When motherhood feels impossible.

It’s impossible to hold it all! - When yoga, essential oils and journaling are not enough.

A tale of overwhelm and an inspired offering

Well what a week it has been for me personally. Nothing big has happened no huge changes but I have found many parts of this week to be completely overwhelming. Too much and as if I can longer continue in this way. 

If asked I couldn’t put my finger on one particular thing that caused the overwhelm. It wasn’t specifically work, or home, or family but purely the holding it ALL and the expectation that I can do that without dropping any balls.

The weight of expectation.

Is this an expectation I put on myself. Yes definitely! I am the daughter of a single working mother. As a child I didn’t know the definition of true rest and I find it so hard to create time and space for myself to do that because i didn’t have it modelled to me as a child. 

Last week I shared the things I do to keep my nervous system regulated. The things that on a daily basis help me to feel safe… But sometimes these little touches just aren’t enough. 

Thursday is my busiest teaching day and this week I also had the added extra of baking on Wednesday night for a school cake sale. An early collection on Thursday from school to buy said cakes and then the additional stress of baking extra cakes for a gluten free Beatrice! 

And on Thursday morning after dropping the children off I just felt like my head could explode. Over stimulated under so much pressure. (Most of it put on myself…) but is it really? Or is it more the weight of a society that expects so much of women that we cannot help but apply this pressure. Perhaps a good blend of the two. 

Responsibility to myself

My essential oils weren’t cutting it. I couldn’t think to journal and so with the 10 minuets I had spare I went to woods. 

A forward fold - allowing more blood flow into the brain. Another trick to regulate the nervous system.

Breath and nature

I found a spot where the sun light stretched its way through the leaves. My face up turned my feet flat on the floor I began to breathe. Inhale for 4 hold for 6 exhale for 8. repeat. 

This is a powerful breath practice. It helps too slow the mind and also assures the nervous system that it is safe. It has more than enough oxygen to serve the body. It can soften. Rest. 

I was gifted with the sighting of a robin within 30 seconds of leaving my front door, I always think of my grandad when I see them. And later a squirrel my first one this year I think. 

I turned to leave but still felt a sense of unease and for the 10th time tipped myself into a forward fold. I’d been downward dogging for quite a bit of the morning in-between making cups of tea, breakfast, and dressing my little people. 

You have the power - Thank you

As I began teaching a sense of ease flowed as it often does when I see you beautiful women and honour your beautiful pregnant and postnatal bodies with the movement they need and your minds with a safe space to just be where you are at now. 

Hormonal shifts - a cycle settling in

Thursday I think was ovulation day for me. I also think that for my first 3 cycles I didn’t ovulate so this is still a relatively new hormonal state for me. And as a breastfeeding mother of 1 child and with two children who do not sleep through the night of course my body is going to be screaming at me right now NOT to make another baby. It hasn’t got much more to give! Although my bleed has returned I am in NO WAY fit to be growing another human so perhaps that is where this unease and overwhelm has come from. 

Perhaps it’s the weight of wanting deeply to have my own career, but also to be a present mother, one that parents gently and with consideration for the emotional wellbeing of my children. Perhaps its the two FULL washing baskets and the hoovering that needs to be done the shopping that should have been purchased already and the dinners that are yet to be served. 

Perhaps it’s just one of those weeks.

I have come back to words for this sun season season hourly this week. Self worth and intuition. What I really need is time off. And so I have the task of working out how to weave in that time. I will find it I am sure. I have too. 

I’m not sharing this for sympathy, I know many of your will be juggling so much more than I am. Some of you managing on a lot less sleep. Some of you perhaps without a mum close by or a partner at home to help. 

I am sharing today to acknowledge all of you the struggle. In the hard bits of being a mum. Because whilst I consider motherhood the greatest gift I have received and whilst I love the shifts and transitions that have come for me as a result its all still hard work. 

Join me to carve out space for you

And if like me you are seeking that space. I have something, just a little treat a cacao ceremony at Chantry play on Wednesday the 22nd of October. This is for mothers and babies, we will join together to just be, to sip the magical medicine that is cacao and to take part in a creative/journaling activity. It’s an hour where the focus is YOU. £12.00 will include your cacao and all that you need to take part in some time to nourish your body mind and soul. Yes it’s still time with your little one but we have to start somewhere right?