How to Remain You While Raising Them

So. Much. Pressure. is out there to be an amazing mom. From the moment we find out we're pregnant, we start thinking about our child's needs...and all too often forget that we have real needs, too! Join us for a conversation that is sure to lighten the pressure and bring refreshment. We talk with author Alli Worthington about her newest book "Remaining You While Raising Them" and her insights are sheer gold!

ABOUT OUR GUEST
Alli Worthington's goal is to help women live the life they were created to live. She lives outside Nashville with her husband, Mark, their five sons, and the only golden retriever who refuses to retrieve. 

She's a popular Christian women's speaker who travels the country sharing her humor, practical advice, and encouragement. She hosts her top-rated weekly podcast, The Alli Worthington Show, and brings us friends she loves, experts to learn from, and coaches listeners in life, business, and faith.

Alli built her business in 2008 after her family went bankrupt with $42, a broken laptop, and millions of Google searches. She is now a sought-after coach and consultant who has helped individuals, small business owners, and Fortune 500 companies be more successful. 

Alli's no-nonsense, guilt-free take on motherhood, parenting, and balance lead to appearances on The Today Show and Good Morning America. 

Alli spends way too much time on Instagram at @AlliWorthington and you can download free resources and gifts at AlliWorthington.com

ABOUT THE BOOK: REMAINING YOU WHILE RAISING THEM
Bestselling author, life and business coach, and mom of five boys Alli Worthington believes too many moms have neglected to take care of arguably the one person who matters most: themselves. In Remaining You While Raising Them, Alli shares guilt-free, often hilarious, empowering, and research-informed advice to help you:

• Intentionally care for yourself--spiritually, emotionally, and physically--amidst the demands of motherhood
• Drop the "good mom" myths that have been stealing your happiness
• Take back your own identity by discovering the unique type of mom you are
• Let go of social pressure, conquer mom guilt, and stop toxic comparison once and for all
• Discover easy tools for building your confidence and developing a healthy mom mindset

Raising children who are spiritually, emotionally, and physically healthy is essential, but to accomplish that heroic feat, mothers also need to be healthy in those areas. It's time to rediscover the beauty, the joy, and the sacred and secret art of confident motherhood together.

Creators & Guests

Host

Becky Harling

Author of How to Listen So Your Kids Will talk and several others. Podcast host of The Connected Mom. A dynamic speaker who is passionate about Jesus.

Guest

Alli Worthington

Bestselling Author. Speaker. Advisor. Business Coach. Podcast Host. Wife. Mom to 5 Boys. Seen on @Todayshow, @GMA and @Forbes

What is The Connected Mom?

Form a deeper connection with God, more empathetically connection with other Moms, and more intentional connection with your child.

Connected Mom podcast explores the pressure that can come with being a mom
BECKY: Welcome to the Connected Mom podcast, where we have real conversations helping you to connect more deeply with God, more empathically with your fellow moms, and more intentionally with your child. I'm Becky Harling. I'm your host. And I have with me today my amazing and fabulous co host, Sarah Wildman. Hey, Sarah.
SARAH: Hi, Becky. It's awesome to be here and we get to talk about so many awesome things related to motherhood. But maybe one of the, not awesome things is the pressure that can often come with being a mom. I've had a few friends lately that have new babies, and from the get go, there's all of these questions, right? And am m I doing the right thing and second guessing yourself. And I think, this issue really can apply to us at a lot of stages of parenting, and we know our listeners are all over the board. Even grandmas are listening, right? So I think this topic of, pressure can really resonate with a lot of folks. But Becky, I know you didn't feel any pressure raising children. Right? It was just the easiest walk. We're kidding, by the way. Becky's so real.
Alli: Yeah. Ah.
BECKY: So Sarah and I often say so for all of you that are enneagram people, we're both solid threes on the know. So the question you ask yourself at night when you lay in bed as a three is, did I do, know? And and I think doing it right was always a thing for me. And there's so many opinions on motherhood. There's the people that say, never let your kids watch TV. Never let them do this, that, or the other thing. And back in the day when I was raising my kids, Sarah, it was like, well, working moms were kind of looked down on we should all be home, just like Leave it to Beaver, making homemade cookies and birthday cakes and all of that. And that really just didn't work with Steve. And so I did go to work when my youngest, was in kindergarten, and I'm glad I did. But that's what we're talking about today, like letting go of some of that pressure.
We have an amazing guest with us today, Allie Worthington
BECKY: So if you're listening, which I hope you are, get out a notebook because we're going to be giving you so much in this episode. We have an amazing guest with us today, in case you don't know her. Let me introduce you to Allie Worthington. I have followed Allie for quite a while. She is a bestselling author, an amazing speaker. She's a life and business coach who launched called Collectives, a, cohort of women speakers and writers. She's been a guest on the Today show on Good Morning America. She lives with her husband, Mark. And perhaps most important about her for our podcast is that she's raising five boys and she's still alive. so that bodes well for those of us that are in the thick of this journey. And Ali has written a book that I absolutely love. I actually want you to write down the title because I'm really going to push you to purchase this book. It's called remaining you while raising them. And we're going to be talking about being confident in motherhood. Welcome, Allie. We are so excited to have you here.
Alli: Thank you. I'm, thrilled to be here. This is so fun.
BECKY: Yeah, it's so fun.
In your book, you say that modern motherhood is broken
BECKY: So in your book, you say that modern motherhood is broken. And what do you mean by that?
Alli: Well, I think being a mom has always been difficult, right. No matter if you have one child or five children, being a mom's tough. It is physically exhausting and at the same time kind of intellectually unstimulating. That's motherhood in a nutshell, right. We would do anything for our kids, but at the same time, we also just need a few minutes to ourselves. Motherhood is tough. However, when you mix modern society into motherhood, with all the images we have coming at women all the time of what we should do and how it should be and how other women are getting it right, it's miserable. I sent an email out to my email list and asked a ton of motherhood questions because I wanted to see, is it just me or is this everyone else? Over 1000 women joined in. They said struggling with mom guilt is something that most women have almost all the time, whether their kid is two or 52. But the number one cause of mom guilt, it's not us, it's not our spouses, it's not our relatives. The number one cause out of a thousand women was social. Just you're innocently opening up Instagram or Facebook or TikTok. And you see videos and pictures of women who look like they're getting it right. They're growing organic wheat in their backyard to make sandwiches for lunch every day. They're grinding the wheat and you're like, oh, well, I guess the peanut butter and jelly I made isn't enough. So of course we have the difficulty of just inherent being a mother. it's not easy for anybody. It's wonderful. It's great. It's the greatest joy of my life. But I wouldn't say that. It's just traipsing through a garden of roses all day, right? That combined with our wonderful beloved phones, which I love. I love my phone. But you open up social media and all of a sudden you see a family with professional photos and all the kids are dressed in clothes alike and the dog is smiling and your two year old or your teenager is throwing a tantrum and your dog just ate a sock and is throwing up on your carpet. And you want to throw your phone across the room because you feel like I'm a terrible.
BECKY: I okay.
So now we have the rise of influencers who make money through social media
BECKY: So, Sarah, you're going to ask the next question, but before you do, I just want to know. Sarah, do you feed your kids all organic food?
SARAH: That's a solid I the amount of work that that takes to just mill the wheat, they would be so hungry, I think they'd be eating rocks before I could make them a proper meal.
BECKY: Back in the 90s, we really didn't have that pressure. It was like, throw a half a sandwich in a lunchbox, give them some pretzels and apples, and call it good.
SARAH: Anyway, continue. but that's so true. I mean, those carefully curated posts that.
Alli: Just.
SARAH: And you know that the next room over could be total chaos. But they've perfectly captured this perfect setting of motherhood.
Alli: And to some degree, there's actually a business model behind it for most of these posts. So now we have the rise of influencers. Who. They grow a big audience. They take professional photos and videos, and they do partnerships with brands, or they're paid to promote certain products or an affiliate code for whatever they're wearing, which is fine. I'm all for women running their own business. But for those of us who are taking in this content and we see it go by on social media, we have to remember, oh, this isn't the person's real life. This is their business model. This isn't just the average woman just like us. This is, oh, $1,000. You were paid to get professional portraits and then talk about laundry detergent. It's a business model. And that's one thing for me. I realized I needed to, unfollow those accounts and the accounts of people that I knew in my real life who were always showing the highlight reels, I just muted them because I didn't want to have the awkward conversation. And I filled my social media feeds up with things that make me laugh or teach me something or people who are real or things that are encouraging. That was the game changer for me. Wow.
BECKY: I love that.
Alli: That's good.
A survey of 1000 mothers found that there are few resources for moms
SARAH: Okay, so this survey that you did of 1000 moms, what were some of the findings that surprised you? I mean, you probably knew social media was a big deal, but could you tell us a few things that surprised you that would be interesting to our moms listening?
Alli: Oh, there's so much. I was shocked by the social media one. I was really shocked by that one. but here's what's fascinating. I asked women, what was the last book on motherhood you read? Very few women could give me a book. There just aren't resources for moms. They gave me parenting books, but a lot of these women would say, here's the book I read. And then they would leave a comment and say, I wish I had never read it because it made me feel worse about myself than when I started or I stopped halfway through. This book made me sob. I didn't realize until then there's a lot of parenting book trauma out there where these books have been written with great intentions, but they're just do this. Here's nine things you have to do be a great mom. And I read them when I was younger, too, when I was a young mom, they just leave you feeling less than, feeling like a failure, putting all this pressure on you. So that's when I knew, oh, I need to write a book for moms. It's not a parenting book. It's not a do these five things to be good enough. It's the opposite of that. We've had enough of that. And that's what got us into this situation. So that was the wake up call for me. It's just another example of how, just like us as women, whether we're getting ready to adopt or pregnant with a child, everything gets focused on that child. We don't ever focus back on ourselves to work on ourselves after that, even the whole book industry, it's all focused on, here's what you can do, here's how to be good enough and nothing for the mom. So it's no wonder that we've just put our needs up on the shelf and we're wondering what happened.
BECKY: Yeah, I love that so much.
Making our children our Top Priority isn't Biblical, Allie says
BECKY: Here, on the Connected Mom podcast, we're all about prioritizing your connection with God, your connection with your fellow moms, and your connection with your child. However, I think the temptation can be to become child centered. And you make such a great statement in your book, making our children our Top Priority isn't Biblical, and I love that you said that. I want to say it one more time. Making our children our top priority is not biblical. So can you expound on that just a little bit?
Alli: Allie yeah, God is our top priority, 100%. And it makes sense when our kids are little, when they're babies, they take over our lives. When they're toddlers, they take over our lives. Because if we turn our heads for a second, they're going to set the house on fire. Right. But as our kids get older, they need to take less space in our brain. And, it's designed that way from the time they can walk to the time they go to school and then middle school, and then they graduate and they go to college. It is God's design that we are less and less constantly focused on them. If we are constantly focused on our children, we will make our children our gods. and to some degree, women have been taught, whether explicitly or implicitly, that we almost have a Godlike role in our child's life. Like, if you don't do family devotionals every day, forget it. Who knows who they're worshipping one day. If you don't feed organic food, they're going to grow a tail one day. Like, every little thing we do is the be all, end all. And it's that kind of messaging, again, whether subtle or told outright, that makes moms go, I have to be completely focused on my child. I can't take my eye off. I can't think about myself. I can't think about anything else because if I do anything wrong, my child's life is ruined.
BECKY: I love that. And I kind of blame my generation a little bit for that because I think there was this whole push during the 90s maybe, to, be more intentional about raising your kids spiritually minded. But inadvertently, what happened is people walked away with that exact message, if you don't do it all right, your kid's going to burn in hell. And pretty much not God's message. I mean, God was the perfect parent, and his kids sure screwed up in the garden. Right? So we got to really look back at all of that. And I just love that because our lives are to be centered on Jesus Christ and our kids are a part of our lives. We do have responsibility in their lives. However, God is to be the center of our right.
Alli: That's right. Couldn't said it better myself.
In your book, you talk about motherhood burnout
SARAH: Now, in your book, you talk about motherhood burnout. So motherhood burnout, as the mother load. What do you mean by that when you write that?
Alli: Yeah, there's this phrase that is becoming more and more familiar. Recently called the mental load. It is all the things that women are carrying that men tend to not carry it's. When do the kids get a physical? Has my husband been to the dentist? When does the dog go to the vet? I got to get a gift from my mother in law. The plumber is coming on Wednesday. Who's going to be at the house to let the plumber in? It's everything, right? This is what goes on in our brain all the time. I'm sure maybe some, men think about all these details, but I'm going to go out of limb and say the vast majority do not. Right. It's this mental load that we carry. And then you combine a woman's natural mental load that we're all dealing with, with motherhood, and it just explodes. Because not only are we worried about keeping everything running, it's is my child doing okay at school? How's my child's relationship with God? What about this? What about that? And it causes so much burnout. And there's a couple of different ways we go about getting help with our mother load, our mental load. one is a conversation with our spouse and explaining what's going on and explaining it and having this conversation in a way that's not going to trigger a fight. I have a chapter on marriage in there, and I talk about kind of the strategies for how to talk to your spouse, how to make sure it doesn't end in a fight. That's really important. In the Audible version of the book, I put in a whole extra session all about mental load and with scripts on how to talk to your spouse. However, I do want to be realistic in this. A lot of times, if a woman is dealing with the mental load and the mother load, and she talks to her spouse about what help she needs. She may not get it. And so if we're all together going, you just talk to your spouse and then it'll be fine. but realistically, a lot of husbands are going to go, well, it's just the way it is, and they're not going to necessarily change all their behaviors. So I think it's important to also empower women and go, hey, look out for you in this way and make sure that you get the help you need. Maybe it's your mom helps out with something or you and your friends share a job or anything like that. Because if a woman is in a marriage relationship where she goes to her husband and goes, I can't be responsible for all the doctor's appointments and all this and all this. Again, not every man is going to go, okay, let's share it all 50 50. I think it is important to give women permission to go, okay, get your needs met, carpool with a friend, have family help. But for us to have these conversations and pretend like everyone can talk to their spouse and it'll end. Rosy is doing a disservice to the realities of modern life.
BECKY: that's so true. And yet I loved the way you described the mother load in the book because I do think women are under a heavy load right now and just trying to keep it all straight, just, exhausts them, I think, at times.
Ali says it's important for women to recognize their strengths as mothers
BECKY: One of the things that you describe in your book that I really enjoyed, where you describe moms as having five superpowers, like, you can identify your type, like the superpower of motherhood. Would you explain that to us a little bit and then tell us what yours is? Because that would be fun.
Alli: Yeah. What, I did is I created a quiz, your superpower quiz, because I wanted to see is it accurate? On my website, and tens of thousands of women have gone through it and kind of have written me back and gone, I don't know how you got it so well. It's me. I think that it's really important for women to recognize their strengths. There's moms who are just super caring, and they're always there for you. There are moms who are loyal. There are moms who are kind of mama bearish with their kids. Me, I'm a cheerleader mom. I'm always going to find a silver lining. I'm always going to look for fun. I'm a roller coaster mom, for instance. That's what I do with my boys for fun. We're always going to theme parks and riding roller coasters. The thing about understanding our superpower as a mom, it's really important to help us not think that other moms are necessarily getting it right and we're getting it wrong. Like my cousin Leanne, she's an outdoor mom, and they're always hiking or kayaking or doing things outdoors. I've never camped in my life. If I'm outdoors, it's to walk to my car or to be outdoors at Disney World. That's how outdoorsy I am. But I realized God gave me my children because I was going to be a good enough mom for them. I didn't need to be an outdoor mom or a crafty mom to raise them well. I could just do the things I enjoy doing. But if I had convinced myself that's the only way to be a good mother, then I would have given in to a lifetime of me doing things that weren't really in my skill set or I enjoyed. No child wants to go camping with me. I'd be miserable. So just kind of us waking up and going, these are my strengths, these are my skill set, this is what I enjoy. And God is not in heaven looking around, going, can you believe she is parenting in this way? I'm so surprised. I never should have given her those children. God knows what he's doing. So however we are, whatever our strengths are, that's what God designed for us and for our children.
BECKY: I love that so much. I think I relate most to the cheerleader mom, too. It's a joke now because our kids are all grown and they're like, mom, we grew up and we thought we were the best at everything because you always cheered for us. And then we came to reality in our adult life and realized we really weren't that, you know, that's okay. I still think you're great.
Alli: Yeah.
SARAH: But I love that because Ali like your title of your book. It's so good. I mean, remaining you while raising them. So just your title alone shows that there's these different personalities and okay, I'm going to put you on the spot. Is there a friend that you're super different from but you've seen her be herself and how does it contrast to how you are? Because I think sometimes even as we're connecting with other moms, we're like, it's really fun. Instead of comparing to just see how they thrive when they're truly themselves.
Alli: Oh, yeah. M. I have a mom friend who's a crafty mom.
BECKY: This is actually pressure right there.
Alli: Well, it's actually my 16 year old son, his girlfriend. They're adorable. They've been together for like two years. They're the cutest things ever. Her mom, when it's his birthday or Christmas, she makes these homemade gifts for him, like gifts that you unwrap and there's little boxes of his favorite chocolates in there and these amazing creations that she makes. And I'm so impressed, because you better believe a gift from me is coming straight from Amazon. And I'm even having Walmart deliver the gift bag. It's a gift from the heart. But if I ever created something with my own hands as a gift, it would not be a gift in the eyes of someone else. So, yeah, I see it. and the way I think about it is my son is so blessed to be blessed by the work of her hands, to get to see and place value in what she loves, and she thrives in it. And she's wonderful in that way. I'm wonderful in my two day Amazon delivery. And it is important for us to go. This is my skill set. This is where, you know, you don't want some Play DOH creation that I'm going to make.
BECKY: I love that I'm right there with you. I can remember a season where I tried to be a crafty mom and it just didn't work out know, because that's just really not me.
There is so much guilt on parents around the concept of television
BECKY: Anyway, one of the things you write about in the book, Ali, and, we need to talk about this. There is so much guilt on parents around the concept of television. Talk to us about well, I have.
Alli: Learned that I'm very surprising once women have learned about, my policies on screen time. I don't have a policy on screen time. I've never had a policy on screen time. It's the only thing that kept me sane when they were so little, because at one point there was five under age nine. So my rule with screen time is, I don't care if screens are on all the time, not a problem. Not during dinner time, of course. But what's on the screen can't be something that's a negative influence. So as long as it's something with a positive influence and they aren't watching things or playing a video game, like something that's violent or things like that, as long as we monitor what our kids are watching, and it is stuff that does build character or is, at minimum, innocent, I never saw a problem with it. I joke. One of my kids was raised on Blues Clues, and he was the valedictorian. We just got lucky with him. We don't know how it happened, but it was just like when God knitted him together in my womb. His little DNA was just super smart. And even though he was raised on TV, it didn't take that away. And I think we forget that God has designed our children and he knows exactly what their life plan is. He knows what they're going to do. Again, he's not in heaven going, I had such great plans for that little girl, but her mom lets her watch hours of Paw Patrol, so I guess she's not going to be a doctor now. It just doesn't work that way. But it comes back to this idea that every decision moms make is the be all, end all for their children. You didn't do family devotionals going to hell. You let them watch too much TV. Never going to go anywhere in life when we aren't God. They already had a plan. And as long as we're supporting the plan that God has for them, we're not going to ruin it. We're not that powerful.
BECKY: I love that.
Emotionally healthy parents have best chance of raising emotionally healthy children
BECKY: So know another thing you say in the book, Allie, is that emotionally healthy parents have the best chance of raising emotionally healthy children. Let's unpack that a little bit, because I think that's a really big statement, and it's really true.
Alli: Yeah. I had a Christian counselor say to me years ago, she said, your children will not be emotionally healthier than you are while they're living in your house.
SARAH: Wow.
Alli: And that was really the kick in the pants I needed to take care of myself. Now, I define emotional health as a combination of mental health, spiritual health, and relational health, the health of our relationships. And when I've talked about it, a few women have said, wait a minute, I don't know how to take this. I struggle with anxiety or I struggle with depression. And if anyone is in that boat, I was there. I had postpartum depression with one of my boys. That does not mean that you're harming your children. What our children need is to see us as they get older, as humans, that we do struggle with things. What our kids need to hear is, this is the issue that I struggle with. It doesn't have anything to do with you. It has to do with chemicals or X, Y, and Z. And this is what I'm doing to get healthier and healthier all the time. Because there are very few people alive in this world who don't have a physical ailment or a mental ailment at this point. It's just the world we're living in. And when we raise kids and we, I think for good intentions, try to pretend like we're perfect, our kids see through it. Our kids know something's up. So if someone is working on their emotional health, say they have mental health challenges, and they're working on their emotional health, that is a real positive. Especially as kids get into Tween and teen years to be able to talk about it, because you'll model what to do for them. But the talk of emotional health is something that's so important for moms, because, again, moms stop focusing on themselves in pregnancy. We read books about our bodies and ourselves when we're pregnant, but then as soon as that baby comes, we put ourselves on the shelf and we wonder, what in the world, happened to me in all these years? I remember years ago, I went to a Christmas celebration with my great aunt Shirley's house, and I was eight years old. I didn't know what was wrong, but I knew something was wrong. We got there, she let us know she had been cooking for three days, as many women do. She was smiling, everyone was smiling. But I didn't have the life experience or the language to know what was going on, but I knew something was wrong, and I didn't know what was wrong. But I remember going I'm not having fun, and I don't know what this is, but I want to make sure this doesn't happen to me one day. And I didn't learn until after she passed from family members that she really hated the responsibility of hosting everyone and cooking for days and days. She didn't feel like she had permission to raise her hand and go, hey, can everyone break a dish or can we switch houses? She felt like that would be a bad mom. So what she did in her heart, she wanted to be the most loving woman she could. So she cooked and she cleaned and she hosted. But through the years, she was resentful about it. And through the years, she was a little bit bitter. And that bitterness, even though she smiled and she did the right things, it leaked out over everyone. and I've been Aunt Shirley in my life. The more women I talk to women go, I've been great Aunt Shirley, too. And that's why emotional health is so important, because we can do all the right things. But if we aren't taking care of ourselves, what boils up inside of us will leak out no matter how hard we work. And all of the parenting advice that a lot of women have gotten is, do more. Do this. And, we're told it's about how you behave. But the truth is, motherhood isn't about what we do. It's about who we are. And the more we take care of ourselves, the natural overflow of that will be a happier, healthier family and happier and healthier life. That was a long way to get around to the answer, but I'm so passionate about it.
BECKY: Wow.
SARAH: well, it was an Aunt Shirley, you said her name was.
Alli: Yeah.
SARAH: I mean, the bitterness. You do talk about anger in your book and how to process it, so would you mind just mapping out a few of those practical steps? Because maybe a mom's like that's it I haven't been speaking up for myself. I haven't been meeting my needs. I have this anger inside. What are a few tips that we could pass along?
Alli: Yeah, I think the most important is just to give yourself permission to pay attention to how you feel. As a coach, I will often talk to my clients, and if I ask the question, what do you need? Almost every woman goes, I have no idea. I don't know what I need for my business. I don't know what I need for myself. I haven't checked in with myself in so long. And so I change that to what I call the magic question. And the question is, what do I need right now?
SARAH: Right now?
Alli: Sometimes it's a nap. Sometimes it's lunch with a friend. Sometimes it's dinner service or a housekeeper or a date night. Sometimes it's just a glass of water. But just the power of honoring ourselves by going, what do I need right now? I have it on a reminder that pops up a couple of times a day on my phone and a, postit note in my bathroom. Because it is not in our nature to go, what do I need? Because life is moving so fast and we're so busy. But just to get in touch with our needs as women, whether our kids are in their forty s or they're four. Because what my husband and I learned with, our two of our boys being grown, we can't really guilt them into coming to visit us anymore. I mean, we could, but it's not going to go well. We looked at each other and said, we have to woo them back home. we have to give them something that they want to come back and visit us and that comes back to emotional health. So whether kids are in our life or our kids are grown and we're just like, I wish they visit more, I don't want to accidentally cause them to not visit as often because I'm not taking care of myself. So something as easy as the magic question habit keeps me grounded and I can go, oh, I need a devotion. I need to just go sit and pray or I need to go out to dinner because if I have to look in that refrigerator and make a dinner again, I'm going to explode. Right. That's a great first step of just getting in touch with how we feel and what our needs are.
BECKY: Yeah, I really love that. I think learning to ask that question, what do I need right now? Because moment by moment through your day, there are different needs that you're going to have and not feeling guilty about what you need right now. my mind's going in two different directions as I'm thinking about two completely different questions to ask you. I'll ask you one first.
One of the needs that moms neglect is time with really good friends
BECKY: I think as moms, a lot of times when we're completely focused on our kids, one of the needs that we neglect is time with really good friends. And at the Connected Mom podcast, that's one of our big values. We want you to understand that you need friends in your life and those friends are precious. Can you talk to us a little bit about cultivating those friendships in Motherhood and why that's so important and how to do it?
Alli: Yeah. The last section of my book, as you know, of course, is Habits to Help Women Thrive. And one of the chapters is all about friendships because researchers have proven this is so amazing. Our friendships are the relationships that make us the happiest. Our family gives us deep joy and purpose, but our friendships make us the happiest. Because we're friends with somebody, because we look at them and we go, I like you. You don't have to like them because of work or because of family. You just like them because you like them. So when you spend time with friends like that. That is where the happiness comes from. And as my friend Eric Barker says, the where friendships go to die because we get busy with work and kids and running errands. So it's really important to cultivate it, for women who find themselves in a busy season with work and caring for kids who can't necessarily get away and visit with a girlfriend every week. There's a concept I write about called bundling your time. And it's a bundle of something that you have to do with something that you want to do. So maybe it's going to the grocery store, maybe you and a girlfriend grocery shop together. I have two friends who they have Tuesday night dinner prep together. So what they do, they each start cooking dinner Tuesday nights at 05:00. They set up a laptop or an iPad in their kitchen and air pods.
BECKY: So cute.
Alli: They talk the whole time they're cooking dinner. And their families know, you leave dinner prep time alone. And that's how they catch up every week. So it's something kind of boring making dinner bundled with something really fun, talking to a good friend. And so even in the busiest of times, and even though we would rather be sitting drinking iced tea and chitchatting, maybe making dinner together is the way we stay connected and making time for friends. But they have to be really good friends. It has to be friends who have kind of earned the right to be in our inner circle. Friends who after we talk to them or after we visit with them, we feel better than before we started. It can't be those quote unquote friends who make backhanded compliments or kind of put you down or one up you or super negative. We really need to look for the two to three women who fill us up. M the other women who maybe aren't as emotionally healthy. We don't have to just say, I'm never talking to you again. But they don't get our priority. They don't get that precious one on one time. We save that for the women who really are emotionally healthy and help us even be healthier.
BECKY: I love that.
Allie recommends remaining you while raising children by Ali Worthington
BECKY: Allie hey, friends, you really need to get I mean, our time is almost up. I can't believe how quickly it's gone by. And I want to remind you of the title of the book because I want you to order it today because you need this book. It's called remaining you while raising them. If you have kids that are still in the home, you really need this book. It's going to encourage you. It's going to lift your spirits. It's going to help you decide what to do next so that you stay emotionally healthy in the journey. Because motherhood is not a sprint, it's a marathon. And it's something that we are all in together, but we can be encouraging each other. And that's what you're going to find in Ali's book again, remaining you while raising them by Ali Worthington. Allie, it has been incredible to have you on today.
Allie Worthington asks you to pray for struggling moms
BECKY: And before we close, would you, first of all, tell our listeners how they can get in touch with you? And then second of all, I really want you to pray over our moms out there because I think some of them that have been listening are like, man, I need this book. I'm discouraged it's all too much. I feel like I'm under the mother load. So would you tell them first how they can get in touch with you and then would you pray with them? Sure.
Alli: I'd be honored. And thank you both for what you do for moms every day. this is definitely a show that great moms listen to to build their emotional health. So thank you for your work. I'm allie worthington everywhere. Allieworthington.com, you can take a fun superpower quiz. The podcast is the Allie Worthington show, but pretty much Allie Worthington all over the Internet.
Connected Mom podcast features guest speakers on parenting, faith and more
Alli: And let me pray. Dear heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of motherhood. Thank you that you placed our children and our families on purpose, that you knitted them together in the womb, that you knew we would be great moms. We don't have to be perfect. We don't have to do everything right. But great moms love you and love their kids. And if we get that right, we're going to be just fine. If there is a woman listening in the middle of a struggle in parenting, I pray that you give her peace and you give her wisdom and you give her strength. There's a woman listening and she's lonely in her marriage. I pray that you bring them together. There's a woman listening who's going through financial difficulty. I pray that this is the year of provision. There are women listening who are dealing with health issues for themselves or someone they love. I pray for healing. Lord, we need you. We love you. We are so, so thankful that you empower us to live out our calling every single day. In Jesus name, amen.
BECKY: Amen. Hey, friends. Thanks for joining us today for this episode of the Connected Mom podcast. And I'm hoping that you're going to join us next week where we'll have another conversation that will help you connect more deeply with God, more empathically with your girlfriends, and more intentionally with your child. Join us next week for the Connected Mom pod.