Mother Plus Podcast

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Today, we’re going to talk about what it means to be a mother + unorganized, messy, scatterbrained adult. Join Stacey as she very openly shares about her most embarrassing quality, and what happened when she did something about it. 

In this episode, we cover:

• It was generally acceptable for me to be a quirky, forgetful, unorganized person when I was a kid and a teenager. But it was no longer acceptable when I became an adult (read: Wife, Homeowner, and Mom).
• There is a lot of shame that comes with being messy and unorganized. I thought I was stupid, inept, and lazy. Something was wrong with me. 
• How “fixing it” with typical cleaning and organizing advice DID NOT WORK.
• My discovery of KC Davis, executive functioning, and the revolutionary message of: Care tasks are morally neutral.
• I share my three takeaways that have changed the way I think about myself and my ability to do care tasks

Stacey is the host (along with Stephanie Sprenger) of the Mother Plus Podcast. She is mother to two loud, full-of-life girls, ages 3 and 5. Before-Children Stacey couldn’t stop talking about her future children. And by now, she thought she’d be totally immersed in motherhood, happily sitting on the floor, “doing voices,” tickling tummies, and trying desperately to hold on to every precious moment. But instead, she found herself on that same floor reminiscing about the days when she was a writer (published in Paleo Magazine, Hub Spot, New You Magazine, and TheList.com), an ad girl (working on brands like Revlon, Green Toys, Enjoy Life, and Eco Tools), and health nut badass (with a successful food blog, health coaching certification, and stint as a personal chef).

Mentioned in this episode:
KC Davis of Struggle Care
Her website: https://www.strugglecare.com/
Her podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/struggle-care/id1643931456

WHERE TO FIND US NOW

Connect with Stacey

• 🎧 The Next Phase Podcast —  
• on Apple & Spotify 
• 📸 Instagram: @stacehutson

Connect with Steph

• 🎧 The Peri-Normal Podcast
  on Apple and Spotify
• ✍️ The Reclamation Era
  on Substack
• 📝 MidCircle
  — a writing community for midlife women
• 📸 Instagram: @stephsprenger

Send us Fan Mail

In this episode, we we meet Cindy Shuster, mother + parent coach. Note, we didn't say parenting coach. Because Cindy specializes in helping the parents. Not just with their children, but with themselves. That's where it all begins. We cover:

1. Cindy's "meltdown moment" when she lost it on her family, and how it was both an epiphany and a turning point when she learned the importance of setting clear boundaries and communicating expectations before reaching our boiling point.
2. Cindy suggests that while it would be great for family members to step up without being asked, the kindest thing we can do for them is do our own work: set boundaries, remember your innate value, and stop doing things we actually don't want to do in order to get approval and validation.
3. Cindy has learned to be comfortable with her kids' struggles. While none of us enjoy watching our kids suffer, Cindy talks about the importance of having the capacity to tolerate their challenges without the knee-jerk reaction to fix them, and how for many of us, fixing our kids' problems boils down to this: "Can I please hurry up and make this feeling in myself go away?"
4. "You are your child's favorite toy, so stop being so exciting when they are misbehaving." Cindy talks about the importance of positive connection vs focusing only on problem behavior. 
5. Cindy sheds light on some particularly "American styles of parenting" that are harming our kids—including a focus on achievement, too much interference, and an intolerance for failure. Cindy says, "Kids develop resilience by feeling competent in their own life."
6. With all the information, opinions, and resources out there, Cindy reminds us that the most important thing is for us to return to our own intuition and parent with confidence. "You don't have to look to the left and the right."
7. Cindy's first question to parents; "What are you doing for self-care?" The oxygen mask analogy is true—you can't help anyone if you aren't filling your own tank every day. 

Cindy Shuster is a PCI® certified parent coach and a Nurtured Heart Approach® Trainer. For the past 7 years, she has been working with parents and educators to provide effective and transformational strategies that improve relationships with the children in their care. Cindy has her B.S. and M.S. in education with a minor in Child Psychology. Prior to parent coaching, Cindy worked as an elementary teacher for 10 years. Cindy has lived in the Baltimore area for 30+ years with her husband and 3 sons. Cindy is passionate about helping families and educators navigate the complex challenges of modern-day parenting and classroom management. She is on a mission to bring more peace and joy into homes and classrooms!

Website: https://parentcoachcindy.com/
Instagram: @parentcoachcindy


For 30% Off the DIY Boudoir Course, visit:
http://motherplus.diybombshell.com/
And use code MOTHERPLUS

WHERE TO FIND US NOW

Connect with Stacey

• 🎧 The Next Phase Podcast —  
• on Apple & Spotify 
• 📸 Instagram: @stacehutson

Connect with Steph

• 🎧 The Peri-Normal Podcast
  on Apple and Spotify
• ✍️ The Reclamation Era
  on Substack
• 📝 MidCircle
  — a writing community for midlife women
• 📸 Instagram: @stephsprenger

Send us Fan Mail

1. In light of us both having had close friends pass away recently, we reflect on balancing grief with living life in a way that makes you feel truly alive. 
2. We talk about the sacred space funerals offer to celebrate life and grieve in community, and how both of us have always prioritized making that time, regardless of the obstacles it takes to get there. 
3. Losing loved ones inevitably causes us to ponder our life choices and puts us back in touch with ourselves and the way we want to be living—it can be a wake-up call and a signal to pay attention to our senses and get back in the moment. 
4. While there's no way to live in a constant state of presence and awareness of mortality (nor should we!), we think there's a way to take breaks from our frenetic, autopilot lives to pause and notice what's important more often than we often do. 
5. Stacey shares the questions she's been asking herself after losing her friend: What do I want be doing? What do I want to be feeling? What don't I want to be doing and feeling? And if I died tomorrow, would I be satisfied with how I spent my day, my month, my years?
6. While mindfulness and intention may be buzzwords in our busy modern lives, we think there's a reason for that: Becoming more mindful of finding the beauty in the small, mundane moments of our lives and bringing more intention to our choices can help to balance grief with meaning after losing loved ones. 

We are covering some heavy ground in this Stace and Steph episode. Both of us recently lost dear friends and traveled to their funerals, and together we are sharing what those experiences felt like and meant to us. Join us for some moments of sadness and questioning, but also some lightness and joy as we remember our beloved friends and what we learned from them, how they touched our lives, and what we are trying to do after these losses to truly feel alive and make our days, months, and years count.

To see Josh's art, visit:
https://www.facebook.com/JoshMillerArt/ 

To buy his book, go to:
https://www.amazingiowans.com/  

WHERE TO FIND US NOW

Connect with Stacey

• 🎧 The Next Phase Podcast —  
• on Apple & Spotify 
• 📸 Instagram: @stacehutson

Connect with Steph

• 🎧 The Peri-Normal Podcast
  on Apple and Spotify
• ✍️ The Reclamation Era
  on Substack
• 📝 MidCircle
  — a writing community for midlife women
• 📸 Instagram: @stephsprenger

Send us Fan Mail

In this episode, we cover:

1. The gift and curse of the multi-hyphenated mother plusser: As someone who does a little bit of this and a little bit of that, Steph shares how having a "cobbled together career" sometimes makes her feel like less of a real adult, and how challenging it can be to be pulled in multiple directions. 
2. Sometimes our intuition speaks to us through our bodies. After losing her voice seven times in a year, Steph realized it was time to change directions, take a break from teaching music classes, and finally write the book she's been dreaming about for nine years.
3. The "Who Cares?" factor: as mothers, it's so easy to discount both our struggles and the importance of our stories. On this podcast, we are trying hard to stop minimizing our needs and diminishing the value of putting ourselves into the world, no disclaimers, no apologies, and Steph talks about how this relates to finding the real purpose of her book. 
4. Find out how Stephanie's nostalgia pilgrimage idea turned into something deeper, thanks to her experience in therapy. 
5. Steph talks about overcoming her discomfort that writing a memoir is a navel-gazing and self-indulgent pursuit, and reminds us that when we put our truths and our stories out there, the impact stretches far and wide: to our families, to readers, and to our community in general. There is always universality in the stories we share. 

In this Steph solo episode, we talk about career changes, following our intuition, and gazing at our navels. Steph talks about her big plan to write a book this summer, and encourages listeners to follow along on this podcast and her Substack: https://stephsprenger.substack.com/. Find out how the idea for her book was born, and how it evolved over nine long years before the time was finally right to start writing it. 

WHERE TO FIND US NOW

Connect with Stacey

• 🎧 The Next Phase Podcast —  
• on Apple & Spotify 
• 📸 Instagram: @stacehutson

Connect with Steph

• 🎧 The Peri-Normal Podcast
  on Apple and Spotify
• ✍️ The Reclamation Era
  on Substack
• 📝 MidCircle
  — a writing community for midlife women
• 📸 Instagram: @stephsprenger

Send us Fan Mail

Mother + Storyteller, Jamie Yuenger has a background in radio, TV, and folklore. She describes her interests as a merger of "identity and how one expresses one's identity," which has led to her current project the podcast "If You Knew Me," which documents the inner lives of women.

In this episode...

1. Find out why Jamie hated her NPR internship—"I didn't know, but I was an entrepreneur,"—and instead pursued helping families and businesses document their histories and share their stories.
2. Jamie shares her perspective on the threefold power of women sharing their stories: defining and creating meaning from your own narrative, the revolutionary connection that occurs when we realize we aren't alone, and the fact that women's lives are finally being highlighted after having been absent from the history books for so long. 
3. "The inner lives of women are big enough." Learn why Jamie decided to pivot from a show about life purpose to one about women's inner lives.
4. Hosting "If You Knew Me" has shown Jamie the value and power of giving women the opportunity to be listened to. She provides a container, as a witness, for women to really process and understand their own stories. 
5. "I was constantly having this sense that I used to be somebody." Jamie shares her identity journey after becoming a mother, and how important it is for her career/life balance to have a partner who doesn't "help," but rather does more than half the work.

Bio: Jamie Yuenger is the co-creator and host of the podcast “If You Knew Me” that documents stories about women’s inner lives. She is also the founder of StoryKeep, a company that works with families and firms to create films and podcasts about their histories. She writes, mothers and cooks out of her home in the Netherlands. Listen to the "If You Knew Me" podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/if-you-knew-me/id1592658728

Link to Steph's episode on If You Knew Me: I Kept Losing My Voice. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i-kept-losing-my-voice/id1592658728?i=1000606696704

Link to Jamie's story, Pandora's Box: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pandoras-box/id1542094287?i=1000517150695

Instagram: @jamie_yuenger & @ifyoukneme.show 

WHERE TO FIND US NOW

Connect with Stacey

• 🎧 The Next Phase Podcast —  
• on Apple & Spotify 
• 📸 Instagram: @stacehutson

Connect with Steph

• 🎧 The Peri-Normal Podcast
  on Apple and Spotify
• ✍️ The Reclamation Era
  on Substack
• 📝 MidCircle
  — a writing community for midlife women
• 📸 Instagram: @stephsprenger

Send us Fan Mail

Today's guest, Sarah Marie, is the epitome of a multi-passionate mother-plusser. In her own words, she wishes she could be "entrepreneur Barbie" and do a little of everything. Sarah says, "I am an entrepreneur, I'm a public figure, I'm a photographer, and I help everyday women uncover their sexy, divine feminine power."

• Sarah grew up fearlessly pursuing her dreams—running for office, auditioning for talent shows—and says "she always lost," but it never caused her to quit. Learn how her tenacity and pursuit of fun and just going for it has impacted her adult life and career.
• "My career has grown alongside my kids." Sarah became a mom in her early twenties before her career really hit the public eye. She has navigated her many roles with her kids always part of the journey, and has naturally passed on her fearlessness to them. 
• One of Sarah's superpowers is integration. She boldly states that motherhood does not define her, it's an element of who she is, and she doesn't put herself in a position to choose between herself and her kids.
• Sarah wasn't always so fearless and unapologetic. Learn about how losing her way in the early years of marriage and motherhood in a religious and abusive culture helped her evolve into the person she is today.
• The common thread connecting the different elements of Sarah's work is that she is passionate about inspiring women to be the best versions of themselves, whatever that looks like. Sarah's philosophy on beauty: "If it makes you happy, if it lights you up, do it."
• As a boudoir photographer, Sarah has noticed that every single woman she works with is insecure about their appearance and has felt like they've lost themselves in a way. With her DIY boudoir course, Sarah gets to teach women how to recapture their confident feminine energy, all by themselves.
  
  

Where to find Sarah:
https://sarahmarie.net/
Instagram
Facebook

** Get A Special Mother Plus Discount off of her DIY Bombshell Course! **
Just visit motherplus.diybombshell.com and use the code MOTHERPLUS at checkout for 30% off!

WHERE TO FIND US NOW

Connect with Stacey

• 🎧 The Next Phase Podcast —  
• on Apple & Spotify 
• 📸 Instagram: @stacehutson

Connect with Steph

• 🎧 The Peri-Normal Podcast
  on Apple and Spotify
• ✍️ The Reclamation Era
  on Substack
• 📝 MidCircle
  — a writing community for midlife women
• 📸 Instagram: @stephsprenger

Send us Fan Mail

Join Stacey as she explains her internal struggle with wanting to accomplish all of these big audacious goals, and wanting to be a fully present mother.

• It feels like we're surrounded by stay at home moms who are succeeding as entrepreneurs, authors, and podcasters...
• But Stacey wonders, at what cost?
• When your time is accounted for at almost every moment of the day, what time is left for empire-building? 
• What if you don't want to sacrifice your family time or husband time? Does it mean that your drive to succeed isn't strong enough?
• Stacey explains that she doesn't do half ass; she does "whole ass." Which feels impossible when she's got three very large things on her plate: Motherhood, Work, and a business. How does she do all of them with all of her? 
• The answer is likely, she can't. As Shonda Rhimes says, "Whenever you see me somewhere succeeding in one area of my life. That almost certainly means I am failing in another area of my life."
• Stacey recounts a time when she heard a mom lament about what she was going to do with her time now that her son is in preschool. She's dumbfounded, but also jealous of this mom who is completely satisfied by motherhood.

Referenced:
Maci Welch from Episode 39: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/this-mom-wrote-a-book-a-story-of-mental/id1596164287?i=1000585328021

Listen To Your Mother Show
Episode about it: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/this-live-show-helps-mothers-share-their-stories-all/id1596164287?i=1000551758706
Link to website: https://listentoyourmothershow.com/

WHERE TO FIND US NOW

Connect with Stacey

• 🎧 The Next Phase Podcast —  
• on Apple & Spotify 
• 📸 Instagram: @stacehutson

Connect with Steph

• 🎧 The Peri-Normal Podcast
  on Apple and Spotify
• ✍️ The Reclamation Era
  on Substack
• 📝 MidCircle
  — a writing community for midlife women
• 📸 Instagram: @stephsprenger

Send us Fan Mail

Allie Lefevere is a mother + writer/marketer and podcaster. She runs Obedient Agency with her best friend, specializing in humor marketing. Join us, as we talk with Allie about:

• Ambivalence in pregnancy: Allie openly talks about her uncertainty with entering motherhood, and once she became pregnant with her daughter, how that uncertainty didn’t magically fade away. 
• Life after baby: A typical day in the life for Allie changed when she had her daughter, but not as dramatically as you might think. As she says, her and her husband had 14 years to discuss how they wanted their lives to look like when they became parents.
• Parenting with intention: For her and her husband, keeping their jobs, their social life, and their identities were non-negotiable. Allie didn’t want her identity to be just a mom; she was and is confident in what she needs in her life in addition to motherhood to thrive.
• Confidence in entrepreneurship: Trust in yourself enough to know that you’ll figure out a way. Allie explains her transition from corporate consulting to entrepreneurship, and how “if we’re carving our own path, there’s no way to feel inferior.”
• Silly goose fun: How Allie embraces motherhood by just being silly with her girl. Fun can coexist with everything else that goes into motherhood, and life in general.

Allie has spent the last decade creating, launching, and scaling fun-centric global programs for brands; whipping up their humorous branding and advertising campaigns, and making sure every touchpoint of the customer experience is unforgettable, unconventional, and most importantly, un-boring. 

Rooted in the power of fun and the potency of humor, her agency—Obedient—believes that traditional marketing is dead, and invites brands of all sizes and at all stages to join them in dancing on its grave. She would never brag that her work has been published in places like: Adweek, The New York Times, VICE, Vogue, Esquire, New York Magazine, and GOOP, but this is a bio, so she’ll make an exception. In addition to her client work—brands like Blue Bunny, Native, Choice Organics, Clif Bar, Alleyoop, and The Dallas Cowboys—she cohosts a trio of business and comedy podcasts: Can They Brand That? a video brainstorming show where they pick a brand, set the clock for 20-minutes and ideate as many creative ideas as they can, Brandsplaining—a business-casual podcast, and Fangasm—a comedy podcast reading steamy, pop-culture fanfic (Think: Marvel, Schitt's Creek, The Office, Harry Potter, Star Wars, etc.) that was ranked top comedy podcast by Buzzfeed and Apple Podcasts.

At the end of the day, Allie lives to prove that you don’t need to prey on the fears of your consumers to make the kill. Instead? Excite them to death. RIP, your sad sales and long live fun. ;)

Where to find Allie:
Obedientagency.com
https://www.instagram.com/obedientagency/
https://www.instagram.com/allielefevere/ 

WHERE TO FIND US NOW

Connect with Stacey

• 🎧 The Next Phase Podcast —  
• on Apple & Spotify 
• 📸 Instagram: @stacehutson

Connect with Steph

• 🎧 The Peri-Normal Podcast
  on Apple and Spotify
• ✍️ The Reclamation Era
  on Substack
• 📝 MidCircle
  — a writing community for midlife women
• 📸 Instagram: @stephsprenger

Send us Fan Mail

1. On this solo episode, Steph is talking about the "3 stages of the momcation": anticipation/preparation; the actual trip; the dreaded reentry. 
2. Anticipation: the week or two before the trip when you lose your mind because you need a break SO badly and are SO close and start imagining all the things that could go wrong to ruin your vacation. 
3. The actual escape: Sweet relief! The exhale. This is the part when you realize you have zero responsibilities and you can enjoy absolute freedom and just BE. 
4. The reentry: This could potentially be a time when you integrate all the peace and rejuvenation back into your daily routine, but let's be honest. It's usually a depressing shitshow. 
5. What would happen if we got away without our kids—either alone, with a partner, or with friends or siblings—more often? Would we have the same kind of desperate need to escape? Would it make anticipation and reentry less brutal?
6. Our hectic and overwhelming lives make the contrast between getaways and reality painfully noticeable. Steph asserts that we definitely need vacations to escape reality from time to time, but that it would help if we built in more gentleness, relaxation, and yes, even decadence, into our daily lives to minimize the whiplash effect of reality vs vacation. 

In this solo episode, Steph is talking about momcations again—one of our favorite topics on this show. Our guests Laura and Lucy both took completely solo trips without their kids, but many moms travel with girlfriends, siblings, or their partners. Steph was able to skip town with her husband for their annual kid-free mountain weekend, and she noticed some things about the before, during, and after. If you've ever lost your damn mind worrying that the vacation you desperately needed was going to be ruined, or had a nervous breakdown upon the dreaded re-entry, this is the episode for you. 

WHERE TO FIND US NOW

Connect with Stacey

• 🎧 The Next Phase Podcast —  
• on Apple & Spotify 
• 📸 Instagram: @stacehutson

Connect with Steph

• 🎧 The Peri-Normal Podcast
  on Apple and Spotify
• ✍️ The Reclamation Era
  on Substack
• 📝 MidCircle
  — a writing community for midlife women
• 📸 Instagram: @stephsprenger

Send us Fan Mail

In this episode, we cover:

1. Lucy is extremely clear on what it takes to balance running a business AND homeschooling her three kids: delegate, ask for help, and expect your partner to step up. Bonus if you can do those things with minimal guilt and being totally ok with knowing that is what needs to happen to pursue your passion like Lucy does—she is a rockstar!
2. We do a deep dive on guilt and why it's so hard to let go of. Lucy shares her tips on sharing the household burden without taking on guilt that she should be doing more by herself (plus a rant by Steph that husbands don't "help/babysit" and that generations of systemic dysfunction around gender roles is what got us into this mess...😉). 
3. Once again, we get a reminder of how important it is to advocate for your own health and not settle for feeling miserable or unwell. Lucy shares her experience as a dietician in the medical field and how the focus on medication and just accepting conditions disempowers clients from taking charge of their health with nutrition and lifestyle changes. 
4. As a registered dietician, Lucy has lots of suggestions about reducing processed food and sugar and increasing healthy fats, but her top three tips for moms to incorporate right now are actually mindset shifts rather than nutritional plans: become more aware of what you're eating, start putting yourself first, and ditch the all or nothing mentality. You can do that!
5. Lucy took a MOMCATION!! After listening to our episode with Laura (episode 13), she was inspired to take a trip all by herself (with another one planned!). Find out what it took to make that happen, where she went, and what she did: you will be so inspired by her " This is non-negotiable" stance.

Lucy Hutchings is a Registered Dietician on a mission to empower busy moms struggling with pain and inflammation so they can lose weight, gain energy, and live their best life. She believes in a holistic approach to health and wellness where there is no one-size-fits-all diet. Lucy Hutchings is a homeschooling mom of 3, host of the Healthy Mama Podcast and is the owner of Wellness from Within Nutrition LLC where she provides nutrition coaching to women and men ready to start their health journey and take control of their life. 

Where to find Lucy:
http://www.lucyhutchingsrd.com/
https://www.facebook.com/wellnessfromwithinnutrition
https://www.instagram.com/lucyhutchingsrd/

WHERE TO FIND US NOW

Connect with Stacey

• 🎧 The Next Phase Podcast —  
• on Apple & Spotify 
• 📸 Instagram: @stacehutson

Connect with Steph

• 🎧 The Peri-Normal Podcast
  on Apple and Spotify
• ✍️ The Reclamation Era
  on Substack
• 📝 MidCircle
  — a writing community for midlife women
• 📸 Instagram: @stephsprenger