Relationship Hygiene

Relationship Hygiene as a Woman, Visionary + Mama 

Are you ready to get Flossy with It?! 

Your Relationship Hygiene is getting a checkup today... it’s gonna be fun! 

Seriously though, relationship hygiene and boundary setting is as integral a component of self care as getting massages or any other way you speak life and love over yourself.

So, let’s dive into this divine download designed for your brilliant Mama brain all around relational hygiene.

One of the key components of growth, prosperity, and peace in the postpartum period (and beyond because we’re essentially postpartum forever!) is spending some time reflecting upon how communication and relationship hygiene adds value to your life. 

The extent to which you’re willing to floss and really get into those spaces can mean the difference between growth and decay.

I have chosen to define and redefine relationships in my life, both within my family and extended 'ohana as I’ve transitioned through medical school, residency, fellowship, Mamahood, and now my own massive personal growth as the artist and creator I’ve always been and that I’m now honoring.  I’ve grown bolder and more in alignment with my core values as a woman, visionary, wife, and Mama over time, and as I’ve gained momentum it has brought a lot of clarity and peace into my life.

We can choose peace over passive-aggressiveness, we can choose distance over drama.  The choice is ours.

So, let’s floss together.  It improves our soul smile, and quite possibly our organic smile as well.

That bleeding that may occur is a sign of flow and energy coming to that wound and it’s healing stronger and cleaner than it was before.  So let’s get flossing.

I can’t wait to see your flashing that peaceful pearly white smile Mama with all the refreshing relationship hygiene you can choose to apply.

I’m pretty stoked to claim relationship flossing is an arena  I’ve shorn up for myself in a massive way over the last few years, and it has allowed me to experience expansive energy, peace + prosperity.  I desire the same for you, Mama!

Spending time marinating on relationship hygiene  as an expectant Mama is particularly helpful, and often we find it cleansing to reevaluate how we choose to relate to others.  Most often this is in the context of our family structures: this could refer to our family of origin or the family we partnered or married into.  The ripples for this extend out into our chosen 'ohana/families with the friends and community we choose to surround ourselves with.

It is incredibly empowering, uplifting, insightful, grounding, and of immense value to devote conscious and reverent energy looking into our own self-reflection pond to decipher how we will choose to reevaluate our role in relating to others as a Mama.  

The 4th trimester (first 3 months postpartum) is fertile ground in which a lot of pivoting and shifting, redefining and re-calibrating occurs.  Meditating upon how you might speak love and life into yourself as a priority calls in massive energy.  How might this look in terms of boundaries you honor for yourself, the one your soul craves?  

Subsequently, choosing to practice the art of relational hygiene with those you love can bring a lot of meaning and fulfillment to your interactions.  It helps you clarify how you want those relationship boundaries to look. You are then better equipped to articulate it to those you choose to surround yourself with.  Clearer communication is a two-way validation and allows for more smooth and laminar flow as opposed to confusion, stagnancy and turbulence in your relationship dynamics.

You don’t need to hide out in your room or ignore text messages or be a victim of relational micro aggressions, which could also be the product of limiting beliefs you hold or stories you tell yourself.  I mean most of us have had imaginary shower conversations about anticipated confrontations if we’re being real with each other about hypothetical scenarios that often never even play out.  We all engage in unnecessary drama that doesn’t add vitality to our life or those around us.  So, this going inward to conduct a conscious and mindful inventory of our relationships hygiene is so life giving for ourselves, and potentially those in our life we love.

What if you invited yourself into a clearer blue ocean in the way you communicated with those you value and those included in your family constellation?!  What if you believed that all of your relationships could add meaningful value, and that you could derive energy rather than feel it draining from you in your interactions with your family, both chosen and by blood?  This is the reality of a Mama who is in harmony with her Mama Mindset, her Mamatuition.

I’m excited to share with you how I’ve helped thousands of Mamas navigate this in my clinical practice as a Pediatrician & Sports Medicine Physician, as a Counselor in my Marriage & Family Therapy sessions, and as a fellow human and Mama exploring these very same waters myself.

Here is some framework from my own divine download to yours, an offering to nourish and stimulate your Mama neurons along your own path:

• Realizing you’re at the party with A LOT of people.  Everyone has struggled with establishing or reestablishing boundaries within or across their family dynamics at one time.  It is your choice whether this brings you continued suffering or it is a source of growth and evolution.
• You willingness to be vulnerable and admit that you’ve ridden or are riding the front row of the struggle bus of interpersonal communications opens up the portal for you to explore what you desire in your relationship dynamics.  It allows you to climb on the party bus with millions of others and know you’re not alone.  And most importantly, it allows you to choose to invite in  all the prosperity that is waiting to flow into your life in the context of relationships that exist inside + extend outside your own home.
• We can commonly feel a fierce allegiance to our families of origin often because inside a piece of our soul is still that 3 or 13 year old daughter seeking the affection and approval of her parents/caregivers or harmony with siblings.  We often move a lot of energy trying to make our new identities as women or Mamas mean something and fit into the constellation of our families of origin.  Family dynamics are meant to shift and expand and grow.  To not remain stagnant. 
• The concept of reparenting can be great to play with in this context, and I’ll choose to elaborate upon that in another life chat in the future.  It essentially involves reexamining situations or concepts from your childhood so that you can re-experience it in a way that speaks love and life into your soul (often through the lens of your love language), so you can heal and be effective in your new role as a Mama and parenting your own children.  And so you can exist in the present of your relationship dynamics, rather than dwelling in the past.
• We often cycle through a kaleidoscope of emotions (and a lot of them internalized and energy depleting) in our relationships to others.  Oftentimes in anticipation of interactions that bring us anxiety, we mute our emotions or even dismiss them, convince ourselves we can endure it or just exist from visit to visit.  We tense up at comments we feel have a snarky spice infused in them.  So, we can let it all make a nourishing mental meal for life chats (i.e. cultivate the bravery to lovingly confront and go deeper) or a rotting overdue item we just keep in the back of our mental refrigerator (aka pass, smile and nod and move on not addressing what made us uncomfortable).  The choice is ours. 
• If you’re like me, I’m thinking you could benefit from taking inventory of your relational refrigerator for expired dates to update and freshen up boundaries.  Maybe setting some intentional dates for conversations to provide clarity + growth, and choosing not to allow stagnant + moldy emotions to continue to fester. So basically we can choose the magic of growth or moldy stagnant growth (yuck that stuff you forgot was even BACK THERE or in that drawer), which often leads to growing apart.
• Energetic investment is so important as a Mama.  Our energy wellspring spills over into our relationships with our spouses/partners and our babies.  It all starts with how reverently we treat ourselves and how courageous we are taking inventory of where we are, how our energy is allotted, and how bold we are about redefining it.  We can choose to hold space for ourselves and invite healthier boundaries and more flourishing family interactions.  We can offer our unique energy for family dynamics in a way that is life giving and uplifting, empowering and meaningfully fulfilling the way we were divinely designed to function.
• As adult children, we often wonder how to create a formula to integrate our parents, now promoted to grandparents, in our lives while honoring them.  We look to discern how we can live into what feels authentic + aligned with our core values as humans, women, and now Mamas.  This looks different for everyone, but honor that it is something you’re calibrating to.
• It can also be super fun to play with our child selves.  Go back and dance, twirl, climb, hug and talk to at those pivotal moments your 6 year old self, or whenever you recall key pivots.  You can pour + speak life and love into yourself across time: past, present and future self.
• If you dread something or feel yourself tense up in anticipation of an interaction: allow it, examine it, ask your body why, dig deep and invite yourself to explore into an energetic reality that is open, serving and offering the chance for change.
• This looks different for everyone, but a universal truth I offer is that from a place of grounded neutrality we can exist in massive gratitude.  Existing in gratitude automatically takes us out of survival mode or flight-or-flight mode.  We can think creatively here in gratitude, we can get innovative in our relationship dynamics, we can be playful and live our own truth, choosing to flow in our one beautiful and wild, precious life.  Here, we can uncover our gratitude for our upbringing, the truths we were taught, the experiences we had that shaped our lives (can be “good” or “bad” as all were formative experiences).  In this gratitude, you can access and surrender to the sacred stillness within, tune into your inner wisdom, future self and superpower of Mamatuition that guides you. 
• Advocating. Clarifying. Courageously having conversations to articulate your desires, a willingness to be vulnerable and invite others into your alignment, and to share the dreams divinely dropped into you.  And then it is a loyalty to your own emotional compass to allow the reactions and calibrations to be external to you, to be patient in love and aloha and know that it is a reflection of another’s own space to come into alignment with their core values.  You invite.  The answer could be yes, I will attend; No, I choose not to; or maybe later.  The RSVP is not up to you.   Can you show up for yourself and offer though?
• I’ve helped thousands of Mamas navigate this dynamic in a way that honors their individual energetic map, and I’m honored to suggest and help you along your own unique path.
• Inviting yourself into this most important constellation exploration so you can shine your brightest is imperative for your own growth and for choosing to go from overwhelm to peace.
• As Mamas we now have the layered roles of our family of origin in addition to the new dynamics we are carving with our own partners and babies.  These can be in harmony if we are willing to examine our feelings and be bold in offering ourselves the creation of  a new synergy.  And one that is in alignment with our core values.  No convincing or playing roles for anyone else.  A bold willingness to live into your truth.  To live your life in a way that is massively loyal to what the definition of brave, true, and beautiful means to you.
• I want to encourage and plant the seeds for you to explore this for yourself today. You can choose to invite peace and prosperity into your relationships with family members.
• So many of us wrestle with these dynamics and allow it to occupy pristine mental real estate, and distract us from time that could potentially be spent with more meaningful and fulfilling interaction.
• This topic is so important for expectant and new Mamas and an important health hygiene to revisit throughout our ever expansive energy as a Mama and woman. Placing protective energy around + surrounding ourselves is one of the hardest and most essential components of our health as a Mama and woman.
• Cultivating the art of saying no, outsourcing, defining and upholding clear boundaries, communicating with clarity, advocating for ourselves and our babies... these are communication patterns that serve us so well and can become an innate part of our poise and posture.  It takes courage and a fierce and radical compassion for ourselves to maintain this.  Your health will soar when you choose to embrace a dynamic that is right for you.
• Be your own bouncer or ask a trusted partner or family member to do it for you in the early days.  And do it again if you need a reset. Babies are extremely vulnerable in the first 30 days, which is why we do a rule out sepsis work up in the ED for any neonate who is brought in with a fever, inconsolability, history consistent with apnea or other medical issues that can be concerning for potential underlying infection.  We take samples of their blood, urine and spinal fluid via a spinal tap.  I lost count of how many teeny tiny babies I rolled over on their side and slid down their newborn diaper to perform a spinal tap to extract a small portion of their CSF or cerebrospinal fluid.  We are so careful with who we expose babies to in the early days.  Consider playing with this same level of concern & protection for yourself and your evolving emotional climate as you expand into your role as a Mama in the early days.  And again and again when you need it.  Many Mamas can relate as we are all postpartum forever and we hold memory of those blissful and exhausting early days, often with blurred relationship boundaries between lots of people “wanting to see the new baby”.  Our depleted physical energy and emotional climate might suggest it’s too difficult to set boundaries or perhaps we don’t want to deal with any perceived emotional fallout from others.
• So, realize Mamas are vulnerable in this newborn stage too and your sole focus can be choosing to sEthel into your sacred new territory as a Mama.  You can choose you and space and rest and rejuvenation. No need for explanations.  No.  No can be a complete sentence.  Legit.
• You get to create the life you want. Now.  And that for your child.  You make the decisions for your child.  You’re the parent.  And a healthy dynamic starts by exploring what boundaries physically/emotionally/spiritually/relationally are most honoring of what you envision.
• As humans we were created to make connections with others, we long to honor our bond with our families of origin and those we’ve chosen to weave into our lives as chosen extended 'ohana in the form of family & friends. Our village. Realize relationships can ebb and flow. Like waves.  They don’t have to lose their power to go out with the tide and then rise back in, it’s just dynamic movement, mirroring nature.  
• The one relationship that needs the most care and loving intention is our relationship to self.  As women, we are wired to think relationally.  We are nurturers.  We possess massive amounts of empathy.  Learning to reflect those qualities and skills upon ourselves shifts the flow of your life forever.  In the best way. 

So Mamas,  I want to conclude this edition of our life chat with the following questions and prompts to ponder.  Let them marinate in your gorgeous, capable, fascinating and brilliant mind.  Invite them in.  Just get curious.  Picture us on a beach walk or sipping a life latte together.  

These questions are super juicy and perhaps optimally revisited a few times, or journaled about so you can sit with your own stream of consciousness and allow it to come alive for your own life.

• What stories are you telling yourself about the relationships you’re in with family?
• What if you released limiting beliefs, showed up as yourself and for yourself in your interactions with others?
• What if you knew that your default state was prosperity, and that you can exist in peace within?
• What if you offered your energy to those that you love and then released yourself of the need to interpret their reactions?
• What if you reframed perceived or actual confrontations as a portal to grow deeper?  And in this way you went from tension to intentional loving communication?
• What if you reframed any rejection as redirection?
• How would your life look if you knew some turbulence was completely normal in relationships, and as you navigate this new journey?
• How does it feel to know you never have to convince anyone of anything ever again, you don’t need to “gain anyone’s approval”, and you don’t have to choose to play any role or be anyone other than who you genuinely and authentically at this moment in your life and evolution as a woman and Mama?
• Can you invite yourself to feel peace in knowing that others are trying to find their footing, new roles, new place in the shifting dynamics; that humans are averse to change and not adept at discussing it so it often presents in relational micro aggressions?  Can you invite yourself into the knowledge that your participation in the energetic drain of relational micro aggressions is entirely voluntary?
• When/If relational micro aggressions start to surface, will you choose to address them and ask for clarification?  Can you also allow the massive transformation that has occurred and shifted within you to now pivot & empower you to address these instead of letting them play out as patterns of old which no longer serve you?
• Can you play with revisiting what your core love languages are?  And then intentionally speak them into and over yourself every single day?  And can you then from this place of radical compassion for self, move outward and speak the respective love languages of your partner and family members into their lives? This is truly transformational as you’ll be speaking in their energetic frequency.  See the book by Gary Chapman on the 5 Love Languages for more on this concept.
• Can you be playful and infuse humor and flow, dance and get creative and innovative in the shifting roles, your new identity/rebirth as a woman and now a Mama as the family constellation shifts to add a new star to the galaxy?
• Will you offer yourself the chance to practice the art of Essentialism- saying no to that which no longer serves so you can say yes to your priorities?  This is massively important in interpersonal relationships.  See the book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown for more on this concept.
• What would your life look like if you engaged in conscious and playful, flowing and committed, intentional and loving ongoing dialogue with your partner? Modeling healthy communication for your babies is one of the greatest life skills you can help instill in their evolving souls.

• If you chose to pour into your own cup, embraced flexible routines, sleep as medicine, food as medicine, movement as medicine and relational hygiene as part of your daily flow + floss, what kind of shift would you experience?
  
• What kind of wisdom are you willing to let your body impart to you if you start to get curious and question anxiety and the way your body feels forcing certain situations?  Are you willing to allow your body to be your teacher: examining whether a situation is bringing you tension and anxiety or peace and fulfillment?
• How good are you willing to let your life get, Mama?! 
• What if you never lived through another holiday or interaction or visit just getting through, but could be your true and authentic self, and experienced life-giving, fulfilling and nurturing energy through your relationship dynamics?
• Can you entertain the thought that at the moment, some relationships may be complete?  That it is always possible for you to invite others on your journey forward in your grounded and neutral, refreshed and repurposed energy?
• Can you play with offering space for growth whenever it may organically occur? What if you believed and cultivated fertile ground for your relationships to flourish?  
• What if you developed the art of recognizing when your energy is more optimally placed elsewhere?  What if you believed there was no forcing in love?  
• How would it look for you to hold space in the form of patience and loyalty, belief and peace for others in your life?
• How fascinating would it be for you to invite yourself to examine from different angles how you may choose to dance to your own rhythm and off the rhythm of the dance floor you grew up with?
• How does it feel to allow others’ energy and decisions to be external to you and to exist in loving gratitude and patience, belief in their own path as a human?  What would it look like for you to extend grace and unconditional love with appropriate boundaries?
• Are you playing a role when you’re interacting with family members, or do you feel relaxed in your own authenticity?  Are you in alignment with who you are at this moment, and who you’re evolving to be within the superpower of your Mama Intuition, your Mamatuition?
• What would happen if you challenged yourself to check in and  interact in a purely manger with family and friends?  Might you be open to experiencing a fun and a feed-forward cycle when you start practicing the art of communication clarity?
• How does it feel to own that ultimately, you can choose to surround yourself with uplifting, supportive, empowering family who holds space for your dreams and fears and fascinations, and supports you into living a life that brings you immense joy?
• What would it feel like for you to experience boundary bliss and communication clarity?

Here’s to your relational hygiene Mama and all it can add to your brilliant life energy!

Oceans of Aloha,

-Anik

P.S. I’m actually not the best/most consistent real life teeth flosser, butttt I have the little wishbone shaped flossers now and not cutting off the circulation on my fingers wrapping the floss around is helping me step up my game.  If I feel a popcorn kernel, I’m all over it.  But otherwise I’m pretty nahhh mayyybe tomorrow. My goal is to be racing junior + senior citizens to the aisles of my local drugstore to buy floss level stoke.  I’m not there yet, but floss vibes are looking up for me.  

And you can believe I’m right here cheering you on in your own relational hygiene pursuits.