From the cozy office on a sleety winter day, a truth worth sitting with.
You’ve said it. I’ve said it. Almost every mother I know has said it at some point: I want to be a better mom.
But what does that actually mean?
When I look at that sentence through the lens of the work we do here at The School of Mom, “being a better mom” isn’t really about doing more, knowing more, or optimizing more. It’s about something far more foundational — and far more transformative. It’s about learning to lead yourself.
All of yourself.
You Are Not Just One Self
The word “ourselves” in Mothering Ourselves Mindfully is completely intentional. Because we are not just one self. We are a compilation of selves — younger selves, more reactive selves, the parts of us that shut down under stress, the parts that people-please, the parts that rage, the parts that collapse. And underneath all of that? The steadier, wiser, more grounded parts that are waiting to be brought forward.
Selves leadership is the practice of getting to know all of those parts. Of tending to the younger, more contracted parts with compassion — rather than shame or suppression — while simultaneously awakening and strengthening the parts of us that are capable of real, grounded maturity. The parts that can hold our kids and ourselves when things get hard.
This is not self-improvement. This is self-leadership.
The Secure Attachment You Never Had
Here’s where attachment theory comes in — and I think this reframe can be genuinely life-changing.
Many of us grew up without a securely attached caregiver. Without a parent who was emotionally healthy, consistently present, and able to model resilience. So we developed what we needed to survive — anxious attachment, avoidant patterns, hypervigilance, shutdown. These were not failures. They were adaptations.
But here’s the profound thing: you can become the secure attachment figure for yourself. Right now. Inside the ecosystem of your own inner world.
This is what selves leadership makes possible. When you learn to meet your own contracted, scared, or overwhelmed parts with the steadiness they never received, you are literally building the neurological and emotional foundation you didn’t get in childhood. You are not doomed by your early experiences. You are not broken. You are in the process of awakening something that has always been in you.
Awakening, Not Creating
This distinction matters more than I can say: we are not building something from scratch. We are awakening what already exists.
A few years ago I did an ancestor session and told the facilitator I wasn’t sure there was much wisdom to access in my lineage — there was a lot of mental illness, a lot of addiction. She said something I’ve never forgotten: There are healed, well, and wise ancestors in your lineage, even if you don’t know them.
That landed in my body like a quiet homecoming.
The steady, resilient, compassionate parts of you are not something you have to manufacture. They exist — in your body, in your deeper knowing, in the long line of women who came before you and survived impossible things. Your job is not to create from scratch. Your job is to resource and reclaim.
For women who are already doing too much — this is a relief. We don’t need another thing to build. We need permission to tap into what is already there.
Where Are the Adults?
I’ll say what I think many of us are feeling right now: we are living in a moment of profound leadership drought. And our kids are watching.
The feelings of hopelessness, overwhelm, and anxiety that so many mothers in my community are carrying right now are real. And they are not new. But what this moment is asking of us — demanding of us, honestly — is to see the wisdom inside the anger and grief, and to alchemize it into something that actually moves the needle.
That starts with leading yourself.
When you can meet the parts of you that feel shut down, scared, or despairing — when you can be a resource for yourself in those moments — you become something genuinely rare right now: a grounded, emotionally attuned adult. Your kids experience a parent who can come back to steadiness. Not because you’re performing calm, but because you’ve actually built it, from the inside out.
We are becoming the unicorns. And the world needs us.
This Is Your Assignment
I don’t say this to add to your load. I say it because I believe it’s true and because I think, on some level, you already know it: you have an assignment right now.
It is to wake up from the inherited, programmed survival states that are no longer serving you — or your kids, or the world. It is to stop waiting for the grounded adult to show up from the outside and start cultivating that presence within yourself.
You can grieve what you didn’t have growing up. (Please do. I still do.) And and — you can take the next step toward becoming it.
That is the heart of Mothering Ourselves Mindfully. Not perfection, not performance — leadership. From the inside out.
Want to start awakening those steadier, more grounded parts of yourself? Download the Flourished Mother Starter Kit— five nervous system practices to begin this work today. Find it at https://theschoolofmom.com/start
Have thoughts on this episode? Send Sarah a voice message at https://www.speakpipe.com/theschoolofmom or reach out at hello@theschoolofmom.com
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