Episode 52: “I Wasn’t Having Any Fun — Until This Shift Changed Everything”
ITUNES | SPOTIFY
Is “fun” missing from your busy working mom life? In this honest and heartfelt episode, Katelyn Denning opens up about her own journey from being the serious, task-focused mom to becoming someone who laughs, dances, and plays — without sacrificing her career or responsibilities. If you’ve ever felt like there’s no space for fun between meetings, meal prep, and managing your family’s schedule, this one’s for you. Learn how fun isn’t something you’re born with — it’s something you practice.
Whether you feel like you’ve forgotten how to have fun or just need a gentle nudge to reclaim it, this episode will help you see that joy, silliness, and playfulness can live alongside your to-do list.
links & resources mentioned in this episode:
-
You are listening to the Life Coach for Working Moms podcast, the show where we are talking about what it actually takes to make life work as a working mom. I'm your host, Katelyn Denning, a full time working mom of three and a certified life and executive coach. I'm so glad you're here and I hope you enjoy this week's episode.
Hello and welcome back to the podcast. I'm so happy you're here. How are you doing? What's been happening? I am thinking about fun. I. This week I've been thinking about fun for a few years. Very intentionally thinking about fun and so have a lot of my clients. This has been a topic that has come up and most recently in a conversation with someone who is going to be starting coaching with me for the first time, and so.
I wanted to share some of my thoughts about this topic, about this idea, about what it means to be a fun person, to have fun, to be a fun mom, to just enjoy life. And I'm curious, in your experience, do you feel like. These days, or maybe you have seasons where life is all work and no play. Maybe since having kids when your to-do list has tripled in length, you have now become responsible for so much more, so many more things, probably all while your career is advancing, that there is very little space, if any space for things that aren't practical or aren't productive.
That aren't checking something off the list. I know I used to feel the exact same way. I would never describe myself as a fun mom or even just a fun person. That sounds so sad to say, but it is true. I would not have described myself as a fun mom or a fun person. I had lots of friends who I would totally put into that category.
You know, the ones they're always playing, organizing fun events and activities. They're quick to laugh even when things feel frustrating or. They're stressed, but that just wasn't me. I would say probably for most of my life, I have been a more serious person.
I'm a first born daughter. Not that that has to mean that, but it can sometimes mean that very achievement oriented, productive, and. even as a kid, I have always felt a little more blue than most. I talk about that very openly in my experience, with depression and anxiety and postpartum depression. And after my first child was born, when I was diagnosed with PPD, I remember worrying that he would turn out to be a serious kid like me.
And not because of genetics necessarily, but because he rarely saw me smile, and that broke my heart. And even after I moved beyond the postpartum depression with. Lots of support, lots of professional help. I still would not have used the words happy or optimistic to describe me as a person, let alone a mom.
I accepted that that was just who I was or who I wasn't. I was practical. I was a realist. I was a little bit of a glass half empty kind of person, and I approached motherhood in the same practical and realistic way. I made lists. I focused on schedules and routines. I read books and I learned and I researched about developmental milestones and effective parenting and how to build resilience in your kids.
I would look at other moms who seem to be smiling and enjoying life and a little bit more relaxed, and I'd wish that I could be even just a little bit more like that, but I just felt like I didn't have the time. I didn't have the energy. I was tired from working all day. I was tired from sticking to the schedule each evening and planning our life as a dual income household where we both had big careers.
So I accepted that this was who I was. It wasn't until. Later when I started working with my own coach and learned the coaching tool that I've used almost every day since, and with my clients that I learned the fundamental difference between those fun moms, those other moms, me, and that difference was that they believed they could be fun.
They believed that they could have fun. They weren't born with a fun gene that I was missing. They just decided that their lives could incorporate fun even while doing all of the adult things that life and parenting requires, and that single realization changed. I wanna say everything for me, it changed so much for me.
I stopped clinging to this story because it was a story. The stories we tell ourselves aren't necessarily true. They aren't necessarily based in fact, and you say them enough, they become a belief.
And that story that I stopped clinging to was that I was practical, realistic, and pessimistic, and therefore I could not have fun or I couldn't have as much fun as someone else. Instead, I started practicing, and I use the word practicing very intentionally because it did take lots of practice. If you think about anything that you've not done that you've not believed that you could do or could be, it's not like you just decide one day and you can suddenly do it.
You have to practice it. And so I started practicing having fun. Alongside all of the other aspects of me and how I was doing things that did serve me well, but that I was using to prevent myself, to stop myself from ever fully thinking that I could be fun. That I could have fun. I'm curious if any of that resonates with you.
Maybe you've not really thought about it, thought about fun, what it looks like, what it feels like, whether you are fun, whether you have fun. Do you have enough of that in your life, or is your life so focused on the tasks and the adulting and the parenting that we have to do that it's squeezed out any opportunity or room for fun.
So when I say practicing, , I wanna give some examples of what that means because let me tell you, when I am coaching a client now, where I'm sitting today on fun, having fun, being fun, they can draw a blank and maybe you are too. Like, what does this even look like? Is it. You know, big excursions and events.
Is it going to, I don't know, Disney World or some trampoline park because that's what my kids want. What does fun look like and how do you even practice if you've gotten out of the practice of having fun? So for me, as I think back on my journey. It was little things, simple things, especially at first it was tickling my kids and laughing with them.
It was dancing more around the house, putting on music, not just kids BOP or whatever kids wanna listen to, but music that I loved. Right. We're gonna bring out the. Nineties and two thousands hip hop and r and b music that I loved. That made me want to feel more free and more fun and silly, and dance in the house with my kids or by myself.
I love to put on music now by myself and just dance. It was lying on the grass. Putting my bare feet in the grass, that's an easier first step, but also lying on the grass to stare at the clouds. My kids would inevitably come and lie down next to me and we would just look at the clouds. What do we notice?
It was running around in the rain. I have a core memory now, and I hope it's a core memory for my kids as well, of. A summer rainstorm and them huddling under the porch, under the cover of our porch. And instead I decided, you know what? I'm just going out there. I bet it feels so good. It's so hot out here.
Why not? There's no lightning in the sky. There's no thunder. It's okay. And we all ran around in the rain and got sopping wet. It's playing tag instead of sitting on the bench at the playground. It was honestly, and I do this so much, my husband gets frustrated with me, but laughing at my kids' jokes that are often about farts.
Let's be honest. All right. Just allowing myself to laugh when I found something funny. And it was things like instead of arguing with my husband over whose turn it was or who had done more, I would make light of it and try to chuckle at the situation because honestly, we are both doing more than we wanted to and it was so silly to argue over it.
And now when my favorite song comes on the radio, because yes, one of our cars is still old enough that you're either putting a CD in or listening to the radio. I turn up the volume, I sing out loud and dance, even if it's first thing in the morning on our way to drop off, I will probably not be the kind of mom who does a big theme party or makes a huge deal out of the holidays.
That doesn't necessarily feel fun for me, but if it does for you, that's amazing. And just because I opt out of some things that others feel fun doesn't mean I'm not a fun person or a fun mom, or that I don't know how to have fun. I just know what my definition of fun is and what fun feels like to me ever since I've been practicing.
In those small ways, learning what is fun for me and what's not, and crafting lots of experiments when I'm not sure
it has changed my view of myself, my view of my kids, and enjoying their fun. I have found myself looking for more fun opportunities. Sometimes being fun or having fun does mean doing something right. Turning on the music for a dance party, going out for ice cream, choosing to swing on the playground or go down the slide when you'd normally sit on the bench and just watch.
But I wanna offer that sometimes. Having fun. Being fun can simply be categorizing something that you're already doing as fun. So seeing it in a different way instead of just this thing that I do, it's actually this thing that I do that, yeah, it is fun or it does feel fun. It's painting your nails a bright color.
If you paint your nails every week and you're choosing something fun and funky like that is fun. It's just probably become something that you just do and you don't even notice it. Maybe it's wearing something that's full of color or a really fun pattern, or a different design or style than you normally would wear.
Taking a family walk in the evening or on the weekends together is fun when you're all together and enjoying being outdoors. But again, you're probably doing it so regularly that you're not even seeing the fun that you're already having and doing.
All of those examples are an opportunity to see yourself as fun, to see yourself as someone who, yes, has a plan, has a to-do list, is managing the calendar and the responsibilities and the mental load, but someone who is also having fun in between those other things.
Instead seeing where you are already a fun mom or a fun person without having to add anything or do anything extra For the last few years, as I said, I've been on this journey of shifting my identity.
Of seeing myself in a different way, and it is, going against decades of this belief or these stories that I would tell myself about who I am and what I'm capable of, instead of just categorizing myself in that way or accepting that this is who I am. I challenged it. I challenged it because I realized there really is nothing different about anyone else who is having fun or feels like a fun person or gets to enjoy things.
They're just choosing that. They're choosing to believe something different about themselves, and that's available to me and that's available to you too.
My journey and what I hope for you. As well is about being present. Being present to what's in front of me. Whether that's fun at work, which is possible, fun at home, fun by myself, with my friends, with my husband, with my family. It's about smiling more. It's about enjoying my kids and my life, everything that we're creating, enjoying this role that I'm in as their mom.
As a mom with a career, that's also important to me. Not because anyone's watching, and I wanna prove that I can be fun to anyone else, but because it's who I want to be, it's who I wanna be for myself, for my husband, for my friends, for my kids. I want to be an example. I'm a working mom who isn't stressed out and tired.
All the time. I have my moments though, and I'm, I'm cool with that. I understand that we're human, but I am present with my kids. I produce amazing results in my work. I love the relationship that I have with my husband, and I am enjoying my life, this full life with three young kids, two full-time working parents, and everything in between.
I am a fun mom, and I have fun myself. Not because I was born this way, but because I decided that this was how I wanted to live my life. This is the experience that I want. I'm on a mission to help other working moms create the life that they want instead of just defaulting to what everyone thinks of as a working mom.
Frazzled, stressed, tired. If you want that too, I want you to apply. To potentially work together, whether that's in one-on-one coaching or in the next cohort of my group program Beyond Balance, where women inside of that program are working toward a similar goal of enjoying their life, of having more fun, of developing and sustaining the relationships that they want or the career that they want.
You can head to themothernurture.com/apply to fill out a short application and learn more. Let's go have some fun this summer, but all of the time for ourselves, for our families, and for ourselves. And you know what would be really fun? If you shared this episode with a working mom in your life, someone who you want to have more fun with, decide together, make this change together.
Look for opportunities to have more fun, to be more fun, and to potentially see all of the fun that you're already having in your life. All right. As always, you can find everything about the podcast related to the podcast, share a review, a rating, or even ask a question.
I would love to answer one of your questions in a future episode. You can find, , the question box and all of the information over at themothernurture.com/podcast. All right, I will talk with you in the next episode. Go have some fun. Take care.
If you enjoyed this episode, you won’t want to miss what’s coming next! Make sure you hit the subscribe button to tune into future episodes.
If you love the Life Coach for Working Moms Podcast, I’d be so grateful if you’d rate and review it on iTunes! Simply scroll down, tap to give it a five star rating, then tap “Write a Review.” Your rating and review will help more busy working moms discover helpful episodes each week!
