When Grandparents Don't Help
Catholic Mom Calm
Maybe your mom doesn’t seem to want time with your kids, or your in-laws would help but live too far away, or every visit comes with a comment about your family size or how you parent. Maybe you’ve watched a friend’s mom swoop in after a new baby to cook and clean and hold everything together, and felt the sting of not having that. I’ve been doing this parenting thing mostly without family help too, so I’m walking you through the two kinds of work that bring me back to peace: sitting with Jesus, and the coaching side of clear requests, quiet boundaries, and catching my mind when it...
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Why Self-Care Isn't Filling You Up
Catholic Mom Calm
You took the bath, went for the walk, said the prayer... and you still feel depleted. Sterling Jaquith explains why: when you trash-talk yourself all day, every bit of self-care pours into a cup full of holes. Plus the day a new friend saw her unfinished basement, and she chose not to poke a single hole. WHAT WE COVER IN THIS EPISODE: Why being mean to yourself all day drains you emotionally and physically Needle holes and pencil holes: the small digs vs. the big attacks on your vocation Metallica in a Renaissance museum: a beautiful life with a terrible soundtrack What Sterling did when a...
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Mother Teresa’s Shoes: Why Self-Care Isn’t Selfish for Catholic Moms
Catholic Mom Calm
Mother Teresa wore whatever shoes were left until her feet were deformed, and Catholic moms often share that story like it’s a calling for all of us. Sterling Jaquith, Rita Johnson (Health and Hormones) and Denise Jelinek (Weight Loss with the Holy Spirit) talk honestly about why caring for yourself isn’t vanity, why your kids are watching how you do it, and how it can become a form of worship. WHAT WE COVER IN THIS EPISODE: Why we put off self-care: choosing habits from woundedness instead of praying about them, and believing lies like “I don’t have time” Authentic self-care:...
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When God Doesn't Give You An Answer
Catholic Mom Calm
I just got back from two weeks away (the Fulton Sheen conference in St. Louis and then France with my 15-year-old daughter) and I brought two big things with me to pray about in some very holy places. I asked for clarity every single day, and I kept thinking He’d surely talk to me on the 10-hour flight home, because airplanes are where I so often hear Him. He didn’t. When I crawled into bed at 11:30 that night I was surprised and honestly a little embarrassed. Then a sentence came to me that may have been a gift from the Holy Spirit: if He didn’t tell me, I don’t need to know today....
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Being On Time - I Just Start the Circus Earlier
Catholic Mom Calm
Getting kids out the door is a banana circus. That's what I told my daughter in the driveway the other morning, after somebody forgot a lunch and we had to turn around and come back. It's going to be a circus no matter what I do, because children bring chaos and no amount of systems fixes that. The only reason we're never late to school is that I just start the circus earlier than other people do. So this episode is about being on time when you have kids, and underneath that it's really about how you adopt a new identity without beating yourself up to get there. I tell you where my own on-time...
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The Art of Saying No
Catholic Mom Calm
Here's something I find fascinating. A lot of us are living a balanced life with a brain that's a hot mess in there, and so a life we're actually executing really well ends up feeling terrible. You got everybody fed and you made it to all the things on time, but your mind spent the whole day telling you how far behind you are, and that is what drained the battery. That's not a commitment problem. That's a thinking problem, and honestly it's good news, because you don't have to change your calendar to fix it. So this episode is how I tell the difference, and then exactly what I do when it...
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Blanket of Peace
Catholic Mom Calm
I said it kind of offhandedly on a coaching call. "I want to be a blanket of peace in my home." And the moms would not let it go, so I have been sitting with it ever since. Here is what I mean. You have the ability to take your own emotional state and blanket a whole room with it. You already do it. Sometimes what you are laying over the kitchen is frustration or stress or that sharp voice, and sometimes it is calm. The part I want you to hear is that it is yours to choose. This episode is me asking you to stop settling for awareness of your thinking and actually reach for the peace. I walk...
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How to Reach For Peace Faster
Catholic Mom Calm
Anxiety never comes from the Lord. So the second I feel that tightness show up in my chest, I already know something true about myself. I am thinking about my life in a way that God does not want me to think about it. Period. Because if I were thinking about it the way He wants me to, I would be at peace. This episode is one question I want you to start asking faster than you are asking it right now. Not "Lord, take this away," but "Lord, what do you want me to know about this?" About this toddler. About my husband. About my body. About this house. I asked Him something this morning and He...
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Planning From Woundedness
Catholic Mom Calm
I am team planning. I am team house systems. We teach it in the membership and it is the very first thing we tackle in the Catholic Mom Reset, because looking at your next 90 days and making a plan is genuinely a gift to your future self. But if you took all of it away tomorrow, dropped me in a different house in a different town with no idea what the next 90 days held, I would be okay. I could walk around and have peace. That is the part I want for you. A lot of women tell me they are type A planners. There is a healthy version of that. There is also a version that gets built in a childhood...
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Transitioning from Summer to Fall
Catholic Mom Calm
"People love change. They just hate transition." I heard Matthew Kelly teach that years ago and I think about it every single August. Because right now I'm getting a hundred emails from the school, two of my boys walked out today in socks with giant holes in the heels, and there's a lunchbox in this house that will not zip. If your body is fritzing out over start dates and supply lists and shoe sizes, nothing has gone wrong. You're not in the change yet. You're in the transition, and I want to give you the exact words to say to your own brain while you're standing in the middle of it. Plus a...
info_outlineHe spent $1,500 on her for Mother's Day. She felt terrible.
A mom wrote in with a situation that sounds simple on the surface — her husband surprised her with an expensive gift she'd actually been wanting. So why did it feel so bad?
In this episode, Sterling breaks down exactly why a generous gift can land all wrong, and what it reveals about the thoughts we've been carrying for months without realizing it.
You'll learn:
- Why his comments about the grocery budget created anxiety that was actually optional
- The difference between him having an off day about money and a real financial problem
- How to know if you actually have "blueberry money" — even when it doesn't feel like it
- What it looks like to receive a gift well, and why it matters more than you think
- Why your husband's feelings don't determine yours — and how to stop letting them
This episode is for any woman who has ever felt confused, conflicted, or quietly resentful when something good happened — and didn't understand why.