5 Simple Ways to Reparent Yourself and Find Healing as a Mom

[Reparenting yourself can help you to heal your inner child and develop healthier relationships. Discover simple ways to begin reparenting yourself today.]

Your relationship with yourself is important, Mama.

Your relationship with yourself impacts all of the relationships in your life including your relationship with your children.

And nurturing healthy relationships is so important for our overall health and for your parenting journey. Whether you want to strengthen the relationship with your partner, your children, your parents, or your coworkers so you can create healthy boundaries and get the support that you need on your motherhood journey, you are going to love this episode of Soul Care Mom Podcast.

In this episode, I chat with Jennifer Ally Kern, a higher consciousness consultant and author. And we dove deep into the topic of healthy and unhealthy relationships, as well as how to reparent yourself so that you can approach your partnership and your parenting from a place of strong inner alignment.

If you’ve ever wondered how you can nurture your relationships so that you can create more meaningful connections with the people in your life, you are not going to want to miss this episode of the Soul Care Mom Podcast.

[Disclaimer: we are not health professionals. This chat is solely based on research and personal experience. If you have any concerns please seek out the help of your trusted health professionals.]

[Please Note: This post may contain affiliate links. This means that Soul Care Mom may receive a small commission if you click through and make a purchase, at no additional cost to you. Please see disclaimers for more information.]

Welcome to the Soul Care Mom Podcast. I’m Catherine Wilde of soulcaremom.com. I’m a mom of three amazing kids as Soul Care Mom Coach and yoga and meditation teacher. I’ve helped hundreds of women.

And I’m here to help you feel calm and find your unshakable confidence as a mom.

If you’re ready to stop living in survival mode and you’re ready to drop the mom guilt and overwhelm this podcast is for you!

Think of this as a lunch date with a girlfriend.

Grab a cup of tea and get cozy.

It’s time to get honest and vulnerable and shift the traditional mindset around motherhood.

Be sure to subscribe to be the first to know when new episodes are released. Get ready to grow and feel empowered. As a mom. I’m here for you, Mama.

Let’s get started.

Catherine Wilde

Hi, Jennifer, thank you so much for joining me today.

Catherine Wilde

Hi, Catherine. Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Catherine Wilde

So one of the many reasons that I’m excited about talking with you is that you have had quite the journey and have learned so much about relationships and connecting with your inner alignment.

Catherine Wilde

And you shared a little bit with me about your story with your mom. Could you share about that experience and the healing journey that you both went through?

Jennifer Ally Kern

Yeah, I’m happy to share that. It was quite a quite a journey. I had a pretty tumultuous relationship with my mother. And there is a history in our family of tumultuous relationships from mother to daughter. So she had a hard relationship with her mother, her mother with her mother before. And I can kind of trackback a few generations of this discord and like a lack of synching up between mother and daughter.

Jennifer Ally Kern

That has been a thread through my ancestry. And what’s interesting is that with my mom, when I was a little girl, I just looked up to her and I thought she was the freaking cat’s pajamas.

Jennifer Ally Kern

She’s tall, blond-haired, blue eyes, lean, beautiful. And she just has this incredible spark where, I mean, she’s always singing, she’s bubbly, she loves talking to people. And so she had this just incredible effervescent side to her.

Jennifer Ally Kern

And yet I would watch her engage with men. She was divorced from my dad when I was about three years old. So when I was first formulating my memories, I would watch her. And see when at some point she was dating, how she would be with men. I saw how she was with work and for a time period, too, she was actually pretty heavily involved with drugs and alcohol. And so I would see this kind of like flip side of her where she would diminish her power.

Jennifer Ally Kern

There would be this sort of like life-force, energy draining out from her. And as a little girl, like, I didn’t understand it. I didn’t get it. And it made me mad.

Jennifer Ally Kern

But I was pretty passive. I was a pretty scared kid a lot. And so I never expressed it as anger. I kind of internalized it. And what’s interesting is that led us down a path of having sort of a mistrusting relationship because my mom would very quickly snap.

Jennifer Ally Kern

She would be like, I love you one minute, I hate you another. And so, of course, that just breeds this discomfort and mistrust. She married my stepdad when I was seven. And he was a pretty rough guy and big guy. He was six foot five and two hundred thirty pounds, dark features. I mean, like little he was scary sometimes. I mean he could be super sweet, but when he was scary he was scary.

Jennifer Ally Kern

And there was always this sense that he didn’t really want me around. They had two more kids, my two little brothers. As the years went by, there just became more and more of an underlying tension. And by the time I was 16, they kicked me out of the house.

Jennifer Ally Kern

And so my last two years of high school, I actually ended up living with two different families.

Jennifer Ally Kern

And it became this like really big drama. And then for years and years, it was always this on again, off again. You can be in the family. No you can’t be in the family. I can’t tell you how many times I got kicked out of the family.

Jennifer Ally Kern

And I would always come back and say, you know, but this is stupid. We’re wasting time. I love you. This is time you don’t get back. And then finally, at some point when I got married a number of years ago, I decided, OK, that’s it, I’m not going to live like this anymore.

Jennifer Ally Kern

And as much as I love my mother and as much as I saw, like all the beauty and who she is, I just kept seeing her just fade into this other person. I mean, I even told her that one time I said I feel like I need an exorcist, like where’s my mom? You know? I mean, it got to that point. And finally, I said, I’m out, I’m out. This isn’t OK because it became pretty abusive.

Jennifer Ally Kern

And I said, I’m not going to go into a new family life caring that.

Now, the interesting thing about this, Catherine, is like you could listen to a story like this and say, “wow, what an awful mom or how sad about that mom.” But when you go back and you actually look at how this got stimulated for her, it actually kind of makes sense. You see, my mother was the third of five children from my grandparents.

Jennifer Ally Kern

And about six weeks after she was born, my grandparents had their two first kids. Two boys. Six weeks after my mom was born, the first born son. So her older brother. Sitting at the dinner table. They’re all sitting at the dinner table.

My grandmother was feeding my mom, my grandfather sitting there with the two boys, feeding the two-year-old. And the oldest one, Jerry, about five years old. He starts throwing his food around.

Jennifer Ally Kern

My grandfather says, “Jerome, stop it. You’re making a mess.” You know, he’s getting annoyed. And Jerry keeps throwing his peas or something like that. And my grandpa said, “Jerome stop it.” He said, “But it doesn’t work, Daddy.” He said “What do you mean it doesn’t work. What doesn’t work?’ He said, “My arm, Daddy. It’s not working.” And that was the first sign that they had that my Uncle Jerry had a brain tumor.

So my mom’s a newborn and she gets shipped off to family. Right? Because all of the energy goes to taking care of Jerry.

And a year later. The day after my mother’s first birthday, Jerry died.

So her whole first year of life, she didn’t get to bond with her mom. And even those two or three years after that, her mother was in this incredible grief.

Grief that really was pervasive throughout my mother’s whole upbringing and the formation of that family. I mean, how could it not be?

And so then when you fast forward and look at what kind of a mom she was with me, it’s like, How can you blame her? You know? She was doing the best she knew how, given her experience and given what she had.

And she I mean, she really loved me. That was never a question. But there were all these other things that were pulling her energy, taking her, I would say, out of alignment.

With her, trying to keep up with so many different areas of her life and really in some ways just kind of trying to keep it together, at least for certain periods of time.

Jennifer Ally Kern

But the good thing about this is that the story kind of has a nice ending.

A few years ago, she and my stepdad actually ended up getting divorced. And she started down her own path of healing.

And she went through therapy. She really kind of rediscovered a new spiritual side of herself. And three years ago, I was actually planning an event. I called it Thrive Fiesta, a Gala for the Soul. And she showed up.

And she was there and oh, my God, she was like I mean, it was like somebody just flew her to the moon.

Jennifer Ally Kern

She was so proud her daughter did this thing. And she kept telling everybody, that’s my daughter. I was like, “oh, you met my mother, huh?” And everyone was like, “oh, we met her mother. She’s so proud of you.”

So it was the first, like, kind of a fresh gateway where now over these last three years, we’ve really had the opportunity to get to know each other as adults, as women, as ones who have been on our own respective healing journeys.

Jennifer Ally Kern

And now it’s like I finally got my mother back. You know? It’s like. And I never thought I would see this day, Catherine. I never did. I mean, I always kind of longed for it, but I had set it aside because I tried for so many years.

And to see where she is now, she’s such an inspiration for me because she’s pioneering new things and she’s doing her own business and she’s got a part time job that she loves.

Jennifer Ally Kern

And she loves serving people. And she’s a healer. And she’s she’s like she’s almost 70 years old. And she’s like, “I’m going to find the love of my life.” And she’s like, “I’m going to do new businesses.” She’s like, “I still have at least another third of my life yet left, you know?”

And I’m just watching her thinking like, “Wow. I want to be like her when I grow up.” There were a lot of years, I couldn’t say that.

Jennifer Ally Kern

So it’s really sweet to have this reconnection now and to get to know each other and the phases of life that we’re in at this juncture.

Catherine Wilde

That’s so beautiful, I’ve got tears in my eyes.

And a credible story and an incredible journey for both of you. And it’s really powerful that the journey that you can go on and that there’s always hope. Yeah, that’s amazing.

Jennifer Ally Kern

Yeah.

Healthy And Unhealthy Relationships

Catherine Wilde

So often we are born into relationships or we end up in relationships where things get unhealthy for everyone involved and it tends to happen like overtime or maybe if you’re a kid that you don’t really know what’s healthy from what’s unhealthy.

Catherine Wilde

But, you know, in your adult relationships, we rationalize things and we develop certain patterns and they become our new normal. Can we talk a little bit about what healthy and unhealthy relationships look like? You had to set that boundary with your family. Is there anything you can share with us there?

Jennifer Ally Kern

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think anything that I mean, there are a lot of nuances for what’s healthy and what’s unhealthy.

And I think as a woman, you just need to know what are the things that are true for you? What are the things that are aligned for you?

And basically, all that means is what feels good to you. Women are very intuitive beings, you know what feels good to, you know, what’s right for you?

Jennifer Ally Kern

Part of the healing journey is, the journey of our souls expansion through this human experience is coming to recollect the parts of ourselves that have been shattered and scattered.

The parts of ourselves that were left in a wounding experience.

The parts of ourselves that were diminished because we weren’t understood or weren’t listened to.

Parts of ourself that were left in certain places or in the context of certain relationships where we abandoned ourselves. Where we didn’t speak our truth. Where we didn’t know how to protect ourselves.

Jennifer Ally Kern

And that is so much of the healing journey. That is what it is in my perspective to be a spiritual being in the human experience. That’s how we grow.

And so being able to be in touch with that. That, to me, is part of what how we identify “what is healthy for me? Where are my boundaries?” Because for some people, having, like, teasing banter in a relationship might be like fun and playful, but for someone else, it might activate wound and then that’s not OK.

Jennifer Ally Kern

So I don’t know how much it is about like what are the things that get done that make something healthy or unhealthy as much as it is “what’s the energy that it activates in you? And is it an energy that’s nurturing and nourishing for you or is it depleting?”

And only you can know that.

What are your thoughts about that Catherine?

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How to Reparent Yourself So You Can Heal

Catherine Wilde

I love the way you put that. We’re all unique individuals and we all have different things that we need to heal. And so different situations affect us differently. So maybe we can talk some more about that.

Our relationships are so important and meaningful in our lives, but are our most important relationship is with ourselves. And it’s the foundation of all of our other relationships and when we can approach our relationship with ourself from this place of inner alignment. It often means we need to do some reparenting though right?

Whatever happened in our past we have the ability to reparent and reconnect with ourselves.

Catherine Wilde

It’s just a beautiful part of being human. And no matter what self-limiting beliefs we have or judgments we have about ourselves or what our current relationships look like, we can shift and reparent ourselves so we can approach our relationships from a more aligned place.

What can you share with us about connecting with our own inner alignemnt? If we’ve been pulled in so many directions with so many messages coming at us?

Catherine Wilde

How can we connect and how can we find that inner aligniment again that we have within us?

Jennifer Ally Kern

Yeah, well, yeah, absolutely. I’m going to answer that question. I want to go back one step to what you’re saying about the self-limiting beliefs and that need to reparent because I want to offer people, the mamas out there who are tuning in, a framework for thinking about it.

So I have a pretty good brain, but I really like things simple. As soon as it starts to get too complicated I just I can’t get much traction.

Jennifer Ally Kern

So I wrote a book. It’s called “The Drama-Free Way: Authentic, Thriving in a Chaotic World”.

And it’s about the drama that we can get hooked into on our own minds and how that then seeps out into our relationships. It seeps out into our jobs. It’s the kind of thinking that limits us and blocks us and keeps us in old cycles and old patterns of drama and trauma. And we’ve all had some experience of this. So but what’s important to name here in the context of this conversation is that there are only three things that underlie every drama you can come into contact with.

3 Core Wounds to Heal As You Reparent Yourself

Jennifer Ally Kern

And again, drama is anything that blocks or limits you.

And its three core human wounds. And these are tribal wounds. It comes from being engaged in family and in community and in schools, something that happens in our developmental years.

And these ones everybody will recognize because you’ll have them all.

One is shame. One is abandonment. And one is betrayal.

And shame is the deepest one in terms of sort of like a darkness and how it hits at the core of ourselves in a spiritual level.

Jennifer Ally Kern

But abandonment is actually the most primal one. It’s the first fear.

We’re only born with three fears. The fear of falling. The fear of loud noises. And fear of abandonment.

Because as a baby, if you’re abandoned, you literally can’t survive, right?

So that’s the most primal of them.

And then betrayal is really about being able to establish your sense of trust in the world and in other people.

So we experience all of these wounds.

And then we start to have beliefs that come from them.

Jennifer Ally Kern

And the beliefs very simply are that with shame is that “I’m not enough. I’m not good enough.”

The belief of abandonment is “I don’t matter.”

And the belief of betrayal is “The world can’t be trusted.”

And so you can see how these three little seeds will start to blossom out into the stories we tell ourselves. Our perspectives about ourselves in the world.

And then we start to build this very elaborate internal system that sets the tone of our consciousness. That then gets projected onto our realities. And then our realities feed it back to us.

Jennifer Ally Kern

So a lot of the healing journey is recognizing those. Where do those come up for you?

How how much have you healed? Right? Because you’re not at zero point. Right?

And how can you heal further? What are the next phases? And it’s always in phases.

There’s no end point. We shrink our recovery time. We get triggered and you go nuts for a minute and then it’s OK.

1. Notice Your Thoughts and Feelings

Jennifer Ally Kern

I can come back, I can come back into center with myself.

Which comes to the second part of your question and that’s “how do I come into alignment with myself? What is my alignment? What is alignment look like?”

And the most simple way to say it is you are in alignment when you feel good. Any kind of feeling good, it could be calm, balanced, peaceful. It could be in a state of acceptance and contentment. It could be the state of hopefulness.

Jennifer Ally Kern

Of being in a state of courage. Courage is a state of mind. It could be love, joy, excitement, anything that you would say has a positive vibe to it. That’s what tells you the frequency that you’re in.

2. Do Things That Bring Your Joy

And so if you’re in a frequency that aligns with your soul’s truth, which is the highest vibrational resonance of who you are, you’re going to feel good.

The farther you come away from that, the more you go into the dark. Just like the planets that are further out from the sun. Right? The worse you feel.

So in the Drama-Free Way Book, and we’ll share a resource with you, too, that you can download for free.

It’s something that I call the Energetic State Spectrum. And in my opinion, every household should have this. Definitely, every mother should have this.

Because it’s going to give you a scale to recognize where are you at with your own frequency based on your emotions.

Because your emotions tell you how much are you in alignment with the truth of who you are, how far away are you from it?

Jennifer Ally Kern

And so the further you get out, you go into anger, you go into irritation, impatience, frustration, something every mother knows about. Right?

And then the further away you get into more like fear, anxiety, then you get into like apathy and then you get into worthlessness, powerlessness, hopelessness, shame.

Those are those furthest away from the truth of who you are. And so as mothers, it’s so important to recognize where you’re at, know how to do your own healing work, even if it’s just that micro healing of a moment.

3. Come Into Alignment with Yourself

Jennifer Ally Kern

Every single bit counts.

And then when you come back into alignment with yourself, you raise your energy, you feel better, you feel more balanced. Right?

And everything ripples out from there. And you know what kind of a mother you are. You know how your kids respond to you when you’re in that state of alignment versus when you’re in a misalignment.

Catherine Wilde

Absolutely. So if there’s a mom listening right now and she’s saying, well, I’m really far away. I’m in shame. I’m just feeling so unworthy.” What can she do to move closer to alignment?

4. Allow Yourself to Feel Your Feelings

Jennifer Ally Kern

Yeah, good question. There are a couple of answers to that. I think it really depends on is there something immediately happening that you need to process and move through.

Because we’re not in the business of denying emotions. Right?

This is your experience. I think one of the best things you can do for yourself always is be present to your experience. If you’re feeling shame, then have at it. Right?

It’s like if you woke up in the morning, you started a diet and guess what? You started having some ice cream. “Well you better do that ice cream good girl.”

I don’t even know if that’s really a good example, but it’s sort of like when you’re in it, it’s like do it good, you know?

Not in the sense of indulging yourself. We’re not talking about making it bigger to make it to amplify a drama.

But what I’m talking about is being really present to it and letting yourself go into the aching of it.

Letting yourself really feel the depth of it, because that’s what let’s move.

Jennifer Ally Kern

That’s what lets you release it, because you can’t stay there for very long. Even biochemically, I think anger for example, has a half-life of like 90 seconds in the body.

When you pay attention to it, it will release itself. It’ll resolve itself.

It’s when we stay cycling in the stories, in our minds, in the brain that’s when it perpetuates. And that’s when it turns into drama.

So if you’re having a real experience of shame, anxiety. Anxiety and depression, that’s really what I think a lot of people are going through right now.

Letting yourself be in it, honoring the experience, knowing it’s a wave. It’s not going to stay there forever.

Even giving yourself an intention.

5. Allow Yourself to Be Playful & Present in the Moment

Jennifer Ally Kern

OK, I’m going to spend the next five minutes, 10 minutes and just really honor this. And then I’m going to go do X, Y or Z. Something to start shifting the energy.

So that would be the next thing. So the first thing is tending to what’s happening internally. The next thing is “what are the choices that I can make to do something that’s going to give me a sense of relief.

“Is it calling somebody and talking it out, is it sitting down and writing, just scribble it out? Is it playing with my kids?”

Let me get distracted with my kids. Let them be a source of my upliftment. Not that you’re dumping anything on them or making them responsible for it.

But that you’re surrendering to the energy of playfulness, the kind spirit that your child has. Whatever that is.

When you can kind of surrender and relax into joining their world, you get to have a lightening of whatever’s happening for you. Does that make sense?

Catherine Wilde

Absolutely, and I totally agree that it’s the pushing down and, you know, avoiding our emotions is what makes them bigger and we get further and further away. And I like to think of our emotions as messengers like they’re trying to tell us something. When we can hear the message, the messenger can go away, you know?

Jennifer Ally Kern

Oh, that’s brilliant. I just love the way you just put that. Yes.

Catherine Wilde

Yeah.  I completely agree. And then being present with your kids is so powerful. I mean, they live in presence, you know? Especially when they’re really little. They’re always present. And so it’s such a great thing to kind of soak in be in that place with them, you know? Because that really does get you out of the drama in the story in your head and lets you go deeper into your heart. Yeah.

Jennifer Ally Kern

Yeah, absolutely.

Catherine Wilde

And so talking about kids, I would love to talk a little bit more about the parent-child relationship. As a step mom, can you share some of the tips that you have, the way that you connected with your stepdaughter to create that beautiful relationship?

Jennifer Ally Kern

Yeah, so I. I have not have biological children. I was married to a man who I’m no longer married to, but when we were married, I was a step mom to his three kids and his kids were 12, 15 and 18 when I came into their lives.

So, you know, the older two, we got along great, but I didn’t really have a parenting role for them. But the baby, when she was 15, she actually came to live with us full time.

Jennifer Ally Kern

So their mom lived in another state. And so initially it was just I would see them at holidays and summers and that kind of thing.

And I didn’t really expect to have a parenting role at all. And about halfway through her high school, my former husband came to me and said, hey, what do you think of our youngest comes the lives of both full time. And I would like to be honest, I was like, “I don’t want that.

Jennifer Ally Kern

Like, I didn’t sign up for that. And it was mostly that wasn’t coming from a place of anything about her, but it was my own fear.

Especially my experience with my mom. I didn’t think I’d be good. I mean, I was really kind of afraid of, like, screwing her up. Or like it being awful.

I was afraid that I was going to be really inadequate. And so I thought, OK, I know enough.

Jennifer Ally Kern

I’m smart enough. I’m passionate about working with women and supporting women.

Especially after the experience I had with my mom.

And so I said, well, let me talk to her. She’s a young woman. Let me ask her what does she want? So I asked her, “So what is it that you see here that you want to come live here?” I mean, that’s a big decision for her. She’s young.

And she said, “Well I just want to get out of my comfort zone.”

And I was like, “Well, damn girl.”

I mean, what I want for any woman, right? And here she is telling me I said, “OK, game on, let’s do this.”

And so she came to live with us. And early on meeting her, I could tell she’s just such a sweet soul. Really gentle, really good-natured, just a good person. Just a sweet, thoughtful, caring soul.

Jennifer Ally Kern

Then she moved in. And I got nervous all over again. And I kept feeling like “I’m not her mom, so I can’t really say and do things like a mom. But I’m a parent figure.”

It was, I think, what a lot of stepmoms go through, which is trying to figure out “what the hell is my role here? Who am I to this kid?”

Jennifer Ally Kern

And so as we progressed in our relationship, there were a few things that I thought, OK, I know I can do good here. I know we can really help her with this thing.

And what it turned out to be actually in our relationship was a lot around money and a lot around empowering herself to be self-reliant and self-sufficient.

Which is something that I’m very good at with my upbringing, having had a lot of independent time at an early age. I know how to do that.

Jennifer Ally Kern

So her junior year of high school. She’s living with us. And she was it must have been with us for about six months already. And I was like, OK, it’s time for this kid to get a job. Because she’s just sitting around doing her homework, but then kind of doing nothing. And I was like, you know, it’s a good age for that. My former husband agreed and she kind of wanted it.

Jennifer Ally Kern

So he was like helping her look for jobs. And we lived in a neighborhood where, I mean, we were five to ten minutes walking distance from every kind of like teenage dream job. You know, like coffee shops and grocery stores and floral shops, all these things.

And so it wasn’t for a lack of there’s nothing out there. And it was just like weeks and weeks. I was like, “what is going on here?”

So finally I said, “OK, I’m going to like step in, join the conversation.” Instead of, like, leaving it just up to my former husband.

Jennifer Ally Kern

And so I sat down with her one day and I said, “OK, so how’s this job searching going?” She said, “Oh yeah, it’s OK.” And I said, “So what do you think you would like?” She said, “Well maybe or that…” I said, “You know how much your money are going to make?” She said “No.” And I said, “Would you like to figure that out?” She said, “Yeah.” So we got out a calculator, figured out what was minimum wage at the time, and how many hours could she work a week, and taxes.

Jennifer Ally Kern

We kind of figured it out. And I said, “oh, so do you know that every two weeks you take home probably about one hundred dollars, maybe a little more?” I just got big and lit up. And I said, “so that means every month you’re not working, you’re losing over two hundred dollars.”

And the next day she had a job.

I mean, but it made it real for her, you know? And so that was something that I felt as a step mom, “OK I found a place where I can add value.”

And it gave us something to bond around to talk about that. And then sort of the next wave of that came the following year.

Her senior year. It was early in the school year she was taking Spanish class. And she’d taken Spanish class the year before, had kind of talked about a senior trip. And then it was senior year. And I said, “Are they going to take a trip this year?”

Jennifer Ally Kern

She said, “Yeah.” And I asked, “Do you want to go?” She said “I think so…” That was like at the beginning of the year.

Now it’s like October, November. And like times going by. I was like, “I haven’t heard anything about the Spain trip.”

And so I asked her “What’s happening with the trip?” And she said “I’m not going to go.” I said, “Why aren’t you going to go?” She said, “Well, it’s expensive.”

I said, “Oh. Hang on a second.”

Jennifer Ally Kern

I said, Like, how expensive, what are we talking about?” I think it was like four or five thousand dollars. And I said, “Sweetheart, do you want to go?”

She responded, “Well, yeah.” And I said, “Then don’t let money stop you.” I said, “If there’s something that you want, money is not a reason to not do it. If we can plan for it. If we can save for it.” And we still have like six months or something before they were going.

Jennifer Ally Kern

And I said, “If that’s something that you want to do, we will help you. You will save some money. And we can make this happen.”

And she did it. She went to Spain. She saved her money. I think she paid for half the trip. And she was so proud of herself. And she went. It’s one of those things. It just changes a kid’s life. Her first trip out of the country. She went with her classmates.

Jennifer Ally Kern

She came back. She’s going to be a designer and she’s going to move to Barcelona. Right?

So but it’s one of those things. And I have a traveling spirit myself. And Spanish is one of my other languages that I speak. And so I kind of have a personal affinity for that anyway. But it was a way that I could bring my value system and offer it to her.

In a way that it was supporting something that she was intuitively and naturally drawn to as part of what was aligned with her soul’s journey.

Jennifer Ally Kern

And so that’s something else that we got to bond over.

And so if I look back now and I’d say, “Gosh, you know, I feel really good about those things.”

I could get really down on myself about the ways that I think maybe I downplayed my impact on her. I think there were a lot of days when I was caught in my own drama. Part of my own healing journey at that time. Of thinking that I shouldn’t be too involved because I don’t want to impose.

I don’t want to be overbearing or overpowering. When the truth is probably I think she would have liked me to be more involved. To be more present.

And so I can look back and see both sides of things.

Jennifer Ally Kern

But that’s my main experience with being a mom. And thank God she’s still someone who’s super close to me in my life. I mean, if you ask me, she’s my kid. She’s my kid, and I love her. And I support her. She’s in university now and she’s doing great. And I just can’t say enough about what a joy it is to have her in my life.

Catherine Wilde

What a beautiful connection you guys have. And you are such an empowering part of her journey. That’s so amazing.

Jennifer Ally Kern

Well, if those stories but again, there’s this other side that. Right. And it’s like it’s the whole range of experience. So, yeah. I mean, I can see that that part is empowering. And of course, that’s so much of my work in the world is empowering women. So thank God I have the opportunity to at least extend that to her.

Catherine Wilde

Yeah, there’s definitely all sides of the coin. We’re human. It’s messy.

Jennifer Ally Kern

It is. And I think that parent-child relationship, however you come into that. Whether it’s by biology or by some other means, by marriage or through adoption or whatever it is.

Once you have a parent-child relationship at the soul level, that’s real. Right? It doesn’t matter how the humans get connected. Not that it doesn’t matter.

Catherine Wilde

But I mean to say is that whether it happens biologically or through another means, once there’s that kind of relationship formed, it’s going to take on a life of its own.

And through the context of that relationship, we always have the opportunities to heal and grow and to expand as spiritual beings. And the human experience.

Relationship is one of the number one contexts that we have for growth and expansion.

And that intimacy of parent-child. It’s like there’s nothing like it. You’re going to grow.

Catherine Wilde

Yes. There’s no getting around that.

Catherine Wilde

No matter how you come together with your parent, your child, whichever. It’s meant to be you know?

It’s meant to be. There’s something there. I can see each my kids, they have push me in certain ways. They help me heal and then challenge me. I have the kids that I was meant to have for sure, you know?

Jennifer Ally Kern

Yeah, I bet. I bet any mother listening to this can say the same thing.

Catherine Wilde

Yeah.

Jennifer Ally Kern

We get the people who are devined for us. Part of my my work is doing spiritual mentoring work and I’m an Akashic Records master healer.

And so what I’m always looking through the lens of the soul’s perspective. And you just said something really beautifully, Catherine. It’s that this idea that, like, it’s kind of meant to be right? Because there’s soul agreement there.

You know, their soul agreement that we’re here to grow together. We’re here to have fun together. We’re here to be connected. We’re here to contribute to one another.

And there’s a whole range of what that is. Right? The beauty and the blissful moments in those moments. I’m just going to squeeze your head off right now. Or lock myself in the bathroom.

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Self Care Practices to Help You Reparent Yourself & Find Inner Alignment

Catherine Wilde

Yeah,  definitely had those moments. Speaking of that, like locking yourself in the bathroom. That is such an important thing for all humans. But just to be able to care for yourself. And part of that finding that in alignment. And knowing what feels good for me? Which direction do I need to go?

But just creating space for yourself and feeling that worthiness around. I think a lot of times we think Self care is this thing that’s just we do for fun when we go to the spa. But it’s really caring for mind, body and soul, all of our needs. Because there’s so much coming at us all the time.

Catherine Wilde

We have to tune back in. Whatever way you choose to do that. It’s just important to make space for yourself to do that. And I would love to hear your thoughts on that. And what are your favorite ways to reconnect with yourself? To practice your soul care?

Jennifer Ally Kern

Yeah. So the first part of your question, my thoughts about that are that the best thing that you can do for yourself and for your kids and for everyone and everything else that you touch in your life is come from a strong, powerful place of alignment with you first.

And the reasons for that are because it’s going to keep your vibration high. When your vibration is high, you’re feeling good. When you’re feeling good, you emit that to the people around you.

Jennifer Ally Kern

When you’re feeling good, your brain works better. You can think more clearly. You can make better decisions. You can manage and navigate time more effectively.

You can be present to the people around you. And you can engage in greater empathy. You’re less impulsive. And you’re able to be both more rational and more connected at the same time.

The space of alignment actually from a neuroscience perspective, has the hemispheres of the brain balanced really well and connected really strongly.

Where you are blending like emotional connection and creativity and getting your intuitive guidance with rationality and logic and positivity. And so you can just navigate everything better.

Jennifer Ally Kern

And that comes from cultivating that space of alignment. Which, again, very simply put, just follow what feels good. Follow what’s nurturing to you. What gives you a sense of relief.

What keeps you in that high vibration state. And everyone around you will benefit.

I think so often it’s so easy as women to like “I’ll take care of myself once you’re happy over here.” Instead of the reverse. And as a mom, certainly it depends on what are your child’s needs right now?

Jennifer Ally Kern

How old is your child? Where are they in their developmental experience? Right? If you have a newborn, you might rather be sleeping, but if they’re crying, you’re going to get up. Right?

But there’s still something about that that’s aligned for you, right? Because you have a high value and a priority of nurturing your child.

So leaning into that like, oh, my gosh, I am tired is all crazy business, but this is important and I’m showing up.

Jennifer Ally Kern

So there’s still an alignment there. But the point is that prioritizing your own self, nurturing, feeling good, healing all of these things.

Even if it sometimes means setting aside what you perceive as the neediness of another one, even your children.

Obviously, again, context-dependent. Situation by situation. But there are times when it is OK to say, “you know what, I’m going to prioritize this first.” Because you know that you’re going to go deal with that better, because all of the reasons I just mentioned. About how the brain is impacted.

If you need some ideas for Self Care, be sure to get the 50 Soul Nourishing Self Care Practices with activities you can do to nourish your soul and fill your cup as a mom.

Catherine Wilde

And the words self is in there. So we feel like it’s a selfish act. But really, it’s I mean, it has a ripple effect on everyone you interact with, you know.

Jennifer Ally Kern

Absolutely. And I love that you say that because to me, selfishness is on a spectrum. Selfishness is not just like one little act thing that happens.

Selfishness can happen because we’re all self-oriented beings. So when you’re selfish, most people think of selfishness, self-absorption. And that comes from that shadow side of things.

But selfishness, being self-oriented from a high vibrational place is altruistic. It’s generous. It’s extending of self. And that feels good.

Jennifer Ally Kern

So there’s a selfishness to it. So I always like to think of selfishness on a spectrum.

Catherine Wilde

I love the way you put that.

Jennifer Ally Kern

And selfishness is not me taking care of my needs so that I feel good. Selfishness is me saying you need to be the way I want you to be so I can feel good. And so really understanding what does it mean to be a self-oriented being?

And what’s the self-orientation I need from a high vibrational state of feeling good state? And then how does that serve others?

Jennifer Ally Kern

So even if it means I need five minutes just to get myself back here. Take a deep breath. Get grounded. Look for the good in things. Again, the brain will start to clear biochemically.

Cortisol, adrenaline will start to dissipate from your system. Your logical, rational, connected brain comes back online and now you can go interact. Now you can go be of service to your loved ones.

Catherine Wilde

Yeah, and I love that you mentioned about the selfishness. You need to be a certain way so that I can feel OK. That’s definitely something that I’ve had to work on. And kids definitely help with that, you know?

But the thing that helped me is just is to accept the moment and not resist it. And I still find myself doing this from time to time. But pushing against the moment and saying, well, this isn’t the way it “should be”.

Catherine Wilde

It is exhausting. And just letting that go, it releases so much stress. It lets me reconnect with myself. It’s a simple shift, but just letting go of trying to control and make everything a certain way, can ease so much stress and anxiety.

Jennifer Ally Kern

Yeah. So you asked me a good question about my practices. I want to make sure that I answer that. Can you say it again?

Catherine Wilde

What are your favorite ways to practice self care or soul care? Caring for your mind, body and soul.

Jennifer Ally Kern

Well, certainly I have a meditation practice that I do every day. And I’m flexible with it. Sometimes it’s in the morning. Sometimes it’s at night. I generally like to take a few minutes, even midday, to just connect.

So meditation is absolutely something that is a must have for me. And then I have other practices. I have writing practice too. And I kind of go with what feels right to me. I’ve been doing this for so long that I can kind of feel into what I really need at a given time.

And then moving my body every day. Doing something, going for walks, going swimming, doing some yoga.

Jennifer Ally Kern

Any of those things are always really good for for integrating energies, for kind of stepping aside from screens and computers and conversations. And those kinds of things and just getting that self nourishment. Really getting connected with myself.

I would say probably those are my top practices. And I’ve got some nuances within there that make them a little more unique.

Catherine Wilde

I love those. Those are beautiful. Yeah.

Jennifer Ally Kern

Yeah, I mean, pretty standard. Nothing like really exciting there, but all super, super important.

Catherine Wilde

Absolutely. I think a good thing to remember is that it doesn’t have to be complicated. It’s the little things that really help us, help us and make a difference in the day, you know?

Jennifer Ally Kern

Yeah, absolutely.

Catherine Wilde

Oh, thank you so much. I love this beautiful conversation. Can you let us know where we can find you online?

Jennifer Ally Kern

Yeah, absolutely. So my website is JenniferAlly.Com. You can find me there and everything is there. If you’re interested in the book that I mentioned, The Drama Free Way, certainly can get it on Amazon. On my website, you’re also able to download the first three chapters for free. If you want to just dip into it and try it and see how you like it. So that’s available there, too.

Catherine Wilde

Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom, your empowering stories with us. I loved this conversation. Thank you.

Jennifer Ally Kern

Absolutely. Thank you so much, Katherine, for having me. It is such a pleasure. And I’m just honored to be here. Thank you.

Catherine Wilde

Thank you.

Hi Soulful Mama, I loved spending this time with you, you are amazing for showing up and carving out this space to nourish your soul. If you are loving the Soul Care Mom Podcast be sure to subscribe and leave a review.

And if you are ready to start your mornings feeling calm and energized, get the Kickstart Your Morning Guide. A  self care morning ritual for moms as a free gift when you join the Soul Care Mom community.

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Sending you so much love, Mama.

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