Feel Inner Peace as a Working Mom with a Neurodivergent Child
Be the Mountain, Not the Storm.
Here’s How.
When chaos lives in your house daily, meltdowns, dysregulation, fear, it's easy to feel like you have to become just as reactive to survive it. Tia shared the season that taught her otherwise: her daughter was aggressive, dysregulated, and living in fight-or-flight, and Tia realized her own reactivity was feeding the chaos rather than calming it. That's when a dear friend, a meditation teacher, introduced her to the mountain meditation, a practice that would carry her through years of panic attacks, parenting two kids, and building a business all at once.
The practice is simple but profound: you picture the most majestic mountain you can imagine, and you become it. Your head is the peak, your legs and hips the base, steady and rooted no matter what the weather does around you. Storms pass. Seasons change. Clouds come and go. But the mountain stays the mountain. That's the deeper teaching, you are not the meltdown, not the hard day, not your child's pain. You are the steady thing underneath it all, and you can return to that steadiness again and again, even in 60 seconds, even in the car before walking into the house.
HERE ARE THE 3 KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS EPISODE:
1️⃣ Your own regulation matters as much as your child's, it's not selfish to ground yourself.
2️⃣ You are not your hardest moments, you can hold them without becoming them.
3️⃣ Even a short pause, a breath, a mental image, can help you return to steadiness.
THE 5-MINUTE SELF-CONNECTION PRACTICE
This free resource will help you interrupt the shame spiral after a hard parenting day and reconnect with yourself in just 5 minutes.
“I can remember to be the mountain. I can remember that I can choose stillness and equanimity.”
Full Transcript
ROCKY (00:00.066)
There starts to be violence in our home and her nervous system is living in fight or flight. To say that this was a hard period of life is the biggest understatement ever. I can remember to be the mountain. I can remember that I can choose stillness and equanimity. Welcome to the Feel Good Club podcast. This is the place where ambitious working moms
With challenging neurodivergent children, stop feeling like they are failing and believe they are a great mom without giving up work that lights them up. You will learn how to elevate your well-being and create a positive, aligned life. Whether you're here to hear expert interviews or inspiring talks, this is your space to learn.
And grow. I'm Tia Graham, mom of two neurodivergent kids, keynote and TEDx speaker, best-selling author, and founder of the Feel Good Club, a community for working moms with neurodivergent kids. I am an expert in the science of happiness. This show is here to help you feel grounded, confident, and connected to yourself and others.
I know you're gonna love it. Thank you for being here. Let's dive in. Hi, beautiful woman. Welcome back. I am so glad that you are here. And I just want to say, just the fact that you hit play on this episode shows that you care, that you love your kids so.
Flipping much that you want to grow, that you want to expand, that you want to become wiser. And what I'm going to share with you today is a simple practice. But I learned about it during the most challenging time of my working mom life. And I'll tell you about that. And this simple practice was so profound.
ROCKY (02:22.574)
And it was so valuable that I thought I need to make an episode about this. So before I tell you what it is, let me back up and tell you how it came into my life. So I met one of my dear friends 26 years ago while I was going to the University of Hawaii in Honolulu. It was my first semester there, and I met my friend Serena.
My very first semester, and we instantly clicked and became friends. She was only there for one semester. So we only lived in the same place for five months, yet have stayed close and stayed connected for 26 years. And she lives across the country. She's on the East Coast. I'm on the West Coast. But you know, when you meet those people and like your soul is just aligned, well, that's Serena. That's that's one of the people in my life.
And then I was building my first entrepreneur business, the speaking business under my company brand Arrive at Happy. I was giving in person and virtual talks. I was doing in person and virtual leadership trainings. I had my book out, Be a Happy Leader. I had a viral TED Talk out, The Simple Secret of Being Happier.
And I was really, really determined and motivated and passionate about building this purposeful business, teaching people the science of happiness and the science of happiness at work. And I always knew that I wanted to work, that I am not a stay-at-home mom type of person. I have full respect. It's not about better or worse.
That's just not my journey and it never has been and never will be, right? And so I, as I am building this, our older daughter, who's always been challenging, who's always been strong-willed, who's always had trouble with sleep and eating, and you know, just again, insanely strong-willed. During this time, she starts becoming aggressive.
ROCKY (04:47.864)
There starts to be violence in our home, and her nervous system is living in fight or flight. Just everyday life of being an eight-year-old, she is throwing things, kicking, pulling hair, breaking things, and is just screaming. She's just dysregulated daily. And to say that this was a hard period of life.
Is the biggest understatement ever, you know, for for being a working mom. And we have a younger child as well. And so as I am working and researching and doing everything I possibly can to help our older autistic PDA, ADHD daughter, healing her, learning how to change how we parent. I mean, doing everything possible.
And parenting our younger child, at the same time, I realize that my responses and me being triggered is making things worse. And so as I'm working on healing and helping my daughter, I start healing and helping myself so that my nervous system can stay more regulated.
And so I start doing different healing therapies. I think I've talked about it before, like EMDR, neurofeedback, somatic experiencing therapy. And I realize that I also need mindfulness. Now I had started meditating way before this really, really hard period. But there was something in me that was like, I need more. I need more mindfulness tools.
I need to know different things on what to do. And so I ended up reaching out to Serena, my friend from years back in Hawaii, because she is a meditation and mindfulness teacher. She's a coach. She's connected to Duke University. She's a speaker. I just was like, Serena knows a lot.
ROCKY (07:12.94)
And so I reached out to her and was, you know, it'd been probably a year or so since we talked, and I was bawling on the phone, telling her all about what was going on with our daughter and with me, and just saying, like, I'm I'm, you know, doing all this therapy, but I there's something in me that that called to you. And so I started working with her. And she started teaching me and coaching me. And we would talk for an hour every other week and
She started teaching me all different types of meditations, formal and informal. And she also is a well-being coach. So, and I had, I have, you know, worked with spiritual life coaches. I've worked with the business coaches, but I'd never had like a mindfulness well being coach. And she taught me so much. And she helped me feel held. And so let me know.
If you want to reach out to Serena, I'll put her info in the show notes. But one meditation that she taught me is the mountain meditation. And if you're driving, I don't think you can close your eyes. If you're exercising, you can't close your eyes, you can just listen. But what I want you to do is if you are sitting, if you are still, and if you're if you're not still, you can come back to this. And I want you to play this.
And listen to it when you're still. All right. And I listened to the mountain meditation so many times. And again, it helped me tremendously that I knew I had to put it on this show. Let's take a quick pause for something that can really support you. If you constantly question if you are failing after a hard day when you reacted to your child when they were having a meltdown.
I have a free resource for you. It is my five-minute self-connection practice that interrupts your shame spiral. You get my four-step practice, a simple PDF, and a two-minute audio for when you want to listen for additional support. The replay of the meltdown and how you reacted is not proof that you failed. It's proof how much you care.
ROCKY (09:39.926)
And you love your child. To get this free tool, just go to teogram.com forward slash practice. That's teagram.com forward slash practice. So the meditation is done in a sitting position, either on the floor or a chair, and begins by sensing into the support you have from the chair or the cushion.
Paying attention to the actual sensations of contact. Finding a position of stability, upper body balanced over your hips, and shoulders in a comfortable posture. Hands on your lap or your knees, hands up, arms hanging by their own weight like heavy curtains, stable and relaxed. Actually sensing into your body.
Feeling your feet, legs, hips, lower and upper body, arms, shoulders, neck, head. When you are ready, allow your eyes to close, bringing awareness to breath. The actual physical sensations. Feeling each breath as it comes in and goes out. Letting the breath be just as it is.
Without trying to change or regulate it in any way, allowing it to flow easily and naturally with its own rhythm and pace, knowing you are breathing perfectly well right now. Nothing for you to do. Allowing your body to be still and sitting with a sense of dignity, a sense of being complete, whole in this very moment.
With your posture reflecting this sense of wholeness. As you sit here, letting an image form in your mind's eye of the most magnificent, beautiful mountain you know, or have seen, or can imagine, letting it gradually come into greater focus. Feel its overall shape.
ROCKY (12:07.798)
And look at its lofty peak or peaks high in the sky, the large base rooted in the bedrock of the earth's crust, its steep or gently sloping sides. Notice how massive it is, how solid, how unmoving, how beautiful, whether from afar or up close.
Perhaps your mountain has snow blanketing its top and trees reaching down to the base. Or rugged granite sides. There may be streams and waterfalls cascading down the slopes. There may be one peak or a series of peaks, or with meadows. Observing it, noting its qualities, and when you feel ready to
Seeing if you can bring the mountain into your own body sitting here, so that your body and the mountain and your mind's eye become one, so that as you sit here, you share in the massiveness and the stillness and the majesty of the mountain. You become the mountain.
Grounded in sitting posture, your head becomes the lofty peak, supported by the rest of the body and affording a panoramic view. Your shoulders and arms the side of the mountain, your buttocks and legs the solid base, rooted to your cushion or your chair.
Experiencing in your body a sense of uplift from deep within your pelvis and spine. You and the mountain are one. With each breath, as you continue sitting, becoming a little more a breathing mountain, alive and vital, yet unwavering in your inner stillness, completely what you are, beyond words and thought.
ROCKY (14:28.672)
A centered, grounded, unmoving presence. As you sit here, become aware of the fact that as the sun travels across the sky, the light and shadows and colors are changing virtually moment by moment in the mountain stillness. And the surface of the mountain teems with life and activity. Streams.
melting snow, waterfalls, plants and wildlife. As the mountains sit, seeing and feeling how night follows day and day follows night. The bright warming sun followed by the cool night sky, studded with stars, and the gradual dawning of a new day. Through it all, the mountain just sits
Experiencing change in each moment, constantly changing, yet always just being itself. It remains still as the seasons flow into one another and as the weather changes moment by moment and day by day. In summer, there is no snow on the mountain, except perhaps for its very peaks or in crags, shielded from direct sunlight.
In the fall, the mountain may wear a coat of brilliant colors. In winter, a blanket of snow and ice. In any season, it may find itself at times enshrouded in clouds or fog or pelted by snow or freezing rain. People may come to see the mountain.
And comment on how beautiful it is or how it's not a good day to see the mountain, that it's too cloudy or rainy or foggy or dark. And through everything, the mountain just sits. None of this matters to the mountain, which remains at all time its essential self. Clouds may come.
ROCKY (16:53.398)
And clouds may go. The mountain's magnificence and beauty are not changed one bit by whether people see it or not, in sun or clouds, day or night. The mountain just sits, at times visited by violent storms, buffeted by snow and rain and winds of unthinkable magnitude.
Through it all the mountain sits. Spring comes, tree leaves out, flowers bloom in the high meadows and slopes, birds sing in the trees once again, streams overflow with the waters of melting snow. Through it all, the mountain continues to sit, unmoved by the weather, by what happens on its surface.
By the world of appearances, remaining its essential self through the seasons, the changing weather, the activity ebbing and flowing on its surface. In the same way, as we sit in meditation, we can learn to experience the mountain. We can embody the same central.
Unwavering stillness and groundedness in the face of everything that changes in our lives. Over seconds, over hours, over years. In our lives and in our meditation practice, we experience constantly the changing nature of mind and body and of the outer world. We have our own periods of light and darkness. Activity
And inactivity, our moments of color, and our moments of trabness. It's true that we experience storms of varying intensity and violence in our outer world and in our own minds and bodies, buffeted by high winds, by cold and rain, we endure.
ROCKY (19:15.278)
Periods of darkness and pain, as well as the moments of joy and uplift. Even our appearance changes constantly, experiencing a weather of our own. By becoming the mountain in our meditation practice, we can link up. We can connect to its strength and stability and adopt them for our own.
We can use its energies to support our energy to encounter each moment and mindfulness with equanimity and clarity. It may help us to see that our thoughts and feelings, our preoccupations, our emotional storms and crisis, even the things that happen to us are very much like the weather on the mountain.
We tend to take it personally, but its strongest characteristic is impersonal. The weather of our own lives is not being ignored or denied. It is to be encountered, honored, felt, known for what it is, and held in awareness, and holding and in holding it.
In this way, we come to know a deeper silence and stillness and wisdom. Mountains have this to teach us, and much more if we can let it in. So if you find you resonate in some way with the strength and stability of the mountain in your sitting, it may be useful to use it.
From time to time in your meditation practice to remind you of what it means to sit mindfully with resolve and with wakefulness in true stillness. So in the time that remains, continuing to sustain the mountain meditation on your own, in silence, moment by moment, until you hear the sound of.
ROCKY (21:34.53)
The bell. The first time I listened to the mountain meditation, I was filled with gratitude. Tears were streaming down my eyes. And I also remembered. You see, the mountain that I pictured is a huge mountain in the Pine Pass in northern British Columbia, Canada. This mountain is where I lived.
For the first ten years of my life. My mom and dad ran a little local ski area in northern British Columbia. The closest town was a forty five minute drive down through the Rocky Mountains. I am from a big mountain. And so it was this remembering and this knowing of although.
There is so much chaos happening in my life. There is so many storms and snow and changes and things that feel out of my control. I can remember to be the mountain. I can remember that I can choose stillness and equanimity and
For several years as my daughter continued to have panic attacks, and I was parenting her and my other daughter, and I was a busy entrepreneur. I utilize the mountain over and over again. And I hope you can use it too. You're an amazing working mom. Remember to prioritize your well being and share this episode.
With a working mom that has challenging kids that could use this message too. See ya next time. Thank you for joining me on the Feel Good Club show. I hope today's episode left you feeling inspired and equipped to take on your day with confidence, self-love, and a little more joy. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe.
ROCKY (23:55.498)
Leave a review and share it with your fellow ambitious working moms with neurodivergent kids. Remember, you are not alone on this journey. We're all here to support each other in growing, healing, and acceptance. Until next time, take care and be hopeful. And remember, prioritize your happiness.