You are not a village. 

Your partner is not a village. 

We must work to debunk the myth that women and  the nuclear family can do it all. This is hard because it is hard. 

You gave birth. You were rebirth as a mother, as a parent. 

In 2020 you likely gave birth in a global pandemic. 

THIS is not what you thought. 

The world of modern conveniences and automation has us believing that we can do alone. 

It makes it easy to “set-it and forget it”. 

Babies do not function this way. 

Postpartum mothers do not function this way. 

So what? Is this just the world? 

Nope. You have power here. Don’t you forget that. YOU.  

YOU are this babies parent and YOU are not a village. 

While we may never end up living in small villages with a bunch of aunties and grandmothers to help we can use today’s world to create our village. 

We can build a healthcare team. We can ask for food instead of toys at a baby shower. We can text or call a friend this week and say “How can I show up for you this week” or “I would like to drop off a meal for you this week” OR  JUST DROP OFF FOOD, a good book, mail a card. 

We can start to build our modern villages by starting before we are ready. STOP waiting for permission. YOU are not a village AND you still have the power to create change. 

Be. 

As we wrap up 2019 and begin 2020 I wanted to take some time to call myself out and share with you why sometimes Be. is well connected and why other times Be. seems almost dormant. When I opened my doors to the public in April of 2019 I had a “plan” and a vision for my company. I set lofty goals, I started networking with some women-owned business that I admire and hoped to support through referring my own clients to their business. I was ready to go big. 

Then in late May, I found out that I was pregnant. A baby business and a baby? Ok- we are doing this I thought. I will grow both. I was always told that it would take me years to get pregnant as I struggle with some chronic health issues. However, I was told wrong or life had another plan. The first trimester was truly challenging. I was sick all the time and had enough energy to show up for my clients, hold space for them and then find my way back to my couch. 

This was not my plan. 

The second trimester was “easier” though that is when we learned of the complications. The uncertainty around my bodies ability to safely birth this child. The idea that to ensure the safety of the child my birth plan will not look anything like I had originally dreamed.  I started to work with my own therapist around the idea and reality of uncertainty, letting go and talking about mortality. In this time period that is marketed as magical, hopeful and filled with joy. I was faced with impermanence. 

Here we are a few weeks away from the birth of my child and am still holding space for my clients. I am able to do more than go from my office to the couch, I am certainly not where I thought I would be at this point. Still I have been creating a plan for my maternity leave and ensuring that my clients have proper coverage while I am away. 

Here I sit, wanting to bring you a detailed plan for what will happen during my maternity leave and what Be. will look like upon my return. I sit here wanting to fill you with hope, post fancy sayings that remind you of life. I want to give you quick fixes and life hacks because if I did that Be. would be more mainstream. Be. would fit this easy business model. 

Then I ask myself one of my favorite questions to ask my client: “ What is the most honest thing you can tell yourself?”. The most honest thing I can tell you is Be. is not cookie cutter. Be. is a place for the messy. It is admitting my mistakes and holding the space for women and new mamma’s to mess up, break free from perfectionism and show up no matter what. 

My plan is to have a series of blog posts ready to go while I am on maternity leave. I see it as letters to my ideal clients, insights and real talk about things that we all struggle with day to day. Content that you can have while I am away. This is my plan and here is what I know to be true: life always has other plans. 

Have you ever found that sometimes the hardest thing to do is to start a task? Or do you find that when you get into a project you find that the project takes you longer than expected and this leaves you feeling as if you never have enough time?  Each day we are creeping closer to the time of the year where us modern-day humans are equally jolly and always feeling as if we never have enough time. 

It is the creeping in low-grade holiday anxiety you have been dreading. The quiet voice and slowly entering  “do-it-all” thoughts that have found their way back to you. The struggle is real and you are not alone. 

As the holiday season approaches it can be helpful to consider using some time management tools to keep your expectations in check and you on time. We often overestimate the time it will take to complete a given task, this is known as the planning fallacy, to manage this try adding half the time in which you think the task will take you to the amount of time you are planning. If you are planning to spend an hour writing a blog post, next time plan an hour an half. This will not only account for any unpredictables, it accounts for the time it takes to start and end an activity. It leaves room for the transitions. 

Transitions are something we all go through though do not give enough air time for. We see where we are starting and we see where we want to go and the middle can be messy. These smaller transitions that occur every day from home to work, work to lunch, tasks to task. You might be switching from new mom tasks to being a manager task and all of these transitions require your brain to switch mentally, our focus needs to change and our fine motor skills are being used differently. It is ok to allow time for this to happen, some days you will need more time than others. So as you approach this holiday season try using one intentional breath when you are dashing from here to there. 

Currently, I have a list of 34 books on my “to-read list”. I think about this list often. In some ways, this lists haunts me. There is a version of myself in my mind that reads books nightly. And if you ask me, I tell you I am an avid reader. Which is true when comes to reading for research that I want to share with clients and actually not true when I hold on to the idealized version of a person who reads nightly before bed.

Some nights I achieve this version, this idealized avid book reader. I read in bed till I fall asleep and those days I give myself an extra pat on the back. My expectations actually met my reality.

It was not until recently when a friend said something to the effect of “It’s not like you have the time to read right now”. At that moment I wanted to bark back “What do you mean- of course, I can read”. She had unknowingly shed light on a version and expectation I hold myself too and felt exposed. Instead, I laughed and let her words sink in over the next few days.

An innocent comment that I could not shake. “Not enough time? What does that mean! Of course, there is time, there is always time”.

Let me stop myself right there and you too, you kick ass human agreeing with my high expectations.

There is not always enough time.

There is not always enough hours in the day.

You and I are NOT being “lazy” for not reading or following through on certain tasks when life around us is moving at a force so fast that there are days we all forget to breathe.

In fact, maybe the actual truth is that my expectations are not based on my current reality. Maybe you feel me here. I am not saying I will never be an avid night time book reading fool and I know that is not the season I am currently in right now. This mental shift is a way to give me space and grace. I urge you to try it. If you want help- I’m here.