Why my own experience with stress launched Healthy Mummy Wellness

Pre covid, mental wellness and mental health was something I thought was more related to someone going though a significant problem or suffering from depression. 

Like for many people, I became a lot more aware of my own stress levels and mental wellness over the past few years.  I have also now understand the difference between daily stress versus symptoms of anxiety that need attention. 

But I was very ignorant. I was ignorant to how wide spread mental health issues were and are. I was ignorant to how so many of us have our mental wellbeing negatively impacted in our day to day lives. 

And the pandemic brought all of this to the surface in society and in my own awareness of mental health.

It also taught me that my own mental wellness was severely suffering and I was stressed, anxious and suffering from anxiety but doing all I could to function and hide it from myself and others.

My life was incredibly hectic and stressful and I had way too much on my plate. People always said to me “I don’t know how you do it all” and the truth is neither did I. I was burning out. Juggling too much and having an enormous amounts of pressure and stress put on me at every turn.

Then Covid happened and things got a lot worse with a lot more pressure and stress at work and I was in a constant state of stress with a feeling of nausea in the pit of my stomach almost daily.

Unfortunately I coped by sleeping less, eating more, drinking more, not talking care of myself and working every hour in the day as so many people were demanding so much from me and I didn’t want to let anyone down.

This resulted in me gaining 15kg and feeling in the worst physical and mental health that I have ever been in.

And of course I was not alone in this.

Covid lock downs and the stresses associated with them challenged people all over the world and  we now know the mental health of so many has suffered over this period – and continues to suffer today.

But what I am grateful for is that over this period we all started to talk about it.

The Healthy Mummy community talked about it

I listened to all they were saying and I understood the mental anguish and struggles that they were experiencing and how anxiety and stress levels were through the roof. And  I recognised the similar feelings of stress, anxiety and depression that I was also going through.

After listening to our community, I realised that that we were all living in a culture of “She’ll be right” “It’s all good!” and we were clearly not addressing the mental challenges the same way that we address having a cold or the flu.

I also realised that we have mental blocks when it comes to seeing a specialist.  We consider only seeing a psychiatrist or psychologist if we are at the very breaking point. 

We are prone to be reactive vs proactive and it was really important that we needed to change that thought pattern.

It was also clear that mums had other challenges around gaining help and seeing a specialist – the waitlist,  the right specialist, the time out of your day, THE COST – there seemed to be so many obstacles stopping us from getting the help we clearly needed.

I realised at this point that I needed to a) help myself and get back in control of my mind and body and b) help others to do the same.

So I talked to our team about creating a Wellness and Mental Well-being program that focused on stress and anxiety and helping mums get practical support with programs to feel good and mentally well – and I was excited at what they talked about. 

This was never intended to replace professionally tailored medical attention, but more of a platform where our specialists are able to provide instant access, tools and support to help mums and families in the first instance of understanding self care and wellbeing. 

Our experts talked about self care, meditation, breath work, sleep, anti anxiety and anti stress programs, nourishing food and educational podcasts and I was so excited.

I 100% got into it and my mindset changed and over time I felt like a new person – and most importantly I felt back in control and so much happier. I also went onto to lose the 15kg I had gained.

I believed in the Wellbeing approach so much that I asked our community if this is something they wanted us to create as a business and over 10,000 mums said yes in under 24 hours!

So that was a resounding YES

So that was enough for me to go full steam ahead with it.

But as well as all the above I also wanted to broaden the wellness approach to include family and kids wellness as this is a big factor of stress to a mum and I knew that kids were also suffering from stress and anxiety.

I also wanted to include programs to support PMT and Menopause too as both of these times can affect the wellbeing of a woman and I wanted to ensure we were helping women in the key areas they needed the help.

And now after 12 months of passion and so much work we have a new Wellness launch!

We have a new Wellness website, a new Wellness App, a new Wellness social community and a new Healthy Mummy Wellness expert team who are passionately leading our wellness content and programs 

I am so passionate about what we have created and I believe that it is our responsibility to lead the way in the Wellbeing space and ensure we are supporting the mental wellbeing of mums and their family.

Setting an example to our children is critical. Once we feel better and understand why and how our body reacts to anxiety and that we can make a mental shift to change our thought patterns – it can change our lives – which in turns means we can also teach our children to do the same.

Wellness. should be an achievable and an affordable safe place to be and I am passionate about providing this via Healthy Mummy Wellness and that we have done so at a much needed time I’m the world.

It is an area we will keep investing in and will keep creating new Wellness programs and tools to support women on a regular basis.