. And when I say life happens, I mean, well, we get responsible. We have kids, and all of a sudden it's like, whoa, I'm thinking outside myself right now. Friendships just become more of a challenge. They become harder. They become work sometimes. And we have to understand, like, why this happens, why a lot of moms tend to isolate. I don't know about you, but sometimes maybe it's that you'll see something on social media where a lot of, you know, they're having ladies night, right? A lot of women go out, they're hanging out, and they're having sex. Much fun and something in you. Maybe you have that in your life. But if you're a busy mom, chances are you don't. And you see that and you're like, man, I wish I had that. I wish I had my, like, Thursday night girls club, you know, where we could go out or we could stay in to watch a movie. And we just, like, bounced ideas off of one another. We encouraged each other. We just were there for one another. We knew all of our kids. And maybe you have that awesome, fantastic, praise God. But if you don't, why, like, what's really going on here? And we're talking about why we isolate. There are actually six reasons why, as a mom, we tend to isolate ourselves. And we're going to talk about all six of those in this session that we have going on right now. This is the Making and Keeping of a Friend, part one. And we're talking about why we isolate. So the first reason now, if you've known me for any time at all, you know that I talk about mom brain incessantly. Like, I. One of the top researchers of mom brain, I've been teaching about mom brain for over two and a half decades. I've been coaching moms with mom brain. And this is something. If you have not ever, ever heard my teachings on mom brain, I want you to, like, really, really tune in right now. I know there's a million things going on around you. You could be, you know, getting ready for the day right now. You could be driving right now. But I really want you to focus on what I'm going to share with you. Because I've heard from a lot of moms, when they find out what actually has happened in their brain, there is a huge sigh of relief from, like, the marrow of their bones. They're like, oh, my God. Nothing's wrong with me. I'm not a failure. I'm not Broken. I don't have some weird neurodivergent situation. I'm actually. Okay. My brain is doing what it's supposed to do. So that first reason why we isolate is exactly that. Our brain. So when a woman becomes a mom, when she actually has a baby, her brain changes. Her body changes, but her brain changes as well. It's something we don't really give enough time and attention to. We don't have the same brain after we have a baby as we have before we have a baby. Like, if you look at an mri, which is magnetic resonance imagery, like, we can look inside the brain. If you looked at an MRI of a woman before she had a baby and after she had a baby, you would see a loss of gray matter. She actually. Like, when you say your kids are making you lose your mind, you're actually spot on. Yes, they did. You actually lost gray matter in your brain when you had a baby. Now, we think about this, all right? We have a loving, merciful gut. Why? Why would this loving and merciful God have us leave the hospital with less brains than we went in with? Like, here. Here we are. We need it more than ever. We need our. We need all the cognition functioning. We need our brains. And all of a sudden, like, we feel brainless. We feel like, what is happening to me? I walk in a room, I don't know why I walked in there. I start conversations. I don't even remember what I was talking about. I start projects, I can't finish them. I leave my coffee on the hood of the car as I roll out of Starbucks. Like, what is happening with my brain right now? It's mom brain, and it's a real thing. Your brain doesn't just change anatomically. It also changes cognitively. Now, here's why your brain only has enough room to do the neural processes that it's required to do. Your brain is actually the most efficient organ in your body. When I say efficient is going to use as little energy as possible because it's one of the most massive energy burners. You're always using your brain. You always need that glucose for your brain. So when you're talking about a new mom, this is an evolutionary thing that happens in your brain, because now, as a new mom, you are not just having to keep yourself alive now you have to keep your children alive. Now imagine back in, like, biblical times when it's like, okay, I literally have to protect my children from, like, risks out in the wilderness, right? Dangers that are drinking in drinking water. Like, these things that are Real and present dangers. A mom's brain is now engineered to ensure the safety and the preservation of their children over themselves. That's why, you know, that, that cute little, you know, in the event of, you know, breaking oxygen in the plane, right? Like all of a sudden, like the, the there's no oxygen, oxygen masks are going to drop, right? In the event of an emergency, the oxygen masks will drop. What's the mom supposed to do? You know the shtick, Put it on you, then put it on your baby or put on your child, your dependent. And that's what we are always taught when we talk about moms you got to take care of. However, that is absolutely contrary to how the new wiring of the brain operates. You give me any plane. When those oxygen masks drop, that mom is going to go to her primal brain and she's going to put the mask on her child. She will hold her breath for 10 minutes if she has to, to make sure that child is okay, because that's how her brain operates right now. Now where does that leave us? Like, to imagine it like the new mom brain is like a phone with all the apps open. And now your, your brain is taking in all the information from your environment. It's no longer filtering it just for your safety. It's now broad in this radar and looking at all the potential dangers. So you're not even aware of this. It's like happening on a cognitive level that you're not even aware of, that you're taking in all these little things. That's why a mom has mom's intuition, right? She's aware of things in her environment that maybe her husband or her sibling is not because she's so tuned into that child's survival. That leaves us feeling like we can't focus, we can't carry on normal conversations. It makes us feel completely overstimulated. So I want you to think about with mom brain, one of the symptoms is overstimulation. We all of a sudden, there's too much noise, there's too much visual things, there's too many screens, there's too many, too much emotion, too many things happening in our environment. Feel like we need to like, move into a cave somewhere. This is a sign of overstimulation. Now I want you to think about that with the mom brain. Now friends just, even your old friends become more challenging because of your focusing issues. Now you have a high level of distraction, you have a very low level of focus, and you have a very high tendency to be overstimulated. Those three Things right there make carrying on conversations difficult. It makes meeting with friends difficult. You feel insecure. You feel like you're looking at everything around you, and you can't really tune into what they say. So first reason is mom brain. And that's okay. It's just that overstimulation. And it's okay to feel this way, but we have to learn how to work with the mom brain. And that's why you're here inside Mom Master University, because all the coaching is designed for moms with mom brain to help us work around mom life. So that's the first reason. The second reason is. Can I just tell you something? You are tired, right? A mom is tired. Like, we are working so hard. We're taking care of. Often we have a career, and we're taking care of the home. And maybe you're responsible for paying bills. And maybe you have to be the one to make sure everyone gets where they have to go. Maybe you're the one who's making the meals. But when it comes down to it, it usually falls into the lap of the mom to make sure the home and the family are running efficiently and effectively. And, baby, that just sometimes leaves you tired. It makes me think of that story of Elijah in First Kings where he does this amazing work, right? He's like. He's like preaching, and he's talking to the people. He's saying, choose today who you're going to serve. And. And he calls down fire from heaven and God burns up the sacrifice. Awesome. Miracle breakthrough. Moms are doing miracles every single day. Within just hours, he's in the wilderness, suicidal. How do you get from being up here to down in the lowest pit you can be? And one day he was tired. How do I know he was tired? Because when he's there, he leaves his servant. He runs off by himself, which. There we go. Isolation, right? We always want to isolate when we get tired and we get hungry and when we get frustrated, we always want to isolate, deal with it ourselves, which is the last thing you need to do, especially as a mom. So here was. He left his servant, went to the wilderness by himself and pray. He's like, just kill me. Just let me die right now. Just kill me now. He was suicidal. That much overwhelm, that much overstimulation, that much fatigue. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him. And here was the amazing breakthrough he gave him. You ready for this? He said, go eat and drink this water and take a nap. He said, eat this cake. It's like a loaf of Bread. He gave him some food. Drink this water and go take a nap. That was the amazing. That was like words of God spoken to this prophet. Go eat something and go to sleep. That simple. So here's this amazing. And he woke back up after it. And guess what? He needed to eat and drink again. He was able to on that food, go 40 days. Beautiful. But sometimes as a mom, you have to give yourself space, that I'm just tired. Do I have to make sure everyone's okay? Do I have to make sure that at this chapter, I do have those friends that do nurture those relationships? Maybe. But maybe there's this permission slip you can give yourself that says, you know what? Hannah can't show up for friends today because she's tired. Sign it. Give yourself permission. It's okay to be tired. You won't always feel like this. Okay. But especially for new moms in the throes of motherhood, where you have all the ages, all the things. I remember homeschooling my seven kids. And there were days, one day I will never forget, I was. It was sheet changing day, right? I would always change all the sheets on all the bed. One day, I'd wash them all, dry them all, get them all changed. And I was putting sheets on my daughter's bed. She was just a toddler at the time, and we had her in this, like, bed. And there's, like, a bed rail over it. I put the bed rail down, and I. And I put the fitted sheet on. And with the fitted sheet, it was on a. It was on a pretty low bed frame. And I put one corner on, I put the next corner on. I put the farthest corner on. And then I put. I sat on the floor to put that last fourth corner on. And I folded this. I put the sheet underneath the fitted sheet, and then I laid my head down on the mattress, and I fell asleep. Like, 30 minutes, I'm sitting on the floor, my hands are tucked underneath the mattress, and my head was on. The mattress was out. Why am I sharing that with you? Because I was so tired. And truth of it is, that's okay. At that point, I don't need friends. I need a nap. Sometimes you don't need friends. You need a bowl of soup and a piece of bread. Like, you have to understand this about yourself and continuing to push past this and push the actual pretty fragile nature of humanity. You're just saying, let me prove to myself what I can do. There's a space for that. But for a new mom, that's not Always going to make you show up the best. So it might be okay to just be tired. Third reason you ready for this? Isolation is less pressure. Why did Elisha leave his servant behind? He told his servant, you stay here. His servant was always this right hand man, right? You stay here. I'm going to go off into the wilderness by myself. He's literally making the worst choice, like, consciously making the worst choice. I'm going to isolate myself, and I'm just going to run off into the wilderness. That I'm totally going to be dictated by my feelings right now. That was where Elijah was, and that's where a lot of moms are. Because in the wilderness of isolation, there's less pressure. Now I want you to really think about that. In the wilderness of isolation, as hard as that feels, there's less pressure because it's just you. I remember thinking when we went through. We've gone through some pretty tough times financially, and there are times when, you know, there. Like, if we didn't have the church's food pantry or a friend that came by and drop some food off, we would not have eaten. And I remember telling my husband, I was like, you know what? If it was just me, that'd be fine. Like, I could be scrappy. I can go without. Like, I'm fine. But having children who are dependent upon me having having a family, that changes the dynamic. It's not just me. I can't just be scrappy. I can't just, you know, sleep on a sofa somewhere or, you know, just. Just find. Find some food somewhere. It's like, it's just not me. It's a family. So when you think about this as a new mom, when you're a family, there is pressure there. And moms are working under pressure almost 90% of the time. Waking hours there always feels like pressure. Do you feel like that? Like, I want you to let me know how you feel about this. Like, do you feel like there's always pressure? You wake up feeling pressure, pressure. You go to bed feeling the pressure of I didn't do enough. There's always feels. There always feels like this urgency that's operating under the radar. I call it the dull roar of motherhood. That's like. That's like what I nicknamed it said, it's that voice in the back of your brain. It's like that roar. It's like. It's like there's always these engines churning. I'm not making motherhood seem very good right now. I'm so sorry. I just realized it's like, dang. If you're listening to this, you're like, I am not a mom yet. I'm not sure I want to be a mom. I'm telling you, motherhood is glorious. It's beautiful. It's amazing. It's wonderful. It's the best calling in the world. But right now, we're talking about our tendency to isolate. And I got to go into the muck. I just got to go into the dirt. Okay? Jesus had no problem getting in the mud with the people he loved. And I have no problem getting in the mud with the moms that I love and the moms that I'm called to serve. And part of that is the news of. Of the other side of motherhood. Like, there's two sides. There's. There's the law of polarity. There's always the best case scenario, and there's always the worst case scenario. So I'm not like, you know, Pollyanna, that's like, everything's good and rosy and beautiful all the time. Can be. But we also, as much as we are a divine being, we are also a human being. And how do we mix our divinity when we are filled and flooded. Excuse me. We are filled and flooded with the presence of God. We walk in divinity, but we also are human. We walk in our humanity as well. So we have to talk about all those issues. So one of those is that dull roar of motherhood that. That always. The engine turning. It's almost. You can hear the. The engine turning. I sound a little like Darth Vader there, didn't I? You are a mom. You must work. I don't know how to do Darth Vader. Just ignore that. All right. Thank you. If you ever. If you listen this on replay, just know the time code, and you can, like, go forward by 15 seconds, not even have to hear that. So we're going to talk about that dull roar of motherhood is that urgent energy that's always making you push harder. And you're operating the belief that I'm not doing enough. And guess what follows? I'm not doing enough, therefore I'm failing. Sound familiar? Okay. This is why the easiest place we can go to is isolation. Because it's just me. I don't have to answer to anyone. I can just feel the pressure. Just me. And I'm not accountable to anyone. I don't have to answer to anyone. I don't have to make sure anyone else is okay. I can just handle this pain. Why? We isolate. It's less pressure and that's the third reason. The fourth reason is a thing I call time off mentality. Time off mentality. So relationships are work. Anything that is worth anything is going to be work to create. I'm sorry, but that's just true. Faith without works is dead. Like faith is the energy we use to manifest. And that is all godly. God shows us how to use faith. People talk about manifestation outside of the covenant of God. They're leaving out one of the most powerful platforms on how manifestation happens because we know that we are grafted in to inexhaustible abundance of God through Jesus. And so I love to talk about manifestation. The sense that God talks about manifestation is how faith operates. And faith without works is dead. So understand this. A lot of moms like what we're doing inside Mom Master University. We are creating lives that we love. We're creating abundance, we're creating wealth, we're creating joy, we're creating laughter in our homes. We're creating like hot, sexy marriages. We're creating amazing careers, we're creating ministries. We're creating like human beings, right? And that is wonderful and is glorious. But there is work. Because faith will at work is death not up to sin. The belief. The belief is there to turn into a behavior that now establishes the kingdom of God and all of the abundance that goes with it. The joy, the freedom, the abundance. But it is work. And you will admit it. And I will admit it because God also said it like, come on. Faith always shows up as a change in how you show up. So when we think of this, that it is work, it is. If I'm going to create something of a lasting legacy and eternal proportion and everything that God has, you know, downloaded this dream in my heart, it's going to be work. So there is a time off mentality that moms have. And that is, I just need some time off. That's why we have a tendency to scroll or, you know, like surf the Internet or just kind of like hang out with something. Maybe go to our phones, go to screens, something like that. Because our brain, the mom brain, is desiring time off. Like, tell me the last time as a mom, you clocked out. I don't know. Like, I mean, I don't even like, have a time card. I don't know, like, I can look, I can look downstairs maybe. Maybe there's a machine there and a time card. I can clock in and clock out. That's why, you know, you know how we clock out. Do, I mean, tell you the secret way that moms clock out. I know your mom if you're listening to this or if you're watching this, so I can tell you, like, it's a secret. We all know. We don't tell our husbands. We don't tell our family. We don't tell anyone else. It's just this inner circle of mom secret. That's why we say we have to make a run to the store. Oh, it's okay, honey. I'll go to the store on the way home from work and. No, no, no, no. It's just. No, it's too much work. I know what I need. You know what we're desiring to do? Clock the freak out. It's true. And so as a mom, you have this time off mentality. With that friends now become not a release to hang out and have fun. It becomes another thing you have to clock in and do. Do you understand this? So we look at not having friends as more opportunity to clock out. We can have time off, and that's totally okay. I mean, it's just easier because life gets hard when you become a mom. You're not just out for your own success. You're out for the success of this brood that God has given you. You're out for family success, financial success, your success in your home, success in your body. Like, all of a sudden, everything changes and it gets bigger and broader and to an extent, harder. And so we want to take some time off. And that is 100% okay. So let's talk about reason number five. And this is a little trickier. Okay? There is a level of acceptance that is necessary in order for a friendship to happen. Two people have to fully embrace and accept the other person. And now there's chemistry and now there's connection. But this is one of the things that often gets in the way of friendships. And this is why we isolate, because we don't feel accepted, right? We don't know if we can fully accept other people, and we don't know if they will fully accept us. Because motherhood can change you. Motherhood brings out a difference in how you cope and how you manage things. And you have to change. And sometimes with those necessary and unavoidable changes that happen when you become a mom. And here's the biggie, you don't really fully accept yourself. You know, that's that. That dull roar of motherhood, you're not enough. You're not enough. You're not enough. With that comes this core belief that starts to be created in your psyche. I don't Accept myself now. I don't accept my, my shortcomings. I don't accept my body. I want my body to change. I want my mind to change. I want my behavior to change. I want my level of commitment to change. I want my housekeeping skills to change. I want my follow up to change. I want my mothering ability to change. All of these things we just, we don't accept about ourselves. It's like we become a mom and now we all of a sudden we think, well, life has to get back to normal and I have to be 100% and everything has to go well or I'm just going to be mad about it. I'm going to be angry and I'm going to pout. So underneath all of that is I am not accepting this. Now I can understand how this could work for you if you're like, this is unacceptable. I'm going to start today to change it. Like that's different. That comes from a place of, okay, I can learn to change this. I'm going to become aware of something new, like unacceptable. But it's here. And I'm not going to pretend it's not. It's just here. But I have to look at it, have to be aware. And maybe that will help me get some revelation and some new skill to change it. But there's another place where we can go to. It's like, this is unacceptable. Makes me mad. I'm going to pout and fume. That does not help us. It just leads to more stress and anxiety and overwhelm. So what if we. Here's just an idea. What if we allowed ourselves to fully embrace who we are Right now the camera just focused on my dog and not on me. That was funny. If you're listening to this, then you have no idea what I'm talking about. This. Okay, go back and watch the video. But what if we just allowed ourselves to embrace where we are right now? So instead of saying, this is unacceptable and I'm mad, we say, wow, this is unacceptable. But let me sit in it for a minute. Let me just sit in it and I'm going to. I can't change it till I just am aware of it and I sit in it and I embrace it some. The beauty of this is you start to accept yourself. Not that I'm flawed and I'm going to stay flawed and I had to be okay with it. But you know what? I'm human and I can change things and I'm going to like start today. That's why you're inside Mom Master University because things were not acceptable. And instead of pouting and fuming and just being mad and overwhelmed and resisting it, you decided, what if I just. What if I embraced where I was right now? Because no positive change can come out of a negative space. And resisting that, that new you, is never going to lead you to a better you. What if you sat in it like, this is just my life now. It's what it looks like now. And actually I'm okay with that because I'm taking measure to move through it. That's a place of positivity. That's where change can happen. Because you can't have friends and accept other people if you think you can't accept yourself. As soon as you enter that place where you accept yourself, you embrace yourself. You're okay with where you are right now. Now you can feel more accepted by other people. And you don't have the walls that when you meet people now, you can start to connect. Now there's one more reason, and this is reason number six. And this is life transitions. Now, the thing about motherhood, it's a transition. You are not the same woman before you had a baby as you are after you have babies. So understanding this is a transition. I'm like literally walking into a new chapter of life. This is not the old chapter. It's not the chapters that I'm going to be in in 20 years, but this is a new chapter. It's evolving. I'm changing. I'm walking over bridges, I'm walking into new rooms. I'm becoming a different person. Being like, embracing that and being at peace with that and understanding. Transitions lead to changes in every area of your life. And one of these areas is simply your friends. Think about how it changes. Old friends expect us to be our old selves and we're just not anymore. Like, we're the ones like, guys, I got to go home. So I cannot, cannot be up till two in the morning anymore, right? Because that's usually time the first baby wakes me up. But now it's like, you know what? My old friends, I don't connect like I did. And it's just challenging to make new friends. So that's why we have a tendency to isolate, because we've changed. We're transitioning into a next chapter, into a different person, and that's okay. So now that we know why we isolate, we're going to move into the next session. And that is the making and keeping of a friend, part two. We're going to Talk about what happens when we do outgrow those old friends. What do we do? How do we take care of our friends? And how do we manage life when we start to outgrow the old ones? So that's where we're going to go in part two and I can't wait to see you there. Now make sure that you log into your account inside Mom Master University because this is the first. Like this is just the top of the iceberg. We go deep inside Mom Master University, so make sure you get inside and do the work. What do I mean by doing the work? Watch the extended video give you step by step directions on how to really take this coaching and apply it to your life so that you get real results. Now, if you're just listening this as a podcast and you don't know what I'm talking about, make sure you go to Mom Master University. We have a quiz there to see how we can serve you the best. Get inside, set up a membership and do the work inside there. I promise you life is going to look so different when you get inside Mom Master University. So I'll see you there. So what about you, Mama? Are you ready to enroll in the only school that will not only change your life, but also your legacy? Go to Mom Mastery University, where we dive deep into the biblical principles that give ordinary moms extraordinary results. Get enrolled today.