Atomic Habits for Moms

I recently had a great conversation with Maria Morera Johnson on the CatholicMomcast. It was a great conversation (you can listen to the 26-minute episode here). We discussed all our favorite mom hacks, but I’ll be honest: my kids interrupted many times, and I felt very frazzled as I tried to share what was on my heart.

Here’s a mom hack for you: ALWAYS get a sitter for podcast interviews.

In all seriousness, though, many ideas have been rolling around since our chat, so I thought I would continue the conversation here with all of you. So, now that we have established that I absolutely do not have it all together, here are my thoughts on what is working in this season of motherhood.

Atomic Habits for Moms

As mothers, our days feel full before our feet even hit the floor. The needs come fast and constant: meals to make, diapers to change, math lessons to teach, squabbles to referee, work deadlines, and maybe—if we’re honest—a lingering guilt over the prayer time we wish we had but can’t seem to make space for.

When I first read James Clear’s Atomic Habits, I was struck by his reminder that small, consistent changes lead to big results. For moms, especially Catholic moms striving to live intentionally in the chaos, the key isn’t cramming more into our already packed days. It’s letting God into the little things we’re already doing.

Here are a few ways to start building tiny, grace-filled habits into daily life—without adding more pressure, and without waiting for a mythical “perfect season” that may never come.

1. Start Small: One Tiny Habit That Changes Everything

For me, that habit is prayer.

Not the hour-long, candlelit holy hour I wish I had most mornings. I’m talking about a simple Morning Offering over coffee, a whispered “Jesus, I trust in You” while buckling a car seat, a Memorare while unloading the dishwasher. These small, hidden prayers anchor the day, reminding us whose we are.

I’ve even tied habits together: coffee + prayer. My “Morning Offering mug” is my cue to turn my first sip into praise.

Some mornings, journaling helps me recenter—filling the tank before I pour myself out for my family. Other days, I pray the Rosary on a walk or listen to the Divine Office while folding laundry. Prayer doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be real.

Jesus tells us in John 15:5:

“Apart from Me, you can do nothing.”

Not a little.

Not “not much.”

Nothing.

There’s so much freedom in that surrender. Fr. Jacques Philippe uses the image of a still lake like the one in our family photo—when the water is calm, it reflects the mountain perfectly. When it’s agitated, nothing is clear. Our souls are like that lake. Prayer invites the stillness where Christ can be reflected.

2. Stack Your Habits: Invite God Into What You’re Already Doing

One of Clear’s most helpful strategies is habit stacking—pairing a new habit with an existing one. For Catholic moms, this can be a game-changer:

• Morning Offering mug to pray before coffee

• Rosary walks to feed your soul and steward your health

• Laundry folding can be paired with a podcast or audiobook that lifts you up

• Nursing time is a favorite of mine to pray a decade of the Rosary or the Divine Mercy Chaplet

• Got a commute? listen to the Divine Office, an audio Rosary, or Scripture

• Paste prayer prompts: tape Scripture verses on mirrors, post a Saint Francis prayer above the sink, or swap out letterboard verses in the kitchen

• Sacred pauses like the Angelus at noon, a quick Memorare in the mess, a jubilant “Thank You, Jesus!” when something goes right

These small anchors keep us tethered to Christ without overcomplicating the day.

3. Develop Walls for Your Digital Rule of Life

James Clear reminds us that environment shapes behavior. One of the most freeing shifts I made was dumbing down my phone.

I stripped it down to what truly serves my vocation: text messages, camera, Divine Office app, Rosary app, banking, podcasts, and audiobooks. No social media. No Amazon. No browser. No YouTube.

For Catholic moms, protecting our attention is a spiritual discipline. Our ability to pray, to be present to our kids, and to love well depends on where our attention rests.

If you want to reclaim quiet, here are a few ideas:

• Delete distractions. Create distance from apps that rob your peace.

• Use Instapaper. Save intentional reading for waiting rooms instead of endless scrolling.

• Take phone Sabbaths. Put it away during breakfast, bedtime, or weekends.

• Read more. A 2009 University of Sussex study found that just six minutes of reading a day can reduce stress by 68%. That’s six minutes you could spend scrolling—but why not fill your soul instead?

Our phones aren’t just costing us serenity—they’re costing us presence. Every yes to distraction is a no to real life unfolding right in front of us.

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4. Lean Into Seasons

Moms don’t need more pressure. We need more peace.

I’ve learned to work with the seasons God has given me. In summer, my rhythm shifts toward writing, recording podcasts, and creative deep dives. During the school year, our days move into homeschooling mode.

A few rhythms that help keep both home and soul grounded:

• Meal planning on autopilot. We have Muffin Mondays, Toast Tuesdays, and Oatmeal Thursdays. Decision fatigue, gone.

• Zone cleaning on a loop. Even if you miss a day, it cycles back around.

• Daily anchors. Morning prayer, school blocks, rest time, dinner prep, bedtime ritual—our kids thrive when they know what to expect.

• Movement matters. Even 20 minutes of walking daily improves longevity and energy. If 20 feels like too much, start with five. Small steps add up.

• Build margin. Everything takes longer than you think. Leaving space for interruptions transforms frustration into flexibility.

Rhythms free us from constantly reinventing the wheel and make space for spontaneous joy.

5. Little Loaves, Big Miracles

At the end of the day, Catholic motherhood isn’t about doing more—it’s about bringing our loaves and fishes and trusting God to multiply them.

Some days we get it wrong. We lose our patience. We yell. We fail. But those moments are invitations to model humility:

“I’m sorry. Please forgive me.”

The devil loves to steal our peace when we fail, but every failure is a chance to grow in humility. As Fr. Jacques Philippe reminds us in Searching for and Maintaining Peace, our littleness isn’t a problem—it’s the place where God meets us.

Every small step, every whispered prayer, every imperfect effort adds up over time. Holiness doesn’t happen in grand gestures. It happens in the hidden, ordinary, repeated moments of saying “yes.”

Motherhood is a thousand tiny habits lived faithfully. And when we root those habits in Christ, our small steps begin to ripple into eternity.

YOUR turn! Tell me your favorite “mom hack” in the comments below!

Ignatian Wisdom for Moms

Motherhood has a way of stretching every part of us—body, mind, and soul. The daily tasks feel so small yet so overwhelming: slicing apples, wiping crumbs and tears alike, praying for patience. The tough moments can break us, or we can allow them to slowly shape us, like a river carves deep grooves of beauty into a canyon over eons. But only if we let them. 

Saint Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order, didn’t live in a home bustling with toddlers or teens, and yet Ignatian spirituality seems built for motherhood. The Spiritual Exercises offers a vision that helps us to recognize that even the most ordinary parts of our vocation are in fact a sacred path of holiness.  

Finding God in All Things 

Finding God in all things is the central tenet of Ignatian spirituality. The Good Gardener sows seeds of contemplation at every moment, not only in quiet prayer time (which may or may not happen before sleepy footsteps descend the stairs in the morning), but in the spilled milk, the mismatched socks, the dandelion bouquets, and the nighttime questions that tug at our sleepy souls. 

The invitation is not to escape into some imagined spiritual life, but to meet God in the thick of this one. 

How do I see God in my child’s nagging? 
How did I fail to love well today — and how can I do better tomorrow? 
How is God using these moments to tutor me in my remedial subject of patience, generosity, humility, and surrender? 

AMDG: For the Greater Glory of God 

If finding God in all things is the central reflective practice of Ignatian spirituality, Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam is its rallying cry: “For the greater glory of God!” 

One temptation is to associate this phrase with pressure—make it all perfect—but in truth, it’s the opposite. Knowing that everything is for God’s glory, and not our own or defined in the world’s terms, liberates us from self-importance. The phrase reminds us that we are not here to build our own kingdoms or perfect homes, but to offer what we have, as we are, to steward what we have been given in the task of raising saints for God’s glory. 

I once thought only the major moments mattered, or that I had to be out serving the poor like Dorothy Day and Saint Teresa of Calcutta to be radically following Jesus. Ignatian spirituality has helped me to recognize that the magnitude of the act is not as important as my posture of surrender, and that finally matching all the socks might be more important than submitting a perfectly polished article. In other words, AMDG is not about outcomes, but faithfulness.  

Ignatian Indifference: A Mother's Surrender 

The word “indifference” might conjure images of apathy, but Ignatius means something deeper: a kind of detachment rooted in holy freedom. He calls us to be open to whatever God wills—health or sickness, riches or poverty, praise or blame — so long as it leads us to love the Lord more deeply, with greater generosity. 

Ignatian indifference reminds me to hold my ideals loosely. To love what God gives, rather than grasping for control. To see the grace in the interruptions, the beauty in the mess, the sanctity in the sacrifice. Rather than grasping tightly to my preconceived ideas of how things should be, I can accept circumstances as they are, and look for the Lord’s will for me even in the rough messiness of reality.  

Does the carpet need to be shampooed again in this season of potty training? Are we still catching mice in these traps? Is the crawl space flooding again? Each of these real-life disasters has hit our home within the past few months. Perhaps, rather than despairing of my inability to maintain perfect order and control, the Lord is inviting me to surrender my idea of perfection, to come to him in petition for these needs and for whatever grace my soul requires to weather these seemingly endless storms.  

Contemplation in Action 

Finally, Ignatius calls us to be contemplatives in action: anchored in prayer, moving through the world with Christ. 

For me, this looks like a thousand silent prayers scattered through the day: 
“Jesus, help me speak gently.” 
“Mary, be a mother to me, so I can mother them.” 
“Lord, make me attentive to what matters right now.” 

Contemplation in action doesn’t require stillness, only awareness. If the basic posture is looking for God in all things, and the basic mantra is AMDG, then the basic tool Ignatius offers us is the awareness examen. This prayerful review at the end of the day is nothing more than asking the Holy Spirit to accompany us as we recall what happened, discerning the clues God has left for us to see Him at work in our day. Making this a regular habit is the transformational key that unlocks our minds and spirits to be attentive contemplatives in action throughout the day as well.   

On this feast of Saint Ignatius, may we mothers learn to see our homes as the domestic churches they truly are and our children as fellow pilgrims. May we live this calling, not perfectly, but prayerfully — for the greater glory of God. 

AMDG. 

This post first appeared at CatholicMom.com.

Cultivating the Garden of Our Souls

What is summer to you? Does it taste like watermelon and smell like sunscreen? For gardeners, summer smells like warm earth and tastes of homegrown tomatoes bursting with tangy sweetness. It also means a sweaty, daily battle with vicious villains: squash bugs and weeds.

When I first planted my backyard garden, I chose the “no dig” method of layering cardboard and compost right over our weeds. I hauled in wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow until our small patch of earth was no longer a snarled mess, but an unmistakable garden plot ready for planting. It was exhausting work, but each shovelful brimmed with the promise of homegrown vegetables, and that vision drove me on. I naively believed the no-dig promise that the cardboard and mulch would be enough to smother the weed seeds lurking below.

Confession and the Garden of the Soul

It was around this time that my daughter received her first Confession. When it came time for her second Confession (which held none of the excitement and glamour of the first to obscure the objectively nerve-wracking nature of bearing your weaknesses to a total stranger), I found myself coaxing and cajoling a fearful and anxious eight-year-old to our local parish. I couldn’t really blame her for her reluctance. I am an adult convert, and fifteen years later, I felt the same aversion when dragging myself to Confession.

During one particularly painful examination of conscience, I felt my shame spilling over into hot tears. I berated myself for failing to avoid those same sins that land me in Confession week after week. When will I stop needing Confession? I asked myself in exasperation. At this moment, a tiny drop of wisdom bubbled over from my head, soaking into my heart as the image of my garden popped into my head.

The Weeding is Never Done

I pushed open the gate to our back garden in July, after about a month of neglect, to find my once pristine vegetable beds entirely overrun by weeds. There was cheese weed with its deep taproots, nearly impossible to remove without the right tools. There were tall, bright green grasses with shallow roots that nonetheless reappear every year, and—worst of all—nefarious bellbind with its deceptively lovely white blooms wound its way up my crops, choking the life out of them. (Incidentally, this is the indefatigable weed that inspired the name of the demonic title character of my upcoming book, The Bellbind Letters, a creative take on C.S. Lewis’s spiritual classic for Catholic moms.)

I spent the better part of a week on my hands and knees yanking every last one out by the roots. When I finally stepped back to survey my work, my triumph was short-lived: Although my well-defined borders were once again visible, they were dotted with tiny specks of green from weeds that had either escaped my notice during the initial battle or had simply grown back in the time it had taken me to tackle the other beds. Tempted as I was to hang my head in shame at my utter inability to dominate this space, a fleeting moment of grace whispered deep in my heart like the fluttering of a hummingbird’s wings: Maybe through this garden the Lord is trying to grow patience with myself within me.

Like our sins, weeds are impossible for us to eradicate entirely. Continuous weeding is the fate of every gardener, and if we want to make our souls delightful gardens for our Lord, we find ourselves in need of constant cultivation. We will always need to diligently weed out vices. Frequent visits to the confessional will prevent the roots of more serious sins from penetrating too deeply and dissuade the deleterious effects of sin from choking out emerging seedlings of virtue.

What the Master Gardener Sees

The garden is rich with spiritual metaphors. Scripture is full of agricultural imagery that helps us unravel the mysteries of the spiritual life. Of course, tending the garden of our souls is not something we are meant to do on our own. We must consult the Master Gardener, sower of good seeds. What is His vision for this space? What fragrant varieties would He like to see planted here?

As gardeners and disciples both, we cannot become overly distressed when we see the weeds creeping in. The Master Gardener calls us to a life of joy and unceasing prayer. Of course, weeds cannot be permitted to flourish in the garden, but their appearance is not cause for despair. He expects to find weeds, and so should we. If we attend to them diligently, day by day, we will find that they can be managed. With His help, flowers will still blossom and trees bear good fruit.

If the Master still sees all the beauty in this garden, why shouldn’t we?

This post first appeared at Blessed Is She.

What Is Slow Motherhood? Choosing Presence Over Pressure

Motherhood was never meant to be rushed.

Somewhere along the way, we began to believe that the measure of a good mother was how much she could manage, how many plates she could keep spinning without letting one drop. We fill our calendars, cram our days, and scroll through an endless feed of other people’s lives, and still we lie awake at night feeling as though we aren’t doing enough.

But beneath the noise, there is a quieter invitation.

Slow motherhood is not about doing less for its own sake. It is about doing what matters most. It’s about creating room to breathe, to notice, to savor the beauty that is already here. It’s about trading hurry for presence, anxiety for trust, and distraction for attention.

When we choose slow motherhood, we begin to live more intentionally. We begin to ask better questions: What deserves my time and energy? Where is God calling me to be fully present? What can I release so I can focus on the things that truly matter?

In my own life, slowing down has meant anchoring my days in prayer, building family rhythms that cultivate peace, and carving out space for faith to take root and grow. A slow home is not a perfectly quiet home—there are still dishes to wash, lessons to teach, and little voices calling your name—but it is a home ordered toward the things that last.

Our children are growing up in a world that prizes speed, productivity, and constant stimulation. If we are not intentional, the pace of modern life will sweep us along with it. Slow motherhood is a deliberate resistance to that pull. It is the choice to raise our children with care, to protect the sacred space of home, and to create an environment where faith, joy, and connection can flourish.

This shift requires us to recover the value of presence. When we slow down, we notice the details—the sunlight on the kitchen table, the laughter spilling down the hallway, the sacred ordinariness of a child’s hand in ours. We begin to see that these seemingly small moments are, in fact, the moments that shape a family and form a soul.

Slow motherhood is not a formula or a set of rules. It is a posture of the heart. It is choosing depth over distraction, savoring what is right in front of us instead of racing toward the next thing. It’s how we begin to build prayerful homes, nurture joyful rhythms, and cultivate faith that carries our families through seasons of both chaos and calm.

That is why I created Slow Motherhood—a space for mothers longing to embrace a more intentional way of living and raising their children. Here, I share reflections, practices, and gentle encouragement for those who want to slow down, savor the goodness of today, and plant seeds for tomorrow.

If your heart is longing for a different way—a slower way—you are not alone. You are welcome here.

Want more tips for cultivating joyful rythms of slow motherhood? Join me at the Slow Motherhood newsletter!

10 Ways to Pray When You Are Too Busy to Pray

There is no such thing as “too busy to pray.” I know that life can be crazy, and there is real value in knowing our limits and being gentle with ourselves. This is not one of those posts. If you need one of those posts, read THIS instead. This is a tough love post, a “come to Jesus” post (literally!). This is an “I love you just the way you are but too much to let you stay that way” post. I know I need this list, and I think you do too.

For your kick-in-the-pants list of ways to prioritize prayer, read on.  

• Pray first thing in the morning. If you make it the first thing you do every morning, you won’t ever run out of time.  
  
  

• Pick a Scripture verse that inspires you. Write it on a post-it (or print it out) and put it on the wall in front of your toilet. Seriously. You spend several quality minutes sitting here in quiet each day. Make them count. Change the verse each time you clean your toilet.  
  
  

• Take a social-media hiatus. Delete the apps from your phone. Every time you have the impulse to scroll, offer a prayer instead. Finally, a way to honor St. Paul’s call to “pray continually!” 
  
  

• Use recorded prayers. Whether you have a long commute or spend time at the sink doing dishes each day, you can pray along with a recorded Rosary or Divine Mercy Chaplet as you go about tasks that do not require your mental attention. Check out the Family Rosary app, Together We Pray, for a recorded Rosary. It's free for iOS and Android.
  
  

• Listen to worship music. Set aside some time to create a playlist of songs that speak to you (or use one that’s already been curated on Spotify. Here’s a great one by Blessed Is She).  
  
  

• Make a date with Jesus. Look up daily Mass, Confession, or Adoration times and pencil something into your calendar. You can’t sustain a romance with someone you never see. 
  
  

• As you work, clean, or make a meal, offer a prayer of gratitude for the person who will benefit.  
  
  

• Before turning on Netflix, take 20 minutes to journal, read Scripture, or relax with a good book. Pick something that will refresh you rather than merely helping you zone out.  
  
  

• When you feel frustrated with someone, make a conscious effort to see and love Jesus in that person. If you are like me, this will provide you with ample prayer opportunities throughout your day. 
  
  

• At the end of the day, review it with an examination of conscience like this one from IgnatianSpirituality.com or this one, shared by Loyola Press. Leave yourself a note on your pillow so you don’t forget. Ask God to help you see where He showed up, and how you missed opportunities. Sit in gratitude. Ask for help to do better next time.  

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