It takes a village
Hello Mama, and welcome to blog post SEVEN of Mumstoppable! Yikes, seven posts already! I cannot believe that this podcast and blog were just ideas two months ago, and now they’re real things! Thank you so much for investing your valuable time with me, and for those of you who are regular readers, thank you so much for sticking with me! I’ve had some lovely emails this week with feedback on and it’s really made my heart sing that you are finding this valuable. As a mum myself, I know just how busy life is, with work, a house to run, a family to look after, and I so so so appreciate you guys coming on this journey with me.
This week, we are looking at how to create our own villages, as well as how we can better create positive connections with others. Let’s go!
For those of you that want to listen - click below to play the podcast:
Otherwise, you can read this week’s show notes below:
Now, when I was looking at topics to cover off with the blog, a few dates jumped off the calendar at me. One was Blue Monday, which we covered off last week. Which reminds me… how did you find the episode? Did you manage to look at your needs yet? Did any of them surprise you? Have you popped them up on your fridge yet? And if so, has it worked to keep you accountable? And has being accountable made a difference to how you feel? I hope the answers to all these questions are positive ones, Mama, and that your cup is feeling full and that you’re coping with the dreary month of January.
Now, along with Blue Monday, January brings with it another really important date, and that’s “Parent Mental Health Day”, which falls this week on 27th January.
Okay so Parent Mental Health Day #stem4pmhd was founded by stem4, a charity that supports young people to build positive mental health. PMHD started in 2022, and was spurred on by “The Cost of Living Crisis, which so closely followed the pandemic, and increased concerns about digital harms, rising rates of mental ill health and the impact of stretched services have further increased parent and carer anxiety and, in some cases, helplessness and hopelessness.”
Each year, PMHD has a theme, and for this year, “it’s an opportunity for parents and carers to acknowledge and discuss their struggles and share in their achievements of connecting positively with each other and the whole family, and to learn ways to connect positively to maximise young people’s mental health.”
Now, given Mumstoppable is all about supporting mums, I obviously want to focus in on that aspect. And this is especially important when we overlay the findings of Peanut’s “The State of Invisibility” report, because they discovered that a staggering 80% of UK mums have experienced loneliness/isolation, and 86% of UK mums wish people would check in on how they were more frequently…!
Now, my kids are a bit older at 8.5 and 10, so I feel like I’m really lucky in that I’m out of those tricky years where often you’re stuck in the house with a baby, or a toddler who has to nap during the day. However I do still remember how that felt… And have very vivid memories of feeling very isolated.
One in particular which comes back to haunt me is the first day my husband went back to work after we’d had our first baby. He’d started a new job the month before I gave birth and so felt really pressured into not taking his full 2 weeks of paternity leave, and so went back to work after a week off.
Now, I was also in a fairly unusual situation in that my parents lived abroad in the US at the time, and so did my sister. And whilst they, and another sister who lived an hour away, had all been to visit a few days after Alfie was born, I remember they had left the country by the time my husband went back to work, and I had never ever ever felt so alone in all my life… And I now had a tiny human to keep alive, on my own, and had no idea what I was doing.
I was also sleep deprived, and remember not feeling at my best, health-wise, so I was really struggling. I had NCT friends, but they were going through their own struggles and whilst they were a great support on WhatsApp and we made the effort to meet for coffee every week or two, it was a very lonely time. The only people I saw were my baby, the midwife (when she popped in for check-ups), and my husband when he came home from work… And I know from speaking to a lot of you on Instagram, and on email, and to my lovely clients that this is common when you have a baby. Particularly when it’s your first baby.
However, the fun doesn’t stop there, Mama, does it? Because for those of you with more than one baby, you might have felt a similar thing when baby 2 or 3 came along? As although it’s different the second or third time around, the isolation can still be there.
I know by the time I had my second baby, Rocco, I had a routine of going to toddler classes with my eldest, and I didn’t want to stop with those as I knew how important social interaction was for Alfie at that age. So I was going through all the motions and dragging baby Rocco to all those classes, which got me out of the house. But I still felt really lonely! And this is despite the fact I had a very supportive, loving husband who was sharing nights with me, and was (and is) the best dad our children could have hoped for.
Looking back, there are things I could have done to help myself.:
I could have asked for help (and actually I did this a few times, but probably not loudly enough!).
I could have told people how I was feeling, although this is easier said than done.
I could have prepared myself better and ensured I had a “village” around me, ready to support me mentally (although it’s all well and good saying that in hindsight)
Looking at your life now, Mama, how do you really feel about your “village”? So many of my clients feel alone - whether they have babies, toddlers or older children. So many feel like, although many have extremely supportive partners, outside of their immediate family unit, they lack support. A surprisingly large amount also tell me they lack support from their own parents and wider family. And that they often feel like unless they themselves are making the effort to connect with them, there is no connection there at all… Does any of this sound familiar?
Given all of this, and the fact that it’s PMHD this week, which has a theme of positive connection, I want to use this week’s #coachingcorner to talk about our village. Now, we’ve all heard the old adage that “it takes a village to raise a child” and that’s all well and good, Mama. But what if, as discussed, our village is spread across the globe, or are just not there to catch us when we fall for whatever reason…? The good news is… we can create our own village! And I don’t just mean to help raise the children (although having a babysitter is a HUGE help!), I mean to support you, Mama, on your journey through motherhood. So, let’s take some time now to make a plan for our village.
Take out that trusty pen and paper, or jot things down in your phone’s notes section, or just have a think for now, and revisit this podcast later if you need to.
Now I want you to divide your paper into two halves… (you can do this either in landscape or portrait), and then divide each half into two, so that you can essentially make 4 lists. Okay good, now label one half “relationships” and the other half “wellness”. Good job! Now, you should have two halves of the paper, each labelled and each with a space for two lists, right? Good, so I want you to label the lists now, one will be called “Have” and one will be called “Recruit” - do that for both halves, so each half has a “need” and a “recruit” list for you to complete.
Okay great work, Mama. Now we get to the fun part…! This is where we are going to go through and list out WHO you currently have within your life as a support for each of these areas (these will go into the “have” lists) and what sort of person you need to recruit for support (these will go into the “recruit” lists).
Before we crack on though, let me say that generally speaking, we will have much more support in our village for those areas we are successful in. And where our village is lacking, we might be struggling in our life.
For example, think about an award winning business woman. She will likely have a mentor, a business coach, and accountant, a team of people working for her, etc etc. Now that’s a proper village, right? In fact it’s more like a city, but whatever.
This same woman though, might be struggling with her health and wellness. And if we were to look at her village in that area, we would likely see that she doesn’t have any role models, doesn’t take fitness classes, doesn’t have friends to go walking with, no PT, no nutritionist, her parents likely never taught or role modelled healthy behaviour, etc etc. Now I’ve used an extreme example, but you get what I mean.
Okay so let’s go ahead and I want you to try to think of a member of your current village who you have supporting you within the “relationships” part of your paper (and by relationships I mean your intimate relationship with your partner, your relationships with your kids, your friends, your wider family group). To make this easier, I want you to think of anyone who comes to mind when I say the following:
Who mentors you in this area? Who role models the behaviour for you? Who can offer you advice as they’ve been through similar things before?
Who are your peers in this area? People who can listen and let you know you’re not alone and to offer you emotional support?
Who is your cheerleader in this area? Supporting you from the sidelines as and when you need it, without judgement or question?
Who is challenging you and keeping you accountable?
Who is giving you practical support? Babysitting the kids when you need a date night to reconnect with your husband, for example?
Those are 5 example “buckets” of people you might want to call on for help within your village, but there may be more or less. You decide what you need as you are compiling your list.
Okay great, now as you’re compiling the list I want you to be VERY conscious of where there are gaps. And where there ARE gaps, do you have anyone in your village who you could lean on MORE for support? Or do you need to go out and recruit someone to fill the role?
Brilliant work, Mama! When you’re done with the “relationships” part of the paper, you can go on and do the same with the “wellness” side.
When you’re done, look at your lists. These people are your village, Mama. These are your support network. The people you can call on to help you. They are people who love you and who would be thrilled to help. So don’t be afraid to ask them! So often we are afraid to call on people to help, where actually a lot of the time people are delighted to help others.
My final note on this is that you can repeat this exercise with any number of areas of your life, from your career (as in the business woman above) to physical fitness, to wealth, to specifically your relationship with your partner, to literally anything you want to work on in your life. It’s a super useful tool to check in with who is in your village, and whether you need to reach out for more help, or recruit people to join your village.
#coachingchallenge
Brilliant work, Mama, well done. This week’s #coachingchallenge is linked to the village design exercise, only I want to bring our focus to other mums we know now. So take a second to think about any mums you know who might be struggling with something and who might either not have a village of their own, or who struggle to ask for help or support.
Bearing in mind that stat from the start of the show, where 86% of UK mums wish people would check in on how they were more frequently, I want you to be brave this week, Mama. And check in on your mum friends. Send them a message. Meet them for coffee. Reconnect with them. And do it from a place of giving. Of wanting to help and support them.
And when you meet them or speak to them, if they start to offload, I want you to either bear in mind or ask them - what do you need right now? Do you just want to be HEARD? Do you want a HUG? Or do you want me to HELP?
This is really important, and something I only learnt in the last 5 or so years, but if you think about it… sometimes you really just want someone to listen to you have a bit of a rant! And them offering you advice just makes you more angry! (Or it does me, anyway). Sometimes you might want a moan and a hug from someone who loves you. Or sometimes you might genuinely want some advice.
So please bear in mind, when offering support, it’s okay to ASK someone what sort of support they need from you. And going back to the theme of this year’s Parent Mental Health Day, that awareness and asking that question will foster really positive connections, which as we know is much needed amongst mums.
And it’s also a great tool to use with your kids, who often won’t know what support they need or want from you until you ask. And it teaches them to also be aware that people need different levels of support at different moments.
And in reaching out to other mums, and in trying to offer a really positive connection through using the 3 Hs, you’re also putting out an amazing energy which I’ve no doubt the Universe will pay back to you in spades.
That brings us to the end of this week’s blog! Thank you once again for joining me, and well done for spending the last 30 mins doing something just for you!
Enjoy working through this week’s coaching corner tips, and as always, I would LOVE to hear how you’re getting on with the coaching challenge, so please feel free to send me a quick email at [email protected] or find me on Instagram at @mumstoppable_ and send me a DM or leave a comment on one of my posts.
You will also be able to find reminders of the coaching corner tips and details of the coaching challenge on Instagram towards the end of the week.
Over the coming weeks I’ll be talking to you about challenges facing mums ranging from feeling lost and like you don’t know who you are anymore, to surviving overwhelm as a mum, to motherhood and the strains that puts on your relationships, to the struggle of returning to work. Please also feel free to email me with any challenges you’re facing which you’d like me to cover off on upcoming sessions.
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For now, though, have an awesome week, and remember:
I see you, Mama.
You’ve got this.
You are Mumstoppable!
