Hey, mama. Raise your hand if you've reheated your coffee today. Now raise your hand higher if you still haven't drunk it. Now wave it around if you can't remember where you set your coffee down. Well, welcome your home.

If there's one thing I know about homeschool moms, it's that we are really good at giving of ourselves. Making sacrifices, showing up, that's what we do, right, every single day for our kids, for our families, for our co ops, for our ministries. And for a lot of us, our jobs too, because many of us homeschool moms work on top of everything else. And we do it because we wanna give our kids a beautiful life, a childhood that they'll look back on and remember fondly. We want to volunteer.

We want to serve. We want to use the gifts that God gave us. And that is a beautiful thing. But somewhere along the way, we've picked up this belief that a beautiful life is something that we give, not something that we get to have. That abundance is for our kids, our families, and the people that we serve and not for us, that we're the ones who provide it, not the ones worthy of receiving it.

But Jesus was talking to moms too when he said, I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. Today, I've invited Debra Foletta on to unpack what that actually looks like and why so many of us have never given ourselves permission to live it. Debra is a licensed professional counselor, author of numerous books, founder of the Deborah Foletta Counselors Network, national speaker, and homeschool mom of four. Thank you so much for being here today, Deborah.

It's a pleasure to be here.

Yay. Well, my prayer for this episode today, as I was putting my hair and makeup on, was that not only are we gonna talk about soul care, but that this episode in itself would be soul care. For the listeners who are just meeting you, can you share with us briefly what your book Soul Care is about? Why you wrote it? What's your why?

What was your heart?

Soul Care is such a special message for me. I have nine books and, you know, I write books on a regular basis, but to this day, it felt like it was a message for me. And not just as a homeschool mom, as a counselor, but also for a difficult season that I was about to step into and didn't know it. And it's a book about the six rhythms that Jesus practiced to care for his soul because high levels of pouring out require high levels of filling. And I think we're really good at pouring out as homeschool moms, as caregivers, but we're not necessarily good at filling up.

And when that gets out of balance, things start to go wrong. The other fun fact about soul care is that it was a book that I wrote in sixteen days.

What? I

know. It's wild. It's a wild testimony. You know, my first book took me nine months to write. So obviously, as you write books, you kind of get into the groove of writing, but to me this was different.

It felt like a gift that was given to me. It felt like an anointed word from the Holy Spirit that God said, I'm gonna download this into your heart and it's gonna bless you, and it's gonna bless others. And so it's a special message for many reasons, and I'm so excited to be able to talk more about it today.

Yeah. Well, and I think that it's really pertinent to homeschooling moms because we are naturally those sacrificing type people. I mean, we give up a lot to homeschool our kids. You know this. You're a homeschool mom.

And, yes, of course, you know, people say homeschooling is a privilege. I absolutely agree. We have the privilege to be able to maybe not work as much, maybe not work full time, maybe stay home and homeschool our kids. That is absolutely incredible. When I think about the agony of my first book

I know. It felt like it was truly a word from the Lord. And as I dived into scripture, and as I dived into the gospels to study the life of Jesus, you know, I write from a psychological perspective, a counseling perspective. But as I immersed myself in the life of Jesus, I just fell in love with him even more. He's so healthy.

He's so intentional. And he was so good at caring for his soul so that he could care for the souls of others. And I think that's the key in all of this. We don't just practice soul care for ourselves. It's not something to be hoarded.

It's for us to fill up so that we can pour out effectively. And I think sometimes as moms, we feel guilty about it. We feel ashamed. We feel like it's wrong to think of ourselves, put ourselves first, fill up, but it's not a luxury. It's a necessity.

The one thing that really resonated with me when I was reading your book, and last night as I was kind of preparing and thinking about today and meeting you, I told my husband Scott, I said, you know, I feel like I'm really in alignment with Deborah Faleta's message because she really looks at psychology and research and then looks at the scriptures and looks at the bible and says, okay. What can we learn? And I think that's really necessary. We're seeing that a lot more, and I think it's really healthy, honestly, for the parenting space in particular. You know, because a lot of us, we were raised with authoritarian parenting, and we know we don't wanna do that.

A lot of us, especially if you were raised a Christian, you probably were raised in that way. And we wanna run to something, but we don't know what to run to because we don't know what's scriptural. But I really think that when you look at the life of Jesus, both with parenting and how he handled sinners, how he handled those around him, and also how he with you and this message, how he took care of himself to make sure that he had a lot to give. I wanna go into the next question because it's a line in your book that really stopped me in my tracks. I underlined it.

And I'm gonna go ahead and quote you here. You wrote that the signs of burnout are symptoms of a much deeper belief system going on underneath the surface. A belief system that is preventing or inhibiting us from caring for ourselves. And I think that most of us treat burnout as an external problem, kinda like a scheduling problem. Mhmm.

Like, if I could just get organized, I'd figure it out. But you're saying it goes way deeper than that.

Yeah. Absolutely. I think oftentimes we want to make change by just adjusting the external behavior modification. Like, okay, what do I need to do differently? And it's funny because even with soul care, I talk you through six rhythms that Jesus practiced that you can begin to practice.

And I think the temptation is to start with the rhythms. Okay. I'm gonna do this better, and I'm gonna get my schedule, and I'm gonna drink more water and I'm gonna and you start making your list even longer, but it's funny because you can burn out trying not to burn out if you're just focused on the peripheral, the behavior modification portion. So what really is significant to me before the six rhythms are the five chapters that precede those rhythms, and they're all about the why. Why are you burnt out?

Why are you depleted? Why are you good at self neglect and putting your needs on the back burner? And I find that there's multiple reasons. I would say reason a is because of false or misguided theology. We believe that scripture calls us to self neglect when it does not.

And so there's some theological work that needs to be done, and I camp out a little bit on the theology. But then there's also part b is the family of origin stuff. It's like we've got this family of origin roles that we've carried, and we don't even realize we have these underlying belief systems that are not rooted in truth. They're rooted in trauma. I actually found that there are three personality types that tend to be bad at soul care, tend to neglect themselves more.

Oh, give it to us.

Girl, come on. I have this podcast where I do on air counseling sessions, and it's called Talk To Me. And half the callers are, like, notable Christian celebrity famous leaders. The other half are just hotline callers, average anonymous people that call in and I did a special soul care series where I had people who are burnt out call in and we talked through their burnout. And out of all those people that applied and out of all those people that called in, I started noticing these themes.

Theme number one was the eldest child. You know, people that come from a family where they're the firstborn because, you know, as firstborn, I'm a firstborn. So I could really relate to this. It's like, you feel a higher level of responsibility in your family. You want to fill in the gaps.

You want to please and help and alleviate the problems around you. And so you become somebody who is so in tune to the needs of others, but often not in tune to your own needs. The second group of people were people who come from a family where someone in the family had higher needs than them. So maybe it was a child in the home with a disability or special needs, or maybe it was a sibling who was rebellious and they kind of stole the show with their yelling and screaming and breaking the rules. And so there's a lot of needs there.

Maybe there was a family member who was an alcoholic, or there was drugs, or there was chaos, there was fighting. And so you look around and you see all these high needs and you see all this stress and you learn to make your needs smaller because it's like, don't wanna rock this boat. I don't wanna add stress to their plate. They already have enough. It could be a family of 12 kids.

And that's just where the chaos is. And it's like, well, there's a lot needs here, so I'm going to silence mine. And that's the second group that struggles to be aware of their needs to care for themselves. And the third group were people who came from a home where either mom or dad or both were emotionally unavailable. Maybe dad was a workaholic, ministryaholic, alcoholic.

And so you're a kid and you have these needs and you bring them to dad, but he's not available. And so maybe you go to mom, but she's stressed out, maxed out, frazzled. She just can't handle anymore. So you retreat with your needs and you learn to put your needs on the back burner. You learn that, you know what?

There's not room here for my needs. And so you either ignore your needs or you make them really small or you think I'm just gonna deal with this myself. And imagine if you could check all three of those boxes, how susceptible you are to being a person that just ignores their needs and focuses on everybody else around them. And that's some of the roots of this is these underlying belief systems that we develop that our needs don't matter, that there's not enough room here, that it's wrong or unbiblical to focus on where we're at and what we need. But the enemy uses this stuff.

I mean, Jesus calls us to be a light that shines. How can you be a light that shines when your light has been burnt out? You know? And that's why this really matters. It's so many of us are living with a light that's just a flicker.

And I think the enemy can sit back and not have to do anything because we're self sabotaging our own light by allowing it to flicker to the point where eventually it just burns out.

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I was a glass child because my sister still has profound special needs. And back in the eighties, they weren't really diagnosing girls with ADHD. She got diagnosed in her forties, actually. But she grew up with comorbidities, you know, dyslexia, dyscalculia. Getting my sister through the system was really hard for my parents.

And because I didn't struggle academically, I was praised for getting the straight a's, not having needs, not needing help, never needing a tutor. Like, Christy's got it cut. Oh, yeah. She'll be fine. But also, you know, in checking those boxes, I definitely see and what really hit me was in your I forget if it was Paige.

I don't know. It was in the fifties, but I started crying because I love how you went to the family of origin to really uncover why we work so hard and burn ourselves out. Right? And I think it's absolutely from trauma and unmet need in our childhoods. But this is so beautiful because what an opportunity to redeem, to break cycles, to teach our a lot of women are listening, to teach our children and our daughters what healthy boundaries look like and what to talk about us loudly tuning into our bodies.

Last night, I was up early for co op yesterday. It was a full day at co op. And last night, I just needed to go to bed. And I was you know, when you feel, like, physically sick because you're so tired? I'm in Peri menopause, I just you know, it's just and I was like, kids, I made sure to tell my kids, hey.

I'm really tired right now. Like, we're I'm actually feeling it physically. I think the best thing for me is to go to bed because the kids were high energy and more to play games.

Right.

But also, was thinking about today's conversation and like, that's probably a healthy thing for me to verbalize to my children because what my mom modeled was frazzle

You just pushed through Yeah. But you're not necessarily functioning well.

Right. Exactly. Yeah. And I think that a lot of Christians, I think, we roll our eyes as we should with self care, which that's why I love the title of your book. Genius.

I'm like, yes. What a play on self care because lighting a candle for a lot of us, that just means now there's an open flame in our house.

Exactly. It's not just about a bubble bath and a mani pedi and a massage. Not that those things aren't helpful, but those things only address a pain point in the moment. They don't address the underlying pattern. So they're not long lasting.

It's like, okay, a bubble bath is gonna make me feel great for a moment. But if I haven't gotten to the roots, if I haven't done the real heart work underneath the surface, this bubble bath ain't lasting more than twenty minutes at best. And then I'm back into old patterns, old cycles. So self care just isn't deep enough.

Right. Well, and you do talk about in your book, can't fill with empty things.

Empty things can't fill empty people. Maybe that's another sign that we should bring up briefly. One sign of burnout is the physical symptoms. You start having difficulty concentrating. You start feeling fatigue all the time even after you've gotten a good night's sleep.

I understand those early baby years when you're tired all the time. But there's a stage that comes where you're like, why am I still tired all the time? Why am I not sleeping through the night? Why am I having a a short fuse? Why is there so much tension in my marriage?

And why do I have less bandwidth for my children? And why do I feel overwhelmed so easily and quickly? And And those are the signs, you know, physical symptoms, headaches and body aches and unexplained physical symptoms. But then there's a whole other set of symptoms that are numbing symptoms. It's too much screen time, needing to veg for way longer than I should on Netflix at the end of the night, reaching for food in the pantry or sugar, the good girl's alcohol that I don't actually need that isn't good for me.

Shopping too much. Like, are numbing devices that we find a correlation in the increase of numbing devices usually correlates to I am this close if not already in to burnout. So sometimes we're masking our symptoms because we're just numbing. Like, I'm okay. I'm not burnt out.

But when I look at your screen time and I see, oh, you've actually spent six hours on your screen yesterday, It shows me a different story. And so we have to be in tune to the things that we're doing to numb as well.

Mhmm. Well, and one thing that's so cool that I've learned over the years with therapy is that numbing is an escape, and you're not present. And I want we're gonna get to that at the end of today because that's something that counseling has really helped me with. Because of my past trauma and my push, push, push, and surviving, and this and that and the other, the idol of which I wanna talk about next, the idol of productivity. We end up numbing ourselves, like you said, and let's just get right into it.

Because you write in our productivity driven world, we make idols out of efficiency. And you wrote bow down to the god of doing more when god has our when god has already done it all. It's beckoning us to stop and rest. And I know that with my counselor, boy, I gave her a run for her money because she kept saying, what are you feeling right now? And the cool thing is I do see that God has gifted me in really cool ways.

Like, I can build systems. I can build in businesses and sell them, and I'm an entrepreneur and all these things. But there's, you know, there's another side to that where

Yeah. You can

get lost in tomorrow. And and one thing that grieves me, and especially with becoming a public figure and all the demands is and I'm gonna try not to cry because I really try to protect this so much is our life is now. Like, even when I'm sitting there and my kid is on in a homeschool book, but I'm thinking about the podcast I gotta film or the chapter I gotta write, I'm not here. I'm not here with my beautiful, amazing, cool child. This is not for only for a working mom.

A lot of us are living in the future, which is where anxiety lives.

Right.

But can we talk about that, the idolatry of efficiency and more? Because homeschool moms in particular, we on Friday, what do we do? We look back at our week, and we always feel like we didn't get enough done. And we're always worried that our kids aren't getting enough. Right?

I'm enough with the enough. Yeah. Yeah. So would you speak to that a little bit? Calling it an idol is very powerful.

Yeah. It's convicting. I'm wired that way too. I think that's why this message was so meaningful to me. I love a good checklist.

I will write something in my checklist that I already did just so that I can check it off.

Me too.

Yes. This feels so good. Yeah. I'm efficient, and I'm you know, I don't like to waste time. But in doing that, you're so susceptible to going too far.

And for me, the section in soul care that spoke the most to me was the rhythm of savor. To be able to be in tune, present, mindful, and enjoy what's in front of you right here, right now, to be in it. Because I'm not wired that way. I'm forward thinking. You know?

And so it was just such a beautiful rhythm to see how Jesus practiced the rhythm of savor. My favorite verse that came up that I never saw before in scripture. You know how you can read the Bible so many times, And then it's like, where did that come from? Matthew 13 verse one says, Jesus left the house and went and sat by the lake. Period.

It's like, wait a second. What?

I've never heard of that scripture.

I know. You can fact check me. He went and sat by the lake. He was so in tune, so present. You know, even at in the last supper, when he knew he was about to go to the cross the next day.

If I knew I was getting crucified tomorrow, I would not be thrown a dinner party the night before, washing my disciples' feet, being right there with them in the moment, not distracted by the regrets of the past or the worries of the future. He was right there with them. This moment, this is all we've got right here, right now. And if we miss it, we've missed it. You know?

This is the gift. It's right here in this moment. Even when the kids are fighting, even when the math homework isn't done, it's like that reset of my mind of this is the gift. The gift isn't of finishing this math assignment. The gift is being able to sit here with it, with my child in the moment to be with them, with God, the God that is with us to savor this moment, to be present, to be all in.

That's the gift. And I, you know, just personally speaking, a week after soul care released into the world, my family went through a significant season of hardship that we're still on the tail end of. But God knew that I would need the message of savor to get me through a season of suffering. Because I think sometimes when we're walking through really hard things, diagnosis, financial crisis, burdens, disability, special needs, there's so many different things that we walk through, marriage stuff, family stuff. We feel like we can't save our life.

It's like life is too hard. It's too stressful. There's too much going on. But I say that savor is what allows us to survive those hard times. Savor is what gets us through suffering To be able to really be present in what is happening right here right now and to receive it as the gift that it is, that's what keeps us afloat no matter what type of season that we're going through.

And God knew that I would need that message for the next fifteen months more than I had any idea to wake up every day with the heart of life, but also be able to open my eyes to the good that's happening in the moment, to the little micro details, you know, and just absorb them. It's what got me through a really hard season. And I feel like it's a rhythm that gets so underrated because it almost feels like we're doing something wrong by enjoying instead of being efficient. But really, that's exactly where God wants us to be.

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Head to True North Homeschool dot Academy or click the link in the show notes to explore courses and get started today. Yes. And and, you know, on this journey, on days where I know they're really big days and I have a lot to do, and it crosses my mind, like, you don't have time to spend time in scripture right now or prayer because you have this, that, and the other. And I go, this is the day I actually need because

Yeah.

This is where I do need to pause. And it's really hard. That's a hard thing to do. And, actually, you kind of started going into the next question that I wanted to ask you because what I don't want moms listening today to think, oh, great. Here's another thing I have to do.

Right? Because I think you are speaking directly to the woman in financial stress, in a hard marriage, a child with extra needs who's listening right now and thinking, can't add one more practice. How do I save her? I, you know, I don't even know what I need. She can't even pinpoint what she needs because life is so incredibly overwhelming.

What would you say to a woman going through that right now who's like, Deborah, I've been on empty for five years. Right? You have that gas tank analogy that's really cool in your book where it's like, do you let the light go on and then you fill up a little bit? Or do you fill it up at fourth of a tank? So for that mom who's literally the light's been on for five years, what's the first step?

Because we need little steps.

Yeah. Well, first again, we start with the mindset shifts. We start with the belief systems that got us here, you know? And that's important work to do. And for some people that's gonna require the help of a counselor to pinpoint, hey, this is why.

This is where the enemy started planting lies that we need to replace and rewrite so that we can do this differently. I think it's starting with the mindset shift that this is not a luxury. It's a necessity. Mhmm. I need to do this to survive.

You know, even the mom of twins who is like, how on earth am I gonna find time? It's not a luxury. It's a necessity. You know? This is what you must do in order to get through this season and have the capacity to enjoy it.

You cannot enjoy when you are burnt out. There is no enjoyment. When my kid hops in my bed at the end of the night, when I am burnt out and he wants to snuggle and read a book. Mhmm. But it's enjoyment when I have margin, when I have a little bit more to give, when I have cared for myself earlier so that I can say, oh, yeah, I can actually do this.

Or sometimes the caring is, I don't have the capacity right now, so it's time for bed and we'll do it in the morning. You know? Like to be aware of my needs and where I'm at is not a luxury. It's a necessity. And then I also think each of us are susceptible in a different way.

So with the six rhythms, some of us are gonna be more susceptible to neglecting the rhythm of nourish. Some of us are gonna be more susceptible to neglecting the rhythm of protect the boundaries or connect the life giving relationships or tune in emotional health. We have different susceptibilities. I actually think we start where we're the weakest because that's where we're see the most productivity is by plugging up the biggest hole where we're leaking out Mhmm. And starting there.

I actually wrote a quiz, debrafileta.com/soulcarequiz. And it's just a free about five minute quiz asking you a bunch of different questions about yourself and your tendencies. And it will help you pinpoint where you are the weakest, where you might be leaking the most. Because I think that's always a good place to start. Like, okay, I need to start with this area, and I'll see the biggest difference overall when I do.

Oh, man. Can we put a link to that in the show notes? That would be really cool. I think that would be helpful for mamas who are just overwhelmed, and they're like, okay. Where that tells you where to start.

I love that.

Where to begin.

Yeah. That's awesome. That leads right into the next one, which is you make a case that our best isn't a 100% all of the time. This was really cool. It's more like 85% so that we actually have something left when life demands more.

What does that look like practically, especially for those of us who are with our kids all day, and we can't really clock out?

Yeah. Well, first of all, if I gave you a paycheck and you spent a 100% of it at the end of every week, you got it, you went and spent it. We would say that's foolish. Right? But we don't think that way about our energy.

We spend a 100% of it and we don't think that's foolish. We think, oh, that's what I'm supposed to do. But it's not what you're supposed to do. It's foolish because it leaves you extremely susceptible to burnout. I always tell my clients as a counselor to live at 85%, to leave some margin in your life, to have a little bit of room, a little bit of bandwidth in your schedule, in how you're spending your energy, and what you're committing to or not committing to.

And it's interesting because as I was kind of mapping out the rhythm of rest, where Jesus practiced a restful pace and took naps and honored his need to be still and honored his exhaustion by stopping. You know? He responded to the signals. And as I was studying that and looking in at Sabbath and other different things that Jesus practiced, one out of seven days, which is what the bible calls us to, a restful life, one full day out of seven, when you actually calculate that out, it comes out to 85, a bunch of numbers, percent. And that was mind blowing to me because it's just the advice that I give as a counselor, but there's something to it in that we're not supposed to give our entire energy.

We're not supposed to spend ourselves to the last drop. And so what does it look like for us to practically play that out each day with our nighttime routine, with what we say yes and no to, with allowing ourselves to get away and even I don't mean get away like leave the house necessarily, but withdraw to lonely places like Jesus did. He never felt bad. Jesus was gone all the time. I mean, if you read scriptures, it was almost laughable.

I found myself laughing out loud at how many times you come across the disciples didn't know where he went. They were looking for Jesus.

Yeah. There he goes.

Did he go? Where did he go? And he didn't ask permission. He just knew I need to get away. Jesus often withdrew to lonely places.

That's what the Bible tells us. And so how much more if Jesus needed to withdraw and fill up and be with the father and sit under the true living water, the only thing that fills us up? What makes us think that we're better than that? What makes us think we're stronger than that? What makes us think we're less susceptible?

We don't need that. If Jesus himself knew that high levels of pouring out require high levels of filling up. How much more do we need to believe that? And to be honest with you, I think it takes some humility to receive that. Not the prideful, like, I can do it all.

I can do it all. I'm supposed to do it all. I'm made to do it all. I'm expected to do it all. There's some serious pride in that, and that's not what we're called to do.

So what does it look like for us to make that time to ask for help where we need it, to ask for help from our children, from our spouses, from our friends, from our family, from God in order for us to live in the healthiest way possible?

Yeah. Well and I'm gonna throw you a curveball here because for some reason, I can't get it off my mind, and I almost added it to my question list. I'm just gonna give it to you now because I think that well, one, what is going through my mind is what about American Christian culture has gotten us here? One, you don't have to answer that. I mean, maybe you've thought about it.

You probably have, but it's also a historical question. But also, about the people pleasing, I think that a lot of women identify as people pleasers. They call themselves that. And I know that in my life, I've had friends come and go who were people pleasers. I'm not that I have a lot of problems, girl, but that is not one of my problems.

But and I've been really hurt by people pleasing because I have felt that it's really selfish and from trauma, you know, and then I stop myself. I like I really like to guard my thoughts and say, wait. No. Compassion, empathy. This is from trauma.

Like, people pleasing is from trauma.

You're right. You're right.

And that allows me to have space for those friends and former friends who, you know, they just please to the point where they're leaving a body count around them and it's actually really self protection. What happened? And I think it's particularly prevalent in Christian culture, don't you think?

Yeah. For sure. The reason people pleasing is unhealthy, it's because it's putting people as my compass. They're the guide. You know?

They're the the measuring stick rather than God. I don't wanna be a people pleaser. I wanna be a God pleaser. Mhmm. And that doesn't mean I don't care what people think or I have no compassion for people.

Quite the opposite. I care more about what God thinks, and I wanna be more in alignment to his calling than I am to obligations and expectations. And when I do that, I actually end up loving people better. I end up loving people more authentically because I'm loving them in the way that God called me to. I'm not loving them so that they like me.

And there's a very big difference there. Is I'm doing it for him to show love with no expectations versus I'm doing this because I want you to like me, and I wanna feel valuable, and I wanna feel needed, and I wanna feel necessary. And so, you know, again, like you said, it comes from trauma. Mhmm. It comes from a lot of things from our past.

It comes from unhealthy narratives. Sometimes it's a little bit of personality as well. But learning to care more about what God thinks is the solution, to be in alignment with him, to realize that just because I can doesn't mean I should. I can do this if somebody asks me to do this. I could show up to this event.

I could tack on this volunteer thing. I could help you with this homework assignment, but should I? Is this the right thing to do? Is this what God has asked me to do? And oftentimes we don't even check-in with the spirit.

We just say yes because we think that yes is always the answer, but so many times Jesus said no. So many times he said no. Just as many no's as yeses and probably even more no and not yet than yeses. He always checked in with the spirit. And I think that's where we're lacking.

We check-in with culture. We check-in with the fact that we wanna keep up with the Joneses, our kids' schedules. What are they doing? What are they buying? What curriculum are they using?

Instead of first making sure I'm in full alignment with what God has called me to do, even if it looks very different than what everyone else expects me to do. So so just because I can doesn't mean I should. And I have to get that yes from the spirit before I move forward. I think that alone, that moment of pause could radically change a lot of our lives before we put something in the calendar.

Hey. Shout out to Summit HealthShare for sponsoring this episode today. I love Summit HealthShare partially because it's my husband's company. What I think they're doing over there is absolutely incredible and life changing for many families. What is Summit HealthShare?

Well, first, let me start with one of my rants about health insurance. Need I say anything? Probably not. But the co pays, the denials, the in network, out of network nonsense, having to get permission to see your doctor, paying thousands a month, and then them still fighting with you every time you need just basic health care. I believe so much in the freedom that comes with leaving health insurance and moving to health sharing.

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I want you to go to summithealthshare.com. When you get to the homepage, you'll see the savings calculator. Go ahead and click that. It takes only two minutes. And when you see those numbers, what you should be paying for the health care you need, you are going to be grabbing the phone so fast because health care is a serious thing, and you're gonna have really personalized questions, and they are used to answering all of them.

Tell them all of your concerns, all of your questions, and they will tell you full stop if this is gonna be a fit for you or your family. And tell them that you listen to the show because I want you to have the VIP treatment. Go to summithealthshare.com today, and the link is in the show notes. This podcast is also brought to you by the Christie faith list. Now hold up because I want you to know what this is.

I'm really proud of what the Christie faith list has become. It started really scrappy just compiling recommendations because I was fed up with guessing which businesses and providers and doctors weren't gonna give me a hard time when I walked through those doors. And I had tons of friends and family members with nightmare situations where they felt like they were walking into an ambush situation just when they were trying to get help for their families. And I was sick and tired of the discrimination that homeschool families were getting. But since then, it has grown into a massive directory of colleges, businesses, doctor's offices, reading specialists, occupational therapists, homeschool graduates that are in business themselves now.

You name it all in one place. Because why wouldn't we wanna do business with the people who share our values and actually want to work with homeschool families and not give us a hard time? It is completely free for homeschool families to search. And if you are a business owner or part of an organization that loves homeschool families and wants to reach more homeschool families and grow your business in that way, please sign yourself up. We wanna know who you are.

It's the place where homeschool families support the people who support us. Go to the christyfaithlist.com today. That's that's powerful. And, yeah, I know that over Christmas you were talking earlier too about our energies. And over Christmas, I had to drop a pretty big piece of what I do because of the emotional demand that it had and the angst and the overthinking and the thinking and actually with the work that was involved in that particular thing.

And just trust the Lord, like, alright. I have to let this go. But it's interesting because I think that I feel more in alignment, and I feel like I'm better at the things that I am called to be doing now because I let that go. And I think this is a great next segue into and maybe this is the final question before we talk about your new project that when I reached out to you, didn't even know that you had a new project. So I wanna make sure we talk about that before we go.

But you do talk about protecting our calling. I think that when when women join Thrive Homeschool Community, the first thing we have them do is to take my forty five minute workshop on finding your why. And at the end of that forty five minutes, every mom in my community has a sentence that they can memorize that is their why, and it is so personalized and so pinpointed. And it's beautiful and it's freeing. But we do that because we everything in the homeschool space can be a shiny object that you wanna say yes to.

Oh, that co op's awesome. That paper walk, that book, that read aloud, that ah. Right? And so it really helps the women know exactly what they want for their family and their children and say yes to those things. But what's so cool is that your message is, okay.

Yeah. That's homeschooling. That's important, but we need to be doing that with our life. Right? We have callings from the Lord.

And if we're not careful with protecting our time and energies, like what happened to me where I found myself over Christmas break this last year is I wasn't doing my calling things well because I was so split into a million pieces with everything else.

Right. Right. I read a book years and years ago, and she was actually just talking about her closet. She was talking about her wardrobe. I think it was called Disciplines of a Godly Woman, something to that effect.

And she was talking about how she goes in her closet, and she has this theme, concentrate and eliminate. So she goes in and eliminates the things that aren't gonna serve her and kinda focuses on just a few outfits. She just kinda talked about simplifying life. And that phrase concentrate and eliminate has stuck with me ever since in every area of life, not just with my wardrobe, but with life. Like, what do I need to eliminate so that I can concentrate?

I can't concentrate when I'm spread too thin. I can't concentrate when everything's diluted. The opposite of concentration is dilution, something that's diluted. I don't wanna have a diluted calling. I wanna have a concentrated calling.

I don't wanna have a diluted family life. I wanna have a concentrated family life. I don't wanna have a diluted marriage. I wanna have a concentrated marriage. And you can't do that when there's too much.

You can't do that unless there's an elimination process first. And that we could apply that to our clutter in our home or the emotional clutter in our lives, the relationship clutter, the expectation clutter, the obligation clutter. There's so many things we can apply that to. But like you said, at the end of the day, when I can concentrate and eliminate, I do what I'm called to do so much better. It's freeing.

It's freeing. It really is.

Yeah. And I hope mama listening right now, I hope you see that. Like, this is not an episode of another thing to do. When you're living in alignment with what the Lord wants for your life, it's a peaceful life.

Yeah. It's easier in that. My guilt is easy.

Yes. You're a better mom. You're a better homeschool mom. You're a better wife. You know?

And that's incredibly motivating. And I think that's countercultural, especially in Christian spaces where most everything is run on the backs of volunteers. That's another Oprah. But I definitely wanna talk about your next project, and it's a book that you wrote called People Skills. I can't wait to What read is that about?

Yeah. It's a little bit of a different project in that it's what I consider low hanging fruit, meaning there's 31 practical things that you can apply, thirty one minutei chapters, and each one offers you a new set of skills. Because oftentimes, we think we're coming across one way, but we're really coming across another way. We have love inside of us, but that love isn't necessarily being conveyed because we don't have the skills to convey it in a healthy way, and we don't understand why there's a misunderstanding, why is there conflict, why did they not understand what I was trying to say, why did they get offended, why am I offended. With our husband, with our kids, with our community, with our friendships, it's not a deficit of love.

Oftentimes, it's a deficit of skill. And so it's teaching this 31 skill sets that I actually think is perfect for homeschool families. I'm hoping to teach a people skills class next year for my high school kids at our co op because I just think there's so many skills, vulnerability, body language, forgiveness, different levels of conversation, communication skills, conflict management. You know, all of these different topics that I don't think we necessarily get enough education in, but these are the things that make or break our relationships. So it's a book that I hope will really add a lot to family dynamics, marriage dynamics, ministry dynamics, and it comes out February 17.

Oh, man. That sounds incredible. And I think it's also a healthy way to look at people. At least it's helped me. I tend to be less offended when I just look at something like, oh, they're lagging in that skill.

And I love doctor Ross Green's book. I don't agree with the premise of his book. I've said that publicly. It's definitely a humanistic evolutionary perspective, but he's not wrong. You know, I think that often Christians are scared of, like, the latest research in psychology, and they're like, ah, yeah.

And then they throw the baby out with the bathwater where, actually, no, we can be intellectual, and we can look at everything through scripture and be mindful about it and prayerful about it. But in terms of, like, the parent coaching that we do in Thrive, one of the mentors in Thrive is a certified parenting coach. And what we really like the moms to work on with their kids is rather than like, you're doing this to me, you know, you're annoying me or this is driving me crazy. It's really like, okay. Well, where's the lagging skill?

Is this a lagging skill in problem solving? Is this a lagging skill in frustration tolerance? And what's interesting is over the years when I've done this work, it's poured out to my everyday life where if, I remember this is an interesting story. We were traveling, you know, speaking. I speak across the country like you do, and we bring our son.

He helps with the booth, and he's it's his job. And we were at a Wetzel's Pretzels because we were so hungry one time, and the worker there was just really cold and weird and strange and like, woah. And immediately, I'm like, this person has autism. How cool that they are working here. Right?

But my son who he's a teenager. We walked out and he goes, that guy was so rude. Right? And then it was a conversation. And so I think that's kind of what you're getting at is, like, we misunderstand what's really going on.

And Right.

We can't pour grace over situations when we're constantly feeling offended by them. Right?

Exactly. Exactly. It helps you look at it differently objectively. Yeah. It helps you realize, okay, this isn't a lack of love.

This might not even be intentional. It's a lack of skill Yeah. As you're receiving things. But then most importantly, as you're giving and communicating, it helps you take ownership of how you come across versus just defend your intentions. My intentions were good, and this is what I really intended.

But it's more than just excusing our intentions. It's learning to take ownership of how we show up in relationships.

That's really cool. I'm excited for that. And I know that homeschool moms will absolutely love that. Deborah, would you let everybody know here? Where can they find you?

We're gonna put a link to that quiz. Are there any other resources that we should be aware of?

Yeah. Thank you so much. I hang out a lot on Instagram personally. We're on all social media platforms, but if you wanna reach me personally, I'm on Instagram at Deborah Fileta, f I l e t a. And we have a really neat group of faith forward counselors that are all clinically informed.

Everyone is licensed and they have their education, but we're all faith forward, you know, Holy Spirit driven. And so if anyone wants to go deeper, it's debrahfileta.com/counseling. It's called the Deborah Feleta Counselors Network. And it's a really great team if you're interested in doing some one on one deeper work. But you can find all my resources at the website, all the books.

I have a children's book that just came out this year. So just a lot of really fun resources you can learn about the podcast there and just get plugged in and go deeper.

Fantastic. And moms, please go run and take that quiz as well if you feel overwhelmed, but you felt like this episode really hit you at the heart, but you feel overwhelmed and don't know where to start, make sure right when the show is over that you go and you click on that link to take her quiz so that you can know where to start. And I know, Deborah, that we are recommending your network of therapists to the women who we feel need counseling in Thrive Homeschool Community because we are not we are not therapists. We are homeschool coaches, and we know where that line is and when a mom needs more help. And so we were excited to find out about your particular network in that way.

Would you please listen or grab Soul Care? It really is a fantastic book. And I don't know if you know this, Deborah, but I don't have guests on my show that often. Probably only about a quarter of the time because I have been very mindful about who I invite. And right away when I read your book, I was like, I need to meet What this

an honor.

The ladies who listen know that. They know that I'm just not gonna have the person on because they're pushing a book. And that's why I wanted to mention that you're not on here today because of the new book coming out. I reached out to you because I read Soulcare. I was moved by it and invited you on, and then found out about the next project.

So, anyway, I really thank you for your time today and for coming on and giving us some soul care. I really appreciate it.

It was a pleasure. We're kindred spirits, and I feel like we became fast friends. And I just appreciate what you're doing for the homeschool world. So I'm grateful. Thank you for the opportunity.

Awesome. Alright, ladies. We'll see you next week.