Photo by Xeniya Kovaleva

There’s a question I’ve been sitting with lately — one that has stopped me in my tracks, cracked me open, and ultimately brought me back to center. It’s only four words long, and chances are you’ve asked it yourself. Sometimes in the heavy, hopeless way. Sometimes in the curious, clarifying way.

What’s the point?

The way you ask it makes all the difference.

Two Ways to Ask the Same Question

When we ask “what’s the point” from a place of exhaustion or defeat, our nervous system is in what’s called a dorsal vagal state — a kind of shutdown. Everything feels flat, purposeless, too heavy to move through. That version of the question keeps us stuck.

But when we ask it with genuine curiosity — what is the point? — something shifts. We zoom out. We get perspective. We reconnect with meaning. And science actually backs this up: finding meaning is one of the most evidence-based strategies for wellbeing and happiness we have.

I’ve been doing a lot of that second kind of asking lately, particularly as I’ve been returning to my book manuscript with fresh eyes after a longer-than-planned break. Looking at it with new perspective asked me to get honest: why should anyone read this? What do I actually want them to walk away with? What is this all for?

The Through-Lines Behind This Work

The School of MOM didn’t emerge from thin air. It grew out of two very personal, deeply rooted realities in my own life.

The first: I am estranged from my mother. It’s been a long and painful road — though one I’ve done so much work on that it doesn’t carry the same acute pain it once did. But the ache of that relationship, and watching the trajectory of my mother’s mental health, planted a seed of fierce determination in me early on. I can’t help her at this stage. But I can help myself. And I can help other women who are more available, more ready, more conscious. That is part of my legacy.

The second through-line is just as personal. When I became a mother myself, I needed a mother. There’s a bucket, as I often say, that only your mom can fill. When that bucket goes unfilled, the next best person to fill it — the only person who can truly fill it — is you. Mothering ourselves mindfully became, for me, a literal act of becoming the mother I always needed and never had. That’s what this work is. It always has been.

And underneath both of these roots is the love I carry for my daughters. I’ll never forget teaching an early workshop and putting up a slide about my “why.” One piece of it was this: I don’t want my 30-something-year-old daughter sitting in a workshop learning how and why she needs to make time for herself. I will do the work now so she doesn’t have to spend her precious days unraveling what I can unravel for her. My girls are my why. My inner life, my younger parts, my healing — it all feeds into who I get to be for them.

It’s Not About Learning More

We are living in an age of information overload. Between books, podcasts, courses, and AI-generated content, there is more to consume than any one human could ever take in. And I want to be honest with you: the point of all of this is not to learn more.

We know enough. The missing piece isn’t information — it’s integration.

Integration, the way I use the word, has two roots. The first is the one you might expect: taking what you’re learning and actually living it. Closing the gap between what you know in your head and what you embody in your life. You can understand the nervous system intellectually, but you don’t know it until you feel it in your body. You can read about boundaries and estranged mother relationships, but those of us in the “Apples” community — women who carry the weight of estranged or complicated mother relationships — know that you don’t truly understand it until you’ve lived it.

The second root of integration is wholeness. It means getting to know all parts of yourself — not just the polished, functional parts, but the anxious parts, the shame parts, the inner critic. Not to fix them or push them away, but to welcome them, tend to them, and ultimately bring them into relationship with the parts of you that are rooted in safety, connection, and flourishing. That’s what healing really is. Not erasing the hard parts, but integrating them into the whole.

The Whole Point

A few hours before I recorded this episode, my youngest daughter got off the school bus and something was clearly off. She wasn’t talking. She was carrying something. And I had a choice: pivot my plans, or be present.

I stayed. I waited. I held space. And as we settled into that moment together — her eventually falling apart a little, me being steady — I thought: This is it. This is the whole point.

Not the podcast. Not the book. Not the program. The point is the moments where your child can feel your sturdiness, your safety, your presence — and where that presence is something you’ve actually cultivated, not just something you hope for.

The Flourished Mother isn’t an ideal. She’s not perfect. She’s integrated. She’s whole. She’s done enough of her own work that when her kid needs her, she’s actually there — in her body, in the room, rooted enough to hold what needs holding.

That’s the legacy I’m here to build. One mother at a time.

Ready to Zoom Out?

If this question — what’s the point? — is stirring something in you, I’d love to meet you there. The Flourished Mother Map is a personalized experience designed to do exactly that: zoom out, get clear on where you are and what’s getting in the way, and give you concrete next steps. It’s all me — reflection questions, a personal video, no AI involved. You can grab yours at theschoolofmom.com/map.