How Can Moms Find Peace In Hard Seasons?

And a tip from my therapist

A toddler hand covers my face and a small body smelling of sugar flops on my chest.

“Mama, I wanna hold you!”

“My dear, you’re already on me. I’m not sure how much closer we can get.”

Of course, I know she’s really asking for two things: to feel close to me after a week of moving homes, and to have her hand down my bra because groping me still comforts her.

Emotions of anger, frustration, guilt, and exhaustion are all clouding my ability to be at peace.

This level of chaos and internal stress reminds me of the first year of motherhood, when the fresh yo-yo wave of hormone shifts plunged me into depression. In the moments I want to physically remove my toddler from my body, I also remember one particular midnight feeding where I wanted to pass my breastfeeding newborn like a hot potato.

I didn’t know about these things before my child came into my life: the rage, the grief, the anger, or the complex and contradictory emotions I could feel all at once.

I saw mothers as creatures that were either good moms or bad moms, and I often executed a swift judgement on something I was ignorant about. To read of my previous paragraph’s confessions would surely have placed me in the bad mom category.

Now, I know the truth. These thoughts do happen and we can love our children deeply and still hurt. Don’t act on them but please find a safe person to share these thoughts with. Keep the hard conversations going.

After spending over a decade fighting off anxiety and depression and also writing extensively about these topics (see my Mental Health tab), I wanted to share what I learned in therapy today. Not everyone has access to a good therapist or perhaps any therapist and it feels like a crap show out there getting help so here we go.

My Sunday Afternoon

We’re going to find a safe space to think of when our peace is going out the window.

Now as a Christian, I have a lot of thoughts I’ve written about beforehand on peace. You can find those in the archives but today I want to establish that when we may ask “how does Christ bring me peace?” we learn that Christ IS peace.

So my first step to find peace is to seek Jesus. I do this with prayer, even as I am internally screaming. I know he is with me in the broken mess of my mind. I have faith in his power as God to heal us eternally, therefore I have hope and peace in that promise.

Second, I am learning new ways of dealing with the negative feelings and thoughts of my present life. The most recent technique I learned wasn’t given a name beside finding a safe space.

Think of a recent time you felt peace. Where were you and what was happening?

For myself, I’ve called it “my Sunday afternoon” because it was when we went to visit my family in Ohio. My child was taking a nap elsewhere with my mom. I was on their couch reading a book. The football game was on and the sun was making the outdoors glow from autumn skies. The train sounded in the distance and my dad paced between whatever he was cooking in the kitchen and the football game. I was so peaceful that I could fall asleep there.

Figure out your peaceful place and write down the senses that you recall: sight, smell, sound, touch, or taste.

Next, think of a mildly unpleasant experience. Don’t pick something very traumatic. For me it was the feeling of not having time alone after cooking dinner.

Practice going from that experience to the positive safe space in your thoughts. Only do this for a minute or two at a time.

The goal is to make it easier for your body to focus on the safe space rather than the negative ones. Notice the physical feelings your body may experience.

This practice had some unexpected effects on me. One was realizing that a very comforting image I could turn to in hard moments of parenting was myself running into my stepdad’s arms in this safe space for a hug. I imagined him telling me, “you can do hard things. You can find peace.”

It’s not a coincidence that the stress of motherhood has me seeking to be a child running to a parent again, is it?

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Thank you for being here,

Chanel Riggle.