Empowering Single Parents – Overcoming Guilt and Raising Resilient Kids with Andrena Phillips

Hey, welcome back, No Problem Parents, to another episode of the No Problem Parenting Podcast, where we turn your parenting problems into no problem and help you become the confident leader I say our kids crave us to be. I am your host, Jackie Fineman, and I'm super glad you're tuning in today. It's been a hot minute. We have been super busy helping our one-on-one coaching clients the past couple of months, and we're also gearing up to launch our new parenting community called The Nest.

So whether you're in the nesting phase, ready to welcome your child home, or you have kiddos that are ready to leave the nest and you are going to become an empty nester, you're going to find all kinds of resources, support, and of course, learn how to become a no problem parent in this new parenting community. So stay tuned for that. Be sure to go to noproblemparents.com.

Get on our newsletter so you receive the updates of when that's going to happen. And you can also find in the link in the show notes how to become a no problem parent today for just $50. That price is going to change just as soon as we launch that new program in November of 2024. All right.

Now, whether you're a first time listener of the show or a loyal follower, you're in for a really fun episode today. We are talking all about single parenting. And we know parenting in general can be tough, but doing it on your own is extra hard. Doing it on your own can bring up extra feelings of guilt and overwhelm, but I want to remind you that you are not alone and you have all the tools you need to raise resilient, confident kids.

My guest today is here for all you single parents that are doing an amazing job day in and day out, and she's going to give you permission to take care of yourself, to carve out time for yourself. A lot of times as single parents, I feel like we can't do that. But my guest today is here to tell you that, yes, you can and how vitally important it is that you do take care of yourself first. But before we dive in with my guest today, Ms. Andrina Phillips, I want to share with you the Everyday Essentials eBook.

Here at No Problem Parenting, we love sharing resources, many of which are free, lots that are cost effective. Most importantly, they are resources that we have tried, things we found success with or my clients have found success with that we want to share with you. We don't know what we don't know, and No Problem Parenting is here to bring you those resources that are often some of the best kept secrets. All right.

The Everyday Essentials eBook is your go-to guide for integrating essential oils and supplements into your family's daily routine. The book is designed specifically for parents and is a practical resource that's going to provide you with the tools and knowledge to promote wellness for your children while also supporting your own self-care. So whether you're new to essential oils or you're a seasoned user, this ebook is going to help you create healthier, happier habits for the whole family.

What you're going to find inside the ebook is kid-friendly essential oils, learn which oils are safe and effective for children of all ages, parenting support. You're going to discover tips for how to use the essential oils and supplements to manage your own stress, your own anxiety and fatigue because taking care of yourself is important in order for you to help care for your kids. And then you're also going to learn some safety guidelines.

Get essential information on how to use the oil safely with your kids, including proper dilution ratios, application methods, and best practices to ensure everyone in the family can benefit from these natural solutions. Okay, so today's guest is Ms. Andrina Phillips. She is a dynamic force in personal and professional development.

She's a certified master life strategist, a transformational speaker, a published author, and national award-winning podcaster with over two decades of experience. Andrina specializes in leadership, mindset transformation, we're all about that here at No Problem Parenting, and work-life balance, empowering ambitious individuals to achieve success in their careers and personal lives. As the visionary behind the Transform U, the letter U, coaching institute, she revolutionizes the coaching world by certifying individuals in life, professional, and wellness coaching.

She also helps aspiring coaches launch their own academies while earning ICF learning credits. Andrina brings a wealth of experience from her background as a 21-year licensed practical nurse, corporate trainer in healthcare, and entrepreneur for over nine years. And as a single parent herself, she's here to pour into you, single parents, giving you her best advice for how to navigate the single parenting world, kick guilt to the curb, and raise resilient kids.

So welcome, Andrina, to the show. I am excited to have you here today and to pour into our single parent listeners. Thank you so much, Jackie. I appreciate you. Thank you for allowing me to come on your show to help empower others. I am so blessed to be here.

I'm just excited to have you on to help all of our single mamas and dads build resilience. Parenting is hard in general. A lot of parents will come to me in their two parent homes. they'll come to me and it's hard for them. So I always just have this moment of silence for our single parents out there because it is twice as hard. You're doing it all. So let's begin with what are some, maybe some personal growth strategies that can help a mom or a dad, a single parent build resilience in the face of adversity? Be selfish. Oh, I love that.

So I'm going to give an unpopular opinion. And one of the things is that you need to be selfish because you have to fill your cup up first in order for everybody to get the overflow. Most of the time, being a single parent, what we do is we're so busy making sure that everybody else is taken care of that we actually forget to take care of us. And in reality, we are not serving anybody no good by not taking care of ourselves. So one of my first things that I want to encourage the single moms or the single dads is to make time for yourself. Even if that means getting up an hour earlier, if that means finding somebody to take your kids for a couple of hours while you have a woosah moment, I just really encourage parents to really take care of themselves because I have to remind you, or you have to be reminded, you're doing the job for two people and you're only one person. And in the midst of that, you're still trying to become the best version of you as well as trying to help your children become the best version of them.

Yeah, I absolutely love that. And I can hear some of the single parents listening right now who think there's not enough time. It is enough time. You just have to learn how to manage your time. That's the key as well as a single parent. You have to block out time for you And then the activities that come with you being a single parent. So time management is another tool that you can incorporate in being a single parent. Selfish is one. Time management is second. There is enough time.

Yeah, I absolutely agree. Starting my own company 10 years ago, well, before that, working in my 20-year career as a leader in the company that I worked with, it felt like I was never prepared. My calendar was always changing. My schedule was always changing. There was never enough time to get all the tasks and all the things done at work and at home.

and then starting my own company, it was like, oh, I got all this time. What am I going to do with it? And then I started to just like do things to keep busy. I almost feel like I was working hard.

Right. And it was a couple of years into that where it was like time management is so key because we can fill up our schedules easily. Is it stuff that we really need to be filling our schedules up with? Absolutely not. Some things we need to take off our list and some things we don't need to do. And we need to learn how to prioritize what is important to us, what is important to us as we navigate as single parents. Everything don't have to be taken care of and you don't have to be at everybody's beck and call. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, I do. And just even our tasks at home, the house was typically picked up before kids, right? And then all of a sudden the kids come along and you're trying to maintain this lifestyle of having everything picked up and clean countertops and all, you know, laundry done all on time and everything. And it's like, it's not always feasible to do that. And is that a priority? Especially when you're trying to do it by yourself. So another tip that I can give, delegation, delegation. Like even as a single parent, I was a single parent of three, two girls and a boy. And I worked as a nurse. I'm a retired nurse, 21 years to LPN.

And I worked as a nurse. But in order for us to be successful as a unit, they had to play their part as well. Yes, I am the leader, but I'm also teaching them how to lead as well. And one of the things that I learned with my children was to delegate tasks. That means give them chores.

I'm not the only one who lives here. We all live here. So you do the living room, you do the kitchen, you do the bathroom. And that way we can flow all together. The house is clean, the meals is cooked, and everybody's happy. So you have to delegate. And it also teaches them to be responsible adults. Right. Yeah. I love that. And I often change out the word chores for family contributions. We're a family. We all need to contribute. And so for parents who are feeling like they're doing it all alone and they have too many tasks, have a conversation with your kids at dinner time after dinner sit down at the table everybody's got a pad of paper and a pen even the littles can participate in this and they can color their but we all put on on our list how are we contributing to our family what are the things that we're doing and when they see that mom's list is three pages long and they've got like feed the dog or take out the garbage or pick up their room their own personal space they kind of go, oh, wait, I guess I'm not doing enough around here. What can I do? And it really helps them get involved. So it's not just do your chores and then we're in a battle. Let's change the conversation. Step three of no problem parenting and say, hey, how can you contribute? How can you contribute? Because exactly like you said, we're putting the oxygen mask on ourselves first. We're happier. And, you know, there's that phrase when mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.

Ain't that the truth? So when mom's energy is drained, things don't go as smooth. Kids don't get what they want because mom's too drained. But when you can start to say, hey, kiddo, if you do this, that or the other, my energy tank fills up.

Well, now the kids want to help instead of have to help. To help. Yeah. And the kids, they enjoy it as well to see that they're being successful making up the bed or they're doing dishes.

They feel like a big helper. and it's like you're you're taking on responsibility you're helping us as a family to make this a positive thing you know what I'm saying being a single parent is not it comes with negative remarks at times yeah exactly and it doesn't have to be negative it's just all about how you manage it and how you look at it and how you and your children navigate you know communication is key as well. You have to let them know responsibility not only lies on me, but it also lies on y'all. Have your family meetings and discuss. Ask your children how they feel about the situation. Ask them, can you give a suggestion how we can make it positive here? How it can work for all of us? You know, the kids love the answer. You know, the children love to hear their voices.

They like to be heard too. Right. And they like to feel in control and they like to be empowered in that way. So, yeah, absolutely. I wholeheartedly agree.

Share an example for our listeners about how focusing on your own personal growth helped you and maybe someone that you know in your coaching, the coaching work that you do, become more resilient. because I feel like the number one thing that I said was being selfish and filling your cup up full, understanding your story, understanding your role, understanding that just because I'm a single parent doesn't mean I have to forsake everything about me.

I still have ambitions. I still have dreams. I still have a purpose. If you take in deep dive into you and into your personal growth and understand your story, your steps and your success, even as a single parent, that's your resilience right there within itself. You still having dreams. I went to school with three kids. I went to college. I put myself through nursing school, being a single mom. So that within itself was resilience, overcoming that I walked away from an abusive relationship and got a divorce and still had three kids to raise. But what am I going to do with my life?

You know, I was a wife, one minute I was a wife and next minute I'm a single parent. So I still had to have my drive. And I did. How did you do that?

It just seems so overwhelming to know that you want to better your career, your life for your kids, bring more income in. How did you even start or get the confidence or the courage to go fill out that college application? Because I believed in myself. And I understood the assignment.

And the assignment was I still have to be this powerhouse of a woman in order for me to navigate being a single mom. And I also have to set the legacy for my children. And not only that, to give them the insight and the boldness to leap out on their own dreams. I had to be that example. Yeah. So you just. Yeah, I just did it like like like Nike say, just do it.

Why not? I don't have nothing to lose. I don't have anything to lose by still having dreams and ambition or teaching my children to be leaders. Right. Did you have family, friends, people to rely on or did you have to find those people?

I had to find those people. I had to create a village. And how did you do that? How did you begin to even do that?

By being with like minded people and being in areas, churches, you know, finding activities in the community. One of them was my son used to play football. So, you know, all the single moms, we would gather together there and we would become a unit there. Like, listen, Jackie, I need you to watch the kids on Friday while I take a break. And you like, OK, Andrea, watch the kids on Saturday.

So we would barter. Or if I'm running late for work, Jackie, I need you to pick up the kids for me on this day. You know, you build a community, you build a village. It starts by putting yourself out there and having conversations with the other folks in your community and through kids sports or your church or anything.

Church, community, or just, you know, sometimes single moms, we like to go out to have a little cocktail. Exactly. Why not? Find your people.

Well, and self-care means a lot of different things. Absolutely. If you're staying at home and somebody else has your kids at their house, self-care can also be somebody watching your kids so that you can go out and be with friends. And just those conversations or those outside of your own situation.

I think often, I don't know if you've experienced this in your coaching with people as well, Andrina, but, you know, we are sometimes so involved in our own stuff. Going somewhere seems overwhelming. Like, I don't want to put myself together to get out of the house to go pretend I'm going to have fun when I'm so overwhelmed and stressed. But even the act of doing that can just pull you out of your own bubble and open your eyes to see that, oh, wait, there's other women going through similar things that I'm going through.

And they're figuring it out. And they're not feeling guilty for leaving their kids. And they're not feeling guilty for spending a little bit of money on themselves instead of just always on the kids. isolation is not good for growth. Isolation is not good for growth. And sometimes you, even though you don't want to go, you don't want to do, that's the most time that you should go and you should do. Yeah. Getting there is the hardest part. It is. But once you get there, then you glad you got there. You know, don't think it was easy for me to go to nursing school, but once I got there and saw, Hey, I need to do this for myself because I love taking care of people. That's just in my nature. So nursing was definitely a calling for me. And I guess that's why coaching is so easy to me because I love to empower people. I love for people to get their aha moment, but you know, just starting and getting out there and just taking those limits off of you just because you're a single parent, don't mean that your assignment or your purpose have stopped. Right. Yeah. And actually our kids do better. Absolutely. They thrive when number one, they have more responsibilities, but also when they see that mom is thriving, that is empowering to them. When they see that mom is exhausted and anxious and worried and tired and all that, that creates more anxiousness in our kids and or they'll come at you with negative

behavior just to get in your face, to get some attention, to get any kind of excitement, whether that's negative excitement because you're frustrated and yelling at them because you're stressed and tired or it's, you know, excitability and happiness, kids will find a way to get you to engage with them in some way, shape or form. So I think it's a great thing that when moms can actually be excited about pouring into themselves because ultimately, you know, spills over to the kids. You know what I used to do with my children? I have three of them, so I would take them on dates, individual dates. So you make a deal with them. Listen, if you let me have my moment, then we're going to go on a date. So me and my son, we will go, our date would be on Sunday.

Me and my daughters will be like Saturdays because you know, Saturday's is girl day. So I would do that with them. So, you know, they talk to me now, my kids are older now and they always give me like stories on how they, their childhood was, they used to hear horrible childhood stories, but their childhood was great. Even when their mom was a single mom, even though they didn't realize behind the scenes, like when I go in my bathroom, I'm like crying and like in the bubble bath, like, oh my God, I'm exhausted. I'm tired.

But, you know, just to know that my children understood that resilience is part of life. Showing up is part of you walking in your purpose and living the life that you want to live. And so now they see me coaching and speaking and they love what I do. And they just be like, I can't believe that's our mom. I'm like. It's so empowering though, rather than optimizing, right? It's so empowering rather than, you know, oh, we don't have this and we don't have that.

And we're feeling sorry for our kids that we don't. It's like, look at all we do have and all we can create. Oh, I get goosebumps. That is exactly what No Problems Can't Be. So the journey is worth it. It's just all about you finding what works for you and your kids. Life does not stop because you're a single parent. It really, truly don't. And one thing I always tell my clients, make your journey fun make it fun life is already serious don't get me wrong i understand the dynamics of life you know um life happened to us but you can still make it fun somewhere around the way we gotta laugh we gotta make it enjoyable because we only have one shot i want to highlight that because you came from an abusive situation so it's this isn't white picket fence kind of Not at all.

It is real life, hard stuff that you were able to deal with the problems and the situations that came your way. You were able to deal with and overcome those challenges, which, by the way, it's right in the definition of the word problem. It's a matter or a situation that's unwelcome or harmful. It needs to be dealt with and overcome.

So we can turn any problem, even severe problems like domestic abuse, into a no problem. Right. That's my whole mission. And have a positive outcome.

Yes. Yes. See, life is going through you, not to you. If you see it happening through you instead of to you, you can navigate a whole lot different.

Your perspective on life will change. Yes, I came from an abusive relationship, but that didn't stop me. Matter of fact, that gave me even more drive to become the best version of myself. Because if I understand how it is to live in the pit, how does it look to live in the palace?

So I got to create my own palace. And that's what I did. Laughing along the way. Laughing saves me.

Oh, I love it. It's coming up time and time again recently on my conversations with guests. More people are saying, you got to have humor. You got to have fun.

You do. You got to have laughter. And my dad, who's been through heck and back in his life, one of my favorite quotes that he ever said is, without a sense of humor, tough, put the word tough in quotes, tough is hard to live. That's good.

Isn't that good? Yeah, that's real good. Through all the trials, through all the losses, the defeats, the hardships, and all of those things, the one thing he had was, well, I should say two things, faith. He had his faith.

And then humor. I always say that's one of my favorite scriptures out of the bible I think it's proverbs is laughter is good medicine yes it is it is it really does it takes like life is hard already Jackie we know that so just because you see me the glam side now it didn't mean that I didn't have to crawl to get there but in the midst of my crawling I still enjoy life because we get to write a beautiful a story each and every single day. No matter what life served us, we get to write our own chapter.

And some of those chapters, we need to put a little laughter along the way. You know, I always make everybody laugh when I do my speaking. And I say, yeah, I came from, and then I dated a guy named Lee Ward and made it even worse. But I love that even watching you on Instagram and some of the messages and the reels and the things that you share, you're dancing, you're laughing, you're positive, you're having fun, you're turning, you know, making lemonade out of lemons. Absolutely. You're doing it intentionally, not just superficially. Not at all. But doing it as it's like it was Amy Cuddy that said, fake it till you become it. Not fake it till you make it, but fake it till you become it.

And sometimes it doesn't feel right. It doesn't necessarily feel good, but you intentionally just keep doing it until it does just become part of you have to be intentional about everything in life you know everything in life and and i love to laugh and i love to dance those are my two things that i truly truly love no matter what happens in my life i always go back to those two areas because you get to laugh you know like a child you know child behavior you know before we became adults you know what i'm saying and dancing is just a form of freedom it don't matter whether you on rhythm or not. To me, it just saying, dance it to your own beat.

I absolutely love that. So for the moms listening today that are like, hey, I want that energy. I want that vibe. I want to be able to deal with and overcome the challenges that I am currently going through right now with faith and fun and intention and being selfish along the way. Just take some time for me to do that. One of the best ways they can do that is to set up or to schedule a personal and professional fulfillment session with you.

There's a link in the show notes, parents, for you to go check that out and work with even just in 45 minutes, you're going to be able to give these parents kind of a jump start or a head start or a next step for how they can proceed and really take ownership and just own their situation and find their way out. Find their way through, I should say. Find their way through. I love that.

like going allow life to go through you not to you to you that is can i'm gonna you can i use that quote that is so good i'll put your name on it please put my name behind it girl life happens through you not soon i love it it's so good i cannot thank you enough for being on the show sharing your story your wisdom with us your resource for parents that's one of my favorite things about the No Problem Parenting podcast is being able to share resources that are accessible to parents right from the comfort of your home. So you don't need to go to an appointment or drive you can just have access to you, Andrina, right from the comfort of your home. And you can also follow Andrina on Instagram. Just use the tag keep underscore moving with Andrina moving.

keep underscore moving with Andrina or keepmovingwithandrina.com all the links are going to be in our show notes thanks so much for being with me today oh you're more than welcome Jackie I had a good time with you you're a cool woman well I'm going to receive that compliment and I'm going to take it all day thanks again Andrina for being with us today I'm going to leave everybody with this quote on particularly rough days when you feel like you cannot possibly endure remember that your track record for getting through those days so far is a hundred percent.

And I say that's pretty darn good. All right. That's it for today's episode of the No Problem Parenting Podcast. Hey, thanks guys for tuning in. If you found value in today's episode, click the subscribe button and share it with other parents who might need a little boost.

Stay connected on our socials by following at No Problem Parents for more parenting tips and get your free download of the 60 ways to respond to your kids without losing your cool, go to NoProblemParents.com. Until next time, remember, your confidence comes from embracing both successes and setbacks. So take a deep breath, embrace the chaos, and remember, you got this.