Thriving amidst the challenges of motherhood
After many years working together in a clinical setting providing “ambulance at the bottom of the cliff ” services, Laura, a psychologist, and Kirsten, a physiotherapist and health coach, both knew they were ready for a change.
They found that the skills required to help someone recover from serious health difficulties were also the skills that enable individuals to thrive and excel in their lives. But very often it wasn’t until an individual was in crisis that they had the opportunity to learn how to attend to their own wellbeing effectively. They set about exploring how they could utilise their combined 30 years of clinical experience to support people to achieve and maintain optimal wellbeing and ride through the challenges of life with greater ease.
In late 2019 the first iteration of their new venture, CALM for Mums was born. Starting with what they knew best, being mums to young children themselves, they developed a program to provide practical solutions and strategies to mothers across New Zealand to regain calm and collected versions of themselves as they learned to parent.
When the pandemic hit in 2020 it felt like the course had never been more needed. As parents across the world scrambled to find balance as they juggled homeschooling with work and “normal” family life, CALM for Mums quickly shifted online. Laura says “we were able to bring groups of women together in a novel way for an hour once a week that enabled them to hit the reset button. We knew how tough things were, as we too were living the struggle within our own families. Our program felt like a great way to support mums doing it tough while probably reminding ourselves to put time into our own wellbeing in the process!”
“The difference we wanted to achieve with this program was that it was not going to be another course that told people what to do,” says Kirsten. “With a plethora of health and wellbeing advice at your fingertips people can often feel overwhelmed with where to begin and become rendered into inaction. We incorporated essential tools from our clinical practice to ensure people could understand why they wanted to make change”.
As Laura explains, “working from knowing what is important to you is essential in living a life that feels meaningful and fulfilling. You are far more likely to choose actions that support your wellbeing when you have good alignment with your values. Secondly, we need the skills to recognise the warning signs that we are struggling or heading that way.Building self awareness into the program was crucial to enable mums to know when they needed to choose an action that supported their wellbeing.
As time has gone on Laura and Kirsten have adapted their courses to also support people in the workplace, to address some of the mental strain businesses are up against post pandemic. Their most recent course, Realise.Focus.Thrive, is designed to empower business leaders to approach these challenges from a foundation of insight, confidence and personal wellbeing so they can help achieve sustainable high performance, both at work and at home. “We love the flow-on effects we see when people take these tools home and then come back and tell us about the better connections they have with their families. It makes it all worthwhile”, says Kirsten.
Laura and Kirsten will be running CALM for Mums in Term 4 for six people minimum. Register your interest through their website and in the meantime, check out their free downloads to get started on your wellbeing journey.