A big welcome to the My Kinda Mum blog! I’d like to share a little bit about how and why the blog was born…
When I became a mum at the age of 35, I found it incredibly difficult to adjust to the change of pace.
Starting late with motherhood meant I had a lot of “pre-kids experience”, including a very busy 15 year career. From broadcast journalism to sales and marketing, it was always fast-paced and high-pressure.
When I finally became a mum, overnight I moved from 100mph to 5mph…with speed bumps! Everything took forever. Nothing got done, except feeding and caring for my baby.
I was used to focusing on my own ambitions, spending each day trying to achieve more and climb higher. Now I had to focus almost entirely on this small person, spending each day tending almost exclusively to her needs.
There was no time or headspace for me any more. I felt like I’d lost my identity. I loved my baby to bits, but I couldn’t get past the frustration that my own life had come to a grinding halt.
This left me racked with guilt, as I assumed the change in focus was supposed to come naturally to new mums, like you weren’t supposed to care about your own life any more.
Your baby is your life now, right?
With no support locally, I began to feel resentful of others who had family nearby to help them. I even lashed out at close friends, believing that they took the support they had for granted. I was angry, frustrated, envious and anxious. Not exactly the blissful postpartum bubble I was expecting!
Tentatively, I started sharing these feelings in my content on Instagram.
I had so many concerns about being judged for sharing the struggles of motherhood.
“What if everyone else has their sh*t together and it’s only me that’s struggling?!” I thought.
Needless to say, my fears were totally unfounded.
It became very apparent very quickly that not only were my audience going through the exact same experiences, parents around the whole world were feeling the same things too.
The more we talked about the challenges and made light of them, the less alone we all felt and the fewer guilt trips we gave ourselves for finding things tough.
As well as building up a wonderful supportive community, the page has been incredibly therapeutic for me too, giving me so much confidence that I’m actually doing a pretty reasonable job of this parenting malarkey, instead of the total failure I thought I was before.
So if you’re new round here, and you’ve been feeling like you’re bumbling through every day, hanging onto your sanity by a thread, welcome my friend. You’ve found your safe space!