Become A Calm Mama

Darlynn Childress
  • 5.0 (28)
  • PARENTING
  • UPDATED WEEKLY
Become A Calm Mama

Become a Calm Mama is a parenting podcast where you learn practical parenting tools and strategies so you can stop yelling, feel more calm, and show up as the mom you want to be. Darlynn is the top parenting coach for moms who want to know exactly how to handle misbehavior and create a peaceful home. Darlynn is known for her practical strategies and a down to earth understanding of what it’s really like to be a mom raising kids in the 21st century. Over the past 15 years, Darlynn has dedicated her life to becoming the mom she wanted to be for my kids. In that process, she created a parenting model called “The Calm Mama Process” that helped her navigate every tricky parenting moment that’s been thrown her way. From hitting to bullying, from toddler meltdowns to teenage shenanigans, from missing assignments to college admissions, from getting kids to bed to getting kids out of bed, from kids not wanting to get out of the bath to middle schoolers that don’t want to take a shower, from kids fighting in the car to kids who drive their own car, she’s seen it all. Darlynn has taught her model to hundreds of moms since 2015 and when they apply the Calm Mama Process to their tricky parenting moments they have calm and peace in their homes. Their kids' behavior improves, their relationship with their children gets so much better, and they enjoy motherhood (most of the time!). Darlynn teaches her process inside her coaching program, The Emotionally Healthy Kids course, where you learn how to master your reactivity, teach kids how to manage their big feelings, and set limits that work. Each week she brings practical and simple strategies to the podcast so you can stop yelling and create a peaceful home.

  1. 4D AGO

    Radical Action (Part 6 of the How To Heal series)

    Over the past 5 weeks, I’ve walked you through the hierarchy of healing and how to go through the phases of healing I call radical self-love, self-trust, honesty, listening, and acceptance. Today, we finish the series with radical action - the part where we DO the things that actually improve our lives and create the lives that we want. You’ll Learn: How to hold both contentment and a desire for changeThe 3 types of action (and which is best)How to chase the glimmers in your lifeA surefire way to know if you’re taking the right actions5 enemies of aligned radical action and how to overcome them Radical action doesn’t have to be big. In fact, sometimes a lot of the big actions in life start with really small changes. In this episode, I’ll show you how to figure out what you ought to be doing and how to overcome the obstacles that come up along the way.  ---------------------------------------------- I also want you to keep in mind that any action you take must be rooted in radical self-love. This isn’t meant to be some giant checklist you now have to do. If all you ever do is learn to fall deeper and deeper in love with yourself, you have already won.    Taking Radical ActionRadical action is about making a commitment to changing an area of your life where you are not satisfied.  This typically happens in three areas: Your relationship with yourselfYour relationship with othersYour relationship with the outside world The first part of action is simply committing to the change you want. Then, you decide which actions will support your goal and commit to those, as well. Let’s take a closer look at these 3 relationships. Your relationship with yourself. This includes your mental health and the way you talk to yourself. It is internal. If you're feeling anxious, depressed, directionless, or trapped and you don't have contentment, then this is something that you might want to work on. You might decide that you want to improve your mental health, experience more meaning or purpose in your life, or commit to your own peace and contentment.  Your relationships with others. Maybe your marriage isn't working, or the way you're parenting your kids isn't working. Maybe you have some toxic friendships or some family conflicts.  Your goal might be something like, “I want to have a happy marriage,” “I want to be a more calm parent,” or “I am committed to setting better boundaries with my in-laws.” Your relationship with the outside world. This includes how you contribute to the world and how you feel in the world. This can also encompass your relationship with time, money, your environment, etc.  If your home is messy, cluttered, and it’s driving you crazy, let’s take radical action to make your home function better for you. If you are constantly stressed and overwhelmed about money, you can commit to finding peace around your finances and managing your money in a healthy way.    Step 1: Define the change you wantWe can’t create the lives we want unless we know what we want, right? So the...

    39 min

  2. MAR 20

    Radical Acceptance (Part 5 of the How To Heal series)

    When we set out to create positive change and healing in our lives, those actions must come from a place of love and trust in ourselves. The key is practicing radical acceptance of ourselves and our circumstances.  In this episode, you’ll learn: Why we struggle to accept realityThe truth about acceptance and taking actionReal life examples of challenging circumstances and how we can be more accepting of them4 steps to practice radical acceptance The faster you can accept the hard things in life as reality, the faster you will be able to get into action and take the next right step. ------------------------------------------- As you move through your healing journey, you may have experienced times when you made a decision to change something in your life. You made a checklist or a set of rules to follow, but then you didn’t end up making as much progress as you wanted. You thought you just must not be good at healing or taking control of your life, so you gave up. Often, this happens because your actions are rooted in shame, guilt, buffering, or trying to avoid pain. To make positive change, you have to come from a positive place. This starts with our previous steps of radical self-love, self-trust, honesty, and listening.  The next step in the hierarchy of healing is to accept where you are, accept your current circumstances.    Radical AcceptanceAcceptance is the idea that you are okay with what’s happening in the present moment. You don’t need to judge the moment or your behavior. It’s saying, “This is the way things are right now and that's okay.” We’re often afraid to fully accept our circumstances because we think that if we’re okay with how things are, it implies that we don’t care. That we’re powerless, defeated, and we’ll never take action to improve or grow. But the opposite is true. Acceptance is not about excusing yourself from responsibility or giving up. In fact, the faster you accept your current reality, the easier it will be for your nervous system to calm down and to problem solve. It will be easier for you to show compassion to yourself and get into action. It reminds me of the Buddhist saying that “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” There are facts, and there are our interpretations of the facts. Often, it’s what we make things mean that hurts us the most. And it is entirely unnecessary.  Imagine that you’re sitting in horrible traffic. It’s unpleasant and uncomfortable to be sitting there waiting for so long. But when you become frustrated, angry, and try to resist it, that’s where suffering comes in. You are adding more pain to the moment. Instead, you can choose to accept that there is always a lot of traffic on that particular road, you plan for it, and take different actions (e.g. driving a different route or leaving earlier).  When we struggle because we believe something should be different from how it is, we’re fighting reality. When we resist our feelings, ourselves, and our experience, we create suffering. Acceptance is going with the flow, and it’s what you see in people that seem to be at peace, even when things are chaotic.    Accepting Other People’s BehaviorRadical acceptance applies to other people’s behavior, as well. Maybe your spouse or partner committed to doing something and didn’t follow through. Or your kids are misbehaving. You can choose to accept that they are acting the way they’re acting.  Of course, as parents, we also have a responsibility to teach our kids better ways to behave, manage their feelings, get their needs met, and demonstrate their emotions. So, we do have to take action (more on that next week).  For example, you’re going...

    36 min
  3. Getting Sober [Confessions]

    MAR 18 · BONUS

    Getting Sober [Confessions]

    My healing journey began as a 19 year old, wandering drunk and alone on a beach in San Felipe, Mexico. This is the story of my first attempt at healing and what I learned early on.

    52 min

  4. MAR 13

    Radical Listening (Part 4 of the How To Heal series)

    Welcome to part 4 of the How To Heal series. In this episode about radical listening, you’ll learn strategies for listening more carefully and trusting your intuition and inner wisdom so that you can build a better relationship with your core self. You’ll Learn: How to practice radical listening with compassion The 4 parts within you that you are listening toExamples of patterns that might not be serving you5 steps to radical listening and a deeper understanding of yourself The closer you move to your authentic, core self, the more content you will feel. This truest version of you feels peace no matter what is happening.  ------------------------------------- Healing is really about wanting to feel better. To feel freedom, joy, gratitude, peace, safety, and calm. To be kinder to yourself, become a good friend to yourself, notice your patterns, and make small changes to influence them. Those are our goals here. As my mentor, Martha Beck, says, “Your true nature, the part of you that always remembers what it is meant to be and never stops trying to be what it is, no matter what happens to her. Your birthright is to feel peace and joy and gratitude and love. And in your core, you carry all of that.”   Radical ListeningThe goal of radical listening is to find your inner guidance to move away from the patterns that you've created to protect you from pain and toward new patterns that help you get what you actually want.  We all have patterns in ways that we think, feel, and act. We need to look at them and ask ourselves where they’re coming from. Are you trying to avoid pain? Are these patterns protecting you, or are they sabotaging you because you don’t think you’re worthy of feeling freedom, love, peace, and joy?  The statements we’re working with as we learn to radically listen are: I will listen to my needs and wants and see those as valid and important. I will listen to my intuition and trust my inner wisdom.   Who Are You Listening To?When you practice radical listening, you are having a conversation with yourself. But who are you talking to? In his book No Bad Parts, Richard Schwartz outlines four parts that live within each of us:   Your Inner Child You may have wounds or patterns that you developed in childhood. These were really important to you as a kid, but they might not be necessary now. These wounds are often based on attachment or authenticity.  Perhaps you were conditioned in childhood to believe that you don’t matter or that your needs aren’t important. Or your need for security and attachment wasn’t met, so you didn’t feel safe. You may have been told all sorts of negative things about yourself. Or you were taught that you had to look or perform a certain way in order to be loved, valued, and accepted.  For example, I grew up in a household where it often felt like there wasn’t a grown up. As a result, I developed patterns of hypervigilance, overthinking, overplanning, overstructuring, and then getting easily dysregulated when things weren't going to my plan. Now that I am the adult, I’ve had to teach myself (and my inner child) that I am safe. The grown-ups are here. Were you taught that your value depended on your grades, performance in sports, or how nice you were? Did you hear that you were dumb, ugly, mean, selfish, lazy, rude, or a problem? What messages did you hear in childhood that you might still be acting out today?  Maybe it’s time to look at those messages and examine them. Where’s the evidence?    Your Pain Our wounds and patterns can also come from culture - religion,...

    38 min

  5. MAR 6

    Radical Honesty (Part 3 of the How To Heal series)

    In this third installment of the How to Heal series, I’m talking about radical honesty - why it’s important, what happens when we’re not honest with ourselves, and how to get more honest. You’ll Learn: What it means to be radically honest Why it’s so hard for us to be honest with ourselvesSigns that you might have some healing to do4 strategies to increase your self-awareness and honesty You can't heal from anything until you’re aware of what it is that is causing you pain. Listen to learn how. --------------------------------- In this healing process, we’re trying to tap into our most pure state of being, where we have a deep sense of peace and wholeness so that we can be okay no matter what is happening around us.    Why Honesty MattersYou can't heal from anything until you’re aware of what it is that is causing you pain.  Often, we are unwilling to look at our patterns and our pain because it creates a discomfort in us that we don't know if we can handle. But the truth is, what you resist persists. If you resist your pain, it will stay.  Being willing to really look at ugly, hard, difficult things about ourselves and our lives requires us to be radically honest with ourselves.  Ultimately, you’re healing yourself so that you don’t harm your kids. Because, in full love and safety, yelling at your kid, shutting down, or being rough with their body hurts them. I want your children to grow up and not have to heal from childhood wounds. Now, everyone is gonna get hurt in childhood. In life, pain is inevitable. It's how we deal with pain, how we talk about pain, and how honest we are that actually creates the healing in real time. When you start to get honest with yourself, you’ll probably start to notice some clues. Thinking negatively and critically of yourself… Feeling despair, discontentment, discomfort, anger, resentment, confusion, or lack of clarity … Behaving in ways that hurt you or others (like your kids)... These are all really good indicators that you might have something to heal from.   Why Honesty Is So HardI think of radical honesty as being willing to admit how you are thinking, feeling, and acting - even when it’s uncomfortable. Being honest about your pain is the key to healing your pain.  So, if honesty is so important, why aren’t we honest with ourselves and each other about our pain? We often don’t even realize how cruel we’re being to ourselves with our thoughts, we don’t understand why we’re feeling or acting the way we are.  We also live in a society that tells us we should be happy all the time (good vibes only😒). And we’ve taken a lovely thing like gratitude and weaponized it as a way to bypass negative emotion.  Maybe you feel ashamed if things aren’t going well - embarrassed because you think you should have it all together. Sometimes, we’re scared to get honest about what we’re really thinking and feeling, especially if they’re negative thoughts about our kids or our life. We’re afraid that if we have a problem, we won’t be able to fix it - and we also won’t be able to ignore it anymore. And what I see more than anything is that most people are simply unaware. They’re just not paying attention. They're going through life a little bit unhappy, a little bit dissatisfied. It’s all just kinda meh. Sometimes it all feels too big to deal with, so we avoid feeling the pain by shutting off awareness.  Pushing the pain away actually blocks you from getting a life filled with hope, healing, love, joy, peace, and all the things we...

    33 min

  6. FEB 27

    Radical Self Trust (Part 2 of the How To Heal series)

    This is part two in my How to Heal series. Today, we’re talking about radical self trust and how to build more confidence and trust in yourself.  You’ll Learn: How past emotional wounds show up in the presentWhy building radical self trust is so important for healing and creating positive changeHow to be your own grown up3 strategies for building radical self trust When I think about trust, I believe the entry point is when you have an experience of feeling really safe with somebody. So, let me ask you… Is there anyone in your life that you feel completely safe with? That you can say or admit anything to (even the shameful, embarrassing, negative things), and you trust that they can handle your vulnerability with unconditional love? In this episode, I’m going to help you become that person for yourself. So even when the hard stuff comes up, you know that your love for yourself will never change. ------------------------------------ How to Heal is a 6-part journey for healing from emotional pain, figuring out what’s not working in your life so that you can make small changes to be less reactive, feel happier, and show up as the Calm Mama I know you want to be.    What Are You Healing From?In this context, I'm talking about healing from emotional pain - going back and looking at moments in the past when your core emotional or physical needs were not met.  Understanding these core emotional needs is also super helpful as a parent. These are tools to help you heal your past and parent your child in the present so that they don’t have the same wounds to heal from. The core emotional needs are really questions we’re trying to answer: Am I safe? This is a big one for kids. Babies and young children are incredibly vulnerable, and they know that they are not able to take care of themselves. They need adults to keep them safe.Am I loved unconditionally? When we tell our kids that we don’t like something they’re doing or the way they’re behaving, they often take that to mean that they are bad. They can’t separate themselves from their behavior. It’s up to the adults in their life to let them know that they are unconditionally loved and accepted.  When you experience moments where you feel unsafe or unloved, core wounds can form, and they show up later in our behaviors.  There were definitely times in my own life when I did not feel safe. I experienced abandonment when my dad left our family. I experienced sexual abuse as a child. My mother had depression and undiagnosed ADHD, so she was not always available for me and sometimes chose men that were not safe for me.  I started to decide that the world is not safe. When I looked around, I saw that adults were unreliable. They hurt you. They leave. Later in life, this core wound showed up as hypervigilance, constantly scanning for hazards, being controlling, looking to see if I fit in, and lots of insecurity and anxiety. If you have felt that you aren’t loved unconditionally, you might notice that wound come up as people pleasing, pushing others away, over-performing, perfectionism, or over-planning.  We develop these coping strategies, often even in childhood, to help us deal with the pain and discomfort. As a parent, when these old wounds are aggravated by life circumstances or your kid’s behavior, you might find that you react really intensely.  Overreaction is a good indication that you have something to heal from. Something is triggering you, and you might want to change your reaction.  This is the WHY of healing. You see that you are reacting in ways that create pain for yourself or others. Your past emotional wounds are...

    36 min
  7. Messy Kitchens [Confessions]

    FEB 24 · BONUS

    Messy Kitchens [Confessions]

    A conversation with Kristin Lafontaine about a time I almost died in the ocean, how Shrek is my life coach, and our messy kitchens

    27 min

  8. FEB 20

    Radical Self Love

    Today’s episode is the start of the How To Heal series here on the podcast. We’re starting with the foundation of it all - radical self love. A person who experiences self love and demonstrates self compassion has less depression, less anxiety, less stress, and less shame. Isn’t that what we all want? You’ll Learn: A mantra to help you practice radical self loveHow insecurity shows up for me and how I return to my core self4 tools to deepen your self love Radical self love is the foundation of healing. It is vital. It is a gift that you give to yourself. You are entitled to loving yourself and feeling good about yourself, and I want that for you so much.  ------------------------------------------ This is such an important topic that I’ve had a lot of feelings come up as I get ready to share this with you - tenderness, insecurity, and impostor syndrome (just to name a few).  But the truth is, I’m not trying to solve all of the world’s emotional pain problems. I’m creating this series to share with you my own journey of healing from trauma, uncertainty, and difficult experiences and the things that have been fundamental to me on that journey.  Over the course of this series, I’ll help you to: Become kinder to yourselfMake friends with your thoughts, feelings, and behaviorsNotice the patterns or strategies that don’t work for you anymoreMake small changes that influence those patterns This isn’t about making a huge overhaul of your life. It’s about picking one or two patterns in your life that you want to get curious about and explore…and loving yourself all along the way.   Radical Self LoveRadical self love is the foundation of healing. It is vital. It is a gift that you give to yourself. You are entitled to loving yourself and feeling good about yourself, and I want that for you so much.  Repeat after me: I unconditionally love and accept all the parts of me, no matter how I think, feel, or act. Write this statement down, put it somewhere you’ll see it often, and practice saying it to yourself throughout the week. Then, I challenge you to practice self love through connection and compassion (sound familiar?).   Step 1: Recognize the worth of your core selfAt your core - your essence, your soul, the divinity that lives within you - you are good. You are worthy of love. You are lovable, and you are good enough exactly as you are. Think of a newborn baby. Think of how deserving it is of love and care. There are no expectations of the baby. It doesn't have to prove anything. It doesn't owe anybody anything. It's just this love being.  You have that same pure soul inside of you. There is an essence to you that is pure and loving and good. It is worthy of love. It is worthy of being cared for and treated kindly.   Step 2: Connect to your core selfUnfortunately, we don’t always live in connection to our core self. We have subconscious thoughts and behaviors. Our environment influences how we think, feel, and act (e.g. parents, teachers, peers, religion, childhood experiences, etc.).  Sometimes we lose our connection to that core self, and we start using strategies that we think will either help us get better or help protect us. And these strategies aren’t always very loving to ourselves or others. Our thoughts become ruled by our inner critic. Feelings come up that we don’t know what to do with - like anger, hurt, or resentment. We use strategies to soothe, protect, or punish ourselves.  You might recognize these as people pleasing, yelling at your kids, overthinking, drinking too much, overworking, buying new things,...

    35 min
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About

Become a Calm Mama is a parenting podcast where you learn practical parenting tools and strategies so you can stop yelling, feel more calm, and show up as the mom you want to be. Darlynn is the top parenting coach for moms who want to know exactly how to handle misbehavior and create a peaceful home. Darlynn is known for her practical strategies and a down to earth understanding of what it’s really like to be a mom raising kids in the 21st century. Over the past 15 years, Darlynn has dedicated her life to becoming the mom she wanted to be for my kids. In that process, she created a parenting model called “The Calm Mama Process” that helped her navigate every tricky parenting moment that’s been thrown her way. From hitting to bullying, from toddler meltdowns to teenage shenanigans, from missing assignments to college admissions, from getting kids to bed to getting kids out of bed, from kids not wanting to get out of the bath to middle schoolers that don’t want to take a shower, from kids fighting in the car to kids who drive their own car, she’s seen it all. Darlynn has taught her model to hundreds of moms since 2015 and when they apply the Calm Mama Process to their tricky parenting moments they have calm and peace in their homes. Their kids' behavior improves, their relationship with their children gets so much better, and they enjoy motherhood (most of the time!). Darlynn teaches her process inside her coaching program, The Emotionally Healthy Kids course, where you learn how to master your reactivity, teach kids how to manage their big feelings, and set limits that work. Each week she brings practical and simple strategies to the podcast so you can stop yelling and create a peaceful home.

Information

  • Creator
    Darlynn Childress
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2025
  • Episodes
    172
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2025 Darlynn Childress
  • Show Website
    Become A Calm Mama

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