When Parenting Is Messy, How To Reclaim Your SuperMom Powers
Gina Fontaine is an amazing human being who understands pain and feeling like a failure as a mom. She’s a personal trainer, wellness coach and the author of “You are a SuperMom, 5 Ways To Reclaim Your Super Power and Thrive As A Mom.”
Today she’s here to share her vulnerable story as a single mom dealing with two kids who were struggling, how she felt like she’d failed as a mother and through the process of writing, she discovered that how she handled herself through these challenges was evidence of her superpower to thrive in the face of adversity.
You are going to come out the other side of this episode feeling less alone and more inspired that whatever you’re going through you can find healing and hope.
Listen to the episode HERE!
What You Will Learn:
The Importance of Valuing Rest
How we can all struggle with those critical, awful voices that feel like you’ve messed up your kids, “Where did I go wrong? What did I do?” And constantly questioning yourself, “Okay, is it not the right thing to do? Am I doing this right?” And there really is no perfect guidebook right for parenting.
How feeling can be healing. The importance of allowing the uncomfortable feelings to arise.
False beliefs we believe as Moms and what the truths you need to know that can bring healing and lead to a more centered, peaceful, and joy-filled life.
Remembering to love yourself well.
Mentioned In This Episode:
You are a SuperMom, 5 Ways To Reclaim Your Super Power and Thrive As A Mom
Super Mom Club 10-Day Challenge
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Sheryl
Welcome, Gina to the Moms of Tweens and Teens Podcast. It’s great to have you on today.
Gina
And thank you so much, Sheryl. This is really my niche audience because I have three children in this age span. So between ages 11 and 18.
Sheryl
Again, while I am so excited about what we’re going to talk about, and I feel like it’s perfect timing for me to be talking about all the things that you talk about in your new book, “Supermom: Find Ways to Reclaim Your Superpower, and Thrive as a Mom.”
And right now I’m launching a three-day free training next week. And then we open up the membership and I’m doing all this multitasking. And I feel exhausted and overwhelmed and was reading your book I told you before we got on here and I’m like, oh, Gina would say it’s okay for me to have power naps. I’m just going to take a nap. So I’m just kind of looking at this time, like I’m gonna get filled up and nourished, just listening to what you have to share. So I was really looking forward to being with you today.
Gina
Oh, thank you. I appreciate that.
Sheryl
So before we jump in, why don’t you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and your personal story and what led you to write this book.
Gina
I’m Gina. I actually grew up in the Midwest and Indiana as the youngest of 10 children. And so I consider my mother to be the original supermom, and she raised 10 of us kids – pretty amazing.
And she really demonstrated to me the importance of self care, that power nap that you were talking about. That was something that Sharon Bosler did every single day after lunch. And even though I was a five year old, I can remember wandering away and sure she was asleep. And then going and playing. She would always tell me when I had children so I have three children that are now 11, 14 and 18. And I can remember when they were infants. She would always say “Now when the baby naps, you nap.”
Well, what mom does that – some really disciplined moms. But at the time, that was when I flipped into busy mode and get all my tasks done. And it’s not until now that I’m a more seasoned mom that I see the value of those little “rest.”
And parenting teens and tweens, which is where all of my kids are right now, especially during pandemic times when you are at home with your children, it’s just really the recipe for a perfect storm.
And so I became a single mom in 2017. And that experience really led me to the conclusion that I absolutely had to put myself at the top and take care of myself so that I could fulfill all the responsibilities now being on my own. I left an abusive situation. And, unfortunately, my oldest was the victim of the abuse. And that left a lot of trauma marks on him. And during the pandemic. It was just like everything flared, he was going through some major depression and actually attempted to take his life. And thank goodness he was unsuccessful. And he is still here with us today.
But that situation in May of 2020 was when I had to find somewhere to put my thoughts and my pain. And I did a lot of walking – I’m sure a lot of people did during our lockdown time. And I would just voice record what I was feeling or thinking on that day. And out of curiosity, I would come home and listen. And I started to transcribe it. And I realized, “you know what? I bet I’m not the only mom going through these difficulties right now.”
And so I just kept going, I kept writing with the encouragement of some friends that said, “There are people out there that are going to really appreciate your vulnerability and sharing the struggles and the challenges that you’ve experienced as a mom.” And so I went for it. And then at a certain point, I thought nobody wants to hear my drama. Nobody wants to read this story. It’s not – well, it didn’t seem uplifting to me at the time but in retrospect now when I read it, I see where there’s a lot of material to give moms hope because I didn’t just get through it, I feel like I thrived through it.
My background is in health and wellness. So I have a lot of tools that I’ve collected in my 27 year career as a fitness trainer, and health and wellness professional so I implemented those during my most stressful times. And prior to the pandemic, my then 15 year old, he did everything that you don’t want your teenagers to get into. And that’s when I was throwing my hands up like “Hey, I’m a good person. I’m a former number two in our class in high school and all-star athlete. And where did I go wrong that I have a kid who’s doing drugs, not going to school and cutting classes?”
It just baffled me and I put it on myself. And I started saying “Where did I go wrong? What did I do?” And that’s an awful place to be as a mom to feel like I’ve done it all wrong. I’ve messed up my kid and what parent hasn’t had that feeling at some point in time during our parenting journey? You’re – at least I know I am – constantly questioning “Okay, is it not the right thing to do? Am I doing this right?” And there really is no perfect guidebook right for parenting. That’s at least what I discovered.
Sheryl
Yeah, no!
Gina
I found that oftentimes reading the expert written guide books by this great PhD, I would wind up feeling like a failure after reading the book, like “Well, I can’t do all that. How am I going to implement all that?” When you’re in total overwhelm, and total stress my brain doesn’t absorb material when I’m in constant fight or flight. And that’s a known fact, like our executive function shuts down when we’re constantly stressed. And so I could read a book, attend the class, but it wouldn’t stick.
And so ultimately, what I discovered was, if I just took care of myself, I stayed in a more positive mindset and really just embraced that things were messy. Going through a divorce and restructuring your family, it’s messy, and accepting that it was gonna be messy for a while and that once I got to that place of peace – and it’s still a daily practice – that’s when things started to shift for me.
And I thought, “This can be a book.” And then I resumed writing again, realizing that this can be a book that helps validate moms on their path and dads too, for that matter. And this is certainly not exclusively a mom read. I have had men read the book and gain value from what I present.
Sheryl
Yeah, I want to thank you for writing the book for having the courage. It is a vulnerable book when you share your story and your struggle. And I’m just struck by how it was you expressing your pain and letting it out, that really brought a lot of healing and then through your own pain, you are essentially blessing others by putting it out there into the world so that they know that they’re not alone.
I think that that’s a beautiful thing when we can take our own pain and make meaning from it and offer something and that’s what we need. It’s like you said we want to find the answer, like “just tell me what to do” which is so normal.
But there’s a lot of pain involved in just letting that out and putting yourself first where you can just slow down and just have that time to reflect. And through that you ended up – I love your reflective questions. And how through that process in the book, you shift and you give such wonderful tools of how to shift your mindset and how to take care of yourself when you’re in the pit.
Gina
Yeah, and in the pit. I can remember being in a place where it seems like every single day there was a crisis. And I’d literally be calling the crisis line to get help because my son was very angry and he tells me he doesn’t even remember some of the episodes where he would turn on me and become verbally abusive. When you are in a constant state of fight or flight – I’ve been there where you know there’s tools. I’m a yoga teacher, I’ve been teaching yoga for 25 years and my yoga practice didn’t even necessarily ground me. It was kind of like sometimes the deep breathing almost made the feelings bubble up more.
Sheryl
I so get that!
Gina
Yeah, so much for calming down and there’s a saying that feeling is healing. And so there’s a lot of ways we can suppress feelings. We can drink a bottle of wine, we can eat a carton of Haagen Dazs. And it might make things feel better in that particular moment. But until we allow those uncomfortable feelings to arise – and that’s where I really feel support is so important, we moms have to stay together in community and share. In my case, sharing my experience, strength and hope for moms that might be shuttered and thinking “I can’t, I’m too ashamed to share my story.”
And what I found, my sharing has opened the door for other women to say, “Oh, you know, I didn’t want to say anything, but I’m really having a tough time with my daughter or my son. And here’s what’s going on.” Because the truth is, it’s not all graduations, high school dances, and honor roll. Like there’s other things that happen, they just don’t get posted on social media. And we don’t see those elements of life.
I talked about in the book, living in fullness, and I define living in fullness, is when you can take your whole life experience, the good, the bad, the ugly, the nice, not so pretty. And just embrace it all. The same way that we do when our kid is screaming and yelling and throwing a tantrum. We still love them, we still embrace them.
And so why can’t we do the same to ourselves when we show up “imperfect?” I see the pattern – I do it myself – we tend to go towards self-sabotage. Like, “Oh, darn it, why am I doing this again?” I maybe yelled at my kids again today, and I vowed I wasn’t going to do that anymore. Now, it’s like, “Yep, there that is again, and I’m gonna love that part of myself. Because that’s part of me, and who I am today.”
Sheryl
And I’m not alone in it. And I’m human, I’m not perfect. You write a lot about that and the book will tell us such good stuff. And I want to get a little deeper in it. But tell us what the five myths are that you share in the book?
Gina
Yes, so the five myths are things that I recognize that we live by as moms that aren’t necessarily healthy for us. So myth number one is that a good mom always puts her kids first. Well, if that’s to the detriment of your own health and well being, it might not be the best thing.
Myth number two is moms are master multitaskers. Well, absolutely we are because it becomes like basic survival as more kids join the family. And yet we know scientifically that our brain can only focus on one meaningful task at a time. It might look like we’re being productive. But are we really? And again, at what expense to our health and well being?
Myth Number Three, being a mom is tough. How many times – you probably couldn’t go a day during the pandemic – where you didn’t hear somebody saying, “Oh, it’s so tough. Being a mom is tough.” And yeah, it is. But if you verbalize that on a daily basis, you’ll tend to attract more – that’s the lens you’re going to see life through. And so you’ll tend to see it’s tough. First you have to change the lens and then saying something like being a mom’s easy. Being a mom is fun, and start to look for evidence of that. And it’s not that easy. I acknowledge that.
Myth Number Four is being a mom is exhausting. And again, who doesn’t say that, and so that’s about realizing what is draining your energy. Sheryl, you mentioned that you’ve been multitasking and doing all this stuff to get ready for your event. And then you feel it at the end of the day. So how can we then create that being a mom is exhilarating?
Sheryl
I love that in the book, the energy feels different. I relate to even, “I’m so tired.” That’s one that I will say. Or waking up in the morning, “I just don’t have enough time.” And then it just feels like all this weight versus changing our language. So I even have to say it out loud. “You are excited about today.” It really is switching up our mind, our mindset. It’s so helpful in the book, how you talk about how to do that.
Gina
Number Five is – I think we hear this all the time – moms do it all. And that’s impossible. First of all, moms can’t possibly do it all. And on the flip side of that, wherein your life can you let go of control and stop trying – especially with our teenage kids who are so close to flying from the nest? Where can we – my situation – stop waking my son up to go to school. Instead say, “What he gets to experience is the repercussions of his inability – it was just simply turning on the computer – to go to school, and he wasn’t able to do that.”
It’s hard to get a call from the principal saying your kid is flunking out of school. But it’s not my responsibility. It’s on him. It’s so hard when our kids are making poor choices that we think are going to mess them up for the rest of their lives. And in the end, he got his GED. And he’s off working full time now, and I celebrate his success, and I expect great things for him in the future.
I could still be there. And I call it meddling where you’re always having to put the pieces of your kid’s life together so that they become the straight-A honor student or the best athlete or get into Stanford. Our role as parents is more to just be like, “Hey, I got you, I got your back. I’m here to help you. Be who you’re here to be.” And we all have hopes, dreams and aspirations for our kids. But I feel like as we surrender that and just say, the happiness and the fulfillment as a parent will be when I allow my child to take those steps on their own and the stumbles on their own, because that’s how we grow.
Sheryl
I love that. So I think we have to pause on this because it’s so good. And it’s so difficult to do as a mom. So what were you like, as a mom, when you were trying to get your son up, when you were trying to control the trajectory, the decisions he was making? How, I always say, how’s that working for you? How was that working for you?
Gina
It felt to me like the more I pushed, the more he resisted, and it was like, “oh, I’ll just stay in bed till two instead of noon. And I’ll show you.” It was the same thing with the vaping. I would constantly sweep through his room and if I’d find them, I’d swipe them and throw them away. Well, guess what? He’d just call a friend and go get another one and they would keep reappearing. And I realized, “Okay, he’s gonna again have to experience the repercussions of this.” And now these days, he tells me, “Oh, I can’t run anymore. I’m coughing too much.” Well, eventually, one day maybe when he’s 20, he’ll want to run again and he’ll realize that vaping has to be eliminated.
It’s so hard to release our children to their life lessons lovingly. Not with guilt, “Oh, you’re gonna hurt yourself” or “You’re so lazy.” And those things came out of my mouth. I’d go down there and say “Oh my gosh, you’re so lazy. Why can’t you get up?” And that’s not helpful. So “I lovingly release you to your life lessons” is a mantra that I became very familiar with.
Sheryl
Yeah, that’s a good one, I release you to your life lessons. And that’s really giving them back ownership of their lives. And I think that’s so hard to do. But it’s so important. You get to choose how you want to live your life. I can’t live your life for you. And I think that really makes kids think, because there’s no resistance there anymore. And they just have themselves they’re stuck with and their own choices. Like you said he was resisting so much. We were trying to control and it just wasn’t working. So how has your relationship changed since you started handing him back his life?
Gina
Well, at this point, he turned 18 last month and he got an apartment with a friend and I’m just going with the “no news is good news.” I continue to send him texts and say, “I love you hope things are going well.” Invitations: “Do you want to go have lunch?” I’m not hearing back. I don’t take that personally. I take it as he just needs time and space to establish his independence. And when he’s ready, and I do have communication through his counselor, when he’s ready and has worked through whatever he’s working through, then we can reboot our relationship.
And I have found I’ve had periods of time where he was not living with me when he was younger, he was living with his dad, he lived with a friend for a while, and our relationship was much better than it was getting together. I wasn’t on top of him being in the authority role, and gave us an opportunity to connect on a deeper level and come to the realization that he’s really bright, and he explores new ideas, and he teaches me about Bitcoin and things. So he’s very aware. He kind of has a vision that his life is going to be very different from the status quo. So I’m proud of him for that. He says “I’m not going to go right to college, I’m going to save money and figure out what I really want to do.” And I celebrate that, because that’s not necessarily a normal thing to do. And he’s aware that he doesn’t want to waste his money going to college and not having clarity on what he wants to study. So I respect that.
Sheryl
Yes. Very independent of him. Living on his own and making his way and deciding what he wants to do. I think that we get so bogged down in the way that we think it’s supposed to look. Based on our families and how we grew up and all that and then you have a kid that goes to college, but they’re partying all the time. And of course, all kids are doing that but just because they’re going to college doesn’t mean that’s necessarily the best decision for them. I have a friend and her kids all went to two years of community college, saved money then they went on to a regular college and that was a great choice for them. It looks different. Your son got his GED.
Gina
And passed it with flying colors.
Sheryl
You said you were rereading your book because it helps you. I can see the back chapter asks us such good questions. Is there one particular chapter right now that speaks to you?
Gina
It’s interesting. I was back home in Indiana a few weeks ago and just having some struggles with my family and as I was leaving to go to the airport, my mom handed me my book. She said, “This is what you need to read on the airplane.” And she was absolutely right. I think that the general message of positivity, of everything is always working out for you and, everything’s here to help you even when it doesn’t feel like it. When you’re in the moment and it’s excruciating and you just want to get to the other side where it’s more comfortable. Being In an uncomfortable place when we’re making changes in our life. It might be simple like, “oh, here surrender control.”
That’s probably for me what is speaking the most – just step out of the way. And surrender control. Which is myth number five. Kind of the flip side of “mom does it all” is instead surrender control and recognize where you can – it goes back to the Serenity Prayer really. He helped me to know what I can control, what I can’t and where I need to have the wisdom to know the difference.
And, and ultimately, the piece of self-love of wrapping my loving arms around myself in those moments of despair, or “I don’t know what to do.” And “why does my kid keep misbehaving?” And having compassion for myself instead of “Why can’t I get this right?” Why do I keep making the same mistakes over and over?” Those types of questions aren’t helpful.
I even put this in the book where I have a statement that I make, “I claim living in a healthy, harmonious home.” And I wasn’t even close to that two years ago. But I wrote it down on a piece of paper or thought about it every day, put it in a box, and in a way just offered it up, to the higher power, the sovereign being in me that everything’s going to work out if I keep my lens focused on healthy, happy, harmonious home.
It starts again with Mom. If you’re at peace, it’s amazing how the vibration of peace just kind of goes out beyond you to others. And our kids, they have little radars and they know us. It’s really amazing, even babies have these radars of really tuning into our anxiety or anger or whatever it might be. I’m not even saying don’t feel angry, don’t feel anxious, because I know that we’re going to but let it be okay.
Okay, today is just going to be one of those high anxiety days. So I’m going to need to take that power nap, I’m going to need to go for maybe two or three walks to process through this and just let it be okay. There’s something in it. There’s maybe a message in it and are you willing to stay with it?
Emotion, the word, is an energy in motion. So if you can just be with that energy for a little while, it will move and it will transform into something else. But when we suppress it, and I think there’s like the law of attraction movement of like, “Oh, I can’t feel sad, because then I’ll attract bad things,” or “I can’t feel angry because then I’ll raise my vibe.” My interpretation of that is to feel the sadness. Feel whatever it is you’re feeling with self-compassion, and love yourself through that. And don’t make yourself wrong, because it’s the making yourself wrong and trying to fix yourself that that tends to deplete you. We’re trying to live the spiritual path. I had this realization a few weeks ago, I was listening to a meditation master named Mooji. And he said, “Isn’t it funny how we’ve westernized spirituality and it’s all about doing.” The right mantra and doing the right practice and going to see…
Sheryl
Performing app. Mindfulness.
Gina
You know what, he’s absolutely right. We have totally westernized even spirituality to when the message is to just be and allow. Our nature as Americans – we always feel like we have to go about and do and create and manifest. What if all you had to do was open yourself up to receive something that you can’t even conceive of in your head or something even greater beyond my wildest dreams and imagination.
Sheryl
I love that. What I’m getting from this is just how important it is to feel what we’re feeling but we don’t want to feel what we’re feeling if it’s pain or if it’s uncomfortable and so then we try to get ourselves out of bed by whatever that looks like whether it’s drinking the wine or eating the Haagen Dazs. It’s beating ourselves up then we can turn on ourselves and shame ourselves. All those things are trying to just make it go away. It’s like trying to make anxiety go away, but the more you try to make it go away, the worse it becomes. Like “don’t feel anxious”, “don’t feel anxious” and then “Oh my gosh, I’m anxious!”
I’m feeling what I’m feeling and that’s okay. It’s okay to feel what I feel and surrender to it. And through that surrender and that self-compassion then we can actually move through into a more abundant, spacious place of being because we’re not resisting. It’s that resistance, that energy of just keep resisting whatever that is, whether it be for kids or doing something or feeling something, the more that we’re trying to grasp it and control it. It just doesn’t work.
Gina
Well, it’s constrictive when we add – I’m going to quote my book here – grow, get big, expand and the universe is going to fill that space in ways you never ever planned. But you have to open that space up first and when we’re like in there meddling and trying to control ourselves we don’t allow new possibilities to come in.
Sheryl
It really takes faith, by trusting that there’s a guide or however that looks for you. Like “you’re not alone in it.” So self-compassion So what are some of the internal messages when you’re practicing self-compassion that you say to yourself?
Gina
“I love myself” standing in the mirror and that’s a powerful practice. I probably don’t do it enough but I think it was maybe two days after my divorce was finalized and I was out hiking and just processing. I met this older gentleman on the trail and I swear it was like having a connection with God. Somehow we got talking about my experience and basically his message to me was “Your ex may never be nice to you. So every day I just want you to say ‘I love you, I love you stand in front of the mirror and say ‘I love you, I love you, I love you.”
And just like we can’t control our external environment – the people around us, our kid might always insult us – when they’re a 16-year-old. We can’t control that but I can control whether I react to it or respond to it or ignore it. And so staying in that place of “I love myself more today than I did yesterday” and embracing your experience whatever it is.
That sounds way too simplistic because when that concept was first introduced to me by a friend I was like “Oh sure, yeah love myself when my whole world is erupting and I’m hardly making any money and on welfare and yeah, I’ll love myself.” And it worked. And it took a lot of time and just finding those practices that were nourishing. Nourishing myself instead of – I had such a long history of bashing myself because that’s kind of the way of an athlete. “No pain, no gain.” I would instead flog myself for not getting it right. And when I started realizing that these stumbles, and these imperfections, were actually growth opportunities, it changed the perspective for me. To love myself through those growth periods.
Sheryl
I really enjoy in the book how you talk about changing your perspective. You acknowledge what’s true, so it’s not like you’re denying it. But when I say to myself, “Oh, this is an opportunity for me to learn about myself” or “this is an opportunity where I can lean in and I will grow from this. I can grow from this.” There’s just a difference. When I say those things, and I have some people in my life that say those things to me it’s just really, really helpful.
Well, let’s talk about a final question. I want to talk about boundaries because I think that is an area that we really struggle with. And you were saying, all of the myths kind of fit into that, “I’m not enough”, or, “I got to do it all.” Boundaries are so important. And I don’t think that we’re very good at it.
Gina
I know I wasn’t. I had a friend, this was a year or so before I got divorced and she just said, “I don’t feel that you have any boundaries.” And I just said, “I don’t even know what you’re talking about. Isn’t it good to be open and flexible?” Because that’s what I always prided myself in, I am so flexible and adaptable. And I was never putting a boundary with anything. And so it’s been a six-year process for me of learning. “What is that? What does it mean to set a healthy boundary to say, ‘Now, I’m not going to do that because it doesn’t light me up.” I hear that with so many, “I should exercise.” or “Oh, I should volunteer for the board” or “Oh, I should be the home…”
Sheryl
I should be the homeroom mom.
Gina
Right, “I should volunteer for the field trip.” When we go to that place of “should” and I call it “shoulding on yourself”, I would rather hear women say “I get to exercise” like it becomes an opportunity and a privilege. Just saying those two phrases “I should exercise” versus “I get to exercise today”, it just changes the whole experience.
My background is in fitness and part of finding the vitality and energy in life is finding some way to move your body that feels good to you. That’s one of my signatures is to find fun movement to do all day long. I call them “one minute wellness solutions” that lifts your spirits so that you can get through. That should be a training program before we enter the tween and teen years, because I had no idea what I was in for. You’re not dealing with a rational human with a fully formed brain. And I have to constantly remind myself that and to be strong. For me, doing physical movement, meditation, those are my armor. I keep my defense against the insults, against the pushback that we inevitably experience with kids of this age.
Sheryl
It makes a huge difference. I’m just always surprised like, “Oh, yeah, I’m depleted.” So if I’m depleted, I’m going to have a much bigger reaction towards whatever that is. If I’m hooked into my kid and the choices they’re making – that is just taking so much energy, I have to consciously think I am going to reclaim that. Take that energy over here that I’m focused on this kid. And I’m going to pull it back and what can I do? And you ask some good questions to reflect on. Can you think of any in the moment? Some of the questions that could help moms to set boundaries or to reclaim parts of their lives? Take back ownership of their lives?
Gina
Yeah, I mean, for me, it was asking, “How will my son find success?” or “I don’t know how that’s going to happen for him.” But to know that it’s not about me taking the steps. It’s surrendering him to his life lessons. I found that when I would go to him with advice with “this is what you need to do step one, step two, step three,” he would just kind of look at me and roll his eyes and be like, “I got this mom.”
I think we forget that our kids really just want connection, that I’m a healer, I’m a fixer. So I always feel like I have to give them advice and that’s not necessarily what they want. They really just want to be heard and validated that, “oh, it must be really frustrating to not know where you’re going to go to look for a job and to not know those steps, would you like help for me?” And that same thing happened when my son – we gave him a date to find an apartment. And I would ask him for those three months like, “Do you need help looking? Do you want my help?” And I always got “no, I’m good.”
Asking and not just assuming because I think when we’re in that authoritarian role as parents, and we just tell and instruct, I feel it’s disrespectful to them as free-thinking humans. They know what they like and what they don’t like.
Sheryl
Questions are so much more empowering to them. Wow. And then if we do give advice, and then they don’t take it, then we’re mad that they’re not taking it. So it’s doesn’t work. Wow.
Gina
And trusting that you planted the seeds early in life and it’s there. It might not be evident.
Sheryl
You have planted the seeds.
Gina
And then it might be when they’re 22 or 25 when you start to see like, “oh, okay, starting to eat healthy now” or he’s starting to exercise again. And now those seeds just needed some time to grow through the weeds so that they could become more fully themselves and kind of weed out what’s Mom, what’s Dad? What’s me? And what am I going to take? And what am I going to leave behind as a child?
Sheryl
I would not have wanted to parent me. But my mom was not hooked into everything I was doing like I think we are in this generation, which is much more aware. Have you found that as well? You grew up with 10 kids in your family. Your parents couldn’t know every little gritty detail that was happening. But I know I certainly made lots of mistakes. And it wasn’t until I was in my 20s I kind of sorted a lot of that out.
Gina
I guess we all have to go through our process. And I’m grateful that my oldest kind of went through that process sooner than later. And didn’t become a 25-year-old who became defiant and didn’t know what he wanted. So it’s not necessarily the path that every parent would want for their child. But it seems to be working okay. And he’s living independently. And that’s our greatest hope for our kids.
Sheryl
Absolutely. And who knows what amazing things he’s going to do. I put together a whole sheet for one of the workshops of all the people – so many people that we know every name – are well known, and they did not have traditional upbringing, they maybe dropped out of high school, or they dropped out of college. Or Steven Spielberg, he had ADHD and he didn’t do well in school but he picked up the camera. It’s odd that each person had a different had a unique path.
So tell everybody where to find your book. And moms, I can’t recommend this book enough. It’s like having a warm blanket. You can get your tea and do the journaling exercises that you have in the book, the good questions and shifting your mindset. You’ll read it, and it’s like, I’m not alone, that I feel this way.
Gina
Oh, thank you. Yeah, the book is available on Amazon, there’s some great reviews that you can read, that are already up there. And it just touches my heart to hear what people are already experiencing. One mom says, “I can just open it up. And what I need to read in the moment always seems to be right there.” And I even have a great-grandma that read the book and said “I wish I had had this book 50 years ago when I was raising my own children.” It feels so good that people are resonating with the self-reflection piece of the book. So it’s also available at Barnes and Noble.
It appears to me that I need to create a workbook now and I will be starting the Supermom Club where we’ll be basically working together through the steps of the book. So I’m really excited to do that because it’s more experiential. I know we all want to think that we can find the answer in that book, or that class that we took, but it’s a process when we’re learning to love ourselves. I wish it came innate that we just loved ourselves, and it seems like it would be the most natural thing in the world. But as moms, I feel like we give love really well. But can you turn that and give it to yourself? And that’s kind of the ultimate gift – the experiential portion of the book.
Sheryl
I love that you’re doing that because groups of moms can encourage one another and hear each other’s stories. And that’s really powerful. When are you going to do that?
Gina
I’m launching on October 18. I’m doing just a 10 days Supermom Club challenge where I will be each of those 10 days offering it – might be 20 minutes of supermom yoga, it might be here’s your awareness today to find everything that is right, instead of looking at all the things that are wrong. So it’ll just be a day-by-day challenge of finding the good and nurturing yourself. That will give women an opportunity to understand “Okay, what is the supermom club about?” And I think I’m redefining supermom, it’s not the woman who goes out and volunteers for everything and does it all. The supermom is the one that knows her boundaries and knows how to nourish and fill herself up so she can be an even better stronger mom. And so I’m giving women 10 days to experience that and then I’ll be opening the Supermom Club in November. So it’ll be a monthly membership-based experience.
Sheryl
Good for you. That’s awesome.
Gina
Thank you.
Sheryl
So it’s Gina Fontane, tell us how to find your website and everything.
Gina
Ginafontaine.com is my website and if you go to Amazon and search supermom.
Sheryl
You Are a Supermom: find ways to reclaim your superpower and thrive forever. So thank you so much for putting this out to the world and for all that you’re doing. I appreciate you being on the show today.
Gina
Yes, thank you, Sheryl. I appreciate it.
