Celebrating You at Motherhood Minute

Plus: A gift for my paid subscribers

Reading time is about 5 minutes.

If you are new to this space, welcome to Motherhood Minute, a newsletter for women who need a quick read in under 6 minutes. We explore topics of mental health, motherhood, work, and all of the ways in which parenthood meshes with life as it is.

In December we often find ourselves musing on what this last year had wrought us, what our goals once were and if they’ve changed, and how we might feel about next year.

Immediately, my brain chimed in “what a shit show!” (sorry to anyone who didn’t sign up for the cursing but the old self cannot always be tamed. I like to stay honest about who I am and who I am becoming.

It’s the Old Self, the one before Christ, that often erupts from my thoughts or mouth and preaches its own brand of truth. Truth that doesn’t have any sort of hope in it, just “truth” that twists and turns phrases to fit my preferred ideology to a Good one.

I used to say “I have been struggling lately” but motherhood has truly increased the frequency with which I say “Here are the ways in which I have currently struggled.”

Doesn’t that sum up my life in Christ, as well? Here are the ways in which I have currently struggled is a perfect way to remind myself and others that we are never able to avoid struggles completely. Jesus changes our peace and mindset about the struggles. He changed the eternal consequence despite the temporal reality of a broken world.

What have the hardships been in my world in 2023?

• My husband and I were fired from a company we were investing in

• Re-emergence of my major depressive disorder

• The undiagnosed and persistent pain in my body

• Needing to move my family into one bedroom inside my sister’s condo

It would be incredibly easy to look at this list and let it define my year as a failure. I had been self-assured that this year would be the year for Chanel. The result was a lesson in humility and a reminder that if life is “good” it might not feel good. In the midst of making money and sacrificing family time for career advancement, I was praying for God to simplify our lives again. He did.

Thank God we were removed from the toxic company we had joined, that caused us to only see our child 4 hours of each day.

Thank God for my struggles with depression, because they are an ongoing reminder for me to take care of my mind and love others in their pain.

Thank God for my physical pain! It has helped me surrender to life’s unknowns and fortified my faith.

Thank God for our financial struggles because they remind us to ask for help and help one another.

Therefore, what is there to fear? Do I fear the uncertainty of the future or do I fear I will not approve of the outcome?

-Chanel Riggle

This month I am sending my paid subscribers a handwritten note and recipe card. If that is something you would like to receive, please email me by hitting reply or sending your name and address to hello@chanelriggle.com

I also invite you to join the Motherhood Minute community with a 50% off yearly discount at $30 for 2024. This offer will end January 1, 2024 in which my paid subscriptions will be either $5/month or $45/year.

Motherhood Minute remains free to access until a newsletter is older than 30 days. I ask for financial support as a writer because it takes time to write, research, and publish. If you feel like you are able to support me in this way, please do. I’d love to know how best to serve you or how you’ve been helped in this space.

Thank you to everyone who has joined me in this space for the past year and a half. Motherhood Minute was born out of the long nights nursing my daughter and feeling alone. I was deprived of having vulnerable conversations about the expansion and expectations motherhood requires of us. I constantly wondered, “should I keep talking about how crazy motherhood is?”

For a long time it felt like it was inappropriate to write about it but the only crazy thing to me now is not writing about motherhood.

We are forever changed in body, mind, and spirit when we become mothers yet there was a nagging sense that speaking of these radical (and often traumatic) changes was to bother everyone else.

I promise to never make you feel like that here. Motherhood Minute is always a space for mothers, first. Everything else I discuss here is second because motherhood is an expansion of ourselves. It is complex and messy and beautiful.

Thank you for all the comments and messages you leave me. I leave them as a screenshots in my phone to pull out when I’m having an absolutely hard day because they remind me I am not alone anymore. I never was.

A photo of me trying to run a business with a baby on my lap, with under five hours of nightly sleep, and breastfeeding circa June 2022 when I started this newsletter.