Every so often, on a Wednesday, we ask a mum how they manage their work and family. This week, Anya Hayes gives us her approach to feeling like she’s ‘got this’. (Sometimes.) Anya Hayes @mothers.wellness.toolkit came to Norwich in January 2018, and inspired us with her empowering take on how we can handle emotions and anxieties as our kids grow, all found in her book #thesupermummyth....
Tell us a bit about yourself and your business
I'm a Pilates teacher, and an author specialising in pregnancy and maternal health and wellbeing. I'm currently also training to teach Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, with a view to ultimately offering mums a holistic mind–body postnatal mojo kickstart programme. Oh, and this is my side shuffle, alongside the full-time job which requires the most unpaid overtime yet still remains ineffably rewarding, being a mum of two boys.
What is your most embarrassing parenting moment?
It probably is the time I had to ask a man in a museum shop to cut a Thomas engine out of my hair as my toddler had run it along my head while I sat on the floor changing his brother's nappy... and he had switched the mechanism on so it got completely entangled. The poor shop man was mortified and initially refused to do it (as it involved essentially leaving me with a mohican), but I possibly rather hysterically demanded that he did. And then, I later found out, I also happened unrelatedly to have my skirt entirely undone at the back so was fully showing my pants at the time. Not my finest parenting, or sartorial, hour.
How do you juggle your business with being a Mum?
A constant daily recalibration. Lots of breathing. Knowing that some days are going to be better and more productive and less fraught than others. I manage to deliberately park guilt most of the time as personally I find that that is one of the most toxic unhelpful emotions in the freelance working mum mix. Although honestly, I feel frustrated often that I don't devote enough time to it, and that it can be derailed so easily with sick days and school pick ups...but the fact that I have always been able to place my children at the centre of my plans rather than as something else that needs to be delegated and organised makes me realise that I'm doing what my soul needs to do at this time of my life, "success" or not.
Follow Anya here @mothers.wellness.toolkit, and her book is available here and all good bookshops
