Self Improvement

I always complained to my husband that I never had any close friends. He said that I would make friends with the other school mums when our kids were at school. That was a long time for me to wait to cultivate amazing friendships! I chose not wait for friends to come to me. I decided to do things to become closer to the people I already knew. Now I have a group of 10 women that I am close with and I'm really really close with a few of them too. Make an effort Don’t wait for your friend’s [...]

I knew something was up when I realised that my daughter was five days old yet I had not kissed her once. This got me so worked up that my eyes filled with tears at the thought of it. I really struggled to kiss her then and there. You hear about people falling instantly in love with their child and feeling this special connection. I didn’t feel that. I spent perhaps an hour with my daughter before I was whisked off to surgery, to be reunited with her six hours after her birth. My daughter’s six-week maternal health nurse appointment [...]

I have recently been learning how to give myself grace, particularly when it comes to my daughter. I’ve inherited a trait from my dad that I’ve only just noticed: impatience. I am very impatient with a short temper when it comes to my daughter. And it doesn’t take long before I start to feel how I did at the peak of my postnatal depression. So for me, learning how to give myself grace is becoming something I really need to pay attention to. I need to have more patience, more grace and put a lid on my temper. Some days [...]

I have bee obsessed with Ruth Soukup for a good 6 months now. And I have been consuming anything she produces like it is my lifeblood. I just love hearing her message and have listened to every podcast that she has been a guest on. So I decided to create the Ruth Soukup podcast guest master list. Ruth's podcast, Do It Scared with Ruth Soukup, launched in April of 2018 with an impressive weekly streak of over 60 episodes. On top of listening to all of her podcast episodes, I’ve read 3 of her books, How to Blog For Profit [...]

Sitting in a hot bubble bath or doing yoga is not everyone’s cup of tea when it comes to self-care. While I do love a long hot bubble bath, yoga is just too slow for me. The term self-care wasn’t something I was familiar with before trying to become a parent. Before that, it was just part of what I did anyway. But going through IVF, an importance was placed on looking after my mental health. Now self-care means taking the time to do things that I enjoy and being a little bit selfish with my time to make sure [...]

I never had anxiety until I was pregnant but it has lingered ever since. Just like everything, there are good days and bad days. And I recently had two bad days in a row. So this is a journal of my anxiety for those two days. Friday I almost didn’t leave the house this morning. I'd booked and paid for a play session with a candid photoshoot for my daughter but I almost didn’t go. I changed my top twice. I made sure to have a breakfast that wouldn’t make me look bloated. Even shaving my legs for fear of [...]

When I think about the amount of time I have spent arguing with my husband about housework, I could have done a lot of other things instead. Like doing the things I was complaining about. I was honestly tired of having the same conversations, about the same things all the time. And I never set out to stop arguing about housework. but then one day it just dawned on me. If something is important to me, then I should be the one to do it. Since that realisation, I have wiped down the kitchen bench at least once a day. [...]

I hosted my first girls night in January 2018, and that first girls night changed my life. It was such a great night that I hosted another one in February. I guess you could say the rest is history. Relationships were a major focus for me in 2018, one of the main ones was with my friends. I wanted to catch up with them more often and know more about their day to day lives. We all get busy with work, family, and other commitments. We often don’t make time to catch up with those that have been there for us. [...]

Once again this year I have decided not to set goals or resolutions, but pick a word, theme or phrase for the year. But again like last year I have chosen two themes for 2019. Around the middle of 2018, I decided to start thinking about what I wanted to accomplish in 2019. I have heard that the best time to set new goals for yourself is your birthday, rather than the start of the year. I think this makes it a bit obvious that my birthday is in the middle of the year. Health Health encompasses many things. Physical [...]

I first heard about 18 for 2018 on the Happier with Gretchen Rubin podcast. So 19 for 2019 is not a new concept to me. But the thought of achieving 19 things this year was quite daunting. I’ve struggled over the years to stick to any new years resolutions that I make. So in 2018, I decided to pick a theme for the year. Actually, I picked two. I’ve also picked two main themes to focus on in 2019, but there are a lot of one-off things that I want to do too. So here is my 19 for 2019 [...]