Mum As You Are

You find an hour to yourself. A moment you’ve potentially been anticipating for weeks. What do you do? You fantasize about what you *could* do - book a massage? see a friend? read a book? Then the moment comes. Is this excitement or anxiety in your body? Is this feeling calm or am I just frozen? Somehow you can’t think of a single thing you want to but instead are filled with thoughts – I’m feelin...

*NB this episode is available on YouTube if you want to follow along with the visuals Life in the Five Senses, Gretchen Rubin https://amzn.to/3qjroyI   Feeding the Soul (Because it’s my Business), Tabitha Brown https://amzn.to/439h0Zd   The Art of Growing up, John Marsden and Take Risks, John Marsden https://amzn.to/43tAhEq https://amzn.to/3C0tLsV   Coretta: My Life, My Love My Legacy, Coretta Sco...

Getting up at dawn to journal, exercise and smash goals might work well for well-rested people. But what if you're not yet a member of the well-rested Mum's club? Is getting up earlier the answer? Social Media Detox for Mums ⁠⁠⁠Amazon Australia⁠⁠⁠⁠ More than a healthy baby: finding strength and growth after birth trauma ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://amzn.to/3cAuvfu⁠⁠⁠⁠ If you'd like to follow along my s...

Wintering doesn’t have to occur in the physical season of winter. It can represent a time in life that’s challenging and depleting. A time when your soul needs to rest and pull back. Today I share 4 lessons I've learned in wintering   This book might also be helpful: Wintering: The Art of Rest in Difficult Times https://amzn.to/43a1Pio Social Media Detox for Mums ⁠⁠Amazon Australia⁠⁠⁠ More tha...

Some of the best anxiety tools around are ones that people often assume are just for kids. I'll share with you a few fun, playful tools to introduce or re-introduce into your stress and self-care practise. I recently learned about a tool called  Calm Strips . I haven’t tried them yet, and not sponsored, but they look interesting. They look like a sensory toy in sticker form. You can choose a r...

Like pretty much every mum I know, I have too many tabs in my brain open: when did I last worm the dogs? How am I going to find time to go to the dentist? Does my youngest have allergies? Is it bad that I stopped taking my kids to swimming lessons? Is every choice I make as a mum somehow always "wrong"? The internet regularly gives the message that if only you tried a bit harder, or focu...

One of the dirty secrets of parenting that not too many mums seem willing to talk about is that sometimes parents don’t enjoy playing with their children. Or maybe they never enjoy playing and would go so far as to say they hate it. There’s a few reasons for this, and with a few tweaks the concept of ‘play’ might shift for you. *NB* that's cockatoos in the background in case you're wonderi...

Something like 90% of new parents will have intrusive, scary thoughts. I'll explain what they are about, how to cope with them and a bit about what situations are expected or 'normal' and what situations would be considered problematic or a psychiatric emergency. Social Media Detox for Mums now on sale! ⁠⁠Booktopia⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Angus & Robertson⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Amazon Australia⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Amazon US & REST...

Following on from last week's episode about EMDR for birth trauma I thought it would be useful to delve into birth debriefs. They've become popular, and I do offer them myself but are their practice standards? What does the research say? And, in what circumstances could they make trauma symptoms worse? You can read the accompanying blog post on EMDR for birth trauma ⁠https://doctorerin.com...

In this episode, I explain as best I can in lay language what EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) is and how it can help process past and future births. This type of therapy is intense but it tends to work faster than exposure therapy or CBT based techniques. You can read the accompanying blog post on EMDR for birth trauma https://doctorerin.com.au/2023/04/21/emdr-for-birth-trauma...

Four times a second your nervous system will ask "Am I SAFE?" We can find a lot of relief by using practical tools that appeal directly to our 5 senses. If I asked you - which sense do you think you've been neglecting lately? What might your answer be? Luckily, one of my favourite writers, Gretchen Rubin has developed a quiz to help you with that very question. You also get suggestions for how to...

Recently I was reading a book and came across some useful ideas for what to do while you're waiting for therapy or in between appointments. Usually when someone books an appointment there's been a big wave of emotions. Sometimes the emotions subside a bit while life gets in the way, sometimes we block them, sometimes we forget exactly what was happening or what we were thinking in the times when i...

If you want to pause or quit social media it's usually not as simple as just going cold turkey. This is what I wish I knew before I started my social media detox. some practical, measurable steps that will help get you that meaningful change you're looking for. You can find the handy guide to the steps outlined here .  DASS (depression anxiety stress scale) - note this is a screening tool, no...

This is the second part of a conversation about the science of why parents judge each other. What happens when we attribute fault to someone else based on their character (e.g, they are an idiot), but we assume people will give US the benefit of the doubt when we have our own crisis? Social Media Detox for Mums now on sale! Booktopia Angus & Robertson Amazon Australia Amazon US & REST...

Today I'm sharing one of my favourite Easter books that is such a surprise and a delight.  A book written 84 years ago by a white man from the deep south of the USA. Life is full of surprises. The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes by Du Bose Heyward is a book that teaches children that you can be anything. That mothers are valued. That children thrive when their mothers are happy and fu...

There is research evidence suggesting that women are judged more harshly for their decisions than men. In The gift of imperfect parenting, Brene Brown says we judge each other so harshly because most of us feel like we are barely holding on. We are afraid of making mistakes, so we perceive anyone who is doing anything differently as criticising our choices. Leaning into growth and changing behavio...

I've been following this blog for years . I tool I've taken from Pip is the idea of taking stock. I like to recommend it because rather than sitting down and getting all stressed about goals you may or may not have met, you just take a quiet few moments to jot down where you’re at and what you’re doing right now. I’ve found it’s a nice way to sit in the moment, and later look back on the small thi...

We're told to prioritize self-care, but do we ever really hear about prioritizing fun? I'll share some lessons I've been learning in how to make motherhood more fun Catherine Price also has a book on the topic called The Power of Fun: Why Fun is the Key to a Happy and Fulfilling Life. https://amzn.to/3Sc06UR Want to be a course tester? Want to be a tester for my brand new 21 day social media detox...

When I look back on my early mothering, I'm often wondering "what would I do differently? What was making me miserable then that I now have clarity on?" I came up with 5 things. Want to be a course tester? Want to be a tester for my brand new 21 day social media detox course? You can try it for $21USD before it goes on sale to the public. Use code 21FOR21 until March 21st Social Media Detox for Mu...

If you've struggled with motivation and trying to change a behaviour maybe consider that laziness and willpower have nothing to do with it. Maybe you've been trying to make a style of motivation fit when it's a total mismatch to your personality? Today I'll share a tip that has really helped me understand why certain approaches (like bootcamp!) really don't work for my personality type. Take the 4...

This week I jumped to hit record after a client and I pulled out some good nuggets about control. Often, when we automatically go to scroll, we’re not really there for the content (the things we watch, read and listen to). We’re there for the process and the associated feeling (numbing and subconsciously trying to control) We’re not honest with ourselves (and our therapists!) about our verbs We te...

This is the one I recorded then deleted three times. Then I recorded it, but decided I didn’t want to publish. I went ahead and wrote a few other posts instead, and look, it would be absolutely fine if I never shared it with the world. But then it nagged at me. In reading The Tools by Phil Stutz (go watch the Netflix documentary, Stutz if you haven’t yet, it’s brilliant) and Barry Michels, a passa...

Today I share a little peak inside the 21 day social media detox course I'm working on. This activity will challenge you to try monotasking - listening to an album from beginning to end WITHOUT doing anything else at the same time. Just listening, not judging, just noticing. When I fist tried this for myself it was embarrassingly much harder than I thought it would be. The urge to pick up my phone...

I attempt to summarize my new book, social media detox for mums in less than 10 minutes. A brief overview of what you can expect to find in the chapters and what I hope will be the major takeaways from this book. Pre orders for my new book, Social Media Detox for Mums is open! Booktopia (21% off) Angus & Robertson  (20% off) Amazon Australia Amazon US & REST OF THE WORLD Book Deposito...

I take you through a handful of the books that have impacted me in some way along this motherhood journey. Most are not even parenting books per se - there were so many I could include, but ultimately I chose ones that inform my work and philosophy on life, and even a few that have pictures.  Show notes here allows limited space, so for the full title list, head to my blog Pre orders for my n...