Natural Mama Struggles: "I Don’t Have Time To Do It All"

Do you want to live more of a natural lifestyle? You know, eat healthy, get outside more, decrease your exposure to toxins and chemicals, and embrace the world of herbal medicine and other natural remedies? If so, I know exactly how you feel. I was there once. In many ways, I’m still there. The only problem is that there’s so much we natural mamas want to do and so little time to get do it, right?

Here are some emails I’ve received from natural mamas  struggling with this very issue… TIME.

Thank you for the emails. I am looking forward to the first thing to know before raising naturally healthy kids. In response to your request wanting to know what I struggle with the most trying to raise my little girl healthy and naturally: It’s time. It is extremely time consuming to prepare everything from scratch, make your own immunity boosters, give a two year old quality time, keep up with the housework and work out of the house part-time. Is there any way you can give me 5-6 extra hours in the day? 🙂

And another…

I am so excited to learn from you! I have a 13 month old and my husband and I have spent the better part of the last 4 years changing our lifestyle to a holistic, organic, herbal approach. I have learned a lot, but my personality makes me really scattered! I would say what I struggle with the most right now is keeping up with the things I am already doing, but also the overwhelming amount of information about everything I feel like I must start doing right now or my kid will be unhealthy! Things like a bigger garden, buying a dehydrator, cutting out grains or not, cutting out meat, or not, homemade remedies for illness, essential oils, etc. It all just feels really overwhelming. So maybe I am looking for help on becoming more organized, focused and achieving these things in a way that doesn’t stress me out. Maybe making a plan for my family to meet my goals? I don’t know. This is what I am struggling with. What stays, what goes, and how to make those things happen!

Can you relate to these mamas? I know I can. There’s so much we feel like we MUST DO NOW… especially if you’re like me and have a type-A personality. The fact of the matter is this… most of us are busy. We have A LOT going on, and we can’t possibly do it all. Below I’m gonna give you 4 simple tips to dealing with this internal struggle of “I must do it all today”. My hope is that this encourages you and helps decrease the overwhelm that we all feel from time to time.

4 Tips To Get Past The “I MUST DO IT ALL” Struggle

1. Recognize & Accept That You Are Unique

This step is huge, and it has to be the first step.

Mama, you are human and so am I. Although we both only have 24 hours in a day, just like the rest of the world, and we both value this natural lifestyle, we all have different lives and different responsibilities. We all are wired differently. We’re not all going to be able to do the same things… or even want to do the same things for that matter.

We’re similar, but we’re oh so different.

We are each unique individuals.

Recognizing that your life is different from mine, and your sister’s, and your best friend’s, and 10 of your favorite natural living blogger’s is a must. Once you see (and accept) that your life will look differently than everyone else’s, you’re on your way to freeing yourself from the guilt associated with this struggle.

Besides… isn’t that the beauty of life. That we’re all different.

It’s perfectly fine to have role models… we all do, but beating ourselves up to “keep up with The Jones’s” is no good. Feeling that we’re going to ruin our kids if we don’t do what the other natural mamas are doing is a recipe for discontentment and bitterness. That will never get any of us anywhere.

We need to recognize, accept, and embrace our unique lifestyles and learn to work within them.

2. Prioritize

Once you’ve accepted the fact that you don’t have to do it like everyone else is doing it, it’s time to prioritize. What’s most important in your life right now when it comes to health? There are a million different things you could focus your time and energy on, but what are your top 5? Mine are below.

1. Nutrition for kids
2. Breastfeeding baby
3. Kid’s teeth
4. Vaccines
5. Learning herbs

Sure there are other things I’d like to learn about… like how to grow a better garden, how to deal with some of my and my husband’s little issues naturally, or how to cook with herbs more… but right now, those things aren’t my priorities. My priorities are learning how to cook real food meals for my kids… that they’ll eat, how to boost my milk supply and make it as nutrient dense as possible for baby, what vitamins and minerals I need to focus on to keep my kid’s teeth strong and healthy, why I’m not vaccinating my kids and what my plan will be to keep them healthy or deal with these illnesses if they come our way, and what herbs are good for my kids as well as when and how to use them.

If 5 things are too much, narrow this list down again to 3 things… and maybe again to 1 thing. If I were to only pick one thing that’s my highest priority, it would be nutrition for kids because all the other things fall under that category. If I can feed my kids nutritionally dense meals, my milk will be healthy for baby, my kid’s teeth will be healthy, and they’ll get sick less often which helps when it comes to vaccines and using herbs.

3. Identify Your Passions

Once you’ve prioritized the areas you really need to focus on, double check them and make sure you’re passionate about them. If you really hate something, it’s going to be horrible to spend your time learning about it.

For example… if one of your priorities is to get the toxic skincare ingredients out of your home, but you hate DIY projects and learning how to make things in your kitchen then you’re gonna have to get rid of that as a priority and opt for buying things instead of making them yourself. Make sense?

4. Challenge Yourself

My last tip is this. Once you’ve got your priorities and interests (passions) lined up, challenge yourself to sticking to it for a certain amount of time in order to make it a habit.

Take my priorities into consideration. Below are some things I can do to challenge myself to learn and do more on a consistent basis.

• try out one new real food meal a week to see if my kids like it
• learn one new food prep tip and use it daily for one month (like including homemade bone broth in meals)
• formulate a “mama’s milk” tea and drink it daily for 30 days
• research one vaccine/childhood illness each month and write up a plan of action around it
• study one herb each month

These are just some examples of things I could do as I’m sure there are many, many things I could come up with. The point isn’t to overwhelm myself with a big list of to-dos. I already have enough of those. The point is to break my priorities down into 30 day challenges in order to stick with it and hopefully make these areas of learning into habits.

So again… we’re all busy and we all have a desire to raise naturally healthy families. We need to give ourselves some breathing room and stop focusing on what everyone else says we should do. Let’s purpose to grow in small ways every day. We can’t do it all, but if we can incorporate little changes into our lives slowly, over time, those little changes will end up being big changes.

Do you struggle with this? If so, how do you deal with it? How do you filter all the coulda, shoulda, wouldas and focus on what you need to in order to help your family live a more natural and healthy lifestyle?