Episode 17: Building A Supportive Community - Navigating Rejection in Motherhood

Episode 17 — Building Community: Rejection as Redirection

In this episode of A Soulful Mom’s Wisdom, we begin a new monthly theme: building a supportive community. This conversation explores the intersection of rejection, connection, and mental well-being, particularly through the lens of motherhood.

We start by defining community not just as a group, but as a shared experience of alignment—formed through common values, interests, and lived realities. From this foundation, the episode examines how the process of finding that alignment is often shaped by rejection.

A guiding quote anchors the discussion:

“Man’s rejection is God’s redirection.”—Anonymous

This idea reframes rejection as course correction rather than failure. Across different life stages—from childhood through adulthood—rejection shows up in relationships, opportunities, and environments. While often uncomfortable, these experiences can serve as signals, redirecting you toward spaces that are more aligned with who you are and what you need.

In the context of motherhood, this becomes especially relevant. Building a “tribe” is rarely immediate or effortless. There can be missed connections, misalignment, and periods of isolation. However, these experiences are not endpoints—they are part of the filtering process that eventually leads to more meaningful and supportive relationships.

The episode highlights the importance of patience, resilience, and authenticity in this process. Authentic connection requires showing up as yourself, even when it risks rejection. Over time, this approach creates the conditions for deeper, more sustainable relationships.

We also explore the emotional and psychological benefits of finding your community—how shared experiences can reduce isolation, validate challenges, and provide support not only for mothers, but for their children as well.

Ultimately, this episode positions rejection as a necessary component of alignment. It is not something to avoid entirely, but something to interpret with greater clarity and intention.

A closing reflection:
 “Where might rejection in your life be guiding you toward a more aligned community?”

Theme: Building a Supportive Community

Quote:

“Man’s rejection is God’s redirection.” —Anonymous

Episode Highlights

• Introduction to the monthly theme: Building a Supportive Community
 • Reframing rejection as redirection and alignment
 • Exploration of rejection across different life stages
 • The challenges and rewards of building a “tribe” in motherhood
 • Importance of authenticity, patience, and resilience in forming connections
 • Emotional and psychological benefits of supportive community building

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Transcript

Welcome to A Soulful Mom's Wisdom. This is episode 17. Wow. We are on episode 17 already. Y'all, this is so exciting. You know, it doesn't take much for me to get excited. And on this week's episode, we are going to talk about rejection. And you might be wondering how does that tie into prioritizing your mental well being and all the things.

So more on that in a moment. I want to also share first with y'all, as I do in every episode, what the theme is for the month so you can understand what we are focusing on and what we are diving deeper into within our discussions. So for this month, the theme is building a supportive, Community and really quick, cause you know, I like to research and define and different things like that.

So I can make sure we are all clear on what we're talking about. So there's a few definitions online for community, but I feel like the one that resonates with me the most is a feeling of fellowship with others as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests. and goals. You're sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals.

And that gives you a feeling of fellowship. Yeah, I really like that one. So that is what we are focusing on this month. So if you want to hear more about that, then stay tuned. All right...so for today's episode, as always, I'm going to start with the quotes, and then I will dive deeper into how it has informed my life experience and just helped me ultimately put my wellbeing first.

So, man's rejection is God's redirection. This is the quote for this week. And I am not certain Where I heard this quote at first, it's something I have heard multiple times within my lifetime. I do not know who the author is, but it's a quote that has definitely shown up in my life to be true. So, I have noticed that from an early age, rejection is simply a part of life.

You experience rejection with potential friendships. You experience it with the experience of being a child and making it on a team or being invited to an event or party. And that continues throughout life. You also experience it as an adult. That's why I said it continues throughout life because you really do.

You see it show up in different ways, whether it's in some of the ways I just mentioned, being invited to a party or, you know, making a potential friend, starting a potential relationship. You experience rejection in your professional life when you're trying to apply to a job, get a promotion, when you're trying to be a part or join an organization.

So this is what rejection can look like just on the basic level from childhood to adulthood. But I'm also going to talk about rejection today as it relates to motherhood, because for me, I had to go through rejection all over again when it came to motherhood, but it wasn't a bad thing. Like I said, as the quote mentions, man's rejection is God's redirection.

Finding a tribe as a mother can take a lot of time for some of us. And just to be clear, when I say your tribe, I mean exactly what it sounds like, the people who are your community. Right. Going back to the theme of the month the people that you share common attitudes, interests, and goals with. For me and my personal experience of motherhood, it was important to me to build community for so many reasons.

And I did struggle with it. I think I didn't know what to expect, but I think I thought the timing of me building a community would have been a lot quicker. And along that journey of building community or creating, finding my tribe, however you want to think about that. Some relationships just didn't work out and I'll never know why, probably.

I was very intentional in trying to make them work. You know, just doing the basic things you do when you're trying to develop any relationship. And like I said, some just didn't work out. But I also know, It's not always personal when these things just don't work out, especially when you're trying to build your mom tribe.

I think some of the things that can be missed that can impact that journey is location, parenting styles, schedules, so many things. The age of your child. But most importantly, just as I eventually found my tribe, your time will come too. If. You haven't found yours yet. Having a tribe or finding a mom fit has been so instrumental in my life.

It truly gives me a level of balance since it gives me things to look forward to. For example, you. I mean, there's nothing like having a nice conversation with another mom that gets you. And then also your children get along too. Ah, it's perfect. But then there's also so many  other benefits from having a mom tribe or just someone that you connect with that I won't even be able to go into into this episode.

But honestly, I had to learn really quickly that only moms really understand momming, like, I think that is the best way to summarize all those other things that I can't really go into, into this episode, because there's just so many reasons why having a mom tribe is important, but I would think, or I would say one sure way to just [00:06:00] summarize the benefits is that, and yes, I just create the word momming, but.

When you are in motherhood, it is like no other experience on this earth. And you share this experience with only a few other people. And there's just certain things that y'all get without even having to say it. It is just understood. And that's so beautiful because there's so deep breath on that one.

There's so many layers of complexity in parenting. So many y'all. And you know what? It's also really good for your child because I feel like they also get the emotional and psychological benefits when you and other moms are all together. I think sometimes, historically, we have forgotten in parenting that Children, babies, they are adults too.

They need their cups filled with some of the same things that we desire. They desire the emotional and social connection with others, but in a psychologically safe environment. And when you find that, it's beautiful, serious. So here's what I've learned, okay? Because you know I like to wrap up my episodes with call to action or something I've learned, some type of something that can help you today or at some other point in your life.

All right. So for the mom relationships that did work out for me, I felt like I noticed a lot of the following seem to be happening. We have similar parenting styles that we share. We have similar communication preferences. And even if our communication preferences are slightly different, we're comfortable with meeting each other in the middle.

We have common interests. We reciprocate support and understanding while sharing the motherhood experience. together. And I have so much more to talk about on that last part with sharing motherhood experiences together, where there are reciprocations happening of  support and understanding, but I will save that for next week's episode.

So make sure you stay tuned. And as always, I hope you have a wonderful day and an even better week until the next time.