Managing Mom Stress: Mindful Parenting Tools for Hard Seasons with Cyndi Horwitz

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Today, I’ve invited therapist and author Cyndi Horwitz on the podcast to talk about something I’m very passionate about: Healing and supporting women when they’re going through difficult times. We’re talking about how to get out of the trap of self-abandonment and take excellent care of yourself so that you can manage mom stress and show up even in hard seasons.

Cyndi Horwitz is licensed marriage and family therapist, writer, and lifelong seeker of healing - for herself and others. She has spent decades guiding others through grief, growth, and profound transformation, firmly believing no one is truly alone in their struggle. Her approach  honors the mind, body, and soul as inseparable parts of the healing journey - using  breath, movement, compassion, and curiosity as powerful tools for self-connection.

If you've ever wanted a handbook full of exercises, journal prompts, and mantras that would actually help heal you, Cyndi’s new book, Held by the Tide, has it all. I particularly love the way Cyndi shares a lot of her own personal journey, the grief, pain, sorrow, and difficult things she's gone through in her life. Even if you haven’t navigated these same challenges, I know you will relate to the common struggle we have as women to people please and to abandon ourselves in order to make everyone else feel comfortable. To make sure that everyone else's life works for them while we neglect ourselves.

Cyndi explains that the title, Held by the Tide, refers to trusting in yourself and the Universe. She says, “If you allow yourself to just be held, then you know that the tide is going to come in and the tide is going to go out. There are going to be moments that are hard and there are going to be moments that are joyful. And if you allow yourself to flow with what is, rather than fighting against it, then I think you learn to be in your body and with yourself and who you are.”

The Hard Seasons of Motherhood

Sometimes, our worst fears actually come true. In Cyndi’s case, she lost her mother at the age of 15, someone she saw as the picture of perfect health. 

Cyndi describes her mother as someone who was very germaphobic, and she passed those fears down to Cyndi. So when the COVID-19 pandemic happened, it was another one of her biggest fears realized. She decided to use that time to get healthy on the inside. To heal that anxiety that she was carrying around with her. 

Riding her Peloton, doing yoga, and incorporating other practices all helped her to make a connection between her body and movement and breath and how she was feeling. 

When her son was later diagnosed with a chronic medical condition, she says that the healing work she did during COVID had laid the groundwork she needed during this new time of high anxiety. 

At the beginning of third grade, Cyndi sensed that something was off with her son Easton. He was struggling with behaviors that looked like ADHD, but something still didn’t fit for her. She noticed times when she “lost him energetically”, he was chewing differently, there were lots of little things happening and lots of symptoms that were misdiagnosed.  

Eventually, in 2023, he was diagnosed with focal epilepsy, which means that the seizures were coming from one specific part of the brain. 

In her book, Cyndi talks about the experience of having a child with a serious medical diagnosis: 

“No one talks about how much of yourself you lose when you're fighting this hard for your child. The quiet unraveling, the slow erosion of ease, identity of dreams, the weight of advocacy, of managing, of vigilance, of being the one who holds it all together.”

If you have a child in any kind of non-typical situation, you can probably relate. You might find yourself in a hyper-alert state of waiting for the next thing to happen. 

Cyndi shares that for a long time, she tried to just keep moving. She thought if she just kept going, she’d be okay. In part, this was fueled by the fear that if she let herself go too deep into her feelings and her pain, she wouldn’t be able to get out of it. She’d get stuck, unable to get back up.

She says, “For me it was very hard to be present for my other child. It was very hard to experience joy. And there is so much joy around me, it was hard to just relax.”

Healing Self-Abandonment

In her book, Cyndi talks about how even as a young girl, she was learning to please others. As a way to avoid being abandoned by others, she made herself into the agreeable, low-maintenance person she thought people wanted her to be. 

Essentially, she abandoned herself in order to be accepted by others. And this is much more common than you may realize, especially among women.

My own path to stop abandoning myself and letting go of the people pleasing and perfectionism came down to becoming a better friend to myself. Connecting to myself, being curious, listening, and having better conversations with myself.

One of the things that I think Cyndi’s book helps us to see is that we aren’t too much. It’s okay to have needs. 

She encourages us to practice being a  “burden” to others. She says it’s, “having that trust that the people around me care for me and love me. That I could practice falling apart in front of them and that they would be there.”

Cyndi recalls her son’s exploratory brain surgery as the first time she really allowed herself to be held and taken care of. She says, “My two best friends came, and I really just practiced letting them take care of me. I let them order me lunch, I let them sit with me, I let them talk with me, and I let myself just be held by them.”

Mindful Parenting Tools for Parents

I think self care is the inner wisdom of saying, “I am going to take really good care of myself right now.” What that care looks like will be different depending on the situation and how you’re feeling. But there’s an integrity in it that you’re not avoiding or abandoning your circumstance. You’re giving yourself whatever it is that you need at the time. 

Cyndi agrees, saying, “We can only know ourselves when we continue to be curious about ourselves and we continue to talk to ourselves and check in.” 

An important part of healing is creating emotional safety within ourselves. You have to feel emotionally safe enough within yourself to say the truth and to trust the questions in your mind. And the more time you spend with yourself in love, the safer you feel, and the more honest you can be.

The practices Cyndi shares in her book are her ways of slowing down, experiencing where she is, feeling whatever is in her body, mind, and heart, and softening those parts of her.

Her hope is that these practices help other women to ground themselves and believe that they are safe. This is a moment in time, and it will pass. She says it’s about “giving yourself loving kindness that whatever you’re experiencing is okay.”

One of the first steps that Cyndi added to her personal toolkit was simply paying attention to her breathing and what was happening in her body. Was she holding her breath? Was her heart racing?

Next, she’d use some supportive self-talk, saying something like, “Whatever it is, I will be okay,” or, “If the phone call from school comes, I will deal with it when it happens.”

Here are a few of her other favorite exercises and tools from the book:

• Write one page every night about everything you wish you could say out loud.
• Place your hand over your heart and tell yourself, “This is hard. And I’m still here.”
• Walk slowly. Walking barefoot and feeling your feet on the earth is even better.

We’re always breathing. Tap into it.
We’re always moving. Do it intentionally.
We’re always having conversations in our heads. Invite yourself to a lovelier one.

Cyndi reminds us that healing is a daily practice. There is no finish line. She still has times when she reverts to old patterns of withdrawing when things are overwhelming or stressful. She still goes into fight or flight sometimes, or is afraid to let others see her fear or pain.

You can always come back to these tools. You can return to your healing process as many times as you need to, no matter how much time has gone by. 

To me, this entire book is an invitation to tap into the belief that you are okay in this moment. 

Whatever grief you're carrying…
Whatever hardship you're carrying…
Whatever pain you're carrying…

You can handle it. 

You can reach out to people. You can be angry and disappointed and sad. You can feel all of that, and you'll survive it. Everything is survivable. 

You’ll Learn:

• Why you can’t plow through pain
• What self-abandonment looks like & why we do it
• How to start coming back to yourself
• The practice that helps you feel held and cared for
• Simple exercises to ease anxiety and fear

Related Episodes:

• The 6-part “How To Heal” series, beginning with episode 161: Radical Self Love

Connect with Cyndi:

• Pre-order the book, Held by the Tide: A Journey of Hope and Healing Through Breath, Movement, and Love
• Follow her on Instagram @healing.in.practice and TikTok @cyndi.horwitz
• Visit her website: www.cyndihorwitz.com