Make a life you love

Now In Paperback!

Click here for your copy!
In The Well-Crafted Mom: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Making a Life You Love, Kathleen Ann Harper provides compassion, creative insights, and well-researched advice on how to take small steps toward big change, even in the midst of temper tantrums, diaper blow-outs, and the exhaustion, disappointment, and resentment that often accompanies parenthood.

Within the pages of The Well-Crafted Mom, you'll find reassurance that you’re not alone, see yourself in familiar stories, and discover new ways to make a life you love.
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How Will you Spend Your Day?

Coaching + Crafts
Free Guide
You tell your kids to wait just a minute. You tell your boss you'll finish it tonight. You tell your husband I'm just too tired. What do you do when you're spread so thin that everything is getting only the Leftover You?

Sign up for my mailing list and get The Well-Crafted Mom's Coaching + Craft Guide for a great self-coaching tool called How Will You Spend Your Day? It will make managing your time and energy easier so you aren't overdrawn at the end of the day. You'll also get step-by-step instructions for creating a memento to help you build a simple routine to integrate this new idea into your everyday schedule so you can focus on what matters most.

What To Do When You don't Have a Clue

Kathleen's Coaching Corner
There have been many times when I've felt like I don't have a clue about what I'm doing as a mom, like when my first son was born and no parenting book or parent education workshop truly prepared me for life with an infant; when my second son was a baby and fussy all the time; and during the terrible twos and even more terrible threes when there were days that wrung me dry. 

As the mom of two teenagers, I'm again unsure, wishing for a roadmap on how to parent my sons into young adulthood. There aren't major roadblocks but the territory is all new. My husband Bill often turns to me and asks, "What should we do?" and I wonder why he's asking me. I have absolutely no idea. 

My inner critic is loud and a constant voice in my head these days. Friends tell me I'm doing a good job, I'm a great mom, my boys are lucky to have me. The inner critic doesn't agree. 

Am I the only one who feels like she's failing as a mom of teenagers? Logically, I know that this can't be the case. But most of my close mom friends either have young adult children now or they're parents of little kids. The moms with older children offer advice and are highly empathetic. The moms of younger children are sympathetic but don't fully understand how the balance of life with teenagers can shift in one brief moment, one unsettling circumstance, one regrettable argument. 

Recently, my husband and I met with a parent educator at Parents Place, a family support organization with several Bay Area locations. The parent educator approved of what Bill and I are already doing and offered additional ideas for parenting our teenagers. 

My biggest takeaway from that meeting, though, was to trust my intuition. I've fallen away from that place of trusting myself. I've been afraid I'll push my kids away. I've been nervous I'll make a mistake that I won't be able to undo. I've often acquiesced to Bill's decisions even if I don't agree with them, mainly because I don't know what else to do and I want to keep the peace. 

I've been thinking too much, which creates fear and indecision. Lately, rather than searching for ways to avoid not knowing, I'm learning to lean into not having a clue, allowing the unknown to shape my way forward. 

I'm discovering big benefits to not having a clue of what to do. Click here to read more on The Well-Crafted Mom's blog.