Welcome to the 5-Step Path from Surviving to Thriving for moms! I have been in survival mode so many times over the last ten years of motherhood and began to see a pattern emerge from fighting my way to thriving again and again. This is a framework that I created to help us all see clearly where we are in a hard season and know where to put out time and energy so we can navigate our days confidently. The 5-Step Path From Surviving to Thriving: Survival - circumstances are bigger than you Re-entr...
Apr 26, 2023•14 min•Ep 262•Transcript available on Metacast Are you a busy mom struggling with burnout? It can be tough to find time to take a real break when your days are full with the good things of running a home and nurturing your family. That’s why I’m excited to share with you a simple, yet powerful tool that can help you end your day on a positive note and prioritize your well-being. In this episode, I’ll be discussing four questions from the Thriving in Motherhood Journal that will help you end your day from a place of feeling accomplished and e...
Apr 19, 2023•14 min•Ep 261•Transcript available on Metacast In this week’s episode, we sit down with Autumn Kern, a homeschooling mother of three children, to explore the idea of bringing truth, goodness, and beauty into our homes and families. Autumn shares her philosophy behind a classical Charlotte Mason education and how it can help us cultivate these values in ourselves and our children. We also get to hear some of Autumn’s defining moments in her motherhood journey and the lessons she’s learned along the way. Whether you’re a homeschooling mom your...
Apr 12, 2023•43 min•Ep 260•Transcript available on Metacast As a homeschooling mom of pre-K, 1st-grade, and 3rd-grade kids, I’ve tested out a variety of resources and materials over the years. So, if you’re a fellow homeschooling parent looking for inspiration, you’re in the right place! Here’s a list of some of our tried and true homeschooling resources: Rightstart Math All About Reading Story of the World books and activity books Writing with Ease First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind Letter Stories Ambleside Online Kindle In this week’s epi...
Apr 05, 2023•22 min•Ep 259•Transcript available on Metacast In this week's episode, I'm sharing the story of how I went from waffling between feeling bored and overwhelmed to confidently navigating my days and enjoying motherhood by creating the Thriving in Motherhood Planner. During my first two years of motherhood, I felt completely lost and bored and struggled to make it through each day as I felt guilty for all the things I should be doing but wasn’t. I had also reached the place of desperate determination to figure out who I was and what motherhood ...
Mar 29, 2023•15 min•Ep 258•Transcript available on Metacast This week on the podcast, we are talking about how to design your homeschool room (well, really, any room in the house, but I'm using our homeschool space as the example). Now, this is not going to be how to make it really beautiful - yet - I'm going to talk functional. If you remember, we talked a few weeks ago about the four phases of designing a home that supports you, and I'm in step 3 in our homeschool space. 3 Steps to Design A Functional [Homeschool] Space Decide what you want to do for y...
Mar 22, 2023•15 min•Ep 257•Transcript available on Metacast I love making big goals - and you’ve seen me do some of them here with things like the Soaring Mothers Summit. But this year, I wanted to try something that I read about years ago in Atomic Habits: making 1% Better Changes. Each month of the year, I’m picking one tiny thing to focus on, and so far, the impact has far exceeded my homes. When I’m deciding on what to focus on each month, I start with this question that is found in the quarterly review pages of the Thriving in Motherhood Planner: “W...
Mar 15, 2023•13 min•Ep 256•Transcript available on Metacast For the last few weeks, I had the experience of feeling like I was running in circles without a clear direction - endlessly researching but not sure what to do next. I told myself that I had gotten to the end of the road on my vision. In reality, things weren’t that dire - I just forgot what phase I was in and how to keep myself anchored. There are three phases to creating and living out your vision for the year: Caterpillar: exploring and building systems to support bringing more of what you wa...
Mar 08, 2023•13 min•Ep 255•Transcript available on Metacast I recently listened to a group of mothers share their feelings of overwhelm, and I absolutely identified with their thoughts. The things that they found overwhelming fell into three levels of overwhelm: Getting Things Done Our Homes and Keeping People Alive Our Thoughts When we feel overwhelmed, it can be hard to slow down and identify what is really causing our stress. Over the years, as I’ve peeled back the layer, I’ve realized that there were lots of different skill sets that I needed to deve...
Mar 01, 2023•19 min•Ep 254•Transcript available on Metacast Have you had the experience of committing to a hard goal but found yourself miserable along the way? Arielle shared with me that she had made it through her first semester of grad school as a mom with four young kids, but it was a miserable experience. Instead of seeing it as a failure, I shared the 5-Step Path From Curious To Committed. 5 Step Path From Curious To Committed: Curious - Identify what you would like to try or start (like grad school or a podcast). Consistent - Set a timeframe to t...
Feb 22, 2023•11 min•Ep 253•Transcript available on Metacast Today I’m sharing how I involve the kids in cleaning our home - how we do it, why we do it, and what we use. We are going beyond picking up or tidying and addressing things like scrubbing toilets and mopping floors. (My kids are ages 9, 7, 5, and 2.5 for reference, but this is something I’ve done with them since they were babies) Here are the four phases of getting kids to clean at home that we use: Watch me do it. Do it with me. Do it with me watching you. Do it yourself. Working through the ph...
Feb 15, 2023•12 min•Ep 252•Transcript available on Metacast If you worked through the Create Your Vision Challenge, one of the last exercises was choosing your word for the year. Your word of the year helps remind you of your vision for the year and what you hope to accomplish. But now that you have your word, what are you going to do with it? There are three ways I’ve found that are really effective for using your word for the year. 1 - Remind you of who you are trying to become You can do this in any season of motherhood, but it is especially powerful ...
Feb 08, 2023•11 min•Ep 251•Transcript available on Metacast Have you ever had the feeling of excitedly buying a planner and using it with great enthusiasm in the beginning but after a few days, weeks, or maybe even months, it starts to collect dust and end up in the back of the closet? Or, maybe it’s led to paralyzing planning guilt, and you’ve abandoned the exercise entirely and sworn off buying planners. In this week’s episode, I talk about what it looks like to use a planner in different seasons of motherhood. Spoiler alert: sometimes there are a lot ...
Feb 01, 2023•15 min•Ep 250•Transcript available on Metacast Do you feel the pressure to set big goals and achieve them quickly? In January, I feel bombarded by all the messaging about “doubling,” “accelerating,” and “2X faster/better” in all areas of life. Productivity, homeschooling, business, decluttering our homes, and the list goes on. It’s enough to make me want to give up or not even start. Early one morning, as I was praying about my discouragement, I ended up in The New Testament. In Luke 1, the angel Gabriel shared with Zacharias that his son, J...
Jan 25, 2023•11 min•Ep 249•Transcript available on Metacast All of my kids stopped napping around age two. When we went through the transition the first time with my oldest, I was reading one of Sally Clarkson’s books (I’ve read so many, I’m not sure which one mentioned this), and she said that every day they had quiet time to read and be in their own space to recharge. From that day forward, we rebranded “nap time” to ‘rest and read time,” and we’ve had this as an anchor for our day ever since. Read and rest time isn’t boring at our house. Sometimes the...
Jan 18, 2023•11 min•Ep 248•Transcript available on Metacast One of the questions that has emerged for me as a mother with less physical energy than I’d like is, “What really matters when it comes to parenting?” For a long time, my tactic was don’t engage if I can’t be nice or I can’t enforce (which has been the case off and on with challenging pregnancies or recovering from surgeries). But, as my kids get older, I realize that isn’t an effective long-term plan. I came across The Collapse of Parenting which provided a lot of clarity as to where to focus m...
Jan 11, 2023•24 min•Ep 247•Transcript available on Metacast This week’s episode is a peek into one of the incredible groups in Soaring Mothers Society. They were the first women to go through the Made To Soar: Next 90-Days program in 2020, and we’ve been meeting every month for the last two years to do monthly planning and reviews together. The transformation and growth of these women is incredible, and it was a real treat to take a few minutes to celebrate their journeys and growth in household management, family relationships, strengthening community, ...
Jan 04, 2023•38 min•Ep 246•Transcript available on Metacast It’s amazing the impact looking back can have on how I feel about the year. In this week’s Thriving in Motherhood podcast episode, I am reviewing my 2022 with you and giving some tips for how you can look at your year as well. Spoiler alert - I started this activity thinking things weren’t that great and ended feeling like I was on top of the world and could do anything). As a close friend recently said, “You are very good at not seeing all that you are not doing.” Looking back tells the story o...
Dec 28, 2022•23 min•Ep 245•Transcript available on Metacast Do you ever feel bored as a mom? Do you have full, busy days, but at the end of them, you don’t feel fulfilled? Are you bummed because you don’t feel like you’re able to make progress on the things you want to do? I’ve been there, and in this week’s podcast episode, we talk about what to do when you find yourself in this place. The very first step to getting out of this rut is getting more clarity about what matters to you by creating your vision for the year. Until you know who you want to be a...
Dec 21, 2022•18 min•Ep 244•Transcript available on Metacast Does anyone else have moments where it feels overwhelming, no matter how much progress you've made with your home? I've been there the last few weeks, searching for a way through our upstairs bedrooms. I've read dozens of books over the years about decluttering, organizing, and maintaining your home, but the reality is when I walk into a messy bedroom, I'm not sure what to do next and back away slowly. Then I look through the Ikea website for organizational furniture, google how far away the clo...
Dec 14, 2022•25 min•Ep 243•Transcript available on Metacast Typically at the end of the year, when there is so much going on, I start to feel like I’m not seeing a lot of progress on my projects and goals. This leads me to feel discouraged and want to give up - which is not an option when managing a household. One thing I like to do when I notice this feeling creeping is to create a “Finish List” to create some momentum. Dave Ramsey has a principle he calls the “debt snowball.” The idea is that if you have multiple lines of debt, you pay off the smallest...
Dec 07, 2022•16 min•Ep 242•Transcript available on Metacast I read Tiago Fortne’s, Building Your Second Brain and immediately saw how the time I was wasting online was because it was too hard to do the things I really wanted to do on my phone or computer. In this episode, I share the behind-the-scenes of how I organize my digital life as a mom so that I am not wasting time on social media and getting way more done by being effective when I’m on my computer. I love my physical planner and journals to keep my day-to-day life organized and my brain working ...
Nov 30, 2022•20 min•Ep 241•Transcript available on Metacast I read so many great books this year that I can’t wait to share with you! And since the year isn’t over, I’m not done reading yet and have even more favorites to add ( How Not To Die and The Collapse of Parenting are a couple of recent favorites.) I love to keep track of the books I read to prove to myself that I’m learning. There are loads of ways to track your books, but I like to keep it low-tech in the Thriving in Motherhood Planner monthly review page. Keeping track helps me get a better pi...
Nov 23, 2022•11 min•Ep 240•Transcript available on Metacast We all have hard things in our life that we get to keep learning from again and again. Mine is physical pain and health challenges. In this week’s episode, I’m sharing some practical tips for parenting while in physical pain (which can be applied to mental and emotional health challenges, too), as well as some principles and lessons I’ve been learning over the last few months. For me, one of the biggest things this challenge has taught me is to rely more fully on God. I’ve chosen to look at the ...
Nov 16, 2022•23 min•Ep 239•Transcript available on Metacast Would you like more support from your husband with your projects and goals? This week on the podcast, I’m sharing the principles and practices that help Andrew and me be effective in communicating and supporting each other in making our priorities happen.
Nov 09, 2022•15 min•Ep 238•Transcript available on Metacast As I’ve looked back over the last few years, I’ve been able to see the simple things that have really made a difference in making life joyful and meaningful in everyday life. The great news is that you don’t necessarily have to look outside of your current responsibilities and plans to increase fulfillment. Listen to this week’s episode for ideas on how to recognize and create more moments of joy and meaning in your life and ways that you can celebrate your everyday accomplishments more fully....
Nov 02, 2022•14 min•Ep 237•Transcript available on Metacast Emily is the creator and co-host of the Enlightening Motherhood Podcast and a life coach. As a mom of four, former foster mom of 27, and educator of all ages, she understands what it’s like to feel overwhelmed with your children’s intense behaviors and emotions. Her mission is simple yet strong: to empower moms to calmly and confidently handle their children’s big feelings and behaviors, so motherhood won’t seem so hard and so there can be more peace at home. In this week’s episode, we talk abou...
Oct 26, 2022•42 min•Ep 236•Transcript available on Metacast I was recently asked what our family scripture study looks like, and I realized that it has evolved a lot over the years. In this week's episode, I outline what our family does for scripture study as an example of how I’ve pulled from many different sources to create a vision for my family and how we slowly grow into that vision in time. It’s the process I’ve built into the Thriving in Motherhood Planner , and it was good to reflect on how much growth we’ve had in this area of our lives using th...
Oct 19, 2022•14 min•Ep 235•Transcript available on Metacast A few years ago, I saw this idea of a Big 5 from @farmhouseschoolhouse, and we adopted it immediately into our home with tiny children. I’ve mentioned it on the podcast before, but a friend reached out with some excellent questions about what the kids and I do for our Big 5, when we have to finish them by, and what we do if someone doesn’t complete their Big 5. This week’s episode of the podcast answers all of these and more!...
Oct 12, 2022•11 min•Ep 234•Transcript available on Metacast There is a lot of focus on time management and being productive. As a mom, I find that managing time can be inconsistent, which for me, is incredibly demotivating. The great news is that there are other things we can focus on to accomplish what matters to us. For me, that is homeschooling, my kids, working on projects together around the house, having time each day to study scriptures, journal, and pray, adventuring as a family, and running Thriving in Motherhood. In this episode, learn the secr...
Oct 05, 2022•17 min•Ep 223•Transcript available on Metacast 
