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Sophie Messager

Category: Business

  • From impostor to trailblazer: learning to trust your inner pioneer

    From impostor to trailblazer: learning to trust your inner pioneer

    If you are worried about starting something new, read this.

    A few months ago, when I felt stuck after a long time not creating, my neurodivergent coach reminded me that sometimes we do not know whatā€™s right until we try it. She asked me what would excite me. I said that I wanted to teach a course about drumming for birth.Ā 

    I had fears around the fact that it was so niche that nobody would want it. I ran a free webinar. It had a 100 people signup, and was attended by 60 people so I thought, let’s try.

    I nearly cancelled the course because a week or two before I was due to start I only had 3 or 4 students. Then I decided to run it anyway, as a small early adopter group, knowing it would be special to do this, even if it didn’t make sense financially, and I also knew that, inside the container of creating this course, new things would be born. I thrive when I provide knowledge and support to others.

    In the end 10 women signed up, from 6 different countries, and the live sessions on zoom I held over the summer were beautiful and intimate. I loved them. My students had powerful transformative experiences. I get exciting messages from them telling me they’ve drummed at a birth in the hospital. They got tremendous personal growth by doing the course too.

    And now, 4 months on, I have 17 students from 9 different countries. I’ve published an article in a scientific journal about drumming and birth. I’ve started writing a book about drumming, birth, and womenā€™s life transitions. I got the book project accepted by a publisher I’m really excited to work with. I started a podcast. I’m giving a talk about the science of drumming at the convention of women drummers next week, and I’ve been invited to 2 other conferences next year. I’m teaching an in person course in January. Iā€™ve also had my request to write about it in a parenting magazine accepted.

    Don’t give up on trying something new just because you are the first person to do it.

    The pioneerā€™s energy

    Until recently I couldn’t see my gifts. I didn’t think that being able to do things that came easily to me was a big deal. The crisis I experienced over the last few years, working with various coaches and therapists, getting diagnosed with ADHD, and generally becoming a lot kinder to myself, has helped me understand and acknowledge my gifts. I can see what I’m really good at now.

    I should trust this pioneering energy, because it’s been there in my life.Ā  It was there when I was 8 years old and I already knew I would become a scientist. It was there to hold my path steady when I was told, aged 16, that I shouldnā€™t pursue a career in science because I wasnā€™t good enough in maths.

    It was there when I was a biology student, and I refused to study molecular biology despite everyone else studying it. I wanted to study physiology. I was told it was old fashioned. I pursued it anyway and it made me a very desirable employee later on as molecular biologists where two a penny and very few people had the ā€œold fashionedā€ knowledge I had. It was there during my PhD and 2 postdocs when I questioned everything I was told by my supervisor and did things my way.

    It was there when both my 2 postdocs and my first biotech start-up job led each of my bosses and collaborators to publish articles in a higher impact journal than they had even done before. When I shared ideas that more senior people hadnā€™t thought about. It was there when the biggest medical journal in the world, The New England Journal of Medicine, made an editorial decision to include animal data for the first time in the journal (that normally only published human data)Ā  because the story we had was so compelling (a gene without which there was no puberty).

    It was there whenever I changed jobs or career as within a few years I became a name in my field. It was there when I left science to focus on supporting expectant and new parents. When I flew instructors from Germany I wanted to train as a babywearing consultant because there was no training in the UK.Ā  It was there in my obsessive learning, in my desire to understand everything about so many subjects, reading, talking to people and attending countless study days.Ā 

    It was there in my ability to metathink, in my looking at topics from a bird’s eye view and seeing links across far reaching topics (something I now understand to be one of the gifts of my ADHD).

    It was there when I started integrating osteopathic knowledge with rebozo techniques, when I created a new postnatal massage course with an osteopath, when I taught antenatal courses and used my drum to do practise contractions, when I created workshops and online courses about topics that didnā€™t exist before. It was there when I fought and succeeded to get insurance companies to insure babywearing, closing the bones and rebozo techniques.Ā 

    It was there when I wrote my first book, Why Postnatal Recovery Matters.

    Stop wasting your energy with the laggards.

    A few years ago I attended a workshop about change making with Sophie Christophy. In the workshop she drew Rogerā€™s adoption curve. It looked like the picture below.

    Rogerā€™s adoption curve shows how a new product, technology or innovation spreads through a population over time. It looks at the rate of adoption and plots the cumulative number or percentage of adopters on a chart over time.

    The adoption curve shows how early adopters first start using the new innovation, followed by the majority, until a saturation point is reached where most potential adopters have adopted the innovation.

    Key phases of the adoption curve include:

    • Innovators – the first few risk-takers who adopt very early (the pioneers)
    • Early adopters – next group who embrace new innovations, influential in spreading the word (the people you need to reach with your new idea)
    • Early majority – big wave of adoption, pragmatists who require proof and recommendations
    • Late majority – only adopt after the average person, sceptical, need pressure from peers.
    • Laggards – last to adopt, very conservative, only accept once innovation is commonplace (the kind of people who would only stop using a rotary phone once it’s no longer available).

    You do not need to worry about the last 3 categories, because they will only adopt your idea after each of the previous categories has done so. You only need to focus on the early adopters. See how much easier it makes it? You only need to worry about reaching 13.5% of your potential audience. And how liberating it is to notice that you do not need to speak to the laggards.

    This workshop was a defining moment for me, because I finally understood that my inability to affect change within the local maternity care system wasnā€™t due to my not trying hard enough (I used to beat myself up about this), but rather to the fact that I was talking to the wrong group.

    I completely stopped wasting my energy in maternity care meetings after that, and focused on finding early adopters and champions where I wanted to make change happen. This is how I ended up training all the local NICU nurses in using slings to support parents.

    Now thankfully I recognise the signs. I look for the early adopters. I cast my net wide to connect with like minded people. I trust that the right people will find me.

    I no longer feel the need to justify my offerings. I share my stuff from a place of authenticity, warts and all, knowing that it will resonate with the right people, and that, if it puts people off, these arenā€™t the people I want to work with. I no longer waste energy in trying to explain things to people who approach me from a place of judgement instead of curiosity. I do a lot of blocking and deleting on social media.

    I find this really helpful when starting something new in taming my inner impostor. Its voice is quite small these days.

    It doesnā€™t mean that it isnā€™t scary and that I donā€™t worry that nobody will want what Iā€™m offering and that I donā€™t doubt myself. But I recognise the pioneerā€™s process, and feel a deep sense of excitement, especially when I realise that nobody else has been where Iā€™m going. I thrive on it.Ā 

    Do you worry that you are doing something so new that nobody will want it? Does it feel scary or exciting or both? Iā€™d love to hear your stories. Just comment below this blog, or message me.

     

  • How to ease back into work gently after a holiday

    How to ease back into work gently after a holiday

    I’ve just taken a much needed break, as I do every summer, visiting my family in France. I did a lot of catching up with my family, a lot of swimming (including in the sea-bliss!) a lot of reading, and mostly a lot of just being and relaxing.

    In the past, I found returning to work after a break stressful, because of the accumulation of messages and tasks whilst I was away. Every year the weight of the many tasks, combined with the change of pace, and the struggle to return to a “normal” working rhythms meant that I used to feel a lot of pressure. Now I do things differently. I want to share some simple things I do to make returning to work less stressful :

    Before the break

    Put your holidays in your diary a long time in advance. This way you can plan your work around the breaks. There are 2 main reasons for this: 1) to know your capacity around that time and not over plan a number of unachievable tasks 2) to make sure that you can truly relax (and avoid feeling guilty about not doing work) whilst on holiday. In a previous blog I explained the importance of truly switching off as a solopreneur. This goes a long way in building confidence, being realistic about what you can achieve, and avoid guilt.

    Planning ahead means that I sometimes do more work in advance, to make sure that there arenā€™t major tasks needing to be done during my break, and to plain my income around the break. When you work for yourself, you donā€™t earn money whilst on holiday and this can be difficult if income is tight. I often launch new courses ahead of breaks, in order to feel content and secure during the break. It also gives me a much needed deadline to complete the course by, which really helps me produce the course content on time. This year I startedĀ  teaching a course before my holiday and I factored in the break within the course, which gave my students times to practise. It also gives me something driving me forward when I return.

    During the break

    Make a conscious decision not to do to anything work wise unless it 1) cannot wait 2) It gives you joy and you donā€™t resent it. This is especially important as, since 2020 there has been numerous occasions where many of us could not be away from home during breaks. I made the mistake to carry on working several times, albeit at a lower pace, and didnā€™t feel refreshed by the end of the break. Iā€™ve learnt over and over that stepping out of work completely and adopting a different, more relaxed pace of life, is a great source of renewed creativity for everyone.

    After the break

    Be gentle with yourself. After a change of rhythm it can take a few days before you feel like you are back into the swing of things. The change of pace combined with accumulated tasks can feel stressful and overwhelming.Ā 

    Allow extra time for planning. It is easy to try and get back into ‘doing’ and losing sight of what is really important. Tune in how you want your month, week or day to feel rather than getting bogged down into lots of tiny little tasks. I find the 3 things model very helpful. When feeling overwhelmed, ask yourself, if I could only do 3 things, what would these things be? Apply the same model for longer term planning as well as shorter termĀ  (I do a 3 months, then a monthly, then weekly and daily plan).

    Give yourself 2 or 3 days of gently easing back into work. Doing some planning and dealing with the stuff that accumulated whilst you were away. I try to ease gently into my normal work rhythm, at a slower pace than normal. I like to think about it the same way I look at physical fitness: if you had taken a break from running for a couple of weeks, you would restart your training gradually again, and not expect to be able to run a marathon on the first day!

    I hope this helps you be kind to yourself, and ease your back from holiday overwhelm. I would love to hear if you have any other tips or suggestions.

     

  • Unseen Brilliance: ADHD, Witnessing Your Gifts, and Empowering Others to See Theirs

    Unseen Brilliance: ADHD, Witnessing Your Gifts, and Empowering Others to See Theirs

    Last week, I got diagnosed with ADHD (more on that in a future post), and I also taught a webinar about closing the bones, as well as a 2 day face to face closing the bones workshop.Ā 

    It was the first time I taught this course in person for a couple of years. It gave me a lot of space for reflection. I reflected about how much Iā€™ve grown, but mostly, about how much love and effort I put in everything I do, and how I wasnā€™t able to see this until now, because when things come to me easily, I tend to take them for granted.

    If, like me, you tend to be blind to your gifts, and focus mostly on what you are not doing, I hope this post will be helpful. Iā€™ll also suggest practical ways to change this.

    This is different from impostor syndrome, something I have managed to tame over the years, but something I also know is common, because I saw it in the doulas I mentored over the year, and I see it in my students all the time.

    Listening to an episode of the ADHD for Smart Ass Women, I learnt that people with ADHD tend to have an ā€œangry neighbourā€ inner critic, as they cannot quite access the ā€œfriendly butlerā€ voice of the prefrontal cortex. People with ADHD often also have rejection sensitive dysphoria, which is different from impostor syndrome. I plan to write something to disentangle the two in the future.

    It is an ongoing practice for me, to undo years of pattern in my brain. Itā€™s only since Iā€™ve been consciously focusing on this that I have become aware of how much of a perfectionist I am, and how my inner voice is a harsh critic.Ā 

    From 2016 to 2020, I taught at least a couple of workshops per month, travelling up and down the UK, and sometimes abroad. The pandemic and changing family circumstances led me to start offering my teaching as online courses (5 so far). Whilst I am delighted to have over 600 students from many different countries, and grateful for this as a source of income, there is something about teaching face to face and being in ceremonial space with like minded women that brings me unparalleled joy.

    Because I hadnā€™t taught this workshop for a while, I finally got a full measure of how much effort I put into this work, and I decided to write about it.

    Ā  Ā Ā Hereā€™s the prep I did for the workshop:

    • I rewrote the entire course handouts, to keep it up to date, and because I had recently reshot all of the course tutorial videos with a professional photographer. My handout is designed for students to have something to fall back on: a description, picture, and video tutorial of each of the techniques, as well as a description by an osteopath about what they do on the body.Ā  I have been to many trainings, including with people a lot more famous than me, and I have never come across anyone else who provides such a detailed handout.
    • I printed all the handouts for my students, on premium paper, then placed each of them inside a folder.
    • I rewrote my entire teaching plan (because Iā€™ve learnt new things and I want to share them).
    • I packed all my kit for teaching
    • Iā€™m someone who likes to bring ALL THE THINGS. I have always been. So when I pack for teaching (this was true ten years ago when I taught antenatal classes, or even when I taught free babywearing drop in clinics), itā€™s BIG. Packing takes the most part of a day before the workshop. Itā€™s harder and more time consuming to do now as my ADHD brain (I didnā€™t get severe symptoms until I hit the perimenopause), finds it hard to organise things and gets sidetracked and overwhelmed (this video illustrates this issue very well).
    • The teaching kit includes a lot of rebozos (some for practising, some for selling), some blankets a pelvis, altar items, a drum, a bluetooth speaker and essential oil diffuser, smudge and oils, some flowers for the altar, teas, coffee, and biscuits, and this time I also baked a groaning cake and make chia pudding and salad for the shared lunches.
    • All in all, it took over a week of prep. And this isnā€™t counting the work to advertise and share the workshop., hiring the venue etc.

    Ā Ā On the day of the workshop itself:

    • I drove there really early (45 min before people were due to start arriving) because I like to set the room up and be ready before people arrive. (ADHDers can be time blind, and often late, but in my case, itā€™s the opposite: Iā€™m always early as being late causes me anxiety).
    • I set up the chairs, the mats, the altar, the rebozos. I made it all very pretty. I was grateful to have the help of a student who is also a friend to do this.
    • I also set up the space energetically, both clearing and setting it up for being the right space to hold the teaching.
    • I prepared the drinks and cakes etc in the kitchen (this type my friend Malwina did this and I was very grateful)
    • This is what it looked like:

    The teaching:

    • Teaching closing the bones requires a lot of work, both in terms of time keeping (letting important discussion happen and encouraging sharing, whilst also keeping to the teaching plan). It also requires a lot of space holding as people often have big emotional releases during this work.
    • I have over 10 years of experience teaching this, and I always refine it. I am very good at holding space safely whilst I do this. I also have training in teaching, and I know how to make sure my students leave the workshop feeling confident, and I make myself available to support them and answer questions etc. (Again this is something that is less common than you think-with a lot of people I have trained with, I have found it impossible to get support after the training had ended.). I even support students I trained years ago, including giving them free copies of my updated handout.
    • I love it, it makes my soul sing and nourishes me to spend time sharing this and in ceremony with a group of women, but at the end of each day I crash, and then it takes me a couple of days of rest to recover.

    Packing up

    • When the workshop is finished, I need to pack up. Fold all the mats and rebozos, put them back into bags, put back the chairs, wash and tidy up the kitchen, put everything back in the car. Here, even with the help of 3 students who stayed behind, it took about 45min to complete.
    • Then I get home and near to wash all the rebozos and blankets (here I used about 30 of them!), and pack up my kit back where it belongs.
    • Here is a picture of my packed kit after the workshop was finished, and also the boot of my car filled with kit (there was as much stuff on the back seats too-it barely fits in my car).

    Ā  Ā 

    Working with business mentor George Kao Iā€™ve learnt to write manuals that includes all the step when I create and do something, and my the manual for this workshop is very long and has hundreds of steps.

    The feedback I get speaks for itself, as time and time again, I get people who are delighted about the training.

    • “I loved the balance of information, the explanations with your pelvis model, hearing your real life experience and stories, all the thoughtful extras: the tea, cake, the drums, your care, the love you oooze is incredible”
    • “The teaching was excellent: thorough, well organised, I felt safe, heard, understood. As a facilitator, Sophie is very professional, embodied and kind. I appreciated Sophie’s intuitive nature, and her combination of cognitive and intuitive approach”
    • “Everything was amazing. A great balance of hands on and explanation”

    But when you see me teach, the preparation work is invisible. And in some ways it is invisible to me too. Writing this blog has been quite enlightening in this regard.

    So if you are, like me, blind to your gifts, here are some suggestions that might help.

    • Write a Ta-Da list at the end of each week. Set a timer for 5 min and quickly write all the big tasks youā€™ve done that week. I write my wellbeing tasks, then family tasks, then work tasks. Every single time my mind is blown by the fact that I’ve forgotten most of what I’ve done, and have a feeling that I’ve not achieved much.
    • Write a Hat Manual (something I learnt from George Kao) for each of your big work processes. If you wear many hats in your business, writing a manual for each “hat” (I have one for big things like creating webinars, or for creating and teaching courses) means that the next time you do it, youā€™ll have a recipe to follow and you won’t need to reinvent the wheel. You can then review and improve the process. It also let you look at all the steps you took to do something, which helps make you more aware of how much work you do.
    • Keep a brag file. I use a word document, and I copy and paste into it every time someone gives me positive feedback. Read it from time to time.
    • Find a way to look at whatā€™s in your head. Journal, draw, reflect, talk to a kind friend or two. I took the Doodle your Emotions course last year and it works for me better than journaling. It allows me to become my own therapist.
    • Ask for kind friends to witness what you do. Itā€™s been transformative for me to become part of a community who loves me for who I am and reminds me that I am welcome to turn up at a gathering just by myself (and without a cake!). I also worked with a coach who showed me that being witness is a vital for me, otherwise I cannot see my gifts. Other people see strengths and gifts in you that you can often not see. I talk about this in my post The Kindness Boomerang.

    I hope this helps, and if you resonate, please comment below. Iā€™d love to hear about your experience.

     

  • Do you feel overwhelmed on Monday mornings?

    Do you feel overwhelmed on Monday mornings?

    Every Monday morning, I sit at my desk and feel a sense of overwhelm. Itā€™s odd because I have a job I really enjoy. What happens is that I see the entire week ahead as an enormous task, everything that needs to be done, and I get overwhelmed by it. I see the weekā€™s tasks in my mind as a huge mountain, an Everest sized one. And I have no idea how to get there. It feels so massive and so difficult to do, that I donā€™t want to start.

    Does this sound familiar?

    Last year I realised that I have ADHD. I have most likely had it all my life, however in my case the symptoms didnā€™t become severe until I hit perimenopause. The change in hormones is known to make ADHD symptoms worse. I had a aha moment when I listened to this podcast episode about ADHD and perimenopause, because I recognised myself. This leaflet explains the issue too. One of the symptoms of ADHD is executive dysfunction. It can be explained like this: in neurotypical people, the frontal cortex acts like a friendly butler, reminding you of the tasks you have to do. For example: remember to buy some milk, remember you put your keys there etc.

    In neurodivergent people, the frontal cortex is not running the tasks. Instead, our reptilian brain is controlling things, and acting like an angry neighbour, telling us off for nor remembering things.Ā Another aspect of executive dysfunction is that we have impaired non verbal working memory. This an inability to visualise the future. When a neurotypical person plans to do something, they see the image of what ā€œdoneā€ looks like, and work backwards from there. People with ADHD struggle to do this.Ā 

    In the case of mountain climbing, a neurotypical person would imagine themselves at the top of the mountain, then work backwards towards a lot of small steps of organisation and training. They would start implementing steps etc. In my case, all I can see is the top, and not the steps. I cannot break it down. It applies in many areas of my life. For example Iā€™ve been meaning to declutter my house for years. Itā€™s another typical ADHD thing to dislike clutter whilst also not being able to do the decluttering tasks. I dream of someone doing this for me. I have a huge stock of things I no longer need which I need to move out of my house (for example an 80 plus stock of baby carriers from my babywearing consultant days, my NCT teaching equipment, my doula equipment and large collection of books, and overflowing wardrobe, it goes on and on).

    When I imagine doing the decluttering, I do not know how to start, because it feels overwhelming. Itā€™s a low dopamine task and I donā€™t know how to get started. I also feel that I either need to do it all, or not do it at all. Oddly, if someone does it with me, then I find it easy. And if I do it for someone else, I find it very easy too. This is why I used to love doing housework tasks I normally dread at home, when I was caring for a new mother as a postnatal doula. Iā€™ve long learnt that internal motivation is not something I can muster for tasks that donā€™t excite me. And why all the ā€œjust do thisā€ coming from people who have internal motivation only served to make me feel inadequate. Now I accept and embrace it as much as I can.

    This is why co-working with the app Focusmate has been a life changer for my business. You meet on video with other people around the world, during 25 or 50 min sessions, spend a couple of minutes telling the other person what youā€™re going to do, then work quietly alongside each other. At the end of the session, you spend another couple of minute telling each other how it went.Ā  Some people Iā€™ve co-worked with even use Focusmate to do their morning or evening routine, or to tidy up (itā€™s perhaps not surprising that many neurodivergent people use Focusmate, and this is how I discovered the ADHD for smart ass women group).

    The paradox with us ADHD people is that when we are excited by something (high dopamine tasks) then we can plough through work effortlessly at a speed not achievable by many people. It’s called hyperfocusing. I know this is certainly true for me. This is how I wrote my book in less than 6 months. This is how I create online courses, write blog posts, etc.

    So if you struggle to initiate tasks or get overwhelmed by them, what can you do?

    • Try to pre-plan the following weekā€™s important tasks at the end of the week before, so that you donā€™t have to start with not knowing what to do.
    • Start the day with a little ritual: light a candle, burn some incense or diffuse some essential oils, and set an intention for the week
    • When feeling overwhelmed, rather than trying to push through (in my case this results in more overwhelm and procrastination) address the emotions first: set a timer for 5 minutes (or more, but I find that the short timing is less likely to be met with resistance), and journal, do a short meditation, or movement practise to help move the stuck energy.
    • Try writing : if I could only do 3 things today, and write these things
    • Break down each big tasks in lot of tiny little steps

    If you read this and recognise yourself, I hope it helps. Iā€™d love to hear about your experience.

     

  • How to run a solo heart business without burning out

    How to run a solo heart business without burning out

    I have vivid memories of my first burnout, in 2013. This was my first year as a doula,Ā  and clients came thick and fast (I became recognised for both birth and postnatal work within 10 months). I LOVED every minute of my first year as a doula. It gave me such a sense of fulfilment, that I often cried tears of emotion and gratitude. But I did too much, too fast. Towards the end of the year, I was juggling 3 postnatal clients living 45 min away from each other. I would drive to the first client, then the other in succession, each day. Lunch would be a sandwich eaten whilst driving. I felt physically, emotionally, and (that was new to me) spiritually empty. I had never experienced anything like this before. I called my mentor, and told her about my struggle. My wise mentor explained that, due to the spiritual nature of this work,Ā  I needed to develop new ways of looking after myself. She also explained that I needed to keep some energy for myself, and not give all of myself to my clients. At the time I dismissed her because it felt wrong to me, I didnā€™t know how to do this, and thought that I could either give it all or give nothing.Ā I shared more about this story in a blog post I wrote 7 years ago, called The Refuelling station, the importance of self care for doulas and birthworkers.

    A solo heart business is a business that is driven by passion and a desire to make a positive impact, rather than solely profit-driven. It is possible (and necessary) to grow a business enough to make is sustainable, so that you can keep working, and therefore helping others. Here I share my experience with burnout as a solo heart business owner and offer insights on how to avoid burnout while still running a successful business.

    As my self-employed life grew and evolved, I learnt to balance my needs and those of my clients, and felt that I had found equilibrium. But, naturally, new challenges occurred. Three years later, I found myself in a similar situation. I was busier than ever, working more hours than I wanted to, yet I realised that I wasnā€™t earning as much as I needed to make it sustainable. I felt stuck, and unable to work out the income and needs puzzle. I hired a coach to help me get out of that stuck place. It did work on some level, and certainly did wonders for my visibility, but this coach worked at a level that was too intense for me. So whilst my business grew, I also got more stressed, and felt guilty when I wasnā€™t doing all the social media stuff Iā€™d been recommended to do.Ā 

    There was a defining moment, where I stopped to pick some berries on my way back from a meeting, and I felt guilty that I had stopped, because I felt I ought to be at my desk, working. I knew then that something had to change. I embarked on a process to learn to make space in my life. I used to think that I could only allow myself to relax once I had done all the tasks in my to-do list (but that time never came).Ā  I learnt that I couldnā€™t make more space in my life by working harder. To create space and relaxation, I had to experience what spaciousness felt like, and give myself that experience. This is what led me to start practising year round wild swimming. I wrote about this in my post called getting out of overwhelm.

    Over the years, Iā€™ve spent a lot of time trying to ā€œfixā€ myself and my overwhelm, believing that if I found the right method,Ā  the right tools, my overwhelm and procrastination would go away. I bought countless diaries that promised to fix my woes. Only it never worked, as the pressure, the tension, was inside of me, and no magic technique was going to fix that. If I had been a tree, it was as if I was focusing on pruning tiny branches, when I really needed to look at my roots. I talk about the steps I took towards solving this in my review of 2020.Ā 

    Over the last 3 to 4 years I have taken this further. I have learnt to create to-do lists that create calm instead of stress, and that take into account how much energy and space/time I have. I learnt that I had to put the self care tasks in the diary first, then my family tasks, and only then the work tasks. I go through the same order when I write my Ta-da list at the end of each week.

    Find a support network of people who share your values, a mix of peers and mentors. I have been working with authentic marketing coach and joyful productivity coach George Kao for the last couple of years. I am very grateful for him as heā€™s like a zen master of running oneā€™s business, and because he creates the most amazing community of heart centred business owners. On a recent call, he explained that when working as a solopreneur, it is paramount to keep things sustainable for yourself. He said that heā€™s the only one still going 10 years later, from the group of peers who startedĀ  with him 12 years ago. Thanks to working with George, my business is growing slowly, at a rate of growth that doesn’t feel overwhelming.

    Remember that the most important work isnā€™t to take a course. Anybody can consume a course, because that’s easy. The results do not come from attending a course, they come from applying what you learnt in the course. This takes implementation, effort, time, and continuity. This cannot be done in one day. You need to implement this in tiny little steps, as if training for a marathon instead of a sprint, so you can keep going.

    There are plenty of marketeers and coaches who charge thousands and promise you a 6 figure income in 6 months if you follow their system. In my experience, it doesnā€™t work like that. Each one of us is unique, with a unique set of circumstances. There is no magic, one-size-fits-all recipe, but the time and effort required to build an audience of true fans slowly, authentically, and with integrity.Ā Ā 

    Since running market research and impostor syndrome and soul doula interviews, Iā€™ve been saddened to hear about several new birth workers who got in debt (several thousand pounds on credit cards) when they just started their business, for a very expensive course out of which they got very little value.Ā 

    My two favourite business coaches, George Kao and Leonie Dawson, who are extremely successful individuals, offer courses that cost between 100 to 200 dollars each. Those courses are packed with information. They have also taught me that expensive courses arenā€™t better than cheap ones. The price difference is a marketing decision.

    In summary, here are the principles I like to work with for sustainable business growth:

    • Put the wellbeing tasks in the diary first.
    • Start with an overview of whatā€™s really important instead of getting bogged down in lots of tiny, unimportant tasks. Do a 3 month overview of small ,bullet point goals, then break it down in monthly, then weekly goals. 3 main bullet points for each are enough.
    • Prioritize your passion and purpose, and what makes your heart sing. Stay true to your values.
    • Plan the work week based on whatā€™s important for you and my family, how you want to feel, and how you currently feel. Schedule things accordingly in the diary, rather than letting your clients dictate what your diary looks like.
    • Grow in tiny little do-able steps. Try something new (pick the thing that excites you the most), and see what happens. Only once a step has become easy and regular, add another one.Ā 
    • Be aware of your energy. Plan work accordingly, making space for family tasks that will impact energy levels. Accept that you may have periods of high productivity, followed by low energy periods. On low days, drop all but essential tasks to prioritise rest (I have a lot of resistance to this, but if I donā€™t rest, I pay the price dearly, as I still try to work, achieve nothing, then beat myself up for not working AND not resting. When I give myself the permission to rest, my energy usually recovers very quickly. If you know about human design, I have the 2/4 profile so itā€™s part of who I am to function this way. )
    • Plan small achievable goals, and not over busy your to-do list, so you can build up confidence and a sense of achievement, instead of beating yourself up with not having achieved everything. Things often take longer than you think, and life gets in the way.
    • Have a work day with focused time of around 2 to 4h per day (At the most energetic time for you), keep easier stuff that doesn’t require a lot of brain power for lower energy times.
    • When feeling in a funk, acknowledge it and work with your feelings, instead of trying to plough through and try to flog yourself to be further ahead. Doodle, journal, dance or meditate on it.
    • Try not to compare yourself to others, or get too caught up in external pressures or expectations.
    • Stay true to your passion and purpose, reminding yourself of what makes your heart sing. Try not compare yourself to others, as we are all different.
    • Celebrate the achievements at the end of each week by writing a Ta-Da list.

    To finish, I want to stress that I am far from having all my shit sorted out. Itā€™s a process. Iā€™m un-layering a lot of things, and I know that, as I keep growing, I always will. Over the last year, I learnt that I have ADHD, which explains a lot of things. Learning this has helped me realise that I have spent most of my life being really hard on myself. I am working on being kinder and more compassionate. This feels more important than anything right now. Overall, I feel much happier and more balanced in my life than I have ever been. I want to keep growing my business slowly, from a place of authenticity, integrity and sustainability. I want to be of service to a small audience of people who are really interested in what I have got to offer, and help them grow themselves too.

     

    PS: The illustration above was created using the AI generator Mindjourney. I’ve just started taking George Kao’s course on AI tools for authentic business.

     

  • You know enough. Share it now (How to tame your inner impostor)

    You know enough. Share it now (How to tame your inner impostor)

    Do you have impostor syndrome? Do you worry that you donā€™t know enough, donā€™t do enough, and donā€™t have enough knowledge to share what you feel passionate about yet? Do you feel that you have to get more training, more experience, read more books, listen to more people, and attend more courses, etc before you can finally offer some of your own knowledge to others?

    If this resonates, I empathize, because I used to feel the same way. When I stepped out of biological research and into the world of pregnancy, birth and postpartum, I had huge impostor syndrome. I can still picture how I felt when I went to do my first babywearing consultation in 2010. I went to visit a new mum at her house with a bunch of slings and helped her find a baby carrier that worked for her and her baby.Ā  I spent a couple of hours with her (not counting the time to travel) and only charged Ā£15 for it. She was delighted with the result of the consultation. Yet I worried that it was wrong to charge for it, that I wasnā€™t good enough, etc.

    It didnā€™t even cross my mind to think that had spent well over Ā£1000 in training, equipment and insurance. It didnā€™t occur to me that I had carried both of my children for over 4 years in tens of different styles of baby carriers. It didnā€™t occur to me that Iā€™d been immersed in groups of babywearing professionals and parents both locally and further afield for years. All I could think about was how I felt I wasn’t good enough and it didn’t feel ok to charge for it. I worried my clients would tell me this was a rip-off.

    I felt the same when I taught my first NCT antenatal course in 2010, despite 4 years of training which culminated in a university diploma in antenatal education! I felt the same when I attended my first birth as a doula.

    Thankfully, Iā€™ve been on quite a journey since I wrote my first blog post about impostor syndrome in 2017.

    My underlying fear about not being good enough when offering something new was still there a couple of years ago though. I felt it in February 2020 when I ran my first drum circle. I charged Ā£10 per person and I worried that they would think it was too much and that the circle wasnā€™t good enough for the price!. I spent hours preparing for it. I bought books and read about how to run drum circles; I contacted friends who ran them for advice etc. I wrote a very detailed teaching plan on an excel spreadsheet. Of course the circles were a success and people were absolutely delighted with it.

    The biggest step in my journey to overcome the impostor syndrome happened over the last 18 months because I discovered trainings by empowering business teachers such as Leonie Dawson (I took her course about creating online courses), but most of all, because I started training with Authentic marketing coach George Kao. (for transparency’s sake I want to be honest about the fact that I know have affiliate links with both of them).

    What I learnt from learning from George and Leonie is that I know enough, right now, with my experience as it is, to help others on their journey and make a difference. I donā€™t need to read more, learn more, etc before I offer what I want to offer to others. I am pretty sure that it is true for you too.

    How far I have come became very obvious in September 2021, when I taught a brand new workshop on how to run mother blessings. For the first time in my life I felt confident enough in my experience and knowledge to plan to teach a course without having created the contents first. I booked the date for in person workshop and then wrote the entire course content within the 2 weeks before the course. I was very tempted but I resisted checking out what other people had done or written on the topic (including reading any books).Ā  Every time I felt tempted to check other people’s work, I heard Georgeā€™s voice in my head saying ā€œYou already know enough to really help a lot of peopleā€. Here is an excerpt from his blog post about this topic:

    “Are you hesitant about putting your work out there?Ā 
    What if you get clients that you canā€™t help?Ā 
    What if thereā€™s another course that will finally give you the tools you need?
    If youā€™re saying Yes to any of the above, you are under the illusion that there is an end or final destination to the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and experience.Ā  There isnā€™t. Forever, there will be more knowledge out there that feels like it could be ā€œthe keyā€. Even if you get multiple Ph.D.ā€™s, youā€™ll still feel like you donā€™t know enough.Ā ”

    Thanks to George I was able to write an entire course based on my knowledge and experience alone, as opposed to inspiring myself from other people. And you know what? It felt great! I felt inspired, and amazed by all the knowledge I didnā€™t know I had until I wrote it all down. There was too much to fit within a one day course! I not only created the course content but also a course handout. I felt proud of what I had produced. And, for the first time in my life, I tamed my inner impostor.

    I taught the course at the end of September, and every single one of the seven birthworkers who attended gave me brilliant feedback. They also said they found it hard to believe that it was the first time I taught this course, and one of them who had attended previous training with me even said that this was the best course I had taught yet. I believe this was because this was entirely my knowledge and unique way to teach that imbued the course, and therefore it felt very good and aligned energetically.

    This felt very validating, and it taught me a very valuable lesson. As it was the first time in my life I had created teaching content without anybody elseā€™s input, it made me realize that I want to do this more, and that I want to encourage others to do the same. I structured the course so people could pick and choose activities from the material what they resonated with, rather than following a prescriptive recipe. I have since made this course available as an online course.

    As I reflected I also realized that I always preferred teaching people to things in their own way after training with me.

    It helped me understand that I want everything I teach to be this way from now on. For instance I want to teach an intuitive drum healing course rather than a Reiki Drum course, because teaching from my own unique experience, and sharing this in a way that empowers others to do the same, which is to find their own unique way, is what gives me the most joy. It is also more empowering to my students, as they wonā€™t fear that they are doing it wrong.

    Last year I ran some impostor syndrome mentoring sessions (feel free to contact me if youā€™d like to try one), and I realized that most people are where I used to be. It feels very good to help them overcome this.

    My message to you is: You know enough, right now, as you are, with your life experience, to help others along their path. Even if you only know 10% more than others, you can help them.

    The image I have in my mind is that we are all climbing a big mountain, and the kindest thing we can do is to pull each other up all the way to the top.

    If you do not share what you know, create your course or write your book, or whatever you want to share with the world, people will be missing out of the transformation that your unique knowledge might give them.

    Start sharing now.

    PS: I’ve carried on on my journey since, creating 3 new online courses from scratch, trusting that I will just download what’s in my brain and lived experience, to share with others. The impostor monster still tries to raise its head a little when I think about what I’m planning to offer next, which is completely outside of my previous field (helping others lead from the heart and discover their soul purpose), as it’s the journey I’m on myself, but now I can see it and tame it, which is a big progress from before, when I didn’t even see that it was an illusion.

  • Dancing with chaos: my review of 2022

    Dancing with chaos: my review of 2022

    Every year I write a post where I review my year. It is a form of journaling exercise. I realised several years ago that I write deeper stuff if I plan to share it. The exercise has several purposes for me: to give me a deep reflective experience, to give me a chance to review and celebrate my achievements (because I tend to focus only on what Iā€™m not doing otherwise), and finally, to share experiences and stories in the hope that it might resonate, and help my readers feel supported, gain insight and support growth. I also feel that sharing tough stuff can help others feel less lonely. I know that many of us, myself included, have a tendency to believe that others have got their shit together and that we are the only ones struggling, but this is simply not true.

    This is a long and tough read. You might want to make yourself a hot drink and set aside 10 minutes to read and digest it.

    2022 has been a year of extreme challenges and painful growth for me.

    The challenges

    Iā€™m really glad this year is over. Itā€™s been a year of immense transformation and growth but itā€™s been hard. Really hard. As psychologist Naomi Holdt explained:

    ā€œNo one I know began this year on a full tank.Ā  Given the vicious onslaught of the previous two yearsĀ  (letā€™s just call it what it was) most of us dragged ourselves across the finish line of 2021ā€¦ frazzled, spent, running on aged adrenaline fumesā€¦We crawled into 2022 still carrying shock, trauma, grief, heaviness, disbeliefā€¦ The memories of a surreal existenceā€¦ā€ (read the whole post here).

    The biggest theme for me in 2022 was having to adapt to a constant level of change and challenges and struggle to adapt and balance my needs, the needs of my family, and my work. All year long, I felt that I was dancing with chaos.

    Iā€™m going to share about whatā€™s been happening in my family first because that has been the most prominent thing for the year.

    The last couple of years were extra hard for my family, because my youngest child suffered from increasingly severe anxiety and mental health challenges. In February 2022, my youngest was diagnosed with ASD (Austism Spectrum Disorder). I felt both relieved and upset when I heard the clinical psychologist give the diagnosis. Relieved because school had been treating us like we were making a big deal out of nothing. I did wonder at first whether spending so much money on a private diagnosis would be worth it, but as I discovered, you only get taken seriously once your experiences are ratified by a health professional.

    After the diagnosis, we started the epic fight with the education and health systems in order to get the support we needed. This fight has made my doula fights with maternity care feel like a Disney movie in comparison. The school not only did nothing to help, but also threatened us with fines for non attendance. As we felt powerless through lack of specialist knowledge, we hired a private SEND practitioner, Laura, to support us. I call her a SEND doula. Thanks to her intervention (very similar to doula support in terms of reminding people of their rights and quoting the law at the system) from March onwards, the school paid for private tutors to provide education at home.Ā 

    Supported by Laura, we started the process of applying for an EHCP. An EHCP, also known as Education, Health and Care plan, is a legal document which describes a child or young personā€™s special educational needs, the support they need, and the outcomes they would like to achieve. This document is supposed to get the local authority (LA) to pay for specialist support or provision. As the government has been underfunding education as well as healthcare for many years, the LA simply doesnā€™t have enough money to support all the SEND children in the area, the local authority does everything they can to make parents fail their EHCP application, or to downplay the issues. We started writing the application in March, submitted it in August, and got our first draft application early December. I spent over 30h (including 5h in meetings with my SEND advocate), to make sure all deliberate mistakes and omissions in the document had been corrected.Ā 

    I have a PhD, I am lucky to be able to afford the support of a private advocate. I am also self-employed and therefore able to take the time off to focus on getting this done. I have the support of a husband who is employed and has a salary. Yet I still found this process extremely challenging and difficult. It was like being buried in paperwork, as well as learning to navigate something you know nothing about. I am so angry when I think about what it must feel like for less privileged parents.

    My advocate tells me that we may have to take the LA to tribunal. A recent article shows that the LA decision was only upheld in 3.7% of tribunal cases, which means that it was found in over 96% of them that the LA had acted unlawfully. But tribunals take time (many months), and LA saves money this way by not having to pay for what a SEN child needs to attend education whilst they wait for the appeal.Ā 

    The fight is nowhere near finished, but at least I managed to get this mammoth task done, and this meant that I could rest during the holiday season, ready to taking the fight back on in January (Iā€™ve now just finished reviewing the second draft, and expecting the final document any day).

    Alongside this process, I visited many specialist schools, and after a lot of heartache, thankfully found an amazing small school that feels perfect. We were able to access it because I had put us on the waiting list a year before. As you can imagine all of these schools are massively over subscribed. After visits and try-out sessions, this school offered us a place, pending government funding. This is for a child who started to be unable to function in mainstream secondary school in early 2021. This is how long it has taken, and this isnā€™t finished yet. The place isn’t until next September.

    Now the battle is to get the funding, as this school isnā€™t cheap (22k a year). At first I thought this sum was mind blowing and that there was no way we’d get it funding. However, whilst researching other specialist schools locally, I realised that some of them cost as much as 66k per year!

    As well as battling the education, things got bad enough for my childā€™s mental health to finally get a CAMH referral, something we had been asking for 2 years. The hardest part when things got really bad was discovering that we had nowhere else to go, as even private psychiatrists who charge eye watering amounts of money, had weeks or months long waiting lists. Despite the referral being successful, we waited for so long for it to be actioned, that I had to write several strongly worded complaints to get the support we needed.Ā 

    Since September we have been under the care of 3 different CAMH teams. There has been an average of 4 to 5 medical appointments every week. Managing this, alongside the private tutors, the paperwork, the constant chasing and complaints, has felt more than a full time job.

    The enormous amount of time and energy I put behind this, however, is paying off, and things are improving slowly and I am cautiously hopeful.

    We also got a puppy in February in February 2022, as part of a process to support my childā€™s wellbeing, as she reacts very positively to animals. She had been begging for a dog for years, but it wasnā€™t possible with the unpredictable nature of being on-call. I hadnā€™t realised how much hard work raising a puppy would be. It is quite similar to having a new baby, and I blogged about it here. Whilst the dog added a lot of joy to our lives, it also added a lot of stress which made an already challenging family life harder. The dog is now 1 and a lot calmer and easier to manage, and he is proving to provide a lot of calming and grounding presence, as well as joy for the whole family.

    I feel that the theme for the entire year was teaching me to become comfortable with the unpredictable.

    My own challenges

    Itā€™s perhaps no surprise that I have found this year extremely tough. For most of the year, I struggled with a sense of overwhelm, where even the simplest tasks felt insurmountable. By the Autumn my mental health was in tatters. To top it all up, in November we all got very ill with the dreaded virus, and I ended up having to care for my family whilst being very unwell myself. It really brought home the idea that itā€™s not just postpartum women who struggle in the absence of community support, itā€™s all of us.

    Hitting rock bottom meant that one can only go up. It was then that I realised that I needed the kind of help that the NHS simply couldnā€™t offer (all my GP offered was antidepressants, and they really didnā€™t agree with me), I started taking matters into my own hands.Ā 

    The things Iā€™m grateful for

    At some point in 2022 amidst the challenges I started saying that my child was my guru. If you have ever read the book The Conscious Parent by Dr Shefali Tsabary, youā€™ll know all about the amazing stories about how our children challenge our beliefs and make us grow. It was because of my childā€™s ASD diagnosis that I discovered that I have ADHD (more on that later), then that my other child has it too, as well as likely being ASD, (and Iā€™m also certain that my husband is ASD too). It has meant another fight to tryĀ  and get myself and my son diagnosed (I am doing it through the right to choose route, which is supposed to be quicker than the two year NHS waiting list). My childā€™s ASD diagnosis ignited a discovery journey on understanding neurodivergence, and meeting people I never knew existed. The knowledge acquired supporting my daughter meant that I knew who to approach to help my son, and what to ask for from the onset. Thankfully, my sonā€™s school has been a lot more supportive and immediately put some support in place for him without having to wait for the diagnosis.Ā 

    Mostly, the way I see it, my daughterā€™s ASD has been a gift.Ā  After I discovered my ADHD, I read a lot, talked to people, and joined groups, as well as trying various supplements and medication. I am very grateful for discovering this side of myself, because it means that I have been able to understand myself better, and become kinder to myself. I used to beat myself up about not doing enough and procrastinating, but now I understand a lot more about how my brain works and why certain tasks are harder to do for me than for neurotypicals. Many of you have told me they found my sharing helpful so I plan to share more about my ADHD journey.

    I hit an all time low in October, and after trying and hating antidepressants, I started microdosing with a plant medicine. Within a week I started to feel hope, and at times some tiny moments of joy again.

    In the Autumn, I started working with The Aspie Coach, who specialises in supporting neurodivergent families, and I have found working with her both supportive and transformative. It means that not only am I kinder to myself, but also able to understand a lot more about the dynamics in my family, and manage things better.

    I embarked on a course called Doodle your Emotions, and I loved this so much I am now enrolled on the year long course. You may have seen my doodles on social media. They work better for me than journaling. I find the drawing process both fun and healing, therefore it makes doing it pleasurable and fun, as well as giving me a unique chance to look at whatā€™s going on in my head. It makes me feel like I am my own therapist. I have also realised that I can use it to draw peopleā€™s energy, combining my Reiki and energy work training with art. I may be offering a handful of sessions to try out a new process where I draw your energy as you bring something that is bothering you to the table.Ā 

    Here are some doodle showing the main emotions I felt in 2022

    My husband and I had two family constellations sessions. Family constellation is something that a therapist uses in order to gain insight and information into a clientā€™s family history, dynamics, and possible dysfunctional patterns. I have worked with this modality since 2019 and found it mind-blowingly powerful. After the second session, combined with the doodling work, the plant medicine, and bringing what was unearthed to my coach, I finally felt that the very heavy burden I had been carrying all year was put down, and the relief was immense.Ā 

    Here are some doodles representing my feelings then

    Finally, this year is also the first time in my life where I am in a community of people who do not shy away from you when you go through hard times. It is also the first community where how much I give is really seen and returned in spades. In the autumn my friends organised a healing intervention for me, giving me the rebozo wrapping ritual I had taught them and I felt incredibly loved and supported. It was a defining moment for me, learning to receive (and realise how difficult this had been until now for me). I talk about this in my blog post ADHD and the kindness boomerang.

    When I was ill at the end of the year, I reached out to those friends for help. It felt vulnerable to do this, but I couldnā€™t leave the house and didnā€™t even have enough energy cook, and my kids and husband were in bed. This brought home a new dimension to understanding the message in my book, Why Postnatal Recovery Matters, where I explain that asking for help in the postpartum isn’t a weakness. My friends were just amazing. One took my dog for a week, another delivered me homemade soup and stew, and many friends offered similar help. It really warmed my heart in a dark time.

    In 2022 despite the challenges I kept my weekly practises of shamanic drumming at dawn in the woods, wild swimming, and 5 rhythm dancing. Whilst I wasn’t always feeling it, these kept me grounded amidst the chaos.

    My work

    This hasnā€™t been a mild year workwise either, because there have been so many changes, and fluctuations, and I have struggled to be comfortable with that. And, as you can imagine after reading the above, most of my time and energy have been directed towards my family.

    In April I attended my last birth as a doula after 10 years working in this role. The decision to stop this work was mostly driven by an inner knowing that I was no longer meant to do this, and that until I stopped I wouldnā€™t be able to fulfil my new calling. My new calling is to help people lead from the heart instead of the mind, and look out for new offerings from me as this unfolds. Other factors impacted the decision to leave : the pandemic had made this demanding job even harder, the level of fight required to support women in a broken system was harming me, and the difficult circumstances in my family made the demands of being on-call too stressful. I wrote a long blog post about why I decided to leave doulaing behind.

    After I stopped working as a doula, rather than feeling relieved, I felt a lack of direction and a sense of loss. I entered what I called the blank slate stage, or the void, and I shared several blog posts about how I felt throughout the year. I felt like Indiana Jones in the Quest for the Holy Grail, having to take a leap of faith and step over the void for the bridge to appear. Thankfully, having been there before, I was able to recognise the process for what it was. This doesnā€™t mean that it wasnā€™t uncomfortable, but at least it gave me a sense of acceptance.

    Despite all this, amazingly I still managed to keep my business afloat. Apart from towards the end of November when the illness combined with the EHCP review process meant that I had to drop the ball completely. Until I wrote stuff down, in my mind 2022 felt that I had not done much work wise. Yet I achieved the following:

    • I earned a similar amount of money as the previous tax year
    • I launched 3 new online courses, bringing the number of courses I offer to 5. I now have over 500 students from 10 different countries, and the feedback is amazing.
    • Held 5 free webinars, attended by around 100 people or more each
    • I published 40 blog posts and over 200 posts on social media.
    • I was interviewed for several podcasts and instagram lives, asked to train NHS midwives, and invited to lead sessions in other peopleā€™s courses
    • My book was published in German.
    • One of my videos on Youtube had 13k views.

    A lot of this success was due to having worked with authentic marketing coach George Kao and learn to create something that feels both true and sustainable.

    Before 2020 my main source of income was face to face workshops, which I loved but it meant a lot of energy, travelling, and time away from home and my family. My 52 year old self craves a quieter life. Creating online courses not only means that I can do what I love the most, which is sharing empowering knowledge with others, it offers transformation to professionals and the families they serve, and most importantly it means that it frees up my time to create more content, articles, and courses to share.

    In 2022 my biggest business lesson was discovering that I do not have to hustle or work every hour of the day to earn a living. As an ADHD person I tend to focus only on what Iā€™m not doing and beat myself up constantly about this. Writing achievement lists is something I need to do to counter that. I write a Ta-Da list at the end of each week to help reset my mind. Even before writing the list above I kind of felt that I hadnā€™t done much in 2022.

    In conclusion

    2022 was a year of intense discomfort and tremendous personal growth for me. But is growth ever comfortable? As a wise mentor once told me, if it was comfortable, you would stay where you are.

    I like to choose a word for the year. If youā€™d like to have your own word of the year for 2023, I love healer Rebecca Wrightā€™s Word of the year guided journey.Ā 

    My word for the year in 2022 was opening. This year Iā€™ve chosen a word for the year which is a quality that Iā€™d like to embody. In a session with my coach in December 2022 I had a sense that I had been having a tight ball of control where my heart is. Releasing it gave me a felt sense of what it feels like to be expansive and limitless. I want to embody this feeling and state of being in 2023, so my word for this year is Expansion.Ā 

     

  • Why Iā€™m not doing new year resolutions

    Why Iā€™m not doing new year resolutions

    Every January, I used to feel a sense of pressure and unease. I used to feel this inside pressure to ā€œbe doneā€ with the previous year and have made my plan for the new one.

    Seeing other people take on the ā€œnew year new youā€ challenge with gusto, used to add to the pressure and make me feel inadequate.

    This year it felt different. I still heard that voice in my head that said I ought to be further along, but I was conscious of it, and it was less present than before.

    Over the last year Iā€™ve been on a journey of trying to become kinder to myself. Part of this journey has involved becoming more aware of my inner voice. Discovering that I have ADHD, and hyperfocusing on the topic, has led to a deep new understanding of the way my brain works, and why I tend to put so much pressure on myself.

    So when January rolled on, I noticed the voice in my head that said I ought to have reviewed the year and already entirely planned the new year. Except I havenā€™t reviewed 2022 yet and I havenā€™t even made a start on planning 2023. There is a very logical reason for this.

    Over the last couple of years, having spent a lot more time in nature, wild swimming, doing shamanic drumming in the local woods at dawn on a weekly basis, and hanging out with people who celebrate the Celtic wheel of the year, I have become more aware of the cycles of nature.

    Right now, in the Celtic wheel of the year, we just passed the Winter Solstice, where the days were the shortest of the year, and are still in the depth of Winter. The Spring energies will not start to rise until Imbolc, which is on the 1st of February. Spring itself doesnā€™t start until the 21st of March.

    If like me you feel at odds with the frenzy of planning that occurs in January, this is biologically normal.Ā 

    The depths of Winter arenā€™t the time to do goal setting and planning. I wrote about this in 2019 already, but I want to talk about it again because my understanding of it is different.

    Midwinter is a time to go inwards, for deep rest and for dreaming. Whether you resonate with this spiritually or not, scientific evidence agrees with this. I spent my PhD and 2 postdocs studying our innate biological rhythms and how day length affects the reproductive cycle. Not that long ago, when we were still in tune with natural daylight, winter was a time when we slept more and worked less. It makes so much sense to wait until the days get slightly longer and the Spring energies start to rise, to plan things. February or March seem like much more logical times to do this.

    I find it interesting that culture that follow a lunar calendar like the Chinese, have their new year at the beginning of February. It makes more sense to me.

    If right now is a time of going inwards, rest and dreaming (and I really have to remind myself of this to tame my inner critic from telling me I should be further along), how can you best use the energies of this time?Ā 

    Reviewing the previous year is a good start to the dreaming. Try to you look at how you grew, instead of beating yourself up with what you didnā€™t achieve. Here are some questions to ponder which may help you do this from a place of kindness (set a timer for 3 to 5 min, and think about writing just 3 things):

    • What are you grateful for?
    • What gave you joy?
    • What made you grow?
    • What did you learn?
    • What do you want to take forward?

    Another gentle intention setting activity I like to do at the beginning of the year, because it feels good and not pressured like goals, is choosing a quality I want to embody in the coming year by choosing a word for the year. I like Rebecca Wrightā€™s free word of the year guided journey. I also like to make an altar, and I I wrote a this post about making altars.

     

  • Becoming undone: a normal part of growth

    Becoming undone: a normal part of growth

    Are you struggling with the feeling of becoming undone? Like everything you know no longer feels true, no longer relevant, like you no longer know who you are, like you have just become a blank slate?

    If you do, Iā€™ve been struggling with the same for months. If you follow me youā€™ll know that I shared about this in this post recently. I remember having the same feelings when I was a teenager, and when I became a mother. In this post,Ā I want to share analogies and tools that help me, and I hope they help you too.

    During my first year as a new doula I suffered quite severe burnout. I reached out to my mentor who told me that the self care practises I had put in place in my job as a scientist were no longer adequate, as I was now suffering from spiritual burnout, as well as physical and emotional. I wrote about how I had to develop a new way to care for myself.

    This has the same energetic flavour. And I need, yet again, to grow new ways of caring for myself. I recognise what it feels like, and I know the power that may come from the other side. I know on some deep level that, like the caterpillar that becomes goo inside the cocoon, I have to dissolve to reform. I tell myself, I am goo now. There is not much to do but be goo. You cannot fight against the dissolution as it only makes things harder.Ā 

    The dissolution makes us vulnerable and soft for a while. Animals that need to cast their shell to grow new ones, like lobsters, hide under a rock to shield themselves from predators whilst they wait for their new shell to harden. For these animals, the sign that they have outgrown their old shell is discomfort. As Dr Abraham Twerski says in this video, if lobsters went to the doctor, they would be prescribed antidepressants for the discomfort, and would never grow.

    If you are struggling, remember that the discomfort is there for a reason. If you were comfortable, you would stay where you are.

    When we come undone, even if we understand on an intellectual level that it is a necessary transformational process, it can be very hard to navigate and stay in a place of trust, vulnerability, and surrender. And it is doubly hard as life doesn’t stop and we still need to care for others as we undergo this process. I cannot help but wonder what it would feel like if we still had the rituals that indigenous cultures have to support such tremendous life transitions, and how lost at sea we areĀ  in a culture that does not witness or support times of metamorphosis.

    Nascence is the term that describes a coming into being. As women we have many obvious nascences in our lives: Adolescence (the beginning of our menstrual cycle), Matrescence (becoming a mother), and Cronescence (Iā€™ve made up this word to represent entering perimenopause and menopause). There are other times of course, with every big life change, but these are the ones who share a process of death and rebirth that is not only happening on a visible physical level, but in the mind and the soul too. These times share is the undoing of who we were to allow who we are to become to be born.

    The film Inside out is an anime movie about the emotions in the brain of Riley, a young girl as she enters adolescence. In her brain, as well as characters representing 5 major emotions who rule her behaviours (joy, sadness, fear, disgust and anger), there are islands that represent different aspects of Rileyā€™s personality. As she goes through the beginning of puberty some of these islands are destroyed, much to the dismay of the characters in her brain who try and do everything they can to stop them from crumbling. Eventually, new islands emerge, which the characters are delighted with.

    The crumbling is scary because it feels like everything we have worked for is being destroyed. And we then find ourselves on barren ground, where there are no landmarks. It can feel very disorientating, and frightening. There is no path ahead. Things no longer make sense.Ā 

    Science tells us that the crumbling literally happens in the brain during periods like adolescence, matrescence and cronescence, as neurons and neuronal connections are pruned, and what is no longer relevant is removed, and the brain is remodelled.Ā Ā 

    So what can we do to support ourselves through the challenge of becoming undone?

    I am on the exploratory path of this myself once more, andĀ  sharing what I find helpful. I hope you may find some aspect work for you too. Remember because it works for me, it may not work for you. We are all unique with unique brains and bodies. If you try things, though, youā€™ll quickly know what helps and what doesnā€™t. Start with what you feel excited about trying.

    Body stuff

    • Find ways to be present and ground in your body. It can be a simple of feeling the weight of your body on your feet, or where you are sitting. Or try the trick of noticing 5 things you can see, 4 things you can touch, 3 things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste.
    • Develop a regular movement practice. Start small, even just 5 minutes can make a huge difference. It doesnā€™t matter whether itā€™s yoga, or a walk, a run, or putting some music on and having a quick dance. When you feel in a funk itā€™s quite amazing what 5 min of movement can do to help you shift your state.
    • Have some bodywork, like a massage. Bonus if a somatic massage. It can really help re-teach your body to feel calm.Ā  Iā€™ve also found working with a holistic herbalist, an acupuncturist, and an osteopath helpful. Read what I wrote as for my doula colleagues in the past.
    • Give yourself self care practises like a warm bath (I like to use salt and essential oil), or some gentle self massage (a few minutes massaging your feet feels great, especially with a magnesium balm). You can also try my Rebozo self care massage routine.
    • Try a 5 rhythms dancing class, which is like meditation in movement. It ticks the body, mind and spirit boxes all at once. Itā€™s one of my favourite practises, and so much fun to do, and I also now belong to a large community of fantastic people. There are online as well as face to face classes.

    Mind stuff

    • Meditate/practise mindfulness. Itā€™s easier than you think and you can also start with just a few minutes. Watch this cool animated video which debunks a lot of myths. There are free apps like Insight Timer, which offer guided meditations of various lengths to get you started.
    • Connect to your breath. Three mindful breaths is often all it takes to shift your energy.
    • Listen to drumming tracks, it slows down your brain and allows more spaciousness of thoughts. Or even better, take up drumming, and/or join a drum circle. Search for shamanic drumming on youtube or spotify. Read this short post where I explain more, complete with a link to a drum journey.
    • Singing is also a beautiful way to uplift both mind and spirit. Join a local community choir and enjoy both the vocal and community support experience.

    Spiritual stuff

    I have 3 favourite practises because they tick all 3 boxes at once (mind, body and spirit). I do these weekly or more.

    • Year round swimming in my local river. I took this up in 2018 years ago and Iā€™m now entering my 5th winter of swimming. Read more about that here.
    • 5Rhythms and other forms of mindful movement/dancing meditation. Iā€™ve tried 5rhythms, Freedom dance, Open floor, Ecstatic awakening dance, and Zero one.Ā 

    ā€œConscious dance is a free form of dance that anyone can do, whatever their age, shape, gender, mobility or fitness level. No prior knowledge is needed, there are no steps to learn and nothing to get right. It allows you to connect your body to the music, and, if you like, to connect with others in non-verbal communication of common movement. Let go of your mind, let the music move through your body to awaken your heart, find richness and openness in your lifeā€ . This quote is from the Cambsdance community website. There are similar practises all around the UK and the world.

    Despite these practises, I am currently experiencing major challenges. The practises still serve me, and I am also learning to develop micropractises during the day when I notice I am feeling triggered, or overwhelmed (this happens often). The trick is not to try and chase the feelings away, but to feel them deeply and allow them to pass through you. Remember: the only way out is through, and the only way through is to be with whatever wants to be expressed of felt.

    Finally, be gentle with yourself. Becoming undone is deep, hard work, and it can take a long time. It is especially hard to do in the culture that doesn’t recognise it as “work” and want you to only be “your best self” at all times.

    Donā€™t waste energy beating yourself up wishing that you were further along the journey. You are exactly where you need to be.Ā 

    I take solace in this quote from Brene Brownā€™s book, Braving the Wilderness, where she quotes Joseph Campbell : ā€œIf you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know itā€™s not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. Thatā€™s why itā€™s your path.ā€Ā 

     

  • My ADHD treatment journey : why I hated taking antidepressants

    My ADHD treatment journey : why I hated taking antidepressants

    A few months ago I shared about my experience of trying ADHD medication and the difference it made, and how it convinced me I should get diagnosed and treated.

    The experience led me to start the process of getting a formal ADHD diagnosis, in order to access treatment. I soon realised that it is another lengthy, hard, and time consuming process.Ā 

    I spoke to my GP, who after making me answer the questionnaire, confirmed that it was very likely I had ADHD (I scored 22 out of 24, but already knew this), but that the waiting list for NHS diagnosis (let alone treatment) would be 18 months to 2 years. I requested a right to choose referral with Psychiatry UK, which should reduce the wait down to a few months. I also investigated going private, but the psychiatrists I was recommended also had months long waiting lists.

    Most of my time and energy are currently being used battling the education and health systems to get support for one of my children, who is also neurodivergent. I tried to get the ball rolling for myself, but gave up because I just didnā€™t have the time or energy to do it. I had to chase my GP surgery weekly for 6 weeks, just for the right to choose referral forms to be filled in (and this is despite being present in person at my local surgery on a weekly basis or more due to my childā€™s situation).

    My family circumstances and my ADHD compounded by perimenopause (it can make ADHD and anxiety worse; and it certainly did for me), meant that my mental health suffered. I was feeling stressed, anxious and overwhelmed, at a level that made managing everyday life impossible. I was falling apart and begging for anything that would help. Because it was the only thing that my GP was was able to offer without having to wait for months, and I was desperate, I accepted a prescription for SSRI antidepressants. Having researched what seemed to be most helpful for ADHD people, I asked for Paroxetine.

    I started taking Paroxetine mid September. It didn’t seem to help my mood, and I hated how it made me feel. I felt numb, disconnected from myself, joyless. When I went to my weekly 5rhythms dance session, something I used to always look forward to, I couldnā€™t connect to the dance, or to myself, and ended up spending a large amount of the session sitting on the floor, feeling unhappy, and wanting to go home. To make things worse, within a week of taking the antidepressant, I discovered that I was no longer able to have an orgasm.

    From my scientific career and having attended conferences that talked about SSRIs and sexual health, I remembered that those side effects were common for this type of drugs. The impact on sex life are rarely explained to patients prior to prescription (informed consent anyone?), yet it is a common reason why people stop taking them. In a review paper, I found the following dataĀ  ā€œSSRIs may cause sexual dysfunction in 40% to 65% of individuals, these side effects may exacerbate depression and create a barrier to medication adherenceā€. No kidding!

    I was not hugely bothered about the lack of sexuality per se, because my mental health was so dire that if the drugs had made me feel better I would have put up with that. The straw that broke the antidepressantā€™s back was the fact that this was another example of how this drug was making me disconnected from life itself. I wanted to be able to cope better with lifeā€™s ups and downs. The SSRIs not only didnā€™t achieve that, it made me feel like a narrowed down version of myself.

    Interestingly, when I had taken the plant based version of SSRIs, St Johnā€™s Wort, for several months when I suffered from depression in 2019, I had never experienced this numbing and disconnection feeling, and it had helped me climb up from the bottom of the pit I was in at the time.Ā 

    My experience taking SSRIs felt both numbing and sharp, like a knife, cutting me from myself. Since taking St Johnā€™s wort had felt supportive in the past, I had an insight that this is because synthetic drugs are extremely narrow in their target, only hitting one process in the brain, whereas plant medicines contain many different substances, which act in synergy. As a spiritual and energy sensitive person, I also felt that synthetic drugs are disconnected from the web of life, because of the way they are produced in the lab, separated from their source of origin, whereas plant medicines are more connected, because the plant carries its own energy and the connection to the energy of the earth.

    I spent some time meditating on the different medicines, writing them down, putting them on my altar, to see how they suited me. Having considered switching to St Johnā€™s wort, however, from trying the ADHD meds, I also knew I would need something different if it was to support my symptoms. I had wondered about microdosing with a plant medicine for some time because several of my friends were doing it and reported amazing effects on mood and wellbeing. In fact that medicine sat in my house for 6 months but I felt scared to try it. It really is quite fascinating to me that I had to experience what pharmaceutical drugs felts like to free me of my fear.

    The week I considered trying, the universe sent me very clear signals, because for a few days, everywhere I went I ended up speaking someone new who told me how life changing it had been for them. I sat at a diner party next to a psychotherapistĀ  who wanted to blend psychotherapy and this kind of medicine. I went to a survival skills workshop in the woods, the teacher had some interesting tattoo and they turned out to be replica of this plant medicine carvings found in Algeria, which he had done after an experience with the medicine cured him of PTSD. A friend of mine shared that she was embarking on a 18 months long training as a microdosing coach, it just went on and on for days until I finally said : OK universe, I think I got the message.

    I stopped the SSRIs after about a month, tapering them off slowly, then I started this new medicine journey, supported by a couple of experienced friends. One of them even came to my house to hold me through my first dose of the medicine, and it felt very safe. I am a month into this new experience, and my life has been transformed. I plan to write another post telling this story when I am ready.