Jenn Uren | Dealing with Overwhelm, 170 -

Jenn Uren | Dealing with Overwhelm, 170

Jenn Uren | Dealing with Overwhelm

Being a mom can be overwhelming, but being a mompreneur can sometimes feel downright impossible. Every business “yes” can feel like a parenting “no” – and cue the mom guilt!

Jenn Uren is very familiar with trying to juggle and do all the things herself but too often found that it was at the expense of her family, especially relationship with her kids. She hit a breaking point five years ago when she and her husband experienced a surprise adoption of a sibling set (100% unexpected – you can hear about it on her podcast). This started her down a life-giving path of transformation that gave her back the energy for the things that mattered most. She learned how to ask for help, offer help, and lean into systems to simplify and create space in her own life – and she wants to help you do that, too.

Through her website and podcast, This Mom Knows, she coaches and encourages mompreneurs to find the right systems, tools, and people – their Mom Team – to help and support them so they can be their best as both “mom” and “entrepreneur”.

She and her family have recently left the hustle and bustle of the Chicagoland area and are enjoying discovering their new hometown in Northwest Indiana.

Jenn Uren joins Amber to discuss her personal experience with untangling overwhelm, what pride has to do with it, and where the surprise adoption of two children fits in to her story.

Dealing with Overwhelm Questions Discussed:

(4:09) You are a helper. You enjoy serving people, but you came to a point in your life where you were completely overwhelmed. Will you share a little of the backstory?
(7:22) You moved into a place of “managing” the overwhelm, but you still felt this strong sense of obligation, of this fear of letting others down. How did you begin to untangle that and how was God working on you through that season?
(11:45) On the tail end of untangling overwhelm, identifying the pride in your own heart, and learning to live with intention and purpose your world was turned upside down. What happened?
(15:58) Did the unexpected adoption process send you into another season of overwhelm?
(21:07) Why do you think that we struggle to get from A to Z when dealing with overwhelm?
(29:58) Today, your life is still VERY full, but you live differently. When overwhelm begins to rear its ugly head, what do you do?
(34:07) How would you encourage the woman listening who is nodding her head along with the feelings you described?

Dealing with Overwhelm Quotes to Remember:

“I ended up in this position where…I had so many things that I had said I could do and each of them on their own, I could do and I could do well. But doing all of them at the same time with different expectations, different deadlines, different people I was helping, it really became a juggling game, and I wasn’t doing anything well.”

“It was half their lives. They just knew their mom as frenzied, and busy and tired.”

“I have a different calling than doing. I am called to be. I need to lean into that role as a mom and be the mom, which does include doing some things, but not act and do the things mom does without being that person to my family.”

“Just because you can do it doesn’t mean there’s not 10 or 15 other people who could do it. And by you saying yes, if that is not what you’re supposed to do, you’re actually denying somebody else the opportunity to be a blessing or be blessed.”

“We prayed about it. And we decided that we would say yes, until God said no. We would just keep moving forward until He closed the door. I started that morning, not even dreaming that I’d ever have another child and I went to bed that night with a picture and a name and going we’re going to have a fourth child in this family.”

“But it was through all of that, that God was able to work on my heart and talk to me, because I was sitting there in the middle of the night rocking a little boy and looking at him and saying, ‘You are fighting me and I wish you could understand…’ and….the Holy Spirit would whisper and say, ‘This is what I was trying to show you.’ “

“It was really through this unexpected adoption…that God was able to speak to my heart and then help me see what I needed to do to shift things, so I wasn’t always doing, but I could be the mom for my family.”

“It’s in that transition that I think we feel guilty as moms and so we just do it ourselves or we say it’s just easier to do it myself than to teach them and you’re like, ‘Well, yeah, this day it is.’ But when you do it again, next week and the week after and the week after and the week after and the week after, Wouldn’t it be easier to teach them? So we don’t always look at the bigger picture. Sometimes we just look today.”

“Just because it’s good, doesn’t mean it’s not hard or traumatic or leave some damage in its wake.”

“Where do we have to be firmer? Where do we have to be flexible? I’ve had to learn to be flexible in some areas that I’d love to see us more firm.”

“Start small, but start, because that’s where you get the big results is by doing one small thing at a time.”

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