Mojo Mom: Nurturing Your Self While Raising a Family

Order your copy of Mojo Mom: Nurturing Your Self While Raising a Family now,
available wherever books are sold!

Get Your Mojo Flowing!

Mojo is that feeling you get when you’re at the top of your game, juggling the kids, life, and your own needs—even for one glorious afternoon. — Author Amy Tiemann

A message from author Amy Tiemann

There are hundreds of books that can tell you how to raise a baby. Mojo Mom is a unique guide that helps you make the most of your life as a Mom.

When I was pregnant, I read tons of baby books. I learned all about pregnancy, health, delivery, and infant care, but there was one vital element missing from the hundreds of pages I had read. I had no idea what was about to happen to me.

I have to admit that I didn’t expect the changes in my own life and identity to be so huge. Once I left my teaching career, I was faced with redefining my sense of self and creating the next stage in my life. This challenge was also a great gift of rediscovery. Several years of exploration led me to the realization that I am many things. I am a mother, a wife, a friend, a teacher, and a writer.

When my daughter started preschool, I set out to write the book that I wished I had to guide me through the transforming experience of motherhood. Mojo Mom takes an honest look at the changes, gifts, and challenges that you will encounter as you grow as a mother.

For me, the recalibration of my personal and professional identity was the most unexpected and disorienting aspect of becoming a mother. It is certainly a challenge that requires new skills and survival strategies.

The good news is that once I unwrapped the layers of my identity crisis, inside I found the gift of discovering my essential self. I stripped away the labels and roles that had defined me and I found out who I really was. As I continued to explore, I added back old elements I missed, and discovered exciting new facets of my identity. Motherhood offers us the gift of reinvention—a chance to reshape your career path, examine your priorities, start a new venture, or rekindle long-dormant dreams.

Mojo Mom is designed to help each woman explore the essential question Who am I, now that I am a Mom? We will cover topics that are vital and relevant for new mothers and seasoned Moms alike. I will teach you how to take loving care of yourself right now, wherever you are on the path of motherhood, as well as planning for new interests and paths to develop as your kids grow older. We will explore ways to enhance your relationship with your spouse or partner, so that when the kids are grown, you will remain connected as friends and lovers rather than feeling like distant strangers.

What makes Mojo Mom different?

Mojo Mom is the first book that feels like your own voice, finally saying what it means to be a Mom. Mojo Mom does more than just identify the challenges of motherhood. I have gathered dozens of tools, ideas, activities, books, gadgets, and other quality resources for nurturing every part of your life.

Mojo Mom will fill you in on a wide range of topics that you will not find in other books, including:

• Preparing to become a Mom without losing your sense of self.
• How to take care of yourself in the fragile weeks and months after giving birth.
• Tips on creating a To-Do list that includes your needs as a priority.
• How to declutter your overloaded mental environment.
• Why worrying about your family can actually make them less safe.
• How to negotiate a fair division of household labor among family members.
• The key elements essential for the long-term success of your adult relationship with your partner.

Mojo Mom is based on far more than just my own experience or opinion. My teaching and research background compelled me to work hard to provide you with the most comprehensive, up-to-date information available. You will hear many other women’s stories and wisdom reflected in the book as the result of the years of research and interviews that I conducted. Some of the advice I gleaned in consultation with other experts includes:

• Essential strategies for improving your well-being, gleaned from interviews with employed Moms and stay-at-home Moms.
• Creating a lifelong career path, including specific tips for rejoining the workforce, whether soon after giving birth, or years later.
• A simple tip to enhance your sex life after the baby arrives that even your best friend may not tell you.
• How to cope when you get overwhelmed and feel like YOU need a time-out.
• A chapter dedicated to sound financial planning in uncertain times, including six essential elements of every mother’s financial safety net.

While I consulted many experts and books to provide accurate advice, my goal was to convey the information with humor and compassion. I am honest about the challenges you may face, but I write from a perspective that we are all doing the best we can, and need to support each other.

One of my favorite quotes is from Zen teacher Cheri Huber, “Be kinder to yourself than you think you should be.” This spirit forms the foundation on my Mojo Mom approach.

I invite you to reframe the debate over selfishness that inevitably arises when mothers save some of their best time and energy for themselves: Taking care of yourself is not being selfish. Rather,
it is a vital step in cultivating a centered self. Mojo Mom will teach you how to give yourself as much loving care as you give to your family. Topics include:

• How to recognize the signs of post-partum depression.
• Checking in to make sure that your nutrition, adequate sleep, and medical care are top priorities that you refuse to neglect.
• Taking time for yourself to recharge your batteries, and creating a special space for yourself within your home.
• Giving yourself permission to just SAY NO to mother guilt.
• The importance of creating a strong support network by reaching out to other women and families.
• Becoming a Naptime Activist who changes the world in one hour per week.
• Feeling at peace with your own life-work path, and supporting other women who have made different choices—Ending the so-called “Mommy Wars” between women who stay at home and those who are employed.

Mojo is power. As I wrote, I realized I was creating a guidebook for an epic journey, one that starts with life inside the cocoon during the early months of motherhood, then leads us through a path of discovery back into the world to become visionary leaders.

It is easy to lose sight of the larger world and our role in it. Family life can be all-consuming, and our role as mothers can feel insulated and isolated. After my family moved to North Carolina when our daughter was a toddler, I realized that no one even knew who I had been in my “previous life.” Being a mother creates a most personal relationship with your child, but it can put us into an anonymous position in the larger community. Even within my wonderful Moms’ support group, it took a while to get to know each woman well enough to really know her outside her identity as a mother.

Mojo Mom encourages us to step back into our roles as leaders as our time allows, whether that means organizing a school fund-raiser or running for Congress. Society cannot afford to lose the gifts of our wisdom and experience. Being a mother has helped me grow up and learn what is really important, and I feel that I am more qualified than ever to play an important role in the world. While it can be hard to look beyond the ongoing demands of family life that face us now, if you think about your whole lifespan, most of us will experience a long “Third Act” of life after our children are grown. A woman who has children in her thirties will have an empty nest in her fifties—an age that many women say is one of the most productive and exciting times of life. The key is to keep growing as individuals and maintain our leadership skills so that we are ready to direct fabulous Second and Third Acts when the time comes.

Please join me on this journey. In choosing motherhood, we choose love, commitment, and connectedness. Mothering is a transforming passion, a deep pool we willingly dive into headfirst. What we want is not to escape but to rise to the surface again. This is not about reclaiming who we were, but discovering who we can become—and all this amidst the daily demands, dreams, and hugs you’ll experience in your life as a Mojo Mom.

Tell me more about what I’ll find inside Mojo Mom: Nurturing Your Self While Raising a Family.

Mojo Mom contents

Chapter 1: A Mother is Born tells you the truths about the transformation to motherhood that other parenting books don’t address.

Chapter 2: Life Inside the Cocoon gives new Moms essential tips for surviving the intense newborn months, and developing confidence in your own parenting style. Includes advice for mothers returning to work.

Chapter 3: Banking the Embers of Your Self…to Build a Bonfire Later describes a strategy you can use to include your own needs on your To-Do list.

Chapter 4: Am I Just Being Selfish? Letting Go of Guilt, Worry, and Anxiety makes the case that it is healthy to just Say No to Mom Guilt.

Chapter 5: Centering, Silence, and Reclaiming Your Mind Space describes activities that can help keep you grounded, and reviews two gadgets that filter out mental clutter.

Chapter 6: Express Yourself encourages you to experience your authentic emotions, and lists dozens of activities that serve as creative outlets.

Chapter 7: Daddies as Mojo Partners discusses the relationship challenges that come along with parenthood, the importance of negotiating an equitable division of labor, and the relationship keys to growing as a couple rather than growing apart.

Chapter 8: Beyond “Opting Out” and the “Mommy Wars” cuts through divisive rhetoric to took at the policies holding women back, and ways we can move forward at work, and have our caregiving valued by the larger society.

Chapter 9: Keeping Your Resume Fresh and Your Financial Future Secure describes the essential components of a financial safety net for every Mom. Now more than ever, in a time of economic uncertainty, women need to take their financial futures into their own hands.

Chapter 10: Spreading Your Wings encourages you to take on a leadership role in your community and the world…showing how one small step can lead to significant change.

Order your copy of Mojo Mom: Nurturing Your Self While Raising a Family now,
available wherever books are sold!