 Hey everybody, welcome to the Waldoch Way. I'm Jessica. Today's video is going to be all about realistic self-care for moms. Now I spent the first 35 years of my life not taking care of myself, in fact doing the exact opposite. I was burning both candles at the end, running myself into the ground, like doing everything I could to put myself last on the list. I never made myself a priority. Everything else came first. And in the past two years, I really decided that that needed to change for a few reasons. Number one, I was at the most unhealthiest I had been in my entire life. Number two, I realized I was setting a horrible example for Emily. And number three, I just wanted better for myself, for my family, for our homeschool, for Emily, for everything. And I realized that all of that started with me. And it all started with me doing better and taking better care of myself. So for the past two years, after 35 years of not taking care of myself, I have started to make myself a priority. Take time for me, make myself number one, and really focus on realistic self-care. Things that I could do and incorporate into my life to take care of me that would not only benefit me, but benefit everybody around me. And so over the past two years, I have done different things. I have started eating healthier. I have started working out. I have done more reading of all of these little things that have slowly added up to me taking better care of myself. But here's the thing about self-care that nobody tells you when you're not taking care of yourself, is that all of your reasons for not doing it become obsolete. So, previous to two years ago when I wasn't taking care of me, my excuses were I don't have time, was the biggest one, but it was like I don't have time, I don't have the energy, I can't afford it, whatever the excuses were. But you know what I realized? I actually feel like I have more time now than I did then. And it's because I have more energy since I'm eating better and I'm exercising and I'm pouring into myself. I'm not constantly depleted and exhausted. So while I may not technically have more hours in the day, it does feel like I have more time now than I did then. Being too exhausted or too tired, obviously that fixed itself and not being able to afford to take care of myself. The thing I learned there is yes, sometimes self-care can be expensive, eating healthier is more expensive, sometimes working out can be expensive, you have to pay for a gym or workout equipment, although you can totally do it for free. Here's the thing, if you don't spend the money to take care of yourself now, you're gonna spend the money to take care of yourself later. Whether that's for me, it was more expensive clothes because buying plus-size clothes is more expensive. It was also things like maybe missing out, which isn't necessarily a cost, but it was costing me. Missing out on experiences or not being able to do things or having to like the cost of the anxiety of it, like that's gone, I no longer have to stress about like the little things, like am I gonna fit in this booth or am I gonna be able to go horseback riding because I'm not gonna be at the maximum weight or whatever. The cost, the anxiety and the stress of that is gone and that's because I made a point to take care of myself. So all of my reasons before that seems like great reasons are gone now and so I say all of that to really encourage you, like if you are a homeschool mom in the throes of it and you're like, I don't have the time, I'm too tired at the end of the day to make myself a priority, I have all of these other things that need to come first, it costs too much, whatever it is. I promise if you will just take baby steps and do something, something is always better than nothing and you're going to reap so much more benefits from having done it and those around you are going to reap the benefits from you having done it. Like Emily will hands down tell you, I am a better, nicer, more energetic mom on days that I work out. We can all always tell days when I eat like crud versus days that I don't, I don't feel as well, I'm more sluggish which then means that I'm not as engaged with them or I don't want to do things, I'm like, oh, I don't even want to do that today versus if I work out or I eat better or I take 10 minutes to read, you know, maybe even before I get out of bed or whatever, like I take that time for me, it benefits them 10 fold. So I just want to say that to say, make a point, find five or 10 minutes in your day and prioritize yourself. Now let me get into the really exciting part. For the past two years, while I have been trying to take better care of myself, there is a ton that I have learned, there has also been resources I wish I had that I could never find, or at least I could never find affordably because as a mom who is trying to take care of herself, I can't explain it, but spending a ton of money on ourselves is like, oh, that's not gonna happen. So I will drop $100 on something for Emily without even batting an eye, but spending more than five on myself is like, oh, that's so expensive, which is so silly, isn't it? Anyway, when I couldn't find what I was looking for, I decided to create it. So I have a brand new realistic guide to self-care for moms. And the best part about this guide is that because I know us as moms are not going to spend a lot of money on myself or ourselves or yourself, I made it super affordable. So it is less than $5 because I knew that that was like the threshold that I was willing to spend on myself. It is only $3.99. So you can get this guide for how to prioritize your self-care for less than $4 because you are totally worth at least that. And there's tons of stuff in here. There's self-care ideas, there's journaling prompts. It is so, so good. Let me just turn you around and go ahead and show you an in depth look at what's included. So the first page we have here is the importance of self-care and why it's more than just facials and pedicures. Then we have some self-care basics. We have 50 self-care ideas. We have 30 journaling prompts. And then there are some physical self-care tips, some mental self-care tips, some emotional self-care tips, and some spiritual self-care tips. Then we have 24 different self-care affirmations. There are some self-care boundaries. You guys, this one was hard for me. I'm not even going to lie. Then we have a page where you guys can kind of brainstorm what fills your cup and how to work some of these things that fill your cup into your routine. And then we have monthly trackers. So we have a monthly habit tracker where you can track daily, weekly, and monthly habits. We have a reading summary tracker. So you can decide how many books you want to read and or how many minutes you want to read. And then the actual number of books and minutes you read. Here there is a daily reading tracker. So there will be books for however many days or in the month and you can color each book as you read each day. And then here's someplace for you to track the book that you read and read it. And then you can kind of talk about this month's favorite and this month's least favorite. So you're keeping a log of that. There is a month of gratitude for each month. So there will be however many days, and this case January is 31. So each day you can write a sentence about something you're grateful for. And then a fill your self-care jar for each month as well. Now there's one of these for every month. I'm going to show you an example of what it would look like. So here's a little bit of the habit tracker filled out for January. Here's a little bit of the reading summary filled out for January. Here's a little of the month of gratitude filled out for January. And here is an example of what the self-care jar might start looking like. And then you have those same trackers for every month.