Today is a big day for 3 in 30 because enrollment for my Self-Assured Motherhood(opens in new tab) or SAM program is officially open, and this only happens once every year, so it is an exciting time within my business.
I love the SAM program. Of all the work I do, SAM is where I feel like I am making the biggest difference because it gives women the opportunity to go beyond just listening to helpful information to actually applying it. It's easy to listen to a 30-minute podcast episode and feel inspired, but it's deeper soul-work to go through a comprehensive curriculum alongside other women–and, week by week, apply what you are learning to your unique life.
This will be my sixth year teaching SAM, and hundreds of women have gone through the program with me. I've seen the changes in their lives and their happiness; I've gotten to know them and their stories; and it is truly the most delightful part of my work to get to dive deep with these good SAM Sisters, as we call ourselves.
And that's why it surprised me that, in spite of loving SAM so much, a few weeks ago, I honestly wasn't sure if I could move forward with my plan to open enrollment for the program this year. As you might know, it's been an excruciating summer for our family with the unexpected death of my 44-year-old brother-in-law, Logan, and I spent much of the summer with my sister and her kids trying to support them through this unthinkable loss. And honestly, I'm just really sad. I am so very sad and heartbroken and everything in life feels sort of reorganized, if that makes sense, and life feels vulnerable and fleeting. I barely worked at all this summer, which was fine and exactly how it needed to be, but when my kids went back to school and I thought about gearing myself up to do this enrollment period for SAM, I just didn't know if I had it in me. In the midst of so much loss and heartache and disorientation, it felt hard to remember why any of my work even mattered.
But I will tell you what shifted things for me and made me decide to go ahead and move forward with teaching the SAM program this year. It was when I sat down to do some journaling about my summer, and as I wrote about some of my ups and downs, I realized that the Self-Assured Motherhood principles had been supporting me all summer through this time of tremendous loss. I hadn't even realized it as it was happening, but when I looked back, there was no doubt that the principles I have spent years teaching others and practicing in my life had shown up over and over through my difficult season–and because they have become so second nature to me, I had defaulted towards them even in my grief fog. Looking back, I could see how much they had supported me and helped me make grounded choices during a time when so much of life felt completely disorienting.
As I thought about that, I realized, "This is why I care so much about teaching this work." These principles aren't just helpful when life is going well and you're trying to become a little more confident or intentional. They become part of how you move through your actual life–the ordinary seasons and the really difficult ones. And when I thought about that, I realized that I still wanted to spend this year helping another group of women really practice these principles and apply them to their lives until they start to become second nature for them too. I'm grateful for what these principles have given me in all seasons of my life, and I'd like to spend another year passing them along.
So with that background, I want to do a couple of things with today's episode. First of all, I want to invite you to join me in the SAM Program this year if the time is right for you. You can sign up today, September 14th, through Tuesday, September 22nd, and our classes will start on October 1st. All of the details on class times and logistics can be found at 3in30podcast.com/sam, so you can go there to learn more. I’m also holding two free preview classes this Tuesday, September 15th and Friday, September 18th at 10:30am MST to give you a sense of what you’ll experience in SAM to help with your decision. You can sign up for that free class at 3in30podcast.com/freeclass I’d love to see you there.
And the second thing I want to do with today's episode is actually walk you through the first three principles in the Self-Assured Motherhood framework and share a bit about how each one showed up in the midst of my difficult summer.
3 KEY TAKEAWAYS:
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Voice Your Values. Living your values leads to fulfillment and legacy. When you know what matters most to you, you can pour yourself into it, and that's true in ordinary seasons and in the hardest ones. It's what let me spend a month caring for my sister's family without running myself dry, and it's what made Logan's life so recognizably his own.
- Celebrate Your Strengths. Serving others from your strengths lets you give more without burning out. You don't have to be good at everything, and you don't have to contribute to your family or your community the way someone else would in order for it to be worthwhile. It's just as valuable to be an emotional support sister as it is to be a workhorse sister.
- Balance Your Boundaries. Honoring your limits protects everything else you're carrying, and sometimes the hardest person to say no to is yourself. When your capacity changes, it's okay to go back and renegotiate what you agreed to in order to protect your body, mind, and spirit. I canceled a signed contract on our house in the middle of my grief, and I have never once regretted it.
I really believe that the experiences that I shared in today's episode, though deeply personal to me, are universal in application. They represent what's at the heart of my Self-Assured Motherhood framework: the truth that when you know yourself and honor your needs, you can better love and support your people.
And today we talked about just the first three principles that we work through in the full SAM program. There are three more that I didn't have time to touch on, but that also showed up for me in the past few months. So if today's episode touched you or made you reflect–if you found yourself thinking, I don't actually know what my values are, or I've never sat down and named my strengths–that's the work we do together in SAM, over the course of eight months, with a whole group of women doing it alongside you. Like I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, enrollment opens once a year, and it is open now through Tuesday, September 22nd. You can find everything you need to get signed up at 3in30podcast.com/sam.
I want to end where I started today. I told you that a few weeks ago, I wasn't sure I had it in me to open enrollment to SAM at all. It felt like too much, in a season that was already too much. But sitting down and looking honestly at my summer changed that, because I could see that these principles hadn't just been something I teach–they had been holding me up the whole time, in some of the hardest months of my life, without me even noticing.
That's what reignited my excitement for teaching SAM–the recognition that this work is real and it matters, and that I want other women to have it too. I can tell you with all sincerity that I am now truly thrilled to get started with a new group of SAM Sisters soon, and I would love for you to be one of them, if the time is right for you.
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