The Joy Of Being Mom

You know all about crying babies, dirty diapers, toddler tantrums, potty training, school assignments, and the list goes on and on. Ahhh, Motherhood! But wait, there's more! Judy Brisky wants you to know that despite any of these demanding situations, even in the toughest of seasons, you can experience the joy of being a mom every single day. But first you will need help and wisdom that can only come from the Lord. Then you will find that being a mom is one of the most joyful experiences you will ever have. Yes, you'll get tired and you'll feel pressures, but you'll also be filled with joy! Judy offers the encouragement you need to face common challenges and offers practical solutions from the Bible. She shares from her own relatable experiences, mostly good, but also not so great. Even more, she will bring you hope and motivation to: Cherish each season Deposit intentional investments of love Make every word count Leave a lasting legacy

Full-time FindingJoy.net blogger, speaker, marketer, podcaster, and single mom of seven, Rachel Marie Martin presents a rallying cry to anyone who believes the lie that she is "just a mom." Over the years, you willingly pour everything you have into your family, but in the process, you lose the essence of who you are. In her characteristic raw and visceral style, Rachel teaches you how to rewrite the pages of your story, follow your passion, and discover the beauty of who you are. Drawing on lessons from her own incredible journey--together with insight from conversations with thousands of other women--Rachel encourages moms to break cycles, take off masks, and prevent fear from taking control. She balances her "no excuses" approach with breathing room and grace for those messy moments in life and mothering. Rachel reminds you there is always a reason to hope, to move forward, and to dare the impossible. You can make changes. You can pursue dreams, find yourself, and live a life of deep happiness and boundless joy. Stop waiting for "someday." Take hold of the moment, and say yes to your dreams.

Parenting without anxiety, guilt, or feeling overwhelmed Happy Parents Happy Kids is the ultimate no-guilt guide to boosting your enjoyment of parenting while at the same time maximizing the health and happiness of your entire family. You can find ways to take care of yourself while you’re busy raising a family—just as you can choose to use parenting strategies that work for you and your kids. This practical and encouraging book will help you · Discover what less-stressed-out parents know about minimizing the fallout from work-life imbalance (to say nothing of all the other things our generation of parents can’t help but feel anxious about) · Tackle the challenges of distracted parenting(in a way that helps kids to develop healthy relationships with technology) · Balance your hopes and dreams for your children with the demands of the rest of your life · Manage screen time for your whole family with simple and effective strategies · Learn mindfulness strategies that can make parenting easier and can be effortlessly worked into your daily life · Live healthier (including a crash course on the science of habit change) · Become a calmer and more confident parent so that you can stop feeling bad and raise astonishingly great kids The takeaway message is clear, powerful, and potentially life-changing. You can lose the guilt, embrace the joy, and thrive alongside your kids.

Out-parented at PTA? Out-liked on social media? Wondering how your best friend from high school’s kids are always color-coordinated, angelic, and beaming from every photo, while your kids look more like feral monkeys? It’s okay. Imperfection is the new perfection! Join Meredith Ethington, “one of the funniest parents on Facebook,” according to Today.com, as she relates encouraging stories of real-mom life in her debut parenting humor book, Mom Life: Perfection Pending. Whether you’re buried in piles of laundry, packing your 50th sack lunch for the week, or almost making it out the door in time for school, you’ll laugh along with stories of what real-mom life is like—and realize that sometimes simply making it through the day is good enough. An uplifting yet real look at all that is expected of moms in the 21st century, Mom Life: Perfection Pending is so relatable you’ll find yourself saying, “I guess I’m doing okay after all.”

An Honest and Revolutionary Guide to the Emotions Moms Feel But Seldom Talk About A few years ago, Dr. Claire Nicogossian began noticing a trend in her therapy room: Mothers are struggling with the challenging and unexpected emotions that surface during their journey through motherhood. In the confines of a safe, judgment-free space, they share about the heavy guilt they carry from losing control and yelling at their children; the crippling fear that they are failing their families; and the exhaustion of juggling work, home, and family. Dr. Claire calls these our shadow emotions. While varying in intensity, our shadow emotions take some form of sadness, anger, fear, embarrassment, or disgust, often a combination. In this breakthrough book, Dr. Claire sheds light on these shadow emotions and provides a path to thriving joy, inner calm, and radiant confidence. Drawing upon her own experiences of raising four children and many years of counseling mothers as a clinical psychologist, Dr. Claire shares practical tips, strategies, and encouragement to help women in all stages of motherhood. By creating new language for the feelings moms experience but seldom talk about—inspired by the groundbreaking work of Carl Jung—this book has the power to create a radical shift in the way we understand and navigate modern motherhood. With Dr. Claire’s guidance, mothers everywhere will discover the deep joy, fulfillment, and inner peace that are already within their reach.

Thousands of books have examined the effects of parents on their children. In All Joy and No Fun, award-winning journalist Jennifer Senior now asks: what are the effects of children on their parents? In All Joy and No Fun, award-winning journalist Jennifer Senior tries to tackle this question, isolating and analyzing the many ways in which children reshape their parents' lives, whether it's their marriages, their jobs, their habits, their hobbies, their friendships, or their internal senses of self. She argues that changes in the last half century have radically altered the roles of today's mothers and fathers, making their mandates at once more complex and far less clear. Recruiting from a wide variety of sources—in history, sociology, economics, psychology, philosophy, and anthropology—she dissects both the timeless strains of parenting and the ones that are brand new, and then brings her research to life in the homes of ordinary parents around the country. The result is an unforgettable series of family portraits, starting with parents of young children and progressing to parents of teens. Through lively and accessible storytelling, Senior follows these mothers and fathers as they wrestle with some of parenthood's deepest vexations—and luxuriate in some of its finest rewards. Meticulously researched yet imbued with emotional intelligence, All Joy and No Fun makes us reconsider some of our culture's most basic beliefs about parenthood, all while illuminating the profound ways children deepen and add purpose to our lives. By focusing on parenthood, rather than parenting, the book is original and essential reading for mothers and fathers of today—and tomorrow.

Women who opt not to be mothers are frequently warned that they will regret their decision later in life, yet we rarely talk about the possibility that the opposite might also be true—that women who have children might regret it. Drawing on years of research interviewing women from a variety of socioeconomic, educational, and professional backgrounds, sociologist Orna Donath treats regret as a feminist issue: as regret marks the road not taken, we need to consider whether alternative paths for women currently are blocked off. She asks that we pay attention to what is forbidden by rules governing motherhood, time, and emotion, including the cultural assumption that motherhood is a “natural” role for women—for the sake of all women, not just those who regret becoming mothers. If we are disturbed by the idea that a woman might regret becoming a mother, Donath says, our response should not be to silence and shame these women; rather, we need to ask honest and difficult questions about how society pushes women into motherhood and why those who reconsider it are still seen as a danger to the status quo. Groundbreaking, thoughtful, and provocative, this is an especially needed book in our current political climate, as women's reproductive rights continue to be at the forefront of national debates.

Who among us has not at some point asked, what is the meaning of life?' In this extraordinary book, an eminent social scientist looks at the big picture and explores what empirical studies from diverse fields tell us about the human condition. MEANINGS OF LIFE draws together evidence from psychology, history, anthropology, and sociology, integrating copious research findings into a clear and conclusive discussion of how people attempt to make sense of their lives. In a lively and accessible style, emphasizing facts over theories, Baumeister explores why people desire meaning in their lives, how these meanings function, what forms they take, and what happens when life loses meaning. It is the most comprehensive examination of the topic to date.