Welcome to A Glimpse Inside, I’m Wendy Perrotti. You are listening to episode three, of our four-part series on being a great mom and not losing your identity. Last week in our first coaching session, Victoria had some time to grieve the loss of her pre-mom self. And did some exercises with me to start to uncover what that identity might look like reclaimed in combination with her current self.

This week, we’re going to be talking about living your passion while parenting. We’re going to see what she’s been up to since our last session, but before we do, I just want you to all remember that on our coaching episodes. This is no advice, no-judgment zone. We’re not fixing anybody. You don’t need fixing, Victoria doesn’t need fixing. We’re all perfectly fine the way we are, while talking about living your passion. But sometimes we are yearning for more. Sometimes something feels hollow or missing. Sometimes we have that sense of longing in our life that we’re ready to grow into the next thing. And that’s what we’re doing here. Unlike change, growth sticks, growth only happens in one direction, nothing in nature un-grows and neither will you. So welcome back, Victoria.

Hi, it’s so great to be here again. Thank you for having me, Wendy.

I’m so excited to have you back and to hear what you’ve been up to since our last session. We gave you some homework and what if anything did you do with it?

Well, so it was actually really helpful to have the list of filters that we talked about last week. Because I think for me personally, just having everything in the paper, it made my sense of discovery and my sense of how I was feeling about myself. It just makes everything more concrete. So it helped incredibly. I referred to the list that we made last week, the list of filters in the morning and in the evening. And this one really helped ground me for the day. It was something that I had to hold onto, and it was something that, as I said, was a tangible list that I could refer to. And I did that twice a day. And it really helped reaffirm my values and just gave me something to hold onto in the course of the day, which was really good. Because with everything going on in the world with quarantine, with homeschooling, my kids, it’s exhausting. And I will tell you, I am pretty much exhausted all the time.

Having something that I could refer to that grounded me, that helped me take a breath. That helped me just, like I said, grounded me. Really helped me get through the day even more so than I think I needed. It was something that I could refer to and I did. And even when we talked about the Post-It note my fridge, it’s amazing how many times in the course of the day you’re opening your fridge while you’re in quarantine. So it was really, really helpful to have that and feel like, okay, this is good, I’m good.

I might be stressed. I might be exhausted with my children needing me and wanting things 24/7 because as in the world, we are social distancing, quarantining. And so it was something that I could hold onto that reminded me of me. And that was really, really important to me. And especially now, when you kind of feel like the world is in flux and you’re in flux, and the things that you know are in flux, it was nice to have something to ground me. So that’s what this list really did.

It’s an interesting thing for those of you who didn’t hear Victoria’s first session with me, go ahead, back, and take a listen. We asked her to come up with a couple of lists. One was about her values, what she loves about her current self, and what she might love about her future self in her role as a mom. And then we did the same thing in just her role as Victoria, as a woman, what she values, what she loved about that old self. And what she sort of would see as what she might love about a future self. And these things popped out of her mouth instantly. And they will pop out of yours instantly if you make this kind of list. And yet when we keep it in our brain, it’s kind of in this foggy vapor, right?