hands-on with mums all the time, supporting them and their kids and trying to figure out why there is so much stress in our mama world these days. So I branched into the online course world to support more mums than the ones existing in my orbit.
The real, deep-down reason, though, is that I had just escaped from a burnout myself.
I've lived it.
I've had the health challenges from it.
I know there are better ways to look after myself.
I mean, if a health-conscious health practitioner can end up in burnout, then what hope does a mama without a health background but with the same work–life balance and stress concerns have?
Crawling out of that place was pretty hard work, and looking back, I totally did it the hard way. On reflection, that is not what I want for the mums in my world. This book is kinda like my recovery love story for you, Mama. It can help you rediscover your health in some pretty easy steps; it can guide you on shifting if you want it; and my biggest aim is to give you so much info that you don't go there in the first place. This book is exactly what I wish I had been told when I was a mum in the early stages, navigating my return to work and my value as a human.
I am so excited that you've picked up this book, or been gifted it. I'm pumped that it has somehow made its way into your orbit. If this is your first lap around this motherhood game, welcome and buckle up. The adventure is phenomenal — at times tough, and at times easy. I still love it to this day! If you are a returning mama-bear, welcome back to the fray! I can't wait to help you navigate, grow and thrive through this round of your motherhood journey.
The big shift into work-life and mum-life, when and if it happens for you, is a modern ideal that is now the norm for mums and we individually navigate it in the best way possible. Thriving through this time in our life is transformative in one way, and really bloody hard in another. Escaping all the burnout challenges occurring in the world in our rushed and busy society, with the lurking pandemic hanging on, is exactly why I'm here on this earth: to help mums reconnect to their health and their ‘self’, and to find that spark and joy. To connect their health and their heart on this motherhood journey.
Motherhood is many things rolled into one. It's the chaos and the calm, the joy and the frustration, the overwhelm and the total fun! It's the love that you can't fathom for these little beings, who can become all encompassing. But a love that is also 100 per cent too much at times. A love that is expected to fall out of the sky the second your child is born, which happens for some, but that also takes time to build and grow for many.
For some, motherhood is a welcome interlude in a busy life, something that has been hoped and dreamed about for years. A pause in a career trajectory, a family situation or a planned event that has finally come to fruition. Our motherhood can spin in so many ways. Perhaps it will be a new beginning as you traverse back into a workplace, or working from home, or whatever the computation of working motherhood is for you.
For others, it may be more of a surprise. Maybe not planned but not unwanted. Or maybe initially it was such a shock that all the choices ran through your head to explore. Whether it's a surprise pregnancy and motherhood journey, or the whole experience of becoming a mother is nothing like the picture it's been painted as—it's a massive shift.
This shift is called ‘matrescence’: the glorious shift from a woman to a mother. Matrescence is going to be explored thoroughly in this book, but in these beginning stages of motherhood, I just want you to know that you aren't alone, that this is you shifting into a new version of yourself.
Working with mums so intently over the past 20-odd years from pre-conception, through matrescence and into motherhood, and especially working with their kids, I've discovered many common themes around support, annoyances, grievances and knowledge blocks that mums would like true and current info about. And there are a whole lot of ways to help a mama out.
The busy and tumultuous times that we live in require us as mothers to navigate a stress load that is quite extreme. The stress of navigating life with work (I'm a strong advocate that mothering is work, by the way, just FYI), kids, partners and expectations of society can really drive a heightened stress level in an entire household.
In this book I will share some research with you, so if you are the kind of mama who likes to know about things, you should find a lot of direction here. Like the info published in Nature Journal in 2019 by Azhari and others, which outlines that there is an interplay between the level of stress in parents and the synchronicity of the mother–child brain connection. Basically, this means that if the mother is stressed, there is less co-regulation (awareness of behaviours, physiological states, etc.) between mother and child — that is, they become less of a unit and the relationship suffers.
I don't know about you, but when I was hurtling towards my burnout time I was not co-regulating how I wanted to. And it felt terrible. If I can just help one mama to avoid that time in their life, or teach them how to dig themselves out when they get there, then that is a massive win for the world.
The essence of this book is about empowering mums the world over to navigate the increasing stress loads of society, particularly as working mums. And to do it with a bit more calm and quiet, health and choices during the busyness and the rush. We are going to explore our often ingrained intergenerational mothering patterns and figure out together how we can change, shift and create a new normal for us and our families.
We will be reimagining a thriving motherhood away from burnout for all mums experiencing the constant heightened stress load of life, towards a collective exploration of options to navigate a different path — to a truly connected, calm and conscious motherhood, with our health, and that of our families', intact.
I can't wait to go on this journey with you!.
About this book
This book might be set up a bit differently from what you expect. I've popped it into three core sections so you can flip around if you want, or just dive into the whole thing from the start. The whole book is designed to give you a guideline to shift and change minus the overwhelm. Small things, over time, will add up to a massive change in your world. The possibilities are exciting.
I have separated this book into three parts:
Part I — WORK — forms the backbone of knowledge about who we are as mums. It covers the stuff that helps us know why we want to change and reflects on where we have come from. It's all about motherhood, stress, burnout, research and how society has aided and abetted us to end up where we are. This part isn't a ‘how-to’ guide; it's more about what. It's about what the hell has happened to us as a mothering culture, and in what ways can we reclaim our ‘self’, our spark and our heart.
Part II — MAMA — is the doing section. Here, I introduce you to the 5 Pillars of Healthy Motherhood: five simple approaches you can use to create shift and change in your world. Each chapter in part II gives you heaps of tools to move yourself back into the zone of health. To explore who you are as a woman and a mother at the same time. And how they are connected and not. How time can be reclaimed so you can do it all without adding to the stress load. Ain't nobody want that!
Part III — LIFE — is where we look at life through the lens of mother, business owner, employee, staying at home and the navigation of each of these things. We integrate
