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Lauren’s List
KEEP YOUR COOL
By: Lauren Brown | July 6, 2023
It’s no doubt that we are all about to experience some long hot summer days–days where the dance between juggling kid’s schedules, work, vacation, family time and planning for the upcoming school year all take place. It can be hard to keep your cool!
These long days can bring unwanted stress, but it’s summer after all, aren’t we supposed to have fun? Unfortunately, the reality is that this time of year can feel disorganized, scattered and leave parents feeling unsupported and burnt out.
This is where Lauren’s List comes in. Hi everyone, welcome to Lauren’s List; a helpful resource guide for parents written by me, a trained midwife, birth and postpartum doula and childbirth educator who draws upon her experience of attending over 650 births and educating hundreds of families to create short informative lists that feel approachable to take on. I’m also a Mom of a 16-month-old, who has shown me a whole new meaning to life. Going from birthworker to Mom was a smooth transition for me, and I’m so grateful to all of the families who allowed me to support them during their transformational journeys into new parenthood. Helping them made me a better mom, and without them, my journey would have been much rockier.
So here are 5 ways to help “keep your cool” this summer, so that you can feel well-resourced and truly enjoy this time of year.
Ways to “Keep Your Cool”
- Offer yourself some radical self-love. If you are looking for a book to read this summer please start with this book that changed my life. The Body is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love by Sonya Renee Taylor is bold and empowering. Self-love is a radical idea. It’s a practice where you accept all your flaws and rejoice in the person that you are. Offering yourself some self-love can show up in several ways. You can physically give yourself a hug and say out loud “I love myself”. Say this a few times until you really feel it and then just notice what comes up for you. Maybe it allows you to take a moment to notice something new about yourself you haven’t recognized before. Another way to offer yourself some self-love would be to start a gratitude journal. These entries don’t have to be long, and you can even use voice to text to record it quickly. Make a note of something that you’re proud of doing or something you like about yourself, and see if moving from a place of gratitude brightens your mood.
- Don’t compare. I’m going to tell it like it is, we live in a beautiful, but intense place. Marin can make you feel like you are constantly trying to “keep up with the Jones,” especially during the summer when people start to share their travel plans. This can sometimes lead to feelings of jealousy, inadequacy, or bring up insecurities. At some point, we’ve all felt like we’re not giving our families enough amazing experiences or vacation time. This is where I invite you to not compare yourself to others and instead take note of all that you are accomplishing this summer. It is always best to live within your means and continue to focus on working towards your goals. Brene Brown has really helped me with this practice and she offers some guidance in this article on the curse of comparison and how to avoid it.
- Recognize intrusive thoughts to help you live in the moment. This practice is all about noticing the type of thoughts you are having. Honor thoughts that are purposeful and lead to action or change, and ignore thoughts make you spiral and take you out of the moment. Harvard Health’s article “Managing intrusive thoughts” provides wonderful insight. Many intrusive thoughts are rooted in anxiety. Anxiety is a normal feeling, and not all anxious thoughts are bad! When you are concerned about a situation and those thoughts lead to you taking action to make a change, anxiety can lead to something positive. But intrusive thoughts make people think of terrible, what-if situations which lead down a rabbit hole of unproductive worry. So, this summer I invite you to begin to recognize when intrusive thoughts start to come up. Notice where they start to take you, and see if you can stop them by focusing on what’s currently surrounding you and happening in the moment. Remember anxiety isn’t always a bad thing and learning how to stop intrusive thoughts can be an amazing way to offer yourself some peace.
- Create weekly rituals. It is often difficult to find your rhythm during summer because schedules are constantly changing. With different activities, summer camps, vacations and family gatherings, it is often hard to not over schedule and slow down. People often say “summer has just flown by!” Adopting a weekly ritual serves as a timestamp and reminds us to slow down and enjoy where we are. Take a nice bath once a week using your favorite epsom salts, candles and face mask or take a 20 minute weekly walk along serene McNears Beach. Meet weekly with friends, or schedule a weekly date with your partner to help you feel closer and more connected. Rituals are a great way to drop in and recharge. Here is a list of self care rituals published by Psychology Today for more ideas.
- Try something new. Because why not?! This tip is invaluable and will help make this summer more memorable. Trying something new will allow you to think back on the summer months and say, “Wow, that’s the summer I tried __________” or “That was the summer I learned how to ________” instead of the classic “Wow, I have no idea where the summer went”. I was really inspired by this article from The Atlantic, “Don’t Approach Life like a Picky Eater” by Arthur C. Brooks, where they share the importance of neophilia, the love of new experiences, and how that is strongly associated with happiness. So, the next time someone invites you to try an e-bike, a new restaurant, a new play, show, or movie, be open and tackle something new. I promise it will most likely lead to a memorable experience.
Happy Summer Everyone. Here’s to keeping our cool.
Lauren Miller Brown is the Founder of Moon Belly Birth which provides birth and postpartum doula services and childbirth education classes. Lauren is a trained midwife and a core facilitator at Natural Resources in San Francisco. Lauren became a Mom in March 2022 and is now offering new parent coaching services. You can email her at lauren@moonbellybirth.com or find her on Instagram @moonbellybirth.