The Single Mom Podcast - Single Parent Advice, Support & a Little Bit of Humor

Every year when New Year’s Eve and the New Year roll around everyone starts talking about resolutions and how the New Year will bring a ‘New Them’. Which is great in theory – but when you start the New Year with these big plans or ‘resolutions’ but you are still the same you inside then you will likely fail.

For example, if your resolution is to lose weight but you don’t really change any of the bad habits that helped you gain the weight in the first place then you won’t be successful. If your mindset isn’t right then you will ultimately fail.

How often have you found yourself saying “I’ll start my diet tomorrow.” or “I’ll exercise tomorrow.” and then you make another excuse and another. I know that I myself have been very guilty of it. I often times feel like the amount of weight I have to lose makes me feel like it’s impossible so I give up before I even start. And unless I change that mindset for myself I will never lose the weight. Changing your habits, replacing things instead of cutting things out and other various ‘tricks’ can help you on your journey. 

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The holiday season is by far my favorite time of year. I absolutely love seeing all the lights and decorations and putting up the Christmas tree with the kids. This time of year just always gives me that warm fuzzy feeling, but for some it brings a lot of judgement.

Recently a mother came under fire over social media for providing TOO MUCH for her children.

Emma Tapping, mother of three and savings blogger, posted an image on her Instagram account showing her Christmas tree almost engulfed in presents. Soon after the image was taken and used to create a meme stating

“It’s nearly time for all the materialistic parents to compete and broadcast how many presents their kids have. Just remember, there are a lot of children who won’t get much.”

This set off a social media frenzy of people criticizing and casting judgment upon this mother for her post.

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Unless you have been living under a rock you've probably heard about the recent strike in the 'War on Christmas'. That's right! Yet another company is guilty of taking the 'Christ' out of Christmas. Starbucks recently unveiled their holiday cup and apparently there is a bit of an issue with it.

It's RED.

That's it, nothing more - just red.

Now for most of us rational and non-nutbag people this is not an issue. Red cup with a green logo, that's pretty festive to me. (Maybe next year they can make it plaid - I like plaid.) In the past Starbucks has had cups with reindeer, snow flakes, ornaments and such as decor on their mugs. This year they went with something basic and yet still Christmas-like. Just plain red.

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Today’s Single Mom Podcast discusses a topic that has really started to bother me lately.

As a parent I completely understand that there are times when our children will push us to our absolute limits. Times when we will be so angry that we have to walk away from them and count to eleventy-billion before we can even think of speaking to them again. Often times this will result in the child being grounded or punished in some form or another.

However, there has been a steady increase over the past few years of parents utilizing social media to dish out what some are calling tough love and others call emotional abuse. Parents who take to Facebook or YouTube and post videos of them basically humiliating their children for all the world to see.

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As a single mother I am always looking for various ways to save money and one of my biggest expenses is clothing for my kids. Especially with how quickly my daughter is growing. As a baby she was growing out of her clothes every few months it seemed.

So when I found out about a local consignment sale I was very excited to see what that was all about. I had looked into consignment stores in the past, where you take your items in and they stay at the store until someone comes in and buys them – but I was never really a fan. There is no guarantee of if there will be customers coming in and where will your items be stored or displayed?  And on top of that, how long will it take for my items to sell (if they ever sell at all)?   

So when one day I found the ad for the Denver Just Between Friends sale I became very interested. JBF is a franchise that runs consignment sales across the country where people can buy and sell gently used items twice per year. (Other locations may have sales more often – I can only speak to the Denver sale on frequency.)

The very first time I logged into their site I was very impressed with the way they ran the sale and decided that I would try it out and have participated in every sale since!

Here are the top 5 reasons I love consignment sales.   

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Recently one of my lovely children brought home a nasty little bug that they happily spread around to our entire family, not once but twice! Yep that little germ decided that it was having such a good time making us feel yucky that it stuck around for a second round of phlegmy shenanigans.

Now I am fairly certain that this pesky germ was introduced to our family from one of their friends from school. There have been a multitude of sick kids in my daughter’s class as well as at my sons’ high school; children are just little walking petri dishes. This is normally where you see people posting about how people should keep their sick kids home so they don’t make everyone else sick. If you were expecting that kind of a rant then you should stop reading at this point.   

I am not one of those people who will complain about people sending their kids to school sick, because I have in fact in the past sent my children to school sick. Yep, I have dosed my child with cough  medicine and Tylenol and sent them on their not-so-merry ways all the while hoping that they remember to cover their mouths when they cough and to wash their hands.

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You hear all the time about things like fat shaming and body shaming and all those horrible instances of one person making another person feel bad about themselves. Recently a woman named Nicole Arbour gained a great deal of infamy due to her "Fat Shaming" video where she basically insulted overweight people everywhere. Now I understand that she felt that it was a bit of satire, which I almost always enjoy, however it was done in very poor taste and while MAYBE her intentions were to give some 'tough love' to people who struggle with their weight it ended up simply pissing a lot of people off. (I will not be posting a link to the video because it is really quite offensive - but I'm sure you can find it if you really want to search for it.)

But this brought up a topic that I have found to be a huge problem in the parenting community.

Parent Shaming

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 Don't give up!

 Never give up!

 Don't quit!

 We constantly hear this in our lives. That you should never give up on anything, that you should keep fighting, keep working hard, keep pushing if you want to get ahead in life, if you want to be happy, if you want the outcome that you desire you CAN'T QUIT!

Sometimes when you let go or give up on something that has been causing you so much stress and unhappiness it allows you to be open to new experiences, more positive and happy experiences. Staying in a situation that continues to cause you misery simply because you don't want to give up, or feel like you failed is not good for you. 

 In this weeks podcast I go into this a little more in depth. 

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 I posted a few weeks back that I was going to start on a new challenge: Lose 40 pounds.

 Yep – 40!

That’s a lot of weight to lose for me, especially since the last few years I have been packing it on instead of losing weight. I mentioned how I had gained the weight and why it was so hard for me to lose. The biggest reason being that I REALLY like food. That and I had lived a fairly sedentary lifestyle for quite a few years now.

In this podcast I talk about my weight loss struggle and different ways that may help you lose weight....

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One of the best books I have ever read is the 4 Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. It has brought me a great sense of clarity through my life and helped me get to a better place internally.

Reading this book and learning this concept of not taking things personally really helped me develop a better relationship with myself AND with my ex if you can believe that!

Today's podcast is about remembering not to take things personally and how I had to remember this lesson very recently.

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