Time to Feel Good

The episode has a focus on how feeling good is linked to looking good, not in a superficial sense, but in terms of recognising and being comfortable with one's true self. 

Throughout the episode there are practical insights and tips to help mothers reconnect with themselves and cultivate a positive self-image. The discussion touches on various aspects of self-care, including skincare, haircare, makeup, and clothing choices. The discussion talks about the importance of establishing simple self-care routines that contribute to daily well-being. This can involve practices like maintaining a basic skincare routine, exploring different haircare options, and using makeup to enhance one's features in a way that feels authentic.

The conversation then shifts to the significance of wardrobe choices and how they can impact one's mood and confidence. Suggesting a simple method of decluttering the closet, removing items that no longer fit or evoke negative emotions, and making space for clothes that align with the current self-image. This process is presented as a way to let go of the past and embrace the present version of oneself.

The episode also touches on the role of nutrition and hydration in enhancing energy levels and overall mood. Talks about the importance of balanced eating, incorporating colourful fruits and vegetables, and staying hydrated. The discussion encourages listeners to prioritize nourishing their bodies without resorting to strict diets or extreme measures.

One of the key themes of the episode is self-acceptance. Acknowledging the challenges of adjusting to post-pregnancy body changes and the need to accept and love oneself as they are now. The episode encourages listeners to focus on their individual strengths, achievements, and the incredible journey of motherhood. Explaining to mothers that they are more than their physical appearance and that their worth is not determined by how they look.

Throughout the episode, shared personal anecdotes and experiences  create a relatable and supportive atmosphere. Listeners are reminded that self-care is a gradual process and that small steps toward self-acceptance can lead to significant positive changes in their overall well-being. The episode concludes with a message of empowerment, urging mothers to celebrate their unique identities and embrace the new version of themselves that motherhood has created.

Here are the highlights:

(1:07) Embracing Your Identity 
(6:44) Significance of self care rituals
(13:02) Wardrobe makeover
(19:20) Nutrition and hydration 
(26:17) Accepting your new body
(29:20) Positive affirmations

Lynne Meek -Stylist and link to online shop

Transcript

Welcome to the Being Mom Podcast. The podcast for Being a mom, your way. I am your host, Amanda Forsey. Thank you so much for joining me. It is so important as mums to find a balance between giving to ourselves and giving to our families and living in line with who we are and what we really want. Let's put the you and the why back into mummy. 

Hello. Welcome to this week's episode. Time for feeling good. 

When we're looking good, we feel good. 

Now, I don't mean looking good as in all dolled up and ready for a night out on the town. What I mean by looking good is looking like ourselves. So in this episode, I'm going to break down some of the things that we may have let go of from our routine that mean that we aren't feeling like ourselves. So this is something that just slowly starts to happen in pregnancy. Our bodies begin to change. We no longer fit into our favourite clothes, and maybe we start wearing sort of more casual things like leggings and vest tops and baggy cardigans and jumpers. Then as we progress to having the baby, maybe we're dealing with c section scars that make things uncomfortable or reverse feeding, making clothes need to be quick and easy access, or maybe it's just the extra curves in places that we aren't used to. For me, even my fit size changed, and my favorite shoes became too small. Okay. I went up a whole size. It's really a lot of change for us to with, and we are understandably confused and unsure of where the old me went and who the new version is now. So how can we find ourselves in this new stage of motherhood and begin to feel not only like ourselves, but feel good again. I have a few ideas that have helped me, and I'm gonna share them with you.

First, we're gonna talk about your skin care, haircare, and makeup.  These things are super important in helping us connect with ourselves on a daily basis. and nurturing our own needs, they are self care rituals.  They don't have to be complicated, but they can give us really good benefits. These are daily things we can do for ourselves. 

Second, I'm going to talk about the clothes and outfit choices that we make. Our wardrobe can actually become quite a scary place after pregnancy and, giving birth. It's full of clothes that might make us feel a bit sad, make us feel guilty, they bring up a whole range of emotions, and we're gonna change that. I promise. 

Third, I'm going to discuss how making sure you're getting water and some really good nutrition can help you with your energy levels and how you're feeling.  It's all about feeling good here. 

And finally, we are going to talk about a accepting your new mum body, some comparison and self love that are not always easy, but I'm going to tell you how you can start to make changes there.  And I'm talking about comparison with our old selves here. 

So let's get started. From a really young age, we start to take an interest how we look in our hair and our makeup. In fact, a lot of our teenage years are spent experimenting with this and finding our own personal style and identity I can already see my daughter's doing it. They are 4 and 6.  And we already use language, don't we? Oh, you look so pretty. Oh, your hair's lovely like that. Whereas with boys, we say, oh, you're so strong and now look how big you're getting, it's just the language we use from even a very young age, it can affect us.  At the moment, my makeup bag has been abducted a few times and the delight when they show me what they've done to themselves, honestly, Coco the clown springs to mind, but they think they're beautiful. So it works for them.

It's another example of them copying what you do instead of what you tell them to. So by giving yourself a good skin care and hair care and makeup routine, if you want to, then you can show them the importance of looking after our personal care. Okay. This is our personal self care here. So when you think of yourself, What are the features that make you feel like you? Do you have curly hair? Do you wear glasses? Maybe you think about how short or how tall you are. It's a very personal thing, this self image that we have. And as women, we can focus more on the bits that we don't like about ourselves.

And that's never gonna make us feel good. Just know that all of us have these parts that we don't like, even celebrities and supermodels. So I what I want you to do is think about and focus on what you do like. For me, I've always had long, dark hair with the exception of a very brief experiment in my university years of trying blonde hair. It looked awful, but this is what youth's for. That's when we take chances and we make mistakes. Luckily, it was before Facebook, so there isn't much photo evidence so I can pretend it never happened.

I've been dying my hair now for about 25 years because I started going gray quite young, but for me to feel like me, I know having my hair colored and styled so I can wear it down makes me feel like me. So what is that for you? How, how does it feel for you? What is it that you associate as part of your identity that makes you feel like you? You know, I don't expect you to go to the hairdresser every month unless you want to and you can. And if so, go for it, that's great. But what we can do is find ways of taking care of our hair that means that we can wear it and style it in a way that makes us feel good. So it can be keeping a deep conditioning treatment in the shower, so you don't forget to pamper, it can be having styling products that allow you to do it quickly and that hold the style longer. Think about how you like your hair to look. what works for you. As we grow our hair changes, pregnancy has a huge effect on our hair.

Firstly, it looks very thick and full because it's not falling out because of the hormones, then afterwards, it starts to fall out, and we end up looking a little bit dull. Maybe it's a little bit thinner in places. For me, it was around my face, in particular, seemed to get thin, and now that it's growing back, it's got like a little tufts. With your your routine for your hair care, you don't have to make it really challenging. It can be simple, very simple, just a nice shampoo and conditioner that feels good every time you use it, it's about creating a self care ritual and making it a habit that you feel good regularly. For me, my essentials are having hair dye, so I can do my roots when I need to, and I'm a pro at it now after years of practice. I also use an intensive conditioning treatment every time I wash my hair as dying it does dry it out a bit and grey hair has a different drier coarser texture. I also love using dry shampoo because it gives my hair a few extra days boost between washes.

So whatever it is for you. You don't have to make it a really challenging, a complicated routine. It can be something as simple as buying shampoo and conditioner that smells great, and you feel good every time you use it's about creating that self care ritual and making it a habit so that you feel good regularly. Our skin can also suffer through the hormonal change a pregnancy and motherhood. Okay. It's important not to go crazy and try all sorts of random things on your skin as this can actually make it worse. Our skin has a very fine balance called the acid mantle at the surface, and it's really easy to break down this protective barrier if we use harsh exfoliators or products that dry out skin and cause it to be stressed. So the best thing that you can do is go and see a professional and get a very simple and basic skin care product system in place. They will assess your skin for you, and it's a wonderful way to have it all done for if you don't have the time or the funds to go to your professional, then you can always visit a local beauty counter, at a department store.

Yes. They have a goal to sell you products. Of course, they do, but the advice is free, and it's real, and you don't have to buy anything, or you may only want to buy one product or 2 products. but it will give you the information that you need. So you have a place to start. Okay. my favorites from the High Street are Clinique and Clarins, and I do use some of their products regularly. It's really important to find out your skin type.

Are you dry, oily, combination? Cause this is where you start to build your routine up from. For me, with pregnancy and breastfeeding, it meant my skin went from being combination to being really dry, really dehydrated, and sensitive. So the products that I used previously were no longer suitable for my skin, and they were actually adding to the sensitivity and making me look and feel a lot worse.  It was red. It was tight and it just wasn't a good place to be. 

And I also had a little bit of pigmentation as well, which is another pregnancy thing. The hormones make you sensitive to the light. So I had some, you know, pigmentation from that that I wanted to deal with. So this is why I know firsthand that you have to reassess your skin at different stages and update what you're doing because what worked for you before won't necessarily work for you now. really important to find the right products for where you are now. Most importantly,  I use facial massage techniques when I'm applying the product because it boosts circulation and lymphatic drainage, and so my face looks a lot less puffy and a lot more radiant and glowy. you've got your lymph nodes, around sort of where your ears are along under your jaw line and down into your neck. So when you're doing this with putting the moisturizer and the cleanser on, always sort of moving from your chin up along your jaw line towards your ears, and then always come down your neck down to the top of your chest, so you're collor bone along that, that line there, that's a a good thing to be doing.

It sounds like a lot when I say it. Okay. But really, it's not a lot. I use 6 products, and I do it when I'm cleaning my teeth in the morning and before bed at night. So it's actually a very quick and easy routine to keep as part of my day to day life.  I'm not making it complicated. I just do it when I brush my teeth. I use my products, and when I clean my teeth at night. I use my products again, so I can easily incorporate it in. 

As for makeup, this is something I would prefer not to to bother with, but since it makes me feel good, I do add a little bit if I know I'm leaving the house. So I used to wear false lashes, and I loved waking up and having them on because already looked awake and done. They have this magic effect of hiding the tired puffy eyes beautifully. but with 4 kids, I found that really impossible and difficult to keep the appointment for the infills every 3 weeks. So I had to let them go. They are costly, and they're a real commitment.
but truthfully, I do miss them. On the downside, over time, they do weaken and damage your own natural lashes. No matter what magic products they claim to use, this is just a fact.

And now I'm growing my own natural lashes back and I use an eyelash curler and a basic mascara, which works absolutely fine for now. I'm really keen to try an LVL lash treatment soon, because now I feel they're stronger and fuller and they're a bit longer, that I think this is gonna be really effective. So LVL stands for length, volume and lift. And essentially they dye the lashes, which defines them by making them a little bit darker and thicker, and then they curl or perm the lashes to add volume. And it makes them look longer as they curl up. So it's a very quick and easy treatment to have, and it's something that does cost, but it, it also needs to be maintained as well because your lashes grow and fall out.

So you've got like a 6 week hair cycle. So you're gonna be looking to get that redone as well. For me, I see it as being a great tool to use before a holiday or a special occasion, like a wedding or Christmas, and that's probably where I'm gonna get it done. And then I'll see how it lasts and and how it works. I also also use a tinted moisturizer instead of a foundation or powder as it gives a smoother, more natural looking effect. And I find that the foundation or the powder can sort of add to my dry skin, and it makes it look a bit flaky. And, and whereas the tinted moisturizer just gives this lovely smooth effect for me. And then I'll add some lip balm So it's actually very simple for daytime. I'm not using a lot. And if I'm going out at night, I'll add in some eyeshadow. I'll define my eyebrows. I will use a shimmer or a bronzer to highlight my cheeks, maybe some lip liner and lipstick on my lips. It doesn't sound like much at all, but I'm doing it because it makes me feel like me. If I went heavier on makeup, then I wouldn't look like me in the mirror. Perhaps you don't look like you, unless you have bright red lipstick on. or you wouldn't dream of not wearing a full face of makeup to leave the house.

What's important is the reason you're doing it. If it makes you feel good and it makes you feel like you, then the time or the money you spend is totally worth it, okay, and totally justified. You are more than a mum. You need to feel like you. So if that makes you feel like, you know, you want to use a expensive face mask or you must have your haircut, you know, just the right way that you like it, every 6 weeks, you gotta get it cut and shaped, or a bright lipstick is a must and you have to have it, then you do it. You get to decide what your priorities are, looking like ourselves will make us feel good, and so it is super, super important. 

This leads us nicely into the next area I want to talk about. Our wardrobes and our clothes. The clothes that we wear have the power to make us feel so much. It's not always obvious to us how much our mood and our confidence and our overall well-being can be affected by the decisions that we make every morning when we get dressed. But our wardrobes are full of all those moments in our lives where we felt differently about ourselves. There's favorite items that we always gravitate towards, our super comfy jeans or jumper that we like or a top that always flatters us and makes us feel good. Some items we bought for special occasions and they make us feel glamorous or we feel like we're looking our best in them, and some items like maybe a handbag or a pair of shoes might have been bought as a special treat or a gift. all sorts of thoughts and feelings and emotions that we have around our clothes.

That is the point. Our clothes have emotions and feelings attached every single item has an associated memory, and that memory has the power to make us feel good or bad about ourselves. This is true our whole lives, but for moms whose bodies have just been through huge transformations, it's even more valid. We are at a point where we will be much more sensitive to the memories that our clothes bring up, Our bodies have changed, things that used to fit might not anymore, styles that used to sit us might not flatter our new body and shape in the same way. Our lifestyles changed, and so clothes that worked before might no longer work for us. My high healed boots rarely get worn these days. I'd break my neck running after the kids. So what I want you to do is be kind to yourself, and when you go to your wardrobe, be aware of what thoughts and feelings are coming up for you.

Our clothes need to make us feel like ourselves. So what types of clothes make you feel like you? Are you a jeans and trainers and t shirt girl? Do you feel like you when you're wearing floral skirts and dresses, maybe you feel most comfortable in plain colors with no patterns, and you're always drawn to black or navy or white, that's okay if it's what you like, and it's what you enjoy wearing. When you're having a think about the type of clothes that you like to wear, I want you honest with yourself. Okay. If you like patterns or bright colors, but you would never wear these things because they're too loud, or you don't know how to wear them, that's okay too. The important thing is to be honest and aware and know what you like. You can then add those items in slowly and in small ways, So a scarf or a bag or a pair of shoes, or even a piece of jewelry, if you want to take it really slow. I used to wear a lot of dark colours, mainly black with jeans and boots.

That was until I had a styling consultation with a lovely lady called Lynne Meek, who runs an online clothing shop for women now. She used to do personal styling, and she, came out to my home, I will put a link in the show notes as I recommend to check out her shop, and it's full of wonderful ideas. So it's a great place for you to find inspiration. So she came to my home and went through my wardrobe with me. We discussed what worked, what didn't, what items suited my shape and flattered me and which ones I should get rid of and didn't do me any favors. She removed a lot of the big baggy tops and jumpers I was hiding under and that were making me look bigger than I really was. As a child, I was always tall and skinny with no real of shape. And I used to get called beanpole or olive oil, if you know the character from the cartoon Popeye, or Bony M, my family called me Mandy for short I used to get called Boney M. I used to wear big baggy t shirts and jumpers and this habit stuck with me into my adult life, only now, I wasn't a super skinny kid anymore.

I was a fully grown woman with curves and shape, and I was still hiding away under those clothes. So the other thing that, Lynne told me was which season I was. So if you've never heard of this before, it's absolutely life changing, when it comes to knowing what clothes suit you in terms of the colours and the designs, each season has its own shades and ranges of colours work with your skin tone, your eye colour, your hair colour, it all compliments you best. So you find your season, and then you know what colours suit you, and and it makes it easier to go shopping. You can find this out online easily. Just Google it, Google what season you are, and it'll come up for you. And it's a must it really is life changing for when you're shopping, when you're putting outfits together. So I'm a winter, and I know exactly what colors work best for me and what make me look good, and I can put together outfits that'll make me look and feel good.

Okay. So what I want you to do is to grab a suitcase or just a black bin bag and open it up onto your bed. And I want you to go through your wardrobe and take out any items that don't fit. Maybe they're too big or they're too small. Maybe they're damaged. take out any damaged items. So if there's holes in them or there's buttons missing, get rid of them, put them in the bin. Okay? any items that don't make you feel like you.

Maybe you bought them as an impulse purchase or because they were fashionable, but they're not you and you don't feel good in them or you don't wear them. Take them out of your wardrobe. For now, we're gonna set them aside.  Any items that make you feel sad or unhappy or guilty, take them out of your wardrobe and put them aside. gonna put the items in the case, and we're gonna close it, and you can deal with them later when you're feeling motivated to be organized, and then you could put them into bags for a charity shop or you can sell them online. I want you to go through and do this for all your clothes, your shoes, your bags, your scarfs, other accessories. You're clearing out items that don't work for who you are now. If there's some items that you feel uncertain about, just leave them for now.

 This is the process. I want you to take it at your own pace. once you've done this, you can take a look at what you've got left, really assess what you have and how you feel about it. Do you have ten pairs of jeans or 15 black vest tops or, you know, 20 pairs of socks? It helps to put things in orders. So top together, jumpers together, trousers together, underwear together, and then you can see where you are and maybe where there's some gaps or where you still have a little bit of clearing out to do, knowing where you are currently is empowering. You can see exactly what you have and what you might need to get. What's missing from your wardrobe that you might need? And then when you do go to buy new things, you can pick items that feel like the current version of you. This is a huge, huge when it comes to making you feel good about yourself. 

Right. Next up, I want to talk about the importance of how we fuel our bodies. In order to feel good, we have to be nourishing and nurturing our bodies, and we can't run on low or no fuel. It's the same principle of filling up our cup. We can't run on empty. So I understand how hard it can be to find time to make healthy food. I am super guilty of just grabbing an unhealthy snack like a packet of crisps or a chocolate bar to keep me going when I've got a full on day with the kids, and I'm running around all over the place.

I go for numerous cups of tea and coffee to perk me up when I'm knackered after a night of broken sleep with the baby, I totally get how making it a priority to eat healthy and nourish ourselves can be low, on our to do list. I understand.  But this all comes back to self care and the importance of taking care of our needs and feeling ourselves properly, and it can have huge benefits for our energy levels, our mood and our overall well-being. So what should we be putting on our plate?  We know it's not chicken nuggets and chips, don't we? We know it's not chocolate bars and crisps. I like to say to the kids, and I tell myself too, we have to eat the rainbow. That is the phrase that I say a lot when I'm trying to encourage him to eat food.

I'm like, we eat the rainbow. We want to have all our colours. You know, we have a variety. Basically, we want to be trying to get a mix of colourful fruits and vegetables because then we're getting a good mix of vitamins and minerals and antioxidants and all the good things that our bodies need. So the types of food that will boost our immune systems.  This type of food gives us radiant glow from inside. It keeps our energy levels up and steady throughout the day. all the good stuff.

How can we do this? Well, I have a fruit bowl filled with apples and bananas and pears and oranges. These items are quite long lasting. The kids can grab them as well. It's easy to get used as a quick snack, instead of a chocolate bar. in the fridge, I have a few types of grapes. So the green and the red or the purple, I have a few melons, so I'll have either a honeydew yellow melon or a watermelon. and I alternate what I buy each week. so sometimes the soft fruits can be strawberries or blueberries or raspberries, and I just buy those as a treat depending on what's on offer or what I see.

I also have a selection of colored peppers, carrots, cucumber, and celery, and baby tomatoes. If I have time to prepare and chop them up, that's great. I generally don't have the time to do that. I just take them out when I'm gonna use them. By having a good selection of fruit and vegetables available for snacks, it means that the kids and myself are able to have a good choice, and it doesn't feel boring. Let's face it healthy, it can sometimes mean boring, and it can feel like the same thing over and over each day, it's not very inspiring, is it? So some tricks that I use to help me add interest are to dip the chopped vegetables at hummus or guacamole. it doesn't work for my kids because they won't try the stuff. Maybe your kids will. I hope they do. the other thing I do is I put a selection of the chopped vegetables and fruit onto a big plate or platter. And I'll maybe add some, chopped up cheese or bits of, bacon or ham or chicken. You can add in buttery toast, and I put it in the middle of the table, and then I call the kids for the snack time, or I can add pizza or boiled pasta, and I can call it lunch. generally, I say it's bits and pieces, thats what I call it. I say bits and pieces time. Come on. Come to the table.

I think it's the competition or the act of sharing, but they all eat a lot faster, and they all eat a lot more than if I gave them the same thing on individual plates. I also add extra chopped vegetables like cucumbers and tomatoes to their dinner plates at dinner time. I think frozen veg is a magic gift. It is your fabulous friend. It's very easy to quickly cook and add alongside any dinner option. So frozen veggies is another tip. Another one I have, another tip for us moms is to try to add more protein in as it can help us feel a bit fuller, and it stabilizes our energy levels throughout the day as well.

So maybe you can add some eggs in a breakfast. Nuts are really good, to have around for snacking on, and I'll often snack on cooked chicken from the fridge rather than grabbing a biscuit. It just makes you feel a little bit fuller, actually. One important point to make is that restriction is never going to make you feel good. So please, please do not do it to yourself. If 80% of the time you're eating well, that is more than good enough. Okay? Do not deny it yourself the chocolate biscuit or the takeaway. Just don't have them every time, or every night.

Don't do it all the time. Diets are designed to fail.  They want you to fail so you keep coming back. So instead, base things on how they make you feel, what foods work for you, find that balance that works for you to live. And another thing as well, do not weigh yourself, the scale, will only tell you the effect that gravity has on your body.  They don't tell you how wonderful you are, how amazing you are, what a great mother you are, what a good friend you are, all of the fantastic things about yourself, the scale does not tell you this. It tells you the effect of gravity. That's it, all it tells you. It's a sad step. So don't do it to yourself. 

Another quick point that I just want to touch on is drinking water. This is something I really struggle with, and I think through pregnancy and breastfeeding, I was in a permanent state of dehydration, causing headaches, high blood pressure and kidney stones. So I know firsthand how important it is to hydrate ourselves. It will really help you feel better physically and mentally. Water can help you with staying more focused, healthier, brighter skin. It aids digestion. Constipation is not our friend, especially if pregnancy caused hemorrhoids. So how can we remember to drink water and hydrate ourselves? Well, we can carry a water bottle with us all around, like, everywhere we go, we can set reminders in our phone. You can even get an app now just for prompting you to drink water. It will ping at you all day telling you to drink more if you don't like the taste of water, you can infuse it with fruit or highlight cucumber in there. You can also add in mint. I've got fresh mint in the garden, which I used to make fresh mint tea, and you can put, a pot of this in the supermarket on wind or so.

Okay? herbal teas are a great way to stay hydrated, and you can swap out your regular tea or coffee for one for me. I still struggle in the day to day to remember drink water. Life is just really busy, and I forget. So what I do is I have a really big glass first thing in the morning, and then I have water with my meals, and then I'll have another really big glass last thing at night.  I'm doing my best.  It might not be perfect, and it probably is not enough, but I'm doing my best, and that's all any of us can do. So just give it your best try.

This last part is probably the most important. We can only feel good in ourselves if we accept ourselves. And I mean, except exactly who we are right now, how we look, our current shape, the things that we enjoy doing, all of it. We need to accept exactly who this new version of ourselves is, and that can be really hard. Okay. If we're constantly wishing we were older versions of our self, it can be really, really hard. While there are things like healthy eating and exercise that can help us, we are never going to be the previous version of ourselves.

That's just not gonna happen. That woman is gone forever. She no longer exists. except maybe in photographs or in memories. A lot of moms feel lost in motherhood. Now lost, what does that mean? Well, one definition of lost is that which has been taken away and cannot be recovered. So if we think of this concept in terms of how it applies to us and to motherhood, the woman you were before you became a mother, that woman, she's lost to you. She can never be recovered. She's gone. and we can't bring her back. This new version of you is not familiar, and she won't become familiar and known to you if you don't accept her and you love her for who she is. So the old you is gone, and that is okay. She is not who you are today. The more that we hold on to this old version of ourselves and we try to get back to her the harder it is. We need to let her go. She is in the past.

You are who you are now. you are here, you need to accept it, and you need to show yourself the love that you need right now. Well, there are some steps that you can take to help with this because it's quite a big concept. you can engage in activities that make you feel good long walks, long baths, dancing, singing, reading a book, whatever it is that makes you feel like you, you can treat yourself with the same kindness that you would give to a friend or a loved one, you can, accept that your body has achieved something truly amazing You have created, grown, birthed, and nurtured life. That is a miracle. And you did that. Your body did that. It's important to acknowledge the the strength and resilience your body has shown. And while our bodies are new to us, every curve, every stretch mark, every scar, it tells our story. And our stories are what make us us. So shifting our focus from how we look to how we feel is gonna help you build a stronger sense of self, and it's gonna improve how confident we are in this new year version of ourselves. it's really important to remember that you're worth as a mother and your worth as a person is not determined by your appearance. What makes you you is not only how you look, but how you feel and how you feel is everything. Just as motherhood is a journey, so is the process of accepting your post baby self.

Celebrate all the small wins whether it's feeling more comfortable in your own skin, rediscovering a favourite outfit, or finding a new one, even simply being able to look in the mirror and smile, it can be a really huge step for some of us. So, you know, take it easy. Small steps, small wins, they all add up. So positive affirmations can be another powerful tool in changing your perspective by focusing on what your body is capable of and how much love it brings to your family. You can shift your mindset towards appreciating all of who you are and accepting all of you. I want you to be patient with yourself. Nothing worth having comes fast, but even small steps in the right direction count, and they are worth it, and they will make a difference. 

This week, we talked about some of the things we can do to make ourselves feel good, which is super important. I really hope that some of the topics I touched on this week make you think about how you're living and taking care of yourself on a daily basis. If any of the tips, appeal to you, please do give them a try and let me know how you get on. Remember small wins and baby steps all add up to make big shifts in our lives, and they help us move forward on our motherhood journeys. Thank you for joining me for this episode of the Being Mum Podcast. Please subscribe for future episodes. You can also follow me on instagram @beingmumyourway or join my Facebook group The Being Mum Tribe. I'd love to hear from you. And if you have questions or want advice, please do get in touch and join the online Facebook community.