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Meet the Western Australian mums making a career on social media.

In recent years we’ve seen the explosion of a brand new profession – social media influencing. Increasingly, new mums take to social media as a creative outlet while adjusting to motherhood, with some building up enough of a following to turn it into a career.

Marketers and brands know that in 2019 audiences are after authenticity, so they flock to these mum’s who are open and honest about their journey through motherhood – the good, the bad and the ‘insta-worthy’.

These influencer mums do a lot more than just post cute photos of their babies; they are content creators, authors, businesswomen and give advice on pregnancy, style, health and fitness. They have created a community of mums who can relate to their struggles and learn from their tips and sometimes just share in a laugh.

Here we’ve collected our favourite influencers to follow for your daily dose of motherhood, fashion and travel and lifestyle inspiration.

1. @ourmessynest

Emma Fletcher is local to Perth, Western Australia and has an interest in sharing local activities for adults and children. With a keen interest in local events, travel, cooking, beauty, animal conservation and supporting charity organisations, Our Messy Nest is a true lifestyle account.

Having recently started her own blog, you’ll find a mix of all these as well as personal pieces both on @ourmessynest and www.ourmessynest.com.au. Staying true to the motivation behind her social media presence, Emma’s five year old son Reed is a constant source of inspiration.

Sharing life as a mother, student, blogger and friend is central to the content shared on these platforms. Emma’s passion for photography has allowed her to connect with other parents to share the ups and downs of parenting, tips on travelling with kids as well as special milestones in her life.

2. @common_wild

Landscape Architect Paula Kuka, began drawing illustrations depicting her experience of motherhood while on maternity leave with her second child. What started as a personal project and an alternative to a traditional baby book, quickly gained popularity as other mums loved seeing their own personal experiences mirrored in these relatable, touching and hilarious cartoons.

Paula’s cartoons have resonated with parents, highlighting the fact that it’s not only the humorous parenting moments but also the intensely emotional and frustrating facets of parenthood that appear to be universal.  The main goal of the project has evolved over time as she realised the power the images could have in transforming someone’s challenging day.  Using humour, honesty, and vulnerability, the drawings let other mums know they aren’t alone. Paula hopes that the project continues to cheer up exhausted parents and provoke conversations about guilt and the pressure mothers feel.

Paula lives in Perth with her Journalist husband, 4-year-old son and 1-year old daughter and is currently working on publishing a book of her illustrations.

You can buy Paula’s illustrations at www.commonwild.com.au

Casey Lucas of Lucas Girls Love is a happy wife & mother of two young girls, currently saying yes to new adventures and living the little things!

With a career in fashion and styling spanning over 15 years, Casey enjoys the creative outlet of Instagram influencing, while she raises her beautiful daughters. Well known for their ‘twinning’ and Mummy & Me outfits, the Lucas Girls have worked with iconic fashion labels such a Auguste the Label, Infamous Swim, Unreal Fur and Lack of Colour to name a few.

 Casey feels that life can be crazy enough and not always sunshine and rainbows, so insists on keeping her Instagram positive and ‘light & fluffy’ so that her posts continue to put a smile on her followers faces.

4. @sugarplumtree_mama

Nicole is a 38 year old influencer blessed with 3 beautiful daughters. Currently her main occupation is juggling #mumlife and social media, however she also has a Bachelor of Science (Molecular Genetics) and worked as a Medical Scientist for 13 years.

When her eldest daughter was 6 months old Nicole opened a children’s clothing company, Sugar Plum Tree, which quickly became very popular. Fans went crazy for the bespoke applique pinafores Nicole designed and sewed herself. However after a stressful, yet rewarding 8 years, and the arrival of her 3rd little sugarplum, Nicole decided it was time to move on.

With a love and passion for all things creative, she found a new love in product styling and photography, and for the past two years has shared these passions online, where you can see snippets of her life as a Mum to three girls, find out about fun Perth events and things to do, follow their regular travels, and learn about some awesome new products they love and recommend.

You can follow Nicole on Instagram and read her blog.

5. @storiesofamum

Since starting in 2015 as a platform for sharing memories of her firstborn daughter Sophie, Stories of a Mum has blossomed into a social media brand built around beautiful photography, small business promotion and storytelling.

Stories of a Mum is an avenue in which to document the good, bad and downright testing days of motherhood as Laura shares her very open and raw journey as a Navy Wife and mother of two little girls. Laura uses her Instagram page to connect with other mothers while drinking wine and eating pizza in her Kmart leggings. If you love honest captions, photos of family home decor, Mum & kid fashion, local Perth child friendly cafes and travel then @Storiesofamum is the account for you.

6. @_emma.gibb

Emma Gibb is a Perth influencer with substance. Just like her insta profile portrays, Emma is a wife, mama and manifester. Happily married with two gorgeous boys, Emma wins more in a month than most people win in a lifetime.

We love Emma’s relatable, funny and down to Earth portrayal of motherhood. We also find her honesty around her mental health struggles inspiring; and love how passionate she is about urging women to get help.

Emma loves working in the Perth CBD as a Commercial Property Manager for a top tier agency but when the corporate work day is over and her boys are tucked lovingly in bed, Emma is getting in that side hustle on Insta.

Not only does Emma create content for top brands like Dyson or HelloFresh, she gives intuitive card readings as @thatgypsymum and promotes her successful online crystal store, thatgypsyshop.com

Image credit: @dealuna.photography

7. @house.of.cubs

Isabel is a Perth blogger and content creator.  She is a wife and mother of two boys, Christian, two, and Ethan 6 months.  Her husband, Steve, works FIFO. Isabel lived in Spain until her early teens.  She has a degree in commerce and a postgraduate degree in corporate governance and gave up her corporate job to have a family.  When Christian was 6 months old, she started her Instagram page for fun and in the process discovered her creative passion.  She has never looked back.

@house.of.cubs is a collection of photography and stories about their family life.  It showcases motherhood, the joys and challenges of raising a young family as well as curated interiors, fashion, products for mums and kids, and her family’s love of the beach, adventure and travelling.

Isabel has recently finished styling Christian’s big boy room.  A space where he can play, explore, learn and get lost in imagination! #kidsroominspiration.

Isabel’s family are soon on a 5 week adventure to Europe where she will continue to share the joys and craziness of motherhood whilst travelling with a young family.

Spiritual teacher, healer and medium, Oscar de Souza, shares why we need to acknowledge and nurture our emotions.

Experiencing emotions is our soul’s purpose, according to spiritual mentor and medium, Oscar de Souza. Honouring our emotions can also help us maintain positive relationships and manifest our desires.

We arrive here alone with nothing, and we leave alone with nothing, except the emotions we acquire, says Oscar de Souza, speaking from the Spirit Energy Centre on NSW’s Central Coast.

Acknowledging our emotions prevents us from offloading them onto others, especially our children and partners, and subsequently them rippling through society

Most excitingly, working with our emotions, rather than ignoring them, helps us manifest what we truly desire.

Despite the importance of valuing our emotions, Western society teaches us to disregard them, and worse, to feel ashamed for having them, which is not something we want to be infiltrating to our children.

The best way we can become attuned to our emotions is to observe ourselves, says Oscar. [Meditation is a great way to develop this skill.]

He says we need to be observant of the emotion that’s resonating within us, rather than being subjected to it controlling us, dominating us, and enticing us to act out.

Oscar’s been told by his guides, “Emotions are variable frequencies of energy operating simultaneously”, which is why some people can feel various emotions at the same time.

Oscar says, “The simplest form to expand the neurological system of the conscious brain to be able to harness, access and be attentive to the energy that resonates within us that’s constantly, forever fluctuating, is to first observe our mind, observe ourselves and not be puppets on a string.”

If we acknowledge our emotions, even understand why we feel that way, and to honour them, we are less likely to be puppeted by them and lash out at others. Unfortunately, those we love are often the first to be hit by our emotional releases.

“Instead of articulating what we’re feeling, we’re often being controlled by what they’re feeling”

Oscar explains a typical household scenario:

“The husband (or wife) comes home stressed. They’re going to be communicating on that level of emotion. We’re not usually observant and noticing these emotions inside. We don’t decide to calm them down or be attentive to them, so we don’t impose them on our children or each other (we don’t impose them consciously, we don’t even know they’re doing it).

“We get home, our own fuse is already at the end of its tether. Perhaps we’ve been treated badly at work, there’s traffic, bills, expenses, and then we have to clean, cook, wash up … it’s all putting you on edge.

“It’s then easy to turn around to your child and say, ‘Turn off that machine!’ or ‘Get off that computer!’

“Now, that child foremostly heard “Bang!”.

“Secondly, the words that were spoken.

“Months later our child speaks to us that way and we wonder why.

“We have just been puppeted by our emotions. We are all guilty of that.

“Everyone gets puppeted, and the problem is we indirectly, and even innocently, jab that pain and stress that we’re feeling onto the other person.

“So, it becomes a virus because that person jabs another person with it and it just swims through society.”

The more we understand our emotions, we’re less likely to be subjugated by them, and will be able to articulate in language by talking about them.

“People don’t want to say to their partner they’re feeling a bit insecure and feel like their energy is no longer connected to them,” Oscar says.

“Rather than asking questions based on this, such as ‘Do you want to do more things in life without me?’ we tend to brew, be fearful, and then start to fish … ‘What did you do today? Who were you with?’ or even go through their phone, which just makes people feel violated.

“Emotions people have shouldn’t control their dialect or behaviour, but moreso be a language to the brain to go this is what’s resonating, let’s attend to it.”

Oscar says it’s even worse for men as they have been conditioned to not feel or show their emotions, “don’t cry, suck it up”. “Poor men innocently have been trapped into a void that is not natural,” he says.

“And women, being intuitive, are hit with a brick wall when they try to broach this. They feel a storm inside, they feel fear, they feel confusion.

“The man’s like, I don’t know what you’re talking about, and it takes a while for them to process.”

Oscar says the consciousness of femininity and the consciousness of masculinity is the concept of Yin and Yang. We all have that in us, whether we are male or female.

Some are slightly off balance, some have more of either.

“Men need to start being more intuitive, talking about their emotions, listening to their inner self, not being just driven by the mind.”

“I can’t say that women now need to start applying the male consciousness because unfortunately 2000 years of male dominance, a patriarchal system, means women have already had to assimilate the masculine consciousness within themselves. But men are yet to assimilate the feminine consciousness within themselves.”

Not only can honouring our emotions be great in maintaining more harmonious relationships and averting the ‘virus’ of offloading onto others, they can help us manifest what we want in our lives.

The effect of our emotions was explored through the water experiments conducted by Japanese author and pseudoscientist, Masuru Emoto, whose work demonstrated how the sentiment of a word, which is energy, can affect the molecular structure of water. Keeping in mind we’re made up of about 78 per cent of water, words said to us can impact us strongly.

“If our thoughts (sentiments) on a piece of paper affects water, imagine we have that thought going over and over in our brain, ‘I’m not good enough, I’m not good enough. Life is shit. Life is shit,’” says Oscar.

People are not only putting that energy back into their whole water aspect and altering the energy there, they’re emitting it into the future, so naturally start to have those experiences; and it’s a vicious cycle.

When we realise the energy that resonates within us, the energy we’re emitting, the thoughts that carry it, we can stop causing that ripple effect.

Affirmations, prayer, spells, incantations, are effective when we feel the word, when we mean it and we say it with sentiment, says Oscar.

If we’re panicking on the inside and reading this word, then fear becomes the dominant emotion.

“The key is, when we do feel afraid, we comfort ourselves, ‘It’s ok, I’m afraid,’ that’s ok,” he says.

“Once we acknowledge it, we can move from there but when we’re fighting against it that it’s not going anywhere, so it helps to acknowledge the fear and where it came from. What experiences have led me to have this fear?

“When we know what caused this, ok it’s failed relationships that make us afraid of falling in love again, for example, it’s not so dominant in our psychology or our energy.”

Oscar advises writing down an affirmation in our own handwriting because our brain will absorb it much better.

We should then read it out aloud at least 20 times with no intention just to read it out so that the wording becomes familiar to the brain, so you know what you’re using.

And then our focus can be feeling each word.

For example, when someone says, “I love you,” it feels different when they really mean it. Quite often we want others to say it, but we rarely look in the mirror and say it to ourselves, it’s quite confrontational. And it’s the most important thing.

This article by Charanyaa Gopalakrishnan explores the concept of Mindful Parenting, which is being able to understand our emotions not allow them to trigger our responses to our children.

Our brain is triggered when it senses danger or a potential threat, therefore making us react instantly to what is going to happen. Unfortunately, it can be tricky for our brain to understand what is an actual ‘danger’ to what is just a situation. In simple terms, it fails to know how to respond instead of react.

Mindful Parenting is a topic that I found immensely interesting wanted to explore, and has now become an idea that I wish to share. This is not about being a perfect parent’, but rather about consciously being present at the situation, absorbing it and not getting hijacked by our emotions. This can be complex to get into our system and put into practice, but it has an immense impact on our children and their ability to be mindful about their behaviour.

Mindfulness in parenting is how we manage our behaviour and emotions to let children learn how they can manage theirs.

It maybe a simple instance of seeing our child having breakfast and fearing there may be a big spill to clean. Instead of responding, a jolt shoots through us making our reaction unpleasant. Many of these reactions are a reflection of our own childhood experiences and consequently this stress response can be triggered easily. When the receptor of stress sparks off, we are unable to get clarity in thinking and we fail to pay attention. As a result, our problem solving ability diminishes thoroughly. ‘Flipping out’ as a reaction occurs in no time and we forget how our children comprehend that. We fail to know how scary we appear in their eyes. Seeing how an adult reacts in distress becomes a negative learning experience for them. We need to teach our children that one can pause, think and respond as an alternative to react.

It also gives you the ability to take a step back and look at a situation rather than being highly impulsive and most importantly to improve your relationship with your child.

Mindfulness in parenting is how we manage our behaviour and emotions to let children learn how they can manage theirs. As parents, we must be regulated before we try teaching our kids. Sadly, when we are overcome by stress or exhaustion, we can be emotionally unavailable to our child. However, if we are carried away by our emotions we can give another chance to ourselves to consciously make a different choice – being present. While there are good days and bad days, there are definitely negative elements of being upset or angry. Mindful parenting is paying close attention to what one feels as a parent and responding in accordance with that without any guilt of past situations. Simply, focusing on what is now. This helps hugely in being aware of one’s own feelings, being more responsive to the child’s needs, and becoming better at modulating one’s emotions. It also gives you the ability to take a step back and look at a situation rather than being highly impulsive and most importantly to improve your relationship with your child.

If we are carried away by our emotions we can give another chance to ourselves to consciously make a different choice – being present.

In times of stress or feeling overwhelmed it is difficult to be the best version of ourselves. Our children can be expected to know these triggers. In order to tackle this effectively, we must know what the ‘hot spots’ or emotional triggers are. We may be most vulnerable at a particular time of the day or be unavailable emotionally. These are the situations that we must familiarize ourselves with so as to make the best choice to change our behaviour accordingly.

As previously mentioned, these are a reflection of our own childhood experiences. Perhaps your child behaves in a way that is against your beliefs, like throwing a tantrum at a restaurant where you feel embarrassment. Maybe it is evoking a childhood memory of your own, such as excelling academically and causing you to ‘react’ when your child fails. Your child’s behaviour may evoke a trauma in your life, for example if you had nearly drowned in a pool you may get paranoid every time your child gets into the pool while learning to swim.

Being mindful can help us understand both our children and ourselves in a huge way.

To get control over our senses and emotions we must first identify what the situations are that may trigger those ‘hot spots’ in us that are responsible for the emotional outbursts. Parenting is not a ‘one size fit all’, however being mindful can help us understand both our children and ourselves in a huge way. Understanding our feelings when we conflict with our child, taking a step back before giving a response in anger and listening before disagreeing to the viewpoint of our children are the essential factors to keep in mind. There will be times when we cannot control ourselves and we react in a certain way, which we regret later. We can always apologize to our kids in such a case, after all we are still in the learning curve and parents make mistakes too.