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Moms are interesting. We complain about not getting time to ourselves, but part of the problem with many of us is that even when we do get those rare and precious moments alone, we often squander them, pushing ourselves to do another load of laundry, whip up a quick meal, or get more work done. When it comes to mommy me-time, it’s not just a matter of finding the time, but it’s also about giving ourselves permission to fully enjoy that time alone. Further, while there are many ways one can spend her alone time, one thing we can all benefit from is a few minutes of mindful meditation.
“Mindful meditation is mothers allowing themselves to take care of themselves mentally,” Anisah Amat, Head of Community at Expectful told MadameNoire. “Expectful is is a meditation app that supports parents throughout fertility, pregnancy, and parenting. We describe the app as prenatal vitamins for the mind. Meditation and mindfulness allow mothers to give them a moment new themselves that is kind of hard to come by especially during motherhood.”
If you’re new to meditating, you may be reluctant to spend money on costly apps, but a recent partnership between JOHNSON’S and Expectful has made guided meditations free for moms and expecting mothers through the end of 2020.
“We have 20 meditations that are available on the website through our partnership with JOHNSON’S and the meditations are a glimpse of what Expectful has to offer,” Amat explained. “The mediations are offered for free through our partnership with JOHSON’s and we broke them down to first trimester, second trimester, third trimester, and motherhood. There are a few meditations for each phase each of this journey and it just gives mamas a glimpse into this world of meditating.”
If you’re like many other mothers who are feeling overworked and overwhelmed by the demands of parenting, you may also be wondering when you’d even find the time to meditate. The answer is to prioritize those five to ten minutes of alone time before you tackle anything else. Push it to the top of your to-do list.
“For me, it’s all about giving yourself permission. Something that I have experienced personally as a mother, and something that I talk a lot about, is dismantling the superwoman complex. Dismantling this idea that not only do, I have to be everything for everybody — including my child, including my husband, my friends, but I also don’t have to do it all,” Amat confessed. ‘For me, when my seventeen-month-old daughter goes down for a nap, I take five to 10 minutes to meditate. And I mean as soon as she goes down. That was a practice because before it was like, ‘The baby is down for a nap. Let me see how much I can get done while they’re asleep.’ I just had to give myself permission to take five to10 minutes when I got her down to meditate, to journal, to just be with myself for five to ten minutes. It’s all about giving your self permission.”
Mindful meditation is also all about knowing that you deserve that time, Amat added. “[It’s] definitely challenging at first because your mind is wandering with all of the things that you still have to do but, like I said, it’s about getting into the practice and about allowing it to become habitual. The chaos of motherhood, personally for me, if I don’t meditate and if I miss a day, I don’t feel completely grounded within myself. I can literally feel myself kind of getting kind of eaten up by that chaos. You know what I mean? But allowing myself to take those five to ten minutes of meditating, I can literally look at things from a different scope.”
To begin your meditation journey, click here.
