Chaos N' Cookies: Mindful Motherhood with Josephine Atluri
As an adult we wear a number of hats throughout our day-to-day lives, Josephine Atluri, creator of the Mindfulness Journal for Parents, helps parents and individuals alike through meditation and mindfulness.
CHAOS N’ COOKIES PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
Heather Steinker (00:04):
Hey, I'm Heather. A chaos coordinator and mom of three young kids. Chaos N' Cookies is literally my life with never ending dishes, laundry, you name it. Being a mom is a blessing, but it also comes with hard days, too. Together, we can find the humor and real solutions to lighten your load and clean up the crumbs. You're listening to the Chaos N' Cookies podcast.
Heather Steinker (00:29):
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Chaos N' Cookies podcast. Today's topic is about meditation and mindfulness, and it's a very popular exercise for those to get centered and calm the chaos. And so I have Josephine Atluri as a guest today, and before I bring her on, I'm going to give you a little bit of information about her. So Josephine Atluri is an expert in meditation and mindfulness, helping thousands of people overcome adversity to find joy. A graduate of the University of Chicago, Josephine spent many years consulting for Fortune 500 companies and private clients. Following her passion for total wellness, she became certified as a meditation teacher through Unplug Meditation. Josephine uses her business background to teach corporate mindfulness sessions, plus her experience creating her modern day family of seven children via in vitro fertilization, international adoption and surrogacy inspires her work as a highly sought after fertility and parenting mindfulness coach. Josephine hosts, a popular podcast, Responding to Life: Talking Health, Fertility & Parenthood, where she interviews guests on their inspiring responses to life's challenges. Her parenting mindfulness expertise and fertility advocacy work has been featured in LA Times, Motherly, mindbodygreen, The Bump, Prevention, Well+Good, and Woman's Day. Josephine lives with her husband, seven children and cockapoo in what she lovingly calls her Casa de calm con chaos in Los Angeles, California. Please welcome Josephine. Hi.
Josephine Atluri (02:08):
Hi there. I'm so excited to be on your show today.
Heather Steinker (02:11):
Yes, I'm so excited to have you and I love the Casa de calm con chaos. It's very fitting.
Josephine Atluri (02:20):
I'm always passing when I go on walks and some of the houses have little plaques and I always wondered what would ours be called? And then I came up with it.
Heather Steinker (02:33):
Oh, right? Especially when you have seven children. So before we jump in what is your favorite cookie and or cookie memory?
Josephine Atluri (02:41):
Oh, I love this. My favorite sweet actually is and my go-to favorite food item is a chocolate chip cookie crispy on the edges sort of gooey on the inside.
Heather Steinker (02:59):
Do you bake for your kids since you have a house full of them?
Josephine Atluri (03:05):
I'm grateful that my older two, like to sort of help and cook. So they're always down to helping like make stuff, typically sweets. So yeah.
Heather Steinker (03:19):
Yeah, I know baking is always fun. It's usually the go-to if you need them to do something or you can always like, say like, I'll bake you cookies, if you do X, Y, Z. Yes, exactly. We're not above bribery in this household. So let's jump in a little bit. So you have seven kids. Bless your soul. I have three and that's a lot so, seven, I can imagine it's very busy. You're probably pretty routine.
Josephine Atluri (03:46):
Oh yeah. I definitely have to be. That was actually, you know, in a former life, I was an event planner. And so those skills definitely helped me get through all of the chaos that is constantly swirling around me.
Heather Steinker (03:59):
Absolutely. And what are the age ranges between your oldest and youngest?
Josephine Atluri (04:02):
Yep. My eldest is 14. I have 12 year old boy, girl twins. Five-Year-Old boy twins, and our latest edition of - they're turning three months old in a couple of days - twin girls. So we have every combination of twins.
Heather Steinker (04:17):
Oh, wow, that's great. And so you have practice with twins, obviously. So good luck with the sleep regression at three months with two of them. I mean, I don't even want to, I mean, mine are 18 months apart and then two years, two days. So, I mean, they were all in diapers at one point. So it's like having twins. I feel, I mean, I don't know. I'm just guessing.
Josephine Atluri (04:42):
That is actually, I feel like that's a smart way to go rather than spacing it out the way we did, it feels like deja vu every time, because we're like, oh, I feel like we did this.
Heather Steinker (04:52):
What do you think about the spacing? The spacing out versus keeping them close?
Josephine Atluri (04:57):
Well, you know, because they have a twin, so they don't, it's not like they need a buddy. So having them, like, if you have singletons close together, I think that's so ideal because then they can grow up together and have fun together. Spacing it out is I feel like a little, little bit tougher. It definitely extends your role as a parent of young ones for a really long time. But it keeps things fresh, at least for us, you know, there's always some sort of little one running around. So in that regard it's great.
Heather Steinker (05:30):
I know my youngest is four and it's like, he still has like the chubby cheeks and just like the baby face. And it's, you know, that that's going to go away, like come five years old is usually when they start really growing out of it. And it's like, no, don't do it. So, you know, you get that like itch that you kind of want to scratch, but at the same time, you're like, you know, be careful what you wish for.
Josephine Atluri (05:53):
Yeah, exactly.
Heather Steinker (05:55):
My sister had a baby he's five months old, so I get my fix with him for now. But so if you have seven they always say to keep them in even numbers.
Josephine Atluri (06:08):
Oh, well look, seven is my lucky number.
Heather Steinker (06:11):
Oh, seven's your lucky number. Are you done?
Josephine Atluri (06:13):
Yeah, we're done. We're totally done.
Heather Steinker (06:15):
I mean, you also have twins, so I feel like with twins, you have the pair, you know, I feel like three I'm the fourth. Like I have to be the person, you know, cause it's like odd man out or like you've got two versus one. Like I've always noticed, like having two is easier because they don't have to play off of each other. So, you know, so so talking about motherhood, what does mindful motherhood mean? Because that's in your intro.
Josephine Atluri (06:49):
Yeah. So mindfulness, just to pick it apart, mindfulness is essentially an awareness of everything that's happening. So that can relate to you like an awareness of how you feel physically, emotionally, mentally, how an awareness of your relationship and your environment in that present moment. And so when you have this awareness as a foundation, it guides you in basically every aspect of your life. Like you can be aware of yourself, like I mentioned, you can be aware of yourself as you're eating, like being mindful of how you eat, being mindful of how you exercise, being mindful of how you even do little things like your self care routine. So having that awareness as a foundation then can also,ecause it touches upon every aspect of your life, then it also touches upon your role as a parent, as a caregiver. And this leads to an awareness of how you interact with your child and how you model behavior for your child.
Josephine Atluri (07:56):
So an example would be, you know I have many vignettes in my book the Mindfulness Journal for Parents and I included in there a story of a mom who's reading emails while she's playing with her children. And she reads something that upsets her in a work email and it causes her to be distracted. So she's no longer, even though she is there with her child and supposedly like playing with them, her mind is elsewhere. And I included that as a real life example of something that happened to me, which is sort of the impetus for how I decided to delve further into this personally, for myself. And then it snowballed into me wanting to level it up and spread it to all the other people out there. But I found myself doing that when I returned back to the workforce after staying home with my first three kids and realizing that at the end of the day, I would think about my day.
Josephine Atluri (08:52):
And I would remember playing with my little three, but not really remembering what happened because my mind was elsewhere. I was thinking about, you know, what I had to buy at the grocery store, what I was going to cook for dinner or whatever I had to do with like the Homeowner's Association, like all of this stuff. But like mentally I wasn't there. Physically, I was and that was a rude awakening for me. It, it caused me to figure out like, how can I be present? Like I'm missing this. I had spent years trying to create this family through IVF, all the assisted reproductive therapy, adoption, you name it. And, you know, once it finally came true and I had my family, I was missing it and it sucks to feel that way. And so that is essentially, you know, long story short is what mindful motherhood means. It's being aware of your interactions with your children, being aware of yourself first as an individual, and then being able to translate that into your parenting.
Heather Steinker (09:50):
Sure. But being present in the moment and really, cause they can feel it too. They can feel the stress and they can also, they could be feeling a certain way. And also, they're only little for a little while, so it's extremely hard though, when you're juggling a bunch of things to turn it off. And so you really have to prepare your mind. And so you touched on the Mindful Parenting Journal, which I have a copy of it. That is phenomenal. And so what inspired you to write the Mindful Parenting Journal?
Josephine Atluri (10:22):
Yeah. so I'm always getting asked how do I manage to stay calm and look calm? Given the amount of children that I have and the fact that I work and I figured, you know, clearly people out there need some advice and probably, you know, I should just like pen it all down. And I saw from my clients, my own sort of mindfulness and meditation clients and friends and family who were just really affected primarily by the pandemic, most recently. And they were really desperate for things that were tips and tools and techniques that were approachable and accessible and that they could instantly implement into their own lives and that of their families in order to create like immediate and lasting impact. You know, so often we pick up a parenting book and it's massive and you have to go through the whole thing before you can figure out, okay, well, now that I read this now, how am I going to do this in real life, right?
Josephine Atluri (11:25):
Versus, you know, my, my book is just something where you can pick up any page, you read the journal prompt, that's there and it's kind of acting like a friend who, your best mom friend, who you only have a moment to speak to because you're both super busy. And she'll ask you a really pointed question that will make you think like, oh, okay, well, why was I doing that? Or why did I react to my child in that way? Was it from that happened in my own childhood? Or was it something that happened earlier and how could I have acted differently? So that really was the point of the book was to give caregivers out there just a useful tool that could provide them with quick, you know, quick exercises that they can do to help them navigate the challenges of life today as a parent.
Heather Steinker (12:16):
I was looking at it, it had lines, you could fill it in, it was like a workbook, but also a book in itself so you could write it down and work through it or you, it was very easy to go to where you needed to go and like work on what you wanted to work on. It was really well laid out in my opinion, sobravo to that. And so what led you to meditation and mindfulness, and did you have a light bulb moment when you were when you knew that this was your path?
Josephine Atluri (12:48):
Yeah, I think I, you know, I touched upon it briefly. I was returning back to work and after staying home for so many years and suddenly life had turned upside down and I didn't really know how to handle all the pressure. I was working in a health and fitness company and I knew that there was this, you know, there's a ton of emphasis on one's fitness, one's nutrition, but I knew that we needed to incorporate a mental and emotional wellbeing component. And so I started looking into it for the company, but then as I started to delve into meditation apps for myself, I, you know, I became hooked and I even, you know, I spent many years just avoiding it because I had friends who kept telling me, you should give it a try, but I'm really this type a personality and I'm usually covered in post-it notes and I thought there's no way that I can turn my mind off to be able to sit quietly for a few minutes. But lo and behold, I tried out one of the numerous apps that are out there and it changed my life. Like I finally, at that moment, took a time out for myself and hit the pause button in my life. Cause I was always on the go, go, go. And it was profound because I was able to just almost exhale, which I did. And it was just part of the whole process, but I just let out a sigh of relief and finally gave myself a moment of time outside of what I thought I was giving, you know, like I was always, I would always work out every day. I'd always take a moment to like, you know, watch a show or something if I could fit it in.
Josephine Atluri (14:27):
But this was an opportunity to just sit and try to like focus on breathing and what was going on in my head. And so once I became hooked for myself, I always like to level things up, like I said, and that's when I enrolled myself in a teacher training course, and I didn't think I was going to teach. I just used it as sort of a way for me to explore even more. But then after that, I thought, you know, I have to share this with other people because it really changed my life. And, you know, I started off doing corporates and I still do, but then I took it to what I am living through right now. You know, my past was with dealing with infertility and I'm currently a parent of seven and I'm always getting asked about those two aspects of my life. So I thought, you know, those two groups, those communities would definitely benefit from mindfulness and meditation strategies. And so that's how I fuse the two together.
Heather Steinker (15:25):
I love that so much because I was in health and wellness as well before getting into Chaos N' Cookies and it was the mindfulness and trying to get them into the mindset of getting ready to make the health switch, because you can't do that if you don't make that, that mindfulness and like be there because you can change what you eat for a minute. But if you're not looking at the way you look at food or the way you look at exercise, you have to change your mindset. So it's a key element, so that's a similar path and I applaud you for that for sure. So how do you control the chaos with your seven kids? I have a chaos control system with me. So it's a whole manual for your house where it will roll you through literally every single, like your warranty on your car. And what's covered. What's not, when's the last time that was checked, like where the air filters are like kids, you know, kids schedules and what brand of mac and cheese each one likes and where you can buy it and you know, where people could go in and just like, look it up so it takes mom out of it.
Josephine Atluri (16:37):
I need this.
Heather Steinker (16:38):
Do you?
Josephine Atluri (16:42):
I need the system.
Heather Steinker (16:43):
Yes, I will send it to you. Because I think that when you're managing a lot of moving parts, especially when you own your own business, you know, you have to get on calls, you have to go to meetings. Maybe you want to just go take a date night or a night out with your friends. What happens? I'm sure it's like, does your spouse like message you? Or if your sitters, you know, consistently texting you about maybe you know, bottle, what time this, that, and the other, when you probably wrote it down or maybe forgot, or you told her, but it's those things that you consistently are going to be doing on a daily basis. Like how many lists do you make? And then you throw it away, right? So just keep it. And so that way you're like, it's on page four, go check or it's in the the book it's on the kitchen table.
Heather Steinker (17:30):
So that's how I like to manage because I have help that comes in because I'm single parenting so it's helpful especially when it's the person that's not used to the routine and used to things. It's like, then you gotta give them like the data dump before you go out and then you're stressed out because you just rolled through all of the, you know, the scenarios like, oh, if this happens or this happens, this is where you can do it. They're not getting any of that, right? But if you write it down, you also want peace of mind, right? Like mindfulness, right? You want to be present with your friends. You want to be present in or on your phone calls and take a break. You don't want to be worried. And as a mom you always worry.
Josephine Atluri (18:11):
Yeah. That reminds me, you know, after we moved out here to LA back in, in Boston, I did have one. I had a binder that I created when my in-laws or my parents would come when my husband and I would go on vacation. And the binder would be there with all the, like, you know, like, ER, and like all this other stuff and phone numbers, but it just got, like when you move everything goes to the crapper and so now I don't do that. And with seven kids, we don't go on vacation anymore. No, but that reminds me, you're right. I should have that all. Okay. I love this. Thank you.
Heather Steinker (18:55):
You're so welcome. Oh yeah. Well, absolutely. Because I think it's important to also help others be self-sufficient and take it off of you, right? I mean, yeah, your mom, but people are able to do, they could change a diaper, they can cook dinner, they can find something, they don't have to text you and ask you every five seconds. You know, or it's it, it takes you away from having fun. And then you're already, already stressed and worried you know, cause anything and everything can happen. But if you give the tools for someone to be able to troubleshoot or problem solve on their own before, like, hey check these, like it's all color coded and it's, you know, alphabetical order and it's a PDF. So you can take it with you too and have a digital so you can print it out. If there's like a change, say like the teacher changes every year for your kids. Right. So that information will change, but not everything else will. So why buy a whole new book? If you just print out the new page and stick it in or you can send it via text, like you can pull it up and email it to somebody. So it just helps give, I guess it gives you more power back.
Josephine Atluri (20:11):
Oh yeah, it does. Yeah.
Heather Steinker (20:13):
Because we're chained to our children in our house because we're running our house like a business. So every business has an SOP. Why can't your house have one, right?
Josephine Atluri (20:22):
Yes. I love it. I'm adding this to my Trello board. This is something that I need to do and get on. Yes.
Heather Steinker (20:29):
So is Trello something that you, you work with just for your business or do you use it for your household as well?
Josephine Atluri (20:35):
Well, I started just using it for my business and, you know, I just started using it because I, I tapped on having an assistant and so I just have so many moving parts. And I love it. I just I'm, like I told you, I used to be an event planner. So having all these new organizational tools is just totally my jam. So I created it for work, but then I also have a whole section for home life and kids and things like that. So, you know, that just helps me to keep everything all in one place because much like, you know, even though it is a Google Drive, it it's just, that ends up being like a bunch of post-it notes, even though they're all there. Like then I have to search through this file for that. And you know, but here it's just all there and then I can add attachments.
Josephine Atluri (21:26):
And so it's wonderful. And that, you know, to your question, that was actually one of like, I had three main pillars of like how I keep the chaos under control in our house. And one of them was framework of organization in creating stability and consistency for the kids. And so that's, you know, exactly what that is like having the schedules for the older kids to follow and making them, helping them now that they're like 14 and 12 to let them be accountable because I'll add them onto the Google calendar. And so they can, you know, it's a great system for checking up. Like, did I make a mistake? And one of my 12 year olds always calling me out, like this was not changed so I'm like change it.
Heather Steinker (22:08):
That's the thing is they're telling you what to do, be self-sufficient and do it. If you see it, just do it, just change it. It's okay. You'll have, why do I have to do it? It gives me another thing I have to do. Help mommy out and like take care of it.
Josephine Atluri (22:23):
It's a work in progress, but there's collaboration there that they're learning. And then for the little onesyou know, just having like, I painted one whole wall in my house with that dry erase paint. And so that's where I used to put it for the older kids when they were little. And so now that the little ones are off to kindergarten. That's where I'm going to put their schedules so that they can see and sort of color code it.
Heather Steinker (22:50):
I totally have a wall that I want to do that, by the way. We moved in and I had this huge like decal and it was a calendar. It was all color coded, but I don't have a big wall like that in the kitchen, but they make dry erase paint?
Josephine Atluri (23:04):
Yeah.
Heather Steinker (23:06):
It's not chalk paint - it's dry erase paint?
Josephine Atluri (23:08):
Yeah. It's dry erase paint. Yeah. Because chalk like, for me, like you have allergies, so it always would make me like [inaudible].
Heather Steinker (23:14):
Did you put like a wooden frame to like, keep it? Or you just did the whole wall.
Josephine Atluri (23:18):
Everyone did the entire, the entire wall.
Heather Steinker (23:20):
I think I really want to do that because I, I think I have these big dry erase boards, but they just take up so much space.
Heather Steinker (23:30):
And then they stain or whatever, I'm going to look into that. So thank you for that. And this is a little thing I'm going to walk away with today.
Josephine Atluri (23:35):
Yeah. Yeah. And you can clean that off with anything. It doesn't really stay. I mean, we've been here for five years, so you can definitely just paint over it if it starts to, you know, not really come off, but it haven't had that many problems with it and it's great. And all the kids can, like the little ones can draw at the bottom. I do my schedule at the top and it works.
Heather Steinker (23:57):
Great. I'm going to totally adopt that for sure.
Josephine Atluri (24:00):
Yeah. Yeah. So we're switching a little bit.
Heather Steinker (24:05):
I love it. I mean, I'm super excited to see what you thought, think about it. So well this, this has just been wonderful and it's always good to bond over, over kids and organization and trying to know that we're not alone and just trying to do everything. So can we talk a little bit before we let you go to about your podcast, you've got Responding to Life podcast and you got the book, which is all going to be linked in the show notes. So everyone can take a peek at it and where they can find you and all those things.
Josephine Atluri (24:40):
Oh, thank you so much. Yeah. So I do have a podcast called Responding to Life: Talking Health, Fertility & Parenthood. And you know, it's exactly what that is. Different guests who share sort of their responses to life and how based off of what they went through they're able to live a life that's mindful and you can check me out on my website, jatluri.com. I have all the articles that I've written on mindfulness and the parenting space and fertility space, as well as my podcast episodes. If you're interested in the book, you can buy it on Amazon, but if you'd like it with the online companion course that it comes with, that I created so that you can just follow along on the videos that I created that model the exercises that are in the book, just go to mindfulparentclass.com. And there is a bundle for purchasing both the book and the course. And you can also find me on Instagram @josephineratluri and I'm always putting up daily mindfulness inspiration on parenting and fertility.
Heather Steinker (25:46):
Love it, love it. So everyone needs to go follow Josephine and check out her podcast and her book. And I really do appreciate you being on the show today and look forward to connecting. And I would love to hear about what you think about the chaos control system and I'm going to let you know how the dry erase stuff goes.
Josephine Atluri (26:03):
I love it. I can't wait. Thank you so much for your tips. This is so great, Heather.
Heather Steinker (26:08):
Oh, you too. And thank you so much listeners for listening to another episode, go check out Josephine and we will catch you on the flip side. Bye.
Heather Steinker (26:18):
Thank you for listening to the Chaos N' Cookies podcast. If you want more goodies and friends to share them follow the crumbs to the Facebook group or visit the Chaos N' Cookies website to grab my sweet secrets on how to calm your cookies. Don't forget to leave us a five-star review on iTunes. See you all next week for another episode of Chaos N' Cookies.