What does it mean to live more with less? I'm Katie Wells and welcome to the Maximized Minimalist

podcast. If you found yourself caught up in the hamster wheel of modern day motherhood and want to

rewrite the script, congratulations you're in the right place. I'm here to be your guide and help you take

back your motherhood

and achieve a simpler, more joy-filled life. Cheers to being a maximized minimalist. Enjoy the show.

A year ago today, I remember crying myself to sleep. It was just one of those days as a parent.

That was awful. I can't put it any other way.

The second I opened my eyes in the morning, the day started off wrong. Both my kids were

frustrated and bickering and they started the morning off with a wrestling match. I felt like no one

was listening to me and I felt like every word out of my mouth was no and stopped doing that and

yelling. And I was just exasperated. Like, do you ever have days like this? It's just one of those days

where it's like 10 a.m. And you look at the clock and you're like, oh my gosh, it's only 10.

Like I thought it was 6 p.m. Like I'm ready to put everyone in bed for the day. And, you know, to make matters worse, if you're a parent, you remember, it was just so overwhelming with the stress of lockdown, this unknown, the fear,

the anxiety, you know, are the kids going to be living with me forever? Do I have to learn how to

teach my kids, right? All of these anxieties we had. And then I think, you know, I can obviously

look back and see now how my two were reacting

to my anxiety, right, with their behavior. So anyway, you know, the next day after I cried myself

to sleep, I woke up and I said, I just need to talk to someone. So I reached out to my therapist

and said, can you please squeeze me in? I don't care if the kids have an extra hour of screen

time today. Like, I need this

for myself. I need this. And as I hopped on my Zoom therapy session with her, I was kind of,

you know, unloading the previous day and the guilt and the shame and the frustration,

...