Hola gorgeous souls,
I’m a productive mama. I create a LOT. I get a lot of shit DONE.
And I also have an incredibly balanced life:
I work only 3 hours a day – sometimes an hour more, sometimes an hour less.
I’m the CEO of a multiple six figure company.
I create blog posts + new programs at a pretty astonishing rate.
And I’m also an “attachment mama” – I still breastfeed my 2.5 year old, and we co-sleep, and I spend the vast majority of my time with her + my husband. She’s always been with me or my husband or both of us since she was born.
So: how do I do it?
How do I get stuff DONE while balancing mamahood + a booming, beautiful, abundant business?
1. You make it happen
I’m really blessed that my business has meant my husband no longer needs to work. He is at home with us to be a daddy-o and study Psychology part time. We’re juggling to make sure that all our needs get met – Ostara’s need for love, care + attention, his need for time to study, my need to run my business + not lose my shit.
For the first six months of Ostara’s life though, Chris worked full time and would leave before we got up, and be at home only an hour or so before me + Ostara headed to bed. There was no chance for time out for me, so I did what I had to: I ran my business from my iPod. I would write thousand+ word blogposts with one finger. I’d be replying to Twitter at 3am. I came up with my own million dollar idea – the Goddess Circle membership program in the dreamy haze between night time feeds. And I launched it in the morning from a mattress on the floor with a six month old baby jiggling on my knee.
It ain’t easy. But it IS doable. When you’ve got faith, courage + unwavering passion for what you do, there isn’t any other option.
2. You carve out time for yourself
Once I was ready to, I started carving out time for myself.
I gave my husband the gift of leaving my daughter with him on his own to let him and her work out their dance together.
I gave them the opportunity to form their own relationship without me in the way.
And their bond got stronger and stronger.
Now she’s totally cool with my afternoon work stints.
“Honey, I’m going down to do a couple of hours work now.”
“Car? Car?”
“No I’m not going in the car. I’m going to my office. You can stay here and play with Daddy and the dogs.”
“Doggggiesssssssssss! Okay! Bye bye!”
(And then she waves, and nods her head furiously, and blows me kisses. Then she fetches Charlie’s leash so she can take him for a walk around the house. This pretty much happens every single day.)
If I didn’t have my husbo available to give me the time out I need to do my business stuff, I’d work out another solution.
3. You include your kids
I was talking to Marissa, my dear Chief Operations Officer/other side of my business brain this morning. Every week, we have two hour long strategy + soul sessions together… aligning our to-do list with our intentions, talking out the big soul expansions we are navigating through.
I LOVE that photo of you… that one you made into a new banner. And knowing what I know now… I want to know what was happening behind the scenes in that photo. You always look so serene in your photos, but I’ve been at one of your photoshoots. I know what they are like. So tell me what happened at this one!
That above is the photo in question.
And Marissa’s right: she’s seen what goes down at our photoshoots.
When she was here at our last Business Planning + Dreaming Retreat, we did a photoshoot at the local cemetery (because it was gloriously green + lush.)
And we only had a few minutes to do it, and there was me + my hunky husband (who is the talented photographer behind most of my photoshoots) + my gorgeous 2 year old daughter Ostara + Marissa.
And the photos turned out gorgeous + serene of course.
What you didn’t see of course was that we struggled to find the right backdrop, and we were running against the clock, and it was steamy hot, and Ostara was REALLY not interested in being there. And me + Chris carry on our time-honoured photoshoot dance: he’ll start taking photos, and I’ll start yarking on at him about making sure the ISO is at the right level, and the exact framing I’m looking for (because I’m a visual control freak who wishes she could be behind the camera + infront of the camera at exactly the same time). And he’ll promptly ignore me, because he’s the least push-aroundable person on the planet, which I find simultaneously very sexy and also annoying. And he’ll start teasing me to make me laugh, saying that me laughing is more natural a photo than me posing smiling. And he’s right – as usual. That man is ALWAYS right. And about 360 seconds into this malarky, Ostara is finished, and DONE for the day. And I haven’t got all the photos I wanted, so Chris takes Ostara + lets her sit on his lap to drive up the dirt road behind the cemetery along the canefields (SAFETY FIRST, PEOPLE). And in the 120 seconds of peace that results, I climb up a tree + snap some photos of Marissa + get eaten by ants. Then we pile back into the car, sweaty + borderline cranky + spotty from ant bites. And we get some pies to sooth ourselves back down.
AND THAT’S HOW YOU DO A FAMILY-INCLUSIVE PHOTO SHOOT.
I’m gonna be real with you, sometimes I felt a bit like this:
I know some people would wonder why we don’t get a sitter for Ostara + head out for an hour or more + do it leisurely.
For us, we’ve tried really hard to integrate Ostara into our lives as much as possible.
I love the fact that she’s growing up around photo shoots + wild messy art making + turquoise zebra-printed rocking horse restorations + Creative Caravan renovations + joint ebook painting. I love the fact that most days when I walk back up the wooden stairs after doing some work, I’ll find Chris playing bass guitar in his music room, and Ostara’s plucking at his strings, putting on her own The Voice concert for him (complete with clapping + bowing) or trying to dress our dogs.
Me + Chris are creative peeps. Our lives pre-Ostara were saturated with art + making music + creative projects + lots of reading. So that’s what we do now as a family. And it takes a shitload more patience + a bit more flurried activity to get it finished. It’s a whole new skillset.
That’s why I recorded the Creating with Kids video workshop – to document (like a reality tv show) what it’s like to create with kids + how to actually embrace the fun while we do it. It documents me + Ostara (as a wee one) doing a painting together over the space of a couple of days, along with other creative projects we get up to. You get to see first hand the soul lessons that come about, the infinite number of boobfeeds, the ways we set it up to make it as loving + happy as possible. Because mamas need their creative time, and their babas need to see them do it + be a part of it too.
Somedays it’s the most dreamy day of creating ever. Somedays, like the photoshoot, is a little more soul medicine.
It’s just how we roll. It’s a little bit messy, and a whole lot of amusing, and a whole lotta real love.
We know that by including her, it’s just going to get easier + easier. It’s her normal to have creative parents who like to have “special projects” and photoshoots at the cemetary. And we’ll get smarter + smarter about how to make things flow even more. Being a parent is the fast track to becoming a Bodhisattva – it shaves off all your hard corners, and sloughs away your shit until you become as smooth as a river stone.
Most of all — this is my life, and I wouldn’t want it any other way. I LOVE this business of mine. I LOVE that I get to live my passions every single day. And I LOVE that I get to be a mama + spend so much time with my family.
It’s totally okay to be a mama… and to have other passions outside of mamahood.
I love that this way of life gives me CHOICES – the choice as to how I spend my time. The choice for my family to move to where we need to be. The choice as to how we get all our needs met. It’s why I’m so passionate about being a business goddess. I want to help other mamas get there too – to the place of freedom + choice as to how they want to live their good life. This world is changing so rapidly – and the #1 way I see it changing is giving women + families those gorgeous choices.
It’s all doable.
love,
Are you ready to become a Creative Goddess?
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