Celebrating 5 years of motherhood

                   

 


Today we celebrated my son's fifth birthday.  He is such an intelligent little boy, so friendly, confident and chatty, he is creative, funny and full of energy, I am proud to be his mama, he inspires me and makes me want to be a better person.  As well as celebrating the birth of my beautiful boy, I also had a little glass of wine to celebrate my own anniversary of five years of motherhood. It's strange how we don't acknowledge our own achievements as mothers in this way isn't it?

 Having a baby is like a re-birth, we become a different person, a new person, we are born ourselves.  We become a mother.  And we will never not be a mother every again.  After having a child we can never ever go back to being the person we were before.  And I am not talking about stretch marks here, I am talking about our hearts and souls. We are permanently changed.  So I am marking this anniversary as well.

But what am I celebrating? I am celebrating that I survived!  Because being a mother is HARD!
I used to be a secondary school art teacher and I would say that for me, being a mother is like my most stressful day of teaching, only the children don't leave at 3.00, there are no half terms, it's ALL THE TIME!  And that, my friends, is hard.  But I survived, I am surviving.  And I am a richer person for it too.  I feel like now, at the age of 33 and 5 years a mother, I know my self better that I ever did the the preceding 28 years.  I know more about myself and I know myself more deeply than ever before.  I am able to pinpoint my feelings, desires, stresses more accurately that I have ever been able to before.  I am much more mindful of how I am feeling.   I am more inspired to be creative and have more ideas than ever before (and ironically less time than ever to birth them!) But it's so wonderful to learn about yourself and develop this relationship with ourselves, getting to know the person we were born to be.

I really want us mothers to acknowledge and honour all our achievements as parents, but also to acknowledge and honor our souls, our mother souls. We so often forget how amazing we are as mothers, how important what we do is, and how we need to care for ourselves and give ourselves time to rest and recover along this incredible journey.

Here's to you mamas, we don't always acknowledge how powerful we are as mothers or as women, lets start.

A recent commission I did with the title "It Takes a Village to Rise a Child" 

Turning 30, going vegan and theories on ageing.

I have a theory about getting older, In your 0-20s you don't really know what is going on and you just go with the flow, your parents do mostly everything for you anyway, in your 20-30s you live it up, having as much fun as possible, not caring about the consequences, and then is your 30-40s you take stock and try to repair the damage of your 20s and see the world as a bigger place and your place in it.

Vegan birthday cake, made by my sister,  

I think this is why since entering my 30s I have changed my outlook on life somewhat, rearranged what I think is important and finally begun to act like a responsible adult (well at least some of the time anyway) As I turned 23 last week, I made a new, life changing commitment which I foresee playing a large part in the coming years of my life.

As some of you may already know I have been following a mostly plant based lifestyle since about January and have been vegetarian for over a year now. I have known for a long time, probably since I decided to become vegetarian, that being vegan was the right thing to do, but at the time it just felt too hard (but cheese!).  Many people do become vegan overnight, but I felt like a gradual transition to a vegan diet was more likely to result in success for me.  Over the last few months I have been saying good bye to my favourite dairy and egg foods and embracing the abundance of plant based foods in the form of vegetables (obviously), beans and pulses, and the wide variety of vegan convenience foods that are becoming more and more widely available, and as of 1st July, the day after my 32nd birthday I have made a commitment to follow a vegan lifestyle.

Look how he isn't trying to sink his teeth into this cow, strange really considering it's so natural to eat meat. 

As I have been making this transition over the last few months I have began to realise how very very easy it is being a vegan.  I did have a wobble at one point, I was missing butter amongst a few other things, and someone suggested I fully embrace the vegan alternative foods, which  I had been avoiding in the name of being healthy and avoiding processed food, this really helped me,  I felt I could eat much more variety while I got used to cooking different meals from scratch.  There is such an abundance of food out there that there is no need to ever feel deprived, and the more I become familiar with using whole foods, the more healthy my diet is becoming and the less reliant I am becoming on the "transition foods".

There are many reasons why going vegan is the right thing to do, I am not going to list them all here because there are many, (and I find it quite depressing) but needless to say, it is clear that animal agriculture is the single most destructive thing to our planet without a shadow of a doubt, to our air, water and land, and it has been shows time and time again that a vegan diet has many health benefits and vegans are healthier and live longer than those on omnivorous diets.  That is before going into the impact of animal agriculture on humans generally and the animal welfare issues.

Box of vegan treats, birthday from my in-laws.

Even if you don't care about animals, or you don't think they have feelings or you don't care about your health, there is still the fact that more than 50% of the grain grown on this planet if fed to animals for the meat and dairy industry, 90% of soya is fed to animals.  Think how many people could be fed on that, essentially there are people on our earth, people just like you and me who are starving to death because we like the taste of animal flesh.

Needless to, going vegan is basically a no brainer, there is no good reason for any normal person not to be vegan (and no "bacon" is not a reason)

I think it's also worth mentioning that my transition to a vegan diet has also been quite a spiritual experience/journey for me, I believe that I have been called to a vegan lifestyle and that God has helped me to achieve my vegan goals.  Knowing that this is what God wants for my life has made the journey easier and He has given me guidance and support along the way.

Just one of the many delicious vegan breakfasts I have been enjoying - smoothie bowl.

Over the next few days I will be posting some recipes for different vegan meals to show you have delicious and easy it is being vegan.

Before I end this post I want to say that you can ask me any question you like about veganism, either here in the comments, or on my facebook page.  No question is too silly, hard, obvious or pedantic!  Seriously, ask me anything.

On Turning 31

Today I turned 31.
31 on the 31st May; that feels meaningful.
Turning 31 feels different to turning 30, better; 30 hangs in the air like a partially deflated balloon from a party that you should have already left. 31 on the other hand has a sense of purpose to it.  I am now IN my 30's as opposed to clinging hopelessly to my late 20s. The party is most definitely over and it's time to clean up, it's time to get serious.  Oh, that sounds very dull, I don't mean it to.  It's not going to be dull, it's going to be awesome, but it is going to be more purposeful.
I am going to seriously start to enjoy myself, I am going to seriously start to be grateful for all the wonderful things I have, I am going to seriously be positive, I am going to seriously start making meaning in my life and I am going to seriously start crafting a joyful life.
I love that my birthday falls about halfway through the year, it gives me a chance to reflect on the first half of the year and re-focus on my goals, and create new ones. It occurred to me that 10 years ago I was celebrating my 21st birthday, a great milestone year, I had a look through my photos to see what I was up to this time 10 years ago.  I was in my second year of uni at Oxford Brookes studying Fine Art, my house mates and I had a house party with some old school friends and new uni friends. It was an awesome party involving plenty of alcohol, an epic balloon fight, birthday cake and plenty of drunken antics.  Oh now times have changed in 10 years, not just where I am in life but also who my friends are and what I feel is important.  This year all I wanted to do for my birthday was go for a walk in the woods, eat some lunch in a pub, then chill out at home for the afternoon!  No partying here!  But it was all good, it was what I wanted to do and it felt special.  I felt special.  Even hanging the washing on the washing line this morning felt special and different because it was my birthday and it made me realise how important your outlook is on the way you feel.  I have been thinking a lot recently about positivity and more specifically the power of positive thinking, how consciously thinking positively can change how you feel and maybe even what happens to you.  I fully intend on doing some positive thinking in the coming weeks (made easier by the warmer weather and lighter evenings), lets see where that leads!
When we went for a walk in the woods today and I received a message, a little piece of plastic that my husband picked up from the bushes with the words "yes you can" printed on it.  I took this as an answer to a few questions I have had recently.
I feel really good about turning 31 and I think this is going to be a really amazing year. Watch this space!

10 years ago

Now