Repair with Self-Care (eBook)

Your Guide to the Mom's Hierarchy of Needs

Leslie Forde (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025
290 Seiten
Jossey-Bass (Verlag)
978-1-394-32016-5 (ISBN)

Infos

Reclaim your energy and restore balance with help from an expert and mother who's been in your shoes

Repair with Self-Care: Your Guide to the Mom's Hierarchy of Needs by Leslie Forde is a transformative guide that addresses the overwhelming demands faced by working moms. By reshaping the narrative around energy management rather than time management (and how to access new sources of fuel), Forde offers a refreshing perspective on achieving a more aligned life. This book isn't about balancing work and home in the conventional sense; it's about investing in self-care to enhance all facets of life, allowing more opportunities for personal growth, enjoyment, and efficacy.

In the book, Forde presents a framework for prioritizing physical, emotional, and intellectual self-care. Through personal experiences and extensive research, she identifies the challenges unique to working moms, including those from other marginalized communities. This book is a call to action to stop deprioritizing yourself and to start using your energy differently to live a healthier and more fulfilling life.

Inside the book:

• Learn to prioritize your needs without losing personal and professional momentum
• Transform your approach to caregiving and career with practical strategies
• Understand the importance of self-care in sustaining your social and emotional well-being

Repair with Self-Care is the perfect resource for mothers who combine hands-on, loving care for their children with growth in a demanding career. Employers committed to supporting working parents will also find valuable insights into retaining this vital segment of their workforce. By embracing Forde's strategies, moms can reclaim their energy and live more fulfilled, integrated lives.

LESLIE FORDE has 10 years' experience in leadership roles in media, research, and technology companies that served the childcare, eldercare, mental health, and education sectors. Her writing has appeared in major publications, including The Washington Post, Slate, Parents Magazine, TLNT, and Directorship.

Textauszug

Introduction

In this book, I have one job: to help you invest more of your time in self‐care. That includes everything you need for your well‐being and growth, like sleep, movement, stress management, and learning. Because doing so unlocks your energy, the precious currency that stands between you and a richer, more aligned life.

So, you may be wondering how you can possibly engage with anything new when you're feeling so (insert the blank that fits here) depleted, tired, overwhelmed, or overscheduled. You may also be wondering why energy, the fuel that catapults you closer to your needs, often eludes you. Or why making the time for routines and practices that really work for you doesn't work consistently.

After all, we know what we're “supposed” to do. But, because of what it means to be a mom, in most families it's completely inaccessible. Sadly, seeking “work–life balance” rarely leads to getting more of the right work or life things done. Like the pursuit of callings, delicious stretches of continuous thought, long walks, playing heartily with our kids, or daily rest and recovery. Balance, for most women with families means “more housework” or maybe even “more childcare” but it's usually not the kind of childcare we love, like getting to know our children as people. It's often the mental load of logistics, like planning camps and scheduling appointments. Or shuttling them back and forth to activities and worse, answering more emails about all of these options.

The health erosion that disproportionately affects women with caregiving responsibilities, whether it's moms or eldercare givers, isn't widely discussed. Nor is the all‐too‐common weathering in the Black community and other underserved communities. Like stones beaten smooth from years of waves, the mental energy we spend navigating systemic racism and sexism becomes an ever‐present source of trauma.

Many of us are trying to achieve something our ancestors and own mothers never achieved: you probably want better outcomes for your children—financially, emotionally, and physically—without the same sacrifices of previous generations. I want that, too, for yours and for mine, but the reality is, without awareness of the invisible stressors, an unassailable self‐regard, and daily routines that actually work for the unpredictability of motherhood, sustained change will elude us.

And we often go about it the wrong way. We're trained to push harder and work more to please others. Often in environments where we're forced to pretend and ignore our needs like appreciation, transparency, and rest. So we go into this fight, against everything we've ever been taught, exhausted and empty.

What I'm about to share isn't exactly about doing less, because dialing back doesn't map with reality. Women work incredibly hard and women who are caregivers work impossibly hard. And those of us who are also from communities of color, are disabled, or LGBTQ+ spend even more mental energy to achieve what often feels like the bare minimum.

Like you, I live this reality daily. I was drawn to this challenge in part because of my experiences of motherhood and because I've used research to inform growth and innovation strategy for over 20 years. Mom's Hierarchy of Needs began as a passion project and research blog, not a business. I was a committed “corporate girl” and had no intention of leaving my safety salary or family's health insurance behind to leap into business, especially with my kids in remote school as the pandemic raged on. But when I was laid off within a few months of starting a new job it was shortly before COVID hit. I had barely updated my résumé when the global economy went into a free fall. So, I became an entrepreneur by accident. Prior to that, I held leadership positions at some of the world's most admired companies and in the past decade plus, my career has been focused on the children's mental health, children's educational publishing, childcare, eldercare, family technology, and market research industries. I'm a frequent speaker, researcher, and consultant to organizations on how to engage and support parents and caregivers. I'm also a passionate advocate for public policy reform and have been fortunate to use my voice to amplify needs like childcare and eldercare access, paid family leave, domestic workers' rights, and other critical supports for a brighter caregiving future.

I've heard from thousands of women about what's hardest, interviewed hundreds of specialists, and have deconstructed popular advice, mostly from well‐intentioned men, who don't keep “mom schedules” about how to be healthy and successful, into the little interventions that work for us. It's not perfect, or easy, but it's achievable and just trying is worth it.

I'm telling you that the trick to all of this is to ruthlessly care for yourself while caring for others. Not to use the Mom's Hierarchy of Needs, as an “oxygen mask you put on first” because that's too simplistic to explain the micro trade‐offs we make all day long. But use the awareness, principles, and actions (informed by research, of course) in ways that are highly modular and flexible to suit the dynamic nature of your life.

Because your energy, which disappears when you're overworked, is at the heart of your next promotion, book proposal, board seat, Pulitzer Prize, marathon, inspired family adventure, or just finding a moment of peace.

Whatever “it” looks like for you, that thing you really want to accomplish in this season—without your mental, emotional, and physical energy, it won't happen.

And we all know what the barriers are. My daily work is in systems change—unwinding policies, benefits, and practices of the workplace. But let me tell you something you probably already know. We may become grandparents before the systems of work and US public policies change enough to matter.

If you choose to implement something doable that helps make your life better now rather than wait for “the systems” to be fixed fully, please keep reading. And ditto if you've tried to solve this before unsuccessfully. Because most of us try and fail at least a dozen times.

I wrote this book for moms, but there are structural inequities that disproportionately hurt all historically overlooked groups, like women, people of color, those who are disabled, or LGBTQ+. And if you identify with more than one of these historically marginalized categories, your climb is steeper. Although my post‐pandemic research study currently includes 1% nonbinary people, most of the research hasn't caught up to gender fluidity. So, I'll refer to the difficulties faced by people who identify as women and moms.

Moms are already fighting multiple layers of inequity. If like me, you're also a woman of color or from an immigrant family, then you're probably eager to make your life and your children's lives better right now. Because you promised your parents, who had it even harder, that you would. Increasing energy when you've been overlooked, overworked, and underestimated is not an easy thing to do. Especially when you're ambitious and navigating growth, as a person and professionally, at the same time.

But it's essential for your health.

I use what I'm about to teach you in my own life, which is why you're reading this. I burned out when I returned to work from my second maternity leave just over nine years ago, imploding a job I once loved. And having dealt with some difficult circumstances growing up, including going onto food stamps and losing the home I grew up in during middle school, I never imagined I would make bold transitions within my corporate career, in my forties with a baby and a toddler. Nor did I expect to build a movement, and later a business, from an idea.

As a Black woman, whose parents are from the Caribbean, I had a very different path in mind. But this work is my calling, and health for moms is my ministry. And you would have never heard from me or of me if I hadn't emerged from burnout by implementing these systems and changes.

So, I will start with some “myth busting” for the invisible barriers to overcoming the never‐done list and making the types of changes you're told that you “should” make. Of course, you should get more sleep, move more, ignore what's outside of your control, and stress less—it's common knowledge.

I probably won't tell you to “do” something you haven't heard of before. I'll help you overcome the reasons it doesn't “stick” for you, or for most people, and honor your brilliance by explaining why. Often, the vague way this information is shared or implemented by others whose lives mostly don't work like yours makes it difficult to learn from.

This book is about using every single tool in your tool kit to make more space for yourself. And I'm not talking about little scraps of space; I'm talking about at least one or more hours each day to do what serves you. For me that was really recovering from burnout, regaining my health, clarity, and changing my career.

But for you it could be something entirely different. You're in a judgment‐free zone here. If you want one or two more hours a day so you can sleep more, binge watch Bridgerton, eat ice cream, or...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 3.9.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Christentum
• Schlagworte: career growth • caregiver challenges • Emotional Well-Being • Energy Management • family balance • Mental Load • mom's guide • parenting support • self-care strategies • stress management • women's careers • working moms • Work-Life Integration
• ISBN-10: 1-394-32016-7 / 1394320167
• ISBN-13: 978-1-394-32016-5 / 9781394320165