The Unhurried Mama

My twelve-year-old wandered into the kitchen while I was chopping vegetables. Watched me for a beat. Then said, almost to herself: You seem more relaxed. Like, in general. Compared to a few years ago.She could see it from two feet away. I'd been too close to notice.This is the season finale and the real version of how I got here. Not the one that opens with wisdom. The one that starts in a bathtub in September 2021, with a seven-year-old who just wanted to sleep, and a mother who couldn't stop, and a husband who heard the crying and said kids forget.She didn't remember the bathtub. She noticed me in the kitchen at four o'clock.That was all the evidence I needed.Season 2 is coming—and it starts closer to home than you think.Subscribe to Substack for weekly show notes and free meditations: https://substack.com/@theunhurriedmamaThis podcast has a book coming. If you want to be the first to read it, the early reader form is waiting for you: https://tinyurl.com/pmeydthmIf this show has meant something to you this season, you can buy me a bath soak (I don't do caffeine 😄). It keeps the mic on and the words flowing.→ Buy Me a Bath Soak

I was nine years old when I asked for a ring at a Pow Wow—a little play thing, probably 50 cents, sitting in a foam slot in a plain box. It caught the light just enough to make me feel like a princess. I asked for it the way children ask before they've learned to shrink their wants down to something more acceptable. She said yes.That night, my mother made me give it back.I didn't know it then, but something got written into my body that lived there for decades. This episode is about what gets handed to us before we have words for it, and what becomes possible for our children when we finally decide to look at it.Subscribe to Substack for weekly show notes and free meditations: https://substack.com/@theunhurriedmamaThis podcast has a book coming. If you want to be the first to read it, the early reader form is waiting for you: https://tinyurl.com/pmeydthm

You know the girl you were before the world got loud? Before you learned to make yourself smaller, to move at everyone else’s pace, to be so good at the showing up that you forgot—she was still in there. Waiting. Unhurried.She didn’t go anywhere. She just went silent the way we do when no one comes. And she has been holding a place for you this whole time.This is a letter to her. And an invitation to write one of your own. She just needs to know you remembered.She kept the door open for you.Subscribe to Substack for weekly show notes and free meditations: https://substack.com/@theunhurriedmama

My kids were supposed to be writing about eagles. They were playing thumb war. And I was standing in the kitchen, breath shallow, mental list running, every cell in my body pointed at the to-do list—when my nine-year-old walked over, took my arms, and led me through a breath like she'd been doing it her whole life. Maybe she had. This is the episode about why children are born knowing things we spend decades trying to remember. And what it means that yours has been looking for you—the real you—the whole time.Subscribe to Substack for weekly show notes and free meditations: https://substack.com/@theunhurriedmama

She wanted screen time. I said not until the math was done. What followed was heavy sighs, three trips down the hallway, and more math than I probably should have done for her. But the boundary held. And the next morning, without me asking, she came back and told me exactly what she'd been doing. This is the episode about what a boundary actually is, and what happens when accountability arrives on its own.Subscribe to Substack for weekly show notes and free meditations: https://substack.com/@theunhurriedmama

My son wouldn't go upstairs alone. Every night for weeks: stalling, hovering, refusing—and I had a story about why. Then one night, I actually asked him. What he said was so unexpectedly tender, made me want to laugh at myself, and completely changed the way I see behaviour. This is the episode about what's underneath the defiance you're most tired of, and why the answer is almost never what you think. If you've ever labelled your child difficult and wondered what you were missing, this one is for you.Subscribe to Substack for weekly show notes and free meditations: https://substack.com/@theunhurriedmama

My daughter spat at her brother. I charged in, took away the thing she loved most, and she slammed her door, screaming, "I hate you!" Later, I found what she'd done while we ate dinner without her. This is the story of what happened when I sat on the hallway floor and stopped seeing my failure, and the five words she said that I still think about today. We talk about why consequences given in the flood almost always land as punishment, what a child's silent destruction is actually saying, and what repair looks like when it's nothing like the parenting books describe.Subscribe to Substack for weekly show notes and free meditations: https://substack.com/@theunhurriedmama

You've been holding it together all day. You don't have to anymore. This one is just for you: a gentle body-scan meditation for the mother who needs to be held, for a change. Put it down for a little while. It'll still be there after.Subscribe to Substack for weekly show notes and free meditations: https://substack.com/@theunhurriedmama

My nine-year-old walked into my office shaking, convinced we'd have to move house. What came out over the next 97 minutes on my lap changed the way I understand what it means to hold space for your child—and why you can't offer what you don't have. This is the episode about co-regulation: what it actually looks like, and the sentence my son said that I will carry for the rest of my life.Subscribe to Substack for weekly show notes and free meditations: https://substack.com/@theunhurriedmama

“Mama, I cleaned up the mess." His voice was so small. This is the repair: the knock, the hug, and the ugly cry. And then the second rupture I didn't see coming: the piano, the flashback, the moment I heard my father's voice in mine and had to let go of the thing I thought made me a good mother. This is what unhurried actually means—not as a mood, but as a way of moving through your life at your own pace instead of the world's.Subscribe to Substack for weekly show notes and free meditations: https://substack.com/@theunhurriedmama

We were already late. The bowl tipped. Coconut milk, the last of it, spilled all over the floor. And I snapped. This is the story of what happened next: the shame spiral, the bathroom floor, and the moment I heard a knock I wasn’t ready for. Why your blow-ups aren’t character flaws—they’re biology. The window of tolerance, what it actually means to notice you’re leaving it, and how to start coming back.Subscribe to Substack for weekly show notes and free meditations: https://substack.com/@theunhurriedmama

This is the first episode of The Unhurried Mama. I'm Michelle, and I'm launching this podcast on my daughter's 12th birthday because she's the reason I started asking: What does it mean to parent from a nervous system that isn't running? The choice I made that changed everything—saying yes to homeschool—the tornado years that followed, and the question I'm still sitting in: What am I trying to outrun by staying busy? If you've been sprinting through motherhood and don't know how to stop, this is for you. I'm still figuring it out, but I'm doing it out loud. Your body already knows the path. This is the work of coming home to yourself.Subscribe to Substack for weekly show notes and free meditations: https://substack.com/@theunhurriedmama