PARENTING
Being a mother is not easy. And we need the resources to be able get through the day, to do what needs to be done with all the many hats we wear as mothers. And it can be exhausting. Mama’s matter, and here we want to inspire and you to put your needs on the table too, because you matter.
Every Mama Matters!
Healing and support for mothers
We are not here to give advice on how to parent. Every mama matters is about healing and support for mothers (and fathers). It is about nurturing your needs during the years of parenting from newborns all the way though the teenage years and beyond.
As mothers we are often the glue that holds the family, and community, together. When we are looking after the needs of our family and community there is very little time left for ourselves.
As a mother, a practitioner looking after the needs of others, and a business owner, it soon became very evident to me that to remain able to support others, I needed to ensure that my cup was full. There were definitely times in my life as a mother I forgot about my own needs and I fell into a heap. As a Chinese medicine practitioner, I have many resources at my finger tips to quickly build my energy and resilience back up again. However, many women don’t have the knowledge on how they can improve their wellbeing – it is not taught to us.
Mothers matter too!
Here at Every Mama matters, it is what we aim to do – to give you that knowledge of how you can care for your wellbeing. It might mean, at times, seeing a practitioner when there is the need. But health can be in your hands and learning how to improve your health and wellbeing it the first step in filling your cup.
Every mama matters is about bringing back the ‘me’ in what we experience. Pregnancy is about the fetus, postpartum is about the baby, motherhood is about the child – where is the ‘me’ in this. As care givers – we often put ourselves last. This is a disservice to not only ourselves, but also to our children, our partners and to our society. Thinking about ‘me’ is not selfish. It is the highest form of care to all of us around us. We need to have a full cup to function. We need a full cup to consciously parent. Parenting is not easy – it will pull your heart strings in all directions, from the most extreme joy and love to moment of complete despair in the times you feel like you are not coping.
Mother depletion
There are many traditions around the world that set new mothers up with resources to mother. Yet here in the west, mothers are generally depleted of energy and resilience. This starts in postpartum where often there is very little support after birth and there is not a great emphasis on healing and recovery after pregnancy and child birth. We are then often isolated, overwhelmed and depleted.
Parenting is not easy. We show up regardless of how many hours sleep we have had, regardless of if we feel sick or well, regardless of how we feel, whether it is sad, fearful, anxious, angry, frustrated or happy. And we hold our children, and attempt to sooth their worries, feed them and watch them grow into adults. This is a delight, no matter how difficult or joyful the journey has been.
Many mothers have children when they are in their 30s or 40s. This means we really need to take care of our health. But even if you have children in your 20s, looking after your health is still paramount to parenting. Mothers are generally depleted, because of poor postpartum recovery and lack of support.
mother self care.
What can you do to avoid or heal mother depletion? Sign up for self care tips, and be the first to know about our self care courses and products.
Filling your cup
nurturing the nurturer
It is never too late to start
Let’s start the movement to acknowledge the impact of modern life on the health and wellbeing of mothers and parents.
In our urbanised society, we have lost the extended family and village to help us, as mothers, raise our children. Birth and parenting is exhausting. And many of us, as mothers, struggle with the demands placed upon us as caregivers.
If you have just stumbled across our website, and your children are teenagers, or adults, it is never too late to start the healing process.
You are a priority
First of all, we need to acknowledge where we are at. Is your energy reservoir full, half empty or empty? Or somewhere in between? By acknowledging where we are at, we then can acknowledge the need for change.
If we believe our energy is at 100%, but we are really running on empty, like the fuel tank running on fumes, then we not going to recognise we need to make changes (and you wouldn’t be here).
The next, is to make the time for yourself. There is a limiting belief that I hear from mothers, that they just don’t have the time. And I know I will get push back from many of you about this. You make time. It is as simple as that. It may not sound simple, but it is a mindset issue, and yes, they are not usually simple to change.
Make time, prioritise yourself. You actually don’t have any choice if you want to fill your cup to be there for your own happiness and welbeing, for your children, your partner, and / or your community. Mindset does matter, and so do you, you matter! It is ok to give yourself permission to believe you matter.
When something is a priority we WILL make the time for it. But too often mothers will not make their health and wellbeing a priority. They sacrifice it for their children, (and their partner), their job or whatever else they deem more important than themselves.
This is why mindset is vital to making change, because you need to see yourself as a priority and as mothers we are just not wired to do this, but to put everything else and everyone else first. It needs to change to have a healthy family, and a healthy society.
Allow yourself to heal, recover and rejuvenate your body and mind
Once we give ourselves permission to stop, and acknowledge we need to focus healing our bodies and our emotions, and we are going to make time to do it. It is now time to start – today.
This is where the wisdom of the elders come in, the wisdom of the traditions of those who came before us. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel and we can marry modern life to ancient medicine traditions. There are the energy medicine traditions of the world. The most well known traditions include Chinese and Ayuvedic medicine. These are two of the oldest medicine traditions in the world and still, to this day, relevant to our health and wellbeing. They both have herbal traditions, body work, and energy exercise that balance and rejuvenate our energy – also known as qi or prana.
There are many traditions – including those from North and South America, Europe, Africa and Australia. Many of them have been lost to the general public.
Self Care
What is self care? We all will have a different meaning. And we need to find what fills our cup. It might be setting up a mothers group, a women’s circle, it might be seeing an herbalist or getting a massage. Here I will be teaching what I have learnt and wish to pass on to all the mothers that are struggling. To teach them the simple methods of looking after themselves through self massage and acupressure, yoga and herbal medicine. These are what you will find in my self care tool box.