Today’s guest is Nathalie Savell of the Empowering Stepmoms Summit. Natalie is a holistic psychotherapist, a certified holistic health coach and a certified stepmom coach. She sees psychotherapy clients dealing with anxiety and life transition challenges, relationship issues and spiritual disease in person, via video chat and through walk and talk sessions in Baltimore, Maryland and coaches stepmoms virtually to help them go from overwhelm, confusion, stress and resentment to confidence, clarity and connection. We are discussing thriving in step parenting. Join us!

“People have more power than they think. I hear a lot of stepmoms feel so out of control and so disempowered by the ex, the kids, whatever their partner is doing and there is support out there."

"It doesn't take as much as you think to get on a path that's a lot more helpful that makes you feel a lot more empowered."

"Get the support that you need and deserve. Reach out and get it."

What you’ll hear in this episode:

-The mind body connection

-Flexibility and how that relates to kindness and firmness

-The Think Tree exercise and how that facilitates flexibility with boundaries

-Building connection in step-parenting

-Control and step-parenting - finding balance

-Adjusting from step-parenting to raising one's own child

-Parenting and commitment

-Co- parenting as a stepmom when the child's other parent doesn't want them to participate

-Establishing boundaries for self care

-Giving yourself permission to have feelings about your stepkids and not feeling pressured to feel loving all the time

-The value of couple work in being a united front

-Finding bottom line things you agree on and where your boundaries are

What does Joyful Courage mean to you?

I love the term Joyful Courage so much. It's like the courage to keep doing the work. The courage to keep going and you know, I call the stepmoms in my group "stepmom warriors" some times because I'm like "You're a warrior, keep fighting, keep going, fighting the good fight to be a loving person." For me, it's like a spiritual warrior for being on a path of love. It takes a lot of courage because it's not easy and a lot of people are going to judge you. And a lot of people are going to naysay you. And to add in that joy in there, so not only are you being brave and courageous, and like keep putting one foot in front of the other but how can you have fun while doing it and why not? So why not peel back the layers and see how you can be childlike in your battles, in your love battles. I think we all need to be that way, to have fun, so it's important to take things lightly at the same time that you work hard at them.

Resources:

Interview series on NathalieSavell.com

Where to find Nathalie:

Nathaliesavell.comStepmom Strong Coaching group on Facebook Stepmom Strong Facebook pageStepmom Strong Coaching on Instagram

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