Co-founder Carly Neave talks motherhood
Where I’m choosing to focus my energy…
For as long as I can remember, I was that little girl on an airplane who’d be delighted if my seat was parked up next to a mother and a newborn baby. Any opportunity to help and hold the sweetest souls and I was there.
Fast forward 20 years later and I am blessed enough to have two wonderful children of my own, but if I’m honest, a flight alone would feel like a holiday in itself!
I adore being a mother. The boys enrich our world more than we ever could have imagined and it’s true what they say, you don’t know how hard and deeply you can love until you have children. But that doesn’t change the fact that as quickly as that love blossoms, life changes too and as does the demands on our focus, energy and time.
So where does that leave us as women, as mothers? How do we balance the beautiful whirlwind that is becoming a mother, embracing every moment, staying present and engaged, whilst still leaving something for us and our relationship with our other half? I don’t think anyone will ever have the precise answer, but here are some of the things I am trying to focus on in the attempt to find my balance.
Everyone is just doing their best
I will never forget a book I read many years ago that said, if you treat each other like you treated them in the first 3 months of being together, you’re on a very strong path for the long haul. Coming from a separated family, it’s fair to say one of my biggest fears around family life is how it impacts my relationship with my husband.
I will never forget a book I read many years ago that said, if you treat each other like you treated them in the first 3 months of being together, you’re on a very strong path for the long haul. Coming from a separated family, it’s fair to say one of my biggest fears around family life is how it impacts my relationship with my husband.
Are we strong enough to last?
My heart knows we are but my head is aware of the strain and impact children have on a couple and the truth is, we forget. We forget to appreciate the small things, we forget to be as generous in our time, our affection, our patience. I don’t judge myself for that, I know it’s not because I’m reserving that for me but because it’s pouring out to our children. But I am aware, and right now, after years of sleepless nights (!), it’s more important to me than ever to make sure I protect that relationship as strongly and passionately as I protect ours with the boys.
My heart knows we are but my head is aware of the strain and impact children have on a couple and the truth is, we forget. We forget to appreciate the small things, we forget to be as generous in our time, our affection, our patience. I don’t judge myself for that, I know it’s not because I’m reserving that for me but because it’s pouring out to our children. But I am aware, and right now, after years of sleepless nights (!), it’s more important to me than ever to make sure I protect that relationship as strongly and passionately as I protect ours with the boys.
Everyone is just doing their best. And everyone wants to be seen, appreciated.
I think appreciation is the single most important word in my relationship as a wife. It feeds such a positive cycle of reciprocated gratitude that makes everyone involved feel that much better about some of the harder times we go through.
I think appreciation is the single most important word in my relationship as a wife. It feeds such a positive cycle of reciprocated gratitude that makes everyone involved feel that much better about some of the harder times we go through.
Being at peace with changing relationships
Entering this next chapter of life impacted my friendships pre-children far more than I ever anticipated. There’s no hiding that life does change when children come into the world, the way you socialise, the times you do so, your flexibility, what you enjoy. For a long time, I fought the change in the attempt to keep up with “life before”. But recently I’ve become much more comfortable in the changing of the tides. Excited by the new friendships that having children so often bring into your life and choosing more wisely where to put my time and energy so that the memories I create over the next 10 years are memorable ones, not one’s that felt like an “I should”, but an “I’d like to”.
Entering this next chapter of life impacted my friendships pre-children far more than I ever anticipated. There’s no hiding that life does change when children come into the world, the way you socialise, the times you do so, your flexibility, what you enjoy. For a long time, I fought the change in the attempt to keep up with “life before”. But recently I’ve become much more comfortable in the changing of the tides. Excited by the new friendships that having children so often bring into your life and choosing more wisely where to put my time and energy so that the memories I create over the next 10 years are memorable ones, not one’s that felt like an “I should”, but an “I’d like to”.
Me, myself and I.
My gut pings with a sense of embarrassment writing that. How very self-involved of me.
My gut pings with a sense of embarrassment writing that. How very self-involved of me.
But when I zoom out of tunnel vision, I know in my heart that in the last few years I have come to realise the widely positive impact giving myself time to feel good about me as a woman, has had on me as a mother. There’s no race, no expectation to physically “get back” and honestly me-time extends far beyond physical. Maybe it’s an energy healing session, the permission to be at home without feeling the need to task up every available second when the kids are at school, a dinner out, a cinema on a Friday, a run, meditation, a walk. It’s not really the activity itself, it’s the guilt-free permission to do something for you, stepping away from the mental check-listing that motherhood often brings with it and taking a moment to appreciate the things in our lives with grateful for.
