Hi all, my name is Sarah from MrsPLoves, I am a stay at home mom to one beautiful 4 year old boy and blog about all things personal development, finance and family. I’m so honoured that my first guest post and collaboration gets to be with this lovely mommy! We decided that there was no better way to celebrate Mothering Sunday than to write about how incredibly strong mothers are as individuals, what we go through and the impact that motherhood can have on us and our identities. You can check out Kirsty’s amazing post along with the rest of my blog at mrsploves.com.
Isn’t it funny how before we become pregnant we have all of these pre-conceived notions of what being a mother is, I knew there would be an abundance of love, an abundance of joy and absolutely no lack of laughter, but what I didn’t take into account was the amount of self sacrifice being a mother would take.
We knew fairly early on that I would be a stay at home mom, it was something we had discussed and after returning to work for a little while part time to see how I really felt, it just seemed like the better decision for our family for me to be at home. I have to admit I was absolutely thrilled with the idea and I can truly say I have enjoyed every moment, its only now however looking back that I realise quite how much of a sacrifice this was.
You see before I became a mother I was quite the perfectionist, from a young age I wanted perfect results at school, then as time went by this developed into wanting the perfect home, the perfect career, to be the perfect wife and when I had my son I wanted to be perceived as the perfect mother, the mother who can quite literally do it all.
So of course, I threw my self into motherhood, attended every single baby group, did every single craft possible and made my life into everything that I thought motherhood should be. The thing though with this perceived perfectionism is that it isn’t actually achievable, you can’t have a perfect anything and what ultimately happens is that you end up focusing so hard on what you believe you should be that you end up forgetting to focus on who you are and what you actually want to be.
It was about 15 months ago that I realised this, my life was in a totally different place. Despite how much I enjoy being a mom and how happy our family is my anxiety levels were really elevated. I had no idea who I wanted to be or what direction I wanted to go in life. One thing I knew for sure is that this was not going to be my story.
The fact is that, after a successful career in marketing, and a break to study for my degree I no longer felt like I had an identity and I missed it! Something had to give, I was not going to allow anxiety define me, I’m too positive of a person and the only way to change the mind set was to educate myself how. So after much research on the subject I made the decision to see a hypnotherapist. My hypnotherapist not only helped me understand the root of where my anxiety came from (which I will eventually discuss in more detail on my blog) but she helped teach my mind how to finally relax and also introduced me to the absolute power that is NLP. Its truly incredible how much of a change has been made, don’t get me wrong I do still have a tendency towards perfectionism but now I know perfection isn’t attainable – I’m liberated.
I was so inspired by the transformation that occurred in my life that I decided to do something for me! I’m now re-training to be an NLP practitioner/ life coach and I’m so excited, it suits my path and combined with my past career in marketing and management I know I can make a positive difference in peoples lives. Simply put, I never ever want people to feel how I felt.
I want everyone to know how incredible they are for the sacrifices they make every single day for their babies. Be it going to work all hours to put a roof over your head or to further your career, working from home, or like myself staying at home.
Its so easy to get carried in so many directions with the ‘wave’ of life, but don’t allow that to happen. Take the time on a regular basis to step back for a moment, reflect and look at what exactly makes you happy. Be that re-training, reading a book, or even something as simple as a bath or popping on Netflix. You deserve that time, not just on a day that’s marked for us, but every day. What ever your path, what ever you choose to do, know you are amazing, you are powerful, you are strong and most importantly you are worthy.
I really want to thank Kirsty for allowing me to guest post on her incredible blog. She is such an inspiration and I can’t wait for you to read her post over on mrsploves.com
