Balance the Mother Load: R.E.I.N.V.E.N.T. Your Life in Just 8 Weeks!

By Carly Cooper

Juggling two young kids and a full-time job derailed me. This book put me back on track and even had me laughing. Thank you, Carly!

Lisi Harrison, best-selling author of The Clique series, The Alphas series, and Monster High series. www.lisiharrison.com

You need this book if

you consider yourself lucky when you have time to shave both legs

your kids think its odd when you spend more than a few hours with them

you think running out the door counts as exercise

youre having a more intimate relationship with your smart phone than your spouse

you think putting on clean clothes is dressing up

you look forward to your annual pap just to have some me time

So many moms neglect themselves and their well-being because they think its the only way to take care of their family. After all, isnt that what a good mom does?

Carly Cooper, a certified life coach for moms, shares her unique R.E.I.N.V.E.N.T. System that she created to help busy, stressed-out moms shift this backward perception and get back in touch with who they really are. Using practical advice, tips, strategies, and hands-on exercises, you are shown exactly how to become the best woman and mom you can be by learning to have more freedom, more sanity, and more time to enjoy it all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Jan 24, 2012
• ISBN: 9781452544281

Carly Cooper

Carly Cooper is a certified life coach for moms and the founder of Balance the Mother Load™. She served as the National Mom Ambassador for Living Well, a Johnson and Johnson initiative, and has been interviewed on various TV and radio shows and for Chatelaine and Flare magazine. When Carly became a mom, she noticed many mothers struggling with guilty feelings, unrealistic expectations, and the inability to balance it all. Since then, it has been her mission to help moms balance their mother load. Carly lives with her husband, son, and dog in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. www.balance-the-mother-load.com

Book preview

Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Introduction

WEEK ONE Redefine Motherhood

WEEK TWO Envision Your Ideal Life

WEEK THREE Improve your relationships

WEEK FOUR Nurture Yourself

WEEK FIVE Vanquish Mommy Guilt

WEEK SIX Expectation Overhaul

WEEK SEVEN Nix Negativity Now

WEEK EIGHT Time Management Tune Up

Recommended Reading

Bibliography

About the Author

Dedication

To Jack, for setting me on this amazing journey. And to Marc, for supporting me while I take it. I love you guys infinity plus one.

Acknowledgments

First and most importantly, I’d like to thank my mom and my dad. Without the two of you, I wouldn’t even be here to write this book! Throughout my life, you have given me unconditional love and support and the wings to fly even when I wasn’t sure where I was heading. I appreciate and love you both more than you’ll ever know.

To Lisi and B.J. Thanks for paving the way and being such positive influences in my life. Your successes have made me proud to share your DNA and I love you both madly.

To Marc, Jack and Scout. The three of you show me that love, joy and laughter are the most important ingredients in life. Your constant support, encouragement and excitement keep me going and fuel me to continue to live my best life. I’m so blessed to have you all in my corner. Thanks!

To my additional family and friends. Thank you for your ongoing support, wisdom, humour, and the ability to always know exactly what to say.

To my editor Hailey Eisen. Thanks for helping me shape this book into what it is. Your feedback, guidance and grammatical skills are much appreciated. You were an absolute pleasure to work with.

And last but not least, thank you to all my clients, past and present. I appreciate your trust in me and I truly admire your strength and courage. You keep me going and inspire me to pursue my dreams. For that I am eternally grateful.

Introduction

My Story

I know firsthand how hard being a mom can be. I am one. I’m also a wife, an entrepreneur, a daughter, a sister, a friend, a dog owner and someone who’s very attached to her TV. It’s fair to say, I’ve got a lot on my plate. But, I’m also happy, fulfilled and living my life guilt-free—at least most of the time. Things weren’t always this peachy keen in my world.

I was someone who was always searching for my passion and purpose in life. Finding a career I loved was my mission from the day I graduated high school. And for about 10 years it felt like mission impossible. I tried my hand in advertising, party planning and running my own scrapbooking business. But those jobs left me feeling much like I do after eating Chinese food—empty and wanting more.

I started to think that maybe having a child and becoming a mom would help fill the void. This idea shocked me to the core. I was never one of those girls whose uterus would ache when she saw a baby. In fact, when my close friend had her first daughter and invited me over to see her, instead of taking her lovingly into my arms and gushing over her sweet coos, I asked her to shake a paw.

It wasn’t until I turned 30 that I even considered the possibility of procreating. I thought: well, my career isn’t doing it for me so maybe I’m meant to be a mom. Mom by default. Maybe not the best strategy. But, I went for it anyway. My new mission—to get pregnant, began. Welcome to mission impossible two. After a year and a half of trying, a day surgery (to clear the scar tissue surrounding my ovaries thanks to endometriosis) and way too many Big Mac combos to heal my emotional pain, I finally got pregnant.

That time of struggle and uncertainty was as mentally draining for me as reading my mutual fund statements. But, I wouldn’t trade that experience for the world. When my son was born I appreciated him in a way that I’m not sure I would have had I conceived right away. So, in the beginning I was thrilled to change every diaper, be his main food supply and channel my inner raver to help stay awake all hours of the night, surviving on pure adrenaline.

When my son was six-months-old the honeymoon period came crashing to a halt. I felt more exhausted and irritated than I had when I’d forced myself to watch Citizen Kane. I remember sitting in a mom and baby music class with about a dozen other mothers, our babies staring blankly into our overly animated faces as we sang The Itsy Bitsy Spider. When the song ended, I heard a few moms talking beside me. They were comparing notes on the progress of their babies and the milestones they’d already reached. I felt like jumping in and bragging about how well my six-month-old was already crawling, but in truth he was just really good at sitting in his own poop and not crying about it. So I decided to keep my comments to myself and continue to eavesdrop. I heard them pass judgment on other mothers they knew who had stopped breastfeeding before their babies were a year old and were already talking about going back to work, before their maternity leave was finished.

I broke into a prickly sweat. It felt as if they were talking about me. I stopped breastfeeding at three months, not because it was hard or painful but because I was no longer interested in being an All-You-Can-Eat Boob Buffet. And I was itching to go back to work and do something that didn’t involve being vomited on five times a day. I felt like the worst mother in the world. I looked at my precious, innocent son and remembered how long it had taken for his arrival. I questioned my feelings and berated myself for even considering leaving him to pursue personal interests. I felt like a bad mom for wanting more for myself at the expense of my child. I felt incredibly guilty, so I pushed my feelings aside and pretended as if everything was going great.

But that was just the beginning of my downward spiral. I hit rock bottom when I was at the Gap buying my first pair of transitional pants. You know the kind. The unflattering cargos with a drawstring to give you room until your uterus shrinks. After looking around to make sure there weren’t any fashion police lingering in the store, I grabbed a size that I confidently thought would be too big. But when I tried them on in the extremely unflattering fluorescently lit change room, not only could I see every hemoglobin in my red blood cells, but I couldn’t even pull the hideous pants up past my butt. Damn my slow shrinking uterus!

So there I was, with the cargos covering the wrong half of my legs and tears burning my eyes. I didn’t recognize myself anymore; not just because I looked like I was wearing a fat suit, but because the ambitious, high-achieving, go-getter that I had once been, was MIA and had been replaced with someone who was fragile, sensitive and totally unsure of herself. And this was all my doing.

Looking back, this is how I’d describe myself during that time:

black.jpg    I spent plenty of days and nights feeling overwhelmed by my schedule.

black.jpg    I felt guilty about way too many things to mention (but, buy me lunch and I’ll be happy to share).

black.jpg    I felt as if I was being judged for decisions and choices I made or didn’t make.

black.jpg    I felt lost and like I didn’t know who I was anymore (mostly because I was too tired to remember!).

black.jpg    I felt unhappy with the way I looked and terrified that I’d be destined for a life of wearing mom jeans and ponytails with scrunchies (the horror!).

black.jpg    I felt disconnected from the important relationships in my life.

black.jpg    I felt unsure that I would ever be anything more than just a mom.

And the worst part of it was, I hadn’t done a thing to change these feelings. I accepted this behavior and way of thinking because I thought a good mom puts everyone else’s needs before her own.

As I stood there looking at myself in the mirror that day, I vowed that I would do whatever it took to change my life. Just making that decision got my heart pumping with an excitement that I hadn’t felt since my epidural kicked in. I knew I was on to something.

The next day, I turned on a local morning show and saw an interview with a life coach by the name of Bob Proctor. My interest was piqued, so I went onto his website to find out more about him. Later that day, while working out at the gym, I was watching The Oprah Winfrey Show. She was interviewing a panel of motivational speakers, life coaches and spiritual leaders all talking about how to change your life by taking action and altering the way you think. As I listened to what they were saying, I felt inspired, motivated and like I had just found the key to unlock my life’s purpose.

I don’t know why I didn’t clue into this career path sooner. I’ve been a self-help junkie since high school. While my friends were busy trying to find prom dates, I was reading the words of wisdom and insights from Dale Carnegie, Anthony Robbins and Brian Tracy (I always did fancy older men!). I was the person who would listen and give advice to friends and family and felt totally in my element doing so. Choosing to become a life coach felt as comfortable to me as wearing flannel pajamas.

When I was in a funk I didn’t find a lot of helpful support out there. I went to plenty of classes about what to feed my baby and how to get him to sleep but, I couldn’t find anything that helped me sort out my feelings about the emotional challenges I faced on an hourly basis. So I started to read. I got books on guilt, time management, mindset, relationships, self-care, The Law of Attraction and spirituality. I did a ton of self-reflection and soul searching and began to put what I was learning into action. I immediately began to feel my fog lifting and my life changing for the better. Fast forward a few thousand training hours, a number of exams and many nights of my baby eating Cheerios for dinner (on my husband’s watch, G-d bless him) and I graduated from the Coach Training Alliance and received my certification to be a life coach. Because of all the amazing results I experienced, I felt compelled to share my discoveries with other moms. That’s how my business, Balance the Mother Load™, was born.

When I spoke in front of moms’ groups and coached my clients, I noticed that many mothers seemed to be struggling with the same issues that had plagued me. These included:

black.jpg    Feeling guilty about decisions they were