Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
[Music] so [Music] uh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] well good morning good afternoon good evening wherever you are in the world it’s Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman, Relationship Matters TV. I hope everyone is having a beautifully blessed morning, afternoon, evening, or even in the middle of the night because I know if you’re in the UK it is 1 AM. So I hope that we can keep you up because we try and give you value at every episode. Well, you know, usually I am on my soapbox, but thankfully I don’t have to be on my soapbox, and that was my pandemic soapbox, that was my COVID-19 soapbox where I was urging everyone to either wear a mask or get vaccinated because I missed being with people and I missed hugging people and just being around people and enjoying people. Well, I can hopefully throw that soapbox away because we hardly, we still have a little bit, but we don’t have a lot of COVID, and I was able to go on a cruise that had been canceled twice because of COVID, and fortunately, there were no incidents on that huge ship of people with COVID, and that last night we applauded because they made an announcement, not one person. So I’m thankful, and I thank all of you who listened, who wore their masks, who are still wearing their masks, who got their vaccines, and who were just being careful. So I thank you. I have to find another soapbox. Well, let’s talk about who we have on the show today. Mothers, moms, grandmoms, stay tuned, and if you know a mother, and I know you do, tell them to come on to Relationship Matters TV because there’s going to be a lot of value. We are going to talk about motherhood. I cannot wait. So let me tell you who I have. Her name is Reagan Barnes. She is the host of The Purpose-Filled Life and founder and creator of the non-profit organization known as Mamavate Mommy Mate. This organization seeks to activate the maternal forces of moms, cultivate their maternal instincts to meet the needs of modern-day motherhood, and we’re going to talk about modern-day motherhood, and she elevates the respect given to the role of motherhood. So if you are a mom, you should definitely join us and call other moms that you know. She is happily married to Ted. They are raising eight children, ages two to twenty, in Utah. She is blessed to have her own mother living with her. She readily gives credit to her Father in Heaven for fueling the ideas that promote and advocate for motherhood, and that is the foundation of Mommy Mate. So I’m going to bring her on so you can meet Reagan Barnes.

Reagan Barnes
Hi, hello, thank you so much for this opportunity. I am excited to be here and try to match my smile with yours. You just have a great smile.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So do you. I am so excited about you coming on because this is something that needs to be talked about, you know, mothers. And I’d like to let my audience know that the last Thursday of the month, we will always focus on motherhood, mother-daughter relationships, mother-grandmother relationships, and all things that have to do with motherhood. So I’m gonna start off, Reagan, you know I have a bunch of questions that I want to ask you.

Reagan Barnes
Oh, please, yes, let’s go ahead and dig right in.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So tell me, why did you decide to focus on motherhood?

Reagan Barnes
Oh yeah, so this comes from my personal background. I grew up as the daughter of a single mother. My mom had five kids all with the same dad, but he left, and this is, you know, the 70s, 80s. This is when there wasn’t a lot you could do about that. Thankfully, since then, if the father leaves a family, they garnish his wages or they figure out a way to still make him responsible, but back in those days, it just didn’t happen that way. So she really was left abandoned basically, and she calls him a good sperm donor. She was always happy about having the five kids, and she never treated us like we were a burden by any means, but she often lamented the fact that she couldn’t be a mom. Well, I mean physically, right, she had born five kids, so she was a mom in that sense, but because she had to exit the home when she didn’t want to, and she had to be the person bringing in the bacon, so to speak, then she really felt robbed of her opportunity to raise us, and that’s all she had wanted to do. That’s why she had five kids because motherhood to her was a career choice, so to speak. And so when my dad didn’t keep up his end of the deal, that put a lot of burden on her, and she just was always sad. And so kind of in honor, I think, of her, that is why I thought as I was growing up, and so I graduated from high school in 1993, and women were just making wonderful, you know, shattering that glass ceiling, wonderful strides in terms of our opportunities. And so, and I had done really well in high school, I got scholarships to go to college, and I did, I pursued my bachelor’s degree and received that from Indiana University, but in the back of my mind, I was always thinking I’m going to be a mom once I have that chance. And so luckily, the man that I chose to marry was agreeable to that, he has supported it [Music] and, you know, it was a big deal to choose to trust somebody after having seen how my mom had gotten treated poorly by the man she thought would help her in that sense. That was a big deal for me to choose to trust the man I married, but he is wonderful, and he’s as dedicated to motherhood as I am, which he shows by being willing to be the main, you know, bringer home of the funds. You know, he says I earn the money, you spend it, so that’s really nice that we have that partnership, right? But I’m well aware that that is not the luxury that many women have. We’re getting to a point economically where it’s really difficult for a young woman to not have to work, you know, she’s almost where she doesn’t even have the option of being home with her kids, and especially if, for whatever reason, she’s a single mom, then that makes it, like I said, that’s the background I come from, so I know that makes it really, really difficult. So having had that background and wanting to kind of live the life my mom didn’t get to live, and she was always sad about that, I entered into motherhood, but really with blindness. Since my mom hadn’t had the chance to be a mom, then I didn’t know what motherhood really looked like, and, you know, it seemed kind of instinctive to some extent that you just give birth and then somehow you raise that baby, right? But my college-educated brain needed some more direction than that, and I also noticed that quite a few of the messages coming from society were conflicting messages, you know, like maybe you don’t need to breastfeed, or maybe you don’t need to answer your baby’s cries, or maybe you don’t need to, I don’t know, whatever, be with your child for very many hours a day, or the various things, and I just was like, well, let’s figure this out because I’m basically producing another human being, and I want that human being to be a good person, you know, like contributing to society in positive ways, and that’s what society is really, it’s a, when it comes right down to it, it’s a collection of children who have grown up, and the world that they experience is largely created by me during those, especially those first five years. I can put a lot of ideas into their heads, you know, I can help them see the world as either a good place or a scary place or whatever it is that I give them, and, you know, and so just realizing all of that made me take it on as a profession, so to speak.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, so let me ask you now, you said that, you know, your mom, she was a single mother, and she raised five children, and I saw where you said you started a blog where you said, and you called it the Clueless Mama. So what I want to, and you said motherhood did not come naturally to you, so how did you learn since you saw how your, you know, what happened with your mom, how did you learn to be a good mother?

Reagan Barnes
Oh, well, I honestly, I suppose the jury is still out. My oldest is 21, and I am very proud of him. He’s a college student, he’s also taken two years of his life to be a missionary in a foreign land. I have another son who’s a missionary right now over in Africa, and then I have girls who are twins, and they’re just finishing up high school, and then I took five years off of mother, of bearing children, obviously you don’t take five years off of motherhood, but I didn’t have a pregnancy for another five years, and then I went on and had four more kids. I just wanted to make good use of my, you know, child-bearing years, and so in any case, you know, you never really know, am I being a good mom? Am I choosing out of all of those experts who are saying all of those things and all of the ways that people can be judgmental and can, you know, you might feel like, okay, I’m breastfeeding for, in my case, I chose to breastfeed for a couple of years for each of my kids, but that was not always looked on with, you know, proper judgment. People were negatively judgmental, right? So in some cases, using that word good mom is really hard because you just hope for the best, you know?

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yes, let’s call it a successful mother.

Reagan Barnes
Yeah, that’s a good word, and I do think that it does have to be something that you personally accept as a part of your own self-worth. Like there are, you know, mirror neurons, and so if you are feeling confident and successful, I think that that helps your children feel that too, and hopefully be able to move forward in their own lives with that same sense of self-worth and self-confidence. And so anyway, my youngest child is still just three, so I’m still in the midst of all of this motherhood stuff, and I’m not out there trying to convince every mom to be like me. That’s an important part. That’s one reason I chose to create Mamavate as a nonprofit because a nonprofit really can’t be just about one person. It has to be a teamwork effort, and I think all of motherhood needs to be more of a team effort. We’ve created these, there’s a term that we use for women who are dedicated to motherhood solely, and we use this term that says stay-at-home mom, and I just feel like that’s a subliminal message coming through that we have to be careful about, that we’re telling moms to go be isolated and just stay at home, and that there’s not, we women are social creatures, and inside the walls of our own home, generally speaking, there aren’t a lot of other adults. In my case, my mom lives with me, so I do get to have her if I were to choose to be a stay-at-home mom, I would have her as a social person, but I just really steer away from that term. I call myself a full-time mom, and that might get across a different connotation, right, than stay-at-home mom.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Now, I never looked at stay-at-home moms as, you know, the way you described it. I thought that that was, you know, some women choose to do that, you know. In other words, I just saw it as stay-at-home mom meaning that you don’t work, I mean, you don’t work outside of the home.

Reagan Barnes
Right, and in these days, that’s getting to be less and less of an option. Again, I mean, the house rental rates or mortgage rates, things like that are just getting to where women who, even if they in their heart of hearts would love to quote-unquote stay at home, they’re having to put their children in daycare, and it’s really hard for them. And so we really like the idea of full-time mom because that still encompasses those women. We like the idea of remote work. We feel like this whole, that might be one of the pandemic opportunities that we can focus on that came good out of the pandemic, right, one of those repercussions that’s actually a blessing in disguise. And so, yeah, we feel like rather than using that, and I agree with you, I think for the most part, society hears the term stay-at-home mom, and they just kind of categorize that the way that most people do, like you said. But I’m so concerned about the isolation that that subliminally sends on a subconscious level that says, you know, don’t reach out for help because you have to stay at home, and don’t go find friends because you have to stay at home, you know, like there’s just things there that are really kind of negative connotations, and it makes this seem like if a woman does need to work, that she might not be as dedicated. And so that’s a difficult concept, and we want to help moms be dedicated no matter what their working situation is, you know, because really and truly, women can stay at home and still be neglectful, right? So it’s not necessarily your location as a mom that is going to determine successfulness or not, but I think it’s more your attitude, very much your attitude and an acknowledgment and an acceptance of the challenges of motherhood, which are going to look different for every mom. In my mom’s case, the challenge was that she couldn’t be a full-time mom, you know, but for some women, the challenge is that they are full-time moms, and they feel like they’re going crazy, you know?

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Let me ask you a question. Do you think that there should be classes for maybe high school girls or college girls on how to be a successful mother? Because I know we don’t have that, you know, right? You hope that you can be a successful mom, and some of us have a mother who we can emulate, some of us don’t. And so what do you think?

Reagan Barnes
Well, I think that what has to happen is inside the woman’s heart, she has to want those classes, and then if she can realize that they are available, then that’s the ideal. But you know how sometimes with schooling with our kids, for instance, we tell them you have to go learn algebra, and they think, ugh, when will I ever use that? You know, the best kind of education will come when a child or young adult, young woman realizes she needs it and then seeks it out. And so Mamavate is here with a lot of good information. Mindset, I think, is even more powerful. If we can teach mindset and principles, then that mom, that kind of gives her wings, so to speak, you know? And as you mentioned, sometimes we don’t have an example to look at, and you know, in a lot of ways, that was my situation. Having grown up, my mom was just gone. She worked three jobs, you know? And I kind of say there’s no such thing as a single-parent home because once one parent leaves, then the other parent has to be gone all the time too. And that’s just a difficult hand to deal to our next generation. They need their parents, and they need their parents to be a good team, whether it’s the way that, for instance, my husband and I have it set up where he earns the money and I spend it, or whatever that teamwork is, the kids need that. And so if we can help by teaching relationships principles, and that’s why I’m so excited to know about you and have this opportunity to chit-chat with you about relationships and how essential they are. And there’s all different kinds of relationships, right? We need, first and foremost, we need a good relationship with our higher being. We need to acknowledge that he exists, whether we call him God or Heavenly Father, or, you know, some people just use a real general universe idea. But realizing that there is a creator, in my case, I do see him as a father and loving God, and so that’s been a beautiful relationship for me personally to develop and include in my mothering. I actually also believe that he has a wife, and that somewhere up there is a heavenly mother too. And so for me, that’s been a beautiful concept to consider, and that they are a team helping me through my mortal journey. And then my relationship with my husband is really critical in my success as a mom, not just because of the monetary part, that’s a beautiful thing, I’m really grateful when, yeah, when his, you know, but he is kind of my yin to my yang or whatever, like he provides a different perspective for our kids, he provides a different form of discipline than I do, and that helps our children actually to realize that there are different ways of viewing things, different ways of accomplishing something, getting to a goal. That actually has been really helpful to our kids to be exposed to those different ideas, you know, from my husband’s perspective, because that’s another adult that they can trust, another adult that they can kind of gauge their goals and ideas with, and he gives them that perspective that I don’t necessarily have, you know, just because I’m a different person too.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Right, I agree that it’s, you know, kids need mother and father because there are two different perspectives. But let, you touched on something just a little earlier, and I wanted to go into what you call Christ-like parenting.

Reagan Barnes
Oh yeah, I really, I read a book called that. It was written by a behavior therapist, and it was just very uplifting. I am a Christian, and so to look at Jesus Christ as a model was exciting to me because, as you know, biblically, we don’t see him as a parent. We see his mortal life here as described in the New Testament, but we don’t, it was a way in that book, what they did was they took those biblical stories that we’re familiar with, and they related it to parenthood, and that was just exciting for me personally to look at his legacy of love. Christ was just a bomb of love, like I don’t even know how to describe it, but everywhere he went, that was his goal, was for people to feel his love, and I really, really hung on to that as a mom. I feel like I grew up a little bit love impaired, having been abandoned by my father. I mean, he was my father, he was supposed to take care of me, and he didn’t, and in some ways, that kind of rubbed off on me wrong to where I had a, you know, a lot of selfish concerns, like I was kind of out to take care of myself and not be worried about other people. And so when this concept of Christ-like parenting taught me to think differently and not necessarily make it about myself, but to be seeking ways to bless the lives of others, particularly my children in this case of parenting, but I just really appreciated that. So thank you for giving me that chance to talk about that.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Of course. So now I have to make, I have to take a couple of breaks, and we will be right back because I have some other questions. I really want to know all about what your nonprofit does.

Reagan Barnes
Oh, great.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So we’ll go into that then. So we’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.

Reagan Barnes
Alrighty. [Applause] [Music]

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Hi, we are back with Reagan of Mamavate, and we are going to talk about Mamavate because I want to know all about it. So Reagan, tell us.

Reagan Barnes
Well, so Mamavate is a play on the word motivate, but we put that M in the middle to indicate that we serve moms. We purposely made it a nonprofit because moms, you already give so much. You give your time, you give your sanity, you give birth, you don’t need to give your money also. And our goal is to provide for you four different areas of services, and they end in vate also. So we want to activate moms. We believe that moms are a powerful force designed to move society into the next generation. So we want to activate moms. We want to cultivate maternal instincts as though they’re like seeds in our souls, right? Instincts really are just the beginning of something, and cultivating is that next vate word. If we can cultivate those seeds into flower power, right, and help moms feel confident beyond the instinctive stage, but to learn the best possible outcome-oriented, results-based parenting skills. And so that’s activate and cultivate. Then we want to innovate. We notice that motherhood has not evolved alongside, in fact, just according to some sources, they would say motherhood is obsolete. We are a very forward-looking organization. We don’t have any desire to go back to the 1950s, while at the same time, we know that our children need us, so we cannot abandon our children pursuing other less long-lasting goals. We need, if we’re going to choose to have children, let’s be dedicated to them, but let’s innovate and let’s solve the problems that are facing mothers, and in some cases, it’s keeping women from wanting to be mothers. They look at motherhood, and they get a really bad feeling about it because of some of the cultural things we’ve been doing that make motherhood just too challenging, and so they choose not to be moms. But we believe that we can constructively and conscientiously innovate to solve some of those challenges and move forward with motherhood and help motherhood evolve right alongside the rest of society. And so that is our word innovate. And then we’ve got the word elevate, and that is just like it sounds. We just want to upgrade the respect that is given to the role of motherhood. Like I said, for some people, they think motherhood is just old-fashioned, and we just need to leave it in the dust like we have for the profession of lamplighter or a switchboard operator, right? Those are just professions of the past, and we actually say no, motherhood is just as relevant as it ever has been, and perhaps even more so. We need to put a lot of effort into getting our children that strong basic foundation of love, and so we want other people to recognize that. So we want to elevate the respect given to mothers by the rest of society. And in one place that plays out is in the workforce. People who are looking at hiring women who have stepped away from the workforce in order to raise their kids, they don’t look very kindly on that. There is a lot of negativity towards that, and what we want to help change is that paradigm, that misunderstanding that those women have just kind of been staying at home sitting around watching TV or something. No, when those women are deliberate and intentional mothers, they’re actually building this cadre of phenomenal skills that are going to be valuable to any employer. And so that is something we plan to do is advocate among employers and help them see what mothers are doing besides just raising the next generation of employees. They are themselves becoming wonderful employees with, we call this the RAISE acronym, R-A-I-S-E, RAISE. And these are, again, the R’s for relationships, the A is for atmosphere, and think about this from an employer’s perspective. These women have these phenomenal skills of good relationships and building a good atmosphere in the workplace. The I is for income and outgo, so these are women who have put a lot of effort into figuring out finances. The S in RAISE is for systems and schedules, which, you know, that’s in the case of motherhood, that’s a lot of, you know, figuring out chores and screen time and those kinds of systems and schedules in the home, but that obviously translates into the workplace. And that as a mother has been doing all of those home management things, she’s going to bring those skills into the workforce. And then the E in RAISE is for energy. So these are skills that sound like physical because they’re eating and exercise and sleep, but those are the skills that influence our mental health. And if you talk to employers these days, they are running into so many mental health issues among their employees, and that is something that moms can address those issues and problems. It requires a lot of repetition, and kids need that. They just need to hear it from mom over and over and over, all of those things about nutrition, about getting to bed on time, you know, and if the mom isn’t available to help with those things, then the kids are missing out. And moms need to embrace that repetition as just part of motherhood. I always say to myself, you know, because there’s that phrase, if I’ve said it a thousand times, you know, but that’s the thousand times, if that’s what it takes for them to learn it, then I’m willing, I’ll commit to those thousand times. And it’s taught me so much patience, and think about if a world is full of people who have been practicing patience, that’s gonna be a better world, right? And when our children see us practicing patience, they mirror that. They announce a critical thing that is kind of a missing link going on when moms don’t have the time to do all of that repeating, you know, because they’re trying to, I think about it, my life seems luxurious in a lot of ways. Part of it is because I don’t have the stress of a schedule of having to get up and get out the door and get the kid to the daycare and, you know, get to work at a certain time, you know, I don’t have that particular stress. Now, of course, my kids are in school, so we do have to make sure we’re up and ready for school, but that’s, I think that feels different to kids than having to get up and go because mom has to be somewhere. Does that make sense?

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yes, it does make sense, you know, and I’m thinking about you because you’re blessed to have your husband there and your mother there.

Reagan Barnes
Yes.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
But there are so many women who don’t.

Reagan Barnes
Well, and that’s part of what Mamavate is interested in fixing, and then there’s going to be different ways to address that, right? So that fits in under our innovate, and I would love, can I just invite people to come to our website?

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yeah, now I have it here.

Reagan Barnes
Our website, we want to give away a 34-page packet that has these ideas all, I mean, 34 pages, that is a considerable number of ideas, right, of how to get out of your house or give another mom the opportunity, and that’s the beautiful thing is it’s this teamwork concept. We call it mom pods, and it is, it’s one of our ways to innovate to really bring motherhood into the 21st century, and it’s designed for you. Again, that’s 34 pages. We’ve got worksheets in there of how to work this out with another mom. We have sample kind of like illustrations of what the mom pod can look like and what the purpose of it can be, but it’s this essentially a team that you create with one or two other moms. We don’t think it’s gonna be as useful if you get to a bigger group than three moms, but if there’s one or two other moms that you can work with and build this mom pod where each of you takes turns getting to do something, whether it’s self-care, because that’s, over these couple of last few years, as self-care has become such a buzzword, I can just see moms rolling their eyes and saying, when, when do I get self-care? You know, I’m in charge of all these little beings, and they rely on me, and I just don’t get it. When do I get to do this? And so this mom-pod time frame can be that. It can be the opportunity for self-care, and it can be a hobby. If you just need a hobby for your mental health, please set up this mom pod and get, but the beautiful thing about it is it’s not just about you. Then you take a turn, then the focus, or I mean, the mom in charge of the kids, and you do this all in the same household, so you’re also getting to chit-chat with each other because moms need that socialness, you know? But when the kids need something, then you’re the first responder, so to speak, that’s what we call it, and the other mom gets to focus on what she wants to focus on, and it might even be a part-time job. Now that we’re getting to where remote work is more possible and accessible, that mom might bring her laptop over and get some work done while you are being in charge of the kids. But if you do that in your own home, that’s what we recommend, is that when you are the kids’ mom, you host the mom pod at your house because then you can be doing laundry, you can be fixing meals, you know, all the things that moms need time to do, but we don’t always have time. But the kids, in general, the kids play nicely together. You even set up a script of how to handle things if the kids aren’t getting along, and the beautiful thing about coming up with that script together as a mom pod is you trust what that other mom is gonna say if your child hits someone when the other mom is in charge. You know that that mom has agreed to this script of how to handle the hitting, and that she’s not going to do something that’s uncomfortable for you.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
One time.

Reagan Barnes
A trust factor.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Exactly, exactly.

Reagan Barnes
And it doesn’t cost anything, so there’s no expenses as if you were gonna go put your children into daycare. There’s gonna be far fewer germs than a daycare is, right? There’s gonna be a lot more flexibility, like for a breastfeeding mom, she’s gonna feel like, okay, well, I’m just in the next room, so if my mom pod friend really feels like your baby just needs to nurse, then she can just bring the baby to me, and it’s no big deal. But in the meantime, I’ve gotten to have some time to myself and not feel like life is overwhelming, you know, which motherhood can be, and I’ve been there, and so I know.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
I wanted to ask you this quickly. A question came in, is now how do you advocate with employers? Because you know, you’re talking about all the skills that mothers have, and let’s say, do you have a program or something where you go into organizations or the workforce so that employers know that hiring a mother is not a negative thing? Because most of the time, you think about, well, do you have a babysitter? Is there going to be an issue with you taking off and that your child is sick or when you don’t have a babysitter? So they look at the negative part, but what about like all the skills? Is there a program or anything that you do with employers to advocate for mothers?

Reagan Barnes
Well, just being that we are so new, we are mostly in the idea stage that way, but one way we have actually moved forward in that sense is to attend career fairs, and we like the idea of this. We’ve done it. We’ve attended a couple of career fairs at colleges, and that serves us two purposes. It brings it back into the forefront of people’s minds, both the young women and the young men, that motherhood is a viable career choice. Now, if the young women buy into that, then that’s great because they might not have ever heard that concept before. This generation that’s growing up right now might not even be aware that some moms are full-time moms, you know? And the young men need to be aware of that because they could give that gift to their children. I will be the breadwinner so that you children can have a mom full-time, and what a beautiful gift for a man to be willing to give. So anyways, that’s one of the reasons we show up at career fairs, but the other reason is we can walk around to the other booths, and we can have conversations with those hiring and recruiting people, and we can put that bug in their ear. Look, motherhood is critical to society, and we need to be very supportive of mothers. We need to acknowledge that even if that mother is employed by you, her children need to be her highest priority, and you need to support her in that. If she does call in sick, you don’t reprimand, you don’t give her any trouble about that. In fact, you go ahead and say, wonderful, or I mean, I’m so sorry your child is sick, right? But you go be with that baby. That baby needs you when that baby is sick, and that’s going to be one of the most powerful changes that an employer can make is acknowledging the reality of motherhood and yet that mothers are very valuable employees for lots of reasons, and to give moms that flexibility and feel like partners in that instead of feeling like this is creating a wedge between the employer and the employee. Instead, employers grab this new concept that you can give moms that. I heard of one company, this is phenomenal, they grant mothers unlimited unpaid time off. So it’s okay that it’s unpaid because she’s not able to be there, but she knows her job is not at risk because it’s unlimited. So she’s already going to bear the brunt of not getting paid for that time off, right? So she’s not going to take too much of that time, but she’s not worried about getting to like some kind of cap or some kind of arbitrary limit, right? And I just really felt like wonderful for that company to have that kind of family-friendly policy. And of course, it needs to be unlimited unpaid, like that makes sense economically.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yes.

Reagan Barnes
And they can offer some paid time off, just niceness, but if they’re going to go to the unlimited, then the other side of the coin needs to be that it’s unpaid, but that mom can take it without any concern of any negative repercussions, and there won’t be any kind of punishment or possibility of losing her job.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
That’s great. And again, this concept of the remote work is phenomenal.

Reagan Barnes
Right.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
A company is a company that I’m sure a lot of women would seek. Now, before we go, because we don’t only have a few minutes on your Mamavate, now you have something called the Wall of Honor. Tell us about that.

Reagan Barnes
Well, we just feel like all moms are worthy of honor, and so anybody can go on there and nominate a fellow mom. They could even nominate themselves if they wanted to. Well, we call it maminate, but that is where we just want to say thank you to moms, and we feel like, you know, they are, in a lot of ways, they’re sacrificing, and that word is not a happy word in today’s society, right? So we want to honor that sacrifice and acknowledge that, like, really the point of sacrificing something is because you believe you’re gonna get something better in the long run. It’s more of an investment is really what it is. So when you invest money, you don’t have that money available to go and spend, and you realize that. And so the investment of the five or ten years that a mother puts into the real intensive parts of mothering, she can’t do two things at the same time with her time, so that is an investment rather than a sacrifice, but it has payoffs, and it has payoffs for all of society, not just and including ourselves. A phenomenal, wonderful thing about motherhood is that you might think you’re doing it for the sake of your kids, but it impacts you, and you personally benefit so much from these attitudes and the mindset, like I mentioned, that’s a big part of Mamavate, is that mindset of going into motherhood and how when you surrender is when you actually gain the victory. It’s a very…

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
If I wasn’t a mother after talking with you, because I think it’s great, I mean, it’s really, really great that you are focusing on motherhood. I wanted you on my show because actually, you’re the first person that I’ve talked to that really, really keyed in on, you know, the joy, so to speak, and the challenges of being a successful mom. So now if people want to get in contact with you, they can go to chairmom@mamavate.org.

Reagan Barnes
Yeah, that’s my email address, so yes, I’m happy for them to email directly to me. So you do have to notice the wordplay there. I am the chair mom. I even say I’m the chair mom of the motherboard, so we really like wordplay.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
We had a quick comment right before we leave, are leaving, but Sandy Barney Innocent, I would have loved that as F, and I know she’s talking about, you know, working, and with most times, women are afraid of taking off for the fear of losing their jobs, and that’s exactly, Sandy, you are exactly right. So Reagan, we are just about out of time. I want to thank you so much for being a guest on my show. I thank you, and I want to tell people quickly that Reagan is on the Win Win Women TV Network every Saturday at 3 PM Pacific time, every Saturday, 3 PM Pacific, and you want to hear some more, get some more value about all things motherhood, you’ve got to go to Win Win Women TV, find Mamavate, and you’ll get a lot of value from her show. So thank you so much, Reagan. I really appreciate it. You have to come back, and you know what? I’m gonna tell these young girls, look, you need to tune into this, watch this episode, but then you also need to go to Win Win Women TV, especially you young ladies who are like, hey, I don’t know if I want a kid, I don’t know if I want to be a mom, but yeah. So thank you so much, Reagan.

Reagan Barnes
Thank you, what a pleasure it’s been.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yes, it has been, so you have a beautiful blessed rest of your evening. Bye-bye. Wow, this has been great. This has been great. I have learned so much from Reagan and just a lot of things that I didn’t even think about as far as motherhood is concerned. But before we go, just gotta come go to another promo before I get out of here. Here we go. [Music] Now, if you would like to be a guest on the show, just submit a headshot and a brief bio to relationshipmatterstv@gmail.com. We would love to have you as a guest on our show. And if you would like to advertise on the show and increase your visibility and your bottom line, then contact us at janfornow and put it on here. There it is, contact us at relationshipmatterstv@gmail.com. Next Thursday, we have a masseuse on, and she has, I don’t know what to call her hands, magic hands, but she’s going to talk to us about why we should always try and get a massage, how relaxing it is, and how it’s just good for our bodies, for our mental health, for our spiritual health, and for our physical health. So I’d like to see all of you back here again next Thursday, Relationship Matters TV, 7 PM Central Standard Time. [Music] so [Music] so [Music]