Summer Survival Guide: keep up with your self-care

“We’re on vacation.” The kids have camp.” “What day is it even?”

Inevitably, during summertime, I get emails saying a mom needs to cancel her appointment because she didn’t get time to do her homework.

NO! DON’T CANCEL! This is the most important time to keep your appointment, when you don’t think you made any progress. This is where we maintain consistency. 

Our families subconsciously try to sabotage us over the summer. And it’s not their fault. Summers are always bananas!

We need to have a survival plan in place so when the train goes off the tracks, we have things we KNOW work for us and we can get to when nothing else will fit. 

My number one irritation with physical therapists is we give moms a list of things to do, and then moms go home thinking that if it doesn’t work, that they are:

-doing it wrong

-they need to do it more

-they need another week to work on it

It’s entirely possible the things we give you won’t work, but we rely on your feedback to make adjustments. We may need to try something different! Doing that thing more probably isn’t the answer. 

One of the biggest barriers is when to do the exercises. We need to find a time that works in real life for a mom to get her work done. It doesn’t matter if it works on paper if it doesn’t work for your life. 

One of my superpowers is that I, too, live the shit show. So I TOTALLY UNDERSTAND when something will not work for you, even if it has worked for dozens of other moms. We can adapt, friends. But if you don’t give feedback that something is not working, then all lose. 

The moral of the story is: shit happens. It’s going to continue to happen. 

So stop banging your head against the wall when things don’t go to plan, ESPECIALLY during the summer when chaos reigns supreme.

Find the things you know work and the times they work for you. If you don’t know what those things are and you haven’t gotten them from you PT, then ASK! And if they tell you to just do it more or they give you a guilt trip, FIRE THEM. 

No more mom guilt. We’re done with that.